Tilting at Windmills

The Irish Ferries dispute ended today, in the manner of many of these things, with a compromise.

The Union and Company delegates emerged at six am this morning, after an intensive all night session, an agreement was reached at the eleventh hour. Minimum wage is saved, despite the attempts of the company to circumvent Irish law by waving (very thin) International waters law books frantically in the air and whittering about how twenty-six million in profit last year is not enough to save the company. The company, however, still gets to re-flag their ships which is appalling, but will take a change in Irish law to stop. It also still gets to hire foreign labour to replace the Irish, which in principle I have no objection to, as long as they are paid the same as Irish workers, which is now guaranteed by Irish law. The Irish workers get redundancy deals, and by the end of the day, the lock in on many of the Ferries will end.

This is of course all on the condition that Irish Ferries stick to the agreement, which if previous ones are taken into account, is about a fifty fifty chance.

This whole crisis has made me so Angry that, at the moment, along with a close friend I have had the feverish and badly thought out idea of running for the Irish Parliment at the next elections as an independent, under the single issue of compulsary union acceptance by companies setting up in this country, and the enforcement of any pay restructuring from the top down. The CEO's and their cohorts should get hit first, and hardest.

It's not that I have lost any faith in Anarchism (which I still hold by) but I am sick of ranting to no purpose, both on my blog and to my friends and family.

In the event I run with this insane idea, I think I'll be running down the path of the ex Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra who in the Eighties ran for Mayor of SanFranciso and came fourth. Jello at no point was a candidate that could win, but during the race he managed to put many candidates in uncomfortable positions with regards to their stance on many issues.

The only reason I would run (though the idea came up today, and is still very much only in the "joking about it" stage) is to cause as much trouble as possible for the other candiates and get some issues that I believe in strongly discussed. Things like the fact that the top tax bracket of forty two percent applies to anyone who earns more than €32,000 euro which is most of the country, the destruction of our national heritage to make way for endless roads that do nothing to solve the traffic problem or end our dependency on imported oil.

Those points and about a thousand other things that daily make me want to snap, and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 Carbine-gas semiautomatic, bitterly pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers alike, would be alleviated somewhat by a political soapbox and the adoption of a "holy-fool" like persona. These changes in strategy, taken together would prevent any, ehm, "sapping" of our fine nations economic growth.

Seriously though, the political run will, most likely, never happen, but in the weak light of today's winter sun, it all seems quite plausible.

Now I just have to find out how to do it, how much it costs, and get 100 individuals with a mental imbalance to sign me up for it.

Tilting at Windmills.

Peace and Hope.

FatherCrow.

Santa Claus revealed as the evil demon MAMMON!

So Christmas arrives like a beggar at the doorstep again.

We are once again compelled to go out to the highstreet and worship at the altar of Mammon in order to pay him his due.

The sacrifices are wrapped and left under a dying tree.

Our nearest and dearest come.

How appropriate that these people are celebrating the birth of their God, with wrapped dead things, under a dying thing, Christianity is after all, a death cult.

There is almost nothing left of the festivals of the old ones, and Yule, the death of the Oak King, the birth of the Holly King. We are smothered under the harsh red glow of the neon that calls you to the sacrifice dealers.

We gorge ourselves on traditional flesh, farmed and imprisoned where their bones twist and fuse as they grow, trapped in cages that are sizes too small. The teeth that tear this flesh are the same ones that rattle when after too much booze, razor words are spat across the table. All to celebrate the love and the birth of their saviour.

This is honouring their God, "the"God - the older I become the less I know about their ways - the memories of what it was once meant to be drift out into the mist, nothing but formless daemons, shadows of what they once were in the purity and innocence of childhood.

This is honouring your family, this outpouring of money, they are only worth what you spend, this is what we are told.

Lies.

Scrooge knew the meaning of Christmas, its the reason he stayed well out of it. Or perhaps his family were just sick of him winning the annual Christmas games.

Bah Humbug.

A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every December 25th.

Peace and Hope

FatherCrow.

Self Portrait

Photo taken with strong light source, and no photoshop trickery.

Peace and Hope

FatherCrow

The Apparat Program

The word "apparat" is the old Soviet Era "bureaucracy" or "apparatus" the "bureaucrats" of this system were commonly referred to as "apparatchiks".

It's rare that I do this, just provide a link to another's page but so far I have gleaned quite a bit of enjoyment from Warren Ellis's Apparat program and so, have decided to share it with you, the denziens of the blogosphere.

The Apparat program is Ellis' attempt at spreading the music of unsigned artists who have sent in mp3's to him that give him a kick.

Ellis converts them into Podcast format and leaves them up for anyone to download.

The individual Apparat files comprise of up to seven tracks in compressed podcasts (about 23 meg in size), each file tends to comprise a mixture of tracks, some hard, some soft, some syncopated, some not. My personal preference so far is Apparat 2.

Ellis himself, as am I, is a huge fan of punk rock (emphasis on the "rock" side of it) and electronica. If these genres ring your bell, then it's high time you followed the above link and got some free gut stompin' music.

If you yourself are involved in making music (not "my mates in a band" or "I think you will really like this track by someone other than myself") send him an mp3 and you may find you and your band included in the next apparat program (he gets thousands of hits a day). Of course, he may think you're shit, but that's his perogative.

Support new bands, hear new tunes, and turn off that fucking top twenty radio station you daily subject yourself to, or else I will involve myself in a high magick ritual, and you may well find youself being fucked to death by rabid minks.

Peace and Hope.

FatherCrow.