Hausfrau of the Year

I felt the well of creativity bubbling over last night when a twitter storm erupted over the annual Rose of Tralee frocks and personality vacuums. Not content to sit on the sidelines,being TV-less and unable to join in the collective slagging and begrudgery that such a spectacular evokes, I thought back to my childhood and the wonder that was the Calor Kosangas Housewife of the Year.

I cannot remember the Rose of Tralee being part of yearly life but I certainly recall my mothers hushing for the Calor Spectacular. I have vague recollections of nice frocks and ample buxom, the result of too many queen cakes, children and an ill fitted bra. The chortles and bingo wings, all vying for the golden toilet brush or whatever nonsense passed for a prize in those days. This was after all the era of blankety blank, where contestants sold their souls for a sprayed gold checkbook that connected to no checking account. Tweeter Orlaith Finnegan reminded me that there were speed cake icing and bed dressing rounds. This is perhaps where my mothers obsession with hospital corners on bed sheets originated. None the less the thought of frenzied housewifery had me in tears last night. But what would todays CKHY contestants have to demonstrate?

Its all about the host, you have to put the ladies at ease, a sort of horsewhisperer for housewives. Suggestions so far have included Eddie Hobbs, Gaybo, Tubridy all of which amount to just another Autumn schedule in RTE. Kudos to the tweeter that suggested Ivor Callely, but that level of permatan is likely to spook the hors..housewives. His fellow Senator and all round lovely bottom Ronan Mullens would make a fine host. He could have them eating out of his bag of oats with a gentle coo of residual catholic guilt, and fire them up for the ‘dirty look at the non catholics round’

Yes, indeed, what would we test these new age housewives on?

Complaint call to customer support in India round, where housewives battle through thick regional accents to solve their home broadband problems in as short a time as possible.

Baking at the office, where thoroughly modern housewives use their feet to blend and knead delicious cakes under desks ready for the oven upon arrival home.

The nipple stretch, where housewives see how far a breastpump can stretch their nipples in preparation for returning to work immediately after the birth of children.

The one hundred meter dash, restoring a minimalist home to its uncluttered finish with a child attached to each limb.

Full make up application and hair styling while making sandwiches and driving kids to school, this round also has the added challenge of avoiding the Gardai.

Feel free to add your own to the #CKHY stream on twitter or comment below

To hell or to Carrickstown

I’m turning into a twitter addict, its like all the witty people I ever wanted to hang out with when sober distilled into my pocket. The only thing I despair of is the nightly discussions of shows on TV, for the most part I can slag along, because I know exactly who these people are, despite the fact that I have not seen any of these shows. It doesn’t take much talent, just a matter of recalling whoever was on RTE five, ten, fifteen years ago and making some witty comment. When I hear of the massive figures paid to Pat Kenny in RTE I don’t despair of missing whatever they have to offer me by way of entertainment. They cling to nostalgia like a favourite childhood toy, where is the hope of anything innovative, fresh or new coming to a TV screen near you, when the same old thing gets trotted out again and again?

I disconnected the Sky about 2 years ago, not bothered to revert to RTE. I do have a TV in the house, but watch no TV, I have alternatives that fulfil our entertainment needs, we don’t need 60 channels to watch what we want to watch, we don’t even need to tune the set. The Xbox and a USB is all I need to watch high definition, advert free programmes whenever I want. I’ve been online since 1993, I had my first webpage up within 3 months of starting Computer Applications in DCU that year. While I never had much grá for architecture or code, I did love the web; it was a playground. Things were different back then, everything was shared, the internet was a mess, but a wondrous mess, where you had to know or guess the location of stuff and sponsorship, smiley faces and cookies were a gleam in a programmers eye. I’ve played games since getting hooked on Doom in college and still feel a tingle when I hear the noises from Super Mario Bros. With 40% of US gamers now women, Im hapy to welcome the rest of the girls to the fun.

The early days of the internet were the birthplace of ideas, open source and these values continue today, albeit with increasing pressure from large multinationals to create a monetised internet where you get, but only if you pay for it. Anyone that has used Google images for the past number of years will note the decreasing ammount of images available. There are ways around this problem, like all other obstacles put in the way of users, hackers and geeks have refused to be bowed by barriers. As quickly as code to protect material can be written, somebody is working for FREE to break it. Where and how do these freedom fighters fit in with the Capitalist ethos that now threatens the internet? We, hackers, pirates and open source geeks are the new rebel scum for the interweb overlords to shake angry gloved fists at.

We share the shows we want to watch, with no ad breaks and sponsors messages. We are tuned in, but we have chosen another way of experiencing cultural artefacts. The TV goes on, the show is watched and the TV goes off, we are no longer slaves to the remote, because we have escaped, we have taken the blue pill. On the high seas of P2P, we share with others freely, we support the networked users, we are never leeches. The powers that be want this to be termed stealing but I don’t and wont see it that way, am I stealing if I go to a friends house to watch it on ‘the channels’ without making some sort of monetary donation to the host? The same tired rhetoric of ‘sharing is stealing’ gets trotted out time and time again. If I steal something then I have taken the original, if I copy it the original remains. There is a difference...

For those of you still struggling to get past Eircoms laughably weak attempt at censorship I say get thee to hidemyass.com or take my route to the stars straight through the Bays' own proxy server, because what you do on the internet is your business not IRMA's. https://www.ipredator.se/

Image above courtesy of http://morrigan-reborn.blogspot.com/2009/11/jack-o-connor-hurts-pat-kennys-feefees.html check her out!