Haha, no. I was tempted to visit Paddy’s Lunch, but being in Boston I opted for clam chowder, a good burger (where you actually get to specify how you want it made), and some Italian. I was mildly amused when I walked by a pub that advertised a band called The Gobshites. Certainly won’t help to dispell Irish stereotypes.

Dublin metro was first planned in the 1980s. A definitive plan was finalized last year, and the construction was supposed to start next year, bur at the last possible moment a group of residents near one of the planned terminuses blocked it in court because the construction would “cause them undue stress”. So, if we’re lucky, the metro construction will begin within 50 years of the original plan. Ireland is thus remaining one of the very few European countries with sizable population, without a metro. Despite running such huge budget surpluses that we sometimes refuse to collect taxes from the multinationals.

In Boston, I stayed close to Alewife. The red line was decent to get me to the city centre, and I had two good bus connections to Lexington where I also had some business to attend to.

Just came back from a long weekend in Boston, and I loved it. It reminded me very much of Dublin where I live:

• Expensive as hell.
• Weather forecast is never right.
• You can understand the locals only when they are drunk.

But the food was great, and the T was lightyears ahead of the Dublin metro system.

That’s what I’m doing. Of course, it’s easier with an apple when I clean it anyway, rather than a banana where all I have is hands and teeth.

I usually shop at Aldi, and their brand comes in plastic bags, with no stickers on the fruit. Still not ideal, but at least it’s easily separable.

Ireland

My rubbish company told me not to throw them into the compost bin; that it’s better to put your peel onto regular rubbish if you can’t get them off.

Funny enough, in some countries the Christmas presents are delivered by baby Jesus, and not Santa Claus.

This is also the reason why Metamucil doesn’t sell in Europe. Seriously: just looking at the left picture gives me constipation.

(I understand that the pic is a joke, but anyone who has a coffee and a fag after breakfast can attest to their wonderful laxative powers.)

At first I thought I was on c/running and was about to agree.

One more week till Halloween. The next day the Christmas season starts, and I’ll gave the three TSO Christmas albums on loop.

I used to live in the US back then, and it was cheaper to leave voice messages than text. So, I did. One time I called my sister in Europe, and since she didn’t answer, I left a voice message. She called me back later, pissed off, because she had to call her provider to set up her voice mailbox, because “normal people just text when there’s no answer.” These days, she sends me long voice messages on Whatsapp, which I ignore for weeks at a time. Oh, how the tables have turned…

Looks like they used CSS on that tree, instead of tables…

Last weekend I found that my original floppies for Eye of the Beholder II are still perfectly usable. Now get off my lawn, you young whippersnapper.

IT

Pringlius. Actually, the Aldi knockoff brand that tastes so much better.

Ireland is a special case here. Not that the population wouldn’t be willing to vote in some extremists, but they may actually be unable. Ireland’s voting system, the single transferable vote, almost guarantees a regression to centrist parties. It would take a change in our Constitution to move allow extremist parties to gain any political power, and given our history and existing political culture, the easiest way to achieve that would indeed be a direct military intervention.

But of course it’s happening here, but at least where I’m sitting, there is an overwhelming rejection of this “bullshittery”. Here in Ireland we have small fringe nationalistic parties, which so far only faced outright ridicule, even though recently I heard about outright hostility (a group of such nutcases was beaten up and stripped to their underwear). We are facing political and financial pressures from the US, and so far we dispatched with them fairly easily. And even though our government’s incompetence invites the more radical groups, I’m fully convinced that it won’t happen here, unless we’re directly invaded.

The US used to export its culture, and people were eating it up. But I actually see an uptick in appreciation of local culture in Europe. As you said, there is lots of external financing to push American culture across the world, but I think that this is just a reaction to people not consuming as much of it as before. I see that here in Ireland as well. So far, we’ve rejected most of it (especially the American religious nutcases who tried to influence our abortion referendum), but it’s a constant struggle.

By “alien”, I didn’t mean any negative connotations. I meant that I don’t understand it. Ugandan or Japanese cultures, for example, are alien to me, because I don’t understand their nuances and can’t be bothered to learn them. The US, with its proud European “descendants” (so many people claim to be European even though they are the third generation to never set foot in Europe), used to be at least understandable, but it’s shifting towards something where I no longer understand how people think or what motives drive them.