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O Holy Night

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Talking Movies will return in 2019.

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Any Other Business: Part XX

What is one to do with thoughts that are far too long for Twitter but not nearly long enough for a proper blog post? Why round them up and turn them into a twentieth portmanteau post on matters of course!

A Comedy of Errors/Manners

The Luas stations and trams are now festooned with posters ordering people about (give up your seat, take off your bag, clear out of here) and then adding in a larger typeset – It’s Manners. I feel there ought to be an exclamation mark after that to give the full flavour to the absurdity. I can think of few things more unmannerly than peremptorily barking orders at people and then adding in a bellowed roar that it’s manners. I remember skimming a book in Hodges Figgis’ bargain basement section  some 7 years ago. It suggested that Japanese etiquette avoided confrontational corrections for unspoken but meaningful examples of the right way to do things. If someone made a terrible verbal blunder, the blunder was, after a discreet interval, silently amended without attention being drawn; the understanding being that this was good manners. I put this into practice by waiting a few minutes after Synge Street had been pronounced as Singe rather than Sing to drop in the correct pronunciation idly while asking a follow-up about goings on there which were the real point of interest. The correction was made, no attention was drawn to the original blunder, no confrontation was had. Good manners. I contrast my practise there with a trying scene that followed not long after where, out of nervousness that I would be roared at for mispronouncing Alain Resnais, I mispronounced Alain Resnais as Rey-na and got roared at – ‘Rey-NAY! Rey-NAY!!! JE-SUS!!!!’ Bad manners. I get visually roared at by these Luas posters and I think – Bad Manners.

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