Tuesday, February 23, 2010

No, Minister (subtitled the Strife of Brian)

What a to-do eh? First Willie O'DamhasO'Dea quits and now Trevor Sargent.

I'm giving up watching Desperate Housewives for Lent. The news at 6pm is more entertainment than my brain can handle. Fianna Fail and the Greens at each others' throats is more than an adequate substitute for the trials of Gaby, Susan, Bree, Lynette, et al.

Mind you, if the "Govern"ment should collapse in the not-too-distant future, I'd be at a loose end at the ballot box. I'm sorry, Enda, but no.

If enough people wrote "Michael O'Leary" across the ballot papers, would that mean he could be elected? OK, he's a tough one, and would make cuts left right and centre. He could also make his remaining civil servants wear rotten blue polyester uniforms, sit at yellow plastic desks, pipe awful music at us all day, abolish the canteen in favour of a lady with a trolley selling overpriced paninis and replica forms, sell advertising space in the Dail, make us pay for the loo and so on ad infinitum, but he'd make a fucking brilliant Taoiseach or Finance minister. He'd have the country's finances sorted while Brian Clowen would still be trying to make sculptures out of his bellybutton fluff and earwax.

A scheduled Ryanair 737 could replace the Government jet, making instant savings. Junkets to Brussels would become less popular as going via Charleroi would be too painful for our cossetted ministers. Mary Harney would have to do the work of two TDs as she would take up two seats in the Dail. Mary Cockup (sorry, Coughlan) could be garrotted and those 300 aircraft maintenance jobs could be reinstated in Dublin.

I would be more than happy to serve as Michael O'Leary's speechwriter, as I share with him a love of the vernacular. Fuck it, get him in!

Monday, February 15, 2010

Saint Pancreas

I’m so glad Valentine’s Day fell on a weekend this year. Just so I haven’t had to endure the gushing, faux-surprise exclamations of those colleagues whose partners deliver fucking ginormous bouquets of flowers to the office.

Not even a mention of it! Huzzah! (There has been a whiff of it, however – I would think, one colleague spent much of the morning ostentatiously spraying something with a Tommy Hilfiger logo on the bottle on herself, in the hope that someone would compliment her on the scent and where she got it from! Nobody did!)

As for me, I had dinner cooked for me, a nice walk and a couple of pints in the local. Not a Hallmark logo, overpriced restaurant or pink heart in sight. Not even in the local, which is one of those spit-and-sawdust and greyhounds-in-the-corner type of places where the average age of the clientele is 70.

Anyhow, all that sickly-sweet stuff probably wouldn’t do me any good at this juncture, now that I’m gulping 1,000 milligrams of Glucophage a day to help with insulin resistance which is a complication of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). PCOS is a rotten condition with irregular periods being the main symptom but also hirsutism, obesity, and acne among others. Being lucky where cosmetic symptoms are concerned, I’m neither spotty nor hairy, but keeping my weight down can be difficult, even if I can still get into a size 12-14!

I had been taking Aldactone for years but the results of a recent liver function test prompted the doc to change the script. Bloody triglycerides!

I still haven’t managed to shift the half stone I put on over Christmas thanks to Bailey’s, Quality Street and all the other goodies that accumulate in my parents’ house in Kilshite over the festive season. And now, it seems, a more concentrated effort is required on my part to shift the extra weight and also lower cholesterol without resorting to statins.

I’ve been lucky with Glucophage so far, the side effects of squits and nausea haven’t affected me. I fucked up last weekend and forgot I was not supposed to drink bucketloads of beer while taking it and ended up having to jump out of the car the following afternoon and violently throw up on the side of the road, after a mere four pints the night before! Not to mention the honking and cheering from passing cars. Bastards!

So, I now have to reduce my alcohol intake as well as moderate my thought-it-was-already-pretty-healthy diet (i.e. lots of veggies, no fry ups, no processed stuff). Bollocks. Most of my socialising involves lots of beer so I’m still at a loss for something to replace it with once the two pints I’m allowed have gone down the hatch. And I hate being the only sober one in a group of drunks! FUUUUUCK! Anyway, I’ll just have to grin and bear it, because it’s for the best. It’ll pay off in the end. Volunteering as designated driver will save us loads in taxis.

And I’ve got ten months to go before Christmas and the torrent of chocolate, so I hope to have made progress by then!