Unemployment doubled in Ireland over the last year, and maybe soon it'll triple, so now the government is doing the obvious: distributing suicide prevention materials. (The suicide rate in Ireland, by the way, has tripled since the 1950s.) This is sad, because it is not at all the Irish who I want to be doing themselves in. There's like eight other countries, at least, higher on my list!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
14
Ok...but I was never really comfortable with the peasant class of Ireland actually experiencing the upbeat economy of the last few years.
I think they are much more comfortable drunk and out of work.
Am I wrong?
I'm Irish and I'm more comfortable drunk and out of work. Drunk and working is better, of course, but out of work is fine, too.
I am are much more comfortable drunk and employed.
You are correct!
They have already appropriated the trappings of their brief real estate wealth to return to their roots: http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0726/athboy.html
That article reads really well with an Irish accent. A digger ya say now?
Gabriel Byrne would have been a much better choice.
You are correct.
And perhaps a "Higglety-Pigglety" tag.
Why doesn't the Irish government just give all the unemployed a ticket to the Bronx or Woodside like it did back when their economy was normal, i.e., shitty?
It's a rebranding opportunity. It's not a massive increase in unemployment; it's an Opportunity to produce another pulitzer-winning national author.
They should distribute potato recipes instead. It got them through several centuries just fine (except of course that time that it didn't).
They are an "antique" people. Stick with:
Poems (mostly, limericks, don't strain yourselves);
Booze;
Donnybrooks;
Self-hate;
Golf;
awful chidhoods (but please, keep it to yourself, Balk is sick of reading about them); and
acting.
Which 8 are higher on your list, Choire? I'm betting that none of them would off themselves with as much charm. Or alcohol.
Perhaps they're killing themselves because they can't stand all the clichès above.