Sunday 29 June 2008

Jericho

I wanted to recommend an under-rated, relatively-unheard of tv show called Jericho. It is about a small town in Kansas, USA supposedly 200 miles away from Denver. The main plot is that a nuclear acttack has occurred in Denver and the people of Jericho can see the mushroom cloud. Panic ensues as to what happened, and their worst fears were realised when they discover that this attack is much larger than first thought

The whole first series captures your imagination not only as they unfold the mystery behind the attacks but more so the way they work out each of the new roles and relationships between the characters as they learn to rebuild in the strange new world with power, fuel and food shortages.
I will not give any spoilers but you should definitely try this show. This is up there with my favourite shows such as Prison break, 24 and heroes.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jericho-Season-1-Skeet-Ulrich/dp/B000RHUERU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1214777087&sr=1-2

Thursday 19 June 2008

Animal Rescue

I love it when your day doesn't go at all how you expected it to. Yesterday, I went to dungannon to spend some quality time with my girlfriend Mel. She had just picked me up from the bus station and were off doing our usual random things when we spotted a dog at the side of the road.

This poor creature looked miserable. It was camped in the busheds at the side of a country road, soaked through to the bone from the torrential rain we had just had. We couldn't just leave it there so we stopped the car and tried to coax him over, but it was too nervous and wouldn't come near us.

After several failed attempts, Mel went to the shop and came back with tesco value ham, and that seemed to do the trick. However, the dog had a limp, a bleeding mouth and just generally looked confused so we decided we should take him (yes we estblished at this stage that he was indeed a him!) to the vet and tried to get him into the car. But the dog wasn't having any of it, so we call Mel's mum over for help.

Sure enough Dr dolittle herself got him into the car, and we got him to the vet for a little TLC. There was no way though we were gonna allow the vet hand him over to the dog warden just to be put down, he was a gorgeous black lab! So in the morning we came back and collected him in order to find him a home. Praise God, his owners had contacted the dog warden about their missing black lab, and they put the 2 together.

Turned out his name was giggsy. It was sad to part with him after our ordeal, and it got me thinking that if we put all this effort in just for a stray dog, how much more should I be doing this for our homeless people. Despite failed attempts to lure the dog over, despite failed attempts getting him in the car, despite not knowing where to bring him after the vets, we still did something, I mean where does our responsibility end?

Friday 13 June 2008

Ireland says NO!

Wouldn't have Ian Paisley been proud? Thank God Ireland said no to the Lisbon treaty. It may be the case that it is inevitable the EU will take over everywhere, but at least it has been stalled for now. There are too many "hidden shadows" with this bill, and way too much that the general public don't know what they're signing on to.

I have several issues with this bill. We would be handing over federal power to unelected officials in brussels, with no real accountability being handed back to local government, and by local they actually mean national. It would be much harder to pass laws appropriate to our situation. There are way too many diverse cultures in Europe to have them all generically governed in one place. If the President of a European superstate wanted to abuse his power, he could achieve hitler-like ambitions without the wars.

Apart from all that, the Irish fought for centuries for home-rule from Britain; why would they hand it all away to Europe now? At least the Irish have had some sense and shown an example to the rest of Europe that hopefully the UK will follow. If not, I would suggest that perhaps then would be the perfect time to unite Ireland, and stay away from the EU. Also isn't there something apocalyptic about the rise of a nation in the scriptures?