Missing.ie

I discovered an Irish blog entry the other day that listed all the missing people in Limerick and encouraged everyone to go and pay Missing.ie a visit. Now I can’t for the life of me remember which blog that was and can’t link to that particular entry. Mea culpa.

Either way, that recommendation is indeed a valid one: There appear to be more and more Irish people missing these days. Joseph Mullaly from Cork is the latest one I am familiar with. I know some people who know him (well, in Ireland you always know someone who knows someone!) and a site like this does provide a great local service.

From the Missing Persons list to date 68 have been found (38 of them deceased). Missing.ie also has a Lost Contact section: 134 of these families have been reunited, some of them after decades. My fiancée herself had a brother that was missing in London for more than 30 years and only in the late 1990s made contact with the family again. He has since passed away. So these are by far not unusual cases.

I do hope that some of those missing will soon be found alive. Of course, there are a number that will quite clearly not have “just” gone missing, but that ended up murdered and I have no doubt that for a good number of those cases there are people out there who know more, but are not willing to talk.

One of the most heart wrenching cases is that of Lisa Dorrian from Co. Down. A murder inquiry has since been launched, though her body has never been found. Her family has set up their own website and launched a YouTube video in the hope that some day they can finally bring some closure to this case and discover what really happened to Lisa.

So do pay Missing.ie a short visit and have a quick glance at the photos. At the worst this may take a minute out of your schedule, at the best you may be able to provide some valuable evidence and help locate somebody’s loved one.

3 is a lonely number

Am I the only one who thinks that if you name your company “3” you gotta be extra careful how you word your ad campaigns?

“Now all 3 customers can roam the UK at no extra cost.”

Then again maybe it is indeed an accurate description of their current client base as I have yet to find a single person who actually subscribed to their network.

Axis of Evil

Just stumbled across this window display from a music shop in Cork that shall remain anonymous. (Ah, what the hell: Russell’s Music store in Parnell Square.)

What on Earth is wrong with those people? No matter what one may think about the current state of affairs – and believe me I have very strong views about this subject, and none of them can summarised with “I wish I was George Bush’ secret love child” - , but what can be achieved with this very general and badly drawn condemnation? As those guys used the countries' flags they effectively insulted ALL the British, ALL the Americans and ALL the Israelis. Hardly a very clever political analysis methinks.

And then the Swastika! Is that a new trend in Irish politics?

But maybe I am misreading this and the owner is a Hindu who uses the Swastika as a positive sign of good luck and just wants to wish Bush & Co every success in combating the “Axis of Evil”……

Count Curly Wee

Do you know that feeling? For weeks, months, even years on end you can walk through life and something really small and tiny is niggling away at you every once in a while that is completely incongruous, doesn’t matter much, but keeps you slightly off centre, yet you can’t quite put a finger on it why.

Then all of sudden somebody comes along and writes a little piece that makes it all fall into place and helps identify the itch that’s been troubling you without you really ever noticing.

And life is good again. Till the next time.

This was the case with me when I read Fústar’s excellent research into Count Curly Wee, a daily comic strip that appears in the Irish Independent for as long as I can remember…. well ever since I moved to Ireland ten years ago.

Humour generally doesn’t age well. (When was the last time you had a knee slappingly funny night while watching a Shakespeare comedy? Or split your sides looking at a Punch cartoon?) Count Curly Wee is quite obviously from a different epoch. It’s hard to believe that its humour was ever considered remotely funny. The drawings aren’t hot either. No-one ever reads it or generally talks about it. It has no admirers and there are no fannish websites about it. (Surely the sign that it simply doesn’t matter at all to anyone!)

Yet, the Indo prints it day in and day out.

And every once in a while I had my WTF moments that didn’t last long and didn’t upset me too much, yet kept niggling at me.

And now Fústar reveals all anyone never needed to know about the strip. And the world is a better place for it.