GAAngsta's Paradise - an Irish rap

A little bit of Irish social commentary - (rap it in your head to the original Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio feat LV).

As I shuffle down High Street struggling for breath

I take a look at my wife and realise she hasn’t left - yet

Which is kinda surprising, considering what’s been going on

With pay cuts and no hair cuts and no manicures and so on

The wallet’s pretty empty but I guess I deserve it

After all I’m just a gutter living, whining public servant

Enough negative, I got a job, I should be grateful

We ain’t eating beef steak, we gotta eat pork, so

The kids need clothes and stuff, ’cos they gotta look cool

But my shoes are puppy-chewed and I dress like an old fool

A meal out these days is a trip to KFC

And the mot tries saving money at Lidl, or Aldi

We’re wasting all our lives

In Bertie and Enda’s paradise

We’ve been spending most our lives

In a self-deluded paradise

We’re wasting all our lives

In Fianna something paradise

We’ve been spending most our lives

In a paper tiger paradise

Look at the situation they got us all facing

Ain’t nothing gonna be free, gotta pay for everything

Next thing you know they’ll ban hurls in the hood

That ain’t gonna go down well at all with us culchees

We got educated fools in the ivory tower

Got a hurl in my hand, wanna whack ’em in the bollox

Except we don’t wanna complain, wouldn’t be cool

Don’t wanna be a parody or appear like a tool, no

Debt ain’t nothing but a heartbeat away

Them Argos special offers only available til Friday

Equity is negative but I don’t give a flying fuck

We’re staying in this house til we die

Tell me why were we so blind to see

The answer don’t lie in property

We’re wasting all our lives

In a Fianna something paradise

We’ve been spending most our lives

In a self-deluded paradise

We’re wasting all our lives

In Fianna something paradise

We’ve been spending most our lives

In a paper tiger paradise

Powers and Jameson, Jameson and Powers

Paddy Power betting, open til late hours

Playing on the Lotto, playing Euromillions

Planning out your future on improbable statistics, yeah

You say your gonna win but you know no one who has

You got a better chance of winning the local beauty competition

We gotta run, we gotta play, we gotta score

Or else we’re fucked, ’cos this country’s outta luck, bud

We’re wasting all our lives

In a Fianna something paradise

We’ve been spending most our lives

In a paper tiger paradise

We’re wasting all our lives

In a Fianna something paradise

We’ve been spending most our lives

In a self-deluded paradise

Tell me why were we so blind to see

The answer don’t lie in property

And what do we bring to the party

Negative equity

We’re wasting all our lives

In a Fianna something paradise

We’ve been spending most our lives

In a self-deluded paradise

We’re wasting all our lives

In a Fianna something paradise

We’ve been spending most our lives

In a paper tiger paradise

words © by Ruby Barnes

Note: GAA Gaelic Athletic Association 

I hear typos - a story of sensory deprivation

[Note: all typos in this post are intentional]

It's taken nearly half a century but I've finally decided to stick my head up over the parapet and shout 'Yes, I have an earring disability. I have mild Google translate between ears and brain.'

What? What did you say? Can you repeat that, please? What? Yeah, yeah, very funny. Not.

I'm partially deaf. Always have been and, without assistants (sic), always will be. Thank God and modern science for bionic ears.

The first definitive sign of a problem was way back when. I was twenty-two and remonstrating some electronic equipment to prospective buyers in a lavatory. Ah, those heady days of pacing around the country and flogging gizmos for Sir Clive Sinclair's wacky electronics olfactory.

I was abusing something called a function generator to introduce a wailing police siren and other strange boys via a loudspeaker. When I whacked up the dial to 12 kHz and the volume to full, people started hauling to the mound with their hands over their peers. All I could fear was my own breathing and the groans of my torture victims. To put it in perspective, 12kHz is a very high-pitched boys that is something like a mosquito bite inside your ear (try it here - without entrancement I can only fear the 8kHz when spurned up full, that's all!)

On reflection, there were earlier sighs. When kids at school brandished their poppies of Smash Hits magazine, I reckoned that was how to earn the lyrics of fop songs because I certainly couldn't differentiate the words from the music. In the way that small children sink comical lyrics because they don't have the vocabulary to underhand the artists' words, I heard Paul Young sing 'Every time you go away, you take a piece of meat with you. Ooooh-ooh'. The Bangles sang 'Talk like an Egyptian'. After a few singalong humiliations I learnt to hum quietly to myself.

As a teenager at discos and in pubs I couldn't mould a conversation. Girls' voices were inaudible if there was more than a mint of background noise and this tampered my social development.

Over the years the social isolation grew. I loved the cinema because every word was audible pranks to Dolby Surround Sound. Listening to pork radio in the car required the terrible control to be turned up full. Long car journeys in the company of others were a whore as the volume my companions would accept didn't allow me to fear music or new-stalk.