So Robbie’s back. And he’s brought Jesus with him.

I have long wondered about his general worldview; he was always the show-man, always the entertainer, but some of his lyrics were pain-filled and searching. In 2002’s Feel, he cried out:

I sit and talk to God
And he just laughs at my plans…
… I need to feel real love
And a life everafter.
I just can’t get enough.

His comeback offering, Bodies, is something different altogether. Make up your own mind:

Finally, the future is here.

Open my wallet, and what will you find? A few crumpled notes, a driver’s licence, some stamps, a Cafe Sol loyalty card, a Lemon Coffee Co. loyalty card, a Bagel Factory “bagel” loyalty card, a Bagel Factory “coffee” loyalty card, a Tesco Clubcard (actually, two – one credit-card-sized and one key-fob-sized), a Waterstones loyalty card and a Coffee 2 Go loyalty card.

You get the picture. In addition, I count myself fortunate to be male; if I was female, I could add a Boots card, a credit note for River Island as well as various other cards from various other supermarkets, because women do sensible things such as shop around, or visit Superquinn for fresh fish and Fresh for warm bread from the oven.

Enter ZAPA TAG ^TM.

Yep: shite name and rubbish advertising, but a great idea. Zapa Tag is an adhesive chip you are advised to stick on your phone (because you never forget your phone! Please, you can survive without a phone, but try lacking a wallet for more than 5 minutes!) Then, at participating outlets, you simply tap your tag against a reader to earn electronically stored points. Also, register on www.zapatag.ie and check your account balance at your leisure. How suitably modern! (However, do not confuse with zapatag.com, which is a website dedicated to naming and shaming bad drivers by posting their licence plate on the internet. An absolute stroke of genius!)

Currently the only participating shop is Insomnia, but on finding that I couldn’t collect points on my regular “Coffee + Pannini = €6″ lunchtime offer, I peeled the tag off my phone before investigating its insides and discarding it. Beneath the tacky exterior it looks like the innards of an HMV security tag, if you were wondering.

However, if companies begin to outsource their loyalty card scheme to Zapa Tag we, the coffee drinking, grocery shopping, iPod toting, novel devouring public are on to a winner. Zapa Tag will even store your accounts separately, so HMV won’t have to give away free cds because you single-handedly keep Peru’s coffee business alive. No more trimming paper cards that don’t quite fit into your wallet. No more mysteriously losing your fully stamped Cafe Sol card on the way to the shop. No more carrying 8 cards with one stamp each, arguing that they add up to one free bagel.

ZAPA TAG ^TM : bringing Dublin into the next decade.

One of the rarest delights I enjoy in life is discovering a new band. This is something I put effort into; I listen to perhaps 100 new bands a year, if at the rate of 2 a week, more if I’ve purchased the latest edition of Hot Press. However it is very seldomly, say once every couple of years, that I discover an artist of whom I have never heard before, but to hear them is like deja-vu, only stronger. The music and I have been long separated, and to hear it again is like regaining a piece of myself that went missing years ago, without my even noticing. Virginia Woolf talks about literature in similar terms:

Perhaps it is… that Nature, in her most irrational mood, has traced in invisible ink on the walls of the mind a premonition which these great artists confirm; a sketch which only needs to be held to the fire of genius to become visible. When one so exposes it and sees it come to life one exclaims in rapture, But this is what I have always felt and known and desired!

This happened most recently in March, when I discovered Frightened Rabbit. I heard their second album, Midnight Organ Fight, and each song gave me as much pleasure as the last. I began to dig into the lyrics, finding one song, Head Rolls Off, the perfect satirical accompaniment to the skepticism which I had been harbouring towards my religion. The music and I were meant to be together. We clicked. I planned to take it for a romantic break to France.

Although this mostly happens with music, it also happens, albeit more rarely, with films. I fondly remember the feeling that came over me after watching Garden State for the first time; a feeling of well-being, of transcendence, of clarity. You can’t explain it to someone else, it can only be experienced. Garden State was the first film which impacted me in this way; other films since have had similar impacts, but the drug has never been as potent as the first time.

It is to this sense of transcendence I suspect I am addicted. I read, watch films and TV programmes, and listen to music for entertainment, but I constantly live in hope that I will encounter the old friendly buzz. While others may see my taste in film and writing as light and inconsequential, I’m not looking for something philosophical, or edifying, or even funny or interesting; I’m looking for something, well, almost other-worldly.

It was this point I touched upon briefly with a friend late last night after a mind-sharpening whiskey: regardless of my doubts about my ever-fading faith, the nu-atheism which has admittedly seduced my normally linear and logical mind fails to ultimately convince me, because it leaves no room for transcendence. I have only one conclusion to offer, and like all my favourite conclusions, it raises more questions than the one answer it offers: nu-atheism doesn’t get art, beauty, Garden State or Frightened Rabbit. It doesn’t get Virginia Woolf, romantic weekends in France with a female or an entire band of Scottish men, or drinking whiskey til 1am.

After making my above remarks last night, I wandered homeward along the mostly deserted banks of the river, and the old drug hit me again: the invincibility and light-heartenedness, the satisfaction and the cheerfulness of good fortune.

Below are the acts I saw at Oxegen.
* denotes having gone to only a partial set.

Friday
Dirty Epics
Priscilla Ahn
The Coronas*
Jape
Lily Allen
Mogwai
Snow Patrol
Blur

Saturday
The Saw Doctors
The Gaslight Anthem
The Saturdays
Regina Spektor
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Elbow
Crystal Castles*
Doves
Kings of Leon

Sunday
Ocean Colour Scene
Phenomenal Handclap Band
Rarely Seen Above Ground*
Fever Ray*
Lady GaGa
White Lies
Katy Perry
Jason Mraz
Glasvegas
Camera Obscura*
Manic Street Preachers

My personal highlights were, chronologically, Jape, Blur, Regina Spektor, Katy Perry and Glasvegas.

So we’re throwing eggs at bankers now. Any day now, Ted and Dougal will be chained up outside my workplace.

The recent fad of throwing stuff began when George Bush showed off his Air Force training – how to dodge flying objects. The man is like a cat; for all he knew the Iraqi journalist could have been Oddjob throwing razor shoes at him. Then of course Peter Mandelson took a cup of green custard to the face. This week, an angry AIB shareholder decided Dermot Gleeson deserved some egg on his face. Eggs are not cool anymore, not without the flour. Especially not in a shareholder meeting.

For comedic effect, throwing messy things at important people is always worth a pop. But as a political statement, frankly it’s little short of utterly lame. Especially in the case of idiot vs. Gleeson. The CEO of AIB has already agreed to step down , wisely choosing to remain in office while a successor is suitably found and groomed. He has admitted that mistakes have been made in running the bank, especially in regards to property exposure. What more do you want from him?

In Old Testament times, to atone for the sins of the people, various animal sacrifices were made. Without going into too much detail, one of these sacrifices was a goat upon which was ceremonially placed all the sins of the people; it was then released into the desert to wander off and die. Our goat was held responsible for the sins of a country (that’s quite a burden for a mere goat), and this is where we obtain our phrase “scapegoat”, or, “Dermot Gleeson”.

The Irish people are pissed off. Our economy is going to fall an estimated 8% this year, and we’re losing 1000 jobs a day. It’s only natural to want to blame someone. I myself, little over a year ago, mused about whom to fault with the credit crunch, taking a broad look at the American economy, bond traders, mortgage brokers etc. But now the crisis has gone global in infamous fashion, the average person is feeling the pain first-hand. Assigning blame is now more than an exercise, it’s catharsis, a psychological outlet, a shared hatred to rally around creating solidarity among the masses.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t apportion blame. Where laws were broken, blame should be lavished (accurately) and punishment distributed. But we must be careful where we place our blame, and why we’re doing it in the first place. My opinion? There’s no crime in investing in a booming market, which is what the banks did in good times. Make hay, right? Some argument can be made that loans were made to property developers based more on the state of the economy than the financial status of the borrower, and there was little thought given to the eventuality of things going wrong. Valid, no doubt; look at Anglo – hardly the model of prudence, and now wholly owned by the government for its sins. AIB and BOI retained some conservativism and remain above water albeit with the help of a life-jacket, in precisely the same situation as every other bank in the world, including the ultra-conservative Germans. The Germans did not take part in the property boom, but are suffering regardless because they relied on their quality, solid exports to bolster their economic growth. Now America Inc. has no money to import German goods, especially with the cost of the Euro, killing the  previously inpenetrable German economy. So seemingly the innocent are suffering too.

If prudence didn’t save the Germans from the global fallout, would it have saved the Irish? A small, open economy, immediately prone to the winds of change in larger economies? The comfortable (or none-too-confortable) position we sit in now is one of hindsight, and it’s easy to see your and others’ mistakes with the gift of seeing through your hind. What do I see looking back? I see those most criticised today being praised: banks offering cheap credit; property developers creating so many jobs Ireland became the promised land for Eastern Europeans, never mind the locals; a government lowering taxes, bringing in huge revenues from abroad, spurring on record growth and minimising the unemployment rate at record lows.

To the “people over profits” folk amongst us, we would do well to bear in mind that it is not necessarily one or the other. In the boom years, profit benefitted people, and in fact, profit still benefits people. We have every right to insist on financial transparency for legal and moral reasons. But we should make sure our intentions are more constructive than finding a hook upon which to hang our frustrations.

One of my most vivid memories from my childhood is a family holiday, aged 7. I used to lie awake, listening to the crickets chirping in the warm European air. As I listened, they would become louder, creeping slowly closer to the patio doors of our rented Portugese apartment.

Tonight I was way too close to some speakers at a gig, so at 5.30am those crickets are living inside my ears. They don’t sleep.

Bass pounding the floor, guitar screaming, 1000 fingers pointed at the rafters, excited voices yelling:

Lost and insecure,
You found me
Lying on the floor,
Surrounded.
Why’d you have to wait?
Where were you?

Only possible at The Fray concert in Dublin.

I\’ll admit that I was surprised at the crowd they drew in. I discovered the Fray months before they released a full record in the US, long before they appeared on Scrubs or reached the shores of Europe, whilst browsing through acoustic artists on MySpace music. I loved the helplessness of How to Save a Life, the tenderness of Look After You. Apparently everyone else discovered them on MTV Cribs.

The crowd was deafening at times. No doubt Isaac Slade & Co. are well used to pumping up the volume for live shows, but it took Slade a full 5 minutes to quieten the crowd sufficiently to have his unplugged guitar heard as he sang Fair Fight, front and centre with no amplification – the high-on-sugary-alcohol masses were less than cooperative. Fair play to the man for keeping them quiet as long as he did!

The name \”The Fray\” at the very least suggests offering something beyond chart music, before ever listening to their lyrics; a few years ago they themed Dr. Cox as he practically suffered a breakdown on Scrubs. I expected a fanbase totally different from that in attendance. But, instead I witnessed the lines Happiness feels a lot like sorrow and Maybe God can be on both sides of the gun swallowed up in electric riffs, drum beats and rhythmic clapping.

I guess the kids are down with piano rock.

Sometimes adults just don’t get it.

Walking down Grafton Street today, there were the usual number of talentless hacks displaying their wares, with few to nobody watching. A trio of teenagers with instruments: the drumming looked so bad I didn’t dare take out my headphones for a soundbite. My personal favourite wastes-of-space, the statues, were not present – incidentally, I have challenged myself to provoke one of them into a Once-style chase around Grafton Street.

Today, the street played host to a man dancing his puppet. Not a nice fuzzy puppet like Elmo; not the rosy cheeks of Orville; no, this was a marionette, a cross between Punch and Pinocchio, the kind that give small children nightmares. The puppet’s hat jumped up and down on the strings as he danced grotesquely, head about two feet from the pavement – the perfect height to leer into passing prams.

As I passed, a woman with pram was laughing at the antics of this wooden freak, as the puppet-master performed for an unseen tot in the pram. My iPod blaring, I couldn’t hear the reaction of the child, but walking by I jerked my head around for the verdict – pure terror. How the mother was lapping it up! How hilarious! My one-year-old doesn’t understand it’s only a puppet! Let’s see how long before he shits himself!

Congratulations, your child will be freaked out by puppets for years to come. Hell, I saw bits of Child’s Play as a nipper and dolls still give me the heebie jeebies!

You will notice that my puppet picture is quite friendly looking. I didn’t want anything freaky adorning my blog.

Admittedly, recent blogging activity has been low; this was due mostly to my severe aversion to narcissists.
You can’t see that you’re just the same
As all the stupid people you hate.
I figure that since I haven’t picked up a Big Brother application form, I’m safe from self-loathing, for now.

So I finally updated my accompanying Films, Books and Music pages, and here is the run-down accordingly:

In Books, I’ve read the entire Twilight Saga, and it really dragged to be honest. Worth a read if you’re a quick reader; if not, read the first book, it’s great, but the story doesn’t really go anywhere worthwhile after that.
I’m now reading Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, but it’s not an easy read. I’ve spent the last few days merely thinking about his preface, there is so much depth to his thinking that to breeze through it seems callous and oblivious.