There's a dearth of seven inch vinyl to purchase in the record stores around town. No-ones got anything remotely interesting in stock at the moment so I'll give you a quick round-up of other things that I've stumbled across in recent days.

First up is a blog by an Irish exile in Paris. No it's not Beckett. It's not Joyce. However he does carry on their great tradition of writing and I really liked his recent post on the modern trend of dj'ing with a laptop. What's wrong with a gool old fashioned piece of vinyl?

I was also interested in this piece in the news about the Firefox backlash by certain individuals. I think Firefox is great. I think advertisements are bollocks.

With all this recent talk of the imminent Electric Picnic and Arcade Fire gigs here in Dublin, the upcoming fringe festival is being somewhat ignored by the thirty-something movers and shakers around town. I've always enjoyed the Dublin Fringe Festival although I've seen quite a lot of shite in it over the years. I've also seen some great stuff. This year I have a chum involved in the production of 'Gerry and the Peace Process', a musical about the troubles (Note the lower case for the troubles. It's all behind us now.) I was e-mailed the flyer for it and I noticed that one of the actors was another old friend. You might know him from the seminal piece of work that was shown on all the major television channels. I think it was an ad for Avonmore soup. I bet he doesn't think ads are bollocks. At least not when he's getting paid for being in them.

I've noticed in the news in recent days that firstly, Lily Allen and secondly, Amy Winehouse have cancelled/postponed their US gigs. They're always trying to outdo eachother. What a pair!

I think I'm heading off to Galway for a few days. I'm just going to check on how the place is going since I was last there. I bet you they've got at least two of those people who get dressed up, painted and just stand still for the day. I was in Barcelona a few years ago and there were about fifty of the fuckers all the way down Las Ramblas. They're a load of old pony. Grafton St is brimming with them these days too. Something has got to be done.