06.28.05
U2 and multi-tasking
Went to the final U2 concert in Croke Park last night. I’d been there for the Joshua Tree tour in 1987 and knew not to be blown away as I was then a mere teenager up the front. Now I was up in the seats in the Upper Cusack out of the throng. Still was most disappointed with the sound quality. We couldn’t hear Bono’s voice on most of the songs. Still, Running to a standstill, With or Without You, Where the Streets, Sunday Bloody Sunday, In the Name of Love and One, were all excellent. And I was delighted when they finished with 15 as they did in the old days.
And regardless of sound, they are still soooooooo coool. Especially Larry and Adam. They are what being cool is all about. Hanging out in the background wearing leather, not trying, just doing their thing. And I know it’s easy to slag Bono, but you know what, he’s right. I just hope Blair isn’t using him. As far as I can tell the whole debt cancellation thing is bullshit unless they change the trade laws. What’s the point in sending aid but then charging them huge tariffs when they try to process any of their raw materials?
Finally I went to a party at the weekend and got properly drunk for the first time in what felt like years. Crucially I did not puke, fight or cry. Thus I was deemed hilarious and can be sure to be invited back. Anyway, one friend relayed a classic row she had with her husband, most of which I was able to anticipate as she told me.
Normally she picks up the two children from the creche on the way home from work. She lets them out to play in the back and puts on their dinner. While it’s cooking she empties the dishwasher, puts on a wash, and empties the creche bags. One day, she was working late. Her husband picked up the kids, let them out, put on the dinner and sat down to read the paper. When she came home and tripped over the creche bags and fought her way through the dirty linen to get a plate from the dishwasher, needless to say she asked why the chores had not been done. “But I was doing the dinner!” the protest came. He was convinced that as a job was taking place, he was working. HOW could he be expected to do all those other things? He was doing a job! She should be grateful! She’s so meeaaan. I could just imagine the rest.
We agreed that it is absolutely true that men are incapable of multi-tasking. Women are the superior sex in this as in many other fields (like not going around raping other people). I offered to my friend that no doubt as she lay in bed at night planning how she would accomplish all the necessary tasks the next day, her husband probably accused her of insanity. I was right of course. Meeting all the same people just two days later for the U2 concert, my husband blabbed to her husband about her betrayal (since obviously I had attacked my husband with evidence of his sex’s sloth). All the husbands started ganging up then and demanding the right to a voice in my column. They want to campaign for lower standards at home. I say, fine. Have your lower standards but stop asking me where you might get a clean shirt at 8 in the morning….Of course you know what their solution is…outsource it. Let’s take money from the family budget because they can’t do the work and they’re sick of getting crap from us.
Which reminds me… there was a survey published in the ST which said that men are doing twice as much housework now than in the sixties but as they did feck all the in the sixties they are still doing feck all. Will it ever be 50/50? Not as long as they can only do one thing at a time. Like oppress people.