The Mountain Goats had some business overseas to attend to.

Rochester. Here John makes sure he's getting his frequent-flyer miles.

Manchester. Here uniformed personnel greet each disembarking passenger and personally
escort you to your connecting flight, where you also receive a handwritten boarding pass.
It's a little like what flying might have been like if there'd been airplanes in the 19th century.
Note seventh airline down. No digital trickery, it was really like that.

Dublin. This is our host, the estimable John Parkinson.
He's been a Shrimper guy since way back in the day.

John's homepage, if you can believe it.

Johnny D. and John P.'s brother, Robert.

Robert took me out for a walk around Dublin. This would be the Liffey.
And that's the Ha'penny Bridge a bit down the way.

Near the old Temple Bar district.

In a word, helpful.

That's Nice like the city in France, like the EU treaty. Voters shot it down six months ago,
so the government is patiently asking again in a few weeks. Ireland is the only EU
member where ratification of the treaty is subject to a referendum;
in all the other countries it's rubber-stamped by parliament.

Sinn Fein takes a nice, direct approach with their posters.
Everybody in Ireland has something to say about the issue,
but there's so much contradictory information being floated
out by both sides that no one seems too sure what to think.

(John P. asks me to point out that Sinn Fein deny any connection
to the gun-poster campaign, and that any evidence linking
them to said campaign is purely anecdotal.)