If I have been a little quiet on BifSniff recently it’s for a number of reasons, one of them being that I have been working on my new baby FestivalShirts, which sells t-shirts for festivals - obviously!

I’ve been working with John and Joe on getting FestivalShirts to a stage where I could let you know about it and persuade you to buy gazillions of t-shirts and turn me into a bazillionaire.

FestivalShirts sells colourful t-shirts, with a hand drawn slogan set on a happy yellow splash!

There are an incredible amount of music events and festivals going on this Summer in Ireland, and it looks like we might get the t-shirt wearing weather too, so these happy fellows are the perfect attire for the coming months.

A lot of the shirts are specifically geared toward summer music festivals like Electric Picnic or Oxegen, such as the one pictured above - ‘If this is your t-shirt I slept in your tent‘ But we have a few more general ones too, such as my personal favourite ‘I’m fucking brilliant.‘

Currently we have ten designs in the shop, each design available on a range of colourful t-shirts for men and women.

The t-shirts vary in price, but the standard t-shirt is €19.90 + P&P which I think is pretty damn reasonable… but then I would say that!

The ten designs we have in the shop currently are listed below - click on any of the slogans to see the t-shirts:

• I’m fucking brilliant.
• If this is your t-shirt I slept in your tent
• Mucho Dancing Mucho Agua
• Don’t take drugs. that’s stealing.
• No point asking me I’m wasted.
• Hard Partying. It’s no picnic.
• Talk me down.
• I wish Arcade Fire were playing
• If you can read this I haven’t thrown up on myself yet
• What Music?

More designs following very soon, and the shop has an RSS feed so you can watch for a slogan that suits you.

Or email us your suggestion for a slogan you’d like to see!

Hope you like it!

I’ve been reading a lot about Coen Brother’s projects recently. They have No Country For Old Men opening soon and have announced four other projects to be completed over 2008 and 2009. Looking at the quality of work they have produced so far this is great news. The project that excites me the most though is their second next film, Burn After Reading.

I’ve heard critics go on about an amazing cast before but this is the first time I’ve been wowed by a cast list in my life. John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, George Clooney and Brad Pitt. I mean what a cast for such talented film-makers to have. This has got to be good right? Right?

I had the misfortune of seeing Spider-Man 3 last night. Before I go any further I’d like to point out that I really liked Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. I was looking forward to seeing this film as with Raimi, Maguire and Dunst still involved I believed they had one more good film in them. How wrong I was.

I just don’t know where to begin with my complaints about this film. While watching it I was reminded over and over again of the Joel Schumacher Batman films. Maybe it was because Christopher Young’s score reminded me of the music Elliot Goldenthal gave us in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin? Why anyone would decide to replace the excellent Danny Elfman I don’t know but that was the least of their mistakes.

Just like Schumacher’s massacres, Spider-Man 3 had too many characters and the story was fragmented. The film was also far too long. Raimi is a very good director and showed his skills with the first two films, so where did it all go wrong? The fragmentation and overly long running time must be down to either the director or the editor, but Raimi and Bob Murowski worked on all three films. I found the answer after further investigation of the credits. The first two films were written by David Koepp and Alvin Sargent both professional scriptwriters. For Spider-Man 3, Sargent was joined by Raimi and his brother, Ivan Raimi.

Ivan is a doctor by trade, although does have a few writing credits, and Sam has several writing credits - the most notable being The Hudsucker Proxy, although it must be hard to go wrong working with the excellent Coen brothers. It’s not that I think the Raimi brothers are incapable of writing a decent screenplay, I merely feel that Sam Raimi had things too much his own way on this film and it didn’t work. It is a real shame and watching the film I got the impression that Raimi’s attention was elsewhere. Maybe he was thinking about The Hobbit or maybe there were too many family members around?

His other brother Ted played Hoffman (J. Jonah Jameson’s suck up assistant) and his children Lorne, and Henry had small parts in the film. There’s also a Emma Raimi in the cast list but I couldn’t find any confirmation that she was Sam’s daughter.

The news that Spider-Man 4, 5 and 6 have been confirmed doesn’t make me happy, but I don’t expect Raimi, Maguire or Dunst to be involved. It’ll be interesting to see who they get. At least David Koepp looks to be back on writing duties.

Damien Mulley got my hopes up about a new election based comedy show along the lines of Pat Shortt’s fantastic Maurice Hickey character.

Alas, John Bracken is not a new comedy show just in time for the election. John Bracken is an independent candidate in Erry, Clara, Co Offaly .

I think i would have restrained myself from poking fun at him if I hadn’t read this:

Crime.

There is no question about it. The biggest issue here is Drugs. The number of different crimes associated with the need for the money to feed the habit needs to be addressed but will diminish when we solve the real problem.

There must be a “Zero Tolerance� approach adopted here, and nothing else will do me. I hear talk of harmless drugs and the likes and it sickens me. We are at war in this regard and our government have themselves ready for a pillow fight. Members of An Garda Siochana put their lives at risk on a daily basis without the proper laws to back them up.

A few years ago this country was effectively closed down because some of our cattle got “Foot and Mouth� disease. This was a preventive measure to stop the disease and it worked. Today, people’s lives are being devastated by a much more sinister disease and our government has some sort of a denial syndrome. An earlier government had a similar syndrome when they were first informed of the potential problem of drugs and look at where we are today. I believe that we should close down this country again, but in a manner that will make anyone pushing drugs think twice. It is my opinion that life behind bars is the answer for these people. I will be a loud voice in Dail Eireann in this regard.

Maybe he should read The Corner.

A discussion we were having went off on a tangent into immigration policy and now I’m very curious about what others feel.

The Immigration Control Platform was linked to, and I read some of their material and was amazed - I can’t understand how anyone would consider voting for people who state the following:

Immigration policy should be framed solely from the viewpoint of the needs of the receiving state.

‘Solely’ being my sticking point here, any balanced policy should take the needs of the countries of origin and the imigrants themselves as well as the receiving state.

it would be the position of I.C.P. that labour market immigration should tend as far as possible to be such as would minimize rather than maximize ethnic and racial differences.

I repeat ‘minimize rather than maximize ethnic and racial differences’.

If there is to be preferential treatment for countries with traditional links with Ireland, this should specifically not include countries where that link is primarily missionary or aid activity. This is particularly important if such reference is to appear in the legislation.

Where there is already a preponderance of any ethnic grouping in the State (legally, illegally or semi-legally) as with e.g. Chinese and Nigerians further immigration from such areas should be disallowed. Such an ethnic community when well-established is a focus for further immigration, including illegal.

I have no idea what the function of the first paragraph is, surely policy should be based on immigration issues which in turn could impact on countries receiving aid, but what is the function of excluding countries for preferential treatment solely because they receive aid from us? If a country is receiving aid from us and has a high level of educated and skilled workers why would we deny them preferential treatment? What’s behind this I wonder?

And what criteria are going to be in place to decide we have enough Nigerians or Chinese in the state and we should close the door to them? It’s insane.

Wikipedia defines Fascism as:

Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and other societal interests inferior to the needs of the state, and seeks to forge a type of national unity, usually based on ethnic, religious, cultural, or racial attributes.

My emphasis.

Apart from the discussion we had on the other post, a few other people I spoke to felt that not enough discussion about immigration was happening. But Enda Kenny did call for debate on the issue, and he gave a good speech on it. Read the Enda Kenny speech on immigration and supporting material - it discusses a lot of the issues in a much more balanced and rational form.

I also found the Green Party’s Immigration Policy which also goes through a lot of the issues in a very clear and rational manner.

I found the Green Party policy to be a good read, and would urge anyone concerned about immigration to read it.

Ted Neville, Cork South Central and John Donnelly, Dublin North are the Immigration Control Platform Candidates. Let’s find as many viable alternatives to these candidates as possible, so that those concerned with immigration can vote for someone worth giving a vote to.

Anyone have any other suggestions other than Greens and FG?