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2007-02-21T14:52:00.000Z

Tons of you still have your links pointing to this here dead blog. In the meantime, you're missing out on stories about poo and my lad and such. For enhanced pleasure and deeper penetration, please update your links to http://kavanf1.wordpress.com

Feeds can be found at http://feeds.feedburner.com/KavsBlog.

Gizza job boss

2007-02-13T17:06:00.000Z

I've only ever been fired from one job. I was 16, and it was my first. I worked in the school - three of us (with two subs), for a couple of hours each evening, would sweep out classrooms and corridors and whatnot. During the holidays, we painted and scraped chewing gum off the floors for £2 an hour. I still remember the Friday of my first 35-hour week, walking home and tearing open and sniffing the brown envelope with £70 in crisp notes inside - the stink of being rich.

Easter, 1995. We looked forward to a couple of weeks of raking in the dough as the school holidays kicked in. The janitor, Tom, seemed to think I had a sensible head on my shoulders, so he put me in charge of the team. The fuckin eejit. I, of course, reacted as any young fool given a bit of responsibility would react: I let the power go straight to my head and became as corrupt as Charlie Haughey's writing hand.

It started small. Giving the classrooms a quick lick instead of carefully lifting all the desks and sweeping under them. Stealing biccies (Custard Creams and those dry crumbly ones with the burnt raisins in them) from the stores. Calling down to the lads who ran the tuck shop and nabbing a few bars or some crisps.

Practical jokes abounded. On normal days, there were three of us working, one person per floor, and we were more or less left to get on with it. Tom the janitor would occasionally do surprise patrols, but for the most part we had the dim after-school corridors to ourselves. Perfect for scaring the shite out of your co-workers. Sneak up the stairs, slither down the corridor, then scream like a priest in a room full of girls as poor oul Dennis emerges from the classroom, pushing his broom ahead of him.

The best bit was when we had to clear out an old part of the school. It used to be a monastery, back when Irish people were religious. One of our jobs was to dump a whole pile of skanky single-bed mattresses that had been sitting, dust-laden, since Christ pulled up his first pair of britches. However, we decided that our purposes would be better served by assembling the mattresses in a pile in the middle of an unused classroom - two stacks, six mattresses high - and then leaping from the teacher's platform for a delightful soft landing.

It was the closest thing we had to bungee jumping in Galway. Most lunchtimes would find us blaring Rage Against the Machine on the old tape deck and leaping onto the mattresses. Then someone (I don't know if it was me or one of the others) took it to the next level. To the extreme. The absolute Pepsi Max. Word.

There was a cabinet about ten feet tall at the edge of the teacher's podium, which housed a tv/video combo in its upper half. We discovered that we could climb up on top of this, and leap, leap like the wind! halfway across the room, before landing gracefully in the pile of horrible mattresses.

It was fucking brilliant. Never mind your feckin bungee jumping and kitesurfing, we were the real extreme sports pioneers. Mattress lepping.

You know what's coming. Yeah, I took it too far. Just like in a film, one day I said "Lads, watch this!" and shoved myself off the edge of the cabinet, a leap of unprecedented mightiness that left me gliding through the air just as the mental part of Bullet in the Head kicked in.

"Holy fuck, it's gonna go!" I heard someone say as I joyously hit the mattresses.

My joy turned to shit running down my leg as I arched backwards to see the enormous tv cabinet totter once, twice, and then fall towards the floor. Remember that scene in Titanic when the whole ship is up in the air and then it breaks in two and half of it comes crashing down? Well, this was worse. In a stroke of outrageous fortune, Brian and Dennis happened to be standing either side of the cabinet as it fell, so they were able to get a hold of it and prevent it turning to tinder.

They couldn't stop the tv though.

The momentum of the cabinet forced the tv to slide forward behind the cabinet doors, so as soon as Brian and Dennis halted the cabinet's fall, the telly came crashing through the doors and propelled itself towards the floor. It was saved from explosive impact at the last possible second, when the power cable snapped taut from inside the cabinet and whipped the worst out of the fall. However, one corner of the tv did hit the floor with a fair crack, hard enough to damage it beyond repair.

Know Your Enemy had started playing by the time we stuffed the tv back in. That was the end of extreme mattressing.

Surprisingly, I didn't get fired for that little incident. To this day, only the guys I worked with know that I was responsible for a certain teacher's embarrassment some months later, when the video he'd brought in for the boys that day was unplayable and he had to ad lib his class. My blog is my confession.

I got fired because the janitor's wife spotted me and my mate Paul dressing up as aliens. Aliens from space! Tom the janitor had ordered in some new mop heads so we could put some fancy new polish on the floors or some shit. Fuck. That. Paul and I carefully donned the mop heads - passable wigs, they made - and then wrapped ourselves in black bin bags, using masking tape to hold them in place. We climbed into the metal bin holder frame-things normally used to secure bin bags while we filled them up. I'm telling you, we wouldn't have looked out of place on Doctor Who.

Tom appeared from nowhere while we walked the corridors in our garb, making robotic noises just like yer man from Police Academy. In our child-like naivete (we were but children, after all), we decided running from him would be the best tactic, so we shook off the bin holders and sprinted up the stairs. The second floor was covered with desks which had been pulled out of all the classrooms while they were getting painted. Perfect cover.

Needless to say, I was caught, hauled out, and given my marching orders. Paul kept his job because he was still technically in his area - I was in another building, across a road, from where I should've been working.

I kept to the straight and narrow after that. I wasn't able for such a crazy lifestyle.

dot dot dot

2007-02-12T12:26:00.000Z

In the midst of some banter and jigacting with me at the weekend, Linzi uttered the discomfiting words "You'd make a hopeless rapist."

She was trying to be nice, but I'm not sure how much comfort can be drawn from such a sentiment.

I'd make a terrible politician

2007-02-12T09:06:00.000Z

The past few weeks' physical labour has drained me of almost all creative juices, and has left me struggling to come up with any decent fodder for the blog. So when I read this weekend that I'd been longlisted in some categories at the Irish Blog Awards, I wondered how I might inspire people to vote for me. Yer man, Braveheart Gibson, him what killed all the Jews, he was a good one for inspiring people. I'm more of a "they may take our freedom, as long as they leave us plenty to eat and access to the PS2" kind of guy. Not a good way to be when these things are all about bigging yourself up.

Being up at half-past five on Saturday morning (Jack decided to wake extra-early because he knew Daddy was feckin exhausted) was made that much more bearable by logging on to find that I've been nominated in three categories: Most Humorous Post for this, Best Personal Blog and Best Newcomer. I am surprised and grateful to whoever voted for me - thanks very much. Even though I requested that you vote for Sweary rather than me, doesn't mean I wasn't flattered to see my name in there. It just means that nobody listens to me.

I don't have a very big readership, but many of you who do stop by tend to comment. This never fails to keep me entertained - the comments are more fun than the post itself. Keep it up, and meanwhile, in the spirit of democracy, let's have a dance to celebrate:

I'm honoured to be among such esteemed company as Annie, Twenty Major, Conor, FatMammyCat, Bock, JC Skinner, Dario, Devin, Nat King Coleslaw, The Rambling Man, Old Knudsen, Manuel, Eolaí, Grandad, Blogorrah, and of course fellow arse-ender, the excellent Swearing Lady. Please, direct your votes their way. I don't want my mammy finding out about my blog. Besides, my shelves are already full of virtual awards.

Oh, and Jason Roe and Red Cardinal have impressive longlists linking all the nominees. Good work lads.

Lance Boyle

2007-02-08T23:26:00.000Z

Went back to playing football tonight after a six-month hiatus - I haven't played since before Jack was born. The standard's not high, but we'd probably have given San Marino a better run than Ireland did last night.

Loads of the lads have nicknames. There's Bewsie, because his surname is Bews. Dougie, because his name is Doug. Kenwood, because his name is Kenneth, and he plays like a food processor, blending skill, strategy and tactics as skilfully as his namesake blends flour, eggs and butter. There's Paul T, and we call him that because his surname starts with a T. There's Michael, whose nickname is Mike, and Uno, because his name is Ewan*.

I'm jealous, having never had a nickname that stuck.

When I first started secondary school, I had one of those coats that most kids had at the time - they came in either green or navy, and were made from a kind of plasticky material, with a shiny orange lining, and a hood lined with furry stuff. Probably fur. Dog fur, I'd wager - it was right around the time they had that enormous dog cull in Ireland and slaughtered all the strays.

Anyway, mine was green, and, being the pragmatic gentleman that he was, my dad bought it three sizes too big for me, so that I'd get a good wear out of it. I remember him grinning wickedly as he declared "Ara sure you'll grow into it. You'll shoot up any day now".

Almost as soon as I walked in the gates of the school, hood up as I braved the elements (the elements generally being rain - this is Galway after all, where if rain was currency we'd all be millionaires, which would lead to a massive socioeconomic disparity and a loaf of bread would end up costing you a million litres of wawther and hopefully this would lead to the eventual collapse of the Irish economy and then I might finally be able to afford a house back home), I was labelled Oscar the Grouch. Remember him? The lad who lived in the bin in Sesame Street? He was green and furry, geddit?

I hated it, but then I ended up really missing it when I got a wax jacket - the choice was a wax jacket or an Air Jordan jacket, and I wasn't allowed to get the Jordan, so really it was no choice at all, and of course the wax jacket rendered me apocalyptically uncool so I was pissed off about that as well - and the Oscar label was forgotten. Being called something other than your name implies that you're one of the lads, that you've achieved a status with your mates beyond the norm**. Wearing my wax jacket made me sad and wistful instead of relieved.

I can't wink. Big fucking deal. This earned me, briefly, the nickname Winky. Again, it never stuck, though it provided the guys and gals at college with several months of hilarity. "Go on Kav, try and wink!" Cue various facial spasms and twitches (imagine trying to keep a wasp in your mouth and you aren't allow to squish him, you just have to let him buzz around in there - that's the kind of face I pull when I try to wink) and everyone dissolving into peals of laughter.

When you have a girlfriend, women like you more. I don't know why this is. Does anyone? My last year at university, some of the girls took to calling me Spiky Mikey. I had spiky hair, you see, and my name -

Tricky to figure that one out, eh. Just like Winky, and Oscar before him, Spiky Mikey died when I left the hallowed halls of UCG, or NUIG as it became known in my time there. Nuiggers, the students are called. I still prefer to call it UCG. Great days.

The non-nickname saga continues. For a while, I had convinced Linzi to call me The Throbmaster, but even that's fallen by the wayside. We've been together almost 8 years, so it's understandable.

You're either a person who gets called by a nickname, or you're not. It's to my eternal regret that I'm not, but a leper can't stop his loose, saggy flesh from falling off his bones, any more than a person who doesn't have a nickname can just decide to bestow one upon himself.

Which is where a name change by deed poll comes in. Just like Homer Simpson changing his name to Max Power (he got it from a hairdryer), I imagine I will be infinitely more successful when I am called Jack Hammer, Neil Down, Randy Bastard or perhaps Tommy Jeans.

*come to think of it, most of the lads' nicknames are kind of shit.

**it's true - even being called something derogatory is a term of endearment.

Photays

2007-02-07T22:16:00.000Z

You may have read that I spent much of last week preparing a base for a garage I'm putting in next to the house. I can't tell you how much fun this was:

but you can probably just about make out the grin on my face.

The next bit was awkward though - I had to get the site inspector out to monitor my work and make sure I was complying with all necessary building regulations. I was shiting myself about this bit:

After a solid week's work, this is as far as I've gotten:

Believe it or not, it took six hours' work just to get that wooden frame square and level. This is important to me, because you get a great sense of satisfaction from it when you finally get it right. I understand that 90% of people will not share this enthusiasm.

This is the reason I am building a garage:

The boat is almost 25 years old and was built by my grandad and dad. It was one of many they made back at the height of their business in the early '80's. This one was sold to an old friend of my grandad. He died a few years ago, and I bought the boat off his family; they had no interest in keeping it. It's to my great shame that it has lain there for almost five years untouched. It's kind of an heirloom, and means a lot to me. The garage will allow me to get it restored to its former beauty.

And finally, despite being the whitest little white girl around, my baby girl appears to be developing an Afro:

John Reid is an idiot

2007-02-07T10:48:00.000Z

I tend to avoid political talk on this blog - there's nothing I could add that hasn't already been said by someone with a far better grasp of the situation than I - but that story in recent days about the three lads who met on an incest chatroom who plotted to rape two young sisters really riled me up.

They were given indeterminate sentences with an 11-year tariff for Beavan and eight-year tariffs for the other two.

Cunts! What the fuck is going on with the laws in the UK and Ireland? Why can someone get 20 years for attempted bank robbery (a crime the bank's insured against, in any event), but only get five years (and be out in three - that's this year that this babyfucking animal could be back out) for raping a 13-month-old baby?

If the thought that those bastards will even be let out of prison without being chemically neutered isn't enough to piss you off, consider John Reid, the Home Secretary, and his response to cracking down on paedophilia:

Sex offenders could be forced to register their e-mail addresses and chatroom names, the government says. Home Secretary John Reid said he may make paedophiles put online identity details on the Sex Offenders Register.

Oooh! If we know their email address they'll never do anything bad online again! This is the equivalent of confiscating a child's cigarettes, then giving him money to buy more when he's leaving the house.

I was aghast when I heard this. I thought people only got aghast in Agatha Christie novels, but fucking aghast I was. What a stupid, dimwitted, cuntish proposal. The BBC have a "computer expert" commenting on the foolishness of Reid's comments, but let's face it, you don't need to be a technical genius to know it takes three minutes to create a brand-new online identity. Who do you think leaves comments on this blog? 30 different Kavs, that's who.

Solipsism aside, Reid's competence clearly needs to be brought into question if this is how he proposes improving how we track paedophiles.

Castration, I'm telling you. Any cunt who carries out these sick acts is psychologically damaged, and THERE IS NO WAY TO REHABILITATE THEM. If that sounds harsh, please go ahead and prove me wrong, but no human rights bullshit, thanks.

Here's a proposal for you John: if someone sticks their dick into, or otherwise sexually abuses, ANYBODY, then they lose the right to their balls. Let's see how many repeat offenders we get using that approach.

~

Mr Eugenides sums this up much more succinctly than I.

Oh, and The Devil's Kitchen also tears him a new one. Splendid.

Life, you caaaaaant.

2007-02-06T11:26:00.000Z

Got any good interview stories? I need a laugh.

Seems my tactic of being honest about my reluctance to travel has put off the guys who were so keen on me until recently. The temerity, the acid gall of the bastards; what a bitter pill this is.

This is what happened: a while back, they said they'd like to interview me re: a position. I was flattered, but not exactly dying to move from here; there's a lot of travelling in the job they're talking about, and lots of trips away. Beneath my sarcastic wanker exterior, family always comes first, and I couldn't handle gallivanting around the country and being away from them for days and weeks at a time, even with a decent salary/benefits increase. Having loads of disposable income is fuck-all use to you if you're miserable and divorced and can only see your kids at predetermined times. No thank you.

My reluctance to compromise in this area reared its head a few times during the interviews, and, though I knew it would be to my detriment, I tried to be as honest as I could with them about my feelings on the travelling aspect. James Bluntly: I don't want to travel.

Anyway, yesterday evening, I checked through my emails to find one from the HR damsel who interviewed me. I say damsel because her accent reminded me of how a damsel, or perhaps a maiden, may have sounded in days of ~~thunder~~ yore.

It read:

Kav,

Can you advise the best number to contact you on this week? I have some feedback for you from your final interview with Willy Wonka.

Regards,
Oompa Loompa Doopadee Doo.

As you may guess, all names have been changed, but that's irrelevant. The key word here is "final". I've already been told that there would be a third, face-to-face interview if things were being taken further, so I'm presuming this is a poor attempt at subtlety on her part. What a bitch.

I wish to fuck she would just call me and get it over with. I've been waiting all morning to give some feedback of my own. Exhibit A: six weeks to let me know how the first interview went - I was told I'd hear in one week. Exhibit B: Phoning my fucking BOSS at work and saying "Hello this is Stupid Fucking Arsehole from Stupid Fucking Company, can I speak to Kav please?" Exhibit C: The sly e-mail above, a clever way of demoralising a candidate before administering the final blow via this phone call.

What bothers me most is that I wanted to be the one to reject them, dammit! How dare they steal my opportunity to be all cocky and arrogant and to let them know "yeah, whatever, thanks but no thanks, tossers".

This is no more than I deserve, of course. Serves me right for being an overconfident bastard about it. Now hurry up and phone me, you selfish cunts. I need to be put out of my misery.

Cancer is not a joke

2007-02-05T10:59:00.000Z

So much news, and I'm not really able to post at all these days. I'll catch up with y'all sometime soon, but tings are hectic right now. This is just a quick whore post on behalf of my good wife, who is doing the most honorable kind of whoring* you can possibly do - whoring* for charity. She has taken it upon herself to run 5k in May in support of Cancer Research UK. Her fundraising target is a paltry £100, but my hope is that with help from friends, family, and a few folks here at work, she'll be able to exceed this. Some sponsorship will also serve as motivation for her, because at the moment her idea of a workout is perusing gym brochures.

Now, I don't want to scare you, but it's a proven fact that 100% of people get cancer at some point in their lives**, so wouldn't it be prudent to contribute to a charity that could help save your life when the inevitable happens and those cells start metastasising?

Any support you can give would be much appreciated, and you know it's for a worthy cause. If you would like to donate a few quid, please click over to

http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/linzikav

You can pay securely online by debit or credit card, and if you're a UK taxpayer, you can add an automatic 28% bonus to your donation at no cost to you.

I will have a widget in the sidebar and will hound you about it every so often over the next few months, so you may as well pay up sooner rather than later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

News in brief:

I passed the exam. I'm now entitled to use the letters "CISA" after my name. Certified Information Systems Auditor, that's me. Yay.

My childhood dream to drive a JCB came true last week. Pics to follow.

Even though I had a full week off to do it, I'm only half-way through laying the base for my garage. Still, despite a load of setbacks, the work was so much more satisfying than anything I could do in the office.

Tried this last week. Interesting. Still not sure about it. Worth a go though. I might even ask Linzi to join me next time.

Finally, may I ask what your feeling on the use of the word "cunt" is? Readers will know I tend to use it (probably a bit too) liberally, more so on my blog than in real life, if truth be told. However, I definitely say cunt where the appropriate emphasis is required. On Friday night, we had some friends over for food and alcholic beverages. In the course of our banal chattering, the subject of the word "cunt" came up, and one of the group (a lady), says she deplores the word and would pull someone up for using it. My mental response was "Cunting hell, don't be so cuntish about it, it's only a cunting word!", but my verbal response was "Hmmm...and how do you feel about, for example "flaps"?

Anyway, I know in some places, like practically the whole of America, and polite society in the UK and Ireland, cunt is not an acceptable word. For most of us, though, it's lost much of its shock value and is used interchangeably with other words. What say you? Does it shock and appall thee?

*by "whoring", I mean "running". I always get the two mixed up. You wouldn't believe the trouble it gets me into.

**Source: the internet.

I'm not mental, honest

2007-01-29T22:30:00.000Z

I got a bit vexed there for a while last week. My thunder was stolen, replaced by a kind of apathetic chagrin. See, up until last week, I was the only person on the entire planet who had ever been pursued by a company. Yes, in the whole world. EVER. Their interest had been a surprise, a wee lift from the mediocrity of everyday life. I got a buzz knowing I was good enough at my job to (a) have been noticed and (b) have been chased, by an enormous faceless megacorporation.

Then, last Friday, I found out that my friend and fellow team member, who will remain nameless (except in the wretched darkness of recent nightmares, where he is called Cunty) is in a near-identical position to me with another company, except he didn't even have to jump through the interview hoops that I did. No, all the bastard did was have a chat with one of the partners, and the cunts offered him a job.

Of course, what happened is highly unethical, not to mention possibly illegal. I dare not post more on it in this blog, because I'm not anonymous, but if I use the word poached you'll understand what I'm saying. Said poaching has qualities so incestuous that even Dessie Dempsey*, a lad I went to school with who supposedly shagged his sister, would be appalled.

I wish I could say more on this. Gah. Cursed self-censoring. Clichés work well in this situation. It's not what you know, it's who you know, you know. The main source of my consternation is that if I leave my current job, it might not be for the right reasons, and if I stay, I'll be fucked because Cunty will be gone and I'll be left to deal with Eeyore.

I'm not a violent person. I just wanted to let you know that because reading the next bit in isolation makes me sound like a bit of a lunatic. If I was famous, the papers would have a field day taking quotes out of context.

I was up the road picking up some alcoholic beverages on Saturday evening. On the drive to the off-licence (liquor store), I passed a guy walking in the middle of the road, arms out, Christ-style. He looked like a dirty, aggressive cunt, which was a splendid first impression to get, because he turned out to be a dirty aggressive cunt.

When I finished getting money out of the cash machine at the side of the shop, he had already found his way into the shop. As I pushed the door in, his words drowned out all the others: "...fuckin black bastard, I'm not goin fuckin anywhere ya black cunt...fuckin cameras, I don't give a fuck about cameras ya black fuckin monkey cunt..."

And so on. This went on for about a minute before he left the shop. The Asian guy (yeah, he wasn't black, which just demonstrates to you the level of intelligence this lad had) behind the counter remained perfectly calm the whole time.

For some reason, the whole sorry incident filled me with rage, so much so that I was grinding my teeth as I watched the guy walk out of the shop. I'm by no means an activist when it comes to racism (or much else for that matter), but something about that situation on Saturday night just made my blood boil. It was as much the complete and utter resignation on the manager guy's face, standing there, taking the abuse from this piece of shit, as it was the words the shithead himself was using. Stand up for yourself! I wanted to shout. Chase the cunt and bash his fuckin head in with a mop handle!

Yer man, the Asian lad, just remained calm, and maybe that's partly why I got so angry. He's seen this a hundred times before, and he'll see it a thousand times again, and he's so used to it now that it doesn't even get to him anymore, if it ever did. He knows there's nothing he can do about it. He knows that scumbags like that don't ever get taught a lesson, they just keep going until they die. The thought of that made me want to grab the fucker as he walked out the door and pin him against the wall and slam my forehead down onto the bridge of his nose. My friend Placid Paul did this once, an act of chivalry to defend a lady friend’s honour, and he said that, despite being highly out of character for him, it was an enormously satisfying experience. He was a bit of a secret thug, was Placid Paul.

When I left the shop, scumfuck was standing around outside, muttering incomprehensible complaints. I locked eyes with him, willing him to say something, anything, to insult me, so that I would have a legitimate reason to lay into him. Again I must stress this is not the kind of person I am. I can throw a punch, but I've never even been in a real fight. I don't know why I had such a powerful compulsion to want to do this guy harm that night. I don't feel good about it, but it happened.

As our eyes met, I wanted to say to him, hey, when I was twelve I spent an afternoon mixing together a concoction of piss, mouldy bread, bleach, paint and various other household cleaning products, in a Flora container, then I threw the lot in the bin after it started to eat through the thin plastic of the margarine box**. Then he would look at me and say good lord, sir, why on earth are you imparting such information to a gentleman such as myself? To which I’d reply, well, worthless, pointless and disgusting as that short-lived concoction was, it was still more useful than you are, or likely ever will be, and I have more respect for those crunchy insects that skitter from daylight when you lift up a stone than I do for a piece of shit such as yourself.

I wanted to choke him on the blackness of my contempt, contempt I usually reserve for other people’s children and men who cry at romantic comedies. Instead I just walked on and drove home and told Linzi about my short-lived homicidal tendencies.

In other news, we are now officially a 2.4 children-having, Renault-driving, Oprah-watching, twice-a-day-brushing, ornery lower middle-class Tom and Mary. I know this because we created a rota for household chores at the weekend.

I am off work this week. I'm laying a concrete base for my garage and fixing the fence - it blew down a few weeks ago during those bad winds. Proper man-work. It's made me remember how much I hate office work. It's been too long since I've worked with my hands, and they gleefully reminded me how soft and unused they are. A couple of hours wielding a pick-axe and I got the blister you see in the pic above. What a pussy.

I can say that now because by the end of this week I will be a calloused, grizzled, sprightly whippet of a man worthy of my very own Diet Coke ad.

*not his real name
**true story - I don't know, probably because I was bored.

My relationship with noodles is ruined

2007-01-24T23:47:00.000Z

Last week, the day I went home from work sick, I had noodles for lunch. I tried to have noodles for lunch today, but every time I looked at them my stomach made a peculiar whining sound, like a stray cat being compressed in a vice. I took a couple of mouthfuls and retched, so strong was the taste/smell reminder. The thought of noodles is now inextricably interlinked with the memory of spraying scuttery shit all over the bathroom porcelain while simultaneous spewing my ring into an overflowing basin balanced precariously on wobbly knees.

No more noodles for me, despite their excellent value.

Occasional visitors may recall me posting a while back about being approached by a BIG COMPANY who wanted to feast on my lad. I had a shitey HR interview with them on 6th December, filled with the inane bullshit typical of HR interviews and hilariously satirised by Sweary recently, and they told me they'd get back to me in a week.

They got back to me today; six weeks' delay isn't bad for a HR Department, I suppose. Anyway, I've got a second interview with them on Monday. This one is an hour-long phone interview followed by an hour-long...thing, where they email me some documents and I have to analyse them and write a report and send it back to them. Pretty fucking odd way to assess it, but seems to be fairly standard practice, so who am I to argue?

I despise cunts who say "Thanking you". It's "thank you". Why do some people insist on saying it in the present tense? It sounds as though, rather than actually thanking me, you are letting me know you are thanking me, which is good of you and all, but I could probably tell that you were thanking me if you just said "thank you" and dropped the redundant fuck"ing" suffix.

Yes, I am a petulant arsehole. A petulant arsehole with a new banner though. Not bad for MS Paint*, eh?

Non-sequitor is the order of the day around here lately. I hope I'm not turning into Knudsen, the crazy old fucker. Anyway, I'd promise something coherent in the near future, but it seems unlikely, so you'll just have to put up with me.

*well, everything was MS Pain except the blue-ifying filter, which was done using magic and a spoon.

Suck it up

2007-01-23T20:18:00.000Z

If there's one thing that drives me absolutely mental, it's when the vacuum cleaner gets turned on when I'm trying to watch tv. There I was, laid out on the couch, beer in one hand and bollocks in the other, wearing only a white string vest and a pair of sweaty yellowing y-fronts, just about to watch Nip/Tuck, when Linzi decides the vacuuming is getting done.

I tutted, sighed and rolled my eyes at her as she huffed and puffed before me on her hands and knees, trying to get the nozzle-thing under the couch as best she could while I'm lying on it. No way I was making it easy for her - I kept my legs where they were and let her work around them. That's what she gets for interrupting my telly time. While she worked, I gave her arse a bit of a slap and told her she was a fine ride altogether, but of course this got her all turned on and she asked if she could stop doing the vacuuming to give me a blowjob. "No chance," says I, "you've started so you'll finish. Don't worry though, if you get the rest of that vacuuming done and then bring me in a cup of tay, I might allow you to give me that BJ while I watch the rest of Nip/Tuck." Linzi was absolutely delighted with the generosity of my offer, and continued the vacuuming apace, eager to feast on my lad.

Okay, none of this is true. I fucking hate vacuuming though.

Antivirus software

2007-01-22T21:00:00.000Z

Can anyone recommend an alternative to Norton Antivirus/Internet Security (not McAfee)?

My subscription to Norton's running out soon and I've had enough of it. Slows the computer down something awful, and it's extremely cumbersome.

Any advice or experiences would be appreciated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other geek-related news, I downloaded an emulator for the old Nintendo (NES) at the weekend, and, after a 17-year hiatus, got myself re-addicted to Super Mario Brothers 3. It was like being 11 all over again, only with extra pubes.

What great games the old Nintendo had though. Having them on the PC means you can save them, not like the old days when you had to finish the game in wan sitting.

Pulp Friction

2007-01-22T09:57:00.000Z

My friend Paul McBeef was over this weekend, so I gave him the tour of Glasgow in my dirty oul Megane. We were gripped by an odd compulsion to wear black suits with thin black ties as we cruised slowly through the West End of Glasgae, so we did. Here's a snippet of our chat:

Paul: "Okay so, tell me again about the NHS?"

Me: "What you want to know?"

"Well, treatment is free here, right?"

"Yeah, it's free, but it ain't a hundred percent free. You've gotta pay for anything that's considered non-essential, like those cock implants you say you need so badly."

"So who's paying?"

"It breaks down like this: If you work, you pay national insurance, which contributes to the upkeep of the NHS and ensures healthcare for all. Sure, there are waiting lists, and sponging cunts who fuck the system, but an attempt is made to look after all the UK's citizens, regardless of status. Many people in the UK don't appreciate that they get so much for free. When you consider you have to pay forty Euro to allow a sick child just to see a doctor back home, it makes you think."

"Yeah, that did it, man - I'm movin', I'm fuckin' movin', that's all there is to it."

"You'll dig it the most. But you know what the funniest thing about Scotland is?"

"What?"

"It's the little differences. A lotta the same shit we got at home, they got here, but here it's just a little different."

"Examples?"

"Well, in Scotland, you can buy Buckfast in the cinema. And I ain't talkin' about in no paper cup neither, I'm talkin' about a glass bottle of B. In Glasgow, you can buy Buckfast in McDonald's. Also, you know what they eat after the pub here in Scotland?"

"They don't have Supermacs?"

"No man, they put an embargo on Pat McDonagh-related franchises, they wouldn't know what the fuck a Supermacs is over here."

"Jaysis. So what do they eat after a feed of pints?"

"Deep fried pizza."

"Deep fried pizza, the sick cunts. What do they put on it?"

"Salt and vinegar. They also eat deep-fried black pudding in batter."

"The horrible cunts. Do they deep fry their bacon and cabbage too?"

"I dunno, I don't eat cabbage. But you know what they put on their sausages in Scotland instead of ketchup?"

"What?"

"Brown sauce."

"Goddamn!"

"I'm tellin' you man, I've seen 'em do it. And I don't mean a little bit on the side of the plate, they fuckin' drown 'em in that shite."

"Uuccch!"

I think I'll stop for a while

2007-01-19T09:06:00.000Z

You know that blogging's become too large a force in your life when you consider manipulating real-life situations to make them more entertaining for your next blog post.

I was lying there this morning, willing myself to get up, when next to me, Linzi began to shriek like a murdered knacker's widow. I think it might've been the first real shriek I've ever heard - fraught with genuine terror, and frightening enough in the early-morning dark to make my body prickle with goosebumps and my heart pound like a pornstar. I put my arms around her as she woke, comforting her as she explained what the nightmare had been about.

Her dream was one of those ones that starts seeming fairly normal and realistic - in it, Jack had woken up and L could hear him crying over the baby monitor. We were laying in bed, bantering about whose turn it was to get him, like we often do, when suddenly we heard a woman singing through the monitor. The tune was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but Linzi said the words were all garbled and gibberished, like a Japanese horror fillum. She leapt out of bed (in the dream), and burst into Jack's room to see a woman in a pink woolly jumper leaning over Jack's cot, singing to him. She tackled her, and that's when she shrieked and woke. Disturbing.

You've seen it in dozens of mediocre spooky films. The heroine wakes up after having had a terrible nightmare, and what just happened in her dream happens again, but this time it's real!

This is why we both jumped a little when Jack really did start crying through the monitor. Linzi went downstairs to get his bottle, reaching around doors to turn on lights before she entered any room. She was still understandably freaked out.

Meanwhile, I was upstairs, wondering how I could make this into an amusing blog story. Grinning in the lamplight, my eureka moment came when I remembered Linzi had a pink jumper. What I could do is get the pink jumper, hold it against my chest (too small to wear), go into Jack's room and lean over his cot, wait for Linzi to come in, and then start singing Twinkle Twinkle. Hahahaha! Whoooooo! What a great fright she'd get! It'd be brilliant, a hilarious story to tell my readers.

Then I got a hold of myself, and remembered she's my wife, and she's in a state of pyjama-wetting terror. She's not a puppet to be manipulated for the entertainment of virtual strangers.

I think I need to give this blogging thing a rest for a while. If I don't, before you know it I'll be taking requests from you folks for hilarious pranks to pull on my loved ones, and we can't be having that lads.

Have a good weekend.

Lazy blogging - you do the work.

2007-01-18T11:20:00.000Z

Seeing as I'm a biteen sick and can't muster up the energy to blog, here's an old picture of me I found. Your job is to caption it. The best I've got so far is "Minky looking young lad standing in rural location with jacket over his head attempts to control football", but I'm looking for something a bit snappier. Something like "Cuntheaded child kicks the cunt out of cunting ball", or some such.

Sleeping booty

2007-01-15T15:57:00.001Z

Blogorrah were recently talking about the dangers of the internet and the work hours wasted by employees. Quite timely, considering what happened to me at work yesterday.

I fell asleep, you see. Standing up.

It was just after lunch. I don't know about you, but I often get a near-overwhelming desire to have a post-lunch nap. Many's the occasion I've nodded off at the PC and woken up with a jerk and a small yelp, with a filament of drool connecting my lower lip to the lapels of my suit, like what happens after thousands of years when those stalactites and stalagmites join up to form a...am...stalactube. I've perfected the "I meant to do that" face (also used by fuckin eejits who trip in public places), which I tend to use as I casually wipe the mess off my mouth and jacket.

I vaguely remember learning why eating makes you sleepy, something about all the oxygenated blood going to your stomach to digest your food with the result your brain gets deprived of it, but I kept nodding off during that lecture. Anyway, it doesn't explain why so many cunts in here seem brain dead all day long.

In an effort to save money (ie it's the middle of January, five weeks since I've been paid...roll on the 25th), I've taken to eating noodles these days. I had been eating soup, but that was costing me crazy money - 49p a tin. That's almost one US dollar a day. Then I discovered that you can get eight packs of noodles for a pound. Eight packs! That's eight lunches! For two dollars! I'm telling you, forget the children, noodles are the future.

After slobbering through the noodles and checking Bloglines, a wee after-lunch nap was in order. Settling back into my seat, I was just getting into it, letting the eyes get that comfortable, heavy way where you know you're going to get a decent kip, when I see Consultant Lady coming towards me.

She's been the bane of my life this week, this woman. To be fair to her, she's lovely, but she keeps asking fucking questions and interrupting my naps. Composing myself as she approaches, I use Alt + Tab* to bring up some work on my PC, and gaze studiously at it while stroking my chin.

She wants to find a particular document online, but her internet's been killed. Sure, she can hop on to my PC to have a look for it. I stand next to her, leaning against the wall watching her click onto Google, and praying she doesn't look into my history. I don't want work people knowing about my blog. Or yours, for that matter.

Fuck me, there's nothing more boring than watching someone else surf the internet. Particularly when it isn't porn they're looking for. Ah porn, what good times we've had together. You know what, this wall's fairly comfortable actually...

"Kav?"

"..."

"Kav!"

"Wha?!"

I jerk awake and I can already feel my face flushing. She's looking at me guardedly, as if unsure whether or not she should bite the hand that feeds her, even though she knows she's dealing with a complete fucking mental patient. What kind of a spa falls asleep up against a wall? If I had a feast of pints it'd be one thing...I clear my throat and note with relief that she's smiling. Whatever Consultant Lady's real thoughts about me are, she's obviously decided, hell, it's the second week of a three-month contract, I'd better keep my trap shut.

I make light of it and say something about being up all night with the kids, but the damage has been done.

I'm going to need to watch myself in here for the next while.

*Alt + Tab is a godsend in the office environment. If you don't already use the left hand thumb/index finger combo to switch between blogging and work, you must be some sort of club-wielding Neanderthal.

Nominees - Irish Blog Awards

2007-01-15T10:11:00.000Z

Before I begin, I should point out that I won't really kill your whole family if you don't vote for The Swearing Lady (see link, right), but I will maim them so badly that they'll be unrecognisable to you. You know what you have to do.

Being serious for a moment, here are some facts: The Swearing Lady is an excellent writer. She has actually written books, so she's miles ahead of most would-be authors (myself included). She has the amazing ability of being able to take some little quirk of local culture, or her own personality, and expand on it to make her points resonate on a national (and sometimes international) scale. What's incredible is, she does this without isolating her audience, and with her wicked sense of humour well and truly intact. All she wants is to become a hugely successful millionaire best-selling author, and when you consider how much complete shit there is out there, she more than deserves this. However, she needs the recognition necessary for the fickle publishing types to take note of her, and a blog award surely wouldn't hurt her cause.

So I say: vote for her. It'll only take you a couple of minutes. You have until 26 January.

Here's who I'm voting for in the Irish Blog Awards. Be assured that these blogs are all excellent and worthy of your time (especially the Best Personal Blog nominee).

Best Newcomer - The Swearing Lady

Best Blog - The Swearing Lady

Best Blog Post - The Swearing Lady for any of the following:
How To Be Irish
How To Be Irish, Part Two
Sorry for your trouble
Where do you get your smoke from?
Road Safety and What We Can't Do About It

Most Humorous Post - Twenty Major for any of the following:
Careful with that
Evil is Coming
Some bloggers are like JR Ewing
Once upon a time
Pick it up

Best Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere - Damien Mulley

Best Arts and Culture Blog - The Sigla Blog

Best Political Blog - Politics in Ireland - not a blog, but an aggregator. Definitely the easiest way of reading politics stories from back home, so it wins for me.

Best Group Blog - In Fact, Ah

Best Personal Blog - This one, of course.

Best Designed Blog - Unlaoised - Gerry's new blog is in its infancy, but it's one of the few I read that doesn't seem to be a standard template, so points for that. Plus, he has a unique blogroll that makes a pleasant change from the text-based links you usually get. See?

Best Specialist Blog - Irish KC for all things Irish in Kansas City.

Best Music Blog - nialler9

NEW ADDITIONS: Best Podcast - Twenty Major for either of the following:
Pizza delivery in Dublin
Dirty Dave and the Church of Scientology

Best Podcaster - Twenty Major

I haven't got anyone to vote for in any of the following categories, so if you have any recommendations, let me know: Best Use of the Irish Language in a Blog, Best Videocast , Best Technology Blog/Blogger, Best Sport & Recreation Blog, Best News/Current Affairs Blog, Best Photo Blog, Best Business Blog.

By the way, ANYONE can nominate/vote. As long as the blog itself has at least a tenuous Irish connection, you can vote for it and it doesn't matter whether you're from Balintubber, Sydney or Lesotho*.

*locations used to emphasise potential geographic diversity of voters. It's not a requirement to be from these places.

The Anatomy of Agony

2007-01-12T08:27:00.000Z

Ladies, I salute you. For years now, I have listened to your gripes about wearing uncomfortable shoes in the name of style and sexiness. In all honesty, your cries for pity have fallen on deaf ears*. The main thing, you see, is that those four-inch heels give your calves definition, and make your already lovely arse look even perkier. Pain? Pah, go on outta that. A small price to pay for looking so gorgeous, surely?

In between Christmas and New Year, I popped over to Next to pick up a new pair of work shoes in the sale. The time had come to replace the squelchers. The sale zombies were out in force that week, and had devoured all but the gomiest shoes by the time I got there. Then, behold! buried under a pile in the "Clearance" section, I discovered a decent pair, reduced from £45 to £20. Result. A little tight when I slipped them on, but all shoes feel like that when you first try them, don't they? Besides, £20 is my limit for work shoes, and the ones that would've fit properly were ridiculous prices like £25 or £30.

I went back to work this week.

Monday

Pulling the shoes on, I feel a mild pressure envelop my feet. I manage to get the shoes on, but not before scraping both Achilles tendons on the hard leather of the backs of the shoes. Cursing, I make my way to the train station.

By the time I arrive home that evening, my feet are hot and swollen, and my heels are chafing where the hard bits of the shoes've been digging into them. It's bliss to kick off the shoes as soon as I enter the front door.

Tuesday

I wince as I pull the shoes on, as my feet are already a little tender from yesterday. I find that if I push my foot up to the top of the shoe, it minimises the scraping of the Achilles.

I limp home that evening with watering eyes and soak my feet in hot salty water.

Wednesday

I wake up dreading getting dressed. I whimper slightly as I pull the shoes on, feeling them pinch the widest part of my foot just behind the toes. A refugee tear crosses the border of my eyelid as I slide the shoes over the tattered flesh of my ankles.

Leaving work, the pinch across my foot has become a vice, the thread turning tighter with each step. I hobble to the train station and collapse into my seat with a gasp of relief. People look at me, then quickly look away.

Arriving home, I kick off the vices and revel in playing with the children before bedtime. Dad-dancing and singing kiddie songs turns to swearing and a piercing shriek of anguish as I accidentally kick the jamb of the door. My feet, which had been simmering all day, promptly boil over, and pain sears my entire body. There are no tears of pain because I'm too angry that I did something so stupid. I excuse myself from the family and go upstairs and punch the wall a few times. Takes away the pain in my foot, you see.

Thursday

I'm awake before my alarm goes off, having slept little. I groan inwardly, then realise I've been groaning out loud when Linzi asks me what's wrong. I'm hesitant to moan about my feet, as she'll give out to me for buying ill-fitting shoes. I tell her I need a shite.

My feet are unrecognisable as such. Splotched with purple and maroon, they've swollen to hobbit-like proportions, only without the copious coating of hair. My heels at the Achilles tendon are in raw bloody ribbons. I stuff tissue into my socks to counteract the incessant rubbing, which after four days of shoe-wearing, feels like a handful of razor blades rhythmically slicing my heels as I walk.

All day the antagonistic attack (left, right, left, right) continues. I mince home gingerly, sweating and snivelling like a stuck pig. I collapse into bed that night, exhausted, and I thank the gods that tomorrow is Friday.

Friday

God bless whatever gobshite in the corporate world came up with dress down Friday. I delight in slipping on my jeans and pushing my feet into the cushioned goodness of my Caterpillar boots. I bop to the train with a spring in my step, ready to concentrate on getting some work done for the first time this week.

I vow to never again be unsympathetic towards women's shoe problems.

Have a good weekend.

*I do, however, provide foot massages several evenings a week, out of respect for the effort. Just to Linzi though.

PS: I've had a few visitors from IT2M, most of whom have lasted less than five seconds (thank you Statcounter). If you do happen to come from there and read to the end of this post, feel free to leave a comment, no matter how vitriolic. I can delete it later if it goes too far.

Smacked like a red-headed stepchild

2007-01-11T08:59:00.000Z

Some of you may occasionally peruse the hilariously cruel italk2much site. There's a reason my link to it in the sidebar says of the site "Get ripped to shreds from the comfort of your PC" - submitting your blog for appraisal is definitely at your own risk, and you are very likely to be lambasted on a whim. That's what makes it funny.

A few months back, I submitted my own blog, and yesterday evening noticed that Charred got around to tearing me a new one. I got five grey smacks, which means "You suck". Of all the "unpaid staff", Charred was who I least hoped I'd get to do my blog, but who's to say any of the others would rate any different than he did.

Anyway, check it out if you want a chuckle, and if you do dare to submit your site, you'd better have a sense of humour about it. Alternatively, you could take it seriously, go ballistic, and provide everyone with many hours of entertainment as you try to defend yourself against something essentially indefensible: personal opinion. Yeah, actually, go with that option.

Westside story, bud

2007-01-10T11:14:00.000Z

Growing up in Galway was tough. Coming from an east side ghetto, running with a gang was not an option, it was mandatory if you wanted to stay alive. I had no choice: to protect myself, I joined the Jets at the age of twelve. The Jets were the baddest motherfuckers east of the river Corrib. For my initiation I had to dance to the death against a contingent of our sworn enemies, the Sharks. After six years of ballet and two of tap, my feet were as nimble as a cobbler's fingers, my thighs could crack walnuts, and my lad was like a long thick piece of lead pipe that could crack your backbone with a single thrust. I mortally killed three Sharks fatally to death that very day. I was welcomed into the Jet gang with open, waving arms, and spent the next several years raising hell on the streets of Galway, challenging both Sharks and innocent pedestrians alike to dance-offs, the likes of which had never been seen outside of a Michael Jackson video.

Trouble arose when, in my late teens, I fell in love with the sister of the leader of the Sharks, Mariah. Mariah was a blow-in from Cavan, and was better known by the rather unlikely name "Skullfuck". Mariah, or Skullfuck as she liked to be called, lost an eye as a child (unfortunate) but turned it to her advantage in her teens by giving a very special kind of head to select gentlemen. I was one of those gentlemen.

We met at a challenge dance attack between the Sharks and the Jets. We were thrown together, everyone around us expecting us to dance one another to death (I had my razor-heeled tap-boots with the Cuban soles on). Audible gasps, shocked sighs and hefty drawn breaths emanated from the stunned crowd as they watched us, not killing one other by booglejive, but instead falling in love.

Skullfuck, though, was already engaged to be married to Beano, a right vicious Shark cunt from the west side. Couple this with the fact that Skullfuck, or Mariah, as she preferred to be called, was the sister of Bernie O'Toole, the leader of my arch-enemies, the feckin Sharks, and you can see the difficulties Skullfuck and I had to overcome.

Bernie and meself decided to sort our shite out once and for all, so we met in the GPO one night, for a dance on neutral territory. I brought along Jif, my best friend and the soundest cunt you could hope to meet. Feet like the wind, he had. His speciality was the hucklebuck.

The whole evening, Jif and Bernie were at each other's throats, feet tapping menacingly. Just as we were getting up to leave, Bernie leapt at Jif, his right leg extended. Too late, I watched the diamond-honed spur of Bernie's gold-plated dance-boot slice through Jif's gomey gangly neck, instantly severing jugular and carotid. I grabbed for Jif's head, but it came off in my hands. In a fit of rage and grief, I bashed Bernie to death with Jif's head, then did a legger.

Skullfuck, or Mariah as I'm now ashamed to admit I liked to call her, hadn't a clue what had happened, but Beano found out about Bernie quick smart. The snake went and told her that I'd killed Bernie using Jif's head, but luckily she believed me when I said it was an accident. That was a turning point in ~~the musical~~ our lives together. We decided there and then that we were going to get the fuck out of Galway and move to the Gaza Strip, where it was safer.

Little did I know that Beano was after me, and he had sharpened his rhinestone dance glove in preparation for murdering me stone dead. I told Skullfuck I'd meet her down at Ceannt Station, and we'd get out of this dog-forsaken hep-hole that very day. First I had to go and take care of a little bidness.

Waltzing myself down Shop Street, I came face to face with Rita McGrath, Skullfuck's best friend. Oh Kav! she cried, it's Mariah! They've killed her!

Destroyed by grief and despondency, I skipped jauntily to Beano's house. I had no reason to live now my beloved Skullfucker was gone. Visions of my jism dripping from her hollowed-out eye socket flashed before me, and completely overcome with despair, I flung myself at the mercy of Beano. My last memory is of the moonlight glinting off Beano's rhinestone glove as he raised his arm aloft, swinging down and dealing me my death-dance.

That's right, I was killed. I'm a ghost-writer. Woooooooooooooo!

More here and here.

I eat children*...

2007-01-08T15:41:00.000Z

...and ham and chocolate and crisps and cream and Mars Bar cake and whatever happens to be available. I eat until I feel sick, usually. There's a reason for this, hilarious and terrible, stemming from my childhood and involving a strict weekly allocation of chocolate for me and my sisters, but I won't go into it just now.

Seven years Linzi and I have been together, and yet she's continually surprised when she goes to get some food and finds I've eaten it all.

"Kav, where's the food gone?" she asks me.

"The food?" I chuckle, "Why, I've eaten it, of course!"

"All of it?" she demands, sounding exasperated.

"Uh, yeah" I respond, managing to sound both bewildered by her confusion and slightly incredulous that she would expect anything else from me. "Food's there to be eaten you know. I think there's some of those frozen meat-based products left, though. And a bit of bread."

"Kav, I know food's there to be eaten. And I know what's left. I checked."

Bollocks. Short, abrupt sentences, their conciseness emphasising her thinly-disguised rage. Here we go.

"There's a problem though, is there not?"

"Dunno, my love. Is there?"

"Yes, you fucking gluttonous beast. It's the 8th of January. We have no money. Our food was meant to last until the end of January. Now-"

- a pause while she hits me, thumping out her syllables on my defenceless arm.

"-now, all we have left is fucking 11% beef meat-based products and fucking bread!"

"We have a vast array of condiments though! Linzi, seriously, you know the only way I can control my eating habits is by there being no food in the house."

"Jesus, condiments. We'll just have sweet chilli sauce on toast for the rest of the month, will we? What about the rest of us?! We like to eat too! You have children!"

I bet she'd be really annoyed if she knew I was considering the deliciousness (or lack of) of sweet chilli-covered toast. Better stick to the key issue.

"It's for the greater good. The more I eat now, the less I'll have to eat later in the month, thereby speeding my intended weight loss."

"Meanwhile your wife and children starve."

"Go 'way outta that. I know you've got a stash somewhere for just such a situation arising."

I could post the rest of this conversation, but what would be the point? As is already obvious, I, using superior tactical reasoning and logical assertion, was the outright winner of this argument.

I swear, I'm not typing this from an internet café, and I won't be sleeping in the car tonight.

I don't know what the big deal is. The kids were getting a little plump for my liking anyway.

*don't worry, I only eat orphans. They won't be missed.

Happy New...meh

2007-01-03T23:52:00.000Z

First things first. Thanks a feckin million to Devin for being unbelievably generous - true to her word, I received my first ever Christmas present from a virtual stranger - Stadium Arcadium by the Chili Peppers. I will indeed play it loud and will remember you when I do so. Thankee ma'am. 2007's going to kick ass for you.

You may note in the above pic that I got another couple of other CDs (welcome to 2005, Kav, yay). If you look closely you'll see a fairly innocuous-looking object that has already changed my life for the better. Yes, my wife only went and got me a motherfucking MP Thrizzle Plizzle, muhfuckas! Again, welcome to 2005, Kav. This thing is fucking brilliant. I've already got all three of the above albums on it and there's still room for hundreds more...I'm like a child who's just discovered the joys of the crack pipe. I'm looking forward to going back to work just so I can ride on the train and listen to loud music. In a small way, this little device helps me be me, rather than daddy or husband.

Anyway, happy new year or whatever. New year's eve wasn't shit, and you know why? Because we chose to share it with a couple of close friends and an assortment of alcoholic beverages, enjoyed in the comfort of our own home while the wind and rain battered the fuckin eejits standing around outside trying to conjure up some sort of spirit of togetherness or whatever the fuck the reason for everyone congregating at new year is. If you were there....sorry, but what the fuck were you up to? That storm had been forecast for days, like.

It's nearly always shit though, isn't it? Almost every new year I've had in a pub or a club, with their fucking extortionate entry fees and pushy queues and drunken gobshites who can barely stand by the time midnight rolls around...every single new year, you're obligated to do this simply because every other cunt is doing it, and it ends up being shit. That's why for the past few we've rung it in at home, except for ought-three when we rang it in in New York in a glass-walled restaurant looking out at Brooklyn Bridge with free drink for the entire night and nought for company but the four of us and a dash of the joy and exuberance that comes from being young and unencumbered by kids.

Speaking of kids, mine are fucking amazing:

Catching up on your blogs (you lot didn't slow down for the holidays, did you? Fuck me, it's taken me hours to read everything I missed...I'm dreading having to comment.), I've noticed a lot of you have been tagged to write "5 things nobody knows about me". Pah. Look at me laughing at you, my face full of scorn and derision. You bunch of lazy cunts, five? I've got 101 sitting here. Come on, be a man, or a girl, if that's your thing. If you're only telling me five things, you may as well not fucking bother.

Christmas was good. Aside from getting sick on Christmas Day and spending the rest of Christmas week shivering, wracked with pain, it was pretty damn good. Because I was sick, I couldn't eat as much as I'd intended; I was so sick, I couldn't even bring myself to have a wank. As you probably know, I am a horny bastard, and it pained me immensely to not have the energy or inclination for sexual activity. It always happens to me - as soon as I have some time off to relax, the old immune system decides to fuck off on its own wee mutinous holiday, and everything I've been resisting in the drudgery of daily life decides to take me roughly from behind. Without lube.

I'm better now though.

I came this close to deleting the blog around Christmas Eve. What? No, this close. Can you not see me holding my thumb and forefinger millimeters apart? Alas, it wasn't a tear-filled scene where my finger hovered over the delete button as my blogging life flashed before my eyes - if only real life could be so melodramatic. No, it was more of a sober reflection (then, later, it became a drunken reflection) on the choices I've made in the six months I've been writing this horseshit. Long story short: if I could go back and start all over, I'd completely anonymise myself. I think I've been naive to reveal who I am. When people know who you are, there can be consequences in everything you write.

But fuck it. Bed made, I'm fairly comfortable lying in it now. If you don't like it, please do continue to feck off.

Happy new year to you. And especially to Old Knudsen and The Swearing Lady, who know why.

White Christmas

2006-12-25T00:53:00.000Z

Well, it looks orange in this picture, but yeah. I was on my way to bed, looked out the window and whazz, it's been snowing. Just a little, but the ground's all white. And now let us have a moment of silence for spell check.

Tis the season...to stuff my face

2006-12-21T10:27:00.000Z

I was reading a thing about blogging there, and it says that bloggers will rarely read more than 400 words of an entry. Anyone writing longer entries that this will bore their readers. Fucking hell, you lot must be well bored of me then.

Anyway, it's the shortest day of the year today, so I'd better make this quick. Boom-boom, thank you, I'm here all week.

Actually I'm not; this might be my last post for a bit. I've been working hard this week on my pre-Christmas plumpening (hounding into as many chocolates as possible from the vast amounts circulating at work), and I plan to be a good stone or so heavier by the time January rolls around. This will allow me to feel the self-loathing necessary to force me back to the gym to lose my well-earned December gut. And thanks, I know that's self-destructive behaviour. I plan to stop living like this any year now.

I'm looking forward to the Christmas break. My heart hasn't been in the blog for a while, and it's come across in the posts, I think. I hate the idea of writing shite just for the sake of it; I'd rather wait until I had something worth saying.

But if you waited for that, you'd never get anything written! you say. Yeah, good one. It's not to say I won't be posting over Christmas, just that it's likely I'll be fairly sporadic. I still have a couple of the top five scary moments to write about, so that's something, at least. And my family's coming over tomorrow (for one night only, a mini pre-Christmas Christmas) and my best mate and his lady are coming over for new year's eve, so I'm sure there'll be one or two incidents worth documenting.

For the most part, I'll be reacquainting myself with the PS2, playing with the kids, having sex, and eating enough to kill a horse. It's going to be fucking brilliant.

Anyway, have a good Christmas, fellow bloggers. Do everything to excess.

~

A hasty post-script: I'm loathe to do this, but it's too good not to share. If you've never tried that voluptuous filthbag Nigella Lawson's recipe for ham cooked in Coca-cola, I urge you to do so. Had this for the first time last year and it is absolutely delicious.

Dang, there goes my "no memes or recipes on this blog" rule. Okay, definitely no memes.

Christmas cheer

2006-12-20T21:00:00.000Z

Just had a Christmas card through the letterbox. It was a small one, only about three inches by three, more of a gift tag than a card. Inside it said

To you

Hope you have a ~~Merry~~ rubbish Christmas.

From

Aw ay us*.

What sort of horrible vindictive cunt goes to the bother of doing something like that? The bastards have me in bad form and Linzi close to tears.

Fucking pathetic cunts. I wish I'd caught them.

*Scots dialect, "all of us".

Health and Safety is not a joke, kids

2006-12-20T13:23:00.000Z

If you work, you'll probably know how seriously modern businesses have to take Health and Safety regulations. Of course, this means that we, the employees, must take every opportunity possible to rip the piss out of the ridiculously elaborate and bureaucratic health and safety measures they have in place.

For example, we're walking across the office and someone's chair is pushed slightly out from their desk. This represents no danger to anyone except the truly inept and irrevocably clumsy, and they deserve to die in agony anyway. Well, except you Steph. I love you and would never wish you harm, heh. Anyway, seeing such a dangerous accident waiting to happen, chances are I or one of my colleagues will rush over to push the chair in (thus rendering it safe, and ensuring the health of our colleagues), and have no choice but to report the situation as a "near-miss" to our nearest H&S Officer, the thorough, dependable, and always good-humoured Liam.

"Reason for the near-miss?" poor, bored Liam, who only wants to eat his sandwich and surf YouTube for beheading videos, asks, as he raises pen to clipboard.

"Well, if I hadn't pushed the chair in, someone could have tripped over it, burst into flames, and fallen down the stairs" my reply might be. Liam would then advise, with a straight face, that this was unlikely to become an incident, and not reporting it would pose no risk to the organisation. Well, better safe than sorry, some of the more vigilant among us have been known to say.

A couple of weeks ago, during my "swearing off blogging and staying committed to studying" stage (a period in which almost everything in my life seemed to take on a blogworthy hue, but only because the grass of Blogland seemed much greener than the dank mossy marsh of Studyville...okay, I will stop making stupid placenames out of words right now), a couple of the lads and I were walking down the corridor, and someone had placed a box on the edge of a door to keep it open; obviously they were delivering a large quantity of office supplies, and it was easier for them to work with the door propped open.

Anyway, I did an exaggerated trip and fall exercise which involved me "accidentally" tripping over the box as I walked past it, throwing myself to the floor, and rolling around on the ground, screaming in faux-agony. The lads, bless them, took pity on me and laughed at my foolish jigacting.

Then some guy I'd never seen before came through the next set of double doors. Mid-forties, middle-to-senior management type. Fuck.

"Looks like a bit of a health and safety incident there, I think!" he said with a chuckle.

Nice one, the guy was sound about it. Praise the lord. If it had been one of the other more proactive max-the-envelope cunts, I'd have probably been facing a disciplinary.

"Heheheheh" we said, in what we felt was a decent approximation of laughter. We went on our merry way, delighted with ourselves.

It's become an ongoing joke with this guy, and it's starting to wear a little thin now. For reasons unknown, each time I've met him since our initial interlude, I pretend to trip, or bash my head, or something equally juvenile. It's our thing. It never fails to crack him up, but I'm getting a bit bored of it. Physical comedy's alright, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Plus, this morning when I met him, I "pretended" to trip on the stairs, only I actually did trip, and nearly broke my fucking ankle. That's karma for you.

Santa's gone all PC.

2006-12-19T11:15:00.000Z

On Sunday, we took the kids to see Santa. Forget that it was a four-hour round trip for a five-minute visit, the important thing is that the kids enjoyed the magic of Christmas while they're still young enough to not be embittered, cynical materialists. What got to me was the new policy Santa's got.

The kids aren't allowed to sit on his lap. That's right, as a reaction to the high levels of pedophilia in the shopping-centre-Santa-Claus field of employment*, kiddies must now sit next to Santa rather than on his knee. As for infants, Santa can hold them, but only at arms length, in the awkward manner adopted by foppish British actors when handed a baby in delightful romantic comedies.

Here in the UK, they carry out disclosure checking on potential employees for all jobs involving children. My initial reaction when seeing this new restriction was to think for fuck's sake, that's going a bit far, is it not? Then the dad side of me kicked in and thought, I would tear the motherfucker limb from limb if I ever found he had been getting a horn from having my little girl on his lap.

Right now, I am confused. Is this a necessary step in helping to minimise the risk of sick fucks who (always will) exist in our society from getting their thrills? Or is it just another feckin band-aid on the festering wound of the real problem, the root of which is not being tackled in any meaningful way? The reasonable side of me is saying of course it's the latter, but the emotional side of me is saying hell, anything to keep my wee girl protected.

*this is a completely made-up "fact", but I imagine this is how the conclusion was drawn.

Tuesday haiku

2006-12-19T10:53:00.001Z

Christmas approaches
And I'm stuck in cunting work.
Fuck this for a lark.

4 years ago today...

2006-12-16T17:30:00.000Z

...you missed a great day.

Humble ply

2006-12-14T12:06:00.000Z

In evil sympathy with the horrendous weather of the past few weeks (worst November in 40,000 years, the papers say, the lying cunts), my shoes have chosen to start leaking. Feet farting and squelching as I walk, the minutes are passing like hours in these sock-sodden days. Work is also a complete pisser right now, as I thought I'd be able to wind down over the next week or so. Instead I have to come in next week on three of my four days off.

Plodding through the rain yesterday evening, the seeping soakage creeping up my sock from toe to insole brought back vivid memories of my Frank McCourt-like childhood, when leaky shoes were simply called shoes, because I knew no shoe but the holey, leaky kind.

I grew up relatively poor you see. Relatively poor with poor relatives, I was fucked from the start. My concepts of style and fashion were drawn not from the pages of glossy magazines, nor from the dubious off-the-rack chic of Penney's or Dunnes. My wardrobe was a peculiar assortment of hand-me-downs from several generations of my extended family. Observe a typical childhood outfit:

Me age 10. Cool as fcuk.

What's that? You want more of the style king? How about this pose, taken on the shores of the lovely Corrib? Note the trousers/socks/sandals combo. The trousers were tracksuit bottoms for a 7-year old, hence the visible ankles.

I am a rock, I am an i-ee-ii-land.

The only thing we'd get bought new for us was coats and school uniforms. You need a coat you see, to keep warum. My Granny would regularly skin me alive for not wearing my jacket: "Tis cool mind you, and haven't you a grand warum jacket there? Ara sure the kids today don't wear jackets, but you need to cover up the hollow in your neck and it's pouring down, that oul misht I hate it, I'd rather it rained properly or not at all, tis a curse and you out in it with no jacket on ya!"

And so forth. When I look back on my stylistic debacle of a childhood, as well as finding it horrible and hilarious, I'm also very glad I experienced it. It allowed me to grow up humble. Almost every day, I look at what I've got, all the material shite I have amassed (amassed, I am convinced, precisely because I could not have any of this stuff when I was younger) and, although it's nothing more than a bog-standard life by anyone's measure, I'm still amazed by the comparative luxury I now live in.

The house I grew up in had no central heating, and no shower. My sisters and I used to hammer the shite out of each other with kettles, swords, chairs and the like just for something to do to keep warm. Hot water was at the flick of a switch, a switch you'd get a bollicking and a boot in the hole for flicking. Heating up water was fierce dear, you see.

We never had a car. (My dad bought his first car - the first car he EVER owned - last year. I kid you not.) We did not have a phone until I was ten (this was 1989, not 1969). No video recorder until I was 13. Our tv was older than me, and my dad only replaced it in 2003. We held a small ceremony for it: RIP Sony Trinitron, 1978 - 2003.

It toughens you up though, no doubt about it. Our central heating broke down for three days last month. After those three days, Linzi and the kids had the snuffles and went on to develop full-blown colds. Me? The brief cold snap just brought back fond memories of a shivering childhood as I washed myself with some ice-water and used iron filings and nettles for soap, and strolled around the house in my boxers balancing eggs on my knees.

The kids though. Them getting sick like that got me thinking. They've never gone without anything (essential) and they never will as long as I'm around to provide for them. But isn't that, in a way, depriving them of something? To have and show humility is something a lot of people in society seem to lack. To be humble, to appreciate being better off than others, you need to have something to compare to, and you can't beat personal experience. I don't want my kids turning out like some of the spoiled fuckers I know.

They have it all, or close to it, and I won't ever apologise for that. But we're going to have to work really hard to make sure they fucking well appreciate it.

The question is: How do I get them to appreciate their lot without turning into a carbon copy of the dithering old folks you hear rambling on about how the kids today have it easy, and in their day they used to walk 30 miles to school in their bare feet with only a handful of rocks and a flask of liver for their lunch?

~

This horrible weather has provided me with a great joke:

Why does Snoop Dogg always carry an umbrella?

Fo' drizzle.

Okay, so it's not great, but it made me laugh. I love that izzle talk.

I was scared, but it's okay now

2006-12-12T16:30:00.000Z

Part of my job is warning employees of the dangers of social engineering, phishing and the like. I'm fairly clued up on all the things to watch out for when using the internet. About a month ago, a fellow blogger, someone who's been reading me since I started blogging, mailed me and asked me for my home address. He said he wanted to send me a Christmas card. Ahhh, isn't that nice? I obliged, in spite of my instincts and training (not to mention basic cop-on) telling me to be careful. I had some semblance of trust in the guy, after all, even if it was only because we commented on each other's blags.

I logged on the weekend before last to find his blog had been deleted. Curious, but not unusual. What's more unusual is his entire Flikr membership had also been deleted. And what's downright disturbing is that his website, his main means of advertising his business, had also disappeared.

I told Linzi that night. She flipped. Went mental (with good reason, though I was trying my best to convince her otherwise) and starting getting genuinely worried that someone had stolen my identity. That's probably the least the guy's done! she shrieks. She's so beautiful when she shrieks, I tell her. Jesus, Kav, shut up! He's probably planning a bizarre ritual murder of you, me and the kids culminating in his own razor-assisted suicide! You can't trust anyone these days, you know!

Ah, wise words indeed.

Cut to last week. Devin very kindly told me she'd send me over a Red Hot Chili Peppers album that I haven't got. All the way from Amerikay, no less. I was in a quandary. Jaysis, I said to myself, I really want that CD, but Linzi went mad altogether the last time I gave my address out. What should I do?

After considering my options for one to three minutes, I responded to Devin's email with my address and a thankee kindly. Whistling with delight at this whole making blogging friends madness, and touched by the generosity of a virtual stranger, I swaggered down the stairs into the living room, looking awful pleased with myself.

"What are you looking so pleased with yourself about?" Linzi asks.

"Nothing."

"Tell me. You're up to something."

"Okay. Now, don't roll your eyes and gasp with horror and frustration at my apparent foolishness, but one of the people I know through t'blog is sending me the new Chili Peppers album! Yay!"

She rolls her eyes and gasps with horror and frustration at my apparent foolishness. I wait for the "fool me once, shame on you, blah blah fuck off you bastard" cliché, but it doesn't happen.

"Who is it that's sending it?"

"Devin."

"Devin?"

"Yeah, Devin. She's sound, like. Spot on."

"Right. And that's all you know about her, that she's sound?"

"Nah, I also know that she's a transsexual Irish-American, in the process of transitioning from lad to lassie. I've got to know her over the last few months, like."

Linzi's mouth hangs agape.

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Do you not remember what happened the last time you gave your address out?!"

"Oh that! Ah, did I forget to tell you? I emailed yer man, and it turns out he's setting up a new blog and archive as part of his main website - hence the deleted blog and Flikr account!"

"I thought you said his site was taken down as well?"

"Nah, see, the site just happened to be down for maintenance when I logged on. I checked it again after I mailed him and it was grand. Relief, eh?"

"Kav?"

"Yeah?"

"Why didn't you tell me this already?"

"Dunno, forgot. Fuck, you weren't still worrying about it, were you?"

The rest of this post had to be censored due to the extreme graphic nature of the violence unleashed on me.

Moral of the story is: trust everyone you meet on the internet. They're all sound.

Men and women different, survey announces.

2006-12-11T09:25:00.000Z

I could tell you all about how my exam went. How I've realised that I am never going to be arsed going for a MBA since I just about managed ten weeks studying for a relatively minor qualification, never mind three years of slog for a Master's. How I have absolutely no idea, in spite of the effort I put in, whether I have passed or failed the exam. How I now have a fucking cunting bastard of a cold choking me up, despite resisting my family's best attempts to give it to me over the past month. Christ, as soon as I relax, my immune system lets me down.

Yes, I could tell you about these things. And just did.

Last night we were watching Grey's Anatomy, and yer wan (the main bird in it who Linzi thinks is beautiful but who I think's nothing special - give me the wee blondie any day) and yer man (the dorky stocky lad who never gets the girl and always gets left in the corridor holding a clipboard with a slightly incredulous look on his face) were about to shag:

Me: Go on ya bye ya. Give it to her.

Linzi: Noooooo! No no no no no!

Me: What's wrong with ya? He's about to slip it in to her, that's a good thing, is it not?

Linzi: She doesn't want him, she's only doing this because she's feeling lonely and insecure! Jesus, have we been watching the same programme?

Me: Gah?

Linzi: She's still in love with McDreamy! She doesn't love George, even though he loves her. She's only going to end up breaking his heart!

Me: He's only getting his hole, for fuck's sake! Maybe he just wants a ride. Men don't always give a shite about all that love jazz, sometimes we just need to blow our muck all over a girl's face, wipe our lad on the curtains, and fuck off home.

Cue a look of disgust that would silence a talking horse, followed by a vicious thump.

Linzi: Shut up and watch the tv, you imbecile.

Feckin women, always overcomplicating situations.

In other news, check out these losers. Hahahahahahaha.

Seriously though, that's a shame.

Hello to you

2006-12-08T14:37:00.000Z

I'll be back with loads of news and views once I get this exam over with tomorrow, but right now, I'm looking for some recommendations from you. Having been immersed in horrible shit such as asymmetric cryptography and screened subnet firewalls for the past while, my brain has been starved of entertainment. It has been the best part of three months since I read a proper book. Recommend something to me. Anything at all, as long as you think it's good.

Thanks for all your comments by the way, I appreciate the support. Normal service will resume shortly. I'm not looking forward to it. I have a ton of you bastards to visit and having to think of something clever and witty to say on each blog is a right pain in the hole.

Ah, fuck that, I'll just leave shit comments like I usually do.

Slán go fóill, a chairde

2006-11-29T21:28:00.000Z

You may note I've been unable to get around to your blog recently. Sorry about that. I won't be around at all for the next week and a half or so. Try not to be upset, there's probably plenty of posts you haven't read, so get going on the archives. I'll be testing you when I return. Anyway, it's crunch time for this exam (it's on the 9th), and I have an interview with these guys next week too. Wish me luck. Or not. Whatever. There's no such thing as luck.

Say hi in the comments if you're so inclined. Shake it handy everyone.

Top 5 Scary Moments - #3

2006-11-29T12:24:00.000Z

If I tell you I used to drink Buckfast with pant-shitting regularity, will your opinion of me change? If you don't know anything about Uncle Buck, the link will tell all. Suffice to say it has something of a reputation as being the beverage of choice for anti-social miscreants intent on wreaking havoc on "the man", the man in question being any cunt who gets in their fucking way while looped up on the old B.

It is not a pleasant drink. It has a consistency and viscosity similar to cough syrup, and I've always found the taste to be positively gag-inducing. However, the combination of high levels of caffeine and alcohol in the drink makes for an almost amphetamine-like buzz, ideal for someone who loved to mosh mental in clubs but needed a bit of a kickstart to get going. Since most of my late teens were spent in clubs lepping about to the music of the day, Bucky was frequently my beverage of choice. Thankfully, I was never involved in causing any of the violence or anti-social behaviour that are now synonymous with guzzling the brown sauce.

I've been witness to it though: beatings, bottlings, awful stuff, stuff that happens because some people can't manage a drink, not because of what they drink. Some cunts just can't go out and enjoy themselves without feeling it necessary to do harm to others, regardless of whether they've had a feast of pints, a bottle of vodka, a couple of lines, whatever.

If I were in primary school, this essay would be called "A Narrow Escape".

One evening, myself and two of the lads, Droighneán and Snoopy, were on our way out to Salthill, and we stopped at the bottom of Taylor's Hill to drink our Buckfast from our Supermacs* cups. (To complete the filthy hobo look, you had to call into a fast food place for some paper cups, and drink your beverage - concealed in a brown paper bag - from the cups. Made you look completely innocuous, instead of looking like the kind of trouble-causing fucker who drinks from a bottle. A few packs of Tayto Snax were also considered an ideal complement to the beverage.)

To save an unnecessary and boring description about where we were, please see this diagram:

The red blob is us - the three of us were sitting on a step in an alleyway, guzzling our beverages, when two minky-looking hard bastards walk past. We can feel them looking at us as we do our best to pull off the I'll-look-at-anything-else-as-long-as-I-don't-have-to-make-eye-contact-with-this-
scary-cunt face that you have to put on when you go out around town these days. One of the two, real friendly-like, asks us for the time. We tell him, and they move on.

If Snoopy hadn't been there, I have no doubt I would've ended up in intensive care just up the road in the Regional that evening. He was sharp, that lad - his spider-senses were tingling as those lads walked away. Droighneán and me, pah: never mind any extra-sensory perception, our regular senses were blissfully apathetic, dulled from the consumption of the oul Bucky. We'd have been fucked without Snoopy. Bless you sir.

As soon as those guys walked away, Snoopy stood up. He was a bloodhound, and he smelled trouble. Paul and I were sitting on the step, still sucking down the brown gloop, needing to get drunk enough to enjoy CJ's later. CJ's was an awful club. We're bantering on, talking the usual shite we always talk, when Snoopy shouts "Run byes, run!"

The urgency in his voice leaves little to question. I have a split second to look over my shoulder to see the guy who asked for the time come sprinting towards us. Lack of cuddles as a child means he now wants to cuddle us, though I suspect it's the less traditional type of cuddle, where intense agony, rather than love, is shared. He's pulling a balaclava over his face, he's fisting one of those cosh** things and he is fucking flying at us. Fear is a powerful motivator, and we're all reasonably fit; he hasn't a chance of catching us with that much adrenaline on our side. We run like fuck up Taylor's Hill, in time to see Thug #2 coming around from the other direction (see diagram). They'd been attempting the old western trick of heading us off at the pass, but, thank Christ, Snoopy had been onto them faster than most people would've been, and we were able to get the fuck out of Dodge just in time.

Taylor's Hill is a steep feckin hill - we made it about halfway up before we stopped. Those enormous cunts were nowhere to be seen, but we decided it might be best to make our way out to Salthill regardless. Soon we were laughing about the near-death experience, high and jittery off the bucketloads of adrenaline, and we nearly collapsed with laughter when we looked at each other and realised that throughout the entire incident, we did not spill a drop of drink.

*Irish fast food joint. Tasty and tempting food.

**blackjack

~

In other news, go and check out Blunt Cogs. I just had my first cartoon published there (thanks to Kim), which I reproduce for you here:

Red Hot Chili Peppers: 1999 - 2006

2006-11-28T22:52:00.000Z

This is a continuation of this. Never mind the fact that you don't like the band, just read the fucking post.

1999: I go all the way to America to spend the summer hanging around with Irish and Scots. For the first time in my life, I am successful (to the point of being choosy) with female girlwomen. Ladies of all nationalities are throwing themselves at me. I take full advantage of their foolishness, then act like a dick. Until I meet Linzi.

One morning around 5am, first light, walking home wasted from a party, I find $300 in $20 bills scattered on the street outside an Eckerd. Don't ask, I can't explain it. Later that day, I blow the lot on CDs and clothes. One of the CDs I pick up is the recently released Californication. The music on Californication is still a powerful reminder of the summer of '99 (particularly as I got to see Red Hot Chili Peppers at Woodstock*), and getting together with Linzi. When we say goodbye to one another that September (unsure if we'll be seeing each other again), one of the things I give her is a copy of that album.

2002: By the Way is released at the same time as I emigrate to Scotland. In six turbulent months between July and December 2002, I fail, then pass my driving test (sitting two tests within five days of each other), I emigrate, move in with my future in-laws and sleep on their couch for four months, start a new job in a new city, buy my first house and car, get myself £10,000 in debt to do up the house, learn to drive badly, then well, on a motorway, and top it all off by getting married. And By the Way was in my CD player constantly.

That time in my life is a yardstick for measuring stress; nothing in my life has come close, not even when we found out we were unexpectedly with child.

2004: For certain reasons, Scar Tissue is the first song I play my first-born child.

2006: Stadium Arcadium is released, but I am now too poor to buy CDs. I still haven't heard it. Is this how it ends? Are such sacrifices in the name of raising kids normal?

*incidentally, I must have been too stoned or drunk, but I missed all the violence and misery at Woodstock '99, and had myself a feckin great time. I saw some fires, and remember a crowd of dickhead American jock types singing the roof is on fire, but I wasn't privy to any of the terrible stuff the event became known for afterwards.

Red Hot Chili Peppers: 1991 - 1999

2006-11-28T09:00:00.000Z

The Swearing Lady, in her hernia-inducingly humorous posts about how to be Irish, cites a love of the Red Hot Chili Peppers as one of the prerequisites to being a real Irishman (or Irishwoman, if you were, for example, female). Yesterday, a commenter in her blog said "The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a band with two songs. Californication and the other one."

I was appalled, so my response was:

Holy God...you blasphemous bejayzer. Two songs my hole. I can track my youth from the age of 12 on Chili Peppers songs.

I was half-joking, but thinking about it on the train* home, I realised, you know, that's not so far from the truth:

1991: I start secondary school the same month that Blood Sugar Sex Magik is released, but it's to be more than a year before I get to hear the album. Then, some time in '92, a lad at school called Cronan gives me a tape, a copy of a copy (ridiculous hiss almost drowning out the music - you kids today with your MP3s and your HIVs don't know how good you have it) of an album called What Hits?!, a kind of a mock Greatest Hits album by the Chili Peppers. It's a hodge-podge of covers and originals going back to their earlier days, and includes a brilliant version of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground". There are a good few stand-out songs on the album (Show me your Soul and Knock me Down come to mind), but the one that made me really fall in love with their music was a little known song called Under the Bridge.

1992: A lad at school gives me a tape, a copy of a copy...seeing a pattern here? Heh. I've long since gone and bought all this stuff legitimately, but when you're in your early teens and your family's poor and you love music, there's no other way to listen to it except copying tapes. Anyway, I get a bootlegged copy of Blood Sugar Sex Magik and it gets me through the next few (shitty, awful) years of school. I mean, the song I Could Have Lied may as well have been written for angst-ridden teens going through the agony of unrequited love, and I basked in my angst, oh yes, I relished the pain of what it was like to be an ugly teenager with a crush on an unattainable girl, and RHCP were there with me every step of the way, tending to and ripping open my mental wounds, scraping and soothing in equal measures. I love this album and know practically every word by heart.

1995: In '94 I get my first job (truly depressing to think that I've never not had a job since), and I buy a CD player. My first CD is Soundgarden's Superunknown, but Chili Peppers' One Hot Minute is top of my list when it comes out in late '95. After the near-perfection of BSSM, One Hot Minute is a disappointment: a fractured, disjointed effort sorely missing John Frusciante's beautiful strumming and alot of the signature harmonies that made Blood Sugar Sex Magik so flippin great. Navarro just wasn't right for the band, and he didn't last long after that. That said, there are some classic songs on the album: Aeroplane, My Friends, One Hot Minute and One Big Mob all kick arse, but the one that surpasses them all (and the price of the album's worth it for this song alone) is Tearjerker, a devastating, poignant tribute to Kurt Cobain written after Kiedis found out about his suicide. It's a beautiful song, a perfect counterpoint to some of the near-metal Navarro-influenced tracks, and again, was a balm for a wanker in his late teens who was wallowing in despair at never being able to get anywhere with the opposite sex.

1997: I start going out with my first serious girlfriend. Chili Peppers have no new albums out. I should've known it wouldn't work out. The relationship lasts until 5th June '99, and ends with a kiss goodbye at Shannon Airport when I leave for America.

Coming soon: Red Hot Chili Peppers: 1999 - 2006.

*in between listening to the inane conversation of two of the stupidest bitches ever conceived - here's a memorable snippet of idiocy:

Neddy bitch #1: "Do these trains have drivers?"

Neddy bitch #2: "Nah, they're all run by computers these days."

What the fucking fuck? Does she honestly think that the rail infrastructure of the UK is run by a few lads sitting in an office using PCs? I really wanted to turn around and shout "You stupid fuckin eejits, what kind of big thick foolheaded geebags are you? I bet you think planes are flown by remote control like some sort of winged Scalextric, don't you?" before banging their heads together to try and knock some sense into them.

The eye (updated)

2006-11-27T08:41:00.000Z

I love lazy Sunday mornings. Yesterday morning was, for reasons unknown, very quiet, and I fancied my chances...

I arch an eyebrow, Bond-style (yes, in my mind), and give Linzi a look that says I Am Mentally Undressing You, Be Aroused.

No joy. She's engrossed in her novel. I'm obviously being too subtle. Better make my intentions clear.

"Jaysis, I've an awful serious horn for you."

Cue the rolling eyes; it's all in the eyes.

"Kav...we had sex last night, how could you be so horny this morning?"

I am flabbergasted. Sometimes I wonder if she knows me at all.

"Wha? That doesn't make any sense. You wouldn't say 'Oh, I'm not hungry this morning, I ate yesterday', or 'I'm not tired this evening, I slept last night', would you? No, you wouldn't."

"Stop answering your own questions, I hate that."

I know exactly how to push her buttons.

"Would I stop answering my own questions? No, I wouldn't."

"Jesus Christ, you really know how to get a girl in the mood, Kav."

The monitor crackles to life.

"Waaah, waah, waaah. Waaaaaaaaah."

Oh yeah, that's right. We have kids. I was thinking it was a bit quiet around here this morning.

~

On a serious note, I'm attempting to use this software to back up my blog. If you give even a small crap about your blog, it might be worth backing it up. It's FREE!

I'll let you know how I get on - if all goes well, I'll recommend it.

UPDATE: That software's pretty damn easy to use. It's highly configurable, but if all you want's a straight copy of your blog copied to a local folder, it's ideal. I'd recommend it, but only if you have a decent connection. Dial-up users will be clawing their eyes out. It took me about 20 minutes on a 1Mb broadband connection to back up all my blogs. Worth it for the peace of mind.

Anomalous serious post (here's a topic you're welcome to rant about)

2006-11-24T11:54:00.000Z

Things aren't always as they seem, eh Madge?

Working in the UK utilities industry (gas/electricity/renewables), one of the questions I am asked with irritating regularity, usually posed to me in an aggressive tone as if I alone were responsible for the horrendous price rises over the past couple of years, is "How the fuck can you cunts justify whacking on a 10/20/30% price-rise on electricity to the customer? It's ridiculous and unfair, considering the enormous profits you guys already make."

The problem with the answer to this is that I can't give a simple response, so people end up losing interest half-way through my explanation, content to bathe in the vitriol of their chosen viewpoint rather than consider that perhaps there's a valid reason behind this after all. If this is a topic that interests or concerns you, bear with me and I will try to explain how it works, albeit on a very simplified level.

If it doesn't interest you, fuck off and read some of the fluff below.

My comments here refer to the UK utilities industry, but the ESB in Ireland is organised in roughly the same way.

The electricity industry is divided into three main areas: Networks (aka Wires/Transmission), Wholesale, and Retail. The networks industry is concerned with the infrastructure used to supply electricity from the power station to our homes and businesses. There are few players in this industry, for obvious reasons: pylons and overhead cables are rather unsightly items; if companies were given free rein to build their own infrastructure, there would be a mass of ugly power cables criss-crossing the land. Therefore, the networks industry is tightly regulated so that each area of the country is managed by one company. This company is wholly responsible for the wires in this area.

To prevent anti-competitive behaviour, there are equally stringent regulations in place in the next area: Wholesale. These regulations prevent favouritism; for example, if my business manages the network in this area, I'd be tempted to sell electricity to the wholesale side of the business for less than I sell it to our competitors, thereby increasing profit margins. However, this is velly velly illegal (as fatmammycat might say), punishable by enormous fines and the like.

The upshot is, at any given point in time, all companies buying wholesale gas and electricity must be charged the same amount for it. The trick is in knowing when to buy and when to hold off, a practice known as hedging. Some companies are brilliant at hedging, and this makes the company serious dough. Taking a common example: currency. Say a pound is, right this second, worth two dollars. If you buy a million pounds worth of dollars, you then have two million dollars. Five minutes later, the dollar price drops and a pound is only worth a dollar fifty. You sell your two million dollars, but because the dollar has strengthened against the pound, you make back £1,330,000, or an extra £330,000 on your initial one million investment.

The figures used there are kind of extreme, but you get the idea. Market fluctuations means this happens hundreds of times every day, and the key is knowing when to buy and sell. The exact same rules apply to the wholesale business buying electricity.

Networks and wholesale are known as the regulated industries, because they are strictly governed to ensure they're run fairly. The third area of the electricity business is completely deregulated, meaning it's a free-for-all out there in the market. The third area is the customer-facing side of the industry: retail.

This is the side of the business the average man on the street is familiar with. You know all the big and not-so-big names, I'm not going to list them. You've seen the ads with all of them telling you they're the best. I'm not going to argue. The beauty of modern regulations is that, unlike years ago, we're now free to choose who supplies our electricity based on which company is cheapest for us.

All of the above is a background to give an explanation as to why the cost of electricity is increasing. Put simply, the fuels (coal/gas) used to power the stations used to transmit the electricity to your home and business are becoming scarcer and more costly to mine (deeper, harder to find). Therefore, the power station is charged more to buy the coal/gas. Therefore, the increased cost of producing electricity must be reflected in the wholesale price of the electricity.

Due to the factors described above, the wholesale price of electricity has increased enormously over the past few years. Clever well-managed hedging allows businesses to make profits in the wholesale area, but it is inevitable that such price increases will eventually be passed on to the customer. The industry does not take this lightly, but the fact remains that it has to be done. My company, though it makes good profits, actually makes a loss when you look at the retail side of the business on its own. This is considered a necessary evil to keep customers happy.

It needs to be understood that traditional means of generating power will, probably in our children's lifetimes, no longer be viable. Tens of millions of pounds are invested every year into ensuring that renewable sources of energy, like wind turbines, are created, but not enough's being done. Part of this is a cultural problem, part of it is lack of support from the government. The government have seen making promises regarding renewable energy as a vote-loser, so rather than drive the issue, they've proposed penalising the industry with huge fines if targets aren't met by certain deadlines. The industry needs support to achieve its target, rather than penalisation in the event it doesn't, if it's to be successful in developing next-generation methods of energy production.

On the cultural side, you've got the NIMBY folk who on one hand are clamouring for something to be done about the situation, and on the other are saying, "Oh no, no wind farm in my area, those things are ug-lee." You can't have it both fucking ways.

And finally, the industry themselves need to speak up. I can't for the life of me understand why this isn't explained in layman's terms to people. It's not like it's a secret - any of this info I spoke of is in the public domain. It's just that it's usually described far too technically for people to take it in. The industry needs some good PR people to explain the situation.

Anyway, I realise I will be lucky if more than two people read this far, but it's something I needed to spill out. I'll come back and check this for sense later, but for now, what you see is what erupted from my mind.

Just to clarify: I'm not claiming everything here to be 100% accurate, and my views are entirely personal and don't reflect those of my company or the industry. All the shite I spout here is just opinion.

HAVE A SPECTACULAR WEEKEND.

Top 5 Scary Moments - #4

2006-11-21T19:54:00.000Z

On the rare occasions when there's a heavy fall of snow in Ireland, the country's infrastructure more or less grinds to a halt. Snow is an unprecedented event in a country kept depressingly ambient by the Gulf Stream. When I was young, I often wondered what it would be like to live in a place where the seasons were seasons, punctuated by clear changes - hot in the summer, cooler but still sunny in autumn, snowy and crisp in winter. Spring, pah. Spring's a shite season. You never hear anyone say spring's their favourite season. Feckin lambs flouncing all over the place, the gays.

Anyway, Ireland's weather pattern is usually rain followed by scattered showers with intermittent periods of drizzle. Fo' shizzle, no dizzle. The slightest hint of sun sweating the streets dry triggers jumpers coming off on the pastiest fuckers this side of that albino lad in The Da Vinci Code (ie Irish men).

You can be sure that every year after Ireland's allocated two weeks of sun near the end of May, there's two or three stupid cunts whose backs look like burnt rashers. Great fun slapping them though.

Heavy snow meant that half the school (the ones from out the country*), including the fucking redneck teachers, would not show up. Lack of staff meant that us city boys who had no choice but to brave the elements and walk to school would be given the rest of the day off, free to chuck snowballs at the harassed public.

On this particular morning, we were sent home from school, and three of us were walking towards Woodquay, past the Town Hall. This was back when the Town Hall was still a rat-riddled cinema, not a fancy-dan centre for the arts and culture like you see in that link. Traffic was, as you'd expect, at a standstill.

We were playing a game, as stupid dickhead teenagers do. The object of the game was to, using utmost stealth, toss a concealed snowball over your head, so that it lands on the roof or (ideally) the windscreen of one of the cars stuck in traffic. Done right, this was a near-foolproof way of throwing snowballs without getting caught.

All was going well until one of us (not me) decided to throw a snowball at a Toyota Hiace.

If you're Irish, you will at this point be shaking your head and saying "Kav you stupid cunt. Big mistake." Well, I told you, it wasn't fucking me who threw the bastarding thing. Not that it matters.

If you're not Irish: Toyota Hiace vans -

- were (are?) the vehicle of choice for knackers, a breed best known to foreigners by Brad Pitt's role in the film Snatch (see top image). They were called pikeys in Snatch, but they're the same thing, more or less. Sound until you cross them, and then you're fucked. A large cross-section of them are dangerous creatures, ungovernable by society's laws and social etiquette.

So when Kevin hit that Hiace, we knew we were fucked. We didn't even need to wait for the sliding door to roll back, we just ran like zoo-freed chimps. No matter. Seconds later the van door rattled open and our legs turned to jelly as we caught sight of the bullnecked neanderthal bearing down on us, intent on tearing us to shreds with his bare hands.

He was a smart fucker; he went for Kevin first. He could probably smell the guilt. Kevin, sensing this gorilla's bloodlust**, regressed into an infant before our eyes, just as the guy's slab-hands wrapped around his throat. The tears flowed fat and quick and he bawled and begged and at that point he did not give a shite that he would be slagged mercilessly for this for months to come, all he wanted was for this big scary motherfucker to let him go.

It worked. He released Kevin, and leapt at me. He was possessed, fuelled by rage and liable to do anything because of it. One of us had almost damaged his Hiace, and that's worse than riding his sister.

You know how people say "Things went kinda hazy for me at that point?". That did not happen. I can recall that moment in high definition clarity (four times sharper than your average memory). As he wrapped his hands around my neck, I thought of Homer doing that to Bart in the Simpsons, and when he started to squeeze and snap my head back and forth, he was roaring "Was it yaw? Was it yaw yaw skinneh cont? I'll rip the fuckin head aff yer shawlders, wha the fock threw it yaw cont?" and while he shouted flecks of spit hit me in the face and one went in my mouth and all I could see were his red eyes and I knew that any second now he was going to slam his forehead down and burst my nose like a ripe tomato and somewhere a girl was shrieking over and over saying "It wasn't me, please please, it wasn't me" and then I realise it's not a girl it's me and my voice hasn't even broken yet oh Christ I'm far too young to be killed by a knacker and then he shoves me to the ground and I land in the slush and he storms back to the van because there's a break in the traffic and I've never been so grateful to have a cold wet arse as I am right then.

*in those days, out the country meant anyone living in Carnmore or beyond. Galway's expanded so much since then that there's no real distinction between city-dwellers and country-dwellers anymore.

**apologies to Mr Gorilla Bananas, this was written for comic effect and was in no way intended to stereotype gorillas.

Professor Farnsworth says it best

2006-11-21T08:36:00.000Z

I've kind of been approached by a company. A big one. They want to interview me. For a job.

They must be mental.

Frailty, thy name is man

2006-11-20T13:01:00.000Z

This morning would be laughable if it hadn't been such a cliché. Got up late, no time for a shower, raindrops like fists which necessitated the red umbrella, and to top the morning off, wet feet for the day. I'm even making that sucky welly-stuck-in-mud schlop-schlop sound when I walk, so saturated are my phalanges. Walking to work was like the start of one of those ads telling you how shit your life is until you use whatever wonder-product is being flogged. That bit is usually filmed in black and white to emphasise what a dull, unfortunate bastard you are; once said amazing product is used, the world comes alive with vibrant colour and your life improves at least threefold.

I'm waiting for the second half of the ad to kick in.

Linzi is still sick. Pale, snotty and weak, she seems amazed that I'm still angling for a shag these days.

To help her recover, or at least recover her strength enough to be able to shag, I ensured she stayed in bed this weekend. I didn't really think this through, though. It meant that all weekend, I had sole responsibility for the children. I'm knackered. Coming back to work is a break, and that's saying something.

After Jack was born, I had the naïve impression that having a second child would be easier. You know, we'd been there before, had two years parenting experience, and all that.

It isn't easier. It's harder. Exponentially harder, which seems a bit unfair, really. Shouldn't it only be twice as hard? It seems not.

With one kid, it's possible to have some time for yourself, if you're fairly organised. With two, you must prepare yourself using a level of tactics and strategy that any corporate-policy-loving wanker would be blown away by.

For instance, when you wake in the morning, you hear your older child playing with her doll's house. You go in to say hello and give her a hug, right?

WRONG!!! Back to training camp, rookie. You leave that kid there while she's still happy and try to grab a shower before the other one starts screaming blue murder. If you go in and see her, she'll remember she's hungry, and she'll get cranky, quickly, if you don't feed her. On the other hand, leave her alone and she'll play contentedly for at least another half an hour.

Or: You wake up, and find holy crap! Jack's slept right through to half past seven, and he still isn't waking up. He's normally devoured a full bottle by half six. Great stuff, you think, and you roll over and go back to sleep.

You stupid cunt. Back to remedial school you go. You see, he's going to wake up any second now and scream his little lungs out because he's normally been fed an hour before this, and this means he's absolutely starving. Inconsolably so. Therefore you must get up right now and put a bottle on for him while he's still quiet. Go on. You might be exhausted, but you won't regret it.

There are many pitfalls and ways to avoid them, and I don't have time to share them all. Unless you'd like more incredible parenting tips, in which case I'd be happy to share. For an appropriate fee.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. Enjoy that brief calm spell in the morning before you get them up, because you will not have another one for the next twelve to fourteen hours, after you've put them down for the night.

Having kids is fantastic, without a doubt one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences a person can have*. This said, based on my experiences over the weekend, I can understand why some women have such a struggle to retain their identity when they become mothers. For the life of me, I had no idea who I was this weekend beyond being "Daddy". Had sex been available, I imagine I would have been too tired for it, and I'm usually hornier than a bag of rhinos.

I'm lucky enough to have a full-time job - I can leave the house and have a life outside work, however banal that life may be. My admiration for Linzi deepened this weekend, because she does not have the luxury of skiving off for half an hour if she can't be arsed doing her job. She cannot leave a problem for a day or two in the hope that it will go away, or someone else might deal with it. Well, she could try, but this might lead to someone's death, or a dose of the runs.

In spite of the stress associated with just getting up and dressing and clothing herself and the kids each day (and let me tell you, just doing this is stressful), Linzi manages to surpass herself every single day. She keeps our house (more or less) immaculate, and the kids clothed and fed. What's more, ~~much more than this, I did it my way~~ she finds time each day to help them develop. She reads them stories, plays with paint, playdoh, crayons, music, dancing. It's a conscious encouragement for our kids, an inverted payback for the lack of it we ourselves received. It works. Might not sound like it, but it's a big fucking deal, too. It's far easier to just dump them in front of a DVD.

She always makes the effort. When she's not covered in snot and shivering uncontrollably, she does her hair, dresses nicely, and has time for me, despite being physically and emotionally drained from the "job". I notice this, and am grateful for it. She's a no-nonsense person, always wanting to just get on with things, a constant lesson for a faffer like me.

Hamlet had it wrong. Two short days, and I know there's no way I am cut out for the job Linzi does.

~

I must apologise, I've not been commenting on your blogs these days. Things are a bit hectic, and the pressure's mounting for this exam that's coming up. I've still been reading you all via the magic of Bloglines, but I'm unable to visit you until things calm down here a bit. Don't worry, I still think you're cooler than the liquid nitrogen used to burn off the warts I had as a teenager.

*if you want the kid.

Alba de Paor

2006-11-17T14:49:00.000Z

Goodness me.

Have a good weekend.

And now the birth, death and marriage notices for Galway

2006-11-17T10:05:00.000Z

One of the things I miss about Ireland is the radio. Not because it's very good; on the contrary, it's mainly cack, just a different kind of cack than you get over here. In a typical morning hour on my local station, Galway Bay FM, you might hear Keith Finnegan discussing such diverse topics as mobile phone charges, new mobile phone masts, and the traffic problems in Galway (including drivers using mobile phones), interspersed with a few tunes that haven't been in the charts since Jesus was a boy.

The ads are terrible, but I'm convinced they're made that way intentionally.

Example: An ad for cheese, two local-type voices kick the ad off (the marketing team have done their research and know that this appeals to the average joe, who thinks, Lord Jaysis, that ad is so true to life, so realistic, it's almost as though it could be happening in me own house!)

Voice 1 (female): Jimmy, what are you doing up at three in the morning wearing your underpants?

Voice 2 (young male): (chewing sounds) I can't stop atein this cheese Mammy.

Voice 1: Ah Jimmy, get up to bed, you'll have bad dreams with all the cheese you're eating!

Voice 2: But it tastes so good Mammy!

Smooth voiceover kicks in: If it's cheese you're after, try new Galway Cheddar! It's so tasty, you won't be able to stop the kids eating it!

Example 2: Local businessman thinks it's a good idea to do his own ad. Businessman (sounding a little bit uncertain, his monotonous, inflectionless voice confirming that he's reading from a script):

Hello friends this is Tom McDonald from Old McDonald's Furniture Bedding and Farming Supplies in Headford County Galway. Sale. Sale. Sale. That's right folks we're having a sale here and prices are so low you'll think that I have gone totally and utterly insane. Couches only forty Euro. Blankets only ten Euro. Milking machines now half-price including installation. But you'll have to be quick folks. Things are going fasht and when they're gone they're gone. So remember for all your furniture bedding and farming supply needs come and visit me Tom McDonald at Old McDonald's Furniture Bedding and Farming Supplies in Headford County Galway. We'll give you a personal service that you won't forget. Hurry down this weekend and get a free spoon with every thousand Euro you spend.

The best bit about Galway Bay FM, though, comes just after the news and weather at the top of the hour. During the news and weather, there's all the razzmatazz and sound effects to support the broadcaster's voice, but suddenly, all that drops away, as a sombre voice says

"And now the death notices for Galway."

No music. No sound effects. The closest thing I can think to it is in the old days on RTE Radio 1 when they'd read out barometric pressure readings from various points around Ireland's coast. "Malin head, 996 millibars, falling slowly. Achill, 1004 millibars, rising steadily...etc."

It's a peculiar phenomenon, listened to fondly by the elderly as a means of organising their weekly diaries ("Julia O'Toole, funeral Monday 11am") as well as allowing them to bask in the smugness that comes with outliving their contemporaries. For most of us, though, it's like a snippet of life from a bygone generation, transplanted and spliced into our modern programming*.

Behold, a sample of death notices lifted directly off the website. That's right, the deaths get posted online too. These would be read out, word for word, in a sombre tone to indicate sympathy:

"And now the death notices for Galway: Joseph, also known as Joe Murray, Killimor, Ballinasloe and formerly of Esker, Banagher. Reposing at Portiuncula Hospital Mortuary this afternoon from 4:30. Removal at 6:30 to St. Joseph's Church, Killimor. Mass for Joe Murray tomorrow Friday at 11:30. Funeral afterwards to Killimor Cemetery.

Mary Quinn nee McInerney, Geeha, Doorus, Kinvara. Reposing at her daughter Margaret Conole's residence in Geeha this evening from 5. Removal at 8 to Doorus Church. Mass for Mary Quinn tomorrow Friday at 11. Funeral afterwards to Mount Cross cemetery.

Galway Bay FM would like to sympathise with the families and friends of all the deceased."

Every time I hear the death notices, I snort with laughter, not out of disrespect for the deceased, but at the concept of broadcasting news of these deaths to the entire city. What possible use can this serve, except to depress people? I mean, if you know the person, you're going to find out if they died, and if you don't know them, you don't give a shite anyway.

And in case you're about to start defending this ridiculous practice, answer me this first: why is there no newsflash for births or marriages? Galway Bay FM needs to pull their socks up. Either add births and marriages to the report, or get rid of it altogether.

*tongue well in cheek at this statement.

The hunt is on

2006-11-15T13:25:00.000Z

Being a heart-stoppingly incredible husband and father while maintaining a full-time career isn't easy, but somehow I manage.

The past few days have had me working from home, tending to a sick wife and two cranky but lovable offspring, all the while airing my views at important work meetings, smiling with equal parts benevolence and malevolence, educating starving orphans on the risks of having unprotected sex, and dedicating 25% of my profits to charity. It's been a trying few days, leaving little time for me to study for the exam looming on the grey horizon that is November's end.

What a bleak bastard of a month. Roll on December 9th. There will be much alcohol consumed, including some of Samuel L Jackson's Badass muthafuckin Ale.

I've had a lot of nosebleeds recently. They're quite an accurate measurement of my stress levels. Almost every exam or major life event (wedding, driving test, going down on a girl), even some dates, are preceded by nosebleeds of varying intensity.

Just last week as I jogged through the arid Outback towards the moister northern regions, I was attacked by an elf-like creature with hands made of tinsel. He attempted to thwart my search for fresh blue-winged kookaburra (seasoning for a recipe I was working on) by menacingly shaking his shiny foil hands at me. As luck would have it, my nose chose that exact moment to gush, and I doused Tinself (as I came to know him) with lashings of the red stuff, before setting him on fire. His burning attracted kookaburras from miles around. Dinner that night was a talking point among the web community for days. On my way home I sang, to the tune of Dolly Parton's 'Jolene': "Nosebleed, nosebleed, nosebleed, noseblee-eee-eed, I'm bleeding like a piglet cooked for ham."

Hmmm, just realised that I've covered posts on shitting, puking, farting, phlegm and now, nosebleeds. All I need to do is pull one together on pisses I have had, and that will complete Kav's Bodily Functions Omnibus, Volume 1. Volume 2 will be dedicated solely to some classic tales about wanking.

~

There is major shit going on at my work at the moment, of particular interest to any of you Scottish blaggers out there. It will undoubtedly make headline national news, and will probably be a bit of an international item as well. Alas, codes of confidentiality and all that cack prevent me from doing anything except dangling this carrot, but those of you with Site Meter and access to Google already know who I work for and can put two and two together from what you've already seen in the news about it.

Gah. Fearing for my job does not help the stress levels.

Del Monte strikes back

2006-11-12T23:35:00.000Z

In a rare case of life imitating, eh, life, fucking Del Monte have once again almost poisoned my family.

If you're wondering what the fuck I'm going on about, read this and then report back here. Go on and read the fucking thing, it sets the scene for this post. Seriously, if you don't, it's like watching The Empire Strikes Back without ever having seen Star Wars. Just look at the title of this post if you need any further confirmation.

I'm in a sweary fuck of a mood at the moment. Okay, I admit, the first time Del Monte almost killed my family was partly my fault, but this, this is inexcusable.

After Erin finished her dinner this evening, I went to the fridge and got her a (Del Monte-made) Fruitini for dessert. Being a gluttonous bastard, I helped myself to a mouthful of the orange jelly on the journey from the fridge to the dinner table. Moments later, I splattered this mouthful all over the living room floor.

The smell emanating from the "jelly" was a curious mixture: the blandness of wallpaper paste crossed with the fumes from superglue. I've never tasted wallpaper paste or superglue, but the taste was definitely more akin to something industrial than to anything jelly-like.

I was pretty sure it was lethally toxic, but just to be on the safe side, I shouted to Linzi to come downstairs, and made her taste a bit of it. She made it to the sink to spit hers out. She's a lady, whoa whoa whoa she's a lady.

(Incidentally, Linzi always goes apeshit at me for horsing into the children's food, so I felt particularly smug this evening after making my discovery. "I was merely performing my role as a taster to make sure the food was fit for human consumption, you see. And LOOK! I protected our daughter from ingesting jellified death!" Kav 1, Linzi 0.)

Upon closer examination, the container was undoubtedly contaminated with something. I've done a picture to highlight the contents. Bear in mind that this is usually just a uniform translucent orange - there should be no patches of stuff. Click on the pic to zoom:

Based on the knowledge I obtained as part of my microbiology degree, I've established the whitish stuff to most likely be a member of the Clostridium family. If I had any, I'd put my money on Clostridium botulinum. The presence of even a millionth of a gram of the C. botulinum toxin is all it takes to trigger botulism and near-instant death in humans*. Of course, it may just be C. difficile, in which case all we would expect is severe diarrhea; I did not have sensitive enough devices on my person to detect the exact strain**.

The brownish stuff is obviously the freshly-hatched eggs of a flesh-eating insect of some kind. However, having no expertise in this field, I can only speculate with a high degree of certainty that the insects, if ingested, would have erupted from my innards (or the innards of my family, bless them) in the same manner as poor old John Hurt met his demise in that scene in Alien**.

Of course, I will be writing to Del Monte to ask the stupid cunts what the fuck they think they're playing at, trying to poison another generation of my family. I may even ask my mother to do it - imagine how bilious she's going to get when she hears about this.

I'll keep you posted.

*C. botulinum spores are one of the reasons it's bad to reheat leftover rice. Instant death, I tell thee.

** Of course, I've made up most of these two paragraphs, with the exception of * above, and the bit about diarrhea.

Help, bloggers

2006-11-10T10:30:00.001Z

Ahem. Here's what I want for Christmas, in order of priority:

32" widescreen Sony Bravia LCD HD Ready TV.
Cost: £1000GBP/$1920USD/$2500AUD/€1490

X-Box 360.
Cost: £280GBP/$540USD/$700AUD/€420

PSP.
Cost: £180GBP/$345USD/$450AUD/€270

60Gb portable music player.
Cost: £200GBP/$385USD/$500AUD/€300

However, what I will get for Christmas is this:

Anyway, the 30th of November is a momentous occasion, because, for the first time in roughly a year, I have some disposable income! £75 to be exact. Seventy five pounds is roughly equivalent to $140USD, $185AUD, or €111. A trifling sum, certainly, but I feel like Nelson Mandela must have felt the first time Winnie sucked him off. Ecstatic, and a bit out of breath.

I'm so overwhelmed that I don't even know what to buy. Any suggestions?

Love is...

2006-11-09T12:26:00.000Z

If you've just had lunch, don't read this. If you didn't already think I was minging, this one ought to change your mind.

Below is a transcript of an email Linzi sent me this morning. Before you read it, allow me to qualify a couple of things. (1) I had a nosebleed in the shower this morning, hence the "phlegm", and (b) the plughole is blocked up with long hair that doesn't belong to me, so it's her fault the thing didn't drain away in the first place.

She writes (with abundant sarcasm):

My dear lovely husband,

Just went to have a shower, with my nice towels, good shower gel looked out, and 10 mins peace from our monsters, and had to clean up a load of red bloody phlegm and gunk from the bath before I could even think about getting in. THIS IS DISGUSTING and a horrible experience before 8 in the morning. I don't mind cleaning general gunk from the bathroom, (which I do every second day...) but cleaning up someone else's dirty rotten phlegm from a place that phlegm should never be anyway is HORRID. If you want to phlegm, do it into the toilet bowl. If I find this in the bath again I will carefully lift it out and cook it in your dinner that evening.

I love you though x

No, I didn't realise phlegm was a verb either. If I want to phlegm, indeed.

Top 5 Scary Moments - #5

2006-11-08T08:14:00.000Z

At the age of about 8, my best friend was a lad by the name of Liam Boyle. He was my best friend because he had loads of train sets. He had a room in his house just for his trains, that's how many he had. I'd never had a train set, so I suppose I kind of used him for his trains. Oh, and his Hardy Boys books. And to get to see his sister, who I had a crush on. I was a good friend.

Liam's house backed onto a small wood, maybe a few acres, which separated the houses from the grounds of Merlin Park hospital. Merlin Park was just an ordinary hospital, but for us it was a Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane, housing the most dangerous lunatics in Ireland.

One day, we're out there, pushing through the undergrowth, deep in the heart of the woods. I'm doing my best to avoid the fern bushes, as they house lethal sceartáns (pronounced skir-thawns, aka ticks), and any kid knows that ticks can burrow into your brain and lay eggs. We come to a clearing, far from anywhere. I think of that movie tagline: in the woods, no-one can hear you scream. Or something. There in the clearing lies a big fat man in a suit. Dead.

Well, he must be dead, right? We look at each other for a second, then whisper "Run!" with papery voices. I've lost my bearings completely, so I follow Liam, the two of us legging it like demons might leg it, if demons had legs. We run until our lungs are on fire, convinced that the man is right behind us, about to grab us and...do whatever 8-year-olds who are unfamiliar with the words "anal rape" would worry about.

Since we're stupid kids, when we get back to Liam's house (safe and sound, of course), we decide we'd better go back and check on the man. He was wearing a suit, after all. Escaped mental patients don't wear suits.

We go back, and he's gone. Or are we just in the wrong place? He could be creeping up on us right now. He could still be lying somewhere in the woods, rotting, his face chewed and pecked and home to a thousand wriggly things that scurry and skitter from daylight. Which is worse?

I waited for that man for months, late at night, but he never showed.

Heh, how gay was that sentence?

All of the other reindeer: Cunts

2006-11-07T10:59:00.000Z

Erin's learning Christmas songs these days. You might think I'd be angry and spewing vitriol about how it's only November and already the Christmas songs have started, but I'm not. She's only going to have a few short years where Christmas is magical before it's ruined by some little snotnosed bucktoothed bastard at school. Seeing her happy in her innocence reminds me that it can be good, and not just a shallow exercise in present exchange, and the subsequent, inevitable comparisons and bitching about stingy gift-givers: "Oh, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but..."

I never buy gifts for anyone beyond my immediate family. (If they're lucky.) I can't be arsed with all that keeping up with the Joneses shite. So, as I was saying, it fills me with cheer to see Erin's excitement - this is the first Christmas where she actually knows what's going on with Santa Claus and all that. It's going to be great.

One thing though, about the most wonderful time of the year: the other reindeer were a right shower of cunts, and there's no two ways about it. They represent every popular clique, every exclusionist bunch of wankers I've ever had the misfortune to have had contact with. Observe:

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer had a very shiny nose, and if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows (if you were a cruel fucking prick). All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names; they never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games (because they made fun of an animal whose self-esteem was crippled by taunts about his ugliness).

The other reindeer were nothing but a bunch of fucking arseholes who thought they were too cool for Rudolph. But then, everything changes, and I quote:

Then, one foggy Christmas eve, Santa came to say: "Rudolph, with your nose so bright, you would make an ideal candidate for guiding my sleigh this evening". This, it seems, was sufficient cause to make the other reindeer fall in love with Rudolph; some, in fact, shouted out with glee that Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer would go down in history.

Honestly, there hasn't been a worse cautionary tale for children since Hans Christian Andersen wrote The Ugly Duckling. While Hans focused on how being ugly is shit and surface beauty is all that matters, Rudolph's theme insinuates that popularity will somehow cure one of all the psychological trauma incurred by years of abuse. Surely Rudolph wasn't so thick as to believe the other reindeer suddenly loved him because Santa singled him out to be their leader? If anything, that would make them hate him even more, the shallow heartless bastids.

What kind of message is this to give kids? Let's face it, with people like that whited sepulchre Ted Haggard around, our kids are confused enough about right and wrong. There's enough hypocrisy for them to contend with without it being drummed into them in song.

With this in mind, I've updated the lyrics to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. This is what we'll be singing in the Kavanagh household this year:

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
had a very shiny nose
and if you ever saw it
you'd swear that he'd been snorting blow.

All of the other reindeer
used to try and cadge his gear
they never paid poor Rudolph
or even bought the lad a beer.

Then one foggy Christmas eve
equipped with grenades and an M16
Rudolph with his nose so bright
blew those cunting deers to shite.

Then how big Rudolph shouted
on his ruthless killing spree
"I'm Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
and nobody should fuck with me."

Attention Christmas lovers: this post was a joke, tosser. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and his fellow sleighmates don't actually bother me at all. Fucking hell.

Almost famous

2006-11-06T14:18:00.000Z

The lovely Swearing Lady has received a wonderful write up in a national newspaper, The Irish Times. What makes it wonderful is: what the guy wrote about her is true.

I really hope that this is the start of something for her - she's got too much talent to go unnoticed. Go and visit her and tell her she's fucking great. Make sure you read the comments here, where it shows you exactly what was written, but the jist is in this paragraph:

"Written from a Council estate in Galway and fulminating on the issue of being intelligent and frustrated by poverty and lack of opportunity, Swearing Lady, when her anger is focused, is arguably the most talented writer at work today in Ireland."

High praise indeed, and it also allows me to feel smug because I've been saying that for ages. I wish you well Sweary.

Of course, being Irish and having read about another person's good fortune, I am now fiercely bitter and angry about my own lack of progress in life. Who the fuck wants to work in IT anyway? Why am I bothering to study for this exam when I feel absolutely zero passion for anything and everything to do with my career path? Why does everything I write fill me with self-loathing and the near-overwhelming urge to highlight it all and click Delete?

The latter question is both redundant and kind of hypocritical since I am writing this in the most voyeuristic forum possible, and am eagerly awaiting any and every comment and analysis from those of you who will bother to read this far. It doesn't make it any less true, though.

In a six degrees of serendipity hoo-ha, I also stumbled across this gem of a blog today. The author of Gaping Void, Hugh, has much to say, and it all makes sense, to me at least. His entry on how to be creative is exactly the kick in the arse I needed just as I was about to begin wallowing in self-pity and anger at my own stasis. So cheers for that Hugh.

What to do? No choice; bills to pay. There's comfort in the mental anaesthetic provided by my work in IT compliance, and I can always spew forth here to help maintain my sanity.

Blogs are brilliant, aren't they?

I am so sorry

2006-11-06T13:23:00.000Z

Linzi has been warning me for years, and I never listened. She always said my gas would get me into trouble some day.

Now, I've paid the price for my indiscretion. I feel so terrible for those kids. I'm not sure if I can go on blogging after this.

Party like it's 1999

2006-11-03T23:03:00.000Z

Updated below, where it says Update.

I found this this evening when a load of crap fell over and spilled everywhere in our little office-cum-crap-receptacle. One of the clubs in Galway held these events called Shite Nite on Bank Holidays, Christmas and such. The object of Shite Nite was that you would get in to the club free and get cheap drink if you wore a shite costume. This is the one and only time I dressed up for Shite Nite - December 1999. I was meant to be some sort of Miami Vice cunt. All the clothes I'm wearing are my dad's - authentic 1980's white shoes and all.

How shiny is that suit? Huep.

If you look closely you can see the middle finger of my right hand is bandaged. That's because I worked in a pet shop at the time and sliced the tip of my finger off while I was cleaning out a fish tank. Feckin pirahnas.

Have a good weekend. I probably won't, but I'm not going to turn this post into a moan about broken boilers and tracing leaks in central heating systems.

Update (Saturday): I'm feeling all manly and useful because I successfully located the leak and fixed the central heating/hot water problem in one fell swoop. I was hoping to get sex as a reward for saving hundreds of pounds on plumber's bills, but the conversation went kind of like this:

"I'm your hero, you know."

"Yes, you are my hero. Thank you for fixing the heating."

"And the water."

"Mmhm, and the water."

"Any chance of an oul -" *At this, I raise my eyebrows and nod suggestively at my lad*

"No way Kav, I'm still sick with a cold, and I feel like I need to spew as well."

"Well, you could try giving me a blowjob - that would probably help you to vomit."

"No. You're a sick disgusting fucker."

You can't blame a chap for trying.

You sound like a cunt when you say...

2006-11-02T16:06:00.000Z

These are all things I have heard in conversations over the last two days at work.

irregardless: Regardless of whether or not it's a stupid, made-up word, and irrespective of how clever you're trying to sound, you're still just a pretentious goatfucker.

a pigment of my imagination: How could you say this and not expect me to laugh at you? You stupid cunt.

"Pacific" when you mean "specific": Unless you're afflicted with an unfortunate speech impediment (in which case I apologise), don't ever say "Pacific" when you mean to say "specific", as happened to me today in t'office:

"I'm sorry Kav, could you be more Pacific?"

"Sure, no hassle" I replied, as I donned a pair of shorts and sunglasses and hopped on a surfboard. "Whoa, dude, check out these waves. Gnarly." I cried, balancing deftly on the edge of my desk.

Feel free to add your own hated words/phrases.

Oooooh....dilemma.

2006-11-01T18:09:00.000Z

How unfortunate

I found a diary on the way home this evening. Well, diary's probably too grand a title. It's more of a notebook containing a variety of personal shite.

The girl's address is on the inside.

So...do I read it? Or just return it to its rightful owner?

Update: It was shite.

Despite what you may think, I genuinely did not look at the notebook until after I had posted the above entry. Of course, I always intended to look at the book, and I feel no guilt in doing so. Listen:

The diary consists of only two entries, the first having been written shortly after her man was arrested for various offences. She doesn't elaborate on what the offences are, but her terrible grammar, spelling and general lack of comprehension of basic sentence structure indicate that she is indeed as stupid as a pigeon. This is confirmed when, upon further scrutiny, you find that she's standing by this useless piece of shit because even though he's been bad to her and the kids in the past, she knows they can work it out.

How fucking thick are some people? Delusional, self-destructive bint.

The second entry seems to have been written on the eve of the scumbag's release from Barlinnie Prison. Unlike her other entry, this time her prose flows beautifully, and her heartfelt yearning to see her devoted lover is evoked with tenderness and care, each word seeming to bring new meaning and depth to the love she and Jimmy share*.

Okay, not really. It's the same fuckin shite as the last time. Pure unadulterated cack about how she knows he's going to change, and she hopes that when he comes out he will come to visit her and the kids, because that's the first thing she'd want to do if she were getting out of jail.

There is no mention of remorse, or of the fact that Jimmy might not be the best role model for the childers. This guy has fucked her a few times, she's got two kids out of it, and beyond that, they have no relationship. She's got two kids to support, and she genuinely expects that he is going to come out of prison and be a model dad to the poor unfortunate children, and the perfect partner to her. Christ on a bike.

And what age is she anyway? She's got two kids, one of whom can talk, so she must be at least what, 18? And yet her notebook is full of "Maggie loves Jimmy" sketches and other such adolescent bollocks.

My first reaction was pure contempt at her stupidity, but this was replaced by sadness and pity as I realised that this girl has probably never had anyone to give her perspective on her life - she's never going to realise that there are possibilities she could take advantage of. She's going to plod through life getting fucked over at every opportunity, and because she's not that bright, she will never learn from her mistakes. She'll pass on her own fuckedupness to her children, and the cycle will repeat all over again...

Christ. It's too depressing for words.

I'm not even going to return the book because I would probably be stabbed. What the general public sees as a good deed, this type of person interprets as an invasion of their privacy, and they generally respond the only way they know how: with fist or blade. This might sound funny to you, but I am not joking.

*Maggie and Jimmy are, of course, pseudonyms. I don't want to be chibbed, even though they're probably too fucking stupid to know what a computer is, never mind look up a search engine. Can never be too careful though.

Smellecules - A Fart Story

2006-10-30T22:51:00.000Z

I couldn't, in good conscience, let that other post occupy the top of t'blag for too long. It was bringing me down, and there's enough of that shite going on. Thanks though, for your kind words and sniping. It warms the heart.

A word of caution: if you are of a particularly sensitive disposition, I request, nay, compel, you to stop reading this post right now. Go and visit Kieran instead - he's a thoroughly amiable minstrel with a far greater wit and intellect than I. You won't be disappointed.

You've been warned. I make no apologies if you keep reading, though you'll likely think less of me.

After a really shit few days, I got to thinking (yes, I was exhausted afterwards, hoho): what better antidote for being down in the dumps than a fart story? Inspired by steph and duckie, I spent the train journey home this evening recalling a horrendous incident from a wedding I attended earlier in the year.

Behold...

Last April, when this blog was nowt but a twinkle in my Jap's eye, one of Linzi's best mates got married in a beautiful old castle near Perth. That's Perth, Scotland, not Perth, Far Away. A beautiful day, all told. The sun split the rocks, the bride looked absolutely ravishing, and copious amounts of booze flowed; no sooner had they sealed their future together as husband and wife, than hipflasks were produced from sporrans, and nips of whisky were sucked greedily with that strange species of Celtic hunger that no amount of food can satisfy. Thirst, I think we call it.

Unfortunately for the bride, the groom, the entire wedding party and all sundry guest types, I had partaken of a particularly delicious chicken biryani in a local Indian establishment the night before the wedding. Occasional readers may know of my love/hate relationship with Indian food - suffice to say I enjoy the taste, but my body doesn't deal with it too well. Yes, unfortunate, on such a special day, to be riddled with the foulest, most toxic emissions released since Westlife's last album, but there I was.

These were silent creeping death, untainted by any saving graces: possessing both potency and longevity the likes of which I haven't rivalled before or since, my noxious releases were bound to get me into trouble before the end of the night.

And of course, they did. Wouldn't be much of a story otherwise, eh? Now I shall switch to the present tense, thereby immersing you in the thick of the action with me, your stinky protagonist.

Through the course of the day, I manage to take myself outside whenever the need to release these horrifically smelly molecules (smellecules, if you will) comes upon me. This is often, as you can imagine, but I seem to be managing to avoid attention every time.

Then I get drunk.

As the beers flow, alcohol-fuelled complacency gets the better of me. I gently squeeze one out at the male-dominated bar, to test for reactions. You know, high-fives, cheers, things of that nature.

No reaction. Excellent. I surmise that they are either missing key olfactory nerves (unlikely) or they are just too polite to mention the stench (possible), OR I am simply nowhere near as stinky as I initially presume myself to be (definitely Kav, that HAS to be it). My test complete to my satisfaction, I take this as my cue to fart as and when I desire.

Did I mention Linzi is here? I thought you'd take that as a given, since it's her close friend's wedding, but just in case, I'm telling you.

More beers. Champagne. Beer. Vodka. Beer.

Pffffffffffttt. I am the stealth beast.

Suddenly, my nostrils flare and begin to crease inward, my body's instinctive sense of self-preservation kicking in even before my alcohol-addled mind processes the smell and begins to comprehend the damage I have done. Linzi turns to me, her complexion pale except for two spots of colour high on her cheeks (from holding her breath). She knows me too well.

Fuck. Rumbled.

"Was that you?" she glowers.

"What?" I can't look her in the eye, mainly because my eyes are watering from the smell.

"Kav, oh my God! What have you done? Go. Go! Quick!" she hisses.

She pushes me, but I am drunk, feigning ignorance as to the source of her anger even this late in the game. I make some rudimentary attempts at dispersing the smell. I put my hands in my pockets and try to flap my trousers and jacket; as I mentioned above, these discharges are pungent and insidious - think pulling the covers back the morning after a 12-pint session and a vindaloo, and you're close to the odour I am shaking out with each flap of my lapels.

Futile. Plan B.

If dispersal won't work, internalisation of as many smellecules as possible is the only option. Stands to reason, the more of the smell that I inhale, the less there will be for others to smell. Same principle as a vacuum cleaner, you understand.

I cock my nose like a bloodhound, sniffing as quickly as possible, hoovering up the air. Linzi, several yards away, continues her self-righteous glowering, and I know that my chances of a ride tonight are well fucked.

Being drunk, I only now notice that there is a rough circle around me, its circumference marked out by my fellow wedding guests. They're all looking at me, and I'm wondering if I'm supposed to do a speech or something. I think: cool, I am the centre point of this circle. I consider calling out to Linzi that pi times the distance from me to her squared equals the area of this circle I now stand in, but then I remember why I stand alone, and I go a bit red, and make my way towards the toilets to try to exorcise these demons once and for all.

Update: Incidentally, the words in the pic above are from the Prodigy song Firestarter. I thought this would be well-known, but apparently not. So there you go.

Song 13 off Bleach*

2006-10-30T09:47:00.000Z

This is just filler.

If you're a new visitor, please note: I'm not usually such a dismal fucker. A confluence of circumstances has collaborated to curb my cheer, if you believe in such things.

I feel: a steel band around my chest, getting tighter.

I am: in a prison of my own making.

And: the water heater's gone again.

I've spent: A month's wages in three days.

More to life: Study, work; work study?

To do list: Be a man, get to grips, own your shit, get to fuck.

In summary: I have nothing good to say right now.

I want to escape.

Besides all that, I fucking hate this time of year.

Grrr. Arrrgh.

*also song 10 on Incesticide.

Awkward Conversations #3

2006-10-27T23:39:00.000+01:00

See update below.

Work:

"Kav, when are those *insert techy-sounding bit* reports due?"

"Um...three weeks ago."

"What stage are you at with them?"

"Well, I've got three done. And. Ahem. Ten more to go."

"Any chance you could get this wrapped up by the end of the month?" (Note: This was not a question.)

"Yeah, no problem. By Tuesday. Sound."

Fuckity bastard cunt. Guess who's working this weekend?

~

Home: I arrive home tonight to find that our night out (dinner/a film; the simple things, you know) has been shitcanned because we have no fucking money left. I was really looking forward to this because, well, it would have been good. It would've got us out of the feckin house. So bollocks to that too.

~

Last straw: our water heater's broken. I was almost typing "our hot water heater's broken" but that sounds cuntishly redundant, for obvious reasons.

We can't even bath the kids. They'll be stinking like knackers in no time. Might as well sell the fucking house and move into a caravan.

I had started to explain why the thing isn't working, and then I remembered that I'm taking those classes to help me not be a boring cunt; suffice to say, it's definitely broken.

Nae hot water. Nae night out. Working all weekend.

This, and I've hit a brick wall in my studying, the wall being that I haven't an inkling about anything in the current, 134-page chapter in the 600-page volume which I must have learned by heart for the 9th of December. Not a fucking clue.

Fuck off to fuck. Friday evening, and this weekend's already a write-off.

Have a good one.

Sunday update: After a wasted day at work (I went in to be productive - no phone calls/emails interrupting my flow, and all that - and instead spent the best part of two hours chatting to a couple of guys who were in to do their own stuff. Pah.), I took the boiler and the hot water tank apart last night, and reassembled them without finding the source of the problem.

Yet...

When I woke this morning (at 5am instead of the usual 6 because the fact that we got an extra hour last night means nothing to wee Jack), delicious sexy scalding water abounded. Hooray.

The only this that pisses me off is that I know I didn't do anything to fix it, so I still haven't found the cause. It could stop working again at any time.

Feck it, there's enough other shite to be worrying about at the moment.

Cock-hungry cumsluts

2006-10-26T18:28:00.000+01:00

One of the lads at work brought some impressive sausages back from his recent trip to Poland, so naturally, we had to enact some porno scenes with them.

I must say, they were delicious.

BTW, I'm still up for some questions, if any of you can be arsed.

Update: FUCK BLOGGER.

Free piece of shit. I can't read anyone's blog.

While other bloggers are putting the world to rights...

2006-10-25T20:25:00.000+01:00

...here's a post about umbrellas. Quite the dashing figure I cut, sporting a bright red girlie umbrella, eh? Jesus Christ.

Until recently, I've been strictly anti-umbrella, on the grounds that they are gay. I've changed my attitude of late after getting fucking saturated a couple of times on my way to work. Being damp and miserable for a ten-hour stretch tends to focus the mind, and led me to swallow the last of my ragged pride and say fuck it, umbrella time. I picked up a shitey old umbrella lying around the house - fuck knows where it came from. Linzi swears it isn't hers, and there's no feckin way it's mine. Honest.

I don't know if it's a man's umbrella or a woman's. I do know that to call this umbrella gay would be an insult to gays everywhere.

I've already used it twice this week, and a grand job it's done of keeping me dry.

Christ, and I wonder why I don't get eyed up anymore.

What do you say, blogging types? Umbrellas: Yay or Gay? Can a man ever get away with an umbrella?

Sound Billies one, two, three

2006-10-24T12:38:00.000+01:00

First of all, apologies for not visiting your blog/responding to comments of late, but I'm actually starting to get into this studying thing. Don't worry, it's only for another seven weeks...

~

Had a meeting today and got a fit of the giggles during it. Myself and Kerr (I'll just call him Kerr for the purposes of this story, because that's his name) caught each other's eye midway through a serious discussion and both of us started convulsing at the same time. You know, the silent kind of laugh where your whole body shakes and tears come out, but you have to pretend like you're not laughing.

It got me thinking back to school days, and Sound Billies.

In the earlier years of secondary school, each class remained in one room for the day, and teachers would come and go between subjects. Of course, this meant that in the time between one teacher leaving and the other arriving, the class would descend into utter fucking chaos. Fights, shouting, jerking off, pretending your desk was a spaceship...these were all normal activities.

Once the teacher arrived, he or she would go ballistic, because the classroom looked like it had been pillaged by a group of superintelligent, highly organised primates. After various complaints and escalations to vice-principal and principal level about the class's behaviour, we were given a final warning: shut your fucking mouths or go home. This stern admonition spawned Sound Billies.

The game was simple: one student, any student, shouts "Sound Billies one two three!". As soon as the (stupid, incredibly stupid) words were spoken, you were forbidden from talking. The words worked with the speed and efficiency of a mousetrap snapping; silence reigned.

Seconds would pass; on rare occasions, even minutes. Then somebody would cough, or clear their throat, or if they were feeling particularly brave, shout "Fuckers!" or somesuch, and the room would attack. Yes, the penalty for breaking Sound Billies was taking a serious fucking beating, without fighting back, from everyone else in the class.

The teachers loved it. We were praised for remaining quiet and calm without supervision. They had no idea that the wrath of your peers is a far more effective deterrent than a breezy detention period could ever be.

Like everything, Sound Billies escalated. Some smart fuckers would do things like scrape their desk along the floor, which, since it was not a sound coming out of your mouth, was not directly punishable. To counteract this, Noise Billies was born. Noise Billies meant no sounds. Whatsoever. You had to work incredibly hard just to keep totally still, focussing on your breathing and your breathing alone...because even if you breathed too deeply, or sighed, you were fucked.

Noise Billies necessitated alot of finger-pointing. You'd point at some fucker, who'd shake his head and look all innocent, holding his hands up, silently pleading. Then some other lad would say "Get him!" and of course he'd be the one to get his head kicked in, because after all, the whole finger-pointing thing was just a ploy to get some other mong to drop their guard and make a noise.

Noise Billies worked, but then some smart-arse came up with Smile Billies, the ultimate in Billy games. Smile Billies came with all the prerequisites of Sound and Noise Billies, but also precluded smiling. This, as you can imagine, was an extremely difficult game, and after a beating or two, I learned pretty quickly how to pull a good poker face.

It was my attempts at controlling my smiles today in this meeting that brought back all the memories of the "Billies" games. The memory alone was enough to wipe the smile off my face.

Those teenage games were excellent training for life ahead, both in terms of preparing you for boring meetings in the corporate world, and also for getting the shit kicked out of you on nights out. They should be mandatory for all schoolchildren.

Being back at school sucks

2006-10-22T22:16:00.000+01:00

I can't concentrate. I've never been great at studying; I tend to do all the wrong things but somehow still end up doing okay in exams. Now, though....Christ. It's been six long years since I had to apply myself like this, and I'm like a five-year-old Japanese cartoon character who's been snorting coke while touring Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. I can't focus on anything for more than ten seconds.

I have raised with Linzi the possibility of a sex-based reward system, in the hope that looking forward to a swift blowjob or something of that ilk will help me apply myself in a far more direct way than the esoteric and aesthetic reward of career progression ever could. My plan is, for each evening of study I do, I get a blowjob, but for some reason she disagrees with this. I can't think why; to me it's a win-win situation: I study and learn what I need to learn, and get a delightful reward for doing this, thereby boosting my morale and making me want to study more. Linzi, for her part, is filled with a sense of empowerment knowing that she is helping me to work hard and move on in my career, ultimately becoming a better provider for our family. Plus, she gets to have a taste of my lad.

There are no losers in this scenario.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Did you hear that Bono fell off the stage the other night?

He got too close to The Edge.

~

Did you hear about the lad who drowned in a bowl of muesli?

He was pulled in by a strong currant.

Rainy Saturday window. It's the thought that counts.

2006-10-21T14:46:00.000+01:00

"Fucking hell, it's absolutely bucketing down."

"Oh look, there's a poor old man taking shelter under the tree across the road. Should we invite him in?"

"He's sheltered isn't he? Nah, he'll be fine."

"It's awful heavy though. Torrential. He'll be saturated. Maybe I should ask him if he wants a cup of tea."

"Where is he? Let's see him...ah for fuck's sake, he's not that old."

"Yeah, I suppose. Fuck him."

~

Don't forget to ask.

Ask, and ye shall receive...nothing of any value.

2006-10-20T14:44:00.000+01:00

The above picture was originally going to have me saying "Ask me anything", but I changed it to something completely irrelevant. Woot.

Anyway, kudos and credit go to Debbie for her excellent idea which I am unapologetically thieving. To compensate her for this, I urge you to go and check out her blog - her honesty and cleverness puts my blog to shame. Shame*, I say.

Since I have no choice but to be a lazy blogger for the next while**, I figured I'd open the floor to you lot. If you have anything you want to know about me (fucking hell, I haven't even published this post and I've already received three mails asking me why I'm such a cunt), or questions you want answered, feel free to comment and I will update this post as and when I'm able to. Hopefully this will keep things mildly interesting around here while I go about my bidness.

Have at it.

* Catholic shame - it's the worst kind.

**I'm very annoyed about this because I've got notes on half a dozen posts that I don't have time to type up.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, I want to hear from any lurkers. You popped in for a while recently but then you got complacent, and settled back into your anonymity. So, ask something. If you don't, I'll shake my fist at my PC in a threatening manner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Swearing Lady breaks the ice with the following:

Dear Kav,

What's your pints-drank-in-one-day record? Mine's 47.

Ooh, also. If you had to be one of the teenage mutant ninja turtles, which one would you be?

Ooh, also, also. Describe the taste of red lemonade.

Love, Me.

1. Of course, I have no way of verifying this, but a couple of my friends read this blog (but never comment - the cunts) and I am sure they would break their vow of blogsilence to call me a liar if I gave you an obviously inaccurate figure. So I'll be as truthful as possible when I say I imagine it to be in the region of 14 - 18 pints. Normally I would not drink this much pint-wise (I usually switch to vodka at some point), but my friend Paul's birthday is on Paddy's Day, and we used to have a rule when we drank on his birthday that you could only drink pints (yeah, like that was ever followed). Therefore I will select the median and say 16 pints, and suggest that this was probably on a St Patrick's Day between 1998 and 2002.

47 pints - that's impressive. You're from the country though, so it doesn't count.

2. I had to Google to find out which was the lad with the nunchucks, because he was my favourite lad to use when playing TMNT on the Nintendo. Michaelangelo, he was. So, him for his weapon, but Leonardo for personality. And April the news girl if I had to shag one of the characters

3. Red lemonade. Tricky. Warm TK red lemonade is the backbone of an Irish social occasion, but how to describe its taste? Sweet, fizzy, sticky, useless at quenching your thirst - it's all of these things. But its taste...hmmm. I'm thinking the only way to describe it would be to imagine you have a glass of ordinary white lemonade, and to it you add a good splash of red stuff. The stuff's properties are unknown - it's just called "red". So, red lemonade tastes like white lemonade with red stuff in it. That's an awful answer, but it was a hard one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Debbie asks:

What is your favorite time of year? Your favorite holiday?

Favourite time of year is May, partly because it's my birthday month and partly because it's the start of summer, and I love summer. Favourite holiday is Christmas, because I don't really do anything for any of the others. And this year I have 21 days off at Christmas. How fucking great is that. 21 days. I had to work Christmas last year and vowed I'd take a decent holiday this year, especially cos of the kids too. Oh, and Christmas definitely wins because it was always the best time of year with my family.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Old Knudsen asks: For the last two days I've had blood in my shit, could this be a sign of colon cancer or just excessive scratching?

Also when I stand up I get a little dizzy, this is usually after only 8 beers and a bottle of smirnoff so what could this be?

Have you ever tugged the lad to gay porn?

Where did I put my specs?

Do you think you should of limited people to one question each? some folks really take the piss.

1. I would say you should check your arse in a mirror, and if there are no obvious clawmarks, you probably have cancer. At your age this is a serious condition, yet treatable if you get a good chunk of your bowel removed.
2. This tends to happen if you expose yourself to any sort of natural light. Next time, check it isn't during the day - if it is, the clear answer is you're got a sensitivity to sunlight and ought to remain indoors, ideally a pub or house well-stocked with said beverages, and you'll be fine.
3. Does having a shuffle during that scene in The Crying Game count?
4. Did you check your rectum? It may explain the bleeding.
5. Probably, but I'll take what's given.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Summer asks:

Describe your first school dance.

What's your favorite dishes to eat for holiday dinners? (i.e. Christmas, Easter, etc)

~

1. Hmmm...we don't have school dances in the traditional sense that you Americans do, but as it happens, my secondary (aka high) school actually held various dances while I went there. They went under the moniker "Bish Disco", Bish being the nickname of my school. My first school dance, therefore, was probably one of these. I was sober, and I definitely didn't score, so it was a load of shite. Girls were still fairly alien to me in those days, so most of my first few "dances" followed this pattern.

2. Favourite dishes: Well, I tend to enjoy food on any occasion, but if I had to specify, I would say that ham boiled in Coca-Cola (don't knock it until you've tried it), sausages wrapped in bacon, and stuffing are all delicious holiday foods. You said dishes though, which implies a sumptuous feast of different things. My ideal holiday dish would be seafood cocktail to start, followed by spicy parsnip soup, followed by roast turkey, the aforementioned ham, some delicious turkey stuffing, the sausages described above, some properly-cooked roast potatoes (poorly cooked roast potatoes may as well be used as grenades) as well as some random vegetables to add colour to the dish. The veg would of course be ignored in favour of the meat-based food. Dessert would have to be something chocolate-based, ideally with cream, fruit, jelly, ice-cream, pastry and toffee thrown into the mix. Then I would have a coffee and fall asleep in front of the fire while the women cleaned up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Steph asks:

so. What are you wearing? Meooww! :P

Seriously. Ahem. Errrr.
Do you play dutch ovens with the wife?

Which is worse. Your da's bum crack, or ya mams cleavage?

hehehehehehe!

~

1. As I type this, I'm wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt. It's mostly blue, but the arms are white. And boxers. That's it. Yes, it's 3.30pm on a Saturday. I'm white trash.

2. I have no idea what this means Steph. Is it an Aussie sex thing?

3. Mam's cleavage, I would say. I could just shout at my dad for having his arse on show, but not so with mam.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fat Sparrow asks:

So, good in-laws and family being hard to find, what do you think about an arranged marriage between the Nestling Sparrow and Erin? CV, pictures, and stats can be supplied on request. This would be a non-salaried position, of course. All reasonable offers will be considered.

And, do you have any friends or family that would be willing to be interviewed for the Fledgling Sparrow? She's a gift, but she's a good-looking gift. Unbelievably, she has excellent prospects. She will be attending college and plans to be a school teacher. She can relocate (forcibly, if I have anything to say about it). Again, same referrals as stated above.

~

1. That was acceptable to me until you mentioned that no financial advantage would be gained by the arrangement. However, I'm a firm believer in arranged marriage, so this plan still sounds like a winner. Send me a brief description of the youth, include a recent STD test, and his likes and dislikes, and I'll see what I can do.

2. Some of my friends are sick bastards and they are willing to wait until she reaches the age of consent. However, they tend to live hobo-like existences, unsure where the next bit of food is coming from, so they may not be the safest hands to ship the fledgling off to. I'll work on it and let you know.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Old Knudsen asks:

If you found a sexy and still warm dead girl (natural causes still intact) in an out of the way place how long would it take you to call the cops?

If I found one do you think after a week its still ok to phone them?

~

1. Call me traditional, but for me, the fact that she's dead negates any sexiness she may have once possessed. I have an active imagination, though, so I imagine it would be a good half hour or so before I called the cops, because it would take me that long to stop screaming and freaking out and making sure I had burned the memories of the corpse somewhere in me that only gets to come to life when it's dark and there's nobody else around. On an unrelated note, that's why I like horror movies.

2. Call them, but make sure you give the corpse a good wash first. They can do all sorts with their DNAs and their HIVs these days.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Swearing Lady asks:

You know your problem, Kav? You hang out with very butch and hairy ladies.

Anyway, a question. What's nerdier: collecting X-Men comics or working in PC World?

And a genuine, relevant question. What's your favourite hangover cure?

ALSO: What kind of eejits would have a son on St. Paddy's Day and call him Paul? Where's the sense in that?

~

1. You're just jealous.

2. Collecting X-Men comics is nerdier, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. On the other hand, I've only ever known cunts to work in PC World.

3. My favourite hangover cure has no oldwifery about it, and is a bit boring as a result. Personally, I've yet to find a cure that can beat having a shit, shower, shave and a pint or two of orange juice. Also, I've been known a time or forty-nine to partake of the hair of the dag, but everyone knows that's just an excuse to get fluthered again.

4. There's a story behind that, as it happens. Here is the story: Paul's parents hate the name Patrick with a passion. It's a true story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Marika asks:

What did you want to be when you grew up? Give reasons for your answer.

~

When I was very young I wanted to be an architect, but that was before I realised I had absolutely no aptitude for advanced mathematics, so that career choice was given short shrift. I have variously wanted to be a journalist (couldn't do it; I may be a cunt but I'm not that much of a cunt), a carpenter (my grandfather used to build boats and I grew up around them, but because of being smart, my family thought university would be more up my street than a trade. My bollocks.), a radio DJ (again, I'm not quite enough of a cunt to be a traditional Tony Fenton type DJ, but I can spout some amount of shite so I'd be good on a pirate station or something, waffling about nothing in particular while playing QOTSA requests for The Swearing Lady)...to tell the truth, I still don't know what I want to be, but I know I'm not it yet. I mean, who the fuck wants to be an IT Compliance Analyst when they grow up?

If I could go back and do anything, it would be carpentry/joinery.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Summer asks:

Do you really not know what a 'dutch oven' is?

I thought you, most manly of all men, would know about this. Google. Google is your friend.

~

I really didn't know, but thank you Fat Sparrow for that enlightening explanation. Now I'm lost as to what double dipping is, but I'm afraid to ask because I know it will be fucking disgusting.

Anyway, now that I know what it means, to answer steph's original question, no, I do not play that with Linzi. She would go fucking ballistic if I did. There are many topics she finds hilarious, but the smell of my farts is not one of them. She says that every time she thinks of Christmas 2005, she will think of the stench of my farts from a particularly bad week on the sauce. Enough said on that topic, methinks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fat Sparrow asks:

Kav, if you really want to know what "Double Dipping" is, just e-mail me. I'll bet you've done it, ya dirty Fenian bastid.

As for more questions, you have the Gaelic, do you not? Can you tell me how "losgann" is pronounced? It may be incredibly obvious, but Gaelic can be tricky. Reading books and trying to figure out the Gaelic pronunciation is a bitch.

Also, do you think you will go to Hell for having upside-down crosses in your sidebar, or are you just a St. Peter devotee?

~

I will email you asap, FS. Besides, I have a bone to pick with you. Heh. I said bone.

1. I have a bit of Irish, which is quite close to Gaelic, but not the same. I've never heard of the word losgann - the closest I can think of is loscann, which means frog. As for pronunciation, you would most likely say it "loss-gone". What book you reading?

2. No, I don't think I will go to hell for that, because I have done far worse...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Conan Drumm asks:

Dear Kav, please tell us what you like and dislike most about your Scottish exile?

~

Conan, good question. Things I like most: Nobody has any preconceptions about me, I can be who I want to be and not be prejudged as I would be in Ireland. I earn about double what I could earn back home. I can remain on the fringes of the bigotry and racism in Scotland, as opposed to being drawn into it in Ireland (whether I want to be or not). I have a much higher quality of life here due to the affordability of things.

Dislikes: the geography of Scotland tends towards dispersed, so the need to travel longish distances to do basic things is more or less taken for granted - this is annoying when I've been used to Galway, where almost everything's available within a 10-mile radius. I really miss Lough Corrib; I grew up on the lake and it's the single thing I miss most about home. The lochs over here just can't compare - Loch Lomond is the biggest loch in Scotland and it's only half the size of the Corrib. I dislike being apart from my family and friends, but as migrations go, I could not have picked an easier place for us all to travel to and from. I dislike how much it costs every time I do go home, and I dislike that every time I have holidays I feel obligated to go home. Going home for five days costs more than two weeks in the sun, and that's no bullshit.

There's alot more - I wrote a long post about this stuff a while back if you're interested.

Gullible little bastard

2006-10-19T13:35:00.000+01:00

Fat Sparrow wrote an excellent post about ripping the piss out of her child, and it got me thinking to some of the stuff I used to believe as a young lad:

A school chum convinced me he had a steel arm, just like Lindsay Wagner, the Bionic Woman.
One lad led me to believe that he was a superintelligent being from space, and that trucks could drive over him without harming him.
A knacker who lived across the road told me that when you see sunbeams filtering through clouds, that was a soul going up to heaven.
Do you remember 40/40? It's like hide and seek except the game isn't over when you find the person - once you catch someone you have to run back to "base" and shout "Forty forty home!" if you're the hider, or "Forty forty I see Martin!" if you're the seeker. Anyway, there were usually about 10-12 of us playing this game, and one day, I was the seeker, so I counted to 40, then spent the next half hour looking for everyone. Turned out that they had all just fucked off up to another estate and left me hunting around gardens and such on my own. What a gullible mong.
One of the schoolyard things that used to go around was "If your hand is bigger than your face, you have cancer." When you put your hand up to your face to check, someone would punch your hand and your nose would bleed, but not break. Good times. I fell for this a lot.
Not so much something I used to believe, as something I didn't get: when Freddie Mercury first made AIDS fashionable, the kids used to say "Do you have AIDS?". You would respond "No" to this, at which point they would say "Are you positive?", to which (you guessed it) you would respond "Yeah". You would then be called a HIV-infected cunt and laughed at a lot. I didn't get this until I was about 15.
Back when nobody knew what a vagina looked like, you would place your palms together, and a friend would do the same. You would then place your held-together hands at right angles to each other, and interlock your hands between index and middle fingers. Once your hands were joined like this, one of you spread your palms and looked inside, and this, apparently, is what a vagina looked like. I still believed this until last year, when I lost my virginity.

What about you? Tell me some shite you used to believe.

In other news, I have a tough exam* coming up in December, and I will need to dedicate a fair amount of my time to it over the coming weeks. You might notice a dropoff in the level of my posts and comments, but rest assured I haven't forgotten you. I just think you're a cunt and never want to speak to you again.

I'll be around, just not as much.

*if I pass it, I get a very nice qualification that will help me get more money, and money is great.

Family stuff

2006-10-18T21:58:00.000+01:00

Yeah yeah, boring pictures of random people you'll never know. Skip through this post if you're looking for entertainment - I write this blog for myself, so there's going to be a certain amount of what you may call boring shite, but it's important to me.

Last weekend was excellent. There were almost 30 people in my house on Saturday, as a pile of folk descended from Ireland and ate me out of house and home. At the start of it all I had my usual worries, because Linzi's family are generally fairly pious and straight-laced (she's the exception), and mine are a bunch of fucking mental patients who just want to get hammered and eat lots of food. There was a bit of wincing as I heard my sister talking with Linzi's mother about the "stupid cunt of a camera" not taking a picture properly, but after a while I just thought fuck it, and stopped fretting. Her mother will just need to accept that we say fuck and cunt a lot. I've no doubt she's praying for our immortal souls after the day-long display of colourful language she was subjected to on Saturday.

Oh well, not to worry.

It was Erin's 2nd birthday, and we also had a little naming ceremony thing for Jack.

This is a picture of Erin and Jack looking at each other:

Anyway, the day went really well, and Erin got so many presents that she still hasn't opened them all...now that's spoiled for you. Jack was quiet throughout the whole ceremony thing, during which Erin read him a poem (with a bit of help from me) and grinned from ear to ear when she got a big round of applause afterwards.

Somehow Erin stayed awake the entire day, and as soon as she collapsed into bed that night, Linzi and I went out to eat with the family and got drunk together for the first time in a very long time. We also had some food at some point, I think. One of my best friends, Paul, and his fiancée Eleanor were staying with us, so when we got home that night we fired up the patio heater thing that we've only used twice and sat outside getting wasted and talking shite until the wee hours. I managed to escape going on duty to look after Jack that night, so I was able to sleep off the worst of my hangover.

Of course, my family being my family, one night was not enough, and it was yesterday before I got the last of them sent home. From great-grandparents to cousins to sisters to complete fucking strangers, everyone was here this weekend, and they stayed until they ate and drank their fill. I'm feeling sick and exhausted and three stone heavier from the various excesses, but it was well worth it. Surprisingly, given my fractured family, there was absolutely no tension or arguments...be thankful for small mercies, don't look a gift horse, and all that shit.

First night drunk together for how long?

Sisters, Dad, etc:

Tomorrow, I will complain about something. And yes, I will catch up with everyone too. For now, I must sleep.

Sexism at the Doctors

2006-10-18T12:31:00.000+01:00

Who'd have thought it, in this enlightened age?

I've been off for a while, family stuff (which I'll post more on later), hence the lack of posting. However, I've been compelled to recount my visit to the doctors yesterday morning, because it fucked me off so much.

Since I was off work yesterday, I took Jack to get his 12-week injections (pneumonia and meningitis, various others). I don't usually get the chance to do this sort of stuff, so I was looking forward to ~~checking out the attractive mothers in the waiting room~~ having this time with my boy, seeing a little bit of his life that, ordinarily, I'd not get to see.

The stupid fucking doctor's surgery doesn't allow you to bring prams inside - you have to leave them out near the front door. I'll be fucked if I'm going to leave a £500 pram lying around for any cunt to nab, so instead I carried him in one of those...carrier things.

No, not a plastic bag, but a proper yoke for carrying babies that you strap to your chest, making carrying even the heaviest child an absolute doddle. Luckily, we just live ten minutes' walk from the docs, so I was only partially crippled by the time we arrived for his appointment.

Anyway, I got in, let them know we'd arrived, and took Jack out of his carrier and his little snowsuit thing. Cue Jack bawling his head off, and I can understand why; he'd been snoozing, warm and snug pressed up against me, then he was woken up by being jerked out of his cradle and disrobed without warning. I'd be pissed off too.

And fuck it, what can you do? Babies cry. There were half a dozen of the little shits* crying in there.

I spent the next few minutes doing my best to soothe him, trying not to look like a pathetic parent with no control over their child whatsoever, and then we were called in.

There were three of them in there - two nurses and a trainee. As soon as I walked into the room, I sensed a vibe. Something was not right here. They gazed at me pityingly as I sat down and bounced Jack gently on my knee, talking to him, telling him it's all ok, and so forth.

Then the questions started.

"Oh, is he ok?"

"Yeah, he's fine, he just woke up with a bit of a fright, I think."

"Awwww, poor baby! Has he been fed? He could be hungry."

"No, he just had a bottle before we left. He's not due for a couple of hours."

"Oh. Well, now, are you Jack's primary carer?"

"Well, normally I work through the week, so my wife is the primary carer. I'm off today though, so I figured I'd take him here."

"Right, right...well, are you looking after him all by yourself today?" (Do I even need to highlight the condescension in this sentence?)

"Uh, my wife's at home too."

"Oh good, well, your wife will be able to get Jack calmed down. He might just be hungry for a bottle."

FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING PATRONISING CUNT. Let's just get this shit over with, because you're starting to piss me the fuck off.

Naturally, after receiving two spikes into each thigh, Jack's state of mind was not improved, and the poor lad continued to cry as they advised what side-effects to expect (tiredness, fever, crankiness....it's not fucking rocket science, is it?), which I patiently listened to, because I understand that there are alot of people out there who don't have any idea what to expect, and besides, I'm not a dick, they do have a job to do. So I accepted all their advice with grace and humility, but then the awful, horrible cunt had to go and spoil it all by saying

"And if he does have a fever, just give him some Calpol. Have you got any Calpol at home?"

"Yeah, we've got some alright."

"Well, your wife will know what to do. If he seems to be a bit feverish, just ask her how to give him some of the Calpol."

EXCUSE ME, CUNT? WHAT THE FUCK AM I, A FUCKING SPASTIC? DO I APPEAR SEVERELY RETARDED OR OTHERWISE LACKING THE ABILITY TO FUNCTION AS A PARENT? Jesus Christ alfuckinmighty, give me strength.

I ought to point out that, on the surface, my countenance belied how I felt. On the outside, I looked calm, sincere, expectant, as I listened to them treat me like a fucking idiot who wouldn't know how to change a fucking nappy**, never mind administer medicine to an infant.

Okay, moving on. I ignore her comment about asking my wife for help giving medicine, and, in an attempt at catharsis, to dissipate my rage, and also, probably unconsciously, to point to a possible reason for why Jack's crying, I casually ask:

"What's the earliest you think a baby could start teething at?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, he drools a lot and he chews his fist all the time."

"Well, it's usually between six months and a year, but they can be as young as three months, and let's see, Jack is-"

"Three months."

"Three months, yeah, so I'd say it's unlikely he'd be teething yet."

"Right, that's fine, just checking. Heh."

"Would you like us to make an appointment with you to help you understand how to wean your baby?"

"No, that's okay thanks, we've got one already, so we've been through it all before. We're going to start him on solids when he gets to four months,
and-"

"Oh good, well then, your wife will be able to keep you right, and if you need any more help, just give us a call."

My wife. She's going to love hearing about this.

I don't get it. Was it just because Jack was crying, that they assumed I was a shit parent who had no idea what to do, or is this simply how they treat all fathers, as if they are slightly mentally challenged, the classic lovable oaf-like fuckwit perpetuated on a thousand tv ads as examples of your "typical" father? Either way, they came across as looking like absolute, utter cunts. I'm not trying to stir this up into a battle of the sexes, but if three men treated a woman like I was treated in that setting, she'd (rightly) go fucking berserk about it.

I'm sure the three of them thought they were being incredibly helpful, in the same way as born-again Christians think they are doing you a huge favour by letting you know how you can let the Lord into your life, but I just could not get past the condescending tone, the patronising comments about seeking assistance from my wife, the pitying looks as I tried to soothe Jack. The looks of pity on their own I could understand - it's their job to empathise with stressed parents. It's just the combination with the other things that got to me.

Unfortunately, it seems that some stereotypes continue to thrive unchallenged. So tell me: does the fact that a man, rather than a woman, is looking after a child - does this influence your behaviour towards them? Is it a commonly-held view among women that men are helpless aw-shucks idiots who do hilarious and silly things to kids such as putting their nappy/clothes on backwards, feeding them nothing but sweets and ice-cream and Coke so that when good old mum comes home they're hyper, running riot around the house?

To top it all off, Jack stopped crying the moment we left the building. Little traitor.

*Other people's kids are little shits, of course. Mine are perfect.

** diaper

New profile pic

2006-10-13T00:00:00.000+01:00

That's meant to be a spine. I've always been shit at drawing.

Have a good weekend.

Lazy parents

2006-10-12T12:35:00.000+01:00

This really riles me up. Not this specific article, but everything about it, everything it relates to.

It just stinks of the slopey-shoulder syndrome society is plagued by these days. Oh, let's not give out to the fucking moron parents who let their kids play adult-rated video games for fourteen hours a day, let's blame the faceless gaming industry who makes the games and provides good old-fashioned fun to the vast majority of normal, sensible people. Yeah.

What the fuck happened to personal responsibility? I appreciate that I'm not the first person to go off on one about this; the issue has been dissected far more eloquently by many others. I couldn't help it, though. I had to post about it.

It's just become so ingrained in our culture:

Parents: Wow, I would never have expected little Davie to go crazy, despite the fact that we used to beat him and lock him in the cupboard as a child, and he grew up watching violent Japanese horror, looking at porn and playing GTA at the age of nine, while at weekends he helped Daddy polish his gun collection. Shrug. It's nothing to do with us. Society made him who he is.

Little Davie: I can't be held responsible, look how bad my childhood was.

I am not for one second condoning that the way one is raised gives a legitimacy to the way one behaves - if everyone who had a shite childhood decided to go on a killing spree, we'd all be dead - but I do think it stems from a lack of something, something the parents have failed on. However, it's easier to sue Company X or Industry Y than it is to admit to your own shortcomings.

I know there are exceptions; horrible, awful exceptions. Kids who have great parents who suffer abuse, bullying, whatever. Even in these situations though, should the parent not be sensitive enough to notice that something's the matter with their kid?

One thing about becoming a parent is you are no longer the most important person in your life. There are too many selfish, self-righteous cunts out there willing to blame anyone but themselves for their kid's fuckups. I'm writing this as a parent, so I know I'm laying myself open to criticism from every other parent. "Your kids, wait til they hit their teens" and all that shit. Fair enough. I know it's not going to be a bed of roses. But one thing I will not fucking do is shirk my responsibilities and try to blame some other cunt, or cunts, for my own failings. Getting back to the source of my rant, if my kid is playing video games for ten hours a day, then I will get them out of the house, I will get them involved with other people, I will help them to participate in things, even though it's easier not to. And they will thank me one day.

It's lazy parenting, pure and fucking simple. The kid's in his room, quiet, not bothering anyone. Therefore he must be ok, right? Right?

Right.

Get off your fucking arses, parents. Stop taking the easy way out - show an interest in your kids. I know I sound hopelessly naive, I'm laughing at myself while writing this, but fuck it, and fuck you if you wouldn't even give it a chance.

Anyway, what was I on about? Oh yeah, I like GTA.

Update: I wrote this in a feverish flurry of anger, and don't like the way I've put some of it. I know it comes across as a bit simplistic in parts, and I'd like to put in a bit about phenotype and genotype, but I can't be arsed. So there you go.

Post #100

2006-10-11T12:54:00.000+01:00

For my hundredth post in this blag, I thought I'd recount some stories which involve my vomit. These stories also involve copious amounts of drink, naturally.

Incident #1

I was a young youth, young enough to, like a pure fuckin mong, keep track of exactly how much I had to drink. This is so that the next day you can say "Yeah man, I was fuckin ratarsed last night, I had five pints and five double voddys" and the lads would go "Fuckin hell Kav ya mental cunt!" and I'd feel all validated and shit. Teenagers are such mongs.

Anyway, that night, (I believe I was 16) I had five pints of Bud (ugh) and 5 double vodka and oranges. A decent amount for a lad who'd just started drinking a few months before.

I cycled home, as I did for most of my drinking days.

I woke in the morning and cocked an eye to the door to see my Dad's head looking down at me.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm grand, why?"

I was getting grumpy with his show of concern now. I was still young enough that I didn't get hangovers, and I felt fine, just a bit knackered. What the fuck was he being all inquisitive for?

"You're sure you're alright, yeah?"

"Jeez, yeah, I'm sound, like."

"Okay. I'll see you later, I'm off to work."

"Right, see you."

After he left I promptly fell back to sleep. I woke a couple of hours later to feel a strange kind of tightness on my face. Rubbing it, I felt something crusty, flaky. I sat up. My pillows were on the floor.

There was puke all over them. I ran to the bathroom.

Dried puke all down my face. Caked in my hair. Holy fuck. I'm a rock star.

I'm a fuckin eejit.

Incident #2

There's this club in Galway, the GPO, or maybe it's the gpo. Capital letters aren't cool. Whatever the fuck, between the years 1996 and 1999, I was there at least once (and probably more like two or three times) a week, week in, week out. It was a good time. If you didn't know people, you were at least on a nodding acquaintance with most of them. The bouncers knew us well and knew we liked to go mental and mosh to any of the heavier shit they played, but that we tended not to cause any trouble. We just liked lepping around bashing into each other. I give you this preface to explain why, despite what happened, I was allowed back in the club the very next night.

This story is why I don't drink tequila anymore.

Sometime, 1998. Tequilas are a pound a shot. Of course, for a student, this means you're drinking fucking tequila, even if it tastes like hot piss and they've run out of salt and lemon. So, I've had the usual booze before I arrive, and then knock back seven or eight tequilas in the first hour or so.

Needless to say, half an hour after that, I was thrown out on my arse by the bouncers. The following night, one of the guys, whose name escapes me (Ross?), said I was on the dancefloor and it looked like I was trying to do that "touch your toes" exercise that sadistic teachers used to make you do in PE class - the one where you're not allowed to bend your knees. I imagine that I wasn't actually keeping balance myself, more likely I was just buoyed on the swaying dancefloor by my fellow drunkards.

Anyway, they threw me out the back door onto Mary Street, so I made my way around to Eglinton Street, to the main entrance, where I flopped on the ground outside the video store which was directly opposite the club's entrance. I figured, it's about 1.30am, I'll just wait for the lads to come out. We usually left just before the club closed at 2am so we could beat the fast food queues.

Being at that stage of absolute inebriation where instinctive reactions are nothing more than a preposterous theory, I knew I was going to puke on myself around about the same time as I observed the puke covering my chest and flowing down the slope to my right. I was so fluthered that all I could do was watch and smile a little as thick rivulets of tequila-flavour vomitus rolled down the path, slithering into cracks and gaining pace as they passed a particularly steep part of the pavement.

From across the road, Doug appeared, gimped out of his fucking box as usual. "Alright cunt, what happened to you?" he asked, referring to me getting thrown out. I watched as Doug sat down next to me. I'd forgotten, and he was too fucked to notice. Oops.

"Doug."

"What? Man, you're fucked."

"Doug. Doug."

"What is it, ya mong?"

"Puke. Watch."

"Puke? What are you-?"

"Watch out for the puke" I finally managed, feebly gesturing to where he was sitting.

"Wha? Ah ya dirty cunt! For fuck's sake!"

Oh how we laughed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's enough for now. I have at least three more decent puke stories, but this is taking me too fucking long. I have work to be doing.

Feel free to share your vomitous tales.

Tales from the Boredroom

2006-10-10T11:56:00.000+01:00

At work, I'm often described as innovative. People are impressed because I "challenge the status quo". In other words, I question things I think are bullshit, or done inefficiently. I come up with ideas to make our jobs easier and I follow them through to make sure they get done. Following things through is important, because coming up with ideas is just mental masturbation; anyone can toss out a load of verbal spunk and then sit back and say job done. Following your idea through is what changes the idea from a pile of spunk with potential into something tangible and worthwhile.

Here's a secret: I'm not innovative. A lazy fucker is what I am. What's seen as innovation is actually me trying to find an easier way of doing things so that I end up having less work to do. Almost every idea I come up with is inspired by this pursuit of laziness.

Paradoxically, I work hard to achieve this goal, which is why it appears to my peers and superiors that I am a real go-getter.

Go-getter. Go and fuck off, you tosser.

In fact, scratch all that. I'm not a lazy person. I just get bored very easily. Not to the point where I worry I might have ADD, but my interest has never been held in any job for longer than about 18 months. I like to move on, try something new. If I stay where I am (which usually happens - after 18 months I get bored and it takes me another two, three years to do something about it) I stagnate and become bitter, like the rest of the "this-is-how-we've-always-done-it" cunts with 20-year services. By the time I've become an expert in an area, I'm already sick of it. That might change when I find something I'm really passionate about, but right now, the thought of staying in one field for my entire life is anathema to me.

So far, my career has gone like this:

Degree in microbiology
which led to
A technician's job making catheters for angioplasty
which led to
An auditor's job in a pharmaceutical research company
which led to
An IT controls expert job in the utilities industry
which leads me to...where?

What a disjointed, disparate, disconnected mess.

Right now, there is absolutely no challenge for me in my work. I'm sitting an exam in December in the hope of getting a recognised

qualification in the industry, but even then, I'm not sure this is what I want to do. I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had, and I've been lucky enough to always move upwards, not just sideways or back, as my career progresses. And time is on my side. I have no reason to complain.

Still, I just can't stop this nagging feeling.

I'll tell you who really impress me: people who know exactly what they want out of life and their careers. What awful, despicable cunts. How can they be so self-assured? They must have been raised by parents who believed in instilling self-confidence or something. Fucking hell, I second-guess myself at every opportunity.

Halfway through a haircut:

"Ah, sorry, I've changed my mind. I'll leave it long."
"But it's already half-cut-"
"No, no, it's grand. I'll just leave it as it is. What do I owe you?"

What was I saying? Oh yeah. I've told my management how I feel, so it's not going to come as a surprise to them. They're looking into what they can get me to do next year to maintain my interest. They're a good company to work for. Big, too. Lots of room to move internally.

Moral of this is: watch out for the so-called innovative fuckers that you work with. All they're trying to do is make their lives easier, when everyone knows life should be difficult, filled with painful lessons learned too late to be put to any practical use, and then you die.

EDIT: I don't usually link to videos and such, but this is one of the funniest things I have seen for a long long time. Seriously...if you're having a bad day, click and roll around laughing. I don't know if the lads are for real or not, but it doesn't matter.

I got a haircut today. I feel half a lad lighter.

O Glorious Day

2006-10-09T09:02:00.000+01:00

A landmark in my young boy's life, and hopefully a watershed for us, his exhausted parents.

Yes, at exactly 11 weeks old, the wee man has slept through the night. Consider that he was waking seven times a night only two weeks ago, and you'll appreciate the enormity of this event.

7.30pm - 5.45am. Good job son. I'm proud of you. Maybe now your mother and I will begin to claw back some of our lost hours, and not be so perpetually zombified.

A full night's sleep still didn't stop me snoring on the train this morning.

~~~~~

In other news: If you're coming to my blog and you spend thirty-one minutes reading my drivel, the least you could do is leave some manner of comment. You don't even have to be nice. I promise, I won't bite. Unless you ask me to. And if you do ask me to, I will bite you really fucking hard on the wrist.

Come on now. Don't be shy.

You awful, awful cunt

2006-10-08T20:55:00.000+01:00

Blogging gives global access to your words. In the transfer of my experiences from life to the page you're reading, so much shit is lost along the way. I'll use references and in-jokes, and I forget that nobody else has a bloody clue what I'm talking about.

Global access means there's lots of potential for misinterpretation, for insults to be derived where none are intended. Worse, I might be insulting you and you don't get it.

You fucking retard.

Anyway, Cindy-Lou was asking in a previous comment about the various uses of the word "cunt". This word is more or less taboo in polite company in the US, whereas it's the cornerstone of conversational English in Ireland or Scotland. Since most of my posts tend to be written in conversational English, the word tends to slip out now and then.

Here, cunt can refer to a friend*: "That cunt owes me a pint"

or to an enemy: "He's a total cunt, make no mistake"

or to a greeting: "Alright cunt, how's it going?"

or be used in sympathy: "I feel sorry for the poor cunt - he came home to find his wife shagging a teenager"

or to replace any noun - for example the sentence "Joe, pass me the wrench, I need to change the wheel" could just as easily be spoken as "Cunt, pass me that cunt, I need to change this cunt"

or to a state of mind: "John was totally cunted last night"

or be used in an insult: "He's a slippery, conniving cunt, that Steve"

or to describe a tiresome situation: "I've had an absolute cunt of a day"

or a difficult situation: "That exam was cuntish, wasn't it?"

The word cunt is used on occasion to describe the female of the species, although she'd have to be a right scheming harridan whore of a bitch altogether for someone to call her that.

If you see me writing cunt on my blog, chances are it fits into one of the above categories, and has no relevance to its original meaning regarding ladyparts. I rarely, if ever, refer to females as cunts.

I find it rude.

More reading here.

*please note that there is nothing insulting in the subsequent example. Cunt is the equivalent of the word "gentleman" in this sentence.

All you Bob lovers are gonna hate me.

2006-10-06T15:29:00.000+01:00

An Ode to Bob Dylan

I bought Blonde on Blonde to give you a chance,
but several listens have not changed my stance;
although you're something of a poet
you just can't sing a fucking no-et,
so you've given more fuel for my rants.

You're worshipped like a deity by many a dad,
and they'll say "this is sacrilege" and call for my lad
to be lopped off and nailed
to a tree, or be jailed,
but if you ask me, they've all just been had.

The voice of a generation you may've been,
but to me you're all groaning and spleen.
Your words are just great
but I can't help but hate
your voice - you shouldn't be heard, only seen.

A shit cadence to the rhyming, admitted, but I think it makes my point. If you disagree with me, then why are the covers of his songs invariably better than the originals? Eh? Eh? No matter what you say, I'll just respond with "All along the watchtower".

No, not the U2 version, fucker.

In other news, I urge you to try these:

I salivate just looking at the packaging.

Enjoy your weekend.

Russian Roulette? How is that like Russian Roulette?

2006-10-05T11:58:00.000+01:00

The thrill of getting the train has passed. It's become just as monotonous as driving, the only benefits of the train being lots of people-watching opportunites, and the chance of a decent sleep on the way in to Glasgow. In fairness, you can only do one of these things or the other. Doing both just doesn't work. Trying to casually ogle the sexy women on the train with one eye, while the other gets some rest, just makes me look like I might be going through the early stages of an epileptic seizure.

Even having a nice sleep comes with drawbacks. Yesterday morning (exhausted as I am with Jack waking through the night and my idiot self staying up too late) I pretty much passed out as soon as I boarded the train. I only woke up when the train captain's voice boomed over the intercom: "Yaaarrr! Ladies and gentlemen we are now approaching Glasgow Central. Please ensure that ye take all ye luggage and personal shite with ye, or I'll have ye walk the plank..." etc. His clipped, nasal barking, shrill-filtered through the crackly speakers, caused my body to release a shitload of adrenaline and I awoke with a yelp, jittering like an alco with the DT's, to find I'd been drooling. Bollocks.

Worse, though, was that everyone else was already standing in the aisle, queueing, watching me jolt awake while they waited for the doors to open. Feigning a yawn, I casually wiped the already-hardening drool-crust off my mouth and chin. There was nothing I could do about the warm pool of stuff on my jacket. I just did one of those relaxed "that's how my jacket always looks" faces.

That reminds me: I must wash that jacket.

All in all, not my finest moment. I tried not to catch anyone's eye, so I wouldn't have to bear witness to their smirknudgings, but I knew they were at it anyway. Fuckers. I have a ten-week old kid, you bastards.

To spice the mornings up, I've started playing Russian Roulette with my fellow commuters. Well, those boarding at my stop, at least. Every day, it's the same old faces, and I don't particularly like looking at any of them. There's a brand of ugliness that comes from being a bitter moany ould cunt, and it's all too ingrained on the faces of a vast section of Lanarkshire's inhabitants. To alleviate the tedium, I play this game with them, though of course none of them realise they're participating.

The Russian Roulette I play is of the non-fatal variety; you don't need guns to play. This isn't The Deer Hunter, for fuck's sake. Things haven't gotten that desperate. Yet.

Nah, the only risk involved is that I might miss the train and be two hours late for work. See, my goal each morning is to be the last person to arrive at the platform for the 6.59am train. This bit of foolishness makes me feel superior to all the suckers who've had to stand around waiting like idiots. Hah! Drones! Idiots! Robots! Slaves to the man!*

So, each morning as I approach, I take a mental inventory of them all: There's Tall Cunt with the Glasses, and there's Sexy Spanish-Looking Bird, and there's Smoker Cunt and his Bird. Ah, there goes the Three Workmen Cunts. There's Appropriately-Below-the-Knee-Skirt Bird, also known as I'd Find You Attractive if You Didn't Smoke so Much Bird. Hmmm....looks like everyone's accounted for.

Fuck! There's no sign of Fat Cunt yet! Fat Cunt lives in the same street as me.

He's a slippery fucker, is Fat Cunt. He's the only real contender, to be honest, when it comes to winning this game. He has this trick, you see, where he purposely walks slowly, and leaves the house after me. He makes out like he's all slow because he's fat and he can't move any faster, but I'm well onto his game. If he thinks he's going to beat me, he's got another fucking think coming.

There are various tricks you can employ to let someone pass you by, but on this day I opt for the classic "tying-my-laces" technique. Sure enough, with only yards to spare before we hit the platform, Fat Cunt passes me, and I claim my place as the winner of today's episode of Delusional Gobshites.

"Suckers!" I shout as I swagger, victorious, onto the platform, "You're all suckers! Slaves to a fuckin timetable!". My roars coincide with the roar of the train's arrival, so nobody seems to hear me explaining what fucking idiots they all are. I've thought about buying a megaphone, but they're awful bulky to be carrying around once the game is over.

Some day, I have no doubt I'll push my luck, and I'll be the sucker, shaking my fist at the train creeping away from the platform just as I arrive.

It will serve me right.

* I'm not sure who the man is, exactly, but I heard he's a right cunt.

Relief

2006-10-03T21:05:00.000+01:00

"Come on, let's crack open the champagne that Sharon gave you for your thirtieth!"

"No."

"Ah come on, let's have some! It's good news, isn't it?"

"I said I don't want to have champagne, Kav."

"Not even a glass?"

"Look, we are not celebrating me not being pregnant, okay? It's not right."

"Yeah. Okay. Fair enough, when you put it like that."

"Mmm."

"I'm glad you're not though."

"Me too."

It's Monday, time for a rant.

2006-10-02T08:54:00.000+01:00

It’s time for a pedantic rant. Have a seat. Don’t take it personally.

We had a nice dinner on Friday night with a couple of friends. During the meal, (let’s just call her) Scarlett was bemoaning the fact that it’s been so long since she’s had a holiday and how she really needs to get away and fuckety wah wah wah. My official stance on this is: if you have had a holiday, (and by holiday I mean a period of relaxation lasting at least a week), within the last nine to twelve months, then YOU ARE NOT FUCKING WELL ALLOWED TO COMPLAIN ABOUT NEEDING A HOLIDAY.

My last holiday, going by the above definition, was in 2001. Scarlett's last holiday was in June. The reason for this is obvious: we are a single-income family with two kids and have come from fairly poor backgrounds. Neither Linzi nor myself were given a "start" in life by a twinkly-eyed grandparent. (Though Linzi’s family hasn’t always been financially fucked, they are now, but that’s a whole other post.) They, on the other hand, are a two-income family with no kids and a substantial inheritance from Scarlett’s husband’s parents. Let’s call her husband Rhett. Rhett and Scarlett have no further bearing on this rant.

Let me make one thing abundantly clear: I would love to go on a night out with you, but by telling you "I'm broke", I really do mean that I do not have any spare money. Whatsoever.

I am not living in poverty. I earn a decent salary, a fair bit more than the national average. I don't need to worry where my next meal is coming from. You know why, though? Because I live on a budget. That budget is stretched right to its limit. During the week, I eat soup at lunch. I don't smoke, or buy coffee, or donuts, or anything else during my working day. If you complain that you're broke, but you can still somehow afford to smoke fags*, and/or spend six or eight quid a day on coffees and sandwiches, then let's face it: you are not fucking well broke, because that’s about £200 a month right there for you.

What makes my blood boil is cunts who bandy these terms about without really realising what the fuck they are talking about. For some people, being skint means, oooh, I have to withdraw some money from my savings account this month to get the car serviced or, jeez, I need to decide whether I want this PS2 game or will I just get some new jeans instead.

What I want to say to these folks is: Fuck. Right. Off. If you're even capable of making these decisions, then you have no right to claim that you are broke. Having no money makes these decisions easy: you do without.

My car is off the road as of today**. I’ve admitted defeat and bought a monthly train ticket. See, I had a choice to make this month – do I get the car fixed, or do I pay for a combined naming ceremony for Jack/birthday party for Erin? There are a lot of people coming over from Ireland for this, some of whom are staying with us, so really, I have not got a choice at all. The car sits in the driveway so that we can have a memorable and enjoyable experience with our family and friends.

That’s broke, okay?

Now, you may well say to me “You’re just a bitter cunt because other people can afford to do things and you can’t because you got married young and have two kids and a wife to support.” You’d be partly right. I’m bitter, granted, but what I’m bitter about is that most of these motherfuckers have absolutely no appreciation of their own position, that position being one of comfort, of regular nights out, of weekends away with partners, of new clothes every month, of no worries about unexpected bills popping up because, well, let’s face it, if the car suddenly breaks down, all it means to you is that you’ll have to cancel that weekend in the Lake District. It doesn’t fucking well mean that you’re broke.

As for me, I have no regrets. I have a budget, a spend, right down to my last pound, every month. This budget allows for a few take-aways, some family activities, and covers absolutely everything my children need. (They're not at the stage of wanting expensive shitey toys yet; I'm looking for a better salary in anticipation of that day.)

What my budget has no allowance for is unexpected items like the car breaking down, or having a few pints out with the lads. There's no room in it for these eventualities, so trust me: when I say I can't do something because of financial constraints, I've worked it out, and I really can't make it. I'd love to, but I can't. If you gave me a month's notice, I could rejig my finances for that month and make it happen, otherwise, all bets are off.

I am sorry about this. I am constantly in turmoil about being a crap provider because I can’t do all the things that regular folk do. I'm working on it, though.

So, if you’re one of these people, if being broke to you means that rather than buying both pairs, you have to make the choice between the Manolo Blahniks and the strappy Guccis, then listen: YOU ARE NOT FUCKING BROKE, CUNTYJAWS. FUCKING APPRECIATE WHAT YOU’VE GOT, in the same way that I appreciate the advantages I've been given over those slender kids in Africa, or the junkies I ignore outside Central Station.

If you can't appreciate what you have, and instead choose to moan about the difficult choices that having so much spare money brings, I will stab the fucking head right off your shoulders.

* Fags means cigarettes in this context, my American cousins. I wasn't talking about doing a drive-by on some homosexuals.

** The most recent car-related disaster was driving to Edinburgh airport with Linzi and the kids a couple of weekends ago, on our way home to Ireland. I had a blowout on the motorway. That's "out", not "job". I could fit my fucking fist into the hole in the tyre. It was rather frightening.

EDIT: If you're commenting, can you please let me know something: is this site horrendously slow to load up? I'm not sure if it's just me or if I've got too much shit on my sidebar and it's the page that's slow to load. Ta.

Oh jaysis

2006-09-30T22:49:00.000+01:00

Linzi and I had an Indian for dinner last night. He was delicious.

Boom-boom.

Tell you what though, I'm suffering for it today. Fucking hell, who'd have thought it smells the exact same when it comes out the other end as when you're eating it.

Hope your weekend is as eventless as mine.

A wee ego boost

2006-09-29T22:48:00.000+01:00

I get the train this evening, as usual. I arrive from Cathcart to Central Station, and remember that I'm taking Linzi out for dinner tonight. I ought to get some money out.

A girl joins the (long, always long) queue for the cash machines ahead of me. We eye each other a split second longer than necessary. We half-smile in acknowledgement of our plight. The queue. Always a queue.

She has great legs. Tanned. Ankle-boots. Short skirt, black and white squares. Foreign, I suspect. She's not jaded-looking enough to be from here.

The other reason I think she might be foreign is because she's got a large suitcase. I have a sixth sense for these things, you see. She can't get the case to stand upright, so she has to keep a hand on it to stop it falling over .

I look. She's beautiful.

She's got a smaller bag too, which I deduce is for important personal items. The way I figure this out is: I watch her balance the suitcase and struggle to hold her jacket while trying to get her wallet out of the bag. Wallets are personal items.

Shit. The case. I'm an ignorant bastard.

"Oh, would you like me to hold your case while you-?"

"No, that's fine, thanks," she interrupts, but she smiles, to show she appreciates the offer. Australian. I knew it.

We catch each other's eye now and then after that, but it's not uncomfortable. I am in control. I am warm, floating. I am the Olympics.

It's her turn. She trundles her case over to the machine. There are two. I'm next.

The girl at the other machine is slow. It's a race, Aussie versus other girl. My eyes watch them, a tennis match. I want Aussie girl to win.

Aussie girl wins. She turns to me and smiles as she walks from the machine, proper friendly. I smile back, and go to get my money. I look to my left and see her struggling with her bags again, this time putting her stuff away.

Sometimes you just know things. I could have asked her for a drink. She would have said yes. Sometimes you just know.

And knowing's enough, of course. Knowing's all you need.

When I turn away from the machine, she's gone.

A fat man, smelly too, sits next to me on the train, but even he can't spoil my mood. I don't read today. I look at my fellow passengers. I almost smile. I am not scary. I am young. I am George Clooney. I am immortal.

For a while.

Willies

2006-09-29T10:49:00.000+01:00

A conversation with Erin in Boots. These conversations always seem to happen in Boots. This one was in the checkout queue.

This happened because the other day, while changing Jack's nappy, Erin came over, and before I could stop her, she'd jabbed his little lad fairly hard a few times.

"What's that?" she asked.

"That's Jack's willy, sweetie" Linzi explained.

I had to reprimand Erin for what amounted to assault, even if it was unintentional, but Linzi only laughed.

"Don't touch Jack's willy, Erin." I admonished.

Women just don't understand the pain of having your balls walloped. Just because they haven't dropped yet doesn't mean the poor fella wouldn't be hurt.

After seeing the impact of her actions, willies are now a hot topic of discussion with Erin. Hence, this exchange in Boots:

"Mummy and Daddy have willies."

"No darling, only Daddy has a willy. And Jack."

"Jack has a willy. Mummy doesn't have a willy."

"That's right, my girl."

"Want to see Jack's willy."

"Not just now, sweetheart."

"NOT TO TOUCH JACK'S WILLY! DON'T TOUCH IT!"

"Shhh....ok, don't be shouting."

"NO! NO! NOT TO TOUCH JACK'S WILLY!"

For fuck sake. Get me out of here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other sickness, recent Google searches found my blog using the following keywords:

raped by a dog
shitting outdoors
dog boner
ruining my life

I'm not sure what's more disturbing: that people are searching for this shit, or that I have written about it.

I also have a stalker on Yahoo, who finds me by entering "kavanf1 blog", but never comments. Are you wealthy, Yahoo-user? A hundred grand would sort me out nicely. Not enough to stop working, but it would loosen the mortgage noose. Go on. You might as well.

Do you readwalk?

2006-09-27T23:38:00.000+01:00

I've been getting the train to work a lot recently. When I'm able to stay awake, I read. Nothing unusual about that; millions do it every day.

Sometimes, though, if I'm particularly engrossed in a novel, I will keep reading it, even after I've left the train. It's not uncommon to see me ambling down the road from the train station to my house, reading half-eyed so I can watch for traffic without losing track of the story.

Linzi thinks this makes me a mutant. I've told her I'm in a foreign country where nobody knows me, so what do I give a shit what people think?

She says sorry, Kav, only mutants read while walking in public.

I have other reasons too. What if that guy who gets on one stop after me, who shares the same two trains as me on my journey each morning and evening, who works where I work - what if he wanted to talk to me one day? What if we became friends, and then I had to commit to all sorts of shit that I can't be arsed with: golf, beers with his wanker mates, birthdays, funerals.

Nah. Better to be engrossed in a book, or sleeping. Less hassle.

Or what if some amazingly sexy female was on the train one day? What if I wasn't reading a book, and I happened to catch her eye? How would I divert my gaze without a novel to lose myself in? Before you know it, my irresistible magnetism would draw her to me, and she, being your classic femme fatale type, would come on to me and draw me into a wicked affair, thereby ruining my marriage and the life I've built up.

See? It's much safer to be reading.

How about you? Do you readwalk? Or am I a total mutant? If enough of you tell me Linzi's right, I might reconsider doing it.

I doubt it though.

SEX SEX AND MORE SEX.

2006-09-26T09:57:00.000+01:00

You ladies are obsessed with sex. Having been raised Catholic, I find this absolutely disgusting. Honestly, every female's comment on my 30th birthday for Linzi post was something to do with sex.
Here they are in their entirety:

Jali: "Do you need a grouchy chick on the side?"

What kind of filthy talk is this? When I read this, my cheeks burned like the lakes of fire that sinners such as yourself shall be cast into on the day of judgement. On the side, indeed! Thou shalt be on the side of Lucifer himself when the day of reckoning arrives!

freshairlover: "Hope you get some, after you give some of course."

In the name of all that is good and holy, by "some", I hope you're talking about the fellowship of the lord and nothing else. The unspeakable insinuations in this comment illustrate exactly the kind of young hussy that good, God-fearing men such as myself must avoid for fear of corruption and the shame of sexual vice.

The Swearing Lady: "I hope she gives you the lovin' of a lifetime."

My heart nearly stopped when I read this. From an Irish girl, no less. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Can a man not do something nice for his (celibate) wife without these sort of recriminations rearing their ugly heads? I've asked the lord to spare you as I have no doubt you were out of your mind on drink when you wrote that comment. It's the only plausible explanation.

summer: "I hope ya get some"

Another comment hoping that I get "some"...what sort of rude, malignant mind bestows this sort of crudity upon their fellow man? I know, sure as jeebus sits at our lord's right hand, that you were talking about rotten, disgraceful, atrocious SEX, and nothing less. A woman of your dubious character would no doubt lead a lesser man down the path of corruption and sleaze; were it not for my own peerless character and fortitude of will in the face of the devil's imagery being bandied about these days, I would no doubt be one of the many lost to you.

hotdrwife: "Hope you get some action, Jackson!"

The only action I get is wielding the sword of justice and truth against heathenish and corrupt evildoers. I trust that you, as attached as you are to the evil of modern medical science, will one day meet with the sharp end of my sword as my (celibate) wife and I clear the way for the return of the one true lord.

Don't any of you realise that sex is a filthy dirty habit practised by heathens who'll burn in the fiery infernos of hell for eternity, while I float on a fluffy white cloud above, plucking my harp and smiling benevolently at my fellow celibate angels?

And while we're on the subject, I hereby deny that this used to be my profile picture:

This foul and disgusting avatar was no doubt dreamt up by some lackadaisical office worker caught up in the throes of his own laziness and sloth. His day will come!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A gentleman never tells, don't you know. All I'll say is I had a very good weekend. And you?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Michael, summer, drm2b: Sorry for deleting that post, but I read over it when I was less sleep-deprived, and I felt like it came across as overly negative and depressed-sounding, when in fact my mood over the weekend was generally buoyant and happy. I just happened to post at 4.30 in the morning when I was feeling particularly low after having spent half the night up with Jack.

Disclaimer: This is not a religious post.

EDIT: Since I'm not one of those popular types who has hundreds of people guessing and that, I've filled in the answers to name that movie. Highlight under each quote to see the film name, then go ahead and kick yourself when you realise you should've known it.

Celebrating a 30th birthday on a budget

2006-09-22T12:01:00.000+01:00

In case you haven't noticed before, I'm a bit of a romantic cunt. I like to go all out for my ho and treat her like a bitch ought to be treated, knowwhatahmsayin?

For real, dawg. Woof.

So, it's Linzi's 30th birthday on Monday. Not having much money (£200 to be exact) means I've had to put alot of thought into maximising the giftage while keeping a rein on the finances. Sweating the assets, we call it here in the crazy, crazy world of IT. To tell you the truth, the way I saved for this event was by building up all my mileage from travelling between sites over the course of 2006. At the start of September, I put in a claim for the whole lot, and hence I now have enough yoyos to pay for a decent shebang.

Surprise #1 is that I've taken the day off, cos she thinks I'm working. Imagine how happy you'd be to wake up next to a naked Kav, knowing full well I should not be there. That's how excited she's going to be. Anyway, I'd better stop talking about myself naked, in case I make you even hornier. Come on now, quit licking the monitor.

Ya sick fucker.

Yeah, lahke ah says, the plan is to wake her with breakfast, bringing the kids through to give her the first round of gifts. Said gifts comprise:

a necklace she asked me for ages ago. I hate buying gifts where the person knows what to expect, so I've already told her that the waiting list for the necklaces is two months, and it wouldn't be available in time for her birthday, so I'd get it for her for Christmas instead. So now, even though she knew about it, it's still going to be a surprise when she gets it. I'm a crafty bastard.
a voucher from Erin to get a manicure/French polish at this place. Little does she know the voucher also includes a full-body deep-tissue massage. She'll find that out in the afternoon, once she gets there and they tell her to get her kit off.
a set of Baby Sign Language cards from Jack. What in the name of all that is good and holy are they, you ask? They're just what they say they are: it's a way to use sign language to communicate with your kid before he can talk. For example, fingers up to the mouth means "I'm hungry", flapping the hand forward and back over the crotch means "I'm horny", and so forth.

After this, Linzi's parents are coming over and we're all taking the kids swimming. Well, Linzi, Erin and I are going swimming, while her parents look after Jack. I even paid for L to get her bikini line done this week, so she won't be embarrassed when she goes swimming, as women tend to get. I prepared the fuck out of this birthday, let me tell you.

What makes it good is, I told her when she was going for the wax this week that that was her birthday present. "If someone asks you what you got for your birthday, tell them you got your flaps waxed," I said.

"You're going to have to at least get me a cake," she replied, "I can't tell everyone that my 30th birthday present was getting my flaps waxed."

"Stop, don't be talking like that. Girls sound so crude when they speak like that. Don't say flaps, say minge, or gowl. Something classier than 'flaps', anyway." I responded.

I keep digressing, but it's Friday afternoon, and it beats working.

After swimming, L's parents are going to look after the kids while I take her for lunch to a pub that she loves called The Station Inn. Once we've finished stuffing our faces, I'll take her across to that spa place for her 'manicure', where she will discover that I have tricked her once again, and she's not only getting a manicure, but a massage too.

At this point, she'll think "This day has been perfect, how could it get any better?"

But wait, there's more.

There is a bakery that sells obscenely expensive delicious cheesecake which she loves, and continually rants about how it's so far away that she never gets to have any of it. I figured, rather than go for the traditional, forgettable sponge and cream cake, why not make it one of these cheesecakes? I am picking it up tomorrow (they make them to order, then quick-freeze them), and I'll drop it at her parent's place.

So, while she has her massage/manicure, I am going to swing by her parent's house to collect the cheesecake, then leg it home and do all the balloons and banners and all that tacky shit, put 30 candles into her cheesecake, stick a bottle of wine in the fridge, and then come back to collect her from the spa. While I'm picking her up, her brother and his family will arrive over at ours, so that when we get in, we'll all be there ready to do the happy birthday thing.

Once the cake's consumed, I'll tell her family to fuck off, and give the kids their usual baths. Once they're safely in bed, I will magically provide a bottle of her favourite wine, Sancerre, to help her relax while she sits and watches shite tv. Sancerre is a treat for her because we couldn't normally afford it, so I'm hoping she'll be lost in the deliciousness while I escape upstairs and prepare the bedroom.

This is one area where I got fucking well ripped off. A few years ago, when we still lived in Ireland, I bought L a dozen red roses, but rather than just give her them (boring), I cut the heads off them and scattered petals all over our apartment. I told you, I'm a romantic cunt. Anyway, this time around, I don't have quite as much free time, so I figured, I'll just order some petals and save myself the stress.

I wish I had just done it the old-fashioned way. I spent £20 for what amounts to about a fistful of fucking rose petals. I haven't seen such a display of utter cuntery for quite a while. Trust me, if you ever want to do this, just buy a bunch of flowers and rip them up yourself. That way, at least you'll get enough to cover up your lad while you lie naked on the bed.

Anyway, bedroom: while she watches tv, run a hot bath for her (we have a big corner bath in our ensuite), light 30 candles (because she's 30 - do you get my secret code?), scatter rose petals around bedroom and in bath, and crash bang wallop kazzam, Robert's your father's brother.

Giving her a bath with an expensive bottle of wine ensures she'll be in there for a while, allowing me to give the old PS2 the nurturing and love she so desperately needs. I've really been neglecting her recently. It's been seven weeks since I even turned her on. *insert turn-on joke here.*

There you have it folks, a big birthday on a small budget. I'm also taking her out for dinner with friends next Friday, but that's a surprise too. Indian. Mmmm. I'm salivating already. Shhh now. Say nothing.

Have a good weekend, pups.

Spot the difference

2006-09-20T21:02:00.000+01:00

My family discovered an old picture of me from around April 1980. I think I was going for the Travis Bickle look, but forgot to spike it up:

This is Erin circa Christmas 2005:

The pictures might not show it, but she is the spitting image of me. A lot prettier, mind you.

As my Grandad said, at least we don't need to worry about whether or not I'm her father. Cheers for that, Grandad.

Awkward Conversations #2

2006-09-20T15:11:00.000+01:00

Lunchtime. Computers.

I'm busy fixing my mouse. It's gotten to that stage where it won't scroll or move smoothly, so I need to flip it over, lift out the ball, and give the inside of it a good clean with a straightened-out paper-clip. My blood boils when a defective mouse makes me take an extra half-second to open something.

You'd be surprised how satisfying it is getting all the dusty crud out from the wee mechanisms.

Eeyore interrupts my work. He's wrongly received an e-mail requesting help, but he's trying to help anyway.

"Who would be responsible for fixing emails with attachments that don't open properly?"

"I don't know. It's not us though."

"I don't know what to say to her."

"Who?"

"This girl. She's sent us a mail asking for help."

"I think she's probably just selected the wrong address. We don't deal with that stuff."

"Still, we ought to try and help her out."

"Why? We have no idea how to fix her problem. Just respond and tell her she's mailed the wrong people." (Wanting to add "And save her and everyone else some fucking bother.")

"But I want to be helpful."

"Yeah. You can be helpful by telling her she's got the wrong address and telling her to call the helpdesk."

"I'm going to speak to Steven, see if he knows who can help."

"OK. Go for it."

"Kav."

"What?"

"Did you know that you're truly beautiful?"

"Eh?"

"I saw you in a different light just there."

(nervous laughter from me)

"I did. It scares me sometimes."

Points to note are (a) this is a perfect illustration of why he never gets any work done and (b) Eeyore isn't a sexy large-breasted brunette with come-hither eyes, he's a slighly overweight man-breasted balding chap with regular blue eyes.

Still, that's probably for the best. I have enough on my plate without worrying about whether or not women still find me attractive.

Name that tune.

2006-09-20T11:04:00.000+01:00

Or film, whatever.

Come on now - don't Google it. That's just pointless, and ruins it for anyone who knows it.

I've given you the initials of the characters saying the words. Five films, I just want the name of each:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#1

C: You're a whore ?
A: I'm not a whore. I'm a call-girl. There's a difference, you know ?

True Romance

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#2

T: Oh Manny, look at the pelican fly! Come on, pelican!

Scarface

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#3

D: Hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time. It's just not worth it.

American History X

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#4

N: What's the last thing that you do remember?
L: My wife...
N: That's sweet.
L: ...dying.

Jali is correct with Memento. Have a foot rub.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#5

O: I'ma sell these muthafuckas for fifty nine ninety five.

Menace II Society

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have at it. Winner gets a full-body deep-tissue massage. Unless you're a guy.

At work

2006-09-20T09:10:00.000+01:00

K (singing): Look at the rain, look at the rain, look at the fuckin rain.

Me (joining his song): Shit 'n' piss, shit 'n' piss, shit 'n' fuckin piss.

C (harmonising): Cock-fucking rain, bastard rain, fuck the fuckin rain.

We're having a really productive day.

About facking time!

2006-09-20T08:34:00.000+01:00

I can comment on people's blogs again. Well done Blogger. It's only taken you two months.

This one's for you, Paul

2006-09-19T11:07:00.000+01:00

If you're looking for a post that makes sense, I suggest you skip past this one. I did this one after chatting with good oul Pallrine when I was home in Galway at the weekend. It's just our sense of humour.

Munching on barrel chief, I glanced south to see a small little blue man halfstepping towards me. By the glint in his eye, I knew he was from the hood.

"For bizzle, my wizzle. Where the wombs at?" he sizzled.

Continuing my whittling for another spell, I regarded bluto with a spirited snack. "Don't Eastwood the stereo before you've even listened to the beef!" I warned him, but the bastard was already flailing swimwards like a spastic fish at currant camp. He knew exactly what he was doing - he had arms that looked like two M's. Triple jointed and possessing snipe battlecat, he only tried barrowfires until his deal whimpered moonshine.

I could tell he was annoyed at my flamboyant interface of spook, but he tried to act like a drugged-up pelican for the sake of his family, the scaly Nora. He was blue, though, and by the speed of his skips, I knew a badger was about to attack. Seizing the moment in my hands, I shoved it at his chest. He screamed as the moment impaled him, skewering though his chest and making small little blue love hearts float out of his warm pasta. His fingers slick with blood and ham, he tried to wrest the moment free, but it was buried too deeply in his subconscious.

Behold, his arms went from M's to W's as he died.

I leaned in for a closer look, just as a huge dog leapt out of his blue chest and clamped it's jaws around my haggis-like hand. I howled and jittered like Sammy Davis Junior at a cheese factory on opening night. "Cheddar, ya cunt! Brie! Brieeeee! Monterey Jack!" I screamed. I was sure cheese was his biscuit, but he startled meat when he began grizzling in a fragile t'pau.

"Easy! Easy!" the dog commanded, his mouth full of fingers and plastic bags. I grabbed for one of the bags.

"Hey, they're fifteen cent each!" the dog whepped. "Now stop your heising, I'm only trying to give you the oak wizard barabbus stack!"

Suddenly it became clear what the dog who came out of the dead blue lad who was killed by the moment was doing. I relaxed and started speaking in tongues.

Soon the Israelis started jiving. The Palestinians did the hucklebuck. Bin Laden emerged from hiding in the public toilets in Central Park. Bush shook his hand and gave him a cup of tea. Blair quit. Africa had a load of food. India's call centre lads started making sense. North Korea put all their nuclear weapons in the bin and brought them to the skip.

And all because the lady loves Milk, Jay.

Del Monte, ya bastid

2006-09-18T08:56:00.000+01:00

One day, when I was seven, I was awful thirsty. There was nothing to drink except milk, water, orange juice, or Coke, so I thought, fuck it, I'll use a can opener to pierce a small hole in this tin of Del Monte Pineapple Chunks, and suck the sweet juice out of the hole.

It was delicious, and quenched my thirst nicely. I put the can of chunks back in the cupboard.

Being a child, I forgot about this little escapade until a few weeks later, when my mother went to open the pineapple chunks for dessert. A harrassed mother of three screaming little fuckers, she must not have noticed the piercing made by my stealthy paw several weeks before, and she proceeded to open up the tin.

I said nothing as she gasped and retched at the sink. I watched as she looked again at the brown, turgid gunk that was once a selection of the Man from Del Monte's finest pineapple, then banged down the wooden spoon on the worktop, saying "Dirty horrible bastards! That is absolutely disgusting! How dare they sell this sort of stuff in this day and age!" Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Mam wrote a big complaint letter to Del Monte about the rotten pineapple chunks, and they sent her a huge basket full of Del Monte products. (This was in the days before they'd just send out vouchers - it's not half as exciting to make complaints these days, cos you know all you're gonna get is a money-off coupon or something.)

She still doesn't know it was her thirsty first-born who caused the browning, and not a bad decision by the Man from Del Monte. She's convinced that he got it wrong, and for many years went on to tear strips off that nice lad with the khaki outfit who played the Man from Del Monte going to visit the native pineapple growers on the tv ads, shouting at him that the Man from Del Monte will say yes to any old shite, and lookit him spearing a golden slice of nectarine onto his penknife and he selling poison to children here in Ireland.

I keep meaning to tell her, but I always forget.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The funniest thing that happened this weekend was on the flight home last night. Shortly before we landed, the pilot came on the intercom*, as they usually do, and said "Cabin crew, take your seats for landing."

Linzi, sitting next to me holding Jack, started getting all excited and going "Oh! Oh!" and smiling. I just looked at her with an incredulous "What in the name of Jaysis are you groaning about?" face, then couldn't help but smile as her face fell, realisation dawning.

For some reason, when the captain came on to tell the cabin crew to prepare for landing, Linzi thought he was saying "I have a special birthday message for Linzi Kav".

How I laughed. Sure, it's not her birthday until next week.

*I mean, he spoke into it, not that he shot his load onto it.

See you next week, chiselers.

2006-09-15T15:00:00.000+01:00

I'm off to my wonderful hometown to celebrate my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, and also to introduce them to their new great-grandson, my boy. We're even getting a professional lad to take snaps of the entire clan. Should be a joyous occasion all around.

Plus, I'm gonna get fuckin buckled with the lads.

Have a good weekend.

Mother Goose, this is Blowfly. Switching to secure frequency.

2006-09-15T14:54:00.000+01:00

Here's a transcript of a text message my mother sent me last night:

"In France. Just had dinner - spoke Irish most of the time because people beside us listened to every word when we were speaking English."

I half-expected it to say "End Transmission" at the bottom of the text - you'd swear she was undercover with the CIA or something, the way she was going on.

Only joking, Mam.

Awkward Conversations #1

2006-09-14T11:33:00.000+01:00

I overhear, or am part of, so many of these conversations, that I've decided to record some of them here. Fuck off, it's my blog.

This was between two guys* at work:

Jim: So what are you up to tonight Joe?

Joe: I'm going over to my auntie's.

Jim: Oh right, is she making you your tea?

Joe: No, we're just going to have a bit of incest.

Jim: ...oh. Well, I'll see you tomorrow.

*names altered to protect the eejits

What next, Gillette?

2006-09-14T09:23:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about the new Gillette Fusion that hit the shops recently. Five blades. Imagine the time you'll save.

Here's a brief history of Gillette razors:

1901: First safety razor invented.
1971: Twin blade razor, Trac II.
1998: Razor with three blades, Mach 3.
2006: Marketing called for even more blades. Fusion, world's first 5-blade razor.

Using complex mathematics, I found that it took 70 years to develop the twin blade, and another 27 years to develop the triple blade. However, it only took 8 years to create a 5-blade razor. Based on this flawless assessment, I've confirmed that in approximately three years, Gillette are going to release a 9-blade razor, and the year after that, will obliterate all the competition by producing the world's first 23-blade razor.

You know what the ad will be like.

*Handsome, stubble-less fucker with chiselled jaw admiring himself in mirror. Sexy bitch in her knickers cavorting in the background*

Gravelly masculine baritone voiceover:

"Gentlemen, introducing a revolution in shaving technology! Gillette proudly presents the world's first twenty-three blade shaving system with in-built V8 foam injection mechanism!

For the closest wet shave ever, it must be Gillette Mach-23. Observe our patented 23-blade technology at work!"

*cut to computer graphics of this huge razor gliding across a stubbly face as gravelly voiceover resumes*

"The first 8 blades cut most of the hair away, leaving the next 8 free to trim any stray fuckers that happen to be missed! The final 7 blades get close and cut right beneath your fucking skin, slicing the hair at the follicular level! Once you shave with this razor, you don't need to shave again for a month."

*Cut back to handsome bastard almost finished shaving, hot lady draped over his shoulders, caressing his smooth cheek. Handsome bastard nods downwards and hot lady drops to her knees and starts sucking him off.*

Voiceover resumes as camera cuts to man's face contorting with pleasure as he watches woman's head bobbing up and down on his lad:

"Gentlemen, be the best! Gillette Mach-23 by Gillette. Gillette. The best a man can get."

Passionate singing: "Gillette! The best a man can get!"

Fade out.

You're having a laugh

2006-09-13T13:07:00.000+01:00

Blogger is really starting to take the piss with these word verifications.