I've moved to Wordpress

Come on now, you're missing the action.

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.