Sunday, December 9, 2012

Food science.

Some weeks ago, after running some distance, I opened the door of my flat. I entered, panting, and sat at the desk in my room.I took off my running shoes, checked my phone and stretched a little bit against the mantlepiece near the desk. This is a fairly regular occurrence. I had a shower, also a regular occurrence.
After the shower, my concern was nourishment. Running takes a lot out of me. I'm a hefty lump of Monaghan man, 15 stone most days, so I burn a serious amount of calories galloping around Edinburgh. I would make dinner, sure, but that could take half an hour. I needed something quicker than that. I've been in this situation before. I wanted protein and sugar, and I wanted them right then. I opened my cupboard.
Out of my cupboard I took rice cakes, peanut butter and squeezy jam. You don't need a diagram for what I had planned. I took three rice cakes from the packaging, arranged them in a Triforce pattern on the plate, smothered them in peanut butter with a knife and drew a circle on each one with squeezy jam.
Maybe you do need a diagram. This is the triforce, a symbol of immense power in the videogame series Zelda. Imagine the yellow triangles are rice cakes. IMAGINE IT.
I ate them quickly, sandwiching the second and third rice cake together for maximum efficiency. I put the plate and knife over by the sink. I opened my cupboard, put back the rice cakes, put back the squeezy jam and put back the... hmm. I looked at the jar of peanut butter and I wondered something.

"Wouldn't it be great if they made squeezy peanut butter?"

And then I put it back in the cupboard and checked my phone again. It was a fleeting thought. But later that evening I thought about it a little more.
Out there in the world somewhere, there's probably a man whose whole world is squeezy peanut butter. A food scientist who is working night and day to get peanut butter to that exact consistency and viscosity so that it will be easy to squeeze out of a bottle. His marriage is probably on the rocks. The wife took the kids to her sister's house last week and they haven't returned but he doesn't care. He doesn't have time to care. Rumour has it the Japanese got their peanut butter down to 90,000 centipoise. 90,000! Efficient Asian bastards. That's almost half the regular viscosity of peanut butter! They'll be squeezing the stuff in no time. It probably tastes terrible, though. That's his strength. His progress is slow, but he's kept the taste right. His next batch, SqPB211, will probably get below 100,000 and still taste like a dream. And a month or two later he'll get lower again. 2013 will be his year. He'll show the bigwigs what he's made of.
He's made of squeezy peanut butter.
They'll make millions. He'll get his bonus and he'll put a down payment on that new Mazda he's been looking at. The wife will come back. The kids will come back. His world will be right again. He can go back to the easy side of food science, whittling down the amount of chocolate in Yorkies without making them look less manly. And some man in Edinburgh will be able to make his post-run snack without the need for a knife.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Spare a thought for this poor girl.

This isn't a very topical post, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't recognise her at all. I'm sure she wouldn't mind too much either, she's a fictional character. But we'll pretend she's not, I've a post to write here.

This girl was featured in a television advert for Splenda some years ago. Splenda is an artificial sweetner. Splenda likes to think it's just like sugar, but it never will be. You could have your tongue surgically replaced with a strip of leather and you still wouldn't believe it's sugar.

This poor girl wanders into a diner, asks for a coffee with sugar and the waitress looks a her like she ordered a cheesecake made of laser beams. A family nearby sniggers and laughs at the girl. The waitress asks around the diner if anyone's heard of this crazy stuff and, after the entire diner shrugs its shoulders at the crazy lady looking for coffee, a nearby Morgan Freeman stunt double suggests she might actually be looking for Splenda.
Ah, yes, Splenda. The woman had obviously lost the run of herself for a minute, there. Maybe she had a mild stroke. Of course she was asking for Splenda. What the fuck is sugar anyway?

Light hearted, maybe, but if was the girl above, I would PANIC THE FUCK OUT. Sugar's sugar. I've been hoovering up the stuff for twenty six years. I remember putting heaps of it onto my Rice Krispies and ending up with entire tablespoons of the stuff at the bottom of the bowl which I was only too happy to crunch through. I melted it in a frying pan to try and make sugar glass like the have in the movies. Then I ate that too. Telling me sugar never existed would be like telling me there was never a James Bond Jr cartoon, or telling me that my oldest friend Niall never existed. My entire history would have been rewritten. I'd run home to look at old photos of birthday parties, trying to see if there was a bag of sugar in the background somewhere. I'd go online and type in 'sugar' and hope to high heaven I wouldn't only find stuff about the Apprentice.
I like to think of myself as a rational man but, if the entire world forgot about sugar tomorrow morning, I'd probably tattoo the word across my chest, run onto the stage at the X Factor final with no shirt on and blow myself up. I'd never know if my actions had any effect but surely, surely, somebody out there would see me, see 'sugar' and remember something.

Anyway, there you go. Oh, that ad? You don't remember it? Here you go. I should point out it's a work of fiction. It's not real. Sugar's real. Go eat a big spoon of it and thank fuck for that.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Something I already wrote on facebook, but it's long enough to warrant its own blog entry.

On my way home this evening I took a quick diversion into the Co-op to get something to eat. I'm in a little bit of a hurry this evening, going to see Skyfall again at seven so I went with the easy option. Pizza. You can't go wrong with pizza. Well, maybe you could put it in the oven upside down but if you're that kind of person I'm surprised you managed to make it onto facebook without putting your laptop in the shower.
It's cooking as I type.
I grabbed my disc of bready cheesiness and made my way to the checkouts. There, I was once again HARASSED by the sweets section. Recently, I've had a weakness for peanut M&Ms. I'm fooling myself by thinking the protein in the peanuts balances out the chocolate and sugar shells and makes them someway healthy.
So far, I'm totally fooled. Good job, me.
Anyway, I saw the label on the edge of the shelf "Peanut M&Ms 40p"
"Forty pee?", I thought to myself, careful not to say it out loud in case I sparked a riot, "That's wild cheap". (That's how I talk in my head.) So I grabbed a bag without another thought and approached the checkout with a big smug head on me.
Outside, I looked at the bag I'd bought and I was instantly disappointed. Downsizing had struck again. The bag, I now saw, was much smaller than what I'm used to, maybe two thirds the regular size. Groping it a bit led me to believe it was mostly air, a trick Nestle no doubt picked up from Walkers' Crisps. I opened the bag to see a pitiful amount of sugar coated peanuts staring back at me.
Maybe they were a promotional size, I'm not sure. I can only hope they go back to normal bags but, with Cadbury's taking 4g of chocolate off Dairy Milks in the past few weeks, I won't keep my hopes up.
M&Ms? Would've been more accurate just calling them "Ms"

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

All things nice.

There may be some of you out there that, when you saw I started a blog last year, thought I would approach this site with direction. That, oh, maybe I'd expose the seedy underworld of optometry, I'd review computer games or give you all blow by blow accounts of my lengthy runs in the evenings. And to you people I apologise.
As of today, I have no long game. I have no idea what I'll be writing about next week. Besides a few posts where I detailed my trip with my brother to Vegas, I'm very much winging this. This morning I didn't plan to write anything at all. But this evening changed that. This evening my world was turned upside down, then upside down again so it actually looks very similar to how it began. It's only about two degrees off where it was before, but still. At one point it was upside down.
Oh yes.
This evening, for dinner, I decided to make some chilli. Even though I'm not the herbivore I once was, I still only ever make my chilli vegetarian. Beans, chickpeas, chopped tomatoes and whatever spices take my fancy. I opened some cans, heated the pan and got started.
With the groundwork done, I looked to the flat's spice rack for inspiration. A bit like my blogging, seasoning a chilli is something I make up on the fly. I scanned the rack and reached for a jar.
Five spice. I'm not an idiot, I had no intentions of putting this in my chilli but I opened it and took a wee whiff anyway. It's a lovely smell and and ideal flavour to shake over potato wedges.

I put the five spice back on the shelf and browsed on. What I saw next shook me to my core:
 7 SPICE. Seven spice, people! Since when is this a thing? Was five not enough? Did someone in the spice factory get bored some day? Did their customers demand more? Fucking hell, spice folk, calm down. By this point I got curious. I wondered what limit there was on jarred spice mixes. Evidently five spice wasn't enough for some people, so what's to say seven will be? Surely it's only a matter of time before they rise up again and demand more spice?
How will we contain this? How can we satisfy these spice fiends? WHERE WILL IT ALL END?
Oh, right.


And that was my spice adventure this evening. If you hear of any advances in spice technology, let me know.



Except this. This is never to be mentioned again.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Showing my roots.

I sat at my laptop, staring at a blank blog entry page for a good ten or twelve minutes this evening. I've not written anything for a while and today I told myself that, before I put my head on my pillow tonight, I'd have written something new. I've had blogs, diaries and sketchbooks before. They all ended a month or two down the line. Not this one. Not six/six. This is too important. And not just for me. You, the reader, how are you supposed to know which variety of apple you'd be best sneaking into a nightclub, why I drink so much beetroot juice or what to do if Jehovah's Witnesses are chasing you down the street.

I swiveled around on my chair and looked around my room for inspiration. There wasn't much to inspire me. A wireless printer, a playstation, a few candles here and there. Shirts hanging off a chair. I'm not ironing them today. I've a blog to write! Bah. Nothing here to spark my imagination. I swung back around to my laptop but, mid swing, I stopped.
I smiled. I boiled the kettle, took two photos and took my laptop into the sitting room to write this while watching the Bake-Off.
There it is. That's my inspiration. Not the wardrobe, I should point out. I bought that wardrobe quite recently, for not very much from a Barnardos charity shop down Leith Walk. The wardrobe that was initially in my room was a godawful white laminate chipboard atrocity that was falling apart from the off. While it was probably designed to be rectangular, it spent its time in my room impersonating a parallelogram. It wobbled. It slanted to the left, it slanted to the right. The doors swung open unless held shut with a kettlebell (see above). Even though I had the opportunity to choose its successor, the brown one you see the bottom of in the picture isn't a whole lot better. It looks nice, yes, it has a full length mirror and plenty of shelves but it's BRUTAL quality. The sides are thin, half the dowels aren't in and won't go in properly and it came without a rail for hangars. I get the feeling that swearing loudly nearby would cause it to fall apart.
But my wardrobe isn't what inspired me. Look closer.
No, wait, actually, look somewhere else entirely.
There're the shirts I'm not ironing. But look at the shoes. They're my Kermit the Frog runners. I must've bought them eight years ago. Now look at the first picture. The slippers. Do you see?

I've only noticed this now, but my shoes are always left around my room in that arrangement. One before the other. And, to my knowledge, only one type of people do that.

Farmers.

There's a very specific way to take off your wellies when you come in for tea and sandwiches at 1.00. You use one the toe of one welly to hold down the heel of the other, swing around to do the other and, with both heels free, you step out of the wellies to go in and watch the news. As I grew up it was pretty much guaranteed that, at ten past one on any given afternoon, there'd be at least one pair of wellies outside the back door arranged in a straight line.

Have you seen Inglorious Basterds? Do you remember the scene where Michael Fassbender's character orders three drinks and blows his cover by holding up three fingers in the wrong way? Hold on, I'll go look.
There you go. Apparently in Germany, it's convention to extend your thumb and first two fingers to denote "3", as opposed to what Mike above is doing.

My slippers/runners made me think of that. I've not thrown silage to cattle in years now and my feet have long forgotten the feeling of wellies on them. But yet that's how I still take my shoes off. Heel to toe and leave them in a straight line.
It's how I do things.

And it's how I always will.


Friday, October 5, 2012

Brain damage.

I'd an interesting morning at work today.

I was sitting in my room this morning. The day had just started and I was clicking about on my computer, looking over people due to come in in the diary, checking my emails, making sure there was nothing in the day that would surprise me. Above me, a light fixture flickered. I clicked on. I scrolled down. The flickering kept going. After a while, it actually got worse. Above me was a recessed light fixture, stuck into the ceiling panels. Let me go get a picture off google.
Not a great picture. But it gives you the gist of it. A silver bowl recessed into the plasterboard ceiling tile with two CFL bulbs in it. The flickering had gotten worse because one bulb had blown altogether, leaving the remaining, flickering, one to annoy me without interference. I sighed, stood on my chair and got up to some old fashioned rooting.

I figured I'd enough light from other sources in the room to just take the bulb out altogether, I could source a replacement later in the day. With some tissue paper to insulate things, I took a firm hold of the base of the bulb, pushed it in towards its socket and twisted. Nothing. It didn't budge. Not a push-in, so. I twisted clockwise. Still no give. I twisted anti clockwise. Again, nothing.
This was a tough one. I went through my options again. Going anticlockwise a second time, I heard a faint noise. Quieter than a pin dropping, I hear a "tink".

Instantly, I panicked. I thought back to my youth. I thought back to someone giving out about CFL bulbs. That, while they're great for the rainforest and whales in that they use less 'leccy, they're filled with the most noxious substances known to man. I remembered a science teacher saying something about mercury being in them, and another science teacher tell me about mercury being, even in small doses, a fucking neurotoxin. I pictured men in HazMat suits. I think I was picturing Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak.
I'm making light of this now but, for five minutes today, I was shitting bricks. If I'd enough mercury in my system I'd be shitting out my kidneys soon after too. I was angry at the bulb. I finally got them out (a straightforward pulling motion took them right out of their sockets) and examined them closely.

One bulb was fine. Untouched. Grand. The other one, the one that tinked, had a crack near the base. As cracks go, you'd only see it if you went looking for it. There didn't even look to be any glass missing, no shards below me on the floor. This didn't calm me much. For all I knew, there was a dozen lethal doses of mercury coarsing through my bloodstream as I stood there. I put the bulbs in an A4 envelope. The envelope went into another envelope. All folded up, I put everything into a plastic bag and threw it into my bin. Monday morning, a binman will probably be writing something similar onto his own blog as he panics out.

I sat down and tried to take my mind off things. My shoulder felt sore. Forgetting that I'd been playing squash last night and swimming the night before, I instantly assumed the mercury was causing muscle spasms. I looked in the mirror, it looked like I'd dark shadows around my eyes. I made a typo while writing an email. I stopped typing and looked at my fingers. They were shaking. Fuck, now I'd brain damage. My right eyelid flickered a little bit.
Stroke. I was having a stroke.
All things I would do or experience on a regular day but, since cracking a lightbulb above me, I was convinced I had mercury poisoning.

I went to the toilet. There, I sat down, got my phone out and did a few quick searches.

"How much mercury is in a cfl bulb?"
"CFL bulb breakages and cleanup"
"writing a will in a hurry"

And the internet, the place that can convince you that something like 'not wanting to get out of bed' means you have AIDS, that hiccups means you've SARS, also known as the VERY LAST PLACE YOU EVER WANT TO GO if you have any form of a symptom, it... actually settled me right down.

A CFL bulb contains about 4 milligrams of mercury. That's about ten cans of tuna. And that's if I actually swallowed the whole bulb. I didn't swallow the bulb. I tinked it, double wrapped it and disposed of it.
I left the loo with a spring in my step. The people I work with probably thought I just had a really good pee.
 
I'm grand now. Making typos left, right and centre (really, this post has now taken almost an hour to write up) and my left shoulder's still sore. My eyes always look this way. I'm pushing 27 and I'm starting to show it.

But, for a very short while today, I was scared. Irrationally so, but definitely scared.
Anyway, that's my story for you. I'm away to Canterbury to see an old friend tomorrow evening. I'll probably get more brain damage down there than I'd get chewing twenty bastarding bulbs.

Bye, now.

Monday, September 24, 2012

To (0044)74144704374

Hi there. It's Noel. You've texted me a good few times now, and it's getting a little uncomfortable.

I appreciate that you care about me. I appreciate that you're concerned about recent accidents I may have had and payment protection insurance I may have been mis-sold. I appreciate that you want what's best for me which, according to you, was £2,800 last week but has now risen to £3,400. Pushing up that figure must've taken hours in court, sticking it to the man so that I can have a few hundred pounds extra in my pocket.

But there's a problem.

In my case, there is no man. I haven't had an accident. Check with the folk at my work, I haven't pulled a sickie in two and a half years. The worst I've done is stood on a plug beside my bed, and who can I sue for that? Bendix for making plugs that always sick upwards when not plugged in? Evolution for giving me such sensitive feet? I just don't think we have a case here, never mind a three grand case.
And, as for the PPI racket, I'm grand for that too. I've a credit card and a current account with Lloyds, and they've always taken good care of me. They phone me every six months to make sure I'm doing okay, and bumped up my interest rate on my ISA account without me even asking. I like to think I'm a savvy shopper, to be honest. There was that time about a week ago when I left a pack of Extra gum on the self scan till while I went away with my shopping. Do you think you could claim back my 59p?

If not, then I fear our relationship must come to an end, (0044)74144704374. It was... interesting while it lasted. It wasn't all bad. Each and every time you texted me I, for the duration it took me to take my phone from my pocket, felt special. I felt excited, like maybe a friend had texted me, like maybe someone out there wanted to tell me something, or maybe even wanted to hear my voice.. I'll never forget those moments. And I thank you for them.

But,
For now,
Fuck off.


Noel

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Good morning.

Every so often I arrive into work with a spring in my step. I've a smile in my face, I greet my co-workers with  unexpected enthusiasm and I generally just can't wait for the day to start. People occasionally comment on this. They say I'm "chirpy" or that I must have gotten out on the right side of the bed. And I just smile and nod. The day begins, and three or four people booked in for eye tests that morning get the best damn eye test of their life. Chirpy Noel. There's a fair chance you've never met him.

You may wonder what has me in such a good mood. There's lots of things that could do it. None, by the way, of that Robson and Jerome/Perry Como codswallop about hearing newborn babies cry or touching leaves for me, though. Touching leaves just doesn't cut it for me.

But... maybe I saw some nice art on the way to work?
Seen down Leith Walk sometime last year. A nice break from mobility scooters and tramps.
...no. I'm not chirpy because I saw nice art on the way to work.
But maybe I saw a nice animal on the way to work? A cute dog or some kittens?
Or a goat?
Again, no. I'm not chirpy because I saw a nice animal on the way to work.
Maybe I met a friend on the way to work? Maybe I bumped into an old acquaintance and we had a chinwag at a pedestrian crossing?
And drank a litre of beer.
No. And I only suggested that option so I could use this picture. It's a great picture.

Maybe... I had a nice trip on the bus? A girl smiled at me, traffic was light or the guy playing his music too loud was playing music I liked?
A bus. You didn't need this picture, did you?
Not that either, no.
No, the reason I'm so chirpy this morning is simple.
BOOM!
BANG!
THWACK?
KABLOOEY!
It's because I had my energy shot this morning. It tastes like cordial... that makes cordial. Double cordial. It goes down in one mouthful and it lifts my spirits like nothing else. I usually use it for running but, the odd morning I just can't face the day, one of these down my neck has me tearing out my front door like my first appointment is a naked Famke Janssen.
Thank you, Focus Energy Shot, or whatever you call yourself (the same wee bottle is repackaged in at least six different ways), for getting me where I am today.
I salute you.



Thursday, September 13, 2012

Hey,

I just met you,
And this might sound crazy,

But since the early seventies most of the world's governments have been forcing cereal companies to put more iron into their breakfast cereals. By making us ingest more iron they're hoping to gradually make our blood more magnetic so, using well directed magnetic fields emitted from, oh, A MOBILE PHONE, they can control the flow of it to certain parts of our brains AND CONTROL OUR MINDS.


(I wrote that on my facebook and wanted to share it.)

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Red, red, yellow, yellow, green.

People, at times, accuse me of not "keeping it real". They come up to me and say things like
"Hey up, Daddeo, you're not where it's at anymore. You used to be where it's at, but you rolled down the hill and can't see 'it' anymore. Now can you fix a screw in my bifocals?"
I usually have good comebacks for these people. I tell them how I listen to "pop" music, how most of the people I listen to aren't dead yet. I tell them how the majority of films I've seen in the past year have been in 3D and how the wax I did my hair with this morning has the word "XTreme" in its name.
They swiftly back down. They realise that I'm not only where it's at, they realise that "it", by default, is wherever the fuck I happen to be at a given time.
But, today, I did something I'm a little ashamed of. Something uncool. Something unforgivable for a twenty something year old.
I bought a pizza. I bought a pizza in Sainsburys and instead of choosing the pizza by flavour or topping, as most would, instead of choosing it by price, as many would, I chose it by the wee colour coded wheel telling me just how bad the pizza is for me.

"Red, red, red, red, yellow? Not today.
Red, red, red, yellow, green? Not you either, sunshine.
Red, red, yellow, yellow, green? You're practically good for me. Get in my basket."

Saturday, August 25, 2012

That time I ordered a curry.

A year, year and a half ago, I was sitting in my flat one Saturday evening in December. This was the December with the atrocious snow. Flights were being canceled, bridges were closing. I'd managed to get home from a long day at work, kicked the snow off my shows and put on the heating. I wasn't going outside again that day.
I had a hot shower and reassessed my evening. My fridge was a desperate sight. My block of cheese was moldy and the onions were starting to grow smaller baby onions. The only glimmer of hope in the fridge was the a solitary bottle of Grolsch at the bottom. I popped the cap and went looking for takeaway menus. Chinese. I wanted Chinese. I made my decision and made the phone call.
No deal. The snow was too bad, they weren't delivering that night. My tummy rumbled. Arse.
Pizza, so. I phoned a nearby pizzeria, only five minutes down the road. Again, not delivering. In fact, they were closing early due to the snow. This wasn't looking good. If I went much longer without food I could probably have phoned Oxfam.
Looking outside, the snow was getting heavier and heavier, I could barely make out the buildings on the other side of the street. "It's this or I eat the cheese", I thought, and I phoned a nearby Indian. I convinced them to send out a man with a curry, turned on the telly and put on an episode of Futurama.
Forty minutes later, and I was still hungry. I'd two episodes watched by now, and I was about to put on another. This man with the curry was taking his time. The third episode ended just as the buzzer went. Angry at how long I had to wait, I paid him exactly what I owed him and shut the door in his face. No time to be polite, I was hungry.
The curry. The curry was atrocious. The chicken was undercooked and it was bland as bread soup. I sat back and thought about my actions earlier. Not tipping the delivery man, shutting the door in his face. The poor fellow risked his life driving through a blizzard to get me my food and I treated him like a dog in the street. I'd been a dickhead.
And then I realised my problem.
Bad korma.




(Sorry.)

Monday, August 20, 2012

Danger matches.

Evening, all.
I've not had a whole lot to write about lately. I realise I can only talk so much about running before ye get bored and potter away to another blog (The latest one I'm reading is http://hungryweasel.wordpress.com/ , worth a gander but COME BACK AFTERWARDS.)
I've had a few friends in Edinburgh this past few weeks but I don't want to talk about them too much either. Not that I didn't enjoy myself, I really the fuck did, but if I talked about my social life this past two weeks I'd just end up listing pubs I've sat in and drinks I drank. Nobody likes hearing that. Nobody likes people who list ever single drink they put down their neck. So I won't.
So that doesn't leave me with much to talk about.
Hmm. Y'know what I'll do? I go get some stuffI put onto facebook two years ago, put it here word for word and see how it's aged. A conversation last night reminded me of the time I, for reasons I can't quite remember, bought a box of matches off the internet that you could light anywhere. It's tough finding matches in this day and age that aren't safety matches. It's health and safety gone mad. But I found them, apparently, and got them sent to me. And, on a day off soon after, I pricked about the flat lighting them off things and chronicling it for the fine users of facebook.
So here... we... go.

They don't say safety, so that can only mean one thing... DANGER MATCHES.
I'm not out to impress anyone with this photo. That's for later. I just thought I'd remind you fine folk what matches did.
FFFT! Yep. That. But, well, you can do that with any match. And I didn't make a brand new photo album for any old matches.
For instance, have you ever been having a shower and thought "I'd love to light a match but alas I've only safety matches and the side of the box is gone"?

HAVE YOU?

Me neither
But y'never know.

You'll need tiles and rough grouting in your bathroom, mind. If you've PVC, best bring a lighter.
A seive.
Shit, this album really isn't working out as well as I thought it'd be. But anyway...
I can light my matches on a seive!
Not just for seiving or wearing as a helmet when you're pretending to be in the army!

Wait, what? What'm I gonna light these chaps off?
THEMSELVES?
Noel! You're mad! Stop this, someone will get hurt!

SHUT UP, WORLD.
Took me a good ten minutes between the last photo and this one. Couldn't find anything else to light these boyos against.
Then I found this bottle of, eh, coke...
Nice ridges on the lid, there, I wonder if I could...
BOOYEAH.
So that's me done. Everything I could possibly light a DANGER MATCH off.
Okay, see y'all, wait, what?

My beard?
This beard?
Well, let's see...

No wait, I'll try my good side.
So just... one... quick... snap of the wrist...
Eh... no.
Not happening. Clint Eastwood must've had a jaw made of granite.
That shit ain't happening.



Fuck, I looked fresh then. It ended a bit abruptly, but I wanted to leave it as I wrote it back then. Also, I just realised I've had that viking tshirt for two years now. Classic look right there. Right, I put this up mostly so my blog just didn't go too stale. I do want to keep writing more, but it's not everyday (or week/month) that something comes along to inspire me. If you do have any ideas, leave them below, otherwise I'll end up rating jelly beans out of ten or try and turn ye all atheist. And nobody wants that to happen.











Wednesday, August 8, 2012

I learned something tonight.

So there I was, out running near Ocean Terminal earlier this evening. The sun was at my back, the wind nudging me alone the footpath and a long shadow stretched out on for metres ahead of me. As I rounded a bit of a hill, something else appeared in my vision.
A pair of legs the likes of which I've never seen before. Tanned, smooth and seemingly neverending. A mini skirt that was barely there. An ass that swung like... a swing? A jacket. It was an alright jacket, I suppose. She also had hair. It was dark and looked she was just out of the shower.
It might've been heatstroke, but I was smitten. Last week's girl on the bus was cast out of my mind (Same with her boyfriend Julio she was talking to on the phone. JULIO.) Chest out, arms pumping like I was some kind of Navy Seal, I ran past her without diverting my eyes from what was on front of me. I had to give her the idea that I was some kind of fitness machine and that I might be hiding some kind of sixpack (she didn't have to know it's in my fridge). So on I went for the obligatory six, maybe seven seconds, wondering what beauty lay behind me. When the time felt right, I turned around and BAM, face full of blinding sunlight. My pupils scrambling to close over, I turned back around to look at a big purple circle in the middle of my vision and just about veered around a wheelie bin and clipped a phone box. I gave up on seeing the front of this girl, the girl of my dreams and continued on home.

I learned something tonight.
Ladies, it's not right that us men objectify you so. It's nice of you to go to effort at times to look well for us, we do appreciate it but it's important that we keep in mind that you aren't just eye candy, you aren't just a nice set of breasts and a wiggly arse. It's important that we remember that you're so much more. You're doctors, scientists, teachers and mothers. And I'll try keep that in mind next time I'm out running.

Men, take fucking sunglasses out anytime ye go for a jog. I nearly walloped me bollox off a bollard with that fuckup.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

My new friend Jacob.

Like most folk in the day and age, I get a serious amount of spam sent to me on a daily basis. Since this morning, sixty new messages have clogged up my spam filter. Every week or two I poke and prod through them. Gmail tends to be quite good at sorting this stuff out, and the messages in my spam folder tend to be just that, spam. But I worry that I might miss something. I slipped up a month ago and lost eighty million in the Ghanan lottery, that won't happen again.
So, a few nights ago, I scrolled down through my spam filter. I scrolled past claims to improve my vision, offers to help with my baldness and my one chance at earning a law degree online. I scrolled past private messages from nearby girls interested in ME, the five worst foods to eat for belly flab and pre approved credit cards.
I stopped at one from a Mr. Obi Jacob. The subject line was beautifully simple:
PLEASE READ THE ENCLOSED.
I figured "Let's give Jacob a spin, see what he has to say for himself" and opened it up.
Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division
FBI Headquarters In Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

Attention: Beneficiary
Fuck. This can't be good.

This is the final warning you will receive from me. This notice has been sent to you in many occassions/ several times but you ignored it.
 You see? This is why I should go through my spam more often, and so should you.


I have warned you so many times and you decided to ignore my e-mails because you believe we have not been instructed to get you arrested, if you fail to respond back to us with the payment details below, then we would first send a letter to the MAYOR of the city where you reside and also direct the bank to close your account until you comply with our directives. Note that all your properties will be confiscated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We would also send a letter to the company/organization you work for so that they could get you fired until we are through with our investigations because a suspect is not supposed to be working for the government or any private organization.
They've not even told me what I've done yet and already they're threatening to rat me out to THE MAYOR of my city. The MAYOR of  Edinburgh. The-, wait, does Edinburgh have a mayor? There's a Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. The man's 91, will he really care that much? Unless my crime was kneecapping the Queen herself I think he'll be throwing your message in the Royal Spam filter, Jacob. And as for notifying the company I work for? I haven't pulled a sickie since starting there, two and a half years ago. Some time off would go down nicely. You'll have to do more than that.



Your ID which we have in our database have been sent to all the crimes agencies in America for them to upload you in their website as an internet fraudsters and a terrorist (suicide bomber). Also to warn people from having any dealings or friendly communication with you anymore. This would have been solved all this while if you had gotten the CERTIFICATE ENDORSED AND STAMPED as you were instructed in the e-mail below. I, ROBERT S. MUELLER III, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wish to inform you that there is no more time left to waste because you have been given enough grace therefore you have been mandated to comply immediately you read this e-mail if you don't want to be arrested. As stated earlier, to have the document endorsed and stamped without any delay, you must adhere to this directives to avoid you from blaming yourself at last when we must have arrested and sentence you to life imprisonment. Note that all your properties will be seized and bank account will be confiscated too.
 You're going to report ME as an internet fraudster? ME? Eh, hello, kettle? This is pot. We don't want you coming to our golf games anymore.
The rest of the paragraph is a little incomprehensible. I skimmed it. If I missed anything important, I'd appreciate being informed. I'm on the lam, here, like.

As a good Christian and a Honest man, I decided to see how i can be of help to you because i would not be happy to see you end up in jail and all your properties got confiscated because your information was used to carry out a fraudulent transactions. I called the EFCC NIGERIA and they directed me to a private attorney who can help you get the process done and he stated that he will endorse and stamp the document at the sum of $98 only and i believe this process is cheaper for you. You need to do everything possible to get this process done today or tomorrow because i have been informed by the ARREST WARRANT ISSUANCE DEPARTMENT that the warrant of arrest has been prepared against you and once is being signed by me as the FBI DIRECTOR, then the arrest will be carried out in the next 48hours. from our investigations, we learnt that you were the person that forwarded your identification to one impostor/ fraudster in Nigeria when he had a deal with you about the transfer of some illegal funds into your bank account which is valued at the sum of $10,500,000.00 only. You failed to comply with our directives/instruction, and that was the reason why we didn't hear from you. As i have already been notified about you getting the process completed yesterday and right now the WARRANT OF ARREST has been signed against you and it will be carried out in the next 48hours as strictly signed by the FBI director. We have investigated and found out that you don't have any idea when the fraudulent deal was conducted with your information's/identity and right now your ID is placed on our database as a wanted person. I believe you know that it will be a shame to you and your entire family. Also it will be announced in all the local channels that you are wanted by the FBI.
Now there's a paragraph. Finally, Jacob swings in the save the day.  He's willing to get in touch with his... friends in the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to help me out? How'd Nigeria come into this? Jacob, are you yanking my crank? He's asking for $98 to clear my name. $98? It'd be worth robbing a few cars and torching an orphanage most weekends if my man Jake can clear my name for under a hundred quid.
Oh, wait, I had to do this "today or tomorrow"... last Friday? And if I didn't, Jacob himself, the newly elected FBI Director (he got a promotion within the space of a paragraph), would issue a warrant for my arrest. After that, I'd be arrested within... 48 HOURS? Fuck! Better finish this quick.
At least I now know my crime... kinda. A Nigerian fraudster has transferred ten and a half million dollars into my account. Well take me outside and put me in the stocks. No, wait, announce it on local TV! Oh, you were going to do that anyway. Keep 'er lit, Jacob.
Note: All the crimes agencies have been contacted on this regards and we shall trace and arrest you if you disregard this instruction. You are advised to make the payment for the signing and stamping of the document today, failure to do that will attract a maximum arrest and finally we shall apply for litigation against you. Thereafter, you will appear in ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT COURT OF WASHINGTON D.C for terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking charges. Be warned, do not try anything funny because we are monitoring you  from our satellite.
MAXIMUM ARREST. Is that an actual term? Am I dealing with Robocop or something?
It's at this point I figured that something fidhy might be going on. Besides threatening me with "Maximum arrest", Jacob then goes so far as to warn me not to "try anything funny" (Shhh.) and then lets me know that they're monitoring me via satellite (which explains why I mooned the sky every 2 miles on my jog tonight).

Meanwhile, I pleaded on your behalf so that this agency could give you till 07/20/2012 so that you can get this process done. Bear it in mind that this is the only way that i can be able to help you at this moment. But if you fail to comply you will face the law and its consequences once it had befallen on you. You will have to make the payment through western union money transfer with the below information then Send the payment details to me as stated below.
  You pleaded on my behalf? Jacob, you're the fucking director of the fucking FB fucking I. Surely you could do more than plead. You know, I think you're pulling my leg. I think, THINK I'll not bother replying to you and cobble together a blog entry out of this, maybe get a couple of hits.

That said, if you do wake up beside some dead hookers anytime soon, you might wanna take down the following, fill it out and send it off to my man Jake. And wave your willy at the clouds every chance you get, he's probably watching you right now.


NAME: OBI JACOB

ADDRESS: LAGOS, NIGERIA

TEXT QUESTION: BETTER

ANSWER: BEST

AMOUNT: $98

SENDER'S FULL NAME:

SENDER'S FULL ADDRESS:

DIRECT PHONE NUMBER:

MTCN: 

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Wee bag.

About two weeks ago, a Wednesday I think, I was hovering about the shop floor as I worked out in Cameron Toll shopping centre. An old man, mid seventies but in good shape, approached the front desk. I was just back from my lunch, my next appointment hadn't turned up so I walked over to him to see if I could help. He asked me if I'd be able to fix his glasses as the lens had fallen out. I smiled, lent forward to see the wreckage in his hand and told him I'd see what I could do.
I like fixing glasses. It's not hard, the only reason I can do it and you can't is because you don't have very small screwdrivers and screws. Good vision is handy too, it can be pretty tricky fixing your reading glasses if you've no glasses to help you see them in the first place. A few optometrists don't like this. I know of one or two who feel this kind of task is below them, that they've better things to do, maybe, but I like it. Tightening a screw, bending a side back into place or replacing a nose-pad, it gives me a few minutes of... peace. Serenity. I like, as well, going back to the person with their glasses, newly in one piece again, and telling them that "they'll last a few more battles if they have to". I like it when they offer to pay and I halfheartedly put my palms towards them and tell them not to bother, that it was "nothing major" or maybe to tell them to put a few coins in the next poor box they see. People who don't offer to pay for repairs I don't like. They get my mean squinty face as they turn to walk out (they don't ever see my mean, squinty face, but I'm guessing the back of their heads feel sore).
This repair was a little more difficult. This man's supra cord had snapped. Supra cord is what's used to secure lenses on what we call 'supra', or semi-rimmed, frames. If you've ever seen glasses or sunglasses with just a frame along the top of the lens, there's a very fine cord running along the lower edge of the lens too. It's kind of like fishing reel, invisible to the naked eye. 
Did you really need this picture? Fine, so let's zoom in on the cord.

You can't zoom in on the cord, I told you it's INVISIBLE.
If the cord is broke, and it can snap for a number of reasons, we usually rethread it, put in a new one altogether. I went back to the lab area of the shop and went looking for some replacement supra cord. I found about ten centimetres worth in a wee, see through, plastic bag and had the man's glasses fixed three or four minutes later. I handed them back to him, told him the try them on to make sure they still fitted nicely, pointed my palms at him as he offered to pay and advised him to buy a Big Issue next time someone offered him one (to balance out the Universe).
Back in the lab (I had to put the pliers back where I found them or Colin, who wasn't in that day, would hit me with the leg of a chair), I saw the wee bag the cord came in again. I picked it up and looked at it. I'd seen bags like this before. Lots of bags. But this one, hmm, this one looked useful. At the time, a wealth of uses came to mind.
Right now, I can only think of two. Firstly, I could store buttons in it. I imagined my nine spare buttons at home, from various suits and jackets, strewn across the bottom of my DIY/sewing/wires shoebox. This bag could bring order to the buttons. This wee bag could make my shoebox a better place to put things.
The second use, which I now realise isn't very useful, is for matchsticks. It's a resealable wee bag, matches would stay dry in it, I could go snorkling and light a cigar afterwards with no problems whatsoever. I now realise that, while I could indeed store matches in the wee bag, I'd have nothing to strike them against.

There were other uses at the time, I swear, but they all elude me right now. I took the wee bag. I put it in my wallet and there it stayed until today.
You want to see the wee bag, I know you do.

There you go. A wee, see through, resealable, plastic bag. There's ten million of them in the world today. But this one was going to be special, this one was going to make a difference.

Now, as I look at it, I can't find a use for it. I forgot that I threw out all my spare buttons (all nine) when I moved flat. I don't snorkel. I'm thinking of throwing the wee bag away.
Anyway, the reason I'm telling you, and the rest of the internet, this is so that if I ever get ran over by a bus (or shot, if I'm in Dublin) and the police go looking for ID in my wallet and find a wee bag folded up in a credit card slot that at least ONE OF YOU can convince them that I wasn't a crystal meth addict and that I just had a soft spot for a wee bag.
No meth for me, thanks, I'm high on LIFE.











Monday, June 25, 2012

Trip to America IV: Where was I?

Got a little side tracked, there.
Anyway, here, let me go look at my pictures folder and see where exactly in America I was when I finished my last post.
Oh yes. So we'd gone up and down the state of California. We kicked about the town a little more and, a few days later, my parents hit the dusty trail back to Ireland. 
Few photo opportunities first, we're a ferociously good looking family, y'know.
Ferociously.

I stayed on with Donal and we got down to planning out trip to Vegas. I've said it before. America's a big country. Ireland can easily be covered with one decent sized map. America, no chance. So we'd to sit down, google stuff like there was no tomorrow, load maps onto me kindle and figure out the best way to Vegas while taking in Area 51, Death Valley and where the Undertaker lives.
Paul Bearer lives two doors down.

We tipped over to Costco, which is like Lidl on STEROIDS. The place sells six packs of RUM, washing machines and flipping CANOES. We already had a canoe, so w bought a pallet of water, enough cereal bars to feed eighteen bullocks for the winter and an extra tank of gas. Got up early one morning and headed south towards Los Angeles.
We turned north onto the 14 and then the country really opened up. This country... fuck me. I've never seen road so straight. They go on and on until, well, until you can't see any further.
The gallon drum of gas (I'm calling it 'gas' for this whole series, calling it 'petrol' when discussing America seems a bit wrong) in the trunk (or 'boot') didn't seem so silly all of a sudden. You could break down and be easily seventy, eighty miles from anything. You take a wrong turn, you could end up down some canyon with no reception, an empty tank and a fierce thirst. Respect the wilderness, folk.
Donal paying respect.

Anyway, we got a little lost at one point. End up in California... City (which is much less glamorous than it sounds).
We pricked about a little more, figured out which way was North, ended up driving half an hour at a time just to find a roadsign to tell us what highway we were on and found our way again. Next stop, Redrock Canyon.
Fucking Hell. One of the driest places in the country, but mother of mercy, it was impressive. Shut up until I load a heap of photos onto you.
Seriously.
Fucking.

Hell.





I've said it before and I'll say it again. Photos are horrendously poor at showing the scale of these things. Not just the beauty, but the... hmm... the feeling. The dry heat. The moment you turn a corner and realise how easy it would be to get lost, how people must've ended up here on their way across the country hundreds of years ago. How not everyone would've made it. If you didn't have water with you, you wouldn't make a day. If you put a foot wrong, you tumbled down a 45 degree slope and cracked your head off a rock.
This didn't happen. After an hour of taking artsy photos of stones we got back in the car and continued north.
We stopped, early enough, in a town called Ridgecrest. It was four, maybe five o'clock and we'd a lot of driving yet to do. We decided to leave it for today, finish the drive tomorrow and find a place to stay for the night.
Ridgecrest, as my brother pointed out, felt a little odd. It's on the southern perimeter of the China Lake Naval Weapons Facility. The China Lake Naval Weapons Facility is 4,500km in area, just larger than Kerry (if you're Irish), Suffolk (if you're English), or 110 Skyrims (if you're me). The streets are lined with hanging banners with people's faces on them. Closer inspection reveals they're all fallen soldiers, young men and women who left their town and never came back. Every second billboard is an advert for hypnotherapy centres or sleeping clinics. This town had issues.
With any other town a good 100 miles down the road, we stayed there anyway. Found a nice wee motel who were willing to take us, stocked up on wifi.
Sweet, glorious wifi. A man can go mad in the desert if he doesn't have enough wifi.
And took a wee trip around Ridgecrest. We watched the Hunger Games in a cinema that looked like it may have shown Citizen Kane the first time it came out and not recieved a lick of paint. We took pictures of trucks.
Three yellow trucks in a row (and my brother in the Passat), you try not take a picture of that.

And then this one was just hilariously big. You could rear a family in that thing.
And called it a night. Lots more driving to do the next day.