tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28034220912649767662024-03-13T14:18:05.202-07:00six/sixMumbling away since 1985.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-46812236114564178282013-06-14T13:45:00.002-07:002013-06-14T17:00:28.448-07:00Today I felt really angry.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There have been times I've felt annoyed. Other times I've been peeved. Disgruntled. Miffed. But I've never felt this before. Read on...<br />
<br />
Two weeks ago, May 31st I was supposed to be getting the keys to my new flat. It was a Friday. I'd swapped my day off with a girlI work to have the entire day to get things done. Collect the keys. Check the radiators. Plan out what I had to do with the place. Late in the afternoon I got a call from my solicitors. To summarise, I wasn't getting my keys. The mortgage offer had the wrong address on it, the bank had released the funds but my solicitors couldn't use them. Being a Friday afternoon, not much could be done. My solicitor advised it could be a few days before we could go ahead. I sighed. A setback. It was inevitable. I phoned my mortgage adviser at the bank. She apologised for everything and assured me she would get on the case would right the wrongs.<br />
The next week went quite quickly. I assumed the bank were hard at work changing that 7 to a 5 on my mortgage offer. (By the way, the incorrect address had been spotted before. My solicitors informed the bank and asked them to change it. The bank have this request on file, they just did nothing about it.) I had the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off, I was planning on using the days to paint, get my broadband set up and whatnot. Instead I watched X-Men cartoons, played a videogame about a magic wolf and ate weird cornflakes Sainsburys had on offer.<br />
Friday was the next milestone. On Friday I got a call from a girl in my bank's HQ. She advised the funds now needed to be returned to the bank. They needed four working days to clear at which point a new offer could be drafted and I'd be on my way to my new home with my keys jingling in my pocket. Four working days.<br />
Hoo-FUCKING-ray.<br />
My parents came over that night. It was a flying visit, originally planned so they could get a quick look at their son's first property purchase. We looked at the front. They went home, slightly disappointed.<br />
<br />
Four working days. I hate this bank nonsense. They can transfer my deposit of well over ten grand out of my account in nanoseconds but it takes then four working days to make sure my funds had been returned to them. It's not real money. It's digital, imaginary, internet hyperspace money. IT'S NOT LIKE THEY LENT ME IT IN POUND COINS.<br />
The money was returned. That was this day (Friday) last week. On the Sunday, to get some kind of a rise out of me, the bank added a mortgage account to my internet banking. Now I all of a sudden owed well over a hundred thousand pounds for, get this, the flat at the wrong address. I was paying the mortgage for the people who'd be living above me. On the Monday morning they took my first mortgage payment, again for a flat I had never set foot in.<br />
This whole time I remained calm. Anyone I'd spoken on the phone to had remarked on this. I knew things would be sorted. Shit was falling apart but I trusted my solicitor and my mortgage advisor. They both seem genuinely interested in fixing things for me. Also, I'd in some way planned for this kind of thing. I had an overlap of the whole of June to move from my current flat to the next.<br />
Yesterday, Thursday, I talked to the HQ girl again. The funds had cleared. She could push on with reissuing the relevant documents. The wheels were turning. This was good.<br />
<br />
Which brings us to today. I was doing a late shift today. I was also due some time back from the company so I wasn't starting until 1.30. I made all this clear with the bank. Everything that was going to happen today had to happen by noon. I left the flat early and hovered around the city in various coffee shops from about ten onwards. At 10.20 my phone rang. I smiled, I'd have my keys by 11.<br />
It was the HQ girl. She explained to me that, for one reason or another, she couldn't reissue the mortgage offer today. The earliest it could be done would now by Monday.<br />
That's when I felt angry. I'd never felt that way before. I couldn't speak for a while. I held the phone to my chest and tried to think about what I wanted to say. I looked around the street, somehow expecting a familiar face to be there for support. There was noone. My free hand did it's own thing. Short of a face to punch, it did a weird action that looked like it was playing an invisible piano. I felt disappointed. I felt confused. This phone call was supposed to be the bank, after leaving me adrift for two weeks, giving me a hand-up. Instead they kicked me in the face. Five, maybe ten seconds passed. I composed myself. I stopped my hand from doing the piano thing but it still shook uncontrollably. I spoke in a low voice, slowly and clearly. I made it very clear to the girl how much of an inconvenience all this had been to myself, to my family and to my solicitors. I explained that I was now coming close the the very real possibility of being homeless. I explained that the girl was to liase with my solicitors on a regular basis until I had my new keys in my pocket and that, the instant anything changed I was to be informed. I explained that, when all this is over, that I would be having an in-depth conversation about compensation. Afterwards I realised I may have came across a little like Liam Neeson. I texted some family and friends with an update and sat on a bench in silence for half an hour before heading to work for an early start.<br />
<br />
So Monday is my new date. I'm off that day. I should get my keys early enough, let myself into my new flat and plug in the kettle my parents brought over for me. Then I'll sit down, make a phone call to a girl in an office somewhere and have a long conversation about compensation.<br />
And that will be quite the interesting phone call indeed.<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-61644634702578775562013-05-17T13:36:00.002-07:002013-05-17T13:36:29.173-07:00Nolan's ark.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I mumble.<br />
<br />
If you know me, you know this. I have to repeat myself a lot in person, sometimes slowly, sometimes with gestures. If the guy in Costa doesn't quite catch what size I want my coffee I tend to follow it up by saying 'large' once more while holding my hands out flat with one about ten inches above the other. The 'cardboard box' gesture. Try it.<br />
Big fish, small fish, cardb-, there you go. That's my symbol for a large coffee. To go, please.<br />
It's one of the reasons I don't like talking on the phone. A lot of people have difficulty understanding me on the phone. My deep tone and my south Monaghan accent together just don't travel down a phone line well. (Also, on the phone or in conversation in general I have to think of stuff to say on the fly. That's HARD. In a text, in an email or even here I have better control over what I say. This sentence alone was probably rewritten three or four times before you got to read tit.)<br />
So, yes, I mumble. <br />
This is leading to a story. You know it is. I'll try keep it short.<br />
My first eye test of the day was a girl from down in England somewhere. She was nice, polite and almost inhumanly cheery for 9.10 on a Friday morning. I popped my head out of testing room door, addressed her by her name and invited her in got her eye test. I gestured towards the testing chair and told her to "rest yourself there". I know I said those exact words because I tell everyone I test to "rest yourself there". I like that phrase. I feel it puts folk at ease quicker. (Though maybe it doesn't. Maybe nobody understands that either, maybe all they hear is "Reshyurrshelfder" and somehow find the chair on their own.)<br />
I then introduced myself. Again, this tends to go like clockwork. I said, word for word, "My name's Noel, I'm the optician here today" and, before I had a chance to continue, she was straight in with a compliment.<br />
"Noah? That's a nice name!"<br />
I smiled a little. This happens a lot. I've drank many a coffee from a Starbucks cup with "Noah" written on the side.<br />
I smiled, apologised lightheartedly for my thick accent and repeated my name. To hammer it home I told her I was born near Christmas. (I was.)<br />
She smiled and giggled.<br />
"Ohhhh, Nolan? Sorry! Nolan, that's a much nicer name."<br />
I didn't want to correct the poor girl twice. I'd be spending the next fifteen minutes telling her the little N on the bottom left was actually a H and I didn't want to crush her spirit altogether so I let it go. I smiled again and went on with the eye test.<br />
<br />
Nolan Finegan, pleased to meet you. <br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-87799257454489693082013-05-04T07:09:00.002-07:002013-05-04T07:09:22.082-07:00You go, grandpa.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I laughed today. I laughed out loud. I couldn't help myself.<br />I was walking down Victoria Street, the curved street that leads down into the Grassmarket. You know it, it has a sandwich shop with a dead pig in the window and an antique book shop.<br />Yes, that street.<br />Anyway, up the street came an Aston Martin V12 Vantage, the kind of car James Bond had in Die Another Day. This one wasn't invisible, though it *was* a convertible and had its roof down. Bitter as I am, I began to imagine in my mind what kind of WANKER was driving the car. I imagined a a young Duke of someplace. I imagined a Spanish football player, maybe with a supermodel in the passenger seat. I imagined that fat man who won the Euromillions and still can't help the fact that his head looks like a thumb.<br />The driver was none of those.<br />Behind the wheel was the oldest man I've ever seen, surely in his 90s and barely big enough to look over the wheel. He squinted at the street ahead of him with eyes that were almost closed. His skeletal fingers were covered in gold rings and he wore the BIGGEST fur coat I've ever seen. It looked a bear was trying to swallow him.<br />I don't know where he was going. Maybe he was away to a fox hunt, or to buy the whole of Aberdeen. At his age, he may have been on his way to his own funeral. I couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation. Out loud.<br />But then I thought, fuck it, fair play to the old chap. You can't take it with you. Spend your money while you can. Blow it all on fur coats and gold rings and £150,000 cars. To hell with the grandkids, they can earn their own money.<br />You go, grandpa.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-35714885179069442462013-03-15T13:54:00.001-07:002013-03-15T13:54:48.414-07:00The Dinny Card.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the backstage are of my blog I can see a little bit about what kind of people wander onto my blog. It tells me it tells me 26% of you people use Firefox while 11% use Safari. It tells me where you all come from too. The majority of you fine, fine folk log on from Ireland, followed by the UK, the US and a string of other weird countries like Bermuda and... France.<br />
Those of you back home in Ireland probably won't need much help with the next few paragraph. The Bermudaens amongst you, though, might need a wee bit. So I'll talk slow.<br />
There's an amateur sporting organisation in Ireland known as the Community Games. It's mostly for young folk and covers a wide variety of sports such as Gaelic football, swimming, hockey and Judo. Throughout the year children compete in local tournaments and, over the summer, the regional champions come together in Ireland over a few weekends to see who comes out on top.<br />
Needless to say, I attended the finals a few times. Oh yes. Me and Ireland's finest young people in Mosney holiday centre. What did I participate in? Oh, well, that's not important. This blog post works perfectly well without you knowing that.<br />
Oh, fine, I took part in the under-14s quiz, draughts, art and... recitation.<br />
Recitation, the past-time of KINGS. Loser kings who liked boring the tits off their friends with woeful poems.<br />
Yeah, I did the shite stuff. The kind of activities I got up to had their own weekend. The "special activities weekend". A nation of thirteen year old oddballs with inhalers, Gameboys and thick glasses came together to see who was the best at board games or knew the capital of Peru.<br />
One thing that always raised attention, however, was the Variety show. For this, a team of youngsters would get together on-stage for fifteen minutes to sing songs, dance a bit, do a few comedy sketchs and get the audience clapping. Even though it wasn't a true sport like draughts, folk went mad for it.<br />
I was watching this back in August 2001. I can specify the month because I remember the country reeling from something else at that time. Joe Lynch had died.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joe Lynch, 1925-2001</td></tr>
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Joe Lynch was a familiar face on Irish television. He played Dinny Byrne on Glenroe, surely the best thing to watch on a Sunday night for ten years running. For those of you still here not familiar with Irish culture or heritage, Glenroe was a little like... Emmerdale? It was a weekly soap set in a village with storylines centered around farming, praying and adultery. It was, for many young, folk, the last bit of television they'd get before going back to school on a Monday morning and, tragically, the subject of many schoolyard conversations at wee break.<br />
But let's get back to the variety show. Monaghan had a good show that year. I half remember a song from Grease, and there might have been a sketch about cavemen or something. Someone definitely wore a Fred Flintsone costume. The audience were mesmerised. We had it in the bag.<br />
The next few acts didn't change that. Cork were woeful. Sligo looked like they wrote their show the night before on the back of an envelope. With their bad hand. Monaghan were cocky. We were smug. But that changed. Another county came on stage near the end of the day. I can't for the life of me remember who so we'll go with Carlow. Fucking Carlow. Ten minutes of mediocrity did little to wow the audience but then, out of nowhere, a familiar tune chimed through the PA system.<br />
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The sly bastards low-blowed the entire country and played the Glenroe theme tune. Someone came on stage in an old trenchcoat and wellies and walked around in circle with a picture of Joe Lynch on a placard while the song played overhead. To an outsider it would look like madness but, to an Irishman, it was... beautiful.<br />
They'd done it. They'd played the Dinny card. Carlow (or whatever county it was, it sure as fuck wasn't Monaghan) won the Community Games Variety competition 2001.<br />
<br />
<br />
Pricks. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-69498216514735204252013-02-13T14:59:00.000-08:002013-02-13T14:59:01.293-08:00Refereeing a week of mud wrestling.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="userContent">I've never been a particularly athletic
individual. Growing up, I didn't play football, I'd always 'forget' my
gear for PE and I'd scoff at my mother going for walks around the roads
in the evenings.<br /> But I never minded walking with a purpose. Walking
somewhere. I did it back home, I did it in Dublin and still, in
Edinburgh, I'll walk most places.<br /> It's one of the reasons I'm in no hurry to get a ca<span class="text_exposed_show">r (or indeed learn to drive, still something I'm not overly proud of). <br />
Back home in Carrick if there wasn't a lift available I'd have no
issues with walking into town. There are two main ways of getting into
town from my home. Both go via a route known as 'The Lurgans'.<br /> The
first way is the easy way. It takes about an hour, half uphill and half
downhill. It's all road and there's not much traffic.<br /> The second
way, the hard way, is quicker. It cuts twenty minutes off the time but
forces you up a wee lane only used by tractors and cattle. It brings you
out halfway along the easy way somewhere near Mark Sheridan's house.<br /> Howwurya, Mark.<br />
On a good day you might get through it with only mild damage done. A
bit of dust on the bottom of your jeans, maybe a couple of snags on your
sleeves from thorns and only a mild sweat on your brow. On a bad day
you could end up looking like you've been refereeing a week of mud
wrestling.<br /> I've never once taken the easy way into town.<br /> I pick my steps. Done properly, you can gracefully step on grassy bits and avoid the muck and puddles.<br /> I've never done it properly.<br /> Which is why I'm sitting in a coffee shop in <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=108393022522910&extragetparams=%7B%22group_id%22%3A0%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Carrickmacross/108393022522910?group_id=0">Carrickmacross</a> looking for the world like I was dragged through half of the first world war.</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-246121024729632542013-02-07T13:51:00.000-08:002013-02-07T13:51:01.301-08:00Grundig.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Back when I was wee I watched a lot of telly. At least that was what my mother thought. We had a big old telly with no remote control. You had to go up to it, flip open a panel to the right of the screen and twiddle knobs to do things. Then we got a new telly.<br />We got a Grundig. Is Grundig still about? A quick google would say 'no'. Oh well.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shame, they had a lot of style.</td></tr>
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<br />Our sitting room at the time was quite small so we went with a little one, probably in or around 14 inches. A man came out and helped install it. It wasn't a technical thing, plugging in a telly, but I think something on the roof had to be hit with a hammer. Twenty minutes later the man was showing my father how to use the new telly. He showed him how to tune in channels and how to use the remote. He gave him the gist of teletext too. I remember seeing the RTE 'Aertel' menu page. I remember seeing the 'KIDS ZONE' advertised, it was page 440. I asked my father to navigate towards this magical zone but by then he was busy trying to tune in Channel 4.<br />This telly also had a security feature. You could set up a code without which you couldn't watch TV. You'd turn on the telly and just see static until the correct 4 buttons were pressed. And it wasn't just 0-9 either, it was the contrast buttons, the volume, the four coloured quicktext buttons. If you didn't know the code, you weren't watching telly.<br />My mother, not usually one for technology, figured this out with blinding speed. A day later she had the telly locked down. I couldn't watch a thing without her approval. My all-encompassing knowledge of Power Rangers went to fuck very quickly. My mother even figured out a timer function so she could turn it on and set it to turn off again an hour later. She had me. She had us all.<br />
I remember trying out different codes. I tried versions of our phone number. I tried the coloured buttons in a row. I tried typing out WORDS on the number keys hoping the telly would respond to me typing out "please turn on". I was desperate. But then I thought of something. I went rooting in the drawer where we kept all the manuals and documentation that came with electrical stuff. That stuff never got thrown away. As a family, we must have been terrified we'd forget how to use the toaster someday. (I always liked the troubleshooting bits at the ends of those manuals. Every single fault that could happen is covered by "Ensure the device is plugged in." and "Ensure the device is powered on.")<br />
I found the TV's manual. I flicked through the features and found the bit about locking the telly. It mentioned a failsafe code in case you forgot the one you specified. It said the failsafe code was on the back page. I smiled. I flicked to the back page. The bottom right hand corner of the back page on the manual was neatly cut away.<br />
I must have been about eight then. That may well have been the first time I sweared.<br />
A few months later I'd settled into things. I had a Gameboy, it wasn't so bad. My friend Niall nearby had a VCR and lots of great films taped.<br />
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1993? Maybe I was 10.<br />
<br />
Around the same time, though, my aunt Patricia and her husband Declan had just finished building their new house. We went out one evening for some chat and tea. They had bought a *big* telly for their sitting room. It must have been 32 inches.<br />
It was a Grundig.<br />
I sneakily opened the cupboard under the telly and found the manual. It was the same layout, a similar model only scaled up. I flicked straight away to the back page.<br />
There, at the bottom right of the back page was a little rectangle about an inch high and two inches wide.<br />
There were four symbols in the rectangle.<br />
They stood for 'volume up, volume down, channel up, channel down'.<br />
<br />
I went home with those four symbols burned into my brain. They're still there, evidently. The regime soon fell. A year later we even got a VCR and I could watch shite films about capoeira in the comfort of my own home.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-3431599960417921292013-01-21T10:57:00.001-08:002013-01-21T10:57:13.167-08:00I like to shave in the shower.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Any of you who've seen me or my face will know I'm not the kind of person that gets through razor blades too quickly but I <i>do</i> like to keep my face someway manicured. And one of the ways I do that is, every so often, shaving my neck. I like a clean neck. I like the feeling of it and, I'll be honest, I like the way it defines my jaw line. Without a hair/no hair division, my jaw line is too... hazy. My face and my neck seem to blend in leaving me looking a bit like a thumb. Also I look too young. Like a thumb who's barely out of his teens.<br />
<br />
Anyway, yes, so when I do figure it's time for a shave I tend to do so in the shower. Men, if you're not shaving in the shower, you're missing out. Your pores are open, you've suds a-plenty and a constant supply of hot water. The only drawback is you're doing it blind so you've to be careful. I tend to do the body of the work without much caution and then slow down when I get to the edges. I run my hand over the area and nod at no one in particular when I'm happy with how smooth it all feels.<br />
And, each and every time, I get out of the shower, look in the mirror and see a neck shaved in such a half arsed manner it looks like I rubbed it with a belt sander. I sigh, fill the sink with hot water and finish it off.<br />
<br />
So there's a little story for you. I've not been updating this blog a lot recently so I'm going to try smaller, more frequent stories for a little while. Right-oh, close this tab and get back to facebook, you lot.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-13630197966357200522013-01-12T10:38:00.001-08:002013-01-12T10:48:01.792-08:00"Tidy it up."<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I got my hair cut just under two weeks ago. I was getting a little rough looking and, for a few reasons, I wanted to appear that bit sharper. It was around about the new year and most places were closed so I went wherever was open. It was a place in the St James' shopping centre. Supercuts, I think it was called, but I might be wrong. I think it was a chain. I imagined lots of other Supercuts dotted around the country, sitting in obscure wings of shopping centres beside random travel agents and dressmakers. I stopped imagining and did a walk-by, looking in the doorway as I passed. It looked a bit... cheap but it met my requirements. Scissors, a mirror and a poster of a man. They could cut my hair, I could see what they were at and they at least tried to make men welcome there. In I went.<br />
It was still quite early in the day and the only girl working was finishing up on the only other customer in the place, a woman in her 50s with a tight enough haircut to begin with. She'd taken her bifocals off for the haircut but what little she could see wasn't really impressing her. She suggested some things, waved her hands in various directions around her head and the girl nodded nervously. She snipped a little with her scissors, combed the woman's hair around a bit and sought a renewed opinion on the situation. Again, not impressed. The girl shifted on her feet, she really didn't look like she wanted to cut anymore.<br />
As if sensing her apprentice's distress, a new, older and more confident girl walked into the shop with Costa cup of coffee. I can't remember how exactly it looked, but I remember she had great hair. I remember thinking how I really wanted her to cut <i>my hair</i>. Then I remember thinking that her having good hair didn't mean she was a good hairdresser, it meant someone else was. I remember feeling a little foolish. The original girl called her over, explained the situation and this new girl took over with a smile on her face.<br />
The original girl approached me. I tried to keep my head buried in the year-old FHM I wasn't really reading but she asked me if I wanted to take the hotseat. I hesitated for a few seconds. This was to be my last day off for a week, there was nowhere else in the city that was open, I needed a haircut. With effort I put on a smile, put the magazine back in the rack and followed the girl over to the chair.<br />
She wasn't that bad. She was inexperienced, okay, and a bit too talkative, but I don't demand much when I go for haircuts. My exact words every time I've had a haircut* have been "Could you just tidy it up a bit?". I'd love to be able to just hand hairdressers a card saying "Make my head look like my head did six weeks ago and I'll give you some money." and close my eyes for twenty minutes. She snipped away with the scissors, she did that thing I like where she gets my hair between two fingers and then chops at angles (They call it "texturising", I was once told), she used those scissors that has one blade like a comb so it thins your hair a bit and, most importantly, she spent ages tidying around my ears with the electtric razor.<br />
I LOVE WOMEN TIDYING THE HAIR AROUND MY EARS WITH AN ELECTRIC RAZOR. The buzz, the humm, the strange and illogical edginess I feel, as if she's actually using a real razor and if I move I'll lose half my hearing. <br />
All in all, it was a decent experience. I left, fifteen pounds (fourteen plus tip) and a mass of hair lighter and went looking for a mug of coffee. I was happy with my new haircut. I was happy the next day too. And the day after that. And so on and so forth... until this morning.<br />
This morning I got out of bed and dragged my feet across the hallway for a shower. I showered. Afterwards I was drying myself off and I caught a look at myself in the mirror. My hair was still wet, but I noticed that it was a bit long at the back, down towards the bottom. I dried my hair fully and looked again. Yep, definitely just a wee bit too long at the top of my neck. The rest of my hair was fine, still just how I like it.<br />
<br />
A mullet. The sneaky cow gave me a mullet. But, worse than that, she gave me a mullet that I'd only notice weeks down the line. She seemed inexperienced at the time, but it was all a ruse. She gave me a time-delayed mullet and I paid her an extra pound to do it.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-3215757662527163922012-12-09T10:06:00.000-08:002012-12-09T10:06:01.423-08:00Food science.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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.<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://stickerish.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/TriForceYellowSS.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://stickerish.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/TriForceYellowSS.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">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.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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.<br />
<br />
"Wouldn't it be great if they made squeezy peanut butter?"<br />
<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
He's made of squeezy peanut butter.<br />
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.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-82214914373767638732012-11-08T12:24:00.000-08:002012-11-08T12:24:57.734-08:00Spare a thought for this poor girl.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ab2_DwqsK6E/UJwMWBsSIkI/AAAAAAAACUo/RI5woOqhZc8/s1600/splenda.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ab2_DwqsK6E/UJwMWBsSIkI/AAAAAAAACUo/RI5woOqhZc8/s320/splenda.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
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?<br />
<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-25764302023695003112012-11-02T01:26:00.000-07:002012-11-02T01:26:00.796-07:00Something I already wrote on facebook, but it's long enough to warrant its own blog entry.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="userContent">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 yo</span>ur laptop in the shower.<br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
It's cooking as I type.<br />
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.<br /> So far, I'm totally fooled. Good job, me.<br /> Anyway, I saw the label on the edge of the shelf "Peanut M&Ms 40p"<br />
"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.<br /> 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.<br /> 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.<br /> M&Ms? Would've been more accurate just calling them "Ms"</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-57175473435137257412012-10-24T15:16:00.001-07:002012-10-24T16:17:39.003-07:00All things nice.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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.<br />
Oh yes.<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-80r8WQKp_zM/UIhhtUt2FWI/AAAAAAAACTs/iJkT_yhbdFI/s1600/IMAG0813.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-80r8WQKp_zM/UIhhtUt2FWI/AAAAAAAACTs/iJkT_yhbdFI/s320/IMAG0813.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
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.<br />
<br />
I put the five spice back on the shelf and browsed on. What I saw next shook me to my core:<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Aljzj5cjnV4/UIhhx_46w-I/AAAAAAAACT0/z4ApjFTYtYE/s1600/IMAG0814.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Aljzj5cjnV4/UIhhx_46w-I/AAAAAAAACT0/z4ApjFTYtYE/s320/IMAG0814.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
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?<br />
How will we contain this? How can we satisfy these spice fiends? WHERE WILL IT ALL END?<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fU8VBNidrm8/UIhh2XzhsVI/AAAAAAAACT8/Mb4w5LFK9hM/s1600/IMAG0815.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fU8VBNidrm8/UIhh2XzhsVI/AAAAAAAACT8/Mb4w5LFK9hM/s320/IMAG0815.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
Oh, right.<br />
<br />
<br />
And that was my spice adventure this evening. If you hear of any advances in spice technology, let me know.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/612DEJB357L._SL500_AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/612DEJB357L._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Except this. This is never to be mentioned again.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-5113688462760905432012-10-16T13:04:00.003-07:002012-10-16T13:04:17.880-07:00Showing my roots.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QCdCnk-upD0/UH22rMZpxjI/AAAAAAAACTE/i8A9T_WT2Nc/s1600/IMAG0790.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QCdCnk-upD0/UH22rMZpxjI/AAAAAAAACTE/i8A9T_WT2Nc/s320/IMAG0790.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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.<br />
But my wardrobe isn't what inspired me. Look closer.<br />
No, wait, actually, look somewhere else entirely.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SlBcWvIDzog/UH22w617nAI/AAAAAAAACTM/Cuw_rKOvU-Q/s1600/IMAG0791.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SlBcWvIDzog/UH22w617nAI/AAAAAAAACTM/Cuw_rKOvU-Q/s320/IMAG0791.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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?<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
Farmers.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://thewomensfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Inglourious-Basterds-Finger-Counting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://thewomensfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Inglourious-Basterds-Finger-Counting.jpg" width="253" /></a></div>
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
It's how I do things.<br />
<br />
And it's how I always will. <br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-25632229939604677352012-10-05T12:27:00.004-07:002012-10-05T12:27:38.464-07:00Brain damage.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'd an interesting morning at work today.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
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<a href="http://images.arcadianhome.com/WACR/WAC-R6HT-21-SC.190x190.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://images.arcadianhome.com/WACR/WAC-R6HT-21-SC.190x190.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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 <span style="font-size: xx-small;">"tink"<span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Instantly, I panicked. </span></span>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 <i>Outbreak</i>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Stroke. I was having a stroke.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I went to the toilet. There, I sat down, got my phone out and did a few quick searches.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"How much mercury is in a cfl bulb?"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"CFL bulb breakages and cleanup"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"writing a will in a hurry"</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I left the loo with a spring in my step. The people I work with probably thought I just had a really good pee.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But, for a very short while today, I was scared. Irrationally so, but definitely scared.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Bye, now.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-32868074468978325752012-09-24T13:09:00.000-07:002012-09-24T13:09:05.848-07:00To (0044)74144704374<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Hi there. It's Noel. You've texted me a good few times now, and it's getting a little uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
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 <i>the man</i> so that I can have a few hundred pounds extra in my pocket.<br />
<br />
But there's a problem.<br />
<br />
In my case, there is <i>no man</i>. 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. <br />
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?<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
But,<br />
For now,<br />
Fuck off.<br />
<br />
<br />
Noel </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-27845962574715932362012-09-19T11:04:00.000-07:002012-09-19T11:11:45.780-07:00Good morning.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
But... maybe I saw some nice art on the way to work?<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VeGYWaEPnP8/UFoD9b0kNhI/AAAAAAAACQw/1f-hCezPk5w/s1600/DSC_0208.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VeGYWaEPnP8/UFoD9b0kNhI/AAAAAAAACQw/1f-hCezPk5w/s320/DSC_0208.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seen down Leith Walk sometime last year. A nice break from mobility scooters and tramps.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...no. I'm not chirpy because I saw nice art on the way to work.<br />
But maybe I saw a nice animal on the way to work? A cute dog or some kittens?<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dhTegQ21JGY/UFoEhVlMrNI/AAAAAAAACRE/zY9TX3KM47U/s1600/DSC_0675.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dhTegQ21JGY/UFoEhVlMrNI/AAAAAAAACRE/zY9TX3KM47U/s320/DSC_0675.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Or a goat?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Again, no. I'm not chirpy because I saw a nice animal on the way to work.<br />
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? <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-XOmydlOYxPJgF9Yv5ZYuag4Nyps5dCsDcGvzMscvbEYeBUGRFTzFTI7K8XxvPE0gpCAzPhT9nRisRPAnWqnY9ISCMi6LLRI7y7_YyMplCW_DONNmMdR3b_DFQ532_MNS3hIwaJZ2nxf/s1600/DSC_0266.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-XOmydlOYxPJgF9Yv5ZYuag4Nyps5dCsDcGvzMscvbEYeBUGRFTzFTI7K8XxvPE0gpCAzPhT9nRisRPAnWqnY9ISCMi6LLRI7y7_YyMplCW_DONNmMdR3b_DFQ532_MNS3hIwaJZ2nxf/s320/DSC_0266.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And drank a litre of beer.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
No. And I only suggested that option so I could use this picture. It's a great picture.<br />
<br />
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?<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4027/4288111757_e3e5823172_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4027/4288111757_e3e5823172_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bus. You didn't need this picture, did you?</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Not that either, no.<br />
No, the reason I'm so chirpy this morning is simple.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ikCyITwd_t8/UFoEnlfqvzI/AAAAAAAACRM/HkXvnjdd_Bw/s1600/IMAG0728.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ikCyITwd_t8/UFoEnlfqvzI/AAAAAAAACRM/HkXvnjdd_Bw/s320/IMAG0728.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">BOOM!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u5Xc1FS74sU/UFoEq3mNNPI/AAAAAAAACRU/jWEZQHEndiE/s1600/IMAG0729.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u5Xc1FS74sU/UFoEq3mNNPI/AAAAAAAACRU/jWEZQHEndiE/s320/IMAG0729.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">BANG!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hwmdQcv7o14/UFoEvnR3EAI/AAAAAAAACRc/3nFnXyLaIO4/s1600/IMAG0730.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hwmdQcv7o14/UFoEvnR3EAI/AAAAAAAACRc/3nFnXyLaIO4/s320/IMAG0730.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">THWACK?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JWuEtHY3-Tc/UFoE1ZzEswI/AAAAAAAACRk/nDbTjW5sTcg/s1600/IMAG0731.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JWuEtHY3-Tc/UFoE1ZzEswI/AAAAAAAACRk/nDbTjW5sTcg/s320/IMAG0731.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">KABLOOEY!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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.<br />
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.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XKvHCrz5AnQ/UFoFBUp0OUI/AAAAAAAACR8/4zjVfE7IQMw/s1600/IMAG0734.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XKvHCrz5AnQ/UFoFBUp0OUI/AAAAAAAACR8/4zjVfE7IQMw/s320/IMAG0734.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I salute you.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-44884189783386400842012-09-13T12:42:00.002-07:002012-09-13T12:42:20.858-07:00Hey,<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h6 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"></span></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">I just met you,</span></span></span></span></span></h6>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> And this might sound crazy,</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">
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.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">(I wrote that on my facebook and wanted to share it.) </span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-70895848685940888292012-09-01T10:21:00.002-07:002012-09-01T10:21:58.731-07:00Red, red, yellow, yellow, green.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
People, at times, accuse me of not "keeping it real". They come up to me and say things like<br />"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?"<br />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.<br />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.<br />But, today, I did something I'm a little ashamed of. Something uncool. Something unforgivable for a twenty something year old.<br />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.<br /><br />"Red, red, red, red, yellow? Not today.<br />Red, red, red, yellow, green? Not you either, sunshine. <br />Red, red, yellow, yellow, green? You're practically good for me. Get in my basket."</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-74688964045518691342012-08-25T13:32:00.003-07:002012-08-25T13:32:25.182-07:00That time I ordered a curry.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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.<br />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.<br />No deal. The snow was too bad, they weren't delivering that night. My tummy rumbled. Arse.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />And then I realised my problem.<br />
Bad korma.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
(Sorry.)</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-75139813277714237362012-08-20T10:02:00.000-07:002012-08-20T10:03:31.429-07:00Danger matches.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Evening, all.<br />
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.)<br />
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.<br />
So that doesn't leave me with much to talk about.<br />
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.<br />
So here... we... go.<br />
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFyg6jhyphenhyphen6or5OOZQGtOjvuMq7U4P4iMuWiqxeuO6V9DMxGYZRk3tcw5ItUa_H3aQaEekh7eQcRQ2ChBGTpy2z9NH5EcEKyHZcxl-lGyf7DMD67tdU41WHRk7ly1Jjhsbseo-xaJcs0sQ_k/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFyg6jhyphenhyphen6or5OOZQGtOjvuMq7U4P4iMuWiqxeuO6V9DMxGYZRk3tcw5ItUa_H3aQaEekh7eQcRQ2ChBGTpy2z9NH5EcEKyHZcxl-lGyf7DMD67tdU41WHRk7ly1Jjhsbseo-xaJcs0sQ_k/s320/1.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption">They don't say safety, so that can only mean one thing... DANGER MATCHES.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ67lwr1bFdnl1lW3IVmjCc6vgzd-wCkXQrtzjzw8f7INJYRoFvRCHq7gsb7ftr_lRDsSSxi6-do8Q3kzI3FmJoWD3oHYJKnU4AiQwePf1lsQ2VsoRbuo1piXLcRfe1ob_kKUlH2blNtPC/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ67lwr1bFdnl1lW3IVmjCc6vgzd-wCkXQrtzjzw8f7INJYRoFvRCHq7gsb7ftr_lRDsSSxi6-do8Q3kzI3FmJoWD3oHYJKnU4AiQwePf1lsQ2VsoRbuo1piXLcRfe1ob_kKUlH2blNtPC/s320/2.jpg" width="234" /></a></span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption">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.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn5qtDc6cuWQEdN2b1o7Em-wBQgD8hXACVpGHPdslcdmxEw-zbqMN4rEVrYmJzA8zkGHa-yxN8R5EbWli_iZQG-MU7S3eJ4HR5bR47RaPm1242IlTbJIq-COeHHMfYPGtFlozkKj02bkh2/s1600/3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn5qtDc6cuWQEdN2b1o7Em-wBQgD8hXACVpGHPdslcdmxEw-zbqMN4rEVrYmJzA8zkGHa-yxN8R5EbWli_iZQG-MU7S3eJ4HR5bR47RaPm1242IlTbJIq-COeHHMfYPGtFlozkKj02bkh2/s320/3.jpg" width="234" /></a></span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption">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.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5rKryH51GMwy-D3MfsKiaqNLzI3GdIWYQIa5rlHvgNteJ9VY3oWyhSD9v89PKKRNCv9X0lBRgoDdz01HGXnOgwHcY8AC3-u0_1L0Obv9_Q0Yef58OsfEwON2aCzXpVmWmT4U03eWNeDeS/s1600/4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5rKryH51GMwy-D3MfsKiaqNLzI3GdIWYQIa5rlHvgNteJ9VY3oWyhSD9v89PKKRNCv9X0lBRgoDdz01HGXnOgwHcY8AC3-u0_1L0Obv9_Q0Yef58OsfEwON2aCzXpVmWmT4U03eWNeDeS/s320/4.jpg" width="234" /></a></span></div>
<div style="color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption">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"?<br /> <br /> HAVE YOU?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxZLPSc942Kx45E4y7lILXGSsve9k2h7j0A7DPa8qYDrFzRRwzF14pxIODt8vfms5Z48Ob2dMoHw7vewwWOGPgJviRrYuZKC8HGhub8UAObwgKABqVe-5ZoMklFUYblqRpB2IThULfE02S/s1600/5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxZLPSc942Kx45E4y7lILXGSsve9k2h7j0A7DPa8qYDrFzRRwzF14pxIODt8vfms5Z48Ob2dMoHw7vewwWOGPgJviRrYuZKC8HGhub8UAObwgKABqVe-5ZoMklFUYblqRpB2IThULfE02S/s320/5.jpg" width="238" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption"><br />Me neither<br /> But y'never know.<br /> <br /> You'll need tiles and rough grouting in your bathroom, mind. If you've PVC, best bring a lighter.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEsomSYfn0HxY9AQmpUJZMJhCxaWnpvus3OAYZfu-qr3BLZAFpau9yaolBr6br5UReMePer6629kYGK-nSrMaf8QGroFua_v1sjJzuk96fLg9EzsxRIDptje5hxXypkireHUYFr7xFJdyh/s1600/6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEsomSYfn0HxY9AQmpUJZMJhCxaWnpvus3OAYZfu-qr3BLZAFpau9yaolBr6br5UReMePer6629kYGK-nSrMaf8QGroFua_v1sjJzuk96fLg9EzsxRIDptje5hxXypkireHUYFr7xFJdyh/s320/6.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption">A seive.<br /> Shit, this album really isn't working out as well as I thought it'd be. But anyway...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4CfYt0bqF_tAO9ynnFCW98DwbvYnHu6h1qbaU-Mse6m4ersa8FLtRAkqpi7ZsMtkr0dfmigema2gtvhkNOtpvOD9H3RsWDzZbqxt33AwvS6XQZO8lu3iXeT7EE06cUtvLg2C3_mR2JOaF/s1600/7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4CfYt0bqF_tAO9ynnFCW98DwbvYnHu6h1qbaU-Mse6m4ersa8FLtRAkqpi7ZsMtkr0dfmigema2gtvhkNOtpvOD9H3RsWDzZbqxt33AwvS6XQZO8lu3iXeT7EE06cUtvLg2C3_mR2JOaF/s320/7.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I can light my matches on a seive!<br /> Not just for seiving or wearing as a helmet when you're pretending to be in the army!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgYl6TXvqi9QKZsSvTbSn7M1tk-SdzuIkjj_ZW-Fiy408RHBgEJt6i_WBy2UViazPaPFVE20-gbqz5mkgohCTv5r5dEXGrJ4YV2diuk9KQImz8Qb4kZqS3xMGLBupgnj-cf3UAs2yWVGz/s1600/8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgYl6TXvqi9QKZsSvTbSn7M1tk-SdzuIkjj_ZW-Fiy408RHBgEJt6i_WBy2UViazPaPFVE20-gbqz5mkgohCTv5r5dEXGrJ4YV2diuk9KQImz8Qb4kZqS3xMGLBupgnj-cf3UAs2yWVGz/s320/8.jpg" width="234" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption"><br />Wait, what? What'm I gonna light these chaps off?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiDJgr460t6Wh1bPHyN8VFHuKpC_Grd5nQznM3nOHeEeLkDMs7O3ft5kt9sKyrQVbc3TF0ac-X15dWe49JgS-Y0l1iQFQCKGoBjgsGN1sKiq41tKG3e05dade4mf5in4V4jnSdrwoyZJKZ/s1600/9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiDJgr460t6Wh1bPHyN8VFHuKpC_Grd5nQznM3nOHeEeLkDMs7O3ft5kt9sKyrQVbc3TF0ac-X15dWe49JgS-Y0l1iQFQCKGoBjgsGN1sKiq41tKG3e05dade4mf5in4V4jnSdrwoyZJKZ/s320/9.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption">THEMSELVES?<br /> Noel! You're mad! Stop this, someone will get hurt!<br /> <br /> SHUT UP, WORLD.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOYfQPv9pszVa-34FvOQfjv6DORbcYLDK3ENkJwCjXu99ozRiNX8pxbL4FQfFBXpuvMY8pFRls6Jw3LFKhU__qCjwJTU8Mmvfh5uvQAlwXZmY-v6QeuHhwsCoaQzwJFyRRqau17aXQAY-T/s1600/10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOYfQPv9pszVa-34FvOQfjv6DORbcYLDK3ENkJwCjXu99ozRiNX8pxbL4FQfFBXpuvMY8pFRls6Jw3LFKhU__qCjwJTU8Mmvfh5uvQAlwXZmY-v6QeuHhwsCoaQzwJFyRRqau17aXQAY-T/s320/10.jpg" width="234" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption">Took me a good ten minutes between the last photo and this one. Couldn't find anything else to light these boyos against.<br /> Then I found this bottle of, eh, coke...<br /> Nice ridges on the lid, there, I wonder if I could...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoE1bSPuhs-z2MVYRPbCCm7MFPwv1xqiI4oGrvWCStqzBYfbsaMk0mXEeBqxrARluEWMZ7-6wrqlT-pRwSdOpchyphenhyphenQRWZXWAemPBShKr9mOJIOgPqdZcy8L2DkFy4R-MgAxLEXKgB1NR-Iu/s1600/11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoE1bSPuhs-z2MVYRPbCCm7MFPwv1xqiI4oGrvWCStqzBYfbsaMk0mXEeBqxrARluEWMZ7-6wrqlT-pRwSdOpchyphenhyphenQRWZXWAemPBShKr9mOJIOgPqdZcy8L2DkFy4R-MgAxLEXKgB1NR-Iu/s320/11.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption">BOOYEAH.<br /> So that's me done. Everything I could possibly light a DANGER MATCH off.<br /> Okay, see y'all, wait, what?<br /> <br /> My beard?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsAtrdaBviXY-KERrjOT4yj3wivD0e32g_gXdq-KOlHM3JWlhccvZqe62P0aaeOO7G8B74HQI6VVzCUYkGK3BmAKbSEjVsndL0AFTEnqgdT-dBvANzLY9kv7zxictY0fb1QrJXXxQdnG6T/s1600/12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsAtrdaBviXY-KERrjOT4yj3wivD0e32g_gXdq-KOlHM3JWlhccvZqe62P0aaeOO7G8B74HQI6VVzCUYkGK3BmAKbSEjVsndL0AFTEnqgdT-dBvANzLY9kv7zxictY0fb1QrJXXxQdnG6T/s320/12.jpg" width="238" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption">This beard?<br /> Well, let's see...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUGorGovzvcjnyrwW_X69pbjg-tnEqDCrNHBUcExhHFJ0YesiE7-tDxaXx7OCatM7RIc35BPmxzh9QZuJq8sUXTxwfrUVL8ispnwxiIS-vQXONSITa9PCMGFTpxICxRvcBqqP_n0RAlMfO/s1600/13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUGorGovzvcjnyrwW_X69pbjg-tnEqDCrNHBUcExhHFJ0YesiE7-tDxaXx7OCatM7RIc35BPmxzh9QZuJq8sUXTxwfrUVL8ispnwxiIS-vQXONSITa9PCMGFTpxICxRvcBqqP_n0RAlMfO/s320/13.jpg" width="238" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption"><br />No wait, I'll try my good side.<br /> So just... one... quick... snap of the wrist...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1mAVfFsvBaRKQxczuWNm_6Qk8hnbrKtPwm7rP92P3lxsstaWJskXHanER8Jfq4OBrZCxaQ9E-PfMk6jjtjLLSpoRsm6gG156g_w9HxiTeWYOyXe7AthaAkXgTJqXZhw8-EYlzkOq0kSDH/s1600/14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1mAVfFsvBaRKQxczuWNm_6Qk8hnbrKtPwm7rP92P3lxsstaWJskXHanER8Jfq4OBrZCxaQ9E-PfMk6jjtjLLSpoRsm6gG156g_w9HxiTeWYOyXe7AthaAkXgTJqXZhw8-EYlzkOq0kSDH/s320/14.jpg" width="238" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="hasCaption">Eh... no.<br /> Not happening. Clint Eastwood must've had a jaw made of granite.<br /> That shit ain't happening.</span></span></div>
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<span class="hasCaption">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.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-61100495929831606072012-08-08T13:58:00.002-07:002012-08-08T13:58:28.842-07:00I learned something tonight.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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.<br />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.<br />
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.<br />
<br />
I learned something tonight.<br />
<i>Ladies</i>, 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.<br />
<br />
<i>Men</i>, take fucking sunglasses out anytime ye go for a jog. I nearly walloped me bollox off a bollard with that fuckup.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-15278268686211372882012-07-24T14:00:00.000-07:002012-07-25T05:40:37.716-07:00My new friend Jacob.<div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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.<br />
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.<br />
I stopped at one from a Mr. Obi Jacob. The subject line was beautifully simple:<br />
PLEASE READ THE ENCLOSED.<br />
I figured "Let's give Jacob a spin, see what he has to say for himself" and opened it up.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division<br />FBI Headquarters In Washington, D.C.<br />Federal Bureau Of Investigation<br />J. Edgar Hoover Building<br />935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001 <br /><br />Attention: Beneficiary</i></span></blockquote>
Fuck. This can't be good.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">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.</span></i></blockquote>
You see? This is why I should go through my spam more often, and so should you.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">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.</span></i></blockquote>
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.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /><br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">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. </span></i></blockquote>
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.<br />
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. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>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.</i></span><br /></blockquote>
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.<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">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.</span></i></blockquote>
MAXIMUM ARREST. Is that an actual term? Am I dealing with Robocop or something? <br />
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).<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>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.</i></span></blockquote>
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br />NAME: OBI JACOB<br /><br />ADDRESS: LAGOS, NIGERIA<br /><br />TEXT QUESTION: BETTER<br /><br />ANSWER: BEST<br /><br />AMOUNT: $98<br /><br />SENDER'S FULL NAME:<br /><br />SENDER'S FULL ADDRESS: <br /><br />DIRECT PHONE NUMBER: <br /><br />MTCN: </i></span></blockquote>
<br />
</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-89675796869155303152012-07-12T11:27:00.001-07:002012-07-13T16:14:02.970-07:00Wee bag.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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).</div>
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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. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.specs-by-post.com/glasses/pc/catalog/211a_2297_detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="93" src="http://www.specs-by-post.com/glasses/pc/catalog/211a_2297_detail.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Did you really need this picture? Fine, so let's zoom in on the cord.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://newspaper.li/static/341df14cd4efff8f039e0d6f56be5f91.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://newspaper.li/static/341df14cd4efff8f039e0d6f56be5f91.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can't zoom in on the cord, I told you it's INVISIBLE.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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).</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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 <i>useful.</i> At the time, a wealth of uses came to mind.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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<br /></div>
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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.</div>
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You want to see the wee bag, I know you do.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG4kptFf66VyVE15Mv1k-jmMIE1bxa_0QpKU9h64WEOTHBYCcp8PpuojKtDSNuJNoxjgOuW1XB-5k7Ss9cg_H2j0q7Vs8cYdsSKuQVaArw14rqgAQiYa15UQWaCrIgG8A78UGOJfh2tjB6/s1600/IMAG0581.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG4kptFf66VyVE15Mv1k-jmMIE1bxa_0QpKU9h64WEOTHBYCcp8PpuojKtDSNuJNoxjgOuW1XB-5k7Ss9cg_H2j0q7Vs8cYdsSKuQVaArw14rqgAQiYa15UQWaCrIgG8A78UGOJfh2tjB6/s320/IMAG0581.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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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.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJAAA94ufxaFAGfDX_R6U3GHRzt8w-R9b2bzhHtijUrOnbRp99XKVAOXV3fCMWjh-kZmD49Grj6ZoJ_bSPLickdbAIS-_QOS5hwUeZv12xhJ3H2N-tJDkuJFhllS2OLebuUnHcK89W0uY6/s1600/Jul+12,+2012+7:26:35+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJAAA94ufxaFAGfDX_R6U3GHRzt8w-R9b2bzhHtijUrOnbRp99XKVAOXV3fCMWjh-kZmD49Grj6ZoJ_bSPLickdbAIS-_QOS5hwUeZv12xhJ3H2N-tJDkuJFhllS2OLebuUnHcK89W0uY6/s320/Jul+12,+2012+7:26:35+PM.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No meth for me, thanks, I'm high on LIFE.</td></tr>
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-51794602690972627882012-06-25T03:33:00.000-07:002012-06-25T03:33:02.938-07:00Trip to America IV: Where was I?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Got a little side tracked, there.<br />
Anyway, here, let me go look at my pictures folder and see where exactly in America I was when I finished my last post.<br />
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. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrTDoGmYhyphenhyphenNa0VHe0Xh4StfGntzfLA0ZG2esJEKHwpRZcPp47QUVUSCsedE8OEBo7xr9V1w6aCY7YVLDTmpe_dS0SwoXwJZZcdS1Nuq9cVw84hOs5Dc7jCD-G_BiZecdpNnmqlkEgPSfXI/s1600/IMAG0219.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrTDoGmYhyphenhyphenNa0VHe0Xh4StfGntzfLA0ZG2esJEKHwpRZcPp47QUVUSCsedE8OEBo7xr9V1w6aCY7YVLDTmpe_dS0SwoXwJZZcdS1Nuq9cVw84hOs5Dc7jCD-G_BiZecdpNnmqlkEgPSfXI/s320/IMAG0219.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Few photo opportunities first, we're a ferociously good looking family, y'know.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdR5v1QXsh8U6fTXisDIDwliVZwhYFHPgBiQSaBa5dhagoTqpGZyA9nAE0zpskYaz8pXGqbS_V85vzu8TQ_z_Q-WmATqbkeYL-Q6qZZuTUXpjjU-v9q-Ucd610u6A5saEN1bvwi2wwo8VG/s1600/IMAG0223.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdR5v1QXsh8U6fTXisDIDwliVZwhYFHPgBiQSaBa5dhagoTqpGZyA9nAE0zpskYaz8pXGqbS_V85vzu8TQ_z_Q-WmATqbkeYL-Q6qZZuTUXpjjU-v9q-Ucd610u6A5saEN1bvwi2wwo8VG/s320/IMAG0223.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ferociously.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXJ_aeXXxx5YYsD__wId3p0mg-XTLftm79rhtwYN__mFmHhiH0HeDQfAsNtgul6ua0T5hxz8_CF6er4F0RBpi5croR_MB2h9GXZv1HeImrBj7VYKb4TlUKzMVNF2Mhs7cN-TKSKnPfxb3p/s1600/IMAG0198.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXJ_aeXXxx5YYsD__wId3p0mg-XTLftm79rhtwYN__mFmHhiH0HeDQfAsNtgul6ua0T5hxz8_CF6er4F0RBpi5croR_MB2h9GXZv1HeImrBj7VYKb4TlUKzMVNF2Mhs7cN-TKSKnPfxb3p/s320/IMAG0198.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
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.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2gfCvZTnRxCRG53QklQ_IlGZnWCCjOSdZqYBO3ENppvP1GSaiptG0clf5GnRVXHHIYLbiexHh8qBUPA8Qo3gN_Gb-CLg1g_U2LP04-wE2AqUgRRTbsIbPbs_hCLgPfzLm1X7eU-H_Y8Df/s1600/IMAG0333.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2gfCvZTnRxCRG53QklQ_IlGZnWCCjOSdZqYBO3ENppvP1GSaiptG0clf5GnRVXHHIYLbiexHh8qBUPA8Qo3gN_Gb-CLg1g_U2LP04-wE2AqUgRRTbsIbPbs_hCLgPfzLm1X7eU-H_Y8Df/s320/IMAG0333.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Bearer lives two doors down.</td></tr>
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<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL1-WybU8mYGO7ohW81R8j_Fopzg_cY0eWq7T6mVnC9qya-fMIb6K0pK5Urc-fIArWCQuULMMAYyMo48GcVjT45sptVykF8EmlyXSPUKvcWSWhjgDJ8CBmb4G-tIr08W84izMNztPCUPzQ/s1600/IMAG0229.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL1-WybU8mYGO7ohW81R8j_Fopzg_cY0eWq7T6mVnC9qya-fMIb6K0pK5Urc-fIArWCQuULMMAYyMo48GcVjT45sptVykF8EmlyXSPUKvcWSWhjgDJ8CBmb4G-tIr08W84izMNztPCUPzQ/s320/IMAG0229.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHggkrCexYII1IUWf2aOrefRe5upVzI9ZXkLeuxWL8AW_gtWgjsNN3UOhuHAt8z7LHWFyVwlXDWpKms43zKY-Yg4SuhmECdCoryv9KbHOrRY3wVMrZdHQRKjfm60liyIuS2ghQgcNwANBO/s1600/IMAG0242.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHggkrCexYII1IUWf2aOrefRe5upVzI9ZXkLeuxWL8AW_gtWgjsNN3UOhuHAt8z7LHWFyVwlXDWpKms43zKY-Yg4SuhmECdCoryv9KbHOrRY3wVMrZdHQRKjfm60liyIuS2ghQgcNwANBO/s320/IMAG0242.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Donal paying respect.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><br /></td></tr>
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<br />
Anyway, we got a little lost at one point. End up in California... City (which is much less glamorous than it sounds).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKIMA3ZxpWyIuVSWA7UTV_nkQTZE_Ew5qZBFAX_K1c-Bt37mwWvB3O43Qvfetf44zWFOtNdAYSBZvoqElPBYODk8fGyN18cCPoypPZCrGO83dpRZdJadUqdjscW8huyhgWNC7PM-TdIgi/s1600/IMAG0248.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKIMA3ZxpWyIuVSWA7UTV_nkQTZE_Ew5qZBFAX_K1c-Bt37mwWvB3O43Qvfetf44zWFOtNdAYSBZvoqElPBYODk8fGyN18cCPoypPZCrGO83dpRZdJadUqdjscW8huyhgWNC7PM-TdIgi/s200/IMAG0248.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUgLsPIE9D75HCLfEHc0eAupd_xRpUd5MwzYICOz52dqO-831wmbqpa66f69i9jPmUrbmYshvpl0HYW4e2nKx27JVOQo84ShnlcZWdpFU257qhorVrKdAgpAjW4cNVrW1LVYFbOnxa45Nr/s1600/IMAG0253.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUgLsPIE9D75HCLfEHc0eAupd_xRpUd5MwzYICOz52dqO-831wmbqpa66f69i9jPmUrbmYshvpl0HYW4e2nKx27JVOQo84ShnlcZWdpFU257qhorVrKdAgpAjW4cNVrW1LVYFbOnxa45Nr/s320/IMAG0253.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seriously.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fucking.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hell.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinrrc_1PMdwcbvfEk6_9QRxugvpN4XAstikdFdWeDWiYGnia3n_Wp2l7S4a4koin9xwKWEY5AXX9Uuf7EYFFQlUnzrBIuOOfVj_-B2QOfWPnBBfslgQEXi7sAMCbfnnQzlkpkhQwjV-Zzu/s1600/IMAG0264.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinrrc_1PMdwcbvfEk6_9QRxugvpN4XAstikdFdWeDWiYGnia3n_Wp2l7S4a4koin9xwKWEY5AXX9Uuf7EYFFQlUnzrBIuOOfVj_-B2QOfWPnBBfslgQEXi7sAMCbfnnQzlkpkhQwjV-Zzu/s320/IMAG0264.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxkAvEwh1Uvuwo4tjQdiSeNhgjPGbeBBv6Xhaok7M8-Fg8yyPnDnEkfQFFxedC7D40X_EJW1rhdKkUF6YTgLn8xhTDtR_NPwYJThwBRfuHCJns-v5BjbsLEiFbZa2oCN3Tp86LGA2f9peR/s1600/IMAG0255.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxkAvEwh1Uvuwo4tjQdiSeNhgjPGbeBBv6Xhaok7M8-Fg8yyPnDnEkfQFFxedC7D40X_EJW1rhdKkUF6YTgLn8xhTDtR_NPwYJThwBRfuHCJns-v5BjbsLEiFbZa2oCN3Tp86LGA2f9peR/s320/IMAG0255.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
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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.<br />
This didn't happen. After an hour of taking artsy photos of stones we got back in the car and continued north.<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
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.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizVpjDI1GoFgzagZNSx_wajS6aNSAwXcoDqCf1n8uu9Bq1youBFyEjZs91reHZm9ZSlyqpN4I411Ff4bRKU91NViASXDyitYCJkIK1HXBDBULNY0vLTRyJ6SFtx1l1p60H59I45UaiVT45/s1600/IMAG0276.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizVpjDI1GoFgzagZNSx_wajS6aNSAwXcoDqCf1n8uu9Bq1youBFyEjZs91reHZm9ZSlyqpN4I411Ff4bRKU91NViASXDyitYCJkIK1HXBDBULNY0vLTRyJ6SFtx1l1p60H59I45UaiVT45/s320/IMAG0276.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sweet, glorious wifi. A man can go mad in the desert if he doesn't have enough wifi.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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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.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8krok6n76aKoNmFTG5H1Nh_jMkVV6b94meeqzGuCiSY9N9fDACVrPLGbMQQcoFhwPrLW7HRRPB49-jjEzYxTe5fgZm1vuK3qA-aJLfDaHJwcG-lkkDsh7hU2XliO4CrD6k2LYojNhPR5D/s1600/IMAG0278.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8krok6n76aKoNmFTG5H1Nh_jMkVV6b94meeqzGuCiSY9N9fDACVrPLGbMQQcoFhwPrLW7HRRPB49-jjEzYxTe5fgZm1vuK3qA-aJLfDaHJwcG-lkkDsh7hU2XliO4CrD6k2LYojNhPR5D/s320/IMAG0278.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Three yellow trucks in a row (and my brother in the Passat), you try not take a picture of that.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJFHRGcOWsNpZAKhzR5kiw5yKuuag51veOuUi7Rftia3u_RTVcUO43tZLGhN507xfhfgTj9T6PkrkgRs74m_0tc9M5uFQn25Ww4c5J2vWiA7kPpHw3oFWt8dSsPfrM4MtVyTq2BWTtruuk/s1600/IMAG0280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJFHRGcOWsNpZAKhzR5kiw5yKuuag51veOuUi7Rftia3u_RTVcUO43tZLGhN507xfhfgTj9T6PkrkgRs74m_0tc9M5uFQn25Ww4c5J2vWiA7kPpHw3oFWt8dSsPfrM4MtVyTq2BWTtruuk/s320/IMAG0280.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And then this one was just hilariously big. You could rear a family in that thing.</td></tr>
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And called it a night. Lots more driving to do the next day.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2803422091264976766.post-90141983738778767402012-05-31T14:00:00.001-07:002012-05-31T14:00:14.035-07:00Beetroot juice.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
(Gets a little vivid about bodily functions towards the end, you've been warned.) <br />
<br />
With my running not as good as it was earlier in the year, I've been trying a few things lately to put a spring back in my step. I bought my <a href="http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/products/Five-Fingers-Flow-Mens.htm">barefoot runners</a>, started doing new roots and I've started two different juices. One I've used before. It's a cherry concentrate drink I've used before. Full of antioxidants and nitrates and voodoo. Supposed to be good after a workout. Who knows? I just want something to drink after a run, it's more fun when it's cherry flavoured.<br />
<br />
The other stuff I'm slugging, as you've probably read above, is beetroot juice. Not concentrated, just pure juice. A paragraph in a running magazine told me that folk who drank it for a week before a run did 10% better than folk who didn't. And paragraphs never lie. Look at that one up there, it's all the stone cold truth.<br />
Beetroot juice, in case you didn't know or can't imagine it, is FOUL. It's purple salty pirate sweat. Putting 140ml of it down my throat every day for the last week has made it the longest week of my life.<br />
Also the back of the bottle has a warning. It warns that it may discolour your pee. <i>May </i>discolour your pee. There's no 'may' in the matter, I've been pissing flourescent pink for five days now. And that's not the only thing...<br />
<br />
Anyway, I set out this evening for a cheeky wee saunter about Edinburgh. Didn't make it easy on myself, the first ten minutes was all uphill. I laid into it, beetroot juice coarsing through my veins. At the top of the hill I did a lap of Charlotte Square, came back along Dean's Bridge, and ran down past the Western General. Was doing pretty well, to be honest, had an easy 4km under my belt in just over 20 minutes. Had seven in my mind, but just before the six mark I got a sharp pain in my shin and stopped. Not a major issue, it sorted itself out after a bit of walking. Still an improvement over my last few runs. Also, I was still a fair distance from home, so I'd be able to cool down a little, maybe do a few sprints.<br />
<br />
ANYWAY, I should also mention that I spit when I run. I hate spitting generally, but I get a lot of phlegm in my mouth when I run, so I need to clear it out. Wherever possible, I spit out onto the street, into a drain or maybe a hedge. I do not EVER spit when I'm not running. It's horrible. People who do disgust me. At least burst into a sprint before you spit, I'll let you off then.<br />
<br />
Right, this <i>is </i>going somewhere, trust me. So I was finishing up on my run, about five minutes out and I needed a spit. I really need one. My mouth had, eh, filled with phlegm. I hocked up a bit more to make this worth my while and, as I took a corner, I let loose.<br />
PHLEUGH.<br />
On front of three people I spat the biggest* gob of beetroot juice coloured phlegm I've ever seen. On front of three people, I essentially coughed up blood and ran on like a madman.<br />
If you're having trouble imagining this, here you go:<br />
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So when you hear about the zombie outbreak in Edinburgh, you know what really happened.<br />
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*and only</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13577992727851184933noreply@blogger.com0