Don’t Stop Me Now

I haven’t been about lately because I’ve been dead busy at work, what with Jake the Wanker deciding that now is the right time to have his meriod and maybe get his mangina waxed, and so he has shat upon me from a great height, but instead of nutty faeces and knowing him, the semen of the prospective father of his child, I have been hit with the paperwork of several upcoming tort cases. I’m still off drink, but I have found another equally addictive way of winding down.

I am taliking, of course, about my former ex- and newly current girlfriend Melissa, who mercifully doesn’t read this blog. I have been hanging out with her a lot, and as she embraced the straight edge lifestyle as a teenager and never quite passed that phase, it suits me, seeing as how I am a dry alcoholic en ce moment. I forgot how much fun life could be with her around. Her non-drinking is more than made up for by her sheer spontaneity.

A good example is the Forty Foot up at Sandycove. A popular swimming spot, especially in the summer, it is a high cliff and you jump off it into freezing cold water. A good wake up call when you were suffering the after effects of two bottles of Red Square vodka and a trip to Copperface Jack’s the previous night.

‘Why the hell are we here, Melissa?’ She grinned and I could see a devious flash in those green eyes of hers.

‘Sometimes you gotta take a dip into the unknown Brian. You know, live life to its fullest potential.’ I laughed.

‘What fucking Corn Flakes box did you rob that off? Seriously Melissa, sometimes I wonder if you’re on acid when you come up with this shit.’ She put on a mock sad look on her face, and grasped my two hands in hers. Her hands were like silk quilt covers; so soft I could lose myself in them. I stared hard into her eyes.

‘Well Brian, sometimes you can take the leap … othertimes you gotta be thrown!’ A split-second later, I was hurtling through the air as she pivoted on her heel, swung me over the edge of the Forty Foot, and came hurtling down after me. The last thing I saw before I hit the stinging cold of the water was her face beautifully contorted in hysterics. Then a thousand knifes of jagged water smacked into me. Thankfully I was wearing clothes, but I have no idea how the freaks in the Speedos were managing that shit.

Another example was when we ‘borrowed’ Tommy Cajones’ prized vintage Porsche 911 and decided to head to Bray at dawn and do doughnuts in the beach there. We ended getting the car stuck on the beach and muggins here had to try and shift the car while Melissa sat on the bonnet looking sexy. The following day TC accosted me.

‘Brian, why is there a ton of fucking sand in my car the day of my meeting with the new executive partners?’ I shrugged.

‘Jerky Joe was in Bray yesterday visiting Pothead Paul to get some gear, and he hasn’t forgiven you yet for throwing his white Armani shirt in with your ould lass’ colour wash. Betcha my signed Irish jersey it was Joe.’ TC walked off muttering.

‘I’ll fucking kill that stoner bastard …’

‘Course Melissa is equally content to sit in and watch DVDs with mé féin, and I have discovered … other reasons why I liked her so much. Let’s just say that my life hasn’t been so complete since I scored the winning try against those Clongowes’ bastards in the Leinster Schools Junior Cup all those years ago. And gay and all as that sounds, for once the jock isn’t afraid to show his sensitive side … yeah, I’m so glad I …

 Had you there didn’t I? Emotions my bollocks. She’s as crazy as me and that suits me fine.

Anyway, I said I don’t like tagging memes or whatever the hell they’re called, and let me categorically state that they are one of the most confusing aspects of blogging, along with random awards from strangers, thus placing them in the What The Fuck? bracket of Things Brian Damage Doesn’t Really Have A Fucking Notion About. I’ll give it a shot.

Four jobs I’ve held:
DART station cleaner
Administrative clerk
Shelf monkey
Arrested for assault in Starbucks within the first week

Four movies I’ve watched over and over again:
Saving Private Ryan
The Body Snatchers
Citizen Kane
Anchorman

Four places I’ve been:
Honduras (charity stuff with Gonzaga)
Sweden
Japan
Dubai

Four places I’ve lived:
Booterstown, Dublin 4 x 4

Four TV shows I watch:
Heroes
Prison Break
Scrubs
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace

Four radio shows I listen to:
Tom Dunne’s Pet Sounds – Today FM
Mooney Goes Wild – RTÉ Radio One
The Right Hook – Newstalk 106
Darren and Darragh’s Midnight Metal – 97.3 FM

Four things I look forward to:
My birthday
Sex
Alcohol
Payday

Four favourite foods:
Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad
Dorito’s Chilli Heatwave
Chicken and Mayonnaise Sandwich Filler
Duck Liver Paté

Four places I’d rather be:
America
Australia
Mars
Helmand Province, Afghanistan

Four people I e-mail regularly:
Luke Ugivashit
Francis Ake
Imogen Airy
Peter I. S. Soff

Who am I going to tag? No one. I told you, tag’s for kids.

Or more to the point …

Damn you Zach Braff!!!

Break It Down

I apologise for the of posts/ rounds to your blogs, but I have been busy romancing Melissa/working like a dog/preparing for a return to UCD to do an Arts degree as a ‘mature’ – there’s a laff – student.

So, until the end of the big Feb, so long, though the look of my AIB Current Account is pleasingly in the black …

The Jeremy Kyle Show

Back in 2005, when I was between jobs, I first watched the opening few weeks of The Jeremy Kyle Show. I was so impressed with the tenacity, smugness, and sheer hilarity of the show, that I’ve never stopped watchiong it since. The way he just incisively cuts into guests – usually uneducated pikeys from Rotherham – is fucking awesome.

I can’t really watch it anymore, what with me working and it being on at 9:25am, but I remember watching this particular show. This is Jeremy Kyle taking on the Westboro Baptist Church and three of their apparatchiks. Check out the retarded looking one on the left – that’s what inbreeding will do to you.

 Sadly the embedding has been disabled, so I can’t bring you the embedded videos, but here’s the links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Mta3zdavM&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPB1q77Has4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k2vlELfmnc&feature=related

Happy Guaranteed Scoring Day

In what can best be described as a break from tradition, where I would normally head out of a Valentine’s Day and score like Pele in front of an open net before ending up in the sack for some sweaty, bouncy ’romance’ – what a great cover – I have accepted the gracious offer from my least psycho ex, Melissa, to head out to the Savoy on O’Connell Street to see a rom-com with her and have dinner in a fancy restaurant of her choosing and my billing afterwards.

I certainly don’t wish people a Happy St. Valentine’s Day unless I’m seeing them – sure it’s not like a national holiday or birthday -but enjoy yourselves, and if you are sitting at home, cause you have no-one or if like Jerky Joe, you’ve got your Xbox but mno girlfriend cos killing terrorists and foul-mouthed American kids was more important, you have my sympathy. I’ll down a glass of Ballygowan Sparkling for you.

God I miss alcohol.

Through The Fire And The Flames … Get A Job, Hippies

Jerky Joe was always a bit of ametalhead. We tried to break him out of it, but he resolutely listened to speed metal bands that played ridiculous riffs and solos that are just not humanly possible to play on a proper guitar. They also sound like melodic vomit if you ask me. You didn’t, but hell, why not?

Anyway, Dave the Lawyer got an Xbox 360 for his birthday from the woman and Jerky Joe bought him a copy of a game called Guitar hero 3 with it. I think the basic idea is to follow a series of button presses in time with what appears on the screen by strumming on a plastic guitar. Video games were never my thing and watching Jerky Joe play it was like watching his fingers vanish series of blurs flying about the place. I was amazed that Jerky Joe had that kind of ryhthm, considering this is the same guy who spent his teenage years taking the batteries out of the smoke alarms in his parents’ house so they wouldn’t know he was smoking weed. Him there jacking about like Jimi Hendrix while slamming away on a Les Paul mock-up was pretty funny.

Until he finished the game in about seven hours (marathon drinking session ongoing too) and started playing a song by a band called Dragonforce called Through The Fire And The Flames. You just knew it was speedmetal cos he went ‘aw, awesome!’ before the song started.

Thanks to YouTube I found a video of this being played so you too can marvel at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. If anyone out there has managed to get 100% on ‘Expert’ mode on this, I have to say this …

 Get a life, you knob. It’s a video game.

Ná hAbair É: Sobriety, Citibar, and Why I Hate Bouncers

Úsaideann an líne seo ar cáilíní cé atá ag caint as Gaelige: Dia duit, cáilín gnéiseach, cad é mar atá tú?

My first few days of sobriety would have passed peacefully, except myself and the boys, and Fat Frank, a former rugby teammate of ours, went to Citibar to ‘celebrate’ my new found sobriety. I have a €500 bet with the boys so I’ll stay off for a month. At least it would have passed off peacefully, were it not rfor a few bottles of Lucozade Alert and my mortal nemeses in their most aggressive form.

That’s right, ladies and gents, bouncers.

Bouncers are the scourge of all young Dubliners, regardless of division-cross-the-Liffey. Put an unemployed shitbag from Blanchardstown in a suit, shave his head, give him a walkie-talkie, and he thinks he’s the fucking Terminator. I have had numerous scraps with them over the years, and add to that the fact that I have done Brazilian Ju-jitsu before (not bad shit, so I kept it up, though the birds were the main attraction) and you have a recipe for potential – never mind disaster, more like fucking catatastrophe – and of course I’ve often indulged in a slice of that misfortune. I’ve been in Vincent’s about six times through scraps with bouncers.

So off we went to Citibar, me buzzin’, the boys pretty locked cos it was Dave the Lawyer’s birthday (happy 25th, Dave ) an we approached the door in cvonfident form. Even Fat Frank never gets kicked out of Citibar. We strutted our way towards the door. The bouncer, a shaven headed golem with the intelligence of a woodlouse, eyed us suspiciously.

‘ID?’ He asked. Tommy Cajones laughed.

‘Eh yeah, we’re all at least 24. We don;t carry ID.’ The bouncer narrowed his eyes and checked his clipboard.

‘No ID, no entry.’ What the fuck? This time Fat Frank protested. He tried the ‘reason-wth-fellow-man’ approach.

‘Sir, we’ve been coming here since we were 18, why would you turn us loyal customers away?’ The bouncer shook his head and feigned sympathy.

‘Sorry boys, you’ll have to drink elsewhere tonight. Door policy. No ID, no entry.’ Now at this a load of student lassies – and let me categorically state that 3 years’ worth of age difference is no barrier to a ‘Medical Student at Tinity’ like me (God bless lying) – came up, pretty much winked at the bouncer, and stood at the head of the queue. Now you just knew the bollocks had a fucking boner you could use to put manners on a Kenyan riot with, and so he let them in. That for me was the last straw. Marched up to him and got all up in his face.

‘Listen son,’ I said, breathing heavily on him, ‘I’ve put up with enough shit from your kind over the years. You think that just because you have the power to let people into some shitty nightclub for three hours that you’re a fucking god? Let me fill you in on some secrets: I earn nearly three times as much as you do, I live in a plush gaff in Booterstown, I’ve been with the kind of women you can only dream with, and you know what the best part is?’ I decided to hedge my bets and went nose-to-nose with him here. ‘You’re a fucking nobody. The world fills a cereal bowl full of you fuckers every morning, chews you a bit, then spits your fucking useless asses down the drain. When this three hour shift is over, you’ ll take the Nitelink back to your hovel, to your kids who tell their friends that Daddy’s a musclebound retard, and drown your sorrows in cheap vodka while you mourn your lost hopes and dreams. Now let the fucking movers and shakers of this world into our rightful place.’ I stepped back. ‘Oh, and if you try anything, my friend here is a lawyer, and you try anything, you’ll be in the ‘Joy so quick you still be in that off-that-peg suit.’ I gestured at Dave, who in his swaying state admittedly looked more like Lionel fucking Hutz offf the Simpsons than a shark of a lawyer.

Long story short, bouncers roam in packs, ten minutes later I’m nursing a broken nose in Vincent’s Emergency Department.

I hate bouncers.

Acceptable in the 80s

Another 40 hour week, another €700 cash in the bank. What interesting things happened this week?

- Crazy Paul was very nearly sacked for throwing a laptop out the window of his 3rd storey office, but just got away with it when he reminded the board it was his laptop;

- One of the lassies in a box near mine, Joanna, is trying to sue for sexual harrassment – nastay!

- Me? I’ve given up alcohol, and while any readers familiar with the blog will say that that’s a damn lie, I’m serious.