Oh Christ it's followed us

I can't believe it!! It's pissing rain and today started off so promisingly (is that a word?). It reminds me of the time when Giblets and meself were in the Western Sahara. We decided we were going to camp out for a while. No sooner had we put up our tents and it pissed rain..... for three days! Just to put that into context, it hadn't rained there in forty years until two Paddies arrived over and pitched a tent. The local Bedouins were over the moon and running around like they had just won the lotto. I'm really begining to think that it is me!

Planes, trains and the Divil knows what else

A half hour car journey, a three hour flight, a half hour bus trip, a quick stop for a chat and a pizza with Finnish Euge in Helsinki, a twenty minute tram ride, a two hour boat trip and a half hour walk and I'm finally here in Tallinn and trying to get to grips with this cyrillic keyboard. The Tallinn trip is just a detour to buy shit loads of cheap booze before heading to our lakeside cabin in Finland on Saturday where we will be joined by Finnish Euge and his girlfriend Spolkki, Mr and Mrs Man Donkey and Giblets. It has the making of a crazy week. On the other hand it has the makings of a horror movie where there is a mad axe murderer on the loose in the woods and people disappear one by one. Better sharpen me axe so!

Out of Office Reply

Posting will be a bit sporadic for the next couple of weeks, I'm going on me holliers tomorrow. I don't know what d'Internet situation is like in Estonia and there's definitely none in the forests of central Finland but I will try and get one or two down. Until then, I'll talk to yiz all soon!!

The Child Particle Accelerator Experiment

Last night in Gorf’s house whilst sipping on a few alcoholic beverages I decided to conduct a scientific experiment. I’m sure you’ve heard of CERN and the work they do in particle physics, well my experiment was similar but instead of using electrons and what not, I used children, Gorf’s and Man Donkey’s to be precise, four and three years old respectively.
The particle accelerator itself was the kitchen, the sitting room and the hallway. You can walk in a loop from the kitchen into the sitting room to the hallway and back into the kitchen via the other door.
Acceleration was provided by the ‘Rarrghh!’ game, you know the one, you shout ‘Rarrghhh!’ at the top of your voice and the child, through the primal flight or fight instinct, loses all control of itself and half giggling, half screaming turns and runs away. Extra distance and velocity can be achieved by the stamping of your feet a few of times after them.
A couple of ‘Rarrghhhs!’ into the game I successfully manipulated the kids so that Gorf junior was constantly coming to one of the kitchen doors and Man Donkey Junior to the other. The experiment was ready to begin and by my calculations the ‘particles’ should collide somewhere around the sitting room door. The results were as follows:

Attempt 1:
Gorf Junior didn’t quite make it to the sitting room door. Longer ‘Rarrrgh!’ for him next time.
Man Donkey junior didn’t attempt the turn into the sitting room, instead he ran straight for the front door.
Attempt 1. Failed.

Attempt 2:
Gorf Junior behaved perfectly, turned and ran straight out the kitchen door through the sitting room door and into the hallway.
Man Donkey junior’s flight or fight mechanism decided to fight this time. He let out a huge ‘Rarrrghhh!’ back and battered me in the nuts. A much louder ‘Rarrrgh!’ for him with some very loud stamps next time.
Attempt 2. Failed.

Attempt 3:
Gorf junior behaved as before and ran straight out into the hallway.
Man Donkey junior, with some extra coaxing turned and ran back out the kitchen door into the hallway.
There followed a couple of milliseconds of silence, a loud smack, more silence, then an unmerciful cacophony the likes of which had never before been heard in 27 Andrews Park as two small children made their way back to the kitchen and their respective parents in floods of tears.
Attempt 3. Success!!

I can be an evil bastard sometimes.

Unbeatable Value!!

There’s a massive sale in Dunne’s, Tallaght today. Everything’s gotta go!

42” Plasma T.V €300
Laptops €150
Car Stereos €15
Digital Camera €30

Call to Skobie Dunne, 123 Fettercairn, Tallaght. Tel: 083 9375368 and tell him, I sent you.

Dave...... What are you doing Dave?

What’s going on today? I’m reading around a few blogs and nobody is saying anything major in particular. There are none of the usual fiery, witty cynicisms that always populate the blogosphere.
Twenty’s apathetic about the news, Sweary’s regurgitating the current state of things without her usual poignant, razor sharp edge and Grandad has withdrawn his fatwah on sunglasses on head people and tourists.
Even I was on my way into work this morning with a big bag of ‘I’ll kill ya’ ready to write about how MCD are cunts but now that I’m here, it’s like a wave of apathy has swept over me and I couldn’t give a shite whether or not they continue to rip kids off or, by providing piss poor security, endanger people’s lives.
It’s got me thinking though, something’s going on. I think that bloggers are being taken over by mysterious forces controlled by his Bertness or some other superior power in an effort to control what we say. A huge cloud of ‘I don’t know the fuck’ has descended over the blogosphere and is seeping through our neural cortices.
It hasn’t fully got me yet though but I may not last much longer, people, if there is anyone left out there that has full cranial control you need to do something fast!

S.P.A.C.E.R.O.C.K

The planet Uranus, the first planet to be discovered using technology other than the naked eye, was discovered on March 13th 1781 by the German born, music teaching, band leading, telescope constructing Frederick William Herschel and named after a conversation that he had with his wife Mary soon afterwards.

Frederick: ‘Mary! Mary! Come quick!’
Mary: ‘What is it Frederick?’
Frederick: ‘Quick Look!’

Mary peers through the newly constructed telescope.

Mary: ‘What is it that I am looking for, Frederick?’
Frederick: ‘Tis a new planet that I have just discovered.’
Mary: ‘A What?’
Frederick: ‘A new planet, never before been seen by anyone else but us two. This is going to make us famous Mary.’

Mary is unimpressed

Mary: ‘New planet My Arse!’

Aarrrggghhhh!!!

Sorry guys, no post today, this is doing my freaking head in. I'm at question 45.

Update @ 19.17: At question 81 now, is there no end to this madness??!!

Dumb-rellas!

What is it about rainy days that makes me want to smash people's heads in? Nope, it's not the obvious one, the rain, nor is it the fact that I can't go and lounge around Stephen's Green or Iveagh Gardens on my lunch break, I'm afraid it's the potentially lethal weapon that many idiots carry around with them and use so carelessly, i.e. d'umbrella, that really gets my goat up.
I'm not long back from strolling around Grafton street for my lunch (Yes, I know, I'm working strange hours this week) and I feel, and look like I've just gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson and a pack of rabid dogs. And it's always little people (I'm six foot two) that carry them and wave them around like they're in a frigging Harry Potter movie. And as for the suits with their humungous golf umbrellas, how big do they think their fucking heads are?
One would need the reflexes of a Ninja on speed and the footwork of an irradiated uber Flately just to get from one end of Grafton Street to the other without being horribly disfigured. Come the time of my Socialist Republic, all umbrellas will be banned and the people will be issued with the instructions 'Take your Raincoat you stupid Fucker!'.

Knowledge

Recently, I bought a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, not the DVD or the CD version for PC, but the proper, stick it on a shelf in the sitting room and hope it doesn't snap in two, turny page multiple volumes of it and of course, me being me, I didn't opt for the nice brand spanking new 2007 edition of the encyclopaedia, oh no, instead, I bought a beautifully reproduced replica of the first ever edition of the encyclopaedia, from 1768, and I haven't stopped laughing since.
It was the brainchild of three scotsmen, one of which was a mere fifty four inches high, had a huge nose that he accentuated by wearing an even larger paper maché one over it and another was a veritable drinking buddy of Robbie Burns', just the kind of guys that you want publishing the sum of the worlds knowledge in 1768.
The encyclopaedia was published in three volumes. Bell, McFarquhar and Smellie (guess which one used to get plastered with Burnsy) obviously started out with great gusto and intention as the first volume covers A to B, but this intention seems to have petered out as the second volume covers C to L while the third covers M to Z, presumably it was a case of, 'Quick lads, get this finished, Burnsy's got the pints on!'
The thing I love most in reading the books is the dropped 's', this is an 'f' where an 's' should be and it should be pronounced as an 'f'. It just begs to be read aloud in company.

'The word ELECTRICITY fignifies, in general, the effects of a very fubtile fluid matter, different in it's properties from every other fluid we are aquainted with. The fluid is capable of uniting with almoft every body, but unites more readily with fome particular bodies than with others: its motion is amazingly quick, is regulated by peculiar laws, and produces a vaft variety of fingular phenomena, the principal of which fhall be enumerated in this article.'

There are some great wisdoms in the encyclopaedia. A few of my particular favourites are:

On California: 'a large country of the Weft Indies,... It is uncertain whether it be a peninfula or an ifland.'

On Marriage: 'truly a contract, and fo requires the confent of parties. Ideots, therefore and furious perfons cannot marry.'

On Woman: 'the female of the man.'

and the entire chapter on medicine which I'm not going to quote here as it's about a hundred or so pages long but it does say that the cure for piles is to blow a mixture of tobacco smoke and lavendar up one's anus. If you have a couple of hours, it's side splittingly funny and it makes me thank my lucky stars that I was born in the 20th century.
Every now and then I'll take it down from the shelf and have a good laugh and think, 'Jaysus, they knew so much back then but then again, they knew fuck all!'

Missing, Please Help!!

Missing,

Round yellow thing usually floats around in the sky, answers to the name 'Sun'. If found please tell him, It's FUCKING JULY!!!

Here's an artists impression of what he should look like:

Family ties

I'm not one for believing in fate or destiny or anything like that, but the following story really challenges that belief. It's a completely true story except I have changed a couple of details, like the address, as I don't want any Internet freaks calling to my door. Each time someone new visits the house they get this story, so it's about time I published it.
About 5 years ago, Ms B3n and I were house hunting, looking for the ideal location where we could set up home together. We had decided that we were going to live in Drogheda. I'm from Drogheda and it was a relatively easy commute for both of us to work. While we were saving for the house we were living with her parents in the countryside about 25km from Drogheda.
One evening, we went to look at a house for sale in Drogheda. From the outside it looked like an ordinary end of terrace house built in the very early 1900s. The inside was, however, unlike anything we had seen so far. A young architect had owned the house and was in the final stages of renovating it, but had run out of funds. Among the improvements she made was to build a two storey extension on the back of the house that was bigger than the original house. The interior was roomy, airy and had a great sense of space but was completely unfinished. The extension wasn't rendered, the sitting room had no floor, there was still quite a bit of work to be done. Both MsB3N and I instantly loved the place and decided that this was the one for us. We put an offer on the house and then let the slow, arduous process of buying a house take it's course.
Over the course of the next few of months as it was looking increasingly likely that we were going to be successful in our bid, we made several visits to the house. We had quite a bit to do to make it livable and we were getting the various quotes from the various tradesmen for the work. It was after one of those visits that we called up to my parents who still live in Drogheda.
After a couple of minutes the conversation went thus:

My Ma: What are you doing in town?
Me: We're looking at this house that we have an offer on.
My Ma: Ahh very good. Where is it?
Me: Merchant Street.
My Ma: What Number?
Me: 15

With that me Da piped up from watching the T.V.

My Da: 15 Merchant Street?
Me: Yeah.
My Da: I was born in that house.
Me: Really?
My Da: Yeah, and your granny was born in that house too.

As it transpires my father moved out of that house when he was five years old to the house that I know today as being my Granny's. A couple of months later MsB3n and I moved in to what we originally thought was going to be our new house but turns out to be my old family home. My Granny is still alive, she's eighty nine years old and has been in our house several times. A while ago I was also presented with a photo of my great grandmother standing at the front door of our house, It was badly cracked but I'm working on it in photoshop. I don't know what it is but from the very first visit to this house I have always felt comfortable here

My Great Grandmother at my doorstep.

Breaking Moos!!!

For several months, I had been observing and closely monitoring an unusual kind of bovine behaviour. My journey to and from work on the train takes me past several fields of grazing cows. In each field and with each herd the behavioural pattern is the same, and that is, whenever a herd is grazing, every cow will face in exactly the same direction.
At first I thought it was to do with the wind until I noticed that on a particularly breezy day, the wind was from the East and the cows in one field faced North East but the cows in the next field faced North West. I could rule wind direction out.
For my next theory I had to look to the skies and to flocks of birds. I had often wondered how birds that flew in massive flocks knew when to turn so that they didn’t all collide until an ornithologist friend told me that they keep an eye on the bird to their front and the bird to their right and maintain the same distance apart.
Maybe I could apply this to my cow theory but after several days of observing the movements of the herds, I couldn’t find the pattern that could lead me to conclusively prove that this was the case.
I was at a dead end with my theorising, until last night that is. I was casually chatting to my Druid friend, Lugh, who whilst recently reading ancient Gaelic texts discovered that the nearby Newgrange or Brú na Bóinne as it is in the Gaelic was mistranslated from the original text and should actually read as Mú na Bóinne.
This was the breakthrough I was waiting for, Mú na Bóinne, the Moo of the Cows! What did the cows have to do with Newgrange, or Moogrange as it should be correctly called? When I explained my recent theories to Lugh he got very excited and explained that as a dowser he found that Moogrange was built on an intersection of leylines. So the cows built Moogrange? They must have done, along with other similar structures at Cowth and Loughmoo near Oldcastle. What a bombshell!!
Lugh showed me the map that he had drawn up from his dowsing. I had the answer right there. A series of leylines running parallel to the train tracks. They all face the same direction because of leylines. I’ve always believed that cows retained an ancient knowledge and knew stuff, and you know, they've never found a cow that has died of natural causes so for all we know they may live forever.

Mememememememe.... wha de fuh?

K8 sent me this thing where I have to put 8 things about meself on my blog. Being new to this blogology I thought that I just had to comment on her post. Ah well, I'm a poor simple fool. SO.... here we go.

1. I used to do the hands by the side jumping up and down dance to ‘Birdhouse in your Soul’ in the discas.
2. I’m a vegetarian, but then again so was Hitler.
3. My hobbies are clay pigeon shooting and greeetings card making.
4. I have earrings and a tattoo.
5. I was in a big budget Thai movie a few years ago.
6. I think that celery is the Devil’s poo.
7. I HATE flying but LOVE travelling.
8. Ronnie Drew once told me to F*ck Off!!

Now, I dont know anybody else to send this to so, I'll leave it there.

Nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine.... One Million!! Coming ready or not!

Hey, check out this dude, either he’s completely nuts or playing one serious game of hide ‘n’ seek. He’s counting to one million live on the net. Unfortunately, as he’s in the US you’re not going to see him in action until about 3pm G.M.T but you can check him out now as he sleeps.
I think I’d rather do a fun run or something else for charity. Apparently it going to take him about four months to complete, counting for about sixteen hours a day and he’s not going to leave the house until he’s done. What if he loses his place, will he start over?
Speaking of hide ’n’ seek, if I ever get the money I’m going to organise a game of international hide ‘n’ seek for my mates. We’ll all arrive at the airport, whoever is on, counts to 10 000 and the rest buy tickets and fly off to wherever they want. It could go on for years!

Why does it always......... OH F**K OFF!!!!

OK, it’s my turn now! I’m really fuckin fed up with this rain. It’s finally got to me. I always had the belief that there’s no such thing as bad weather, there’s only the wrong clothes. Fuck that! Even with my hi-tech, new fangled, Gortex superclothes (yes, they even repel bad vibes and keep my aura intact) I’m getting multiple soakings each day now and am starting to think I live in the middle of that poxy Travis song. I’m going to spend my luchtime battering SUV drivers.
All in favour of cutting out a sizable slice of this country, attaching an outboard motor and putting off down to the Med say ‘Aye!’ Which part of the country will we take? Preferably some part that has a EuroSpar and a Bagel factory.

In other news, it’s absolutely great to see that BBC journalist Alan Johnston and his head have been released together after 4 months of captivity.

You are what you read

Last year, I was mainly reading non-fiction, a couple of books on Rwanda, a few on Bosnia, Kosovo and Robert Fisk's mammoth The Great War for Civilisation. The year progressed, the books were getting more depressing and I was starting to become more and more disillusioned with this tiny planet in this vast universe.
Why couldn't the US State department have just admitted that what was going on in Rwanda WAS genocide and set wheels in motion to save the lives of 800 000 people? Why couldn't the UN peacekeepers in the safe enclave of Srebrenica have just done that and kept the peace instead of handing 8 000 muslim men and young boys over to their executioners? Why did the world stand by (and continues to do so) while the Israelis carried out acts against the Palestinians that can only be described as criminal? Fuck, I hated the world.

This year, as a remedy, I have prescribed myself a strict dose of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. I've read fourteen so far and intend to read the whole thirty odd of them by the end of the year. The change is for the better, instead of being Berties3rdNipple, an unimportant, anonymous blogger from Ireland, I am Abdoo Djellibelli a Klatchian fisherman from Al Khali. Or maybe that's just because it's 0.30 and I'm feeling the after effects of a monstrous weekend session and this is my first night since last Wednesday without beer. I'm sure to get the screaming heebee geebees later. I think I'll have a glass of wine!


Abdoo Djellibelli. Klatchian Fisherman

Test Card

Due to an intense weekend of booze and other things, today's post has been cancelled. Normal services will resume as soon as I can get my head to stop fizzing. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.


And now for something completely different:
How to calculate Pi by throwing frozen Hotdogs.