Wednesday, December 29, 2010
2011 - It might turn out like this...
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
A selection of letters to Santa
Friday, December 10, 2010
Diary of a Snow Captive
Saturday, December 4, 2010
My News
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Things I learned this week
Just because they said they did it doesn't mean they did either.
That saying about early to bed, early to rise, makes man healthy, wealthy and wise ... is a myth.
If you watch live football on the internet the picture will always freeze just before a goal.
Cd cases are very handy for cleaning snow off the car window.
You should really take the cd out before you do that.
Getting a cd wet can affect it!
Home made soup is hard to beat.
In some households you might be prevented from having soup until you have lit the fire.
It can be hard to light a fire without firelighters.
But it's not impossible.
When you don't have firelighters and you use paper and old milk cartons, you will definitely go through more matches than you'd anticipated.
At least one match will break.
If you try to light that broken match, there is a good chance that you will burn your finger.
Most people will suck their finger if they burn it.
Even if they already have soot on it.
Adults seem to like the Late Late toy show as much as children.
Perhaps even more!
Ironic as it might seem, some people will still buy monopoly for their children this year.
It might be even more ironic to think on the reasons why some people can't afford to buy monopoly this year!
When I haven't written a blog, I usually write one on things I have learned.
These are often harder to write!
But not impossible...
Friday, November 19, 2010
‘Twas the Month Before Christmas
Friday, November 12, 2010
It’s the economy, stoopid
Friday, November 5, 2010
The thin edge of the wedge…
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Counting sleeps
Strange as it might seem for somebody who writes stuff like this, but I do get bothered at times by things that just doesn’t make sense.
Which is why a new trend I’ve noticed over the past while has really started to bug the hell out of me.
It’s a new measurement of time called – a sleep.
And here’s the thing, while half the time I think I could be a mathematician, the other two thirds of the time I’m pretty certain that I wouldn’t really be cut out for it.
Especially when there are all sorts of new measurements to have to deal with, like umm, a sleep.
If you have reached this point and are a bit lost, don’t worry cos this is a normal enough reaction to my writing and it usually wears off in around six months or so.
Oh yeah, back to the whole sleep thing. You might have noticed that people have been measuring time using the word sleep in recent times (or should that be in recent sleeps, I just don’t know any more).
You know the kind of thing – “five sleeps ‘til my birthday,” “sixty nine sleeps ‘til Christmas,” all that jazz.
But it doesn’t make any sense, because - and here’s the science bit as they used to say in the adverts – people have different sleeping patterns.
And no folks I’m not talking about what’s on their duvet covers, I’m talking about the amount of time (or should that be sleeps) they spend sleeping!
Okay let’s just run with the person who gets up at 7am every day, goes to bed at 11.30pm every night and sleeps soundly for the rest of the hours but only those hours. A person like that might be justified in counting their time in terms of sleeps.
Why they would want to do that when there are perfectly good terms like day and night around, I just dunno. I mean these are terms that have stood the test of time, people know what they mean and they don’t mean something that they are not.
If somebody told you they would be away for a day, you kinda knew how long they would be gone for. If they tell you they are away for a sleep. Well now folks, come on, how are we to know?
I mean what counts as a sleep? What about the person who sits down in the evening with the tv on and with the fire blazing and wakes two hours later with a big slobber mark on the side of the sofa cushion? Did they sleep? Sure they did. Does it count? Umm, I dunno.
I mean some thought has been put into the day and night thing and we have seconds and minutes and hours and stuff. But if you have a nap for fifteen minutes in an afternoon where does that fall into play in the whole sleep thing?
Even thinking about it now has started to hurt my head.
I think I’ll go lie down and have a wee day to myself.
I’ll be gone for at least a sleep.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Now I’m a Twit as well
I am now a Twit. Or I think maybe that should be I now Tweet.
Man, I can’t really get used to all this new fangled technology talk – anyway I’ve joined Twitter.
To be honest, I’ve been aware of Twitter for quite some time now, and yet because I had somehow found myself sucked into the whole Facebook thingy that has swept across the country, I had convinced myself that I didn’t need to be on Twitter too.
I mean, come on now, it’s just some kinda big teletext machine with people putting all kinds of random stuff up that is mostly of no interest whatsoever.
And then I went to a talk by Ireland’s top blogger Damien Mulley last week and suddenly found myself thinking on my way back in the car – umm, random nonsense eh, that Twitter thing might right up my street after all.
But there was a snag.
I have, in the past, been known to ramble a while before finally getting to my point – all in the best interests of building up suspense and getting in as many bad puns as I possibly could of course.
But Twitter will stand for no such messing about and beatin’ about the bush.
No. Twitter gives you 140 characters and if you can’t get your nonsense, umm, I mean message, across in that, well tough.
And yet, I joined.
I sat at the computer for half an hour or twenty minutes or whatever and got the whole shebang set up.
And then I realised I knew nobody on Twitter. I mean when I joined Facebook somebody suggested I join, so it was a bit like going to a wake or a party or something. As long as you knew you weren’t going on your own, it was never so bad.
But here I was, without even a Mass Card tucked under me arm or anything, stepping bravely into the whole Twitter world thingy and not knowin a bein’ in the place.
And after that I had to think on something to write. I mean anything, something cool and funny and interesting. Something that would say to these people on Twitter already that I was here now and they all should be delighted.
But all I could think on was - Now to embrace this whole Twitter thingmebob.
It was probably the Twitter equivalent of the old ‘do you come here often’ chat-up line, and I desperately sought a delete, undo, take back button and couldn’t find one.
But hey, at least sitting behind the screen you don’t see the thousands cringing at your stupidity, so as soon as you can think of something else stupid to say, you can go ahead and post it right up there.
So long as you can manage to keep it all within that magic number of 140 characters that is.
And to be honest, I think that might be a bit of a problem for me.
You see, I never really mastered the art of short text messages because I like to use real words when I write.
And because I do, I send most of my texts from my computer where, if I have to use a madey up word, I like it to be one I madey uppy myself, not some kinda weird combination of letters and numbers.
You know the stuff – gr8 and B4 and all the stuff you see in text messages.
And with all that in mind, I’m really not sure how this whole Twitter thing will work out for me.
And yet, at least it did manage to kick start me back on the blogging trail again, thanks to a perfect Twitter post from one of my girls who watched me struggle with the whole character count thing.
“Well, if you can't get your nonsense to fit into 140 characters it's about time you re-started your stoopid blog again. You big Twit!”
Umm, you know, I think she had a point...
(After a good old break I hope to post here now once a week) - Liam
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Pumping iron…
I’ve never liked ironing. I don’t know why that is, or, come to think of it, why, if that is the case, that I ever have to do it now.
But I do. Here’s the thing you see, apparently despite all the great strides we’ve made in society these days like not being able to call the postman the postman any more in case we’re perceived to be sexist or something, we still can’t go outside with wrinkly trousers. Hence the ironing.
By the way I still call the postman, the postman, although usually I just call him Dan.
Unless of course the postman happens to be a woman. Then I’d call her Debbie or Mary or whatever her name is.
Oh yeah, she'd be a postwoman too of course.
But all that is an aside to this conundrum of ironing.
I’m not sure why I dislike ironing so much, I think that perhaps secretly I’m always afraid that the phone might ring.
If you need a second to think about that, take a pause now - but as a hint remember the old joke about the guy who burned his ear listening to the match.
So moving swiftly along. Ironing then. I mean folks, seriously is there any logic to it at all?
When I was growing up my mother used to spend hours upon hours on her feet ironing shirts and trousers and, well everything really.
And I’m pretty sure than most other mothers around did the same. There were days you could smell the starch in the air from half a mile away.
Those were usually after good drying days, something I think will be making a return to many parts now.
For ten years or so I don’t think anybody knew what a good drying day was. Every day was a good drying day because, well everything was thrown in the dryer and sure what the hell, it only cost a few pence.
And sure what odds if it shrunk the jumper into something you’d have to put on a teddy bear, sure wasn’t the jumper only ten euro and couldn’t we drive down and buy two more tomorrow.
Fancy dancy garden designers were rooting up clothes lines like they were the biggest weeds they’d ever seen in anybody’s garden and sure nobody seemed to mind at all.
Not like when I was wee and the line used to be packed with trousers and sheets and socks and nearly every week a full football rig – whenever there was a good drying day.
There was a kind logic to it all really when you think of it. Wash the clothes on the day you know they could be dried. But the ironing afterwards thing always kinda baffled me.
It was grand if you were ironing something to put on right away, but I could never see the logic in ironing something that was going to be folded and put away in a cupboard.
I mean, as soon as you folded it you were going to ensure that it would need ironed again. It didn’t tally in with all the carefully thought out strategy of washing and drying.
In fact there was a time when I was younger and used to watch things like the futuristic ‘Space 1999’ that I thought it would be kinda cool in the future because all the clothes would be those jump suity things that I was pretty sure were made from stuff you couldn’t iron. (Well you could but they would stick to the iron, trust me on this I know!)
Instead we’ve gone way past 1999 and people are still nipping their fingers on crotchety old ironing boards and standing around and ironing clothes that they then fold and put into a cupboard.
But always fearful of that phone ringing, my ironing skills are only ever now used on something that will be imminently worn.
It’s not a policy that has drawn widespread approval.
“If you do that the clean laundry pile just increases,” I was told.
To which I replied – ‘Yep, and in creases is the way it’ll stay too!”
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The very thought of it pierces through me...
You know I’ve never really quite got the whole piercing thing. You know the sticking bits of metal into bits of your body – deliberately.
I guess there are some who like to do it to shock people or, well to be honest I don’t really know why, but I know that it never appealed to me.
Not that I’m against it per say, I think people are quite entitled to if that’s their thing, but I never really liked pain all that much and anything that would involve pain being inflicted on me, however short that period of time might be, is something that I try to avoid at all costs.
That’s why for instance blood tests and needles and stuff are not exactly high up on my list of things that I like either and it’s not cos I can’t stand the sight of blood or anything.
I have been unfortunate enough to have to have taken some such tests in the past and while I’m pretty certain I build up the extent of the pain much more in my head than it ever actually turns out to be, it’s still not a thing that I have ever looked forward to with any kind of comforting thought.
Which leads me to wonder why anybody would want somebody to come along and deliberately shoot a hole in their body so they could then fill that hole with a piece of metal that quite often festers into a horrible gooey mess.
And the thing is piercing seems to have gone up a notch or seven since the time when I was growing up and only girls and really tough blokes had their ears pierced.
Of course the really tough blokes didn’t have both ears pierced, they usually had one ear pierced and even then only ever as far as I recall wore a wee gold stud ear-ring.
Unless they were a pirate of course and then they could wear some hind of a hoopy thing, but there were never too many pirates around when I was growing up apart from the odd boy in the eighties who might have sold a dodgy video tape or two.
But anyways by and large it was just the tough guys and the girls who had ear rings. I wasn’t a tough guy and I have never had an ear-ring but I do have eight sisters, about half a million nieces and girl cousins and now two daughters, so over the years I have seen the pain a festering ear ring can cause.
With that in mind I could never even begin to contemplate some of the piercings that seem to be all the rage these days and the pain that they could bring to areas that should never have to be bathed with antiseptic.
And all this came to mind when I saw a guy in a shopping centre in Dublin today with a huge amount of piercings and a tee shirt that said ‘I can’t go through the day without shocking at least one stranger.’
I guess some people might have been shocked, he did after all look as if he had tripped and fallen head first into a box of fishing tackle, but it just caused me to wonder how much pain he had to through to get to look like he did.
And that was before I began to think about the hassles involved – for instance could you imagine getting caught in the queue at the airport screening machine behind somebody like him?
Beep….Beep….beep. “Oh sorry, I thought I had them all, umm you might want to look away for a minute while I umm, ah, umm, ah ok I think I have it….hope that’s the last of them.”
I have always thought it was a pain that I have to take off my shoes and belt going through those machines, but how much of a pain must it be for a guy with so many piercings….and that’s even before any of them begin to fester!
Monday, January 25, 2010
One to sleep on...if you can!
I mean if it’s a condition whereby you can’t sleep…how can you sleep it off?
Sleep is a puzzling thing. I know there are all sorts of statistics about it – things for instance that tell us how many years of our lives we sleep away, but the thing I’ve always wondered about is sleeping patterns.
No, I don’t mean the latest duvet designs – I’m talking about the hours we each sleep and the things that affect us sleeping.
An old teacher I one had at school used to say he’d always been told it was ‘seven hours for a woman, eight hours for a man and ten or more for a pig!’
I always wondered where nine came into the equation, but was always too scared to ask him.
Of course these words of wisdom were directed at the time to myself and my classmates who were in our teenage years – since it was assumed that we’d spend half our time in our beds if we got the chance.
We might well have too, but you know on reflection I’m not sure if there’s much wrong with that sleeping pattern anyway, well at least in comparison to any other.
I mean if you think about it, when you are a little kid you might catch wee cat naps during the day but be roaring your head off all through the night.
A bit bigger and while you sleep a bit longer at night time – you still beat the sun up (and that means so do your parents).
A few years follow when it seems everything might slip into the ‘correct’ sleeping pattern but they soon slip into those lazy teenager years of long sleep ins at every opportunity.
And then not many years after that you could well find the whole cycle starting again if you happen to have small kids of your own and find that you are pacing the floor with them as they roar the house down, and then later discovering the joys of early morning television!
By the time they become teenagers you still won’t be sleeping at night – waiting now until you hear the sound of them coming back in again in the early hours of the morning!
Of course things are different for everybody, I mean some people I know say they can go with just ‘half a sleep.’ I could never figure that out either – I mean you either sleep or you don’t. How can you have half a sleep?
Still, on a recent occasion when I was troubled with late night noise and a sore back as well into the bargain, I’d have given anything for a half hour’s sleep – or even a half a sleep for that matter!
I tried lying on my back, on my front, on my side, on my other side.
I tried sitting and kneeling, I’d even have tried standing on my head if I could have managed it. In the end I just confined myself to jogging circuits of the living room in the hope that I’d eventually tire myself out and fall asleep.
Course it didn’t work, but after three nights I felt sure that I could have a shot at any marathon, if I could just keep my eyes closed for the whole 26 miles.
You know while that didn’t work for me I must admit that I have discovered that there are some fascinating ways in which some people find it almost impossible not to dose off.
Like kids in a car, or some people on a bus or a plane, or for some people watching late night tv.
On this occasion for me it happened to be a large injection and course of painkillers – but thankfully the steps don’t always have to that drastic before I can get some shuteye.
I mean sometimes I just get so tired that the sleep gets the better of me anyway
So for instance, I might be doing something like writing this and zzzzzzzzzz
Sunday, January 24, 2010
I can’t get you outta my head…
I’m wondering if it’s just me, or if there are other people out there who find it annoying when a piece of music gets stuck in their head – and just stays there.
And sometimes it can stay there for a couple of days, just swirling around and around and you know that you’ve heard it on the radio or somewhere but you don’t know why it has stayed there.
What usually makes this even more annoying is the fact that quite often, the piece of music that sticks in your head is a piece that, well, that might not be up there among your list of current favourites.
In fact, more often than not, the more annoying a song seems to be, the greater the chance that this will be the one that sticks in your head.
Apparently these annoying songs are called ear worms.
Seriously folks, there has been scientific research carried into all this which has got me thinking that there are very strange things done in the name of science.
In fact, if you were ever to think about it really, there are probably loads of really cool jobs you could do – all in the name of science.
But I’m not sure if researching ear worms is one of them.
For a start I’m wondering why they had to call them ear worms?
I mean if people are finding this music that sticks in their head annoying and unpleasant, thinking of it as some kind of a worm is hardly going to help.
But worms they are and here’s another shocker for you – there are people out there who know how to put the damn things into your head.
Advertising people for a start. You might think that they have come up with a ‘catchy jingle’ but when that damn jingle is running through your head first thing in the morning or when you get up to go to the loo in the middle of the night, you should know you’ve been earwormed!
But advertising jingles are not usually the worst offenders. It usually is a song that is a favourite of radio djs who would appear to just switch and share the same ten or twenty songs at any one time – irrespective of the station.
These are the songs that get played five, six, seven – heck who knows how many times a day.
They are the songs like ‘Who let the dogs out,’ or ‘Macarena’ and hardly ever something good.
I found a lot of this stuff out by asking the google, but the google couldn’t help me do anything about the fact that I’ve had a damn song stuck in my head for two days that I don’t want to be there.
So I’m just trying to sort it myself by listening to different good tunes that I hope will help get shot of the one in there now.
Today it’s the Louis Armstrong classic - ‘Gone Fishin’
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Boiling Mad
I’m all for saving the environment and all, but really folks am I the only person in the world to boil the kettle more than once when I’m making tea or coffee? I don’t think so!
To be honest I don’t even know why I do that. I mean it would probably be just as easy to stand there, wait for the kettle to boil and – hey presto – just make the tea or coffee there and then.
It all sounds so easy – except, well except for the fact that a watched kettle never boils.
When I say ‘except for the fact,’ I don’t for a fact know that is actually a fact - if you know what I mean.
But it is something that I was told before and have heard a few times since.
I’m pretty sure indeed that it is not a scientific truth or indeed fact and I am pretty certain that, if I watched the kettle it would boil.
So long as I had put the water in and switched it on that is.
But here’s the thing – watching a kettle is no real fun.
There are other electrical appliances that are more interesting to watch than a kettle.
You can watch a washing machine for instance. Well if it is one of those ones with a glass door, you can.
It won’t be the most exciting thing you’ll ever have watched in your life – but compared to watching a kettle it will be like watching a Hollywood blockbuster.
Then again you could just watch a Hollywood blockbuster on your television or your computer.
Yep, when it comes to electrical appliances that you might want to watch, there are quite a few that would be higher up on the list than a kettle.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons that I choose not to watch the kettle after I have turned it on – but there is one slight problem with that.
Even though you might have been in a different room and thought you had heard the click – can you really be sure that it came from the kettle?
The only way of knowing is – well to push the button and boil the kettle again.
This drives some people really crazy.
They hate it when people boil the kettle more than once. I’m not one of those people. By one of those people I mean the people who are driven crazy by this - not the people who do it.
For instance I can’t say I’ve noticed that it makes any noticeable difference to, well to the water.
Apart from the fact that I know for sure it is boiled.
Of course it would usually be helpful at this point to make the tea, or the coffee, but sometimes that second flick of the switch comes when I’m just passing the kettle en route to doing something important or maybe finishing something important.
This important thing may well involve watching another electrical appliance (the tv not the washing machine!) and, well the button might as a result, be clicked again a couple of more times before the tea or coffee gets made.
And this, apparently is not good for the environment.
I just thought it was bad for my pocket in the week that the electricity bill comes in, but I guess the more electricity we use, the worse it is for the environment.
And yet I think I have a suggestion that could make a difference.
Why can somebody not just make a television that has a kettle built into it?
Unless of course it really is true – you know.
That a watched kettle never boils...
Friday, January 22, 2010
My news...
Today was Friday. It was a sunny day. I like sunny days, they are nice and warm. Some sunny days are not warm though, they are just sunny. Today was just sunny. I think it was cold, but I don’t know because I was inside. I wasn’t cold because I had the fire lit and it was nice and toasty. I was cold tonight because I was outside and it was frosty. But that was night time so that doesn’t count, even if it is still Friday.
And in other news...
Circus in Lifford?
Children in Lifford are said to be raging this week that the members of the council may have held some kind of a circus and didn’t invite any of them to it.
A local child said they had heard that some councillors were up to old tricks and apparently the Mayor was even walking a tight rope for a while.
They said that they didn’t know how many clowns were there at the time, but said they believed there were probably a few at least.
And the local children say they do not believe the official line that this was not a circus and was in fact a council meeting.
“We might have believed them if we hadn’t heard somebody on the radio saying that the whole thing was intense,” a local child said.
Another plan foiled…
Weeks after all the snow and ice have melted it has emerged that some parts of Donegal are still without water. Hundreds of households still have no water and many are having their water rationed and switched off on a nightly basis. It is believed that things have got so bad that the council was considering diluting its water stocks until they realised they didn’t have enough water!
Not cool
Meanwhile council members did hear at last week’s meeting that the recent cold weather in the county would leave them with a whopping €4 million bill. It is believed that they are now hoping that the government has some kind of a slush fund they can use to help them out.
One for the road?
Gardai say they are concerned about reports they have received about vehicles all over Donegal getting badly beaten up and battered by pieces of road in recent weeks.
A Garda spokesman has warned members of the public to be careful about approaching these roads.
“We have heard of the cars getting badly battered in recent weeks and we would warn people about the dangers certain stretches of tarmac can pose. I mean some of them are cyclepaths!"
And finally
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Something shocking
I'M convinced, although I have no proof whatsoever for actually thinking this, that I am not the only person who absolutely detests those automatic hand dryer things you get in the toilets of busy places like hotels and shopping centres.
For a start I know they are supposed to be environmentally friendly and all that, but to be honest I’ve always been a little bit afraid of them.
After all, they are ELECTRIC hand dryers, and I recall being told time and time again when I was growing up that water and electricity were not a great combination to try to mix.
In fact one teacher I had, I think maybe in second or third class seemed very intent on getting the message across and had us draw pictures time and time again of people getting electrocuted switching on lights and other electrical stuff with wet hands.
I used to love drawing those pictures with the big lightning zaps coming out of them.
But I always struggled when he would tell me that the picture was good, but now I needed a good slogan to go with it.
I was in second class, I didn’t know what ‘slogan’ meant so I just stared at him blankly as if I’d just been zapped in the head by 10,000 volts after switching on the lights with wet hands.
Eventually he would explain and I would come up with something ingenious like ‘don’t switch on electrical stuff if your hands are wet.’
I’m guessing that in those formative years I’d not yet learned to appreciate the humour of Tommy Cooper or the Two Ronnies.
Nor had I any of the caffeine side effects that might nowadays prompt me to more likely come up with something like “If you don’t want to fry, make sure you’re hands are dry.”
Anyway, all these lightning zapping flashbacks often come back to me when I’m confronted with one of these so-called hand dryers and I picture myself putting my hands under them to get the shock of my life.
Not that I have to worry on that front usually though, because apparently these things are put in to help us save the planet and I can only guess that includes never actually hooking them up to a power supply.
Now let me first clarify here that I’m talking about those automatic dryers, you know the ones that are supposed to know you have put your wet hands underneath them and turn themselves on and off.
There are also of course the hit the button type, which - considering they involve turning on an electrical appliance with wet hands - I’m not that fussed about either.
The thing is though, they usually work. And if they don’t come on when you push the button, then you know it is probably broken.
The automatic ones however are a different story. You see you are never quite sure if they are working or not.
You put your hands under them. Nothing.
You start to rub your hands together. Nothing.
You put your hands closer to where you expect the warm air to come from. Nothing.
You are getting mad now so you risk your life and actually touch the wire grid thingy where the warm air is supposed to come from…nothing.
You look around to see if nobody is looking (that’s never the case though because there is always a queue at those damn things)…you dry your hands on the legs of your trousers.
The alternatives however can provide a real dilemma.
You see on the one hand, you could decide not to wash your hands (apparently some people do this I’ve been told) but then you risk spreading germs and disease and infection and, well, you or others might die as a result.
On the other hand you might wash your hands and then find that you can’t get them dry because the damn dryer thingy isn’t working so you resolve next time not to wash them and that could mean you risk spreading spreading germs and disease and infection and, well you or others might die as a result.
Or, you could always do what I do - try to buy trousers that have legs that are reasonably good at absorbing water!