K8 the GR8

There are some fierce creative memes flapping about recently, aren’t there?  This one is from Squidward and here are the rules:

If you had to select celebrities/actors to play the parts in the story of your life today (including yourself!), who would it be and why - this can be based on looks or personality!

The Rules!

1. List the people who would play you, and the key people in your life.
2. Give credit to the person who tagged you.
3. Link your answers to the original blog, that’s here (http://www.iRamble.co.uk)!
4. Tag four new people to participate.

-o0o-

Right so…

I’d have Mary-Louise Parker play myself (as long as she can do me accent!),  because I related to her character and her family in ‘Weeds’ a little bit too much.  It was quite scary how similar we seem to be, except that she can give a mighty verbal ass-kicking which is a subject I am studying.

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The Accidental Terrorist would be played by Keith Duffy, because no foreign actor could act a true Irish lad’s lad, the type of lad that you find annoying at first until they grow on you and you find out that they’re great craic after all, and are handy with a spanner. 

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My father would be played by John Cleese.  I often wonder if they’re not one and the same person in fact - Grandad’s blog-vs-John Cleese’s blog… see?! I am Cleesedad’s offspring.

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My mum would be played by Brenda Fricker because she would nail the part.  She has that earthy mammy quality about her, but with a dark and twisty edge.  I yearn to be a Fricker type lady when I grow up.

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Laughingboy and Puppychild are tough, that kid Emma Bolger is one amazing actress, but too old for the part.  I suppose we could just use sound-effects for Puppychild, maybe a Jack Russell?  Otherwise she’d have to play herself which she’d probably love.

Laughingboy would also have to play himself (unless there is one extremely talented 7 year old out there?), but his story would be amazing on film if he had a voice-over… an inner monologue maybe.  I crave a voice-over of his inner-monologue in real life more than anything else in this world, and I reckon Daniel Day Lewis is best for that part.  No, I’m not taking the piss, My Left Foot is pure coincidence I swear.  That lad can act.

-o0o-

I hereby stuff this meme in a bottle of petrol, light it and throw it at:

Baino… English Mum… From the Living Room… and Xbox4NappyRash.  Suck it up!

A few weeks ago, the acc. terrorist bought one of those flashy LED thingys that scroll pre-programmed messages for the back of our taxi - he’s a sucker for shiny stuff.  It’s pretty much exactly a bit like this one:

You can pre-programme up to 50 messages to display, controlled by an extemely complicated looking remote.  I reckon I could get the hang of it!  I’m trying to think of stuff to display, though I’ve only mustered up these ones so far:

- Thanks!
- Hang up and drive. 
- Turn your f***ing lights down.
- Keep tailgating me, I need the cash.
- Jesus is coming, everyone look busy.
- Remember: Stop Lights Timed For 35mph Are Also Timed For 70mph.
- Warning! I brake for hallucinations.
- Is this a rhetorical question?

I need 42 more.  Give a girl a hand?

-o0o-

What a response!!! Here’s the follow-up:

From Thriftcriminal:
- Awww yeah, overtook your sorry ass!
- Seen the film ‘The Hitcher’?
- Mr. Hanky, the Christmas poo, he loves me and I love you, therefore vicariously he loves you, even if you’re a jew.
- Exterminate! Exterminate!
- Make it so!
- Rigormortis makes me hard

From Me Ma:
- Supercalifradgealisticexpealidocious
- Don’t push yer Granny off the bus
- Free perks on monday - neck massage with every ride

From Me Da:
-Danger! Driver has P.M.T. (predictable but accurate)

From Baino:
- Get in, sit down, shut up, hang on!

From Warrior:
- Imagine, it could be you in this car.
- If you can read this then tell me what the previous line was.
- What are you doing looking at this, look at my brake lights… oh too late.
- Boo!
- You are alone, I am alone, give me a tenner to pay for my petrol, you can walk.
- If you stop following me I won’t tell your wife what you did last night.

From Jefferson Davis:
- Get the f**k out of my way!
- Feck off! (Nice and to-the-point, this one)
- Don’t dare skip on the fare
- No lip, just a tip
- Hire these tyres

From Doc:
- I got some bad ideas in my head
- You talkin’ to me?
- Pssstt… what does the yellow light mean?
- Driver speaks no English
- I knew at an early age I wanted to act
- How’s my drinking?!

From John Braine:
- I’m not getting another ticket just for you.  So back the f**k off!

From Xbox4NappyRash:
- So it goes ‘Accelerator, brake, clutch… I think.

From La Vepista, herself: 
- You are being watched.
- Slow down, cops ahead!

From a bored person: (Whos style I like!!!)
- Don’t make me go Psycho-Bitch on your annoying ass
- You say I’m a Bitch like it’s a bad thing!
- I’m sorry. My fault. I forgot you were an idiot
- Amazingly enough, I don’t give a shit
- Admitting you’re an asshole is the first step

From Moo Dog:
- You’re so close and ugly, I can tell that your Spitting Image puppet would actually be good looking. Ya prick ya.

From Maxi Cane:
- Baby on board… last person to cut me off in boot!
- Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.
- Giving me the finger won’t turn the roof sign off!
- I’m not a real taxi, I borrowed the sign off Michael O’Leary
- Guess who I had in the car last week… your ma!

-o0o-

*CALCULATING…*

That’s 51 messages!!! Fair play to you all. That’s fucking team-work.

I ashamedly didn’t own an English-Irish dictionary until a few weeks ago.  (My school copy is in attic limbo somewhere…)

Then, just as I was agreeing with TAT that we should at least make some sort of effort to re-engage the language in our lives, I found one amongst the other old free books at our local recycling centre.

This poor Irish-English dictionary has been gathering dust on my shelf until tonight, when I opened it to help me with the translation of Íomhá an lae, an excellent blog written as Gaeilge.  It makes me want to learn all over again, and I’m delighted that there is such a funky resource out there to help me.

I opened the front cover of this old book, to see if there were any scribblings to show its history (as you do), and was bowled backwards to find this:

It’s hard to read, but it looks like the owner of the school dictionary had a friend called Rosie, who wrote something along these lines on the 6th of February 1976 to what I assume is her best mate:

Hi gorgeous The word gorgeous is scribbled out in red ink

I’m going to write you a memo.  I don’t know exactly of what, but don’t worry, I’ll think of something.  As you see I had the foresight to right this in pencil as you can rub it out.  Imagine having this scrawled indelibly *BRAINS* (I’m not too sure if you can say that or not, but not to worry!) How’s the crack?  OK, so that’s a stupid question; I hope your nerves regarding Sunday are a bit better than what they were when I was last talking to you - it must be nearly 2 hours.  Such a parting!!  Seeing as this is a memo I suppose I’d better make it one, if you follow my logic!!  In memo of being in 6th year, that should last you all your life!  Five months we’ll be left school for good and i’ll be exactly 18.  Gee whiz, ah!!!  Even be aible to vote - don’t mind the gammy spelling.  Ciao baby.  

Rosie

This discovery means a lot to me, recently my own best mate from school called me to tell me she’d found a stash of passed notes from school… she assures me that I was just as mental then as I am now… that’s very comforting, I’m glad it wasn’t a result of all the drugs I took in later years.  She had me in stitches with the memories.

I hope Ann and Rosie are still friends.

Do you have any written records of conversations with your buddies from your school daze?

“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” - Henry Ward Beecher

I think blogging is a type of art form.  It’s not a skill or an ability, it doesn’t require practice, it’s simply words typed into a text-field that represents the thoughts of the writer.  Good grammar is a boon, but not that important to the overall message, especially when that message is interesting and real.

Blogging is about information, the search for answers and the discovery of the unusual.  An exceptionally good blogger wins praise (and awards!) for constantly producing insightful content in a way that the rest of the world can relate to and enjoy.

Now… I’ve only been blogging for a year and I know that my content has gotten neither better nor worse, but at least I understand blogology a little bit better.  There are un-written rules that state that you shouldn’t slag another blog without good reason because that would be like betraying one of your own, but I’m going to do it anyway.

I wasn’t going to do this.  I’ve wanted to do it for such a long time but was afraid that I would turn into someone’s enemy and now I see that life is not about being afraid, it’s about standing up for what’s real.  So, I’m about to do a drive-by-shooting of my own.

-o0o-

Beaut.ie annoys the hell out of me.

It’s far too pink for a start, and the content is similar to a batch of expired Gruyère.  It’s worth a try because it is - by it’s nature - supposed to improve with age, but shortly afterwards you realise it hasn’t, and now you just feel very very sick.  Why does expired cheese win awards?

OMG!!! Yeah that’s right, I’m a bitch.  But!!!  I have a defence.

Exhibit A: 90210: Fondly Remembered  - I’m sorry, but wasn’t that show fairly shite?

Exhibit B: (From Win! Cocoon Limerick Signature Treatment Facial)

Cocoon use superb cutting edge ranges like Ole Henriksen, Phyts and NVEY ECO. They subscribe to a natural, pure and totally gorgeous philosophy and “believe that the essence of a glowing and radiant complexion lies in the combination of fantastic facials using the best products and beautiful makeup”.

That sounds exactly like our philosophy at Beaut.ie!

-but wait!  I thought that the essence of a glowing and radiant complexion lies in plenty of water, a varied healthy diet and copious orgasms?  Why does everything on this site have to be chemically based with a kiss-ass review? 

I told yiz all about my encounter with the dark side of facials recently, and how it’d left my skin so sore and sensitive that I’d been slapping on the Aveeno, because anything else had caused immediate heat, irritation and redness … So then I read the press release. It appears that this stuff works because of an ingredient it shares in common with Aveeno - Feverfew. This is a little powerhouse of a plant, and it works to soothe irritations and calm inflammation. So it’s brilliant for use in skincare aimed at anyone who reacts badly to yer run-of-the-mill beauty products.

Price and availability - these babies are €13.95, and you’ll pick the brand up in chemists nationwide.

- Ok, so this lady is learning that the usual bunny torture juice she’s been subjecting to her skin is rotting her skin and robs her of her hard-earned cash, but does she stop?  Does she look for alternatives?  Nope, she’s sold out and seems committed to endless skin abuse.

From Dianne Brill Still and Fill All Night Temptation;

Ingredients include Swiss hydro apple fruit (not many of them down in Tesco), essence of snake venom, oasis cactus, vitamins and shea butter - all making this night repair cream smell absolutely yummy (think granny smiths).

-Snake venom?!?!  Cactus?!?  By jove, I think this girl’s been had!

Exhibit C: The Blather Category

365 comments?  I wander in to see what the fuss is about and find myself in a field of sheep.  They seem lost for information and dying for advice about real issues… diet, contraception, men, health… the sort of shit all us girls want to know about.  So what’s the post that triggered these questions off?

Beaut.ie Blather: Thursday

Published by Aphrodite July 24th, 2008 in Beaut.ie blather

Oh glorious Thursday you’re here already!

Let’s

Get

Our

Blather on!

Baaa.  Where’s the content? Where’s the reality, the hard-core face-it-or-die reality that is behind real beauty?  What the fuck is the point of looking like a tango’ed chemical junkie when real beaut.ie lies beneath?

I’m a girl, and I want to learn ways to make the job easier… ways to make my own shampoo, ways to understand hormones just a smidge better, ways to deal with the task of looking half-decent and feeling contented with just three hours sleep and a barrel-load of emotional baggage.  I want to see oldskool advice - advice that my mum taught me about pinching my cheeks, or relaxing my face for ten minutes to ward off headaches and wrinkles.  I want to know what stuff I should be drinking to help me understand blokes.   I want to know what’s truly good for me without the bullshit and the price-tag.  Is it so much to ask?

I do have to say Kudos to its designers (apart from all the pinkness) though, for it is an excellently navigable site, should you be arsed.

Beaut.ie is letting the side down. 

This isn’t beauty, it’s not good advice, it’s just another advertising site.

-o0o-

There I said it.

There is a most excellent comptetion on the go out there, run by manically impressive Maxi Cane!

STALK THE MANAGER COMPETITION

The craic is that he’s leaving not just his job as restaurant manager, but the whole restauranting lark to embark on an entirely different path altogether (best of luck to ya, matey!). His last shift will be on Tuesday the 5th of August and his challenge to us, is simply to find him!

The prizes are:

-Correct guess on the comment form here: €100 to spend in his restaurant.
-Seeking him out successfully in person : €200 to spend in his restaurant.

He has even started us off with a few clues:

-It’s on the Southside of the City Center
-It’s not a Pizza Hut
-It’s not on Dame Street
-Chips/fries don’t appear on my menu

Have at it, people!!  Dust off the old sniper rifle, give Jack Bauer a call, but do it fast because I reckon I just might have it sussed

Did you hear about the Bray Summerfest Airshow today?

Did you hear about the big planes swooping low over the rooftops and the pretty fighter jets doing loop-de-loops in the clear blue sky and the army with their big trucks and tanks and uniformed men? I bet if you did, you thought ‘Let’s get our asses down there, quick!’ or, ‘Awww, innit a shame we can’t go to see all that great stuff?’ because it all sounded so great, but in reality, it wasn’t.

In reality it sucked.

I started my shift in Bray at lunchtime and drove in first gear to the seafront to see what I could see. Everybody I passed was staring up into the sky like morons - but not me, I kept my eyes on the road and battled onwards and Lo! Just as I was approaching my target I got called upon to pick up Mrs. Boring from Stupidville, without seeing diddly-squat.

When I was finished with Mrs. Boring from Stupidville I got sent up to the Ritz (in best behaviour mode though I can’t see why…) for Mr. Bad-Timing and had to drive all the way out to the airport and back.

When I returned, Bray was one big massive car-park. Cars were everywhere… parked on top of each other, under sleeping dogs, one or two were even parked in little old ladies’ handbags. It was mental. The gardee were everywhere, waving traffic back and forth and making rude gestures at passers by (I gotta say though, they seriously did an excellent job of clearing away every last smear of traffic sludge) so taxi-fares suddenly became extremely awqward.

Throngs of people kept hurling themselves at my car and jumping in regardless of existing passengers and shouting ‘TAKE ME TO THE SEAFRONT PRONTO!!!’, at which point I would take out my BB gun and ask them to make my day and they would slowly get out again.

I was then sent to Tescos to collect two people who had been waiting for over an hour for a cab.  A gentleman and his ladyfriend loaded up their groceries and jumped into the back seat.

“Didya see the airshow?!” the gentleman said excitedly - “It was deadly, wasn’t it?!”

“No I had to go to the airport.” I was grumpy. Very grumpy.

“They had this huuuge carrier jet and it swooped right down over our heads and it was deadly!!!!”

“So you said.”

“Do you not like ‘planes?” He was dissapointed at my lack of enthusiasm.

“I bloody love ‘planes, so can you shut up about it now?”

“Right, subject changed. Did ya see the big army tank?!”

“NO!!!!!”

45 minutes later thanks to aforementioned sludge, we arrived at his house and the meter read €27.40. This was a tad cruel seeing we had only travelled the length of a football field, so I waived it and charged him a tenner instead.

“Wow, that’s really kind of you, thanks!” the gentleman’s missus said. Then, as an afterthought as she was leaving the car she added;

“Sorry your job sucks. You should try to arrange to get time off next year!”

Yeah. Some tip. Thanks wench.

Taxi driving is turning out to be a tough job.  It’s not the punters, it’s the lack of work.  We have to put in serious hours now that the hotels are quieter and people are guarding their money because of this imaginary recession. 

It balances out, though.  Driving is such great fun around Wicklow, the roads are interesting and there are thousands of undiscovered quirky Wicklowisms hidden down windy roads and behind dense thickets.

TAT found a most excellent quirky Wicklowism on his travels last week!

The Accidental Terrorist and I are best mates.  We already feel married, but have been putting off the dirty deed… the knot-tying itself, for 7 years just because nothing felt right.  It doesn’t seem right that we should have to sign away an arm and a leg to some swanky hotel and make such a big deal out of everything when it’s just really only about us, and our ickle family.  We thought about eloping, threatened weddings in France and even considered Gretna Green… anything to get out of surrendering to the cash-pit that is the buzz-word ‘Wedding’. 

Is it really so hard to find somewhere unique and intimate?  Apparently so.

We already have a spot, it’s a patch of grass under enormous trees by a river with a permanent burnt patch in the center.  I’d love to get married there.  This is my tree:

This used to say ‘Happy 21st Kate love…’ (but oh look, the name’s chipped off.  TAT he remains so.) and was carved on the day he proposed to me with the ring-pull from his can of Miller.  I prayed for that tree and hugged it and apologised to it for carving into its flesh and I think it’s forgiven me.  It must have liked the warmth of our campfires for it’s still alive and thinking.

Thing is though, we can’t get married there because it would involve hiking with generators and boxes of lights and boxes of sausages and tea-bags, but we discovered the next best thing!  There’s a nudist colony just up the valley hidden at the end of a very long windy road so we’re getting married there instead.

I would so dearly love to link to this place but I don’t think they’d appreciate the publicity, besides, I don’t want you all gate-crashing stark bollock naked.

Yep, we’ve finally set a date to get hitched!  We’ve got nine months to get our act together and then BAM! we’re official.  Sweet.

I might need help with this.  I don’t do the whole ‘organizational skillz’ thing because I can’t think past tomorrow generally.  It works for me for the most part, but the idea of sorting out a wedding scares the bejeebus out of me.  This might be the wedding blog of Bridezilla for a while, I’m sorry about that but tough shit.  Extremely helpful people will get a pass into the nudist colony for a week.

Peior est bello timor ipse belli.

Puppychild likes to watch DVDs as she falls alseep, it’s a wicked habit, I know that.  I plan to put a stop to it as soon as I can figure out how…

…anyway normally she’d ask for Cinderella or the Care Bears or some Godawful crud like that but tonight she impressed me no end;

“Mommy?” (shouted from the top of the stairs)

“Yes-see?”

“Wanna watch?”

“What you wanna watch?”

“King Arthur.  King of the Brittins!”

Now you’d expect a child of three years of age to produce many clear words relating to stuff she knows through endless practice, but these knocked me for six altogether - turns out she watches this film sometimes with her dad while I’m at work and is well impressed with the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.   I went to the bookshelf and found it - Monty Python’s The Holy Grail. 

She loves this film a little bit too much.

I’m waiting for that day though… that day when I find myself having to man-handle her in the supermarket for wanting to trolleyseat-surf, and for her to shout for all to hear…

“Help! Help! I’m being repressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!”

Ahh.  It’s good to see the apple hasn’t fallen far from the nnNi.

I get these Phoebe moments from time to time… like discovering that the expression isn’t ‘for all intensive purposes’ but actually ‘for all intents and purposes’.  It’s vital that if you want to show off your big lexicon you at least spell it right, so that was a swing and a miss for me for many years.

The latest boo-boo I discovered relates to Bryan Adams.

You know that song ‘Summer of ‘69′?  Of course you do.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this song but I have only just discovered that I was drastically wrong about the lyrics.

I always thought it was a very kinky song with pretty shocking lyrics… I wondered how he got away with it, but hey, there’s plenty of stuff out there that’s worse.  It was only when I picked up a kid and his dad in my taxi yesterday that I realised my mistake.  Turns out this kid loves Bryan Adams, and sang me the first few lines of the song which was highly inappropriate I thought, given that he was singing it in front of his dad… that was, until his dad applauded the effort.  I was disgusted.

Here’s how I thought the lyrics went:

“Got my first real sex-dream, boy I had a fine old time.  Played until my fingers bled… etc.”

Apparently I was wrong.  Very, very wrong.

Life in a Semi-D isn’t always easy.

I knew my neighbour was the same breed of smartarse as myself from the minute I set eyes on her.  We knew that there would be a lot of unwanted information shared between us… our super thrifty local authority houses are separated only by a layer or two of plaster-covered polystyrene from the sounds of it, so we knew to keep the t.v. volume low and be aware of the decibel levels of our arguments.  There is something, however, that is very difficult to keep secret.

1.00am - Thump thump thump etc…

1.15am - Thumpthumpthumpthump *pause* thumpthumpthumpthump etc..

1.30am - Thump.  Thump.  Thump. *groan* Thump. *groan* etc…

… this would carry on for a surprisingly long time and we would try so hard not to listen but you know how it is… there’s always the part of us that didn’t mind listening at all, especially since it let us off the hook in the bedroom accoustics on our own side.  We listened to each other’s love-lives for a full month before anyone had the balls to say anything.

Then it happened.  We met each other on our front-door steps one morning and shared a shmoke, but said nothing.  The atmosphere was pregnant, each of us dying to take the piss.  It just needed one trigger… a badly timed pun would do… anything.

“Took a trip to Bargaintown yesterday and got meself a new three-piece…” my neighbour finally said.  “Got bunk-beds for the kids on order too!”

“Savage… gotta love the bunk beds!”  I said, teetering on the edge of a dirty grin.

“Yeah speaking of beds…” (here we go!) “… Ye wouldn’t push yours about a foot away from the wall, would ye?”

That was it.  We exploded in a torrent of filthy laughter and revelled in each other’s embarrassment and it was good.  The issue did eventually require that we both go out and buy sturdier beds (with obligatory celebratory pint!) and since then it’s been quite peaceful… until last night.

It started at about 3.30am and continued for two hours.  I won’t go into details except to say that it was graphic, and awakened a newfound respect in me for my neighbour’s husband.  He really is a trooper by the sounds of it.

She knew just from the look on my face this morning… that ‘HA!! I’m surprised you can walk!!’ face …that no apology was necessary.

I went into town for a few bits today and had a sudden goo for a burger and a portion of tasty-chips but when I dived into the shop to find my neighbour’s husband waiting to take my order I stopped in my tracks.  I nervously examined the menu for a few seconds and decided to go hungry instead and walked away, for the temptation to enquire after his battered sausage was far too great.