...is going to be fun this time around.



Click for big. Hi-res version also available.

Twink's phone call

Labels: panto, phone call, twink, zip up your mickey

When I realised it was the blog's birthday last evening I went down to Ron's for a few pints.

"Evening lads", I said to the assembled crew at the bar. "What are you having?"

Guinness for me, Jimmy, Splodge, Lucky Luciano, Dirty Dave and a bottle of Satzebrau for Stinking Pete, as it turned out.

"What's the occasion?", asked the pils drinker

"Birthday", I said.

"But your birthday isn't in September."

"The birthday of my blog, Stinking Pete. Not my real birthday."

"Oooooooh", he said tweaking his nipples. "Your blog's birthday. How old is your blog?", he asked saying the word 'blog' like Hitler said the word 'jew'.

"Two years old"

"Ooooh, two years old", he said tweaking his nipples and speaking in a high-pitched voice, "aren't you the entrepreneurial shagger?!"

"The what?"

"The entrepreneurial shagger!"

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"You know. One of them shaggers who goes around doing stuff...entrepreneurialy. Look at your shoes and your pants and stuff. Only an entrepreneurial shagger would wear stuff like that."

"Pete, do you have any idea what your on about?"

"Of course. Them entrepreneurial shaggers have been ruining my life for years and now you're one of them."

"Look, it's not uncommon for me not to have the faintest idea what you're talking about but you reached new heights/hit new lows here, Stinking Pete."

"Ahhh, a typical entrepreneurial shagger response."

He went off to the other end of the bar muttering to himself then. He picked up the Evening Herald and looked at the pictures for a while. A few minutes later he came back over.

"Sorry, Twenty. Cheers for the beer and happy birthday to your blog. I didn't mean what I said. You're not an entrepreneurial shagger at all".

"Fair enough, Pete. No worries".

"You're a fucking cunt, Twenty. A proper fucking cunt".

"I know, Pete. I know."

...I completely forgot about it but this blog is two years old today. That's nearly 8 times longer than your average Big Brother contestant's TV career.

I had better go and have some pints to celebrate.

I was listening to the radio the other day and there was this woman on talking about organic clothes. No, really.

She said that the various chemicals they use in cheap clothing, especially in cotton, has a terrible effect on the environment. Something like twenty-five percent of the insecticides used globally go on cotton plants, which are then made into your t-shirts, underwear, shirts and other 'disposable' clothing that you can buy cheaply in shops all over the world.

She suggested that in order to care for the environment we should buy 'organic' clothes. Lots of companies are now launching ranges of organic clothes. She gave the example of one vest, made from organic cotton, costing €250.

HAHA! €250 for a fucking vest. She tried to say that because the clothes were higher quality than the cheap stuff it would last longer and end up being better value for money. What a load of shit. €250 on a vest! Are they mad?

That would be like spending more than €15 getting a hair cut or anything over €100 on footwear.

Anyway, she overlooked an important point. The cheap clothes, when you've finished with them, can be recycled and given to poor people who can't afford to buy new clothes let alone €250 organic vests.

And after seeing that Al Gore film I'm determined to do my bit to destroy the environment so I'm going to buy a hundred cotton t-shirts tomorrow, really fucking cheap ones, then I'm going to go give them to homeless people. I might have a catchy slogan put on the front like "I have nits!" or "If you can smell me without vomiting there's something wrong with your sense of smell".

Organic clothing. Fucking hell. What next? Organic toilet paper? Organic children? Organic battered sausage and chips? The world has gone organic mad and I won't stand for it.

"Oh, but think of the next generations!", those organic loving cuntbutlers say.

"Did the previous generations think of us when they invented damaging things like cigarettes, cocaine, leaded petrol, Israelis, cholesterol and jazz music? No they did not so you should shut your fucking mouth and fuck off", I reply.

I'm right though. The greatest gift we can give to our children is a big fucking mess for them to clean up. It keeps them occupied.

So the Taoiseach received £40,000 from friends but he says he had 'broken no codes - ethical, tax, legal or otherwise'.

Apparently he always regarded them as a 'debt of honour' that he would repay with interest. To date he hasn't repaid any of the money or any of the interest.

He said he accepted the money to provide for his children's education which, I have to admit, is right up there with the buying Christmas presents for orphans excuse. The man was a government minister for fuck's sake. Hardly a poorly paid job.

He span a sob story about all the bills he had to pay but, you know, we all have bills to pay. We all struggle at times and if we do we go to a bank and get a loan and we repay the loan and the interest or we end up in worse trouble than we were in before. We don't all have consortia of businessman friends who will provide us with money and allow us go 13 years without paying any of it back.

But maybe we're being too cynical. There's no reason why these people people got together to provide a loan to the Minister for Finance beyond mere friendship.

I can just imagine Des Richardson ringing around.

"Hey, Dave McKenna! Poor old Bertie appears to be having a hard time. Would you like to contribute something to a loan we're going to give him that he's never going to pay back just because he's our good old pal? You would! I thought so. What a wonderful altruistic bunch we are. Thanks a million, I'm going to ring around some other people you don't know at all to see if they'll give some money too. Bye, Dave, you generous, not looking for anything in return fella!"

Check out Gavin's blog who has some info about his generous benefactors, as do the folk at Irish Election.

Let's remember that Bertie is the man who stood at the funeral of this country's biggest ever political crook and conman and lauded him like he was the greatest man to have ever walked. Now, I don't expect him to speak badly of a man at his funeral, no matter what his past, but to try and paint a different picture of a politician who lived the high life, paid for by the people of Ireland, while the rest of us suffered was just offensive. We were supposed to forget because he was dead? Bollocks to that.

Let's also remember that Ahern shafted Junior Transport Minister, Ivor Callely, because a building contractor involved in public contracts had painted his house for free in the early 90s.

Now, we're supposed to think that it's not ok for someone to paint your house but it is ok to accept payments of £40,000 because his children needed an education? They could have gone to a public school, couldn't they? They could have gone to a VEC post Leaving Cert, couldn't they? Did they really need money to pay for their education when there were plenty of alternatives available to a man who claimed to be in dire straits financially?

Of course not. The whole thing stinks of bullshit. All of it. I don't believe a word he says. If you can't afford a private school then you send your kids somewhere else. You don't borrow money from a group of 'friends'.

When the first whispers of this emerged last week the leader of our country said:

I'm not answering what I got for my holy communion money, my confirmation money, what I got for my birthday, what I got for anything else. What I got personally in my life, to be frank with you, is none of your business.

It's scandalous. He is a public figure. He is the elected leader of the country and to be frank with you what he got personally is our business especially given the history of his political party.

If there was nothing wrong about the situation he would have addressed it there and then. Definitively. Without raising further suspicions by refusing to answer legitimate questions about money he had received.

It has taken him too long to concoct the bollocks story he's given us. I don't believe him. I don't believe his story. I'm now sick to the fucking back teeth of the horseshit we're fed week in week out by this government who consistently fuck us all in the arse with absolute impunity and have steadfastly remained exempt from punishment. They do what they want and the consequences are almost non-existent.

I've said it before. It's our own fault. The fact people have a few bob to spend these days means they'll put up with being ripped off for beer, for cigarettes, for clothes, for groceries, for services, ripped off driving from one side of Dublin to the other, watching the fat cats get fatter and fatter. Our fault entirely.

I hope what this does though is show people the real picture. This government is a fucking disgrace from top to bottom. And now we've seen why. If this is the leadership - belligerent, obnoxious and too far removed from the common man - then how the fuck can we expect anything different.

Time to resign, Bertie. They used to call you Teflon. Now the shit is beginning to stick and not before time.

So the Taoiseach has remained tight lipped about the money he is alleged to have received despite lots of people suggesting he really ought to make a statement about it. He might say something later today. Or tomorrow. Or he might not.

Let's face it the longer it goes on without him saying anything the more suspicious it looks. If there was nothing to hide then he'd just come out and say 'This is what happened, this is why it doesn't break any rules and now you can trust me as the leader of the country and not think I'm just a typical spiv politician taking back-handers here, there and everywhere'.

What's the delay for? Is it to think up a really good story?

"What happened was I was just standing around outside the Spar and this bloke came up and just gave me the money. Honest. He said he had too much and he didn't want it back or he didn't want any favours, political or otherwise, for it. And that's it. I swear. I never seen him before and I never seen him after. I used the money to buy Christmas presents for orphans. Cross me heart."

In one way though I'm happy he's gone down the road he has. Next time the Gardai catch me with a suitcase full of unmarked, non-consecutive bills and ask me where I got them, I'll just say "I'm not answering what I got for my holy communion money, my confirmation money, what I got for my birthday, what I got for anything else. What I got personally in my life, to be frank with you, is none of your business".

This is the example the leader of our country is setting. What a man he is. Truly he will go down in history as one of Ireland's greatest statesmen.

"Did you kill that man?"

"I'm not answering who I killed on my communion day, my confirmation day, my birthday or any other day".

"Is that your shipment of cocaine we discovered?"

"I'm not answering what cocaine I smuggled on my communion, for my confirmation, for my birthday...."

If it's all right for the politicians then it's surely all right for the rest of us.

I read in the Sunday Times yesterday that the Jehovah's Witness congregation in Dublin are thinking about suing the Coombe Hospital over the decision to give a woman a life saving blood transplant.

What a pack of cunts. Of course they're perfectly entitled to their beliefs, however fucking stupid they are, but what kind of people are you dealing with when they consider legal action in a case like this?

She lost huge amounts of blood giving birth to her child and without the transfusion she would have died. Now, she gets to see her son. She gets to nurse her son. She gets to bring him up, to teach him things, to enjoy all the things that a mother and son should enjoy and this bunch of cunts is thinking about suing.

Wankers. You're dealing with a different mindset, people indoctrinated into what is little more than a cult. Look at the expressionless faces and soulless eyes of the young men that call to your door or stop you on the street in their white shirts with their name badges and their hair perfectly side-parted. They're so polite but inside they're dead. They feel nothing. And their slacks are just awful.

Personally I think they should have just let her die. If someone is willing to put their ridiculous religious beliefs ahead of the welfare of their child then they're not much of a person, in my opinion.

I remember a case a few years ago when a child was given a blood transfusion against the will of her parents who would have watched her die because they're so fucking stupid they think the bible is real. That what it teaches is real. That by following their interpretation of it they'll end up in heaven which is as real as place as Middle Earth or Never Never Land.

If the High Court really had the best interests of the child at heart they'd have let the mother die then deported/executed any other relatives of that persuasion. Then the child might have been placed in foster care and brought up to respect life and not in a sect that needlessly allows people to die (as opposed to religions who needlessly blow life up or needlessly torture life which isn't the same life as their life).

Next time I see a Jehovah's I'm going to hold him down and pour a beaker full of my own blood down his throat. Just for the laugh.

I never bought Ireland on Sunday but now that it's changed to the Irish Mail on Sunday I'm going to double not buy it.

Fucking rag.

Been looking for this for ages.

Jamiroquai lead singer and world class cunt Jay Kay gets headbutted. The sound is a bit dodgy but there's a very satisfying smack when he gets loafed. I could watch this for hours.

Labels: headbutt, jamiroquai, jay kay

There was a small, thankfully, article in the paper today about a group of young actors who performed a 'play' outside the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. From what I can gather it was to protest about violence on TV or in films.

Of course we should listen to what they say because violence doesn't happen in real life and only happens on TV and in video games so if we stopped violence on TV there'd be no violence at all. Fucking muppets. Couldn't they have spent their rehearsal time doing something more productive like studying to learn another 'craft' besides acting which is for cunts.

I'm sure lots of you were subjected to the witless cuntery of those morons at the top of Grafton Street this summer. In their shitty 'I can't sew or darn or make clothes' costumes they would stop people going about their day to day business and shriek:

"Halt, fine sir. Thou must experience a free performance of yon bard, William Shakespeare, in the very park this verily day, hey nonny nonny!!"

And they would leap around like the world's gayest jester and try and hand you a flyer of some kind.

"Thou must experience my fist in thou fucking face", I would think to myself as I ignored them, mindful of what the judge told me about thumping people on Grafton Street.

Don't they have any shame? Don't they know that trying to be zany is the worst thing anyone can do? How sad must their parents feel after trying to do right by their children only to find they've chosen a disgusting path in life. After all the advantages they've been given because their parents paid for them to go to Clongowes or Blackrock or Mount Anvil they throw it right back in their faces to take up a career which will see most of them earn their money waiting tables or washing dishes.

I fucking hate actors.

Things that are so bad they're good annoy me.

I'm sorry to have to take this issue up but the chaps at Blogorrah have forced my hand. This campaign to get Johnny Logan to number one is a great load of steaming horse shite covered with a mug full of Saddam Hussein's jism.

Let's look at the facts. Johnny Logan is Ireland's greatest ever Eurovision song contest person. He won it twice himself and wrote at least one other song which won. Despite what many gay people think the Eurovision is a load of bollocks. A perfect example of something being so bad some people think it's tremendous because they think they're being ironic by liking something so utterly rubbish. Eventually so many people like the crap thing it gains some measure of credibility.

Back to that in minute but let's continue with Mr Logan. He has just realised a new version of 'Hold me now' (which won the Eurovision) with some 'rapper' called Kaye Styles. Kaye is a girl's name. Of all the rappers he has to choose from he picks one with a girl's name.

Anyway, as you might imagine, it's a desperate attempt from a 52 year old former Eurovision winner to gain some 'cred' and get a hit outside of Germany where any old cunt can be a star as the Germans have no sense of what's good and bad (true for music, fashion, invading other countries, genocide etc). It is also one of the worst pieces of music ever. Imagine Damien Rice, Phil Collins, David Grey and Ronan Keating getting together and taking turns raping a kitten, recording its shrieks and then adding a bassline, some acoustic guitar and then all harmonising with the anguished screams of the violated kitty kat. The Johnny Logan record is a billion million times worse.

It's not kitsch. It's not hilariously tacky. It's not so bad it's good. It's just bad. Really, really fucking bad. There is no excuse to inflict Johnny Logan on us again. I mean, you wouldn't like it if I dug up your dead mother and dressed her up in showgirls outfit and made a Flash animation of her dancing around to 'Yes sir, I can boogie' by Baccara, would you? Exactly. This is the same thing. Let sleeping dogs lie. Remember the film Logan's Run where people got terminated when they were 30? If only that had been taken literally and all Logans had been put to sleep we wouldn't have to put up with all this cockjockery now.

Personally, and I know the boys at TCAL won't thank me for saying this, but I blame David Hasselhoff. He's the ultimate example of things that are so naff they're cool.

'The Hoff this' and 'The Hoff that'. Fuck off. Look, David Hasselhoff is a fucking cunt, end of story. Knight Rider was fucking shite, Baywatch was even worse, he was a pop star in, yes, you've guessed it - Germany! - and he's just making a living making a complete cunt of himself because it provides him with the attention and headlines he so desperately craves, the needy twat. If someone put a gun up his hole and blew his guts out through the top of his woolly head then I might actually be interested in him for a couple of minutes but until that glorious day he can go fuck himself.

There are films like that too. As most films are completely crap I'm finding it hard to think of examples but the one that springs to mind is Starship Troopers. You just know they were making a serious film until they realised it was a bag of shite and decided to ham it up to make it 'so bad it's good'! Cunts. It was just so bad it was bad. All the money and special effects they had and the best they could come up with as the baddies were lots of giant spiders. There are drooling vegetables in hospices with more imagination.

Yet still people will say 'Oh that was a great film. It was wonderfully bad'. No, 19, it was not. It was worse than falling asleep at a party and waking up to find someone sucking your dick only to find it's your Dad with a mouthful of your own mickey. Worse. Than. That.

The ever increasing rise in things that are so bad they're good is a terrible reflection on our society and our lack of creativity. We've just given up trying to make things so good they're good and we're taking the easy option. We need to stop it and stop it now.

Johnny Logan? Fuck off. Snakes on a plane? Cunts up a cunt, more like. Get fucked.

Yesterday I had to make some phone calls. I hate making phone calls. Unless it's ringing up famous people and making moose sounds at them. They hate that.

First I had to ring Eircom. What a bunch of cock that voice recognition system they have is.

"Please say your phone number", he says.

"one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight", I say (no smart arse comments, it's just an example).

"Your number is 'seven - two - nine - six million - a hundred and six - twenty nine. Is that correct?"

"No"

"I'm sorry, please say your number again"

"one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight", I say.

"Your number is 'seven - two - nine - six million - a hundred and six - twenty nine. Is that correct?"

"Arrrrrgh!"

"I'm sorry, I don't understand. Would you like to activate your Eircom mail box?"

Seriously, it took me nearly 10 minutes going through none of the options which suited my call before I managed to speak to a real person. And then they were so fucking useless I pined for the machine.

Next up, NTL.

They make you key in your account number on the keypad, twice, then they say "The account number you entered is 12469474. Press the star key if this is correct".

So you press the star key, end up in a queue for 10 minutes with some cunt telling me my call is important and then the first thing the girl does when you get through to her is ask you for your account number. What's the fucking point of all that keying and pressing of star then? Pack of cunts. At least she was helpful. Well, helpful in the sense that she told me straight away she couldn't help me. At least she didn't leave me hanging.

After that it was the Vehicle registration office. I rang at 1pm.

"This is the vehicle registration office. I'm sorry but we're closed for lunch between 12.45 and 2pm. Please call back later."

Christ on a bike. When the fucking supermarkets are open until 11pm every night you'd think these fuckers would be able to man the phones during lunch hour. It's all a bit 1970s, isn't it? Lunch hour, I mean really. Do they all go at the same time? They need to sort that shit out. Given the influx of foreign workers here who'll do anything for €1.50 an hour there's just no excuse for closing for lunch.

When I did get through it was like a linguaphone tape as a woman with an almost incomprehensible accent gave me the information I needed. She'd say something. I'd repeat. She'd say it again. I'd repeat again and get close enough for her to move on. It was such a strange accent at the end I asked from which ex-Soviet state she came from.

"Tralee", she said.

I fucking hate the phone.

So the Ryder Cup comes to Ireland and town is going to be full of golf tourists. You'll know them by their brightly coloured Pringle jumpers and their plus fours.

Some people are renting their houses out for enormous sums of money. There isn't enough money in the world to make me rent my home out to golf fans. Let's not forget it was golf fans that invaded Poland in 1939 and sparked the second world war. And it was golf fans who massacred the athletes at the Munich olympics. And golf fans blew up the space shuttle. And if further proof was needed of their evil then think about how clean our noses would be if it wasn't for the golf fans who invented bogeys.

The people who took the filthy lucre will find it's not worth it. Their carpets, furniture, curtains and tupperware will all smell of golf when the short term tennants leave and even with what they've earned it won't be enough to replace and fumigate everything.

To be perfectly honest with you they drive me mental. I wood prefer they all stayed at home. They could putt this country in real trouble. I'd round them up, slap them in irons and send them back from whence they came. It's the only fair way.

In case people think I'm some bloke who has never played golf I did play once. First hole - 450 yards, wind in my face, bunkers galore, took out the driver, smack, put it two feet away from the hole. Simple putt for an eagle. Next hole, 198 yard par 3, 4 iron, straight in, hole in one. I shot a 59 at Portmarnock and never played again.

I need a game with a bit of a challenge. Like Yahtzee.

Labels: Ryder Cup

All this hoo-ha over ratemysolicitor.com is funny, isn't it?

These chaps needs to get themselves some balls and a blog. There's no reason why they shouldn't be accountable for their work the same as any blogger is accountable for what they write.

I write something here and there's an open forum for people to agree or disagree, compliment or criticise, lavish praise or call me wicked names. It's all part of the fun, isn't it?

You have to be a bit thick skinned about it. Strikes me the solicitors are all mardy cunts at the best of times. The ones that don't get millions from being involved in pointless tribunals have to deal with the 'common man' and they have grown bitter while their colleagues drag out these cases where high profile people pretend they can't remember all the crooked shit they did.

I once had a solicitor who would never do what I told him. I was involved in a very bad car crash once so I sued the driver of the car who had no peripheral vision because he was Chinese and that was what made him go straight through the green light we had right of way on. I broke my arm so badly it took surgeons 9 months to fix it.

Now, surgeons are proper cunts at the best of times and if this one was a Hanna Barbera cartoon about a bunch of cunts in an alley who lived in bins he'd have been called Top Cunt.

He wrote medical reports, which cost £150 a pop (if I remember correctly), and he would say things like "He is fine", "He has reasonable mobility in his arm", "He complains of neck pain but it's nothing really".

6 months in a heavy cast does tend to cause problems and to this day I have issues with my shoulders and back. I would say to my solicitor "Look, this bloke is being a cunt. Can you please ask him to amend those reports to clear up the fact that I am not fine, I have a lot of neck pain and THAT I DON'T HAVE ANY MOBILITY AT ALL AS MY FUCKING HUMERUS IS STILL IN TWO PIECES LIKE A BROKEN FUCKING PENCIL!"

He would then write a letter, as if this cunt was some kind of God, kindly requesting him to change the reports, if he wouldn't mind, because, if it wasn't too much trouble *doff cap*, it would be good for our case, snivel snivel.

Useless cunt. In the end Jimmy the Bollix paid the surgeon a visit and procured a reasonable and truthful medical report. I did not want to exaggerate, just have him tell the truth. I often wonder who did the surgeon's own medical report.

Rate my solicitor? He was absolutely rubbish.

If you haven't heard about it it's a film by Al Gore which spells out the dangers of our lifestyles and the damage we're doing to the environment. Climate change is upon us and we're guilty of making it happen.

I have to say this film had a profound and moving effect on me. More than any other film I've ever seen.

As soon as it was over I went out and bought the biggest, most uneconomical jeep I could buy. It does 50 yards to the gallon.

Yesterday was an absolute scorcher in Dublin. We need to do more to ensure days like that are the norm rather than the exception.

Global warming rules.

We all know Muslims are crazy, reactionary lunatics but the Nazi pope really should know better than to wind them up saying the prophet Mohammed only brought 'evil and inhuman' things to the world.

In the current climate that's tantamount to telling George W Bush you've got unlimited reserves of oil and suggesting you don't like the quality programming provided by HBO thus making you an obvious enemy of American and ripe for an invading.

I don't think the pope should apologise though. There's only one way to settle a dispute like this.

Rubik's cubes. Benny and a senior Muslim cleric should be given one each and the first one to finish wins. Don't ask me to judge this situation though.

I'm not taking sides.

Update: "The Holy Father is very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers who can now concentrate on killing each other because they're not the right kind of Muslims, flying planes into tall buildings and blowing up trains".

Hats off to the lads at Langerland who have created a wonderful history of the Irish music scene. Click the image to view. The final performer is just classic.

"Twenty", said Dirty Dave, "what giant sized animal would scare you the most?"

"You mean like a whale or bear or a megamonkey?"

"No. I mean a normal sized animal that perhaps had been exposed to some kind of radiation and grew to an enormous size in comic book style".

"Hmmm, good question. Many people would think of a giant spider or a massive earwig but you said animal and spiders and earwigs aren't animals as such. Something already ferocious, like a 16 foot tall lion or 500 kilo panther, would be particularly frightening".

"Yeah, or imagine a canary with a 20 metre wingspan?!"

"Oooh, I do hate things with wings and anything that flaps at all is not a friend of mine. Even seeing a quadruple amputee trying to flip his way up the beach to avoid the tide makes my stomach turn over. What about your household pets though? What if Bastardface was 5 times his normal size?"

"Jaysus, stop it, would ya? That doesn't bear thinking about. He'd be able to eat orphans four at a time".

"Yeah, a scary thought. Your average house cat would be a terrifying vision too. I've watched Throatripper take out small falcons and Jack Russells and he's only a kitten. An oversized version of him looming over you with his whiskas and postman flavoured breath would not be nice".

"You can say that again. Puts me in mind of the 70s, if you know what I mean".

"I certainly do, Dirty Dave. I certainly do. However, having mulled this over for some time now I can safely say that a giant rabbit would be the most frightening to me. Rabbits are cunts at the best of times. I had a friend once who had a rabbit in his back garden. He was called 'Flopsy' or 'Cuddly' or something like that but he would try and eat you. He growled like a rabid dog and he once bit the top of my mate's finger off. In his temper he booted the rabbit over the wall and into next door's garden where the rabbit raped the St Bernard that was in there before he burrowed his way back in under the wall.

A giant one of those would scare the shit out of me. Especially if it appeared in the cinema like in that film Donnie Darko that nobody knows what what it's about. Bad enough being in the cinema but to have a giant rabbit sitting right behind you would be too much. So there's my answer. What about yourself?"

"What do you call those creatures that eat their own young and make a mess everywhere and wallow in their own filth and have horns and a terrible smell?"

"Travellers?"

"Yeah, that's it. Giant travellers. No thanks. Pint, Twenty?"

"Don't mind if I do".

Was in town last night and there were kids in there celebrating their Junior Cert. As I walked to the bar I was going to (don't tell Ron) I must have passed by 8 or 10 groups of young girls who couldn't have been more than 14 or 15 years old.

Most of them were wearing skirts that you or I could use as belts, strapless tops, low cut tops, tops that just about covered their boobs but didn't cover their bellies and there were even some in cocktail dresses.

Now, I'm no prude but this was just mental. For a start what kind of parent lets their child go out, into the city centre, looking like that? Now, I realise some of them went out in demure jeans and tops and changed over in Jacinta's house but not all of them. Also, why don't they get cold? It wasn't especially chilly last night but I needed a jacket and if I'd gone round with a mini-mini skirt and a handkerchief to cover my nipples I'd have caught my death.

I certainly don't remember 15 year olds dressing like that when I was a 15 year old. It was all shapeless baggy jumpers down to their knees and Doc Martens.

Fatmammycat wrote something yesterday about how the way a woman dresses can be perceived. I think she makes a good point but at the end of the day an adult woman makes her own choices and is responsible for her actions. If she wants to go out and get drunk wearing very little then that's up to her.

However, 15 year olds slugging from cans of Dutch Gold before they go into a disco to drink from a naggin of vodka then come out and fall about the street looking for a bus or a taxi home is a bit much, if you ask me.

Personally I blame MTV, Girls Aloud and all the other geebags that pass for popstars these days. Life was simpler when the kids dressed like Siouxsie Sioux.

Labels: junior cert

I went round to Stinking Pete's last night to drop off some merchandise and got enthralled in a great film.

It was a laugh a minute comedy about a girl who wanted to be a boxer and the struggles she had. Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman (who plays the wise black man role better than any other wise black man in the world) were the boxing coaches who had no faith in her to begin with but her crazy antics won them over.

She went on to be quite good at boxing, the crowd chanted her name in terrible Irish but then the slapstick really kicked in when she fell over in the ring and broke her neck on a rib-ticklingly misplaced stool (wooden, not poo).

So then we had a hospital comedy with redneck relatives, cranky nurses and all kinds of jokes about paralysis. I have to admit I cried when she bit off her own tongue. Cried with laughter!

Then at the end Clint Eastwood smothers her to death with a pillow. Comic genius.

I haven't enjoyed a comedy as much since Schindler's List. Million Dollar Baby is well worth a rental for those of you who want to leave behind the faux sincerity and schmalz of Hollywood and just have a good chuckle.

There has been a huge amount of controversy over the Late Late Show inviting a convicted paedophile onto the show last week. People are unhappy that their licence money was used to fly him over and pay his hotel and other expenses.

They're unhappy that a sick pervert, who sexually abused his own daughter, was given time on prime time TV.

I agree with them 100%.

I'm unhappy that this bloke was brought over here and then not administered the kind of beating he deserved. I think we should invite paedophiles onto all our major TV shows then kick the fucking shit out of them.

- "Hello Mr X, thank you for joining me on Prime Time"

"Thank you, Miriam"

*smash* *kerplang* *Gurjoink*

- "Good evening and on The Den today we've got lots of cartoons, competitions and an interview with a man who sucked his own son's cock."

"It's very nice to be here"

*5 minutes later*

"Now kids, see the way his fingers are all broken and his teeth have all been smashed in? That's what'll happen to you if you fiddle with kids when you grow up!"

Make it happen, fuckers.

So Darth McDowell has taken over as leader of the PDs. It's a funny time for the party now with some opinion polls putting them as low as 2% which is less than the 'Let's fly planes into tall buildings party' or the 'Raise the price of a pint to €10 party'.

So he's got some work to do to regain ground before the next election. Personally I think he's got to make the party seem more user-friendly, so to speak. So here are my ten suggestions about what McDowell should do to help the PDs win more seats.

1 - Get rid of Kunle. As far as I know he's still here despite being illegal, despite being convicted of driving and insurance offences, despite knocking up an Irish girl so he could play that card to stay here, despite being told months ago his reprieve was only temporary. Get rid of him and they've got my vote. If he's gone already, having been snuck out the back door, he should at least claim the credit for it. While he's at it he could outlaw the Residents against Racism for being enormous cunts.

2 - He should hire out former leader Mary Harney as a bouncy castle for kids parties. What a great way to connect with the voters of tomorrow.

3 - Give himself a catchy 'middle name' like darts players or wrestlers have. Michael "Hooch demon" McDowell or Michael "The Trowel" McDowell would look brilliant on the election posters.

4 - A new logo would be a great way to refresh the image of your party. Perhaps the island of Ireland with an electrified fence around it or a person with a white pointed hood holding a clenched fist to the sky.

5 - The PDs don't have the cuddliest image so they need to do something to address that. I suggest they hire Cecilia Ahern to rewrite the party manifesto. Let's face it, if her shitty books sell hundreds of thousands of copies there are bound to be enough stupid people to believe what she writes for the PDs.

6 - Announce a solution to Dublin's traffic problems by committing to build a metro. Then make all immigrants from recent EU member states work on the metro for a year upon their arrival in Ireland. This will ensure benefit cheats don't come just to claim all the free money they can get their hands on and they'll be gainfully employed for 16 hours a day underground, just like at home.

7 - Add some well known faces to the party. While everyone knows McDowell and it's impossible to miss Harney as she blocks out the sun whenever she's outside but the rest are fairly faceless. Tim O'Malley, Tom Parlon, Liz O'Donnell? All as inspid as their names suggest. Only Mae Sexton is any way memorable and that's because her surname says 'sex' and 'ton' which could put you in mind of a giant Angelina Jolie.

They need personalities to woo the voters. How about the intelligent and articulate Roddy Collins who could have his brother Steve advise him on women's affairs? TV3's Alan Hughes is an expert at consigning terrible history to the bin as nobody ever mentions his hideous jackets and bowties and sub-Norton mincing on TalkAbout all those years ago. He could ensure the dark days of the PDs are left behind as they stride onto a glorious new sitting on the couch on morning TV era. And who better than Sinead O'Connor as Minister for Religious affairs combined with Minister for Affairs with other people's husbands?

8 - When people call up the PD offices they should be greeted by a warm, familiar, professional voice as they're told to 'Press 1 to speak to a minister - Press 2 to make a huge donation to the party' etc.

There can be only one (with a nod to Damien and Blogorrah).

9 - A marketing campaign to show the human side of McDowell could be launched perhaps with one of those Hello! style 'at home' photoshoots with the family showing the day to day stuff the public doesn't get to see like slaughtering piglets and drinking their blood, stinking pins into voodoo dolls of Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny and listening to Judas Priest records backwards.

10 - He should start his own blog to reach out to the literaly tens of people who might then read it then change their vote. He could post pictures of his cat, embed that YouTube video of the blokes with the treadmill and link ironically to Langerland.

I think he would be wise to take some of these suggestions on board. My new career as a political consultant begins here.

Given the nice weather we've had this week Dirty Dave and Stinking Pete headed off to the west coast for the weekend. They were supposed to come home tomorrow but they turned up in Ron's this evening.

"All right, lads? How was the weekend?", I asked.

"Er, great. Yeah. Just great", said Dirty Dave.

"I concur", said Stinking Pete. "It was a very great weekend and nothing untoward happened at all."

"Right, you fuckers. What happened?"

"Nothing!", they both said at the same time. Obviously something had gone down. It was our mission to find out what it was. So we plied them with pints but they stayed firm. They had made some kind of pact and fair play to them they were sticking to it. It took a couple or four whiskeys before we found out what had happened.

Dirty Dave is the weak one so Splodge and Lucky Luciano kept Stinking Pete occupied while me and Jimmy the Bollix worked on Dave.

"Tell us", I said.

"I can't", he'd say.

"Come on, Dave. We won't tell anyone else. Just tell us. We've been through a lot together man. You can trust us."

Eventually he gave in. So some time that morning they decided to go for a swim in the Atlantic. You've got to admire their ability to ignore freezing cold water and they were happy splashing around off the Mayo coast. Dirty Dave got out and was flinging stones from the beach at Stinking Pete who was pretending he was in the Olympics doing the 200m medley.

"Look at me, Dave! I'm doing the front crawl! Now I'm doing the backstroke!"

He did the breast stroke with great success and then came the butterfly. He was doing that most ridiculous looking of swimming strokes and telling Dave all about it.

"I'm butterflying, Dave! I'm the greatest butterflier of all time. In history there's never been anyone like me. The power, the precision, the ... OH JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!! OOOWWWWWW!"

"What happened?", roared Dave.

"OH FUCKING HELL I JUST HEADBUTTED A JELLYFISH!"

Pete came running out of the water wailing like a banshee and telling anyone within earshot how much it was stinging his face. Sadly for him the only person within earshot was Dave. The beach they had gone swimming on was totally deserted. There was no life guard, no Hasselhoff to come to the rescue.

"Sweet cunting mother of the divine sacred heart of the crucified Jesus", said Pete. "You have to do something, Dave. It feels like my face is on fire and then someone peeled the skin off and dipped my face in vinegar."

"Oh man. What am I supposed to do?"

"Get a doctor or something!"

"You're mad, there's nothing around for miles. No doctors, nobody. Oh, but hang on a minute. I read somewhere before that if you get stung by a jellyfish you can take the sting out of it with urine."

"No, no fucking way man."

"Then you'll just have to put up with the pain."

"Oh fuck, oh fucking fuck. Oh fucking fucking fuckity fuck fuck."

"Well?"

"Oh fuck. Arse. Bollocks. Shit. Gee. Cunt. Just do it."

So to cure his friend's jellyfish sting Dirty Dave took out his chopper and pissed all over his face. All. Over. His. Face.

It worked though and the pain went away. The trauma of it though saw them come home early having made a pact never to talk about it, never to reveal what had happened.

And me being the good friend I am I haven't told a single soul, just like I promised.

The Beverage Council of Ireland says supermarkets should not be allowed sell cheap booze as part of promotions. The BCI President Edward McDaid said yesterday,

"The supermarket multiples in particular have slashed the price of beer, to the point where four young people can each put a fiver into a kitty and buy a case of beer. A bottle of beer now retails for as little as 75 cent. Yet, at the same time, other forms of drink promotions, like so-called 'happy hours' in pubs are outlawed."

Firstly, I wouldn't exactly call 4 beers a 'case' of beer and secondly, go fuck yourself you pathetic cunt. The prize of drink in Ireland is fucking scandalous. The pubs, the government, the supermarkets, the off-licences and the brewers make a fucking fortune every week from drink but this wanker wants us to pay through the nose because young people might be able to afford more beer. Idiot.

Here's a fucking story. When I was in school I was given £20 to give to the school to pay for a religious retreat we had to go on. I pocketed the money, told the priest I had put the money in an envelope under his door and went to the pub with my friends where pints were less than £1.

I didn't hear anyone say the price of drink should be raised just because we could afford lots of pints. This country is full of cheeky cunts who have no consideration for the consumer. We're getting ripped off all over the place and kids will still get their hands on booze no matter how much it costs.

The rest of us shouldn't have to pay through the nose to police teenagers who are going to get their flaggins of cider anyway. If his solution to underage drinking is to try and price the kids out of the market then he's a fucking simpleton.

The BCI and Edward McDaid can feel free to come and discuss this matter with me in Ron's at any stage. If not they really ought to shut their fucking cunts.

Mary Harney took over as leader of the PDs. She was never a slim woman, she was fairly plump, let's be fair, but her weight was not a huge problem.

Fast forward to now and her weight has ballooned. She is the size of a small planet and getting bigger all the time. The longer she stayed as leader the fatter she got.

I spoke to a doctor, who asked to remain anonymous, about Mary Harney's covert visits to St Vincent's Hospital. He said "Basically we told her that her life was at threat if she stayed on as leader. If the weight gain continued the way it had in previous years she'd have been dead by 2008 if she'd kept up the position. We spelt it out for her as clearly as we could. She was in very real danger of bursting."

Something the next leader needs to bear in mind. Being leader of PDs = massive weight gain and a big, smelly gee.

This information is embargoed until 08.09.06: 17.59pm

Many, many years ago I had to get out of Ireland for a time. There are generally people after me for various reasons but this time there were too many people after me for too many reasons.

Now, I'd seen plenty of lads with other lads after them who thought that going to the UK would protect them. Off to London or Birmingham they'd go, find the Irish community, start hanging around with them and then they'd get found and dealt with. I did not want to be dealt with. I had to let things cool down and I had to go far away to make it happen.

So I took myself off to California where I spent my time surfing, drinking beer and smoking some very good grass. Being the personable chap you know me to be it wasn't long before I made friends. I started hanging out with two Canadian guys who were crazy scientists and spent their days trying to fashion artificial eyes for people who had had their own pecked out by a crow or were perhaps blind from some other unfortunate event like, erm, birth or something.

Me, Arnold Wudden and Max Idbeen became great pals. As they were completely crazy it was a lot of fun to go to the beach with them, get stoned, get drunk and listen to them fart on and on with their wild theories.

Some of them included:

- Hot and cold do not really exist. They're both just a state of mind. I disproved this by setting Arnold's feet on fire.
- God had to exist because only God could dream up the concept of fjords.
- Space and time could be measured by using cat's poo and half a pound of plutonium painted yellow

Crazy. Their main endeavour was their optical project though and they spent a lot of time dreaming up new peepers in all kinds of different styles. There were coloured eyes, rotating eyes, flashing eyes, any kind of eye you could think of. It was quite an expensive thing to do though and they would go down to Hollywood often to try and raise funding from various celebs preying on their vanity to attain the funds.

"What if", I heard them suggest to a youthful Warren Beatty, "you were in bed with a beautiful young actress and in the throes of passion her fingernails punctured both your eyes? Firstly your acting career would be over and although you might still pull hot chicks you won't be able to see them because you will be blind because that other hot chick sliced your eyeballs open and all that white goo came out. However, if we get this thing off the ground we can simply replace them with a brand new set of baby blues".

That got them a cheque for $3,000. And Beatty wasn't the only one. Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Jack Lemmon, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Mitchum and Ursula Andress were all contributors to the fund which kept the project running and kept the three of us in booze and hallucinogenic smoke.

Then one night we were out and we ran into Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. He was a tremendous drinker and we ended in some place on Sunset Boulevard drinking shots of tequila with Phil Spector and Stills from Crosby, Stills and Nash. That was some night, let me tell you. Wilson introduced us to LSD and we laughed at stupid things, saw things we shouldn't have, stared at our own hands like it was the most fascinating thing we had ever seen and at one stage we thought the street lights were following us because as soon as we went past one he was right in front of us again.

Later that morning, still buckled, we went back to the Canadians' place to keep the party going. They had a cupboard full of booze bought with celebs money. So we went back, got comfortable and got stuck into delicious pints of beer topped with wine and grenadine with a sprig of mint and a chunk of fresh lime. Oh, how we laughed. We told stories, jokes, anecdotes, wisecracks, rib-ticklers and quipped about hilarious world events like JFK's assassination, the Hiroshima bomb and Pearl Harbour.

After a while we noticed Brian Wilson was gone. Somehow knowing that rock stars and drink and drugs and swimming pools don't mix we went out to the back garden expecting to find him face down but he wasn't there. We searched the house and eventually found him in the lab where the boys conducted their experiments.

"All right, Brian?", I said.

Wilson said nothing. He was transfixed. He was looking at what they'd been making, at the blueprints, the notebooks with all the various computations and chemical forumlae. He picked things up, fondled them, smelt them, held them in his hand like you'd handle a new born kitten, he looked like he loved them.

After a while he spoke.

"Man, this is far out. I've never seen anything like this before. What you guys are doing is revolutionary. It's inspired. Think of the people you can help, the people who will be able to see again because of the brilliant work you do."

"Cheers, man, eh!", said Arnold.

"One question though. What do you call them?"

"Well, we haven't quite come up with a name yet", answered Max, "but we're thinking Wudden Idbeen Eyes!"

Brian Wilson ran out of the room straight away. We never saw him again.

Gerry Ryan was on the radio in a place I couldn't escape from the other day and he had some stupid cunt of a reporter at a house where the parents were home schooling their children.

Now, I really don't know enough about home schooling to be an authority but you'd imagine giving them a grounding in the basics, English, maths, history and so on would be perfectly acceptable. Even if the parents wanted to be more practical and teach them about how to manage their money or how to fill out forms I think that would be ok.

This family was different though. The father, who didn't want his surname broadcast because he was afraid that people would be critical or there would be a backlash, was called Derek. Gerry Ryan insisted the reporter called him 'Daddy Derek'. She did what Gerry said and she went on and on about what the kids were being taught.

He taught them how to collect coupons from Lidl and Aldi so they could get bargains in the cheapest supermarkets. There was some other stuff as well but the one that really got my goat was the fact that he was teaching them how to send text messages.

What a load of shit. It takes a kid about 3 minutes to learn how to text if you give them a phone. They'll work it all out in no time at all. They do not need lessons.

He also wouldn't let them use predictive text and then gave them sentences to text within certain time limits. The worst thing though was the fact that he was teaching them 'txt speak'. From 'gr8' to 'c u l8r m8' to 'r u going tmrw?'.

If you ask me this man should be thrown in jail for a very long time. It's one thing taking your children out of a normal school environment where they can learn to mix and socialise with other children and also where they learn in a structured environment but it is another thing entirely to teach your kids to fucking mangle the English language. It's child abuse. No more, no less.

It really doesn't take that much more time to write the real word and as we all know txt speak is for complete and utter fuckwitted cuntbags. To deliberately teach your children to be witless, semi-literate mongs should be against the law. Damien recently had a post where people could ask politicians 5 questions before an election. I sent him 5 questions.

I would also add 'Would you throw a man who teaches his children txt speak in jail if I promised to vote for you?'

If all home schooling is like this then it should be banned forthwith. Twice.

Could those of you subscribing to the RSS feed for this site please update your readers/subscriptions to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/twentymajor

Those of you who have no idea what that means don't worry about it in the slightest.

Update: You can now get Twenty Major in your email every day. Just scroll down and near the bottom of the right hand bar, undearneath the links, you'll see a space to enter your email address. From them on you'll get each new post in your email.

Swish!

"Pint please, Ron!"

"Are you sure you should be drinking, Twenty?"

"Erm, yes. I'm about 100% sure, Ron. Why do you ask?"

"Well, I was reading your blog - do not tell anyone else that or I'll fuckin' brain ya - and I know you're on antibiotics for your swollen glands, you massive fairy."

"And?"

"Well, you're not supposed to drink on antibiotics."

"Why's that then?"

"Apparently it can cause kidney damage, drowsiness, diarrhoea, vomiting and in extreme cases hallucinations."

"So, drowsiness = hash, kidney damage = alcohol or E, diarrhoea = Guinness, vomiting = Indian food and hallucinations = acid. You wouldn't not serve me if I'd consumed any of those so what's the problem with prescription drugs?"

"I suppose you're right, Twenty. No harm, no foul."

*8 pints later*

"Ron, if you don't tell that group of Tom Cruises to stop pointing at me and signing the theme tune from The Greatest American Hero with their 6 mouths each and their fire breathing nostrils which are 3 feet wide I'm going to shit on your bar, projectile vomit out the window then fall asleep on the jacks."

Woke up yesterday morning feeling absolutely shite and as I hadn't had anything to drink the night before it was certainly not a hangover, and anyway, I know the difference.

Underneath the right hand side of my jaw was all swollen and getting swollener by the minute. Now, I haven't been to a doctor in about 7 years as I am normally the picture of health. Well, not the picture of health, but certainly not a picture of illness. However, I had no choice but go see the doctor lest I swell up like one of those frogs that blows that thing out from under their chin. I really didn't want to croak it.

So I trundled off down to the doctor down the road that had seen me on my last visit when I'd come down with the bubonic plague. I came to the door which was locked but there was intercom. I buzzed it.

"Hello", said a voice. "How can I help you?"

'Yeah, I'm wondering if you sell typewriter ribbons', I thought. What an odd question to ask somebody coming to a doctor's surgery.

"I'd like to see the doctor please", I said.

"Surgery's closed", she said despite the fact I could see lots of old people waiting in the waiting room and a sign saying 'Surgery hours 9am - 1pm and it was not even midday.

"The sign here says surgery's open till 1pm."

"Well, we're closed. You'll have to come back in the afternoon."

"Oh, all right then. What time are you open in the afternoon just in case this sign is wrong for the second time today?"

"4pm."

"Ok, I'll come back."

"Well, we're totally booked out. I don't have a single space. You can make an appointment for tomorrow morning though."

"But I feel bad now. I could be dead tomorrow."

"I'm sorry, there's no room until tomorrow."

"Ok. FUCK YOU AND THANKS FOR NOTHING, YOU CUNT."

I went back home and took out the Yellow Pages to find someone else. I saw a name I recognised, local bloke, there was something about him that made my memory jog a little bit but he was close, I was becoming more froglike and I was in a hurry. Hurrah, he could see me in 40 minutes.

When I arrived I saw why there was no queue or anyone else in the waiting room. The desk was cluttered with bits of old paper, the examination bed was covered in blanket which hadn't been washed since 1982 , the wallpaper was hanging off the walls and he was obviously half cut. Doctor Glug Glug, they called him. That's what it was.

"What can I do for you?", he asked.

"Well, I'm a bit swollen and it hurts when I press here", I said pointing out the affected area.

He stood up and had a go himself. He put his fingers on the swollen area.

"Does it press when I hurt here?"

"Er, yes. I just told you that it did", I said breathing in his very familiar aftershave, Eau de Bushmills.

"It's your glands", he said. "You need some antibiotics".

He wrote me a prescription and then, because it was my first visit, he took my details to put in his file. This consisted of him writing down my name, address and phone number on a page from an A5 journalist's notebook which he put under a pile of similar papers in a filing cabinet that was rusted and looked like it might fall over at any minute.

"Right, that'll be €50", he said. I wasn't in the surgery for more than 3 minutes.

"Hahahaha", I said. "Now, joking aside, how much do I owe you?"

"€50. Seriously."

I gave him his money, which he added to the wad of notes a tarmac laying traveller would be jealous of, and went on my way making a strict resolution to never be sick again. €50 to see a fucking doctor for 3 minutes? What a load of shit. Even a fucking alcoholic with no patients is fucking loaded.

If there are thieves in Ireland then doctors are surely the greatest of the lot. Fucking cunts.

English tourist dies in Ireland. He is taken to Beaumont hospital where an autopsy is carried out. His heart and lungs are removed as per procedure. He is then sent back to England where another autopsy is carried out as is the norm when a British citizen dies abroad.

They remove his heart and lungs as per procedure. Then they remove his other heart and lungs as per proced... erm... wait a minute.

It seems the people in Beaumont hospital decided to use this man as a disposal unit. They put somebody else's heart and lungs into a plastic bag then lashed them inside the dead English bloke, stitched him up and sent him on his way.

Surely the most inventive way of avoiding the bin charges I have ever heard.

If they'd been really creative they'd have created some kind of a jack in the box type device so that when the English pathologist made the Y shaped incision it would pop up and have a little sign saying 'Hello from Dublin!!!'.

Instead it's just typical of our health service. Boring, lazy and pretty disgraceful. There was a woman on the news from some support group who blamed Mary Harney for everything and I can see where she's coming from.

She said that she and her group asked Mary Harney to investigate what has happened to all the organs removed and used and disposed of without consent. She said Mary Harney refused point blank to carry out any such investigation.

It's obvious why. She's eaten them all, the enormous glutton. If the public ever found out it would certainly cast a shadow over her political legacy.

Instead of being the politician credited with bringing Large is Lovely boutiques into profit she'll go down as the Minister who ate the most dead childrens organs and nobody wants to be remebered like that.

Apart from Albert Reynolds, of course.

I have a terrible headache this morning but my pain was alleviated by the news that one of our citizens carried out an act of humanitarianism above and beyond the norm. An act so selfless and magnanimous that he should be rewarded with free booze and perhaps an oily massage of some kind.

A busker was busking yesterday in Temple Bar, no doubt playing some kind of Oasis song, when a man rushed up to him and stabbed him.

Hurrah. If only more people would stab street entertainers then we'd soon find our pathways and pavements free of cunts with acoustic guitars trying to get money from us by playing popular, yet irritating, music.

The busker's injuries are not serious and that's good. He just got enough of a stabbing to make him stop.

I once thought about stabbing a taxi driver who went on and on about his ex-wife, her new boyfriend, his mother-in-law and their apartment in Turkey. In the end I didn't.

I should have though. This man has shown me the light.

I can see the light. I'm moving slowly towards the light.