Life Without Toast - Sibling Rivalry

Photoblogging...

Posted by Matt at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Photoblogging...

Not bad at all! Just chilling now after a morning spent swimming and sunbathing.

Are ya jealous? :-)

Posted by Matt at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

My poor Nikki is at home in bed after a night spent being very sick. It's only the second sick day Nikki has ever taken, so understandably she is a wee bit pissed off. She didn't have dinner yesterday, all she had was a cocktail sausage or two on a warship (I'll explain this another time), and no-one else was sick as a result of said sausages, so (using my uncanny forensic food-investigating abilities) I've traced it back to a sandwich she had in O'Briens Sandwich Bar in the IFSC in Dublin city, yesterday afternoon. Well, Nikki said 'the ham looked a bit dodgy, but I forgot to check it in the sandwich before I ate it'. See, this is why I don't eat meat. Too much chance of being incapacitated.

Anyway, the last time I was actually physically sick (as in 'puking my ring'), was after having a tuna (ok, so I eat fish) sambo in another O'Briens Sandwich Bar (for those of you who've never been in one, it's an Irish-owned deli-type place, where Asian students make you a sandwich in front of you). I just thought I'd throw the question out there: Has anyone else ever been sick as a result of an O'Briens (or indeed any other deli) sandwich?

Incidentally, this will probably be my last proper post for quite a while, I won't be online tomorrow, and myself and herself will be heading to windy sunny Fuerteventura on Sunday. I shall endeavour to provoke jealousy in all you readers by mo'blogging pictures of us sipping mojitos beside a pool, peering inside volcanoes and generally chilling to the max. Cheers y'all, and see you in a week or so.

Posted by Matt at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We went down to our new house for the first time today, to meet a 'snagger' lady to give the place a quick once-over and see what's broken before we stump up the vast wad of cash and call it 'ours'. The place didn't look too bad really, the odd nick and dent and bit of trim out of place, but everything looked pretty fine and dandy.

I did notice one thing though. The living room is supposed to be 'pre-wired for surround sound', but although I can see where the wires come out of the walls, there are several problems:

1. I can't see where the wires go into the walls
2. There are only three wires coming out of the walls, and
3. They are in totally the wrong places.

This irks me somewhat, but it's nothing a bit of drilling and hammering can't fix.

The other thing was, when we were leaving, two painters came in (they appeared to be eastern European, but that's not important). One of them was smoking a fag in our house. Seeing as the house is actually still a 'building site', and therefore a 'workplace', this is totally illegal, and could incur a hefty fine for the building contractor. Therein lies the dilemma.

Should I inform the relevant authorities, therefore guaranteeing that the aforementioned painters will almost certainly do something bad to my shiny new pad, or should I do 'the Irish thing', and not complain, in the vein of 'ah sure, it's grand'?

Posted by Matt at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

It's called "Marmite Squeeze Me". It will forever change the nature of my morning slice of toast. It is not, as yet, available in Ireland. Should anyone in the UK wish to purchase me a sqeeeezy jar of Marmite, I will re-emburse you to the tune of TEN of your English Pounds (or Scottish poooounds).

In other Marmite-news, the last ever 57g jar of The Yeasty Goodness™ was recently sold on eBay UK for £235. That works out at a little over four pounds a gram. That's some good Marmite right there.

Posted by Matt at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, in between right now and the unknown date in the near future when we will be moving into our beautiful new dooooplex, we moved into a little two-bedroom flat with all our stuff in piles of boxes and black bags. Well, I say 'we', I mean of course 'me', as we moved Nikki into the temporary place on Sunday, last night was my turn. Apart from one box (the one with the books in it, of course!) which was incredibly heavy and required all of my manual handling training to lift, it was all pretty straightforward.

Well, it would have been, if it wasn't for my uncanny ability to be completely terrible when it comes to getting myself together. Why is it, that I can organise a complete truck-full of lighting, sound equipment, set and costumes to be unloaded and set-up within a fairly tight deadline, but I find it a total 'mare to put my crap in boxes and move it from one place to another...?

The flat is ok, there's plenty of room for all our stuff, clothes, etc, the shower works, it's clean and dry, there's a balcony I can smoke on, and the bed is reasonably comfy ('sleepable in' is how I'd put it). Nikki claimed that the toaster was 'broken', prompting the very real fear that 'life without toast' would become more than just a silly blog name, but a bit of jigging around and wiggling of levers and lovely, Marmitey toast was had this morning.

And so it begins. Nikki and I are now officially 'living together'. If we haven't killed each other by this time next week, we should be cool for a long while yet.

UPDATE:I just realised something. There's no internet access in this temporary place of ours. How am I going to live without my eveningly hour or two of interweb trawling? I'll go MENTAL! Either that or I'll go to an internet café. But I know there's none nearby. Ah... crap.

Posted by Matt at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

...That a Finnish Glam-Death-Metal band dressed as zombie demons would win the Eurovision Song Contest. I'm still slightly in shock.

*Not that I actually watched the contest or anything, I just tuned in for the last 5 minutes of voting. I swear. I was working tonight, so I have a legitimate alibi.

Posted by Matt at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

There's one of those digital signs near where I live that tells you how fast your going as you approach it. You know the ones, with like, "Speed Limit: 50km/h" and "Your Speed: XX", with your speed where the X's are? When I pass it, it always tells me I'm going a lot slower than I think I am. So when my speedometer says I'm doing about 60 km/h, the sign says "52" or something. And it only flashes when you go above 55.*

So therefore, by my reasoning, the sign seems to be telling me that it's ok to do 60. Am I wrong?

Posted by Matt at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

After four or five months delay, after a small move in January, after Nikki living in spider-infested, at times freezing cold, temporary accomodation, and after spending the last few months looking at couches, tv's, coffee machines and crockery, we finally got completion notice on our new house.

Well, I say completion notice, but of course I really mean 'snagging notice', in that they told us we could now come in to find every little niggley thing that's wrong with the place, tell them about the snags, and get them to fix them. Hopefully, seeing as they've now built quite a few places in the development, they'll have gotten the hang of it by now andf won't have fucked up too much. But judging by Seamus's 5-week snagging ordeal, and the fact that his place is only two doors down from ours, I'm being cautiously optimistic.

In the meantime, Nikki has to move from her temporary accomodation to yet another temporary place, this time a two-bedroom apartment in Monkstown. And this time I'm moving with her. I figure it's a good way of packing all my stuff up and sorting it out, before moving it permanently into an actual home. But then I also realise it means I'm going to move house twice in the next month. Oh well, I'm sure there'll be plenty of fun to be had. :-)

In other news, I have been invited by the Argentinian Ambassador to Ireland and The Captain of the flagship of the Irish Naval Fleet to a reception on said flagship, the L.E. Eithne, next Thursday. This is due to Nikki's dad being a Commodore in the Irish Navy, and this will be the first such Naval reception-thingy I will have been to. There's nothing on the invitation about a dress code though, so I'm going to go wearing bermuda shorts and a hawaiian shirt. And wellies.

Posted by Matt at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

5 Things:

• It was my 29th birthday on Saturday
• It was my cousin Ian's wedding on Saturday
• The wedding was in England
• I was an usher, as previously discussed
• Nikki got a new car yesterday

Fun, games, frustration, hilarity, love, and so much more...

Posted by Matt at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Photoblogging...

Pished as farts at my cousin's wedding. :-)

Posted by Matt at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

So, myself and herself are off to the UK for the weekend, to Wiltshire to be precise, for the wedding of my cousin Ian to his fianceé (obviously) Kate. There's five of us going over from Ireland together, us two, my two sisters Sarah and Becca, and my bro-in-law Sean. Getting a flight tomorrow at 6-ish, and back on Sunday late.

I'm actually going to be an usher at the wedding, which is something I actually had to look up myself, as I hadn't a clue what it was. When Ian asked me to be an usher, I said 'riiiight... so what does an usher do?', to which he replied 'what an usher do? Err, I dunno!', so it's obviously a very important position in the ceremony (from what I can gather, the usher is the guy who stands at the door of the church and says 'bride or groom?'. What fun!).

Have a good weekend y'all, and I'll probably post a hilarious wedding-ey pic if I get a break from all my important ushering duties. Later!

Posted by Matt at 7:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Right. In response to Nikki's comment in the last post, I will recount the embarrassing tale of my adventure in the Vodafone shop. Generally, I tend to let on to people that I have very (pretty?) good knowledge of all things technical, but in this instance, I was proved to be not so knowledgable.

My last phone was a Motorola v550, and it was a big heap of shite. It kept resetting back to the main menu while I was texting, I couldn't access the phonebook at all, the battery life was completely rubbish, I had already had the phone in to be repaired, and at this stage I just wanted a new one.

So off to the shop I went, a vast amount of reasons for wanting and deserving a new phone going through my head, ready to be recounted to the (no-doubt) understanding sales assistant. There was a bit of a queue in the shop so I waited for a bit. When I finally got to speak to the assistant, I started ranting.

"This phone is shite!"
"The phone book doesn't work!!
"It's already been fixed, but it's still broken!"
"It's under guarantee, I want a new one!"
Etc, etc.

The assistant (I cannot remember if it was a male assistant or a female assistant, but that's not important right now) stood there, listening and nodding along to my lengthy tirade, before asking me the vital question.

"Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on again?"
"Err... No. Bugger." (problem(s) solved, at least temporarily)

And thus ends the embarrasing tale of the Vodafone shop. Thank God for that, Nikki has been threatening to reveal the true secret of my technical ineptitude to the masses for what seems like forever. Finally, I can breathe a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge the the whole world (or at least all regular readers of the Toasty Goodness) knows how truly brutal I am (but I still consider myself 'a bit of a geek').

Posted by Matt at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

(while viewing that Nescafé ad with the fortune cookies in it)

Nikki: "I didn't know you could make fortune cookies, I thought they just came like that"
Me: "..." (look of extreme disbelief)

(Later that same evening)
Nikki: "I'm cold"
Me: "Put the heating on then"
Nikki: "Nah, I'll just put another jacket on"
Me: "Err... You're not wearing a jacket..."

Posted by Matt at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

So, despite being rebuffed by a German TV station after they had requested the use of my lip-synching madskillz and then decided it wasn't what they were looking for, I am continuing to search for a suitable track to use for my next GoogleIdol entry (or rather our next entry, as Andy has an equal chance of doing 'lead vocal' on our next number). There are no prizes for second place this time. Actually, there are no prizes for first place either, but that's beside the point.

So I have narrowed it down to the following: Me and Chan doing 'Dub Be Good To Me' by Beats International, Me doing 'Jump!' by Van Halen, or Chan doing 'I Am The One And Only' by Chesney Hawkes, or a combination of these. But I can't decide which one to do. Can anyone help?

UPDATE: Looks like Van Halen are the current favourites, with Chesney close behind. I'm quite disappointed at the number of suggestions for other tracks though (ie zero). Come on you lot, give a dude a hand. Suggestions will be credited in any video made!

Posted by Matt at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Photoblogging...

Posted by Matt at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

After all this talk of on-again-off-again Germanic infamy, I'm going to relax it all down a bit, with another Spam Of The Week™.

Following a few interesting BoingBoing posts about the phenomenon of 'Flarf' (spam/net inspired absurdist poetry), I decided to compose a flarf poem entirely out of a spam mail that I really recieved in my inbox.

I've entitled this little ditty "Re: [17]" (I'm sure you know why)

He never forgot these things
these words, these names.
in 1862 into account
She was glowing with excitement

And there was not just one piling but two;
the pain was the pilings
and part of him knew
for a long time before
most of his mind had knowledge of knowing
that the shattered pilings were his own shattered legs

But oh, Mr Rancho Grande!
"At least, not if I have just a little luck"
She looked at him with no anger or suspicion
only faint curiosity
Did that mean he was making progress?
Paul crawled over to his bed
pulling himself on his elbows
and got hold of the coverlet

That night I changed your medication
for something a little stronger
and when I was sure
you weren't going to wake up
even if someone exploded
a grenade under your bed
I got my little tool-kit
from the cellar shelf
and I took the keyplate off that door
in 1975...

Not bad, not bad. Reads quite well, and it even sounds like it's making sense about halfway through, but I assure you, dear readers, it really, really isn't.

Posted by Matt at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ah, bollocks.

"Hello Matthew,
thank you very much for your email!

I am sorry, but I have to say that today we decided not to broadcast videoclips from the internet, so we don?t need your clip anymore.

In the last few days we saw a lot of videos from the world wide web and we all agree that it is not the stuff we were searching for.

Thank you very much and have a nice day!

Best regards
Tobias

Well, so much for that. There goes my big chance for my fifteen minutes of German fame.

ps: Fuck them. Fuck them all, the bastards. :-)

Posted by Matt at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

I just got an e-mail from "a German TV-production-company named 'Constantin-Entertainment GmbH' from Munich":

"Since four months we are producing a funny Clip-Show called ?ClipCharts? which is on air at 7.45 PM on the German broadcast station ?kabel eins?.

Within 30 minutes we show twenty funny homevideos, videoclips, webcamvideos and similar stuff like that.

My name is Tobias and I work in the editorial department of "ClipCharts" .

At present we are searching for new funny stuff and in connection with that we found your great videoclip on www.googleidol.com.

If you agree, we would like to broadcast this clip in our show. In this case we need your videoclip as an .mpeg- or .avi-file.

If you are interested in a cooperation with us and agree that we show your musicclip / videoclip on our TV-Show, please write back as soon as possible , because we would like to use your video in the next few weeks! Further details you´ll hear from my colleagues of the legal department, who will contact you."

What should I do?! Do I want to be famous in Germany (and possibly the next Hoff?!)?!

Posted by Matt at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

You've got a cutlery drawer, with four 'slots', for knives, forks, spoons and teaspoons.

Where do the chopsticks go?

Posted by Matt at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)