Life Without Toast - Sibling Rivalry

Happy birthday to Babs, who has reached the grand old age of 23 today!

Hip-Hip, HOORAY!

We're all going to dinner in the lovely Bar Italia tomorrow to mark the occasion, it should be fab.

Happy birthday Babs! Love ya to bits. :-)

Posted by Matt at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I have recieved another invite to become a commenter on Lifehacker (and, by extension, all Gawker Media websites/blogs), my third such invite so far (they must like me!). I already gave one of them away (I think I gave it to Annie?), and used the other one myself. If anyone reads any of the Gawker blogs and has always wanted to comment on a post, but hasn't been invited yet, let me know, and I'll forward you the invite.

Posted by Matt at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seems almost real, until you hear the words "world's first giraffe-only zoo", and you see the island is shaped like a huge shamrock.

(credit to Babs, who mailed this to me. I dunno who mailed it to her...)

Posted by Matt at 8:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Wikipedia Entry / Youtube Videos

My mouth's as dry as a nuns crack.

As funny as a burning orphanage.

He's so camp, he shites tent pegs.

I'm as sick as a plane to Lourdes.

She had a face on her that would drive rats from a barn.

Sweatin' like a paedophile in a Barney suit.

As tight as a nun's knickers.

I'd crawl a million miles across broken glass to kiss the exhaust of the
van that took her dirty knickers to the laundry.

No show pony but would do for a ride around the house.

Did your mother find out who your father is yet?

What would ye expect from a pig but a grunt.

I left her with a face like a painters radio.

A mickey the size of a double-value can of Right Guard.

Jaysus, she could breastfeed a creche.

As fit as a butcher's dog.

Not even the tide would take her out.

Mother Teresa wouldn 't kiss her,
Daz wouldn't shift her, and
Des Kelly wouldn't lay her.

A sniper wouldn't take her out.

Jaysus, ya wouldn't ride her into battle.

If I'd a bag of bruised willies I wouldn't give her one.

She had a fanny like a badly packed kebab.

If I'd a garden full of mickeys I wouldn't let her look over the wall.

Give her a boot in the hole and a bucket of mickeys would fall out of her.

Posted by Babs at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Photoblogging...

I'm totally going! And so are Babs and Andy. WOO-HOO!

Posted by Matt at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok so I go to this site all the time and all the time I buy t-shirts, I have loads, like at least 20, I even bought one yesterday for my roomdawg's birthday, and then....I saw it, this disgrace of a t-shirt, now I am all for the old un P.C jokes and the taking the piss, but I actually was disgusted, and so were all of my team in work when I showed them, apart from one stupid person who didn't get it, and was like "what's the story with that?"
Anyway, I emailed threadless yesterday to give out shite basically, they still haven't gotten back to me, hmmmm!!

Posted by Babs at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBacks (0)

Last May, for my Birthday, Nikki got me Flying Lessons (thanx Nikki! xoxo)

On Sunday, Midway through September, I finally got round to using them.

It was absolutely brilliant.

Posted by Matt at 1:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

QE has just, through a miracle of blogging technology (and in his first post in nigh on two months, the neck of him), remembered me of an idea I had back in March, which I asked "someone" to remind me of.

It goes something like this:

I hereby call on Annie, Gordon, Dan, Babs and QE (and me!) to indulge themselves in a bit of musical rehashery, and do that 20 tracks meme thingy all over again. And like, yeah, whoever else wants to do it too. You have one week (let's say midnight on Friday? Lovely!).

LETS GET IT OOOON!

Posted by Matt at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

I finally got around to having a good play around with Audacity last night, in preparation for when I get around to lashing a proper podcast together, if only to stop Dan pestering me about it (actually, mostly to see if I can come up with something interesting). It's ridiculously easy to use, and definitely a lot easier than I thought it would be. I was able to throw together twenty minutes of a decent mix with dialogue and tracks in about 45 minutes. I reckon a half-hour show would be just about right, which means only about 5 tracks per show, with some banter and stuff in between. I'm trying to get Andy on board to be the co-host, as I reckon just me talking and playing tracks would be interminably boring. I may be wrong, but I don't think so. Babs will also almost definitely make a guest appearance or three (I haven't mentioned it to her though, and how do you make an 'appearance' if no-one can see you anyway?!).

Anyhoo. I probably won't get a chance to actually do the recording bit for quite a while (at least a couple of weeks), so in the meantime, I'm putting some stuff down on paper. If anyone has any requests for tracks (that aren't something everyone's heard before) then let me know at the address at the bottom of the page. I've got quite a few ideas already, but I'm totally open to suggestions. If I have more than enough for two or three shows before I make the first show, well, there might even be a second show. But we'll see how the first one goes first.

Crunchy Nut Cornflakes on standby.

Posted by Matt at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Careful now, you might die laughing...

Posted by Matt at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well I am cream crackered too but for totally different reasons, I am feeling incredibly jealous of my brother now, for which you will see, are obvious reasons:

Friday 5pm: Off work for the weekend ? awoohoo!!! And there is a work do on tonight even better, I want to leave my car at home so my mate Lorna who I work with said she would follow me to my gaff and then drop me to the bar, result and a half I say. So we are on the way home and there is a massive truck on front of me and the lights turn red, but I don?t see them due to the truck which also broke them, and I broke the lights, for the first time ever, and I didn?t even notice, I was listening to Weezer and boogying on down in the car, not in a dangerous fashion, but you know, drumming on the steering wheel and that, Lorna blew the horn which was the scariest part, I am very disappointed in myself to be honest?..anyway so then it was home?change?play with turtles?.back into Lorna?s car, got to the bar, the drink was all for FREE ? yay!! So I ordered my pint, went to the toilet, my pint came and someone STOLE it!!! I mean seriously, the booze was free and yet someone still felt the need to steal my pint, its just ridiculous!! Anyway finally (felt like ages, was actually approx 8.5 mins) got my pint, there was supposed to be food laid on, so we were milling the pints, I can?t say exactly how many were consumed, but I will say 6 in that bar, approx, em!! I think so anyway, so the food came and it was crap, now bear in mind that this was for the General Managers farewell party, and we got platters of deep fried shite, literally, even if you were into that sort of thing, it was still shite. Anyway, so the scabby bastards cut the tab at 10.30 (!!!!!!!!!) so me, my mate Kirsty and my other mate Barry decided to feck off to another place, so we said we were going to the bar and then legged it!! We went to a place called Toast in Rathmines which I love, and they hadn?t been to, so that was groovy!! More pints then Kirsty went home, bar closed, Barry decided it would be a great idea to get KEBABS, and I agreed, and we went to this dive place called Hit The Spot and let me tell you this, it really didn?t hit any spot, none, not at all, we left without finishing and staggered back into town where I got the nitelink, went home, almost fell into my turtlepops aquarium (I could actually more than likely fit into it!! My largest achievement of the night has to be this though: after I would say 8 or 9 pints (I may be short ish but I can fit them in) a kebab and numerous other dirt infested areas including the bus stop and bus, I was wearing white trousers and they hadn?t a mark on them ? awoohoo!!!! Really, this is a big achievement for me.

Saturday: Woke up 9am, slept, woke up 10am, slept, woke up 11am, got up, made brekki (yum), arsed around the house for a while shaking and the like, trying my best to wake up, showered, shook some more, drank coffee, that was a bit better, remembered eating the kebab, felt a little queasy, then was like ?I don?t want to go to work??.oh yeah forgot, sometimes I work in my friends restaurant, with him, as a nixer type thing. Rob is my friend. Rob is in Bratislava on holidays, with his girlfriend Lyn, Rob didn?t tell me that the dude that I was going to be working with was USELESS. I am trained as a chef and have a pretty cool head under pressure, I also have no problem communicating things with my comrades, this guy, apparently did!! He was all chat before service and then just stopped. Now I don?t know if any of you have ever worked in kitchens or even as front of house, but if you have you will know that communication is the be all and end all of the whole operation, there were orders coming in he wasn?t telling me, thus putting me up shit creek without even a trace of a paddle, then I was doing starters, and sides (easier option and if I get a choice then why not) so he was sending main courses but not telling me which table etc, so I had no idea what to be sending, so then he starts giving ME shit for not being together, so I told him to fuck off and worked it my own way from then on. Go me!! The I did something bad!! I was doing some sauté potatoes to go with a steak I think, and I threw on the pan and oil to heat up and then I had the spuds in my hand to throw in and I dropped one into the boiling oil and it splashed my arm and?MY FACE. So now I have this lovely scabby eye socket, I was lucky I suppose that I dint get it into my eye, but man, it hurt into the pit of my stomach!! Then I cleaned down, didn?t help the knob dude at all cause why should I when he?s a dick head and then left, on my way home my friend Su called me ? ?ooh hey, can I sleep in your gaff tonight Micheal ? her boyfriend ? has gone to France and I don?t like being in my house on my own on the weekends, please? so I said yeah and I collected her on the way home, she gets into the car after drinking a few whiskeys ? to calm her down ? with a bag of pyjamas, and a bottle of Jameson, like a LARGE bottle of Jameson, so when we got home, we tucked into it, then about 2.30 I decided I could no longer function so I put her to bed, found a new spider in the hallway, we named him Larry!! And then I fell into bed, and didn?t wake up until???

Sunday 1.45pm: wake up!!! AAAAAAAAAAGH!!!! Its 1.45, WTF!!!! Got up, made myself brekki / lunch type thing, eggs, toast, tea, then some coffee, an apple, that kind of jazz, then lay on the couch till 4.30 watching ?Shameless? DVD?s, then had a 45 minute shower, then got ready for other work, where Matt works, then my roomie Conor came home, and he was CRANKY, he has worked the last 21 days in a row and is angry about it to say the least!! Then I left, went to my mate Trish?s gaff to park my car, had some tea and then went to work?in the third job in just over 48 hours, rock on Sarah!! Then I went home, made luch for today, watched ?Shameless? dvd and then off to Bedfordshire for me, where of course I cannot sleep??????.

(NOTE:* it is not normal for me to work 3 jobs, I am not insane!! I am going back to college at night time in 2 weeks ? eek! And needed to work extra to pay off fees, comprende?)

Matt is sooooooooooooooooooooo lucky!!

Posted by Babs at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm cream-crackered.

Friday, we had my cousin Andy and his girlfriend Nikki (no, it's not that confusing) over for dinner. I threw together an enormous stir-fry with everything under the sun in it (we're talking onions, 10 cloves of garlic, baby corn, asparagus, red pepper, carrots, sprouts, marinaded tofu, chilli, Thai 7 spice [brilliant], rice, fish, and other things I forget, it was really good, lots, of 'mmmmmms') and got the beer and wines in, Andy brought some nice cheeses and crackers, and we all stuffed our faces and got a bit pished. It was great.

Saturday Nat and Ian came down to the southside as they were in Dublin for the weekend, were looking to meet up and I had come up with a fabulous plan for them, that didn't involve wandering aimlessly and doing touristy things. We walked up the top of Killiney hill, took pictures of the amazing view, walked down, drove to Dun Laoghaire, got coffees and went for a stroll on the pier, had lunch in Harry's Café Bar, came out to Shankers and showed them our lovely house, drove into Dublin City, had a walk around and went for a drink or three in John M Keatings, a new-ish pub/restaurant/club/thingy built out of a converted church, strolled up Grafton St. and went for dinner in Café Bar Deli in Bewleys Café, before we parted ways and went home tired but happy (Nat and Ian: you guys rock!).

Sunday, we got up kinda late-ish, Nikki went to Dundrum and I watched the Grand Prix (Schumacher announced his retirement!). My sister Rebecca and her husband Sean came over for a cuppa with their house-warming pressie which was lovely. We chilled out for a bit after that, then went into town to see Jimmy Carr in the Olympia. He was fucking hilarious, a million one-liners, and particularly good with the hecklers, which is a measure of how good any comedian is, imho. I give him an 8 out of 10.

Really, really great weekend. I'm knackered. Next weekend I'm going flying. I'm off to bed now. Zzzzz...

Posted by Matt at 1:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Photoblogging...

Ian, Nat, me and Nikki, on the pier in Dun Laoghaire, all windswept and interesting. :-)

Posted by Matt at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seeing as I totally forgot, and she might not have told everyone, Nikki has uploaded all her photos from the Snowdonia trip and my cousin Ian's wedding onto her Flickr. My Snowdonia pics are up in my 'Snowdonia' photoset, but I got almost no photos of the wedding due to me being an usher all day and having a lot of things to do.

Have a look, to see me, Babs, Nikki and Rebecca (aka 'the big sis') in varying states of drunkenness in our bestest of clobber, along with all the rellies and the campest photo of me I think you'll ever see. Enjoy!

Posted by Matt at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

I know someone, lets's call him 'Aloysius'*, who has a problem. For the last several years, he has been living beside some fucking scumbags, who seem to believe that his garden is a perfectly reasonable receptacle for their empty Guinness and cider cans and flagon bottles. Several times he has had his garden cleared of this rubbish, only for it to return soon after. On one occasion I counted upwards of fifty empty Strongbow (the preferred tipple of scumbags and winos) cans in one corner of the garden.

Last week, Aloysius (in an inebriated, angry state) flipped, filled up a black bag with these cans, and lobbed it over the hedge onto the neighbors path. The bag disappeared the next day, but the cans once again started appearing in the garden. Aloysius is now in fear of his life, or at least the cleanliness of said garden.

Aloysius has called, and written to, the council (as it is they who own the house next door, and not the occupiers, who are too useless and lazy to have actual jobs, and prefer instead to spend their days indoors, drinking and watching tv, and living off the dole), stating the problem, but has had no reply or result. Therefore it seems that throwing rubbish into your neighbour's garden is an acceptable practise. I wonder, though if we all started doing the same thing, would we get away with it, or would a hefty littering and/or disturbance fine be slapped down upon us. Maybe we should all give it a try and see?

_{*Names have been changed to protect the innocent. If you know the identity of 'Aloysius', please DO NOT reveal it here, or I will have to delete your comment.}

Posted by Matt at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

As per me big sis's comment on the post about the lumpy milk, here's the latest scan of my niece/nephew to be, at 20 weeks. Halfway there!

_{(Any coments about sexual appendages that may or may not be visible in the scan and that you may or may not be able to see, please refrain from commenting them here, as Rebecca doesn't want to know what flavour he/she is until she sees him/her 'for real')}

Posted by Matt at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Steve Irwin, the eponymous "Crocodile Hunter", has died in a marine accident while filming an underwater documentary off the coast of Australia.

I know some people thought he was annoying and a bit of an idiot, and his famous "holding the baby while feeding a crocodile" incident didn't go down too well with the masses, but he was basically a good guy, in my opinion, who did a lot for conservation and animal welfare during his lifetime, and his constant, boundless enthusiasm for what he was doing was always entertaining.

Rest in peace, Steve, we'll miss ya.

UPDATE: It seems that the news of poor Steve's demise was quite popular, to the extent that it completely trashed many website's bandwidth, including most of the big Australian news sites, and the crocodilehunter.com site I mentioned above. Steve was a popular guy.

Posted by Matt at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Don't you just hate it when:

The milk you bought the day before yesterday has the same use-by date as the milk you bought the week before last, namely three days ago, 1-Sep-06.

Fuck Spar, the non-milk-date-checking bastards.

Posted by Matt at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)