Being Drunk and Productive = Counter Productive

I've finally learnt after 3 separate occasions that being drunk, in my case, and trying to be productive has often left me in a situation worse off than improved. This is also 3 occasions that I remember because they have left a lasting effect, like when you watch all of LOST and realise that you could've stared at a giant question mark for 6 years and STILL have gotten more answers.

"Previously on LOST..."

The first of these stupid escapades was something I mentioned in a previous post before. I stumbled into my room like a bowling ball falling down a staircase and saw my curtains agape. This could not stand if I were to sleep in that morning so like a whiley racoon I decided to close them. This proved much more difficult than it appeared, my drunken motor instincts confused closing with going rigid and my balance confused standing up with...not standing up. I forgot this had all happened until I woke up and thought for a moment "my window wasn't on the floor before?". Anyways, the good thing was, I still managed to close the curtains, even if they weren't attached to the wall anymore.

The second time is also something I've mentioned in previous posts. My sister and her boyfriend were over visiting and we all were drinking here in my apartment, which is also their ex-apartment. As per usual I was using my laptop to show funny videos (probably about cats) and play music no one wants to listen to at 3 in the morning. I also felt that the laptop needed no better place to be than on top of stereo speakers, at my head height with wires protruding from it all around the room. After showing them one of the trippy psychedelic fight scenes from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World I took my own trip over my laptop charger sending my laptop on a very brief and ultimately horrendous speed date with gravity that ended at the floor. My laptop still worked but now my screen is stuck in what I am dubbing "Scott Pilgrim mode", it's flickery, crazy, fuzzy and psychedelic making reading just about bearable and the only thing that does look normal on it is Scott Pilgrim Vs. The world.

"Currently what Hibernation Mode on my laptop is like"

The final escapade happened nary a night or two ago. I came home and realised that I had left on a dehumidifier in my room for the majority of the day and as a result my room resembled something of a giant sandcastle. My bedsheets also weren't dry nor on my bed as I had just washed them, so I decided to stay up for a while drying those (not physically, in a dryer of course) and put them on my bed, all the while letting the dehumidifier suck up any dampness left in the sheets. When all said was done I proceeded to turn off and move the unit out of my room. It was probably like watching a newborn deer learn how to walk while trying to carry a dehumidifier. As you may have guessed, the simple idea of moving it didn't go exactly as planned and much like my cutrains and my laptop it ended up on the floor with an almighty crash loud enough to wake a Kraken. It also proved it did it's job well by spilling all of the daily moisture it had collected all over my bedroom floor. Now that's what I call counter productive!

After a bitter 5-10 mins of cleaning this mess and also reassembling the unit, I succeeded in removing it from my room. I walked back into my room and closed the door. Now, this was the third thing that has fallen to the ground in my apartment because of me being drunk so I think it was at this point that the other inanimate objects decided to join in on the fun too, such as the foldaway table behind my door. It lunged itself at my foot and nearly broke my toe. If I wasn't so drunk I probably would've also noticed it giggling as glided effortlessly through the dehumidified air. The Kraken awoke, ME!

"BLUAAAA MY KRAKEN TOE!!!!!!11111!!!1"

I've decided the only thing I can't do wrong when drunk and returning from a night out is to just go straight to sleep. What could possibly go wrong in that situation?

The Reason I know nothing about Music

When it comes down to music, I can tell that people think I'm stupid. More than stupid actually, I can feel them judging me when I don't know the names of the Beatles, can't name a song by Bob Dylan or remember the lyrics to Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon (which I accidentally spelt as Lyon, while trying to look up the name of the song just now). It's almost a look of "are you with reality?", which I can honestly say, most times I'm half way there.

Anyways, my lack on knowledge on, what I'll just label for the sake of labelling, Modern or Conventional music (I'm sure there's proper terms but I ain't lookin for a dictionary!) is because it just doesn't grab me. I think this stems right back to my video game days as a child.  When I think of music it always formulates in my head as some sort of theme or beat, no lyrics, just a looping catchy tune or some foreboding/bombastic/melodic orchestral piece. In turn with this, it sort of sweeps me away from reality, I start forming original (or blatantly unoriginal images) in my head which are animated, real or purely fictional and they usually tell some sort of story based on the tone of this piece. This is all accompanied by a good variety of tracks, scores, themes, music (whatever you want to call them!) because my mind is constantly churning out so many different thoughts that I need variety in sound to match. Actually my mind never stops, it's like a hamster on meth in a ball in which he runs faster than the Pope can say a Hail Mary, while it is powering a formula one car that's racing against Speed Racer on Rainbow Road from Mario Kart.

"This is F@#king crazy"

That actually makes me sound crazy but I'm not, I just have a bit of a wild card imagination that is all. Now along with all of this, I just want to say that it doesn't mean I don't like bands, I have a few that I listen to every now and again, Muse sticks out in my mind, but for the most part I just don't feel that inspired feeling you take from music when I hear bands. When I listen to scores and tracks from films, games or movies the picture factory in my brain starts firing up with more intensity than Christopher Walken reading a eulogy and during these times I usually draw or like to write.

"Lady Gaga was fond of.. the scooching..... I didn't like.... the scooching"

Depending on what I'm listening to it influences what I draw/ write and I have produced utter crap, something I can be proud of or something that makes me question my sanity after seeing peoples reactions (oh dear). This productivity is what I think ultimately brought me into doing Film and Television, scores just gave me so many ideas I wanted to make visually and show to other people.

I also figured out amongst all of the instruments I have heard, that the Violin is my favourite. I actually have one now too (thanks to my super awesome friends + my 21st Birthday!) and it's something that when I have time I will learn to master it. It probably sounds like I should've done a course in music instead and if I become good at the violin in any way in the near future, that's definitely on the cards. But realistically pictures still come first to me in my mind, I really am a film-maker (well, wannabe film-maker!) at heart, composing would be second to that if I could ever do it.

Anyways, I won't keep people reading this mish mash potato of explanations to my musical tastes, I'll just throw down a few tracks that I love and /or have been listening to lately that are "inspiring" as far as quotable words go:

My favourite song of all time (seriously, I told my mam once I want this at my funeral, she wasn't too pleased with the thought that I reckon I'm 2/3's of the way through my life):



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This is my favourite Silent Hill song as of late, it makes me feel badass, but I've stopped drawing to it because it usually not very pleasant:



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And of course, who could forget the awesome cover of All Along the Watchtower from Battlestar Galactica's Bear McCreary:




Anyways, maybe that might give you a small glimpse of the different things I listen to (if that interests you for some reason), show me what you like with comments below. Except for you Colin, we have the same music.

Dance Pants - NO!

I just recalled a slightly embarrassing memory from a few years back. I went through this odd phase thanks to a few of my friends where I would pull down my pants whenever I was drunk, because, y'know, it was just THAT funny to do. What was even MORE funny was doing it in a nightclub, on the dance floor, because everyone wants to see that right? So there we all were, early as the morning birds (except it was night time, at the club Cuba, and we're not birds), we had the dance floor to ourselves so we all took our stationary dancing posts at each corner and dropped the pants, laughing at our delightful foolishness! This idea progressed into the night but became less frequent as more people began arriving, the non early birds. It seems we were only trying to impress each other, our strange insecurities made secure by bearing our legs to each other. As the night wore on (like a pair of jeans!) we got progressively more drunk, me in particular as the event I'm about to tell you unfolds.

Everyone was dancing in a group on the dance floor. This excited me greatly so I downed the remainder of my pint, slammed the empty glass hard on the table as if what I was about to do my final note on my "to-do before I die" list and headed to the dance floor. I imagine if this was some sort of film the remainder of this would play out in slow motion. Like an unexpected ostrich I sprang onto the dance floor into the center of the group dropping my pants and flailing wildly in an orgy of cacophonous laughter while swinging my head around in a drunken insanity. If I had feathers they would've been flying everywhere. As I continued flailing but slowly succumbing to a more acceptable dance so I could read the reactions of my friends, a sudden realisation fell upon me, like a bird had shat on my head. These weren't my friends. And they certainly weren't impressed by my powerful bare ostrich legs. The looks on their faces were caught somewhere between disapproving, disgusted and eyebrow raised confusion.

As the truth of all of this dawned on me I turned around to see all of my friends sitting in the corner laughing at my misfortune. All I could do was stand there, hang my head in shame in a group of strangers, with my friends pointing and laughing at me, with my pants down. Textbook humiliation

Welcome to Silent Hill

"If you ever see this sign run very far in the opposite direction"

I suppose it was only a matter of time before a few of you who know me have come to expect me to write a post about a little game called Silent Hill. And for those of you who don't know me, if you did know me, you would've come to expect me to write a post about Silent Hill. Now, I will write a post about Silent Hill.

I love Silent Hill because personally to me, it is quite possibly the most terrifying experience in the multimedia medium. I love the horror genre and have a bit of an obsession with them (a h-obsession?! har har har!) but this game surpasses every good horror film and gets not just under your skin but also in your head, assuming you have one, which would be quite disturbing if you didn't because then you'd anatomically incorrect. Anyways, I honestly have only played through the first game in the series on the PS1 and I have played half way through 2 and 3. But unfortunately due to compatibility issues with the 2nd and 3rd one on my laptop (yes, my laptop strikes it's whiny bitch hammer onto me yet again) I never got to finish 2 or 3. But fortunately, I'm quite impatient and have the mouth burns to prove it, so I went ahead and spoiled the rest of 2 and 3 for myself with wikipedia. I'm also only going to refer to the first 3 games as they're essentially the main trilogy that are considered the strongest in the series (there is also a prequel, a 4th and a 5th).

Basically, all of the Silent Hill games revolve around a town called (you guessed it!) Silent Hill. This town has a malicious history but in the modern era has become a tourist resort town. In each game you play as a protagonist that is some how linked to the town and winds up being caught in its hellish grasp and can only leave or escape when they have revelations about their past uncovered. You see, Silent Hill is a little different from most towns, it's caught in a certain situation, and not a Mike "The Situation" sort of situation, but something a little more terrifying (just a little!).

"Yo I'm Mike "The Situation" and don' go to Silent Hill or you'll be caught in a Situation! 

Situation, situation, situ....zzzzzz"

It seems to have somehow got itself caught between here and Hell, referred to as "Otherwold" in the games. Silent Hill has itself based in 3 dimensions. The normal dimension, which is just the normal town, the 2nd dimension which is essentially when you're caught (and also screwed to say the least...) in a fog shrouded town where demons roam the street and exits from the town fall into infinite voids, and then there's the final dimension. The final dimension is the Otherworld, a hellish twisted, rotting industrialised version of the town, pitch black and filled with stuff of nightmares. And trust me when I say stuff of nightmares, they really really are. The creatures in the game are usually representation's or metaphors of some part of the protagonist's psyche or other characters' psyches in the game and as you learn more about your in game avatar the more disturbing each revelation and monster gets. The most terrifying of these creatures usually reside in "Otherworld" and sometimes bleed into the foggy second dimension of Silent hill. I can already imagine what my terrifying creature would look like:

"Noooooo not the Custard Creams!!!!"

What makes these creatures terrifying is also their appearance. You can feel the repressed violent urges of some, the dramatic pain of others and suppressed sexual connotations of several. Usually appearing as some sort of wet sheen coated, curvy (and sometimes bobacious) twitchy and rotting entity, they twitch, crawl and run towards you in a terrifying manner. Their disgustingly sexual appearances subconsciously affect us as they take most intimate human actions and twist them into a horrifying form.

I'm trying to think of the best way to describe them but it's very tough and this quite possibly is the most honest post I have ever written about something. I remember when playing through the first one I could only handle it in small doses, probably 30 mins is the most I spent playing it on my first go through. It had me on the very edge, so much so that I had to turn my phone onto silent just so it wouldn't give me a fright. But alas that plan failed miserably as the vibration of my phone on the desk as I played nearly gave me a heart attack, and subsequently I didn't play any more that day. That would've been an embarrassing funeral story!

"Engraved on my Hello Kitty Tombstone: He played, He put his phone on silent, he got a phone call and died"

However there is one of the creatures in the game that has become iconic with the series (amongst others, such as the nurses) and he appears in the second game. He goes by the name of Pyramid Head and yes, it quite literally means he has a pyramid on his head. Welded to his head in fact, he can't remove it and it constantly inflicts intense pain on him. He kind of becomes instantly burnt into the VERY FABRIC OF OUR BEING with his first appearance. For lack of better words I shall show you instead.

Yup, the first time you come across this pointy headed nightmare (apart from one brief appearance beforehand) he's having smoosh smoosh more intensely than Snooki with two other creatures. If that doesn't make sense to you, he's raping two other creatures. This is a little "unsettling" to watch one might say but sets the dread dead into stone for each encounter you have with him throughout the game. And encounters you have, from being locked into a confined space with him while he tries to give you a little nick with his blade (the size of me) to being chased down a corridor where he slaughters the only other person you find in the town like Uwe Bowl does to every film he directs. He's just a nasty piece of work and the only thing scarier than him is being caught in an infinite time loop watching the same 2 episodes of Friends (or just "flicking on E4" as I like to call it). He's the series reminder of how creative (and wonderfully twisted) the creators of the series are and how the simple concept of putting something, such as a pyramid on someone's head can produce a jarring and unsettling appearance. Each game has it's own story and unique set of monsters but they are all linked in a way to each other and they always result in a journey to/through Silent Hill.

Anyways I really wish I could go on about these games for ages and ages but I feel like this post is already too long as it is (I know I probably would have given up halfway through this if I didn't write it) so I leave you with a recommendation of playing these games if you can get your smelly hands on them. Thanks for the read if you made it this far and hopefully you won't have the same nightmares I did about these games!

Intense Walking - The Consumer Cycle

I realised today that I can be a really intense walker when walking alone. Moving through the throngs of consumers (there are no "people" during Christmas, only the soulless creatures that crawl out of Hells hairy arse, the Consumers) on shop street in Galway today, I couldn't help but notice my intense walking affecting the lives of others around me. This intense walking is possibly the result of a mixture of things: I'm usually quite cold so I walk fast to make myself warm, I'm quite spaced out during these moments so I contain a certain soulessness to my facial expression and finally, I usually listen to music from the Silent Hill games. For those of you that don't know, Silent Hill is a videogame revolving around a town caught in a hell that depicts an industrial pseudo-sexual nightmare. Just think of the hottest girl or guy you know, castrate them, melt off their face and remove their clothes while some how nailing a rusty railway spike (or several) through some limb or appendage while they rot and you've got something that closely resembles the game. And then imagine how the music sounds to this picture.

"Your other half from Silent Hill, say hello to Betsy... or is it Alan?"

The walking which results creates a sort of hellish, depressing, unstoppable force of me hobbling towards you with a impenetrable sense of ungodliness. Reactions have been various, but I have always had consumers move with a polite "excuse me" and a smile which feels normal to me, but by the expression of Stranger A (and B,C,D,etc.), would make me imagine I have just shat on their face. They look unsettled, which at first used to kind of worry me, but now it's as normal to me as custard cream in a biscuit. However there are moments when it does get a bit awkward and it's usually when I walk behind two consumers (usually women) that are chatting away to each other and I am unable to pass them. They usually become aware of my unintentionally malevolent presence behind them as I speed up and fall behind, speed up and fall behind like some sort of demon yo-yo, because I keep thinking I have opportunities to pass them. Every time they turn around and look at me it probably appears something like this:

Their uneasiness excretes from their pores like sweat from that fat guy at the gym, and I become disdainfully aware as I now have to not only pass them, but do so before their uneasiness infects others around them. This creates a sort of panic between both parties that fuels my demon-train walk to an uncontrollable level. At this point time has become limited edition, I don't have many options so I purposefully subdue an oncoming walker with a glare:

This prompts the oncoming victim to stop dead in their tracks as I glide by the now two silent women. For a brief moment we connect as I pass them by. It feels feral, I am a predatory ostrich at a petting zoo and they are small children, time has stopped for them as they realised they had fed the wroooooong bird. They cower out of the rest of my way and then I pass while they nearly walk into my previous victim. As I walk away I can feel the tension subsiding like a landslide crap in the toilet yet still feel the eyes of the consumer locked onto me like some sort of awkward-inducing ballistic. But soon I am out of site. Rinse and repeat this situation a few times as I walk to HMV.

Then as I walk around the 2 for 1 priced DVD section of HMV I reflect on the several times this has happened and a thought hits me like I'd hit James Blunt if I ever met him. I HAVE BECOME CONSUMER! 

Irony, you son of a bitch.

Day of Stupid

While I was working today I was giving a woman her items. When she received them I asked "Is that everything?", she jokingly replied "Unless you want to give me something else!" As she packed her things into a bag. I responded wittily "Do you want a hug?". She stopped, looked at me with a blank expression and turned and walked out of the door with her things. To this very moment, I honestly think she did not find this funny. Nor did any other customer waiting. As they all stood there silently judging me. It was embarrassing.

Then I came home and walked into the door frame with my laptop and really hurt my ribs.

FML

Seán O'Beirn and the Drafty Window

I had the liberty of waking up this morning  (after several times in the night) completely non-refreshed pointy nipple cold and more congested than Paris Hilton's coochy in an orgy. As it turns out, there is a mild draft, not blowing, just falling through gaps in my window and as a result, God didn't give me lemons, just a head cold. This falling draft is the most deceiving kind, it fools you into thinking "Jeez laweez, my room sure is darn cold!" and you turn on the heat for an hour our two, only to return and feel no difference. This perpetual coldness just aggravates you as a) you've just run up the electricity bill a coupla euro's and b) it reminds you of how indifferent Winter is to my existence.

Of course, I dismissed the thought of a draft over another reason, my window has no curtains. This was actually entirely my own fault though as it was a result of one of my drunken escapades to close the curtains, in one of my ill fated attempts to go to sleep after a "few jars" we'll say. I will tell this tiny story as if to a child to mask the stupidity of my actions:

"Gather round ya'll! It's time for Seán O'Beirn and the Naggle in the Noggin!"

As Seán wavered quite peculiarly into the room rather presumptuously he couldn't help but feel a Naggle at the back of his noggin. "Seán my indulgent friend" says the Naggle, "You will be required to do laborious tasks for your work people when the Sky torch greets us!". Seán frowned a frown only a grumpy grizzly woken from a slumberous hibernation could achieve. "But Naggle" says he "If my laborious tasks begin tomorrow, why must I perform one now?". The Naggle responds with wisdom as deep as Paris Hilton's coochy "I only suggest to close   the curtains, my Lord, so as to sleep longer than the first break of tweet and light". Easily convinced at the notion of being called "Lord" Seán smiled and said "My Lord". Stretching his arms out like a greedy Godric, Seán gave tug to the curtains only to lose his grivity gravity! "Oh my!" Seán exclaimed as he fell backwards, hands still clutching the curtains stronger than a Ben Afleck's jaw. Down fell the Seán and down came his legacy of curtain-closing. As Seán lay on the ground, puzzled and quite confuzzled his Naggle laughed heartily saying "Oh Seán, what will you do next!?"


Taken out of the context of a childrens storybook, I basically stumbled into my room, mumbled something indefinable and then went to close the curtains. It basically looked like someone fainting slowly and then falling quickly while holding onto the curtains and dragging them down with me. They became stowed away for months.


Anyhoo, that's why I thought my room was so cold. So I took out the ol' curtains and decided I was gonna fix this mutha. And viola, Seán actually managed to do this, I was extremely proud of myself that I managed to put one WHOLE screw in the wall for a curtain hook. I was so ecstatic I felt it warranted a facebook status update "Has fixed the curtains in his room, I am officially HANDYMAN now", yes, I declared myself in a profession for doing the most minuscule of tasks. I was beaming, so I turned on the heat for a little while, closed the bedroom door and left the room alone, to give it a test run and see if the fruits of my labour paid off. Upon returning I couldn't quite put my finger on why I thought I had failed to fix the problem. Maybe it was because I could see my breath in my room or maybe it was because my nipples were harder than diamonds. I knew I had failed. A slight rage befell me, but I wasn't done yet.


Fortunately for me, my friend Roisín tends to leave things in my house when she stays over. Including half of her bed. So I took her double duvet and wrapped it around the curtain pole thus blocking off the window entirely with a duvet. This definitely will work, I thought, so I repeated step 2, turn on the radiator for a while and leave. MUCH to my colossal disappointment, my room was still Icelandic when I returned, with no goddam volcano for heat. So I cracked at it again, surveying where exactly this coldness was coming from. As it turned out the duvet left a small gap between the curtains and the window and a draft continue to emanate through like a light fart, minus the warmth, a below zero fart if you will. So I tried to close this gap. But only succeeded in pulling the curtains down... AGAIN.

"ccuuuuuuuurrrrRRRTAAAAINNNNNSSS!"

On rare occasions I scream when I'm angry, and this was one of them. It was one of those rage filled screams where you make a noise that you never knew you were capable of (and wonder for a brief moment "maybe I can sing!") before returning to a mellow gasping pitch. This probably terrified my new house mate just a tad but he will recover I'm sure. At least this second wave of destruction by myself left me the opportunity to figure out where this Arctic weather system was coming from. As it turns out, my window is just plain shit. All it ever required in the first place was tape, which I had plenty of and spent 2 mins applying. Voila, the solution had finally made itself visible. My rage subsided, my nipples became soft and my room became warm. I wasn't done though. Higher on success than Lindsay Lohan is in general, I fixed my curtains and re-rigged the duvet so that I now have an impenetrable fortress of warmth, go me! :)


Now, if anyone else has window problems in their lives come to me, I da man, da Handy Man.


*UPDATE* : As it turns out, my radiator has a super awesome button to make it heat twice as much, it's like a little holiday in my room now! :)

When Virtual Became My Reality

I remember when I was young the first time I played a video game. It was as clear as my first memory (which was me at the age of two, waddling down the corridor like a drunken gymnast who failed at the splits, I was after pissing myself). It all started with a program called MS DOS and a game called Sim Farm. For those of you who don't know, Sim Farm was made by Maxis, which went on to make other custard cream-like addictions such as The Sims. Now I don't know why, but even at the age of Five when I played Sim Farm I never considered myself ever to be the farmer type, it just wasn't in my blood. Yet making a 256 colour, 2-D, ever failing farm was intoxicating, I just HAD to spray more and more pesticide to keep my strawberries safe (although if this was reality, my strawberries would probably kill someone or many someone's with the insane amount of pesticide I used).

So Sim Farm was basically my introduction to the gaming world. The next step was when a little grey box that you plugged little grey boxes into Jack Bauer'ed it's way into my life. The Super Nintendo. If Sim Farm was an addiction, this would the the creation that should've made me go into video game rehab. Super Mario World dominated my life for some time, it was sort of the stem of my retarded video game flower. I couldn't get enough of going from level to level stomping, flying, eating, destroying castles, killing koopa kids, rescuing an inept princess who can't even bake a cake without a life threatening situation becoming involved:

"Actually, it's quite disturbing if you think of it realistically"

So Mario played a large part in destroying my social life at my early age. However the next part of my video  game life played (anyone see the pun here!?) a cosmological  obsession in my life that changed how I perceived dimensions in game and also what I (disturbingly, but not dangerously...I think...) drew. It was a new game for the PC and I think it's one everyone knows, it brought "doom" to my social life (I'm having so much PUN!!! writing these):

"Black Friday at Walmart"

If you didn't get it from the pun you're pretty stupid. Anyways, Doom brought violence in video games into my life. Unlike Mario which did it in a subtle way, Doom literally let you blow up creatures into giblets right in front of you, it was an orgy of violence that filled an insatiable pit and left you wanting more. It sounds so sadistic (maybe this game is what made me sadistic) but every time you came across a new enemy you always wondered what it would like after firing a rocket into their face, which often resulted in variations of half-eaten gone off hamburgers from McDonald's. And it was in 3-D, something I had never seen before (well.... apart from reality). So it was just totally Oreo Cookie in my life (it means awesome). However there was one more game that would solidify the very moment when I began wishing video game was reality. You could say it was a "Legend of" a game. And it totally "Zelda"'d my life (ok maybe that wasn't a good one.... nor did it make sense).

"Nintendo: Buy now and exchange €50 for your soul!"

The Goddam Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Renowned world over as the greatest video game ever created, it could make me breakfast it was so amazing (although, it never did :( ). This game shattered my barrier of video game reality and  actual reality, it absorbed me like Brian Cowen absorbs debt. It was my new reality. Any time I stopped playing, it would be like my world was The Sims, I'd eat, I'd talk some sort of gibberish to the neighbours, I'd pee on the floor and cry, I'd develop some sort of ability to accidentally create fires all the time, until I hit pause and went back to reality in Hyrule.

Of course there's many games in between all of those and after, but these were the asteroid hits to my brain and have left large impact craters. But good impact craters, not like the one that got rid of Velociraptors. They have left me with memories more fond than a snack box after a night out and more real than Michael Jackson's nose (although, that's not really hard to achieve), video games are just Oreo Cookie.

Master of Boredom

People have many skills in life. And when you develop skills, you keep going further and further with them until you reach a certain point in your life where you feel you have mastered that or those skills. Like any used-to-be-a-monkey being on this planet I too have some skills contained in my husk of a body (lacking a SOUL). Some skills, such as drawing which I proudly admit I am decent at, have been with me for life. Others are more recent, such as the apparent ability to imitate an ostrich, chicken, pigeon and Velociraptor (maybe I hatched from an egg when I was born?).

"Name: Seán O'Beirn
Age: 1
Soul Status: Non-Existent "

But I would never say I have mastered any of these skills, but I'm continuing to develop them. One skill I have mastered however, is something I face everyday. In fact, many of you, like me, have most likely mastered this skill too but I'm calling the throne on this one because I'm writing about it. I have mastered Boredom. Now I know you're probably thinking "Duuuuuh! But Seán, boredom isn't a skill, hyuck!" which is true, it's almost as wrong as saying that Brian Cowen is pretty.


"Our Taoiseach isn't too photogenic... or any-genic for that matter"

It's a state of mind really, but challenging boredom with even the simplest of things you eventually find ways to always, and I mean ALWAYS (facebook stalking anyone?), escape boredom . So I like to call boredom a skill in the sense we do little things to eventually master our boredom. It's like a portal to developing other skills. I know it sounds a little silly to say "I have mastered my skill of Boredom". However, I think it sounds a little better than "I have mastered the skill of entertaining myself" so I think I'll stick with the previous.

When we're bored we usually begin to experiment with things around us. We will do anything to beat our boredom, which ends up literally letting our mind unhinge. This is the first phase, or as I like to call it "The Stupid Phase". I think I can honestly say, this video pretty much sums it up:



We basically go a little "Sarah Palin" crazy and release all of our energy in extremely odd and stupid ways while no one is around (no, that shelf isn't climbable...). This ends and we go into the second phase, which is "The Routine Phase". In the Routine Phase we begin to walk around the house finding things to clean or laundry to do (I for one, like to listen to the Inception soundtrack while doing this, it makes laundry time undeniably EPIC). We eat tea, we drink custard cream biscuits and we stare at something in the room that's partially covered and wonder what it is for 5 mins. This phase varies in length for everyone (depending on how many custard cream biscuits you might have) but when it ends we reach the final stage.


"The Routine Phase may last a while..."

In the final stage we reach the "Productive Stage". In this stage we find something grabs our attention longer than that of Mel Gibson trying not to be racist. This can be a skill we're good at, like cooking, or taking up something entirely new such as, in my case, writing on this very blog. It's usually something that we enjoy or have become interested in recently and we begin to build on our knowledge of it and how we use this skill. It's kind of like Angelina Jolie, she got bored one day and decided that she wanted to get into adopting, an boy oh boy, has she been refining that skill since!


"Angelina Jolie: Soon... Soon you will ALL be MINE!"

I think that the first two stages can swap around for different people but the final stage always stays put as the final stage. Eventually as each stage plays out more frequently (ala, because you're on the dole) you become quicker at adapting to boredom and soon enough, like pterodactyl on speed, you're flying it, pun intended (har har har). In the end, the moment you feel bored, you'll know when you've mastered the skill of boredom when you find something worth doing straight away instead of phases 1 to 3.

Now... begin stage 1 my pretties....

Waking Up in Strange Places

Have you ever woken up in a strange place and forgotten how you got there for a brief moment? Until reality comes crashing down on you, or in my case, you go crashing into reality (aka ground).

Let me tell you a story about one of the more odd places I've woken up in. How I got there was obvious, I was indulging in a few underage drinks with my friends. And like all underage drinking nights, something stupid happens. To me. I remember the night not clearly now, back yonder to my sweet 16 days, it was my friends super sweet 16th birthday and it was super fucking cold out...

I don't remember exactly how we got the drink, but anyways, we used to drink in this field between two estates thinking it was safe, when in reality it was actually quite a retarded place to drink. Anyone could trap us there and people, mainly parents, frequently walked it on visits or on catching-underage-drinkers strolls. Luckily for us, the Garda in Castlebar are as retarded as we were (double negative makes a positive!!), so we never really did get caught.


"Oh no! Double Garda means double negative! That means there poooositively will be trouble!"

So we would drink there, bushing as it were, and we would go clubbing (or we would go "club", because there was only one really worth going to, unless you had one of those spontaaaaaaneous  urges to be stabbed at the other). This particular night though, it turned out that going club was as fun as sitting in a cold shower trying to light a cigarette. If that doesn't make it clear, I will just say, it was not fun. Fun it was not. Luckily clever little ustards stashed some extra drink back in our field. So back we went back, flaming 3 can heads on us, we WERE Castlebar!!

We arrived at the field, it was beginning to rain, but like good alcohal does to you, it makes you forget why our bodies warn us of cold, of pain, of stupid decisions, of just about everythingness. So we drank for a while and then for the first time ever noticed a peculiar tree about 100 metres away. It looked a little something like this:


"We might've been seeing a little extra that night..."

One of my friends let us in on a little secret, apparently it was a BANSHEE TREE, oh my! So not only did parents, Garda, scumbags and children walk this field, but also screaming dead old women. I have to say that was certainly a little more alarming than most things (apart from Irish Radio). Especially if you believed in it, which unfortunately one of my friends did (at the time). I won't mention his name though because James will get really angry at me.

So we left the field because this tree was creeping people out (or person). The weather had also gotten a little bitchy so that last pulsating part ourselves that was sober managed to give common sense a shout and get us to make a move along. We did move along, but alas, underage drinkers don't really have a place in the world besides in the wild emerald banshee infested fields of Ireland. So what was the next best thing to a field? Well since we felt neglected by nature, with it's sky piss and tree whores we decided to drink in a place that was fighting back for us, a building site.

At this point  I had drank a few more cans, and being the Captain Incapableofalcohal I was, I was pretty shteamed.  We found the building site, with a lovely shed to shelter us and lots of cardboard to go pyro with. So we had it all, shelter, warmth, drink... but wait, we didn't have ONE thing. Music! Now, before I go on, I don't  really listen to bands at all, I'm a bit of soundtrack buff, or scores or whatever you wanna call them. I like them ranging from TV shows to films to videogames. This night in particular I felt like being a videogame music. So I kept singing this:



Now don't even ask me how or what I was doing, let alone the fact that only one of my friends actually knew what I was talking (singing?) about. The rest just stared on at me while I constantly repeated myself until (and I'm just realising that this was probably the case) they actually had to resort to giving me enough drink to put me to sleep, which admittedly, wasn't a whole lot. I gladly took it, they gladly saw it worked. I blacked out, which was unfortunate because everything in the night was fairly non memorable, yet the part I forgot was pretty much essential in knowing what shouldn't have happened next.

Anyways, all I remember next was waking up cold. I didn't open my eyes because I didn't exactly quite realise I was awake yet. So like I always do in my bed, I turn over to get a little more comfy. Except I wasn't in my bed. And what happened next certainly wasn't comfy. If the coldness didn't wake me, the 7 foot fall to the ground definitely did. As I laid there sideways in the kind of pain that can only be described as listening to Justin Bieber, I saw that I had laid my shoes perfectly and neatly next to the scaffolding that I had just taken a short cut off of. It turns out that at some point in the night I felt like that the higher I was the safer, BUT I HAD to make sure my shoes were neatly stowed away first. I probably just wouldn't have slept otherwise!

Anyways, I think one or two of the lads were awake in the shed, and I'm pretty sure if they weren't, the sound of me hitting rock surely did (I was something of a human alarm clock). We awoke, we felt pain, we felt misery, we felt hungover. Yes the boys of  the super sweet 16th certainly WERE Castlebar that morning (that sentence is to be read like the narrator in desperate housewives).

Any of ye ever awake in a funky place?

Flight of Doom

There are a few things in life that absolutely terrify me: Leaving the cupboard slightly open when trying to sleep, using the toilet and then realising there's no toilet paper left, trying to change the channel from E4 when Hollyoaks is about to start but you can't find the remote, etc.. But none of them come as close as being in one of these while they are doing their thing:



These flying metal cargo coffins are quite simply one of the safest most dangerous ways to travel. People always say flying is the safest way to travel and that you're more likely to crash on the way to an airport than to be in a plane crash. That's all dandy, I mean, how often is there crashes in Ireland really? Oh wait, all the TIME. But there is one key difference between a car accident and a plane crash, let me illustrate with this video:



It's called playing a little game of "Chances of Survival". I think even the first air plane crash of the video illustrates what I'm talking about. Just parking the f@&king thing proves to be a life or death situation, at least when I'm in my friends car when he's parking we're not going to drive into a goddam jungle and explode. On top of that you're sitting in this confined space with probably 50 other strangers screaming in your face while thinking "I wish I got to see Batman 3" *sad face* before becoming a gravity pancake with a topping of flaming petroleum (the only way this could be possibly more terrifying is if the Hollyoaks theme song played over all of it). Now, I'm not gonna lie....

...Good, I'm glad we got that out of the way!

Anyways, I actually used to be quite calm on planes but unfortunately for me, the National Geographic Channel decided that when I was 17 years old it was as good as any time to unleash Air Crash Investigation into my naive little World. It was like watching CSI about planes (without gingers), it was addictive, it was frightening, it was mysterious and then it finally hit me all at once after watching 20 episodes: it was REAL. Then the reality of the show really hit home when I was on a plane to London (which is only a one hour flight) that I was able to pinpoint every moment of my flight where I could potentially, you know, DIE. Air pocket = Plane falling for a couple of hundred meters,  calm air hostess = where's my f@&king parachute, plane turning = go more than 60 degrees and we'll resemble something of an overcooked Irish breakfast within minutes. Indeed it was a confined smelly demon (a fart?) flight that day.

Now, I kicked my ACI addiction after while because it was doing me no good service (sort of like UPC: NTL Internet/TV/Everything), but then it turns out,  plane crashes had become a hit phenomenon on television shows anyways. Did you ever see that episode of LOST, I think it was saaaaaaay, the FIRST GODDAM EPISODE? The plane decided to take a break mid way through it's flight, quite literally sending passengers cascading into a confused writers most cherished mistake. Then there was a film that decided to enact being in the fracking explosion:



Even worse was that I was compelled to actually sit and watch these, as I reckon it is my fate at this point that it will happen to me. Although when the time finally comes  and the plane nose dives, I think I'll laugh, make a gigantic crap in my pants and start tickling the person next to me, I'd be screaming "fate you penis, you finally found me hahahaha!". And I know it will be at this moment fate will go "hold on a minute, he's enjoying this!?" and fate will super street fighter uppercut the plane and the flight will return to normal.  And I will be sitting there, my laughter slowly dying away, and a probable new restraining order staring me in the face and on top of it all I will have a giant crap in my pants. At which point I will realise that I have ironically become the most terrifying thing on the flight, stupid fate.

I think, in the end, the main thing I'm trying to tell everyone here is probably this: Don't fly with Seán O'Beirn.

And don't watch Hollyoaks.

Quitting Smoking and Other Aggravations

So, I just arrived home, it's 1.03AM and I am actually quite tired. Before I go to bed I usually have a mug of tea and something sweet. This I just realised answers a lot of insomnia problems I'm having lately, amongst other things, but no tea just doesn't feel right!

So to tire out the monkey having a sponge bath inside of my head I decided to do yet ANOTHER blog post. Reading is optional from now onwards.

So as the title mentions, I have recently decided I'm quitting smoking. It has been 5 days of smoke free in my lungs and my plan is to stick with this smokey-free-eeness. Alas, there is a downside to this. You see an addiction needs a distraction, whereas my distractions appear as a new addiction to something else. Now, I'll admit, I have an intoxicating relationship with tea already, but now it's increased 5 billion times fold since I quit smoking. If tea were a person I would be it's Josef Fritzl, I love it unhealthily now ... I wonder if he quit smoking too? (from now on I'm calling tea addiction "Fritzled")

"A Tea Party????"

So along with caffienating myself for 14 hours of my waking day which will without a doubt lead my dad into thinking I'm a diabetic yet AGAIN (oh the summer of 2004, you evil bastard), it's still not enough to divert my dependency of cigarettes. I smoke usually on 3 occasions, either when I'm extremely bored (which is quite often), frustrated (I'll get to that one in a moment) or when I'm drunk (which is quite often).

So boredom usually somehow links to frustration. Sadly the main bout of frustration usually happens around the time I play the Wii. So, this is how it goes.

1. I make a mug of tea and sit down to play the Wii.
2. I pop on the Wii and leave my tea alone for a while, it's still quite hot.
3. I insert my copy of Monster Hunter 3 to play

And there you have it. Monster Hunter 3. The Hitler of the gaming world, the pooh to your hungoverness, the Joey to our sitcoms. Usually what happens during this phase of my day is that I go into blackouts of raging frustration. The game just plain doesn't like the human species (much like my laptop). So after spending an hour thinking I'm achieving something in this game, it comes out of the left field with a big fat "F@&K YOU" which makes you feel like this:

So now I'm pissed, I just wasted an hour of my time playing a video game and achieving nothing. BUT I can't have a cigarette soooooo I go to drink my tea, but it's COLD. Because I wasted an hour of my time, my damn tea has gone cold. My frustration is now slowly beginning to morph into rage at this point, much like the power rangers morph, but way less cool. So I go to the kettle and fill my mug with hot water which spills all over the counter. Shit, that's annoying I better clean it up. I clean it up and then drink a big slug out of my mug. Forgetting there's hot water in it. The noise that comes out of me at this point is probably something not even a Lyre bird could imitate. Let's just call it "unpleasant".


Ok so now I'm quite fuming, but there's a day ahead of me to calm down and relax. Just shower and relax. Phone rings, "hello?", Phone voice "Seán we need you at work", me "ok". So I don't have a day ahead of me anymore, just 5 mins for a cold shower and -5mins to eat.


When I arrive at work I usually have self contained my rage. To workers I appear quiet because I don't want to inflict the anger on them. To customers I most likely appear something like this:





Just dandy, costumers are gone soon enough so they'll most likely forget my horrifying rage, their children will have nightmares however.


So I work away for the few hours wishing I could just have a cigarette but eventually that subsides and so does the anger. It's near the end of my shift, I'm moving a cage happily now knowing I will be gone soon. I roll the cage over my foot due to being distracted by the thought of having a mug of tea. At this point I really thought tea was trying to harm me, physically and mentally. But I just ignored the seemingly severedmytoefrommyfoot pain and just went on till the end.


I break through the doors leaving with my bag on my back. This day which I awoke to with the theme from Knight Rider stuck in my head (usually that's a good sign) had transformed into something of a Michael Bay film, without the explosions (which basically means all the shitty bits).


I need a drink at this point, I have to drink. Luckily for me I have a friend who is usually willing to, or can be made, drink (you know who you are). Actually that last part in brackets can apply to a lot of people (you ALL know who you are...). So we get appropriately shit-faced and then it happens. I buy cigarettes, smoke about 40 when I only bought 20. Wake up with a hangover as raging as I was the day before and regret every single moment of it. The only thing in the end that pulls me through my day is being Fritzled.


That, my friends, is why it is so hard to quit smoking.

Extremely Extreme Sports

Every now and again when I'm spending countless hours stumbling or just staring at the internet (or not working as I like to call it), you come across something so cool that it's below absolute zero. Well, not that cool, that would break your laptop and possibly cause you a lot of harm.

Anyways when I woke up this morning I decided to break my morning routine of eating and tea and go on my laptop instead (well first I had to find a socket that would let it charge first coz my laptop is a bit racist to my kind, ala JUST me)..(also my morning routine is actually going on my laptop, I would be breaking it if I ate).
So I went on to one of my favourite news feed sites and came across this little gem.




Now I was watching this thinking "hmmm, this music is awesome" and off they went skiing with parachutes and I was thinking then "oh they're probably going to jump around the place a bit" but then they go flying over the cliff at which point I went "Oh my Barbara Streisand!". It's like they combined  skiing, a relatively safe sport, with base jumping, an relatively unsafe sport (it's basically jumping off a cliff and making sure your parachute works before you hit the ground).

These people obviously got a bit of a Velociraptor gene in them because they're total badasses, they'd have James Bond stuntsmen working the corners in no time if they got onto Hollywood with these videos. And the music, I bet that music comes on everywhere they go making you want to make gratuitous (thank god for Google spell check) parachute love to them.

Also the music in the video is top class, check it out here



And then play it over other videos on mute, like this:



I'll admit the hamster had it going for him already, but this music just suits this demon critter to the ground, FEARLESS!!

Speaking of Dinosaurs...

    While I'm still on the topic of Dinosaurs (but veering far far away from Don Bluth) I've decided to take some time out to talk about the most awesome rockin smack-yo-bitch-round-the-jungle dinosaur ever created by evolution (and trust me, evolution was being a right dickhead to it's other creations this day, and absolutely awesome to itself).

    In fact, what I think happened (and seems pretty plausible) was that Evolution was having a chat with God one day. "God" it says, "I bet I can make the most awesome rockin smack-yo-bitch-round-the-jungle dinosaur ever". God sat there and thought for a moment, but since he/she is all and everything then it was actually an infinite moment that non of us can comprehend.... After a moment God replied "I accept your bet, but what is the wager?". Evolution says "If I do make the most awesome rockin smack-yo-bitch-round-the-jungle dinosaur ever, we do a role swap, because as you know, I only last as long as this rock does". So God replies smarmily, but also transcendental of self awareness and therefore without tone or emotion "DEAL!", thinking Evolution won't be able to create anything as awesome as the planets, sun or the very cosmos itself. So Evolution got to work, and guuuuurl did it!

    What Evolution created was something more awesome and terrifying than what they probably put in a fig role.... THIS:

    Velociraptor, the greatest animal of their generation and time (and ever as far as I'm concerned). Most of us didn't even know they existed until a little film called Jurassic Park came out and threw them out into the big bad world opening doors all around them and being "Clever Girl"'s. Now, before I get TOO into this, I want to say that the makers of Jurassic Park did use poetic license to change a few things about the Velociraptor (pretty much most things). BUT since they made something that was already badass enough as it was into a OMFGTDIRMM (Oh My F*@king God This Dinosaur Is Raping My Mind) Badass, I'm gonna stick with the film version instead.

    These bitching lizards' looks are seemingly only rivalled by their atomic powered ferocity. The movie tells us they hunt in packs, tricking us stupid humans into a coup where they eat us from all sides, they can jump as high as Everest and run as fast as a JATO rocket (those last two things might be an exaggeration). My point is, if you ever came across a Velociraptor, that would be nature flipping you off.

    It gets better though, by the third film Jurassic Park throws the fact that these magnificent bastards have an actual social hierarchy and even talk to each other! Evolution you certainly showed God how to do it. Speaking of which, what I think happened between Evolution and God was quite obvious. God got jealous, blew up the dinosaurs (although he/she/everything claims he/she/everything tripped and knocked a bit of space rock at us) and made people out of dinodust (thus taking on certain traits of dinosaurs, like talking.. and cannibalism) thinking we would be superior to Evolutions most amazing piece of ass EVAR! God was wrong in my opinion. Even worse now, God an evolution are still feuding, instead of it ending there and then Evolution is now trying to persuade the world that it is the creator and that God's biography, the Bible, never really happened. Oh my, those two really have it in for each other, if only they'd stop fighting and fix my laptop screen....

    Aaaaaanyways, the Velociraptor is not only a total Chuck Norris of the prehistoric era, it's also a pop culture Icon nowadays. It's seen as smarter:

AND divine:

   Seriously, more divine than God's wrist child! There's an actual religion based around a Raptor Jesus, how cool is that?!

   So, ignoring all factual knowledge and using Jurassic Park 1-3 as a bible, we have our God, our Teacher and our Saviour, maybe YOU could learn a thing or two from our friend here. I can say, I've learnt a thing or two from the Velociraptor in my lifetime so far (mainly how to open doors, and for the love of God, or should I say Evolution?, do NOT steal their eggs).

   I guess I could talk all night about this but I wont, this is all I have to say about the Velociraptor to ye, for now. Good bye!

Oh, and you would totally do this if they existed too:

    The lasers is the sheer energy of awesomeness coursing through me from the Velociraptor (which I have named Cherry).

Childhood Trauma

We all experience traumatic moments throughout our childhood that teach us lessons, like, "that dog seemed nice" or having your younger brother spilt your head with a rock (lesson learnt: younger siblings can be stupid). They come in a wide variety of situations and we always can take something out of them.

But very very few can actually steal your childhood innocence in one fell swoop. Your dog getting mauled by a train in front of you or that Ronald McDonald clown... in general...

Or something that THIS man created

For those of you who don't know (and in fact I didn't know what he looked like till I looked him up there), this man is called Don Bluth. For a lot of people this name may ring a bell, he did after all create a lot of childhood animated movies, All dogs go to Heaven, the Fievel Films and several others.

And no, before some people think they've got the film I'm about to mention, it is not Bambi. While Bambi is known for taking a proverbial shit on many peoples childhoods, the movie I am about to mention takes a dump so massive that it would probably collapse in on itself annihilating our universe. Proverbially of course.

The movie I am talking about of course is this:




If you haven't seen this (just the first one, the rest are shite) then I consider you lucky. Bambi is an injury, this is a bulldoser through your soul.

I'll explain briefly what it's about. Dinosaurs are hungry, so hungry in fact that there's really only one place left in the world that they can eat, the "Great Valley". Queue shots of different herds walking across treacherous terrain (because if there's no vegetation there's only room for volcanoes) while watching a few die. Yes that's right, from the outset we watch a few things die. But it's alright, we don't know any of these, we haven't formed any emotional bond with them yet. The film knows this and rectifies this problem with catastrophically effective results.

So here we are with Little foot, our main long necked friend in the picture, he is the only baby long neck left and apart from that there is only his mother and his two grandparents. We watch Littlefoot and his mother form a special little bond, something only a mother and child can form and we relate happily to it off screen.

Then shit hits the fan. Littlefoot decides to dance with a T-Rex, forcing his mother to protect him and on top of that Don Bluth decides this is a perfect time for the planet earth to have a tectonic plate disco party. We watch lots of things die at this point, the ground collapses away sending thousands of dinosaurs to their dinograves while others just fall over and die (presumably from eating TOO much). We watch as littlefoot gets rescued by mammy, whom gets injured by the T-Rex and then we watch all the dino babies get split up by a massive chasm.

Woah that was intense for a 5 year old wasn't it? Even horror films takes their breaks in overwhelming tension, but Don Bluth just fucks it at us like oil from BP's broken well. Well done Donny boy, you've nearly broken a child with your apocalyptic vision of dino annihilation. But thankfully it's over.

WRONG, after beating you over the head with his imagery of prehistoric hell, Don then gives you a sucker punch so hard in the gut that shit comes flying out of your eyes, ears, nose and mouth (not really but I think I get across the point I'm making).

What I'm talking about is THIS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgJhVgK0tPI

I was seven when I saw this scene. I was seven when I lost my childhood innocence. No... It was stolen from me. By a man. A man with an ambition to create a Hiroshima sized crater in a child's mind. Well done Don, you succeeded.

P.S. I absolutely love the film Don!

One month

So now it's been a wonderful whole one month since my first post on my blog. I still have literally no idea what to do with it, I always have had intentions (for the month it's been there)  to use it for good but ever since a facebook app informed me that I'm 58% evil I think I've been a little deterred from the "good" idea.

But since I have no money to do anything remotely evil in any harmful way (other than buy someone a yorkie bar when they wanted a twix) I'll just resort to a slightly dramatised version of my recent month gone by: (By the way nothing ever really happens in my life so this will either be really short or really long just so I can tell my friends later that I wrote a really awesome blog post)

So what has happened in the last month. I can't say much now, besides falling off a stage at a club, which resembles something along the lines of this:

And nearly smashing my laptop and inadvertently fucking up the screen instead, which I would show some resemblance video of too but I'm too lazy to look for one,  I've been mainly sitting around staring at my laptop wishing I didn't go near it when I was drunk. And I changed my ringtone on my phone to some loud noises from Inception, which was a bad idea because I quite like the soundtrack of that film so now when my phone starts ringing I blissfully listen to it for a while until I decide to finally answer, which is usually about the time that Caller-A has decided to hang up.

So this leaves me with a lot of alone time to write on this. But what to write? Well I think there's nothing better to read about sometimes than a good ol' bitch about something right?

For example, work. When I was working one day in Workplace A, I brought out a vacuum cleaner for a customer. However upon bringing this vacuum cleaner out some father nudged his little girl up to come up to me with a receipt. I was thinking "this father is a little cruel, he's sending his seven year old girl up to carry a vacuum cleaner roughly half the size of her and twice as heavy, back to him". So I looked at the receipt and saw that they were actually looking for a smoke alarm which was fair enough.Now usually I wouldn't care in this situation if someone got mixed up about what product they were getting if it appeared similar to someone else's. Except in this case, in which the fact is that a vacuum cleaner is neither the same size nor looks anything like a fucking smoke alarm. On top of that then, you have another customer getting confused as to why their vacuum cleaner is the size of a smoke alarm.

One of my co workers eventually came out two minutes later looking for someone to give the smoke alarm to. Zombified and desensitised by my own shock of the stupidity of this father I took the smoke alarm and handed it to the little girl, this smoke alarm was more like a smoke alarm because it was a smoke alarm. As I handed it to the girl I also couldn't help but see how massive the difference was between the vacuum cleaner and the smoke alarm, it was at least a 30th of the size. It would be like someone giving you a bike helmet when you asked for a refrigerator. Anyways, another confused customer approached me shortly after the little girl had left in which I had to assure her that the cleaner was hers and I wasn't giving it to the little girl (not that she would've been able to carry it anyways).

I could actually go on about this a lot more but I think there's only so much time in a day that you can spend talking about smoke alarms and vacuum cleaners. What I can say though is that if this vacuum cleaner did go home with Daddy Stupid and Daughter Unfortunate, the cleaner would most likely end up doing this to itself:

Well, that's the end of that rant, and now I want tea so I'm going away to mull over what other things I can talk about when  I return in a months time. 

buh...bye

Title Pants

First blog post, I honestly dunno what I'm gonna do with this yet so I'll just post a stupid albeit slightly terrifying video I found while randomly typing words into youtube. It's like something out of Signs or something:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNyQwBKCQS8