A salesman from KFC walked up to the Pope and offers him a million dollars if he would change "The Lord's Prayer" from "give us this day our daily bread" to "give us this day our daily chicken." The Pope refused his offer.

Two weeks later, the man offered the Pope 10 million dollars to change it from "give us this day our daily bread" to "give us this day our daily chicken" and again the Pope refused the man's generous offer. Another week later, the man offered the Pope 20 million dollars and finally the Pope accepted.

The following day, the Pope said to all his officials, "I have some good news and some bad news. 'The good news is, that we have just received a check for 20 million dollars. The bad news is, we lost the Wonder Bread account!'

I became separated from the world of Web Designing around about 1999. When I started designing web-sites in 1995 I was not quite a pioneer but I wasn’t too far off. The internet was a different place then. With grey backgrounds and tables being the cutting edge of design I was like a one-eyed man in the land of the blind.

Things started running away from me as the years went on and around 2000 I started to lose track as my hands on, day-to-day web-site maintenance ceased. My web design skills since then haven’t developed beyond creating tables within tables within tables.

Today if it wasn’t for blogging software I’d barely be able to maintain a site. Knowledge of HTML is now commonplace. To survive nowadays, as this post about the world of Web Designing demonstrates, requires knowledge of a greater variety of languages.

The last two days in Dublin were wonderfully sunny days. The forecast is for tomorrow to be the same and for the day after to be slightly less so until it gradually descends back into foul, relentless rain on Saturday. Luckily for me I’m off work tomorrow and Thursday as I was today. Last years so-called summer is still firmly in the forefront of my memory and it is just possible that these few days of good weather are our lot as far as summer weather goes. Enjoy it while you can!

The newest attraction at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas is Cher who is starting to tomorrow, replacing Celine Dion and performing for four nights a week for a month.

Cher's new show, which is being performed at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace will feature 18 dancers and aerialists. The show will also feature video and special effects and the costumes that you would expect from Cher and Vegas.

It has been some career for Cher, born Cherilyn Sarkisian on May 20, 1946. She started performing in the 1960s and has been through several lifetimes of experiences in the meantime. Interestingly before Sonny and Cher came to be known as such they performed first of all as Caesar and Cleo. In a way then Cher's career has come around full circle; starting off as Caesar and Cleo and coming around to now as Cher in Caesars Palace!

It's a funny thought she will be spending her 62nd birthday performing in Las Vegas. Yes, she is actually performing that night! You can be sure that Cher tickets at Caesars Palace for that night in particular will be highly sought after.

In a way Cher and Las Vegas seem to be a perfect match. An evening with Cher in Caesers Palace strikes me as the perfect way to experience a trip to Las Vegas!

When the thought popped into my head to buy a bean bag a couple of weeks ago I had a figure in my head for what it would cost: €20. This was based on my memories of living in Rathmines where the Blackberry Fair was. At the entrance to the market was a sign advertising bean bags for sale. The first time I saw the sign I think the price was something like £15.

I realised there was a chance that the price of them may have gone up slightly over the years but, considering the basic ingredients of a bean bag are cloth and foam I didn't imagine the inflation would have been too great. Also the image I had of a bean bag was of a cheap type of furnishing for a university students bedsit.

Of course, as I should have expected, times have changed. For one thing, the Blackberry Fair has been closed for over a year. I found this out when I got the bus into Rathmines last Saturday to buy my bean bag. I haven't lived in Rathmines for ten years now and it is about five since I was last in the Blackberry Fair. It was a complete news flash to me therefore when I arrived to find it all locked up.

When I discovered the Fair was closed my plans to buy a bean bag were in a heap. I had looked for one while shopping in the city centre the previous day and the only one I saw was selling for about €130 in Argos. That was when I remembered the Fair and thought it would be worth my while to make the trip out to Rathmines. I made a quick stop off in an internet café and googled 'bean bags in Dublin'. I found posts that said that the Blackrock Market sold them too but Budda Bag on Millennium Walk won the search engine war for me and I got the bus back into town.

Prices were a little bit higher than I had expected. A footstool type bean bag was €100. I bought the Mini Budda which is a one person bean bag with a 1.5 metre diameter and costs €290.

While I spent more on it than I had intended I think it was worth it. It is a very comfortable way to relax. Since I've got it I've spent most of my time in the flat on it, reading, sleeping, surfing and watching TV. I've even tried a bit of meditation on it as well.

I can't imagine a Mini Budda gracing many poor university students bedsits. But then again I can't imagine many poor university students. Possibly the price of bean bags is linked to the spending power of the average Arts Student.

A thought occurred to me yesterday after I posted the YouTube clip of Des Bishop singing The House of Pain's Jump Around in Irish. I was reminded of the time I was listening to that song as I made my way into school one morning.

As usual I was running a little late -- about half an hour. I really couldn't help it. I lived in the countryside miles and miles away from the school I was going to. The only way I had of getting to school at the time was by hitch-hiking which isn't a very reliable method of getting somewhere on time.

This particular morning when I finally got a lift into town it was from someone who wasn't going very close to my school. When they dropped me off in town I still had a bit of a walk to go to get to school. Part of my route involved walking across some wasteground.

The ground was rough and uneven and I was listening to The House of Pain on my walkman as I stumbled over it. It was a dark and ugly morning, full of rain and wind. I was pretty much withdrawn into myself as I plodded on across the wasteground listening to my music.

After walking across all the rough ground I then walked several more steps before I realised that the ground surface had changed. I had reached the end of the wasteground and stepped out onto the road. I had walked across one lane before I realised this. As soon as I saw where I was I jumped back to the edge of the road and counted my blessings. Luckily it was after the rush hour and the traffic wasn't as heavy as it would have been an hour or so earlier.

I know this isn't the most dramatic of near-death experiences but it doesn't take much to end a life. A car passing at the wrong time and I’d have been finished, possibly without even realising what had happened.

I can think of another couple of times where similar things have happened. The time I was standing at a street corner waiting to cross the road when a double-decker bus took the corner too sharply and mounted the footpath. I was about four inches away from not having to worry about global warming that time. I exchanged glances with the guy standing beside me and we raised our eyebrows at each other. We both knew that we had been very close to finding out what it's all about.

There was the other time when I was standing at a bus-stop waiting for the bus to work. The bus-stop was beside an office block which was under construction. I was leaning against the wall of this new building when a concrete slab fell from the top of the building (six stories) and slammed into the footpath about twenty feet away from me.

Ok I wasn't in any danger at twenty feet but it was close enough for me! Once again, if that slab had been better aimed I'd have been dead and I wouldn't have known what had happened.

Those are only the times I almost died that I can remember the details of. There was another time when I was almost electrocuted. I can't remember the exact details but I was doing a bit of electrical wiring for a friend and there was some confusion about who'd taken the fuse out. I forget how that went but I remember the mental shock I got when I switched the appliance on after I was finished and realised that power had been flowing through it while I had been tinkering with it. It's funny how I can't remember much of the details of that incident but I suppose by that stage I'd been almost killed in senseless accidents so many times that it was barely worth taking notice of.

Anyway, long story short. Life is precious, you're lucky to be alive and enjoy every minute.

Also, look where you're going, don't stand right up to the edge of the footpath, remember the scaffolding is there for a reason and check the fuses yourself.

I never heard of Under Armour clothing until today when I saw somebody on Twitter mention it. The first thing I thought of was some type of bullet-proof or stab-proof clothing. What it actually is though is clothing that is worn as a base layer next to the skin and helps your body regulate its temperature in a particular situation. HeatGear is used in hot conditions. Then there is ColdGear, LooseGear and AllSeason Gear. They actually do seem to work.

There is a whole industry in the sale of this type of adventure clothing. In addition to Under Armour I also found Blackhawk Gear which includes all kind of hunting and outdoor gear.

It's a far cry from Peig but in this YouTube clip Des Bishop sings the House of Pain classic anthem Jump Around in Irish. Stuff like this makes me wish I could speak Irish. It also makes me realise it's possible to learn it. If a yank like Des Bishop can learn the language from scratch and do a rap in it, I think that should be encouragement to us all. This is what we should be sending to the Eurovision!

Liricí

Dún do chlab, dún do bhéal
[Shut your gob, shut your mouth]

éist le mo scéal, má cheapann tú go dtuigeann tú,
[Listen to my story, if you think you understand]

tá tú ag cur i gcéill,
[You are fooling yourself]

Tá mé ag dul go nua Eabhrac, ceangal mé le slabhra,
{I'm off to New York, Tie me up with a chain]

Goile a mhac, ná bí (ag caint anseo???)
[Come here my son, don't be (talking here???)

i lár an tsamhraidh
[in the middle of summer]

(súistí búistín buaille beag a phústín???)
[???]

ná bí i do phleidhce, nó gheobhaidh tusa léice
[don't be a jerk, or you're going to get a slap]

Níl mé ag iarraidh a' éisteacht le do chac-bó
[I don't want to hear your shit]

damhsa damhsa gan aon stró
[Dancing, dancing , withour effort]

buachaillí gránna, cailíní boga dána
[Nasty lads , naughty soft girls]

Ní thugann mise aird ar na gardaí síochána
[I pay no attension to the police]

Ag an gCeathrú rua, Amach anseo faoin dtuath
[In Carraroe , Out in the countryside]

léim anois léim anois léim anois go luath
[jump now jump now jump now without delay]

má tá sé mícheart, má tá sé mícheart,
[if it's wrong, if it's wrong,]

is cuma liom, is cuma liom,
[i don't care, i dont't care]

léimigí thart!
[jump around!]

léim thart! léim thart léim thart! léim thart léim thart! léim thart
[jump around! jump around jump around ... ]

Fág seo, éirigh as do pholl is léim thart!
[Let's go, get off your arse and jump around!]

Léim, léim, léim , chuile duine léim, léim, léim, gach duine léim, léim, léim, chuile dhuine léim, léim, léim
[Jump, jump, jump, each and every person jump, jump, jump, everybody jump, jump, jump , ... ]


freastalóidh mé thú ar nós John McEnroe
[i'll serve you like John McEnroe]

má shiúlann do bhean suas, buailfidh mé an hó!
[if your woman steps up, i'll slap the ho!]

Cá bhfuil do chlann, cá bhfuil do chairde,
[Where is your family, where are your friends,]

cá bhfuil an ceol, (suas in airde???)
[where is the music, (way up???)]

Agus díreach (ar do thuiscint, tá mé ag rith???)
[And now (by your understanding, i'm running???)

Má fheiceann tú mise, (b'fhearr duit???) bagairt a rá
[If you see me, (you'd better???) give a shout out]

Mar tá mé ar nós Tom Cruise sa scannán sin Top Gun
['Cos i'm like Tom Cruise in that film Top Gun]

Ní stopadh tú mise leis an Shotgun!
[You won't stop me with a shotgun!]

Má dhéanann tú 's cuí go luath
[If you do, it will be clear right soon]

Agus beidh tú i do staic
[And you will be on the floor]

Ní éiríonn tú arís go deo, sin an craic
[You won't ever get up again, that's the craic]

Anois mo stór, éist le mo ghlór,
[Now my dear, listen to my voice]

amach ar an urlár ar nós Peigín Leitir Mór
[out on the floor like Peigín Leitir Mór]
(Note: Peigín Leitir Mór is a kids Irish language song)

má tá sé mícheart, má tá sé mícheart srl
[if it's wrong, if it's wrong etc]

Is mise an fear is fearr, so tá mé thar barr,
[I'm the best man, so i'm the greatest]

Ní fheicfidh tú mise i mo sheasadh (as an lár???)
[You won't see me standing (aside???)]

Ná ag an deireadh ach an oiread an taobh eile don droichid
[Or at the end either on the other side of the bridge]

má thagann siad chomh fada liom, cuireadh mise iad,
[if they come as far as me, i'll bury them,]

amach ar an bportach, agus iad ag baint mhóna,
[out on the bog, as they cut turf,]

Déardaoin, De hAoine, De Satharn De Domhnaigh,
[Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday]

Suas suas 's síos agus ar ais arís,
[Up up 'n down and up and around]

Dún do straois, tá sé salach agus clúdaithe le smaois
[Shut your face, it's dirty and covered with snot]

(Do héadan bheidh caillte , an teallach sin duitse???),
[(Your face is lost , this home for you???)]

Fainic thú féin nó ní thógfaidh mé uaitse
[Watch yourself or I won't take from you]

Má tá sé mícheart, má tá sé mícheart srl
[If it's wrong, if it's wroong etc]

Tá mo homies as Conamara
[My homies are from Connemara]

M'abhailies, m'abhailies as Conamara
[M'abhailies, m'abhailies from Connemara]
(Note: Abhailies is a made up word which combiens "Abhaile" meaning "Home" and "ies" to make it an Irish "Homies")

Muintir na Gaeltachta, agus muintir na héireann freisin, tá an réabhlóid ag teacht go luath
[People of the Gaeltacht, and people of Ireland too, the revolution is coming soon]

Sin é, sin é, sin é , sin é [TRéIG]
[That's it, that's it, that's it [FADE]]

I was passing time in a shopping centre at the weekend when I had a look in a bookshop. I wasn't planning on buying anything but one book jumped out at me: The Encyclopaedia of Executions. I have a strange interest in morbid things like this. Among some of the more interesting books I remember reading over the years were The Fireside Book of Death, The Hangmans Tale – Memoirs of a Public Executioner, Gin – The Much-Lamented Death of Madam Geneva and The Real Oliver Twist.

The Encyclopaedia of Executions was just as good as I was expecting it to be. It gives a short one or two page biography of each person hung in Britain in the 20th century with the details of the case and some background history of the killer and the murder victim.

I'm reading the book chronologically and so far I'm only at 1903. The pattern so far is of men being executed for killing their wives or girlfriends and women being executed for killing children, their own and others. Most of the killings seem to have been the result of relationships going bad with money being the second motivating factor.

For example, take the case of George Place. He was a 28-year-old miner who found accommodation with Eliza Chetwynd in 1901. Eliza (60) had a daughter (20) of the same name. After some time George and the younger Eliza began to get close to each other and within a year they were living together as a couple.

Things changed between them after Eliza became pregnant and gave birth to a boy on August 13th, 1902. Eliza took out a Bastardy Order against George which was a form of child maintenance. George became angry at this and stormed out of the house on August 21st.

He returned to the house early in the morning of August 24th and went to the room where the two Elizas and the still unnamed baby were sleeping and shot all three of them dead.

There's very little in the above story that couldn’t have happened today. Except of course that there would be an outcry if a piece of legislation were called something so offensive as a Bastardy Order!

In the first four years of the 20th century, two men were executed for the abduction, rape and murder of children. Since the book only deals with cases where people were executed it's possible as far as I know that there were other child rape and murder cases in that time.

Gin – The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva is about the Gin Craze which struck London in the 18th century, causing devastation and misery at least the equal of that caused by heroin or any other drug in our own times.

There were the same dreadful consequences for the addicts who would kill or steal anyone or anything to raise the money for their drug. Gin "was implicated in the abuse of social security – gin-drinkers sold clothes given them by the parish 'and cheat . . . by all the ways and means they can devise to get money to spend in this destructive liquior, which generally ends in the husband’s being thrown into a jail, and his whole family on the parish.' Gin, the Committee reports, was 'one of the principal causes of the great increase of beggars and parish poor.'"

What interests me about books like this is that they tell me that things are no worse now than they ever were. It is tempting when we watch the news and see all the terrible things happening to think that these are problems of the modern age. The fact is that these types of terrible things always happened. In a way that thought comforts me.

In almost every way life is better now than it ever was at any time in the past. A way to test this is put forward in the Progress Paradox, How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse by Greg Easterbrook: Ask yourself, if you could travel back in time to any period of your choosing and live the rest of your life there as an ordinary person (not as a King or some other rich and privileged person) would you do it? Would you put aside your conveniences, your health care, your longer life span, your shorter working days, your plentiful food and your nicer clothes?

I may not have the makings of a good cowboy as far as rodeo goes but that doesn't mean I can't dress like one!

For anyone who isn't living in the western United States it is a very eye-catching fashion statement to wear a cowboy hat. It instantly makes you stand out from the crowd.

For people like me that's a very scary thing; I usually prefer to blend into the background. In addition to the cowboy hat though Cavenders web-site also have cowboy style pants and shirts as well as other cowboy related accessories such as belts, buckles and wallets. And don't forget the cowboy boots. That's an item that I mean to get one day.

This may not be the type of stuff that you would wear every day but it would make an interesting addition to a wardrobe.

Ireland's entry to the Eurovision is facing competition from the Spanish, who have also entered a spoof act. Rodolfo Chikilicuatre has been selected to sing Chiki Chiki for Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest this year. I'm told it's a spoof act anyway. Obviously it's in Spanish but even reading the English translation it's hard to see what the joke is, other than that it's a deliberately bad act. It may turn out to be a subtler satire on the whole glam Eurovision tradition than Dustin the Turkeys entry which is just basic toilet humour.




The lyrics of Chiki Chiki follow in Spanish and then in English;

The final lyrics are:

¡Perrea! ¡Perrea!
¡Perrea! ¡Perrea!

El chikichiki mola mogollón
Lo bailan en la China y también en Alcorcón
Dale chikichiki a esa morenita
Que el chikichiki la pone muy tontitaLo baila José Luis, lo baila bien suave,
Lo baila Mariano, mi amor ya tú sabes.
Lo bailan los brother, lo baila mi hermano
Lo baila mi mulata con las bragas en la mano
¡Perrea! ¡Perrea!El Chiki Chiki is a Reaggetton
Dance in Argentina, Serbia and Oregón
Give el Chiki-Chiki to that little sister
with el Chiki-Chiki she's gonna like it mister !
Dance it with Alonso, Dance it with Gasol
Dance it with your brothers, all around the world
Dance it with Bardem Dance it with Banderas
Dance with Almodóvar Dance la Macarena

Y el chiki chiki se baila así
Uno: el brikindans
Dos: el crusaíto
Tres: el maiquelyason
Cuatro: el robocop

Baila el chikichiki baila el chikichiki
Lo bailan los jevis y también los friquis
Lo bailan en la cárcel, lo bailan en la escuela,
Lo baila mi madre y también mi abuela.

Baila el chikichiki baila el chikichiki
Lo bailan los jevis y también los friquis
Lo bailan en la cárcel, lo bailan en la escuela,
Lo baila mi madre y también mi abuela.
Lo canta el Tigre Puma con su traje a rayas
Y Juan Carlos le dice ¿por qué no te callas?

En el velatorio del Padre Damián
Pusieron chikichiki y el muerto echó a bailar
¡Bailar, bailar, bailar!
Y el chiki chiki se baila así
Uno: el brikindans
Dos: el crusaíto
Tres: el maiquelyason
Cuatro: el robocop

Perrea, Perrea
Lo baila José Luis, lo baila bien suave,
Lo baila Mariano, mi amor ya tú sabes.
Lo bailan los bródel, lo baila mi hermano
Lo baila mi mulata con las bragas en la mano
Y el chiki chiki se baila así
Uno: el brikindans
Dos: el crusaíto
Tres: el maiquelyason
Cuatro: el robocop
Uno: el brikindans
Dos: el crusaíto
Tres: el maiquelyason
Cuatro: el robocop
¡PERREA, PERREA!



“EL CHIKICHIKI”

¡Perrea! ¡Perrea!*

¡Perrea! ¡Perrea!

Chikichiki is wicked and swell
They dance it in China and in Alcorcón too
Give chikichiki to that dark girl
'Cos chikichiki will make her twirl

Jose Luís dances it, dances it cool,
And Mariano dances it, my love you know how.
The brothers dance it, my brother dances it good
My mulatta dances it holding her pants in her hand

Perrea! Perrea!

El Chiki Chiki is a Reaggetton
Dance in Argentina, Serbia and Oregon
Give el Chiki-Chiki to that little sister
with el Chiki-Chiki She´s gonna like it mister!

Dance it with Alonso, Dance it with Gasol
Dance it with your brothers, all around the world
Dance it with Bardem Dance it with Banderas
Dance with Almodóvar Dance la Macarena

And chikichiki is danced like this:
One: brikindans
Two: go crusaíto
Three: maiquelyason
Four: Robocop

Dance the chikichiki dance the chikichiki
Heavy metal guys dance it and freaks too
They dance it in prison and at school too,
My mother dances it and my grandmother too.
Dance the chikichiki dance the chikichiki
Heavy metal guys dance it and freaks too
They dance it in prison and at school too,
My mother dances it and my grandmother too.

El Puma the he-tiger sings it in tuxedo
And Juan Carlos says to him: why don't you shut up?
At Father Damian's wake
They played chikichiki and the dead man got up and danced

Dance, dance, dance!

And chikichiki is danced like this:
One: brikindans
Two: go crusaíto
Three: maiquelyason
Four: Robocop

Perrea Perrea

Jose Luís dances it, dances it cool,
And Mariano dances it, my love you know how.

The brothers dance it, my brother dances it good
My mulata dances it with her pants in her hand

And chikichiki is danced like this:
One: brikindans
Two: go crusaíto
Three: maiquelyason
Four: Robocop

One: brikindans
Two: go crusaíto
Three: maiquelyason
Four: Robocop

PERREA PERREA!!!

Self diagnosis can be a dangerous thing. I don't mind admitting that I can be somewhat of a hypochondriac sometimes. For example over the past few years I have thought at various times I had two types of cancer, lung and skin. I also thought for a long time that I was going blind.

With that in mind it is a good idea to be cautious about self diagnosis. There are usually innocent explanations for the symptoms you are suffering and usually a mole is just a mole.

Still though, knowledge is better than ignorance and it is good to know what the possible symptoms are. For example if you want to know if you are a Heart Attack Risk it is good to read up on the possible symptoms of it. If you have enough of these symptoms to start ringing bells there is still time to see a doctor and start doing something about it.

For the last day my little finger has been numb. The numbness started after I casually carried and swung a plastic bag full of groceries off it as I walked back from the shop yesterday.

The feeling seems to be returning to it slowly and this morning only the tip of it is still numb.

Since it happened I've been doing internet searches looking for possible reasons for this. So far I don't think it's anything to worry about. I think I've ruled out cardiac arrest. For now anyway.

I was an impressionable and superstitious child. I was aided in this by my mother who, despite being a devout Catholic and therefore not really believing in such things, nevertheless said that she had seen ghosts on several occasions in her youth. When my mother and aunt would get together they would sit and talk about growing up in the 1930s and 1940s.

Apparently there were lots more ghosts about then and my mother would tell how she had sometimes seen ghostly shapes of men moving along the road or staring through windows. She said that when she saw them she had never felt scared but instead felt sorry for them.

During this time there was a regular prayer said at Mass praying for rest for the 'Lost Souls'. My mother and aunt both believed that it was this prayer that had helped those ghosts to move on into the next life and that this was why people didn't see ghosts anymore.

In later years I have come to think that the spread of the electric light through rural Ireland during this period may also have been a help but at the time when I heard these stories I believed in ghosts. Even now sometimes in the dark of night I still get that ghostly kind of feeling that I used to get regularly as a child.

There were many things that I was fearful of as a boy. One of them was the abandoned house further down our road. I grew up in the countryside and our house and the old abandoned house were the only two on our road. Even in daylight I would be fearful of passing by this house, with its broken windows and overgrown bushes and trees crowding in around it. When I was passing by on my own during the day the only way I could do it was at a run. At night-time I just couldn't do it at all. The sensation of an unknown and terrible presence was just too much for me and I would get the feeling of something climbing up my back as I got close to the house.

Another things was vampires. One time I stayed up too late and watched a film about vampires. In this film the vampires were trapped inside books. I still remember one scene when a character looked into a freshly dug grave and saw a book at the bottom. He thought it was a good idea for some reason to jump into the grave to investigate the book. When he opened the book the face of the vampire appeared and started to materialise out of the pages. After I went to bed that night I woke up and saw the face of that vampire on my bedroom wall. I did not sleep well that night.

So when one day my sister brought a picture of The Crying Boy into the house I was more than uneasy. What made it seem worse for me was that she knew all about the story behind the picture. I know she knew because she was the one who told us about it. The picture was supposed to be cursed. In numerous houses in England where it was a popular print it had been all that had been left untouched in house fires. There were many reports of houses where the picture was hung burning down and The Crying Boy picture coming out miraculously untouched despite everything else being destroyed.

I couldn't believe that she actually thought it was a good idea to hang this picture in our house! I couldn't believe that my parents seemed to agree or at least didn't mind!

It would have been one thing to buy the picture and hang it up and then eventually find out about the story behind it. During that time you may have become attached to it and be willing to ignore the alleged curse and keep the picture. But to start off from a position of knowing about the curse and still hanging the picture was just unbelievable to me!

The picture was hung in our sitting room which was rarely used anyway except for around Christmas time. Because of its presence the sitting room became like the old, abandoned house to me. I was fearful of being in the room on my own with the picture. Anytime I had to go into the room for something I would try to avoid eye contact with the boy. Whenever I went into the room I felt that crawling feeling on my back. I felt like he was looking at me.

I had forgotten about all of this until I read the latest issue of the Fortean Times which has a feature on The Crying Boy story. It seems that the story was hyped up and publicised in the mid-80s by The Sun newspaper in Britain.

The Crying Boy picture was mass-produced during the 1970s and was very popular in parts of England. Therefore it wouldn't be surprising that it would happen to be in some houses that went on fire for various reasons. It was printed onto hardwood which is difficult to ignite and that is possibly the most rational explanation for why it was likely to withstand fires that might destroy other furnishings.

The story became popular after The Sun carried a report on September 4, 1985 about a chip pan fire in a house in Yorkshire. Ron and Mary Hall blamed the fire on the painting which survived unscathed from the fire which badly damaged the rest of the downstairs of the house. It happened that Ron's brother Peter was a fireman and The Sun reporter quoted him as saying that he was aware of several cases of The Crying Boy painting turning up unharmed in the midst of otherwise destroyed homes.

From there the story grew and grew and was happily spurred on by the editor of The Sun Kelvin McKenzie who said it was a story 'with legs' ie it would keep running.

It is years since I thought about the story. I never knew it's origins before. I didn't realise that The Sun was to blame for some of my sleepless nights as a child. What about 'Kelvin McKenzie Terrorised Me As a Child' for a headline?

It is one of my (day)dreams to be an author. This is one of the things I think about when I am at work staring into space in a daze. My problem is that whenever I do try to write is that when I can't get past the title of the book and the opening paragraphs I resume staring into space.

Becoming an author is not the get-rich-quick option it appears to be in my day dreams. Lots of work and dedication is required to produce a book and unfortunately I never learned how to Apply Myself. However, if you really want to Publish a Book and have enough belief in the project there is always the option of self-publishing. It may not satisfy the dream of the massive payday from the publisher but it would satisfy the other dream of seeing your book in print.

I mentioned previously about Guy Wallace, the English teenager who claimed he was racially attacked on O'Connell St on St Patrick's Day by a gang of Irish teenagers who tore his little finger off. While some media sources jumped on this straight away as an example of racist behaviour by Irish teenagers others suggested that Guy's verson may not have been exactly how it happened. For one thing Guy was so drunk that he wasn't really in a position to give a very accurate account himself and no-one else saw this attack, apart from an incident in a take-away which he was able to get away from.

It was reported in todays papers that his finger has now been found, badly decomposed and attached to railings. It now seems that Guy caught his finger while trying to climb over the railings and the initial doubts about his story were correct.

It's not exactly a happy ending for Guy but it does help to remove the tarnish that the story could have put on the Irish reputation if it hadn't been disproved. I wonder what those expert plastic surgeons in England who said it looked like his finger had been bitten off now say. Meanwhile his family are backing him up saying that he had genuinely believed that that was what happened. In his drunken state he had mixed up earlier incidents and combined them to create this story.

Guys initial version of the story was that he had been asked his nationality by a group of people with old faces and thick Irish accents. When he confirmed he was English they beat him and held his hand against the footpath while one of them stamped on his hand and tore off his little finger.

As Roy the Taxi Driver commented on my previous post on this it appeared from Guys description of his attackers, old faces with thick Irish accents, that he was attacked by Leprechauns. The video above is an artists impression of how it might have happened.

The mental picture I have of a rodeo is from the opening credits of Dallas. Possibly that image isn't too far off the mark. It's certainly a dangerous sport. One of the stars of rodeo, Wiley Peterson, is currently recovering from an injury. The latest news is that his collar bone is healing up nicely and he expects to be competing again at the end of the month.

While it is dangerous, there is obviously a thrill to be had in it both for the rider and the participant. The National Rodeo Finals are being held this year in the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada from December 4th to the 13th. National Rodeo Finals tickets are hot commodities already and going fast.

The video above gives a good illustration of the danger and excitement involved in rodeo. I was scared watching it! There’s no way I'd be able to get up on one of those animals! Last years NRF world champion winner, Wesley Silcox is 22 is one of the participants. As they say in the clip:

"They have that look of haunted need. It's a level of adrenaline that you can't get anywhere else. Riding a bull is not like any other extreme sport. It's the world's most dangerous sport."

AKA BuyOnline Me Bollix

I was getting the bus from Dublin to Longford today from Busaras. The Busaras is the central bus station in Dublin and is like the head bus station of the whole Bus Éireann fleet. As such you would expect it to be fully equipped to provide every service that Bus Éireann promises to provide to its customers.

Funny therefore that the whole service ground to a halt because one of its customers decided to book a ticket online on Bus Éireann's web-site.

Before all of this, it was a little annoying when I was queuing to board the bus that a couple of girls at the top of the queue had chosen to buy their tickets on the bus. I, like (almost) everyone else had bought my ticket in the station and had it with me. All I would have to do would be to show it to the driver as I boarded the bus and that would be that. Everything would move smoothly.

As well as being annoyed I was also quite impressed at the humanity of the bus driver. The two girls were obviously lost souls that didn't know their way around the practice of boarding a bus. Another theory I had was that the queue at the ticket desk had been too long for them and they reckoned they'd get away with it because they were girls. I was a good way back in the queue so I wasn't able to form a proper impression of them.

I have often seen a driver just point towards the ticket desk and tell the poor unfortunate to join the queue to buy a ticket there. If they made it back before it was time for him to leave he would talk to them again. If not. Well, there'd be another bus in two hours time.

Once or twice I have been the one so pointed at, so when the driver condescended to sell them a ticket - and then waited for them to assemble the money to pay for it - and then searched and found them change - I was content enough to put up with this. It only took three or four minutes.

Imagine my relief though when this little hold-up to the queue was removed and the girls plus their newly acquired tickets walked down the aisle of the bus and took their seats.

It was a short-lived relief though when the VERY NEXT person in the queue after the girls with no tickets was the woman with an e-mail print-out.

The driver hadn't seen one of these before. He read it. Several times.

I hadn't seen one of these before either. Not for booking bus tickets anyway. E-mail print-outs are commonplace now for airplane flights where online booking is increasingly the only way you can make a booking.

However, there don't seem to be many advantages in booking a bus ticket online. Out of curiosity I tried it out tonight. The only advantage I saw with it was that I could have saved €2 on my Dublin-Longford day-return by booking online.

If you're a very well organised person you can book your inter-city bus ticket online five years in advance at todays prices which might add up to a reasonable saving. It is currently possible to book a bus ticket online for any date up until 31 December 2013. Provided you're organised enough to remember that you pre-booked your ticket five years ago and be able to keep your e-mail print-out in a safe place you could be able to save a reasonably significant amount of money by doing this.

But it's not even as if you're really reserving a seat though. Buses are still filled on a first-come-first-served basis. You could stand in front of the driver waving your e-mail print-out screaming "I booked this five years ago" as much as you wanted but if all the seats were already taken you'd still have to wait for the next bus.

It's a funny thing that bus tickets should be cheaper to buy online because it appears that processing the online bookings is costlier. According to the terms on the Bus Éireann web-site:

"Once your credit card details have been processed, you will be sent an e-mail
confirmation with a validation code. You must print that confirmation e-mail and give it to the ticket issuing staff at the Bus Éireann ticket office or to the bus driver before travelling on the bus. The ticket clerk or bus driver will check the validation code electronically and then issue you with the appropriate travel ticket in exchange." You are also required to have photo ID with you.

The lady in question seems to have made the mistake of reading all of this and believing it! She thought it was enough to show the e-mail print-out to the driver and have a bit of ID with her and that would be it. Instead the bus driver took out a massive red book resembling a Thoms Directory and started leafing through it. Apparently it was the Big Rule Book of Bus Fares.

Meanwhile everyone else in the queue stood and scowled. My emotions varied from boredom to annoyance at the obvious stupidity of the woman with her bit of A4 paper to the obvious stupidity of the driver for not just telling her to feck off.

After the bus driver had re-read the e-mail and the Big Rule Book of Bus Fares it was the turn of another bus official to have a look at it. And then another. After three people had looked at the e-mail, and as far as I'm aware no validation code had been electronically checked, the woman was allowed to proceed on her journey. As were the rest of us passengers. The bus was only 12 minutes late leaving Busaras.

Once again, let me repeat: this was at the Bus ARAS. The central bus station of Bus Éireann. If they can't cope with an e-mail here what chance do the ones in the sticks have?

I see that Roy of IrishTaxi.net has moved from blogspot over to a wordpress blog. This seems to be a transition that most serious bloggers have to make in the end.

Blogspot is great for starting off. It has nice features for a free service such as the ability to point your own dot com address to it. Apart from that it is easy to use, provided you don't try to do too much messing around with the design side of things. But WordPress does have many advantages over it.

One is the selection of plug-ins that give greater usability to Wordpress. It's also much easier to back up a Wordpress blog. There is a wider and better selection of Wordpress themes also and as well as that I find that Wordpress themes are easy to customize. I find this myself. I may have only basic html skills but I'm able to do some editing of Wordpress themes with limited competency. Blogger themes are much more difficult to edit.

Once you move away from blogger you also need to find a good web hosting service. At the end of the day you'll probably have to pay for that.

I'm still window shopping at this stage. I'm in the early days of thinking about it but it does seem to be the best way to go in the end.

The world really is a strange place. This clip here is a real news report about a sighting of a leprechaun in a tree in Alabama. I’m pretty sure it’s a spoof but on first watching you’d nearly believe it. It seems they really thought they saw it:





It was a good news report and it inspired an equally good rap:






This one, on the other hand, definitely is a spoof. The leprechaun in this one is excellent:

I never really saw myself as a bingo player. But it was Good Friday and the pubs were closed so I was happy enough to try out a bit of online bingo to see what it was like.

While it is possible to play for money and there are some pretty impressive jackpots to be won in it a good way to get started is by playing free bingo. Bingo Port, the site I joined up on gives you 1,000 free points when you join up. You can use these points to purchase tickets in the free bingo games. The cards cost a few points each so you can get plenty of games for free.

If you don't have any luck winning more points playing the free bingo you can get more free points by a number of different methods. One way is to contribute to their forum. They give you 100 free points for every 'post of substance' that you post (ie 'LOL' isn't worth 100 points!).






The two free bingo games are 75 and 90 ball. The most straightforward one is 90 ball bingo. This is a simple game where you play to complete one line, then two lines and finally a full house. The other thing I liked about this game was that the caller had a very pleasant female voice.

The 75 ball game in my opinion seemed a bit more difficult. In this game you try to form patterns on your bingo card. Also the callers voice was a less pleasant computerised male voice which didn't help my enjoyment of the game. On the other hand the jackpots seemed to be higher in this game.

Once you accumulate enough points you can convert these into credit to use in other games and play for real cash prizes. It is possible therefore to play for free and win real money. Alternatively you can convert your free points into Amazon.co.uk vouchers.

In truth there isn't really much to do when playing online bingo apart from watch the computer tick off the boxes on your card. Or not. That is why there is an online chat where you can natter away with the other players. The chatters here use a lot of short-hand terminology so it might take a while to get used to it when you're starting off. On the other hand once you get the hang of it, it saves a lot of time typing!

My winnings almost balanced out my losses last night so I still have nearly 1,000 points to play with. I'll be back to see if I can win any more. The possibility of working up enough points to win real money might be enough to keep me interested!

PS. Most of the bingo numbers were straight forward rhymes or easy to understand but Gandhi's Breakfast was the one I had to think about the most. Gandhi's Breakfast? 80 ie Ate Nothing.

Surfing the web can bring you to some strange places. My latest journey on the internet began last night when I was checking my visitor statistics. I noticed that one person had found my site by searching for 'finglas st patrick's day youtube'. This was obviously someone looking for footage of the riots there on St Patrick's Day.

It hadn't occurred to me to go looking for footage like that but when I saw the keywords I got the idea to have a look myself. The only clips I found were short and poor quality, shot on a camera phone:

Snips From the Saint Patrick's Day Riots in Finglas






One of the good things about YouTube is that similar videos are linked to each other so, while the St Patrick's Day riot footage wasn't much use it brought me on to more interesting things. One of these was a gangster rap from a couple of teenagers in Finglas about killing a police informer.

I used to listen to a lot of rap by the likes of NWA when I was their age too. The lyrics of gangster rap are graphic and violent but hearing young lads with Dublin accents rapping in the same way makes it seem more real.

I have to admit to doing a bit of rapping in the privacy of my bedroom too when I was their age! It was a good way of venting emotions and I never actually killed anyone despite my violent lyrics. But then again I wasn’t stoned either unlike one of the fellas here. Hopefully they'll grow out of it but there’s a chance that they won't:

Gangster rap from Finglas




From there I moved on to joy-riding and I found plenty of examples of this on YouTube. Staying with Finglas this is one of a lad doing a wheelie on a motorbike:





Still with Finglas here's one of joy-riders racing on the M50. It's set to music and the production qualities of this one are quite good. It's a good clip to see things from the joy riders perspective. People may not want to do that but I always think it's a good idea to look at things from different angles and try to understand why people do stuff like this. In the case of joy riding it's done for the thrill of it, with no regard for the consequences.

I think it's telling the way they turn the camera to look at the cars as they overtake them. You can just imagine the scene inside the joy-riders car as they overtake each one. So while the clip shows the fun side of joy-riding it also unwittingly shows the anti-social aspect of it too. Part of the thrill of it is in disturbing other people and scaring them.

Incidently this could be another good argument for getting rid of the tolls. These guys treat the green light and the raised barrier as the start of the race:





And speaking of anti-social behaviour here's one of joy-riding in the middle of a housing estate in broad daylight. I don't know what estate it is. I'm just glad I don't live in it. Imagine trying to raise children in an environment like this. Would you be able to do it and keep them away from this type of behavior? It wouldn't be easy:





Finally, just to give some balance to this in case it appears that I'm just out to knock Finglas I want to assure you that I'm not. There are many areas where this type of thing goes on and some of those happen to be in Finglas. My sympathy to the normal people living there who have to put up with this type of stuff.

I'm sure many people looking at these clips are thinking that the solution is tougher policing and 'taking the gloves off' etc, etc. As an argument against that here are some YouTube clips from 'hoods' in Belfast. Joy-riders there have been getting knee-capped and their limbs broken for decades. The extra danger only seems to have added to the thrill:

Internet dating web-sites are an increasingly common way of meeting new people. With so many dating sites out there picking the best one for you is as tough as finding Miss or Mr Right. I didn't realize however, until tonight, that there was also a niche market in sites that review and compare dating web-sites. Of course, with most dating web-sites charging membership fees it is a good idea to shop around and find out a bit about a site before you join it. So comparison and review web-sites are a good idea.

The one I had a look at was called Online Dating Tips. As well as listing some of the top dating sites it also gives basic advice about online dating.

The site is pretty thin on actual reviews of the dating sites listed. It would be useful if the site concentrated more on that. It has the look of a new site. At the moment the FAQ page is unfinished. The footer information is missing from the page and there are no FAQs. Hopefully in time they'll be able to develop it a bit more and build up some more detailed information on the various dating sites which would help to make it a useful resource for someone looking at joining one of them.

The main strong point of this site at the moment is the dating tips it gives which seem to be mainly pretty sound and useful advice such as what warning signs to look out for and meeting for the first time.

The section which was of the most interest to me was Long Distance Dating. At the moment and for nearly a year now there are a couple of hundred miles separating me from my girlfriend. It was interesting for me to read the advice they give. It mainly comes down to regular phone calls but good advice nonetheless.

At the moment this is the bones of an online dating review site. It's off to a good start but more information needs to be added into it.

I could have made (photoshopped) an awful lot more of this, but apparently there's a ceasefire on and everybody is being super nice to everybody else at the moment. However I have often remarked at the similarites between Ian Paisley and a giraffe chewing its cud and I thought it would be remiss of me to let his announced retirement pass without making an attempt at ridiculing him.

However nice he may be now, never forget what an evil bastard he used to be. If it wasn't for him the last 40 years could have been a lot different.

Forty years is a long time. Lots of water has passed under the bridge in the meantime and hundreds of people have been shot dead. Being Mr Smiley for the last two years doesn't make up for that.

I was away in Donegal for St Patricks Weekend. I spent my St Patricks Day watching a live Gaelic football match in what used to be the Gaeltacht. I don't often go to football matches of any type but I thought it was great the way we could drive onto the grounds and watch the match from our car. This has led to the use of the car horn which I thought was a brilliant advance to cheer on the teams!

Another step forward would be a scoreboard to let us know who was winning. Either that or linesmen who raise their arms when someone scores a point! We left the match not knowing who won. We had thought that our local team had lost but it turned out afterwards that they had won by six points.

While most people in this 'Gaeltacht' now speak English I was quite chuffed and also embarrassed to hear two neighbouring spectators talking to each other and sharing a joke in Irish. I have heard other people tell of the same experience: Hearing someone express emotion through Irish, whether it be happiness or anger, makes the language seem more real to those of us who learned enough of it from a textbook in a classroom to pass an exam. It is good to hear Irish being used for simple everyday communication between people. This is more likely to be heard nowadays in the Gaeltacht but increasingly less so.

I've never liked St Patricks Day in Dublin very much. Internationally the Irish have a reputation for being great party people and great drinkers. I think that too many people try to live up to this reputation, resulting in drunkenness and unruly behaviour. Contrary to our reputation as heavy drinkers, Ireland was near the bottom of the league in Europe for consumption of alcohol up until the 1990s. This was due to the large amount of total abstainers who balanced out the heavy drinkers and also the simple lack of money that was experienced by most people. Since then our consumption of alcohol and also illegal drugs has increased and we are now close to the top.

Too many people are trying to be the 'mad Irish' with enough money to buy the alcohol but not able to handle the consequences.

When I returned to Dublin on Monday night I thought it was a pretty quiet St Patricks Day night. I walked from Busaras to O'Connell St to catch my bus home and, while there were plenty of rambling drunks, there were far less than I expected. Also I didn't sense any kind of menacing atmosphere as I walked along Talbot St. No doubt this was due to what must have been an impressive Garda turnout that day. Apart from a couple approaching from the opposite direction there was nothing remarkable at all. The man, with an English accent, was asking passers-by to kick his girlfriend. She, also English, thought this was a great idea.

As I walked along Talbot St towards O'Connell St it was approaching 10pm and the Gardai walking towards me in pairs were heading back to Store St to finish their shifts. In a way you have to wonder what kind of city it is that the police are only willing to walk the streets in pairs but I suppose it's nice to have someone to talk to.

Standing at the bus stop on O'Connell St I looked around and saw only minor trouble. There were plenty of drunks wandering around. I only saw a little splatter of blood on the footpath. While I stood waiting for my bus a(n Indian) security guard from the McDonalds beside my stop ran across the street to help the (African) security guard at the Burgerking across the road who was having trouble with the (Irish) drunk who was shouting at him asking him why he didn't go back to his own bleedin' country. In the end the drunk, being outnumbered, gracefully offered to shake hands with the security guard.

The quietness of the night was confirmed by the amount of vacant taxis driving past. After getting on the bus I eavesdropped on the phone conversation of a bar worker who had been let go home early because it was quiet. In fact it was so quiet that he had first had a break and then been let go home.

It was only when reading the paper the next day that I heard about the riots in Finglas and it appeared that there was more to the St Patricks Day disruptions than usual. Finglas seems to have experienced the worst St Patricks Day violence with incidents of car-jacking, joy-riding and car-burning, as well as other non-car-related vandalism. Arrests have been made, mostly teenagers. Isn’t it grand?

I also read today in the Evening Herald about Guy Wallace, a 17-year-old Englishman, who was attacked on O’Connell St by five people after he was asked where he was from. He was allegedly then beaten and had his hand forced against the footpath which ripped the little finger off his hand. The finger hasn't been recovered and Guy a piano and rugby player is learning to cope without it.

That's the version according to the Evening Herald anyway. Other news sources, including RTE, are more restrained, saying that Guys story is one possible theory being pursued by the police. Another is that it happened accidentally as Guy ran down the street while running away from an incident in a take away. Apparently he was so drunk that he can't really remember what happened.

Following the murders of the two Polish men in Drimnagh the media are looking out for stories of race-related attacks by Irish teenagers, who are apparently much more racist than their elders - ;) - and the story of Guy Wallace appears to fit in. However contradicting this his father, a Conservative councillor on Somerset County Council, said that this type of thing can happen anywhere in the world. No Irish exceptionalism here.

RapArtists.com is a newly established web-site. The site is owned by First Beat Media. The stated aim of the web-site is to bring the most up to date hop news, gossip, music, and anything related to the hip hop scene.

The site is only new. At the moment the front page consists mainly of top-ten-style lists. A more useful section is the 'Artists Listing' which gives biography details, as well as the discography of the hip hop artists in the list. Hopefully the list will be added to in the coming weeks. As a thirty-something I would like to see a section on the history of hip hop and the past masters of rap. At this stage in its evolution rap has a significant history behind it already and there is plenty of room for this site to expand.