Dec
3
So I took the day off last Friday to attend Sarah’s (Gemma’s sister) wedding. And it was a really nice day. I say day when I mean occasion as the weather on the day was fairly miserable; rainy and cold. But that’s what you expect for 30th November.
I stayed in Gemma’s the Thursday night as it made it easier getting to the church and then down to the reception in Athy. Gemma let me have a lie-in 
while the brides maids all got their hair and makeup done early that morning before we all got dressed to leave. I came out of the bedroom and saw Gemma in her dress as Maid of Honour. She looked gorgeous. Her hair was done up and the dress red and white. She looked so elegant. Being in the house I got to see the bride before the ceremony and she looked beautiful. Being tiny she looked like a little doll in the dress.
We made our way to the church anyway and the ceremony was really nice. It was quite small with mainly close family attending. I think it made it much more intimate and would be the way I’d prefer it if I ever go down that road. The rain held off long enough to get some pictures taken outside the church before we headed to Athy for the reception.
The hotel we stayed in was really nice with the exception of the leaking sink. The reception again was small and intimate. The best man speech went well and got a lot of laughs from everyone. Definitely not something I’d enjoy doing though. I was at a table with the ‘other-halves’ from those at the head table so I didn’t really know anyone. Myself and Colm, boyfriend to Gemma’s younger sister Tracey, got a few questions since we were dating the sisters of the bride. “And which girl is Gemma” I was asked. “The hot one” I said scoring aw points and a “you’re well trained” from the girls at the table. After the meal the dancing started and my sitting began. I had everyone and their dog trying to get me on the dance floor including Gemma, her mam, her granny, her aunt and other relations I don’t know. I would have liked to get up there so that Gemma enjoyed herself but being a hermit most of my life means I never shook off my shyness. A collective aww please? I couldn’t take my eyes off Gemma all night. I kept watching her up dancing cause she looked so good. During the night her mam spoke to me and said doesn’t she look lovely to which I agreed. And Gemma too she added. “I was talking about Gemma” I said. She meant Sarah originally. Gemma eventually dragged me out for the last dance though which I secretly wanted despite my objections.
I enjoyed the day and loved seeing Gemma enjoy herself and look so stunning.
Nov
9
It’s been a while since I’ve posted partly cause I’ve had nothing interesting to show and partly cause no one reads this so who bloody cares.
One thing YouTube let’s you see (yes apart from mountains of shit posted on it) is that there are some brilliantly talented people out there. This guy is Andy McKee with his rendition of Africa by Toto. If you don’t know the original then YouTube is your friend. And shame on you if you don’t know it!
Nov
2
Sexy…
Oct
24
Last night while watching the Man Utd v Dynamo Kiev match I was chatting to Gemma’s dad and he was telling me how he spent hours reading stories on the website www.overheardindublin.com the previous night. I told him I had my own experience last year of the ilk posted about on the site. Here’s the tale:
Three of Dublin’s finest male youths boarded the LUAS at Busáras handsomely gowned in the finest bright-blue silken-synthetic tracksuits benefit-money can buy, sporting tacky gold ear rings and haircuts so close Gillette would be proud. They then proceeded to treat the entire LUAS-travelling public to the most random and acutely tangental tales.
They first began with their character summation of an undesirable known commonly to the three of them. For clarity and conversation visualization let’s call them scanger 1,2 and 3. So it was scanger 1 who mentioned that he was less than besotted with the topical person.Scanger 2 then quipped in with his analysis of how a person like this should be dealt with: “He’s due a baitin’ in fairness. I’d say he’ll get it in anyways but, but he really deserves a GB. “He didn’t go into details or specifics but I interpreted this to mean Grievous Bodily harm. This ended as abruptly as it began.
Next they ventured into their past and reminisced about the bad old days they apparently endured in some juvenile correctional facility.Scanger 3 recounted how the fear of God was instilled in them by one of their mentors. He went on to say that “if you couldn’t get up the rope he’d make a bleedin’ show’eh’ye.” Again this was left up to interpretation so I assumed it was part of some constructive physical education.
Scanger 1 then piped in saying how they were treated poorly, bordering on abuse.Scanger 2 came out with the gem that “it was total degredation; mental, physical and spiritual.” But he somehow topped this with “Everyone goes on about persecution; the Nazis were persecuted, the Vietnamese were persecuted, what about our own? What about the persecution in this country?”
I’m sorry…Nazi what? I must have missed that in History class. At this point I was (aside from incredulous that he knew the word degredation let alone was able to pronounce it and utter something so…profound) placing great effort into controlling tremendous laughter that was itching to burst out. As strong as the urge was to laugh the knowledge of almost certain death-by-knifing as a result was more than enough for me to keep it inside.
One stop before Heuston station saw the sad departure of scanger 1. But to keep our spirits up scanger 2 and scanger 3 began to measure penis size;in the metaphorical sense I mean.Scanger 2 began telling us all that another delinquent they happened to come across was really quite cheeky;always “lookin’ to start somethin’.”
As we arrived at the Heuston station stop scanger 1, in no uncertain terms,left all comers in his wake.” Ah he started on me before.Stuck the head in. I took one look at him and told him if he didn’t get ou’ra me face I’d slice him open.” At this point the lady and her daughter sitting across from me cracked smiles and the laughter would inevitably soon follow.
I was lucky Heuston was my stop.
Oct
24
It’s been on the cards a while and it finally came. The FAI and Steve Staunton have terminated his contract by mutual consent. I’m glad because he couldn’t do the job and the team were suffering as a result but I’m also sad because it wasn’t his fault and I wouldn’t like to see him remembered as a failed manager.
It came out that the FAI were to hold a meeting with Staunton on Tuesday and everyone felt the expected decision was imminent. What’s ironic is how the FAI handled the lead up to the meeting. Originally they were to meet in the FAI offices in Merrion Square but this soon changed to an undisclosed venue. It was thought that certain hotels known to be used by the FAI would be chosen and so the media camped out at these locations. It was reported on RTE at half time during the Man Utd v Dynamo Kiev match that it was confirmed that a meeting room was booked in a hotel by the FAI but none of its representatives had turned up. They found the hotel and room that Staunton was checked into but couldn’t locate him and so the media were running around like headless chickens between three different hotels hoping to get what they wanted.
It eventually came out that a meeting took place in the small hours of Wednesday morning where the FAI had met with Staunton and his contract was terminated. This shows the FAI aren’t entirely clueless since they presumably didn’t want a media circus around Staunton during a difficult situation for him. It also shows that when they want to do something properly they bloody well can. So why not all the time?
John Delaney said that this whole incident is recognition that someone with vast footballing experience should make the next appointment as manager:
‘I think by moving to a process where we will appoint people who are vested in the game in a professional capacity to make the next appointment, it is recognition that that’s the way forward for the association at this stage.’
Which was nicely translated by a reporter who put the point back to him that it was in fact recognition that the decision on who to appoint should be made by football professionals rather than FAI administrators. Delaney responded ‘That’s a fair point, yes.’ Moron.
So let’s wait and see who they appoint next. David O’ Leary is the bookies favourite but time will tell.
Oct
23
I often use this website for checking the movie times when me and Gemma decide to go to the cinema. It’s a nicely done site where you can quickly and easily select any cinema in the country. You select a county and it populates a drop down menu with the cinemas in that county. From here you get a list of the movies being shown and their times for that cinema. The reviews are normally quite reliable. And if you don’t want to go by the opinion of their reviewer then you can read what users of the website thought.
So to my point; the site got a recent upgrade to it’s look and functionality. The site has the look of the latest XHTML/CSS/Web 2.0 etc websites and is much better off. A new feature added is uLike. You create an account and from your profile you specify your favourite cinemas and TV stations to get their listings displayed as default when you visit the site. The feature I like most is the ‘Your Reviews’ section. Here you can write a review of the movies you’ve seen which then get approved by the site admins. When approving your review they give you a rating by way of ‘Review Points’. The best review each week wins a free DVD and when you reach 100 ‘Review Points’ you win free cinema tickets. Worth the five minute’s effort if you ask me.
Oct
21
As many of you may know Cyanide and Happiness is a webcomic hosted on Explosm.net and famous for its controversial nature. It was founded on 9 December 2004 and has since hosted daily comics. The site claims over a million daily visitors and is one of the ten thousand most viewed pages on the web. It openly allows and encourages fans to hotlink images, a behavior that many webcomics frown upon as “Leeching”.
In keeping with their ‘use as you will’ philosophy a Bebo profile has been set up where bebo members can join and view their images and also copy them to their own personal profiles. I’ve never spent much time on their website and only knew of the comics they make in the form of images. Upon viewing their bebo profile I saw they have videos (hosted on Youtube) which you can view and copy to your bebo profile also. A few of them are brilliant and keep the same highly controversial theme that their webcomics portray. Here’s the one I enjoyed the most:
You can view their bebo profile here and then just click ‘Become Member’ to join. Alternatively simply click here.
Oct
19
Oct
18
Jaysus, where to start?
Shocking. Awful. Amateurish. Like a can of pears - a bit lac lustre. We should have been beaten, And beaten well, by a poor Cypriot team. Had they had a bit more class in front of goal they could easily have beaten us by two or three goals; the shot that hit the post, the one-on-one which Given saved and the poor attempt to lob Given when he was off his line should all really have been goals.
They hammered us when we played them away so it would make sense that we would want to put on a good performance here and show them how we can play. But that never ever looked like happening. Apart from Reid no one wanted the ball. No one looked confident. Everyone looked afraid of making a mistake. Reid was the only player who did anything productive (until McGeady came on in the second half). Hunt had one or two little runs but wasn’t very much better than the rest of the players. Everyone seemed to look to Reid to do all the work and hit 40 yard defense splitting passes. He can do that, like most people, but not every bloody time he got on the ball. But that’s what the players around him expected.
I touched on it in the post about the Germany match; Robbie Keane is playing dire football for Ireland. I say for Ireland because he’s completely different when playing with Spurs. Nothing he did had any conviction about it. He threw himself to the ground a number of times seemingly more focused on winning a cheap free kick where the responsibility would lie with someone else rather than taking the responsibility himself and trying to make something happen. He is not a captain. I don’t see the logic behind the appointment. Being the top scorer for your country does not make you a certain captain. Or rather it shouldn’t. In fairness Keane should have lost his place many matches ago. On form, Irish form, Shane Long deserved to play ahead of him. But Staunton seems to be a pleaser, or tries to be anyway, and I can’t see him ever going against the perceived grain and dropping the country’s top scorer having appointed him captain. Sigh. A captain is the manger’s representative on the field. Keane is not a leader. Other than being a senior member of the squad and being top scorer I don’t see the reasoning behind him being made captain. Though that just highlights the fact that Staunton seems to make strange decisions despite his repeated comments “I know what I’m doing.”
For instance, he kept Keogh on when he clearly wasn’t playing well. But that’s not his fault really. He isn’t a winger. He hasn’t got the pace to go by players so a logical change would be bring on McGeady. Why he took so long to do this I don’t know. And when he eventually brought him on he put McGeady, a right footer, on the left wing having switched Hunt, a left footer, who was already playing there to the right hand side. Now you explain that one to me. McGeady did create when he came on. He showed he has the pace to beat players and put a few good crosses into the box. I say good crosses because the crossing in general in the game by pitiful. More often than not we failed to beat the first man. One decent one we had fell to Keane, unmarked in the centre of the box six yards from goal, but he put it wide. Not surprising.
It’s not as if we played well, passed well and just couldn’t make it count up front; our overall play was a joke. We couldn’t pass the ball, with the exception of Reid, and couldn’t keep possession of the ball that you’d expect of a team playing at home. At any level. In contrast, the Cypriots passed with confidence and kept possession with ease. Both myself and my dad could see them scoring and felt we’d lose the match. I remember looking at the clock and seeing 87 minutes played and thought “Nearly ten minutes to go. Great time for them to score” which promptly came. If we can see that happening why can’t the team? And do something about it. Or even the manager. God forbid. Anytime they split us open Staunton stood on the sidelines hand on hip and did…nothing. The point of coming to the touchline is to deal with the team on the field, offer instructions, give instructions rather. But, nothing! When we scored in the third minute of added on time Finnan didn’t crack a smile let alone celebrate. Can you blame him? Scraping a draw three minutes into injury time against Cyprus at home is not something to celebrate.
The F.A.I. appointed Staunton for one reason; money. They said they’d give us a world class manager. You won’t get that for €200,000 a year. You get Steve Staunton for that. It would be different if he had done something, anything, as a manger. Roy Keane for instance took charge of Sunderland and brought them from bottom of the table to promotion to the Premiership. It would have been a stretch to appoint him as he’s mostly unproven as a manger but at least it would have had some kind of reasoning behind it. Staunton’s didn’t. So the only conclusion is it came down to them wanting to save money. And from what Staunton said to the media after the game he has the backing of the F.A.I. despite the outcome of the match. Which leads me to my last point; I’d hate to see Staunton remembered for being a poor Irish manager and not the great international he was for us. The team were booed off the pitch, which I don’t agree with (I think you should always support your team), and chants of “We want Staunton out” rang up at times in the second half. The F.A.I. have shown they won’t sack him. I think, at this point, Staunton should resign. He’s standing firm on his claims of being adept and his four year plan being on track but I think he needs to face facts and cut his loses before he’s vilified by the fans. Which would be horrible and wrong in my opinion. Like my opinion that Keogh playing poorly isn’t his fault as he’s not a winger I feel this isn’t Staunton’s fault either. It obviously is to a degree but ultimately he was appointed to a position that he can’t handle. He may sometime in the future but definitely not now. So I place the blame with the F.A.I. They’re cheap and always have been. They tried getting Jack Charlton for next to nothing (and that was twenty years ago). He told them where to go before they offered him something reasonable.
Staunton won’t resign and the F.A.I. in all their wisdom won’t sack him. I can’t see it doing any good but sign here and maybe it’ll put some pressure on them to take action. I wouldn’t hold my breath though. Nor would I hold any great expectations for the World Cup qualifiers when they begin.
Oct
16
50 yard free kick and a 3 man wall. Reckon they saw it coming?
Jose Manuel Rey:
