Well I’m back!!! Did ye miss me at all?! Doubtless there was a cavernous void, as a result of my lack of blogging but fear not, I have returned! I was a bit down in the dumps for a while there with an acute and life-threatening case of “Oh f*ck, I live in America”. Lifesaving treatment was administered in the form of 15 Wispas and a box of Cheese and Onion Tayto courtesy of my very good mother and I appear to be on the mend. My advice if anyone finds themselves afflicted with this pernicious condition is to desist immediately from watching diabetes advertisements (do NOT make the mistake of sending off for a testing kit OR a slap n’ chop vegetable cutting device, albeit revolutionary) and get outside with a box of Lucky Charms and perform Riverdance up and down the street until you feel suitably irish again. Also if you are lucky enough to have all of Enya’s albums, put them on repeat and play them through the night, your mental health will thank you. Your husband may not however, but it will prevent him from going over to the dark side, what with him being surrounded by good god fearing, gun toting workaholics everyday.
Right I’m off. It’s the third of December and 21 degrees so I’m off to work on my tan!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
Anyone for an enema?
If I have to listen to one more advertisement on the tellybox about medications for diabetes, I will surely go into said tellybox and beat the fools talking about their obesity induced diabetes about the head with the bag of doughnuts that is invariably lying somewhere near them. America is absolutely obsessed with illness and the associated medications and medical care. I estimate that at least 50% of ads on tv are for pharmaceuticals, medical insurance companies or hospitals. If I was unlucky enough to have depression induced constipation that left me with erectile dysfunction, bone density loss, swine flu and a general pox, there are medications I can ask my doctor to give me that will doubtless revolutionize my life. Now ignore the fact that I am a couch residing non-medical cynic and know nothing about medications or their side effects, I am instructed to go to my doctor and demand these drugs. Of course the medical insurance that costs circa 700,000 dollars a month won’t cover it because I sneezed three times in 1985. Oh and if your insurance won’t cough up, Astra Zeneca reassures us at the end of each ad that they will help pay for it. Good of them.
The pharmacies here are fantastic and wonderful places. You can get everything from a hot water bottle to a barium enema. I have been fascinated with the latter since I saw them in the local CVS (Crazily Vast Store) pharmacy 10 years ago on the student visa. Never have they been far from my mind. I thought you could only avail of the cleansing and invasive effects of said enema in a hospita. I also thought that introducing a substance into your system at home that can be picked up by the international space station would potentially be a tad detrimental to your health. Of course if you do enema-ise yourself and you wake up to find you colon has made a bid for freedom in the night and can be found at the local bus station with a one way ticket to Vegas, Astra Zeneca will help pay for your troubles.
I’m off to make contact with the lads on the international space station via the barium enema I’m going to use to correct my doughnut induced erectile diabetic depressive bone debilitating lunacy.
The pharmacies here are fantastic and wonderful places. You can get everything from a hot water bottle to a barium enema. I have been fascinated with the latter since I saw them in the local CVS (Crazily Vast Store) pharmacy 10 years ago on the student visa. Never have they been far from my mind. I thought you could only avail of the cleansing and invasive effects of said enema in a hospita. I also thought that introducing a substance into your system at home that can be picked up by the international space station would potentially be a tad detrimental to your health. Of course if you do enema-ise yourself and you wake up to find you colon has made a bid for freedom in the night and can be found at the local bus station with a one way ticket to Vegas, Astra Zeneca will help pay for your troubles.
I’m off to make contact with the lads on the international space station via the barium enema I’m going to use to correct my doughnut induced erectile diabetic depressive bone debilitating lunacy.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
As mo rhothar
My arse is killing me. Cycled to the library yesterday only to find it was closed for an unpublicised public holiday. The pain is tremendous. Life altering even. Maybe next time i get up on the bike i'll be less ambitious. A distance of that magnitude should not be undertaken when one hasn't been on a bike since April. i'll half it next time. That mile was sheer lunacy.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Celtics v Diaspora!
The blinds are up! The cats are determined to tear them back down again but they shall not prevail in their opposable thumb-less attempts. Furry divils. They have been informed that if they do not desist from this anti-homely behaviour they are going to be exchanged for the pair of raccoons that live in the oak tree outside the house. Let them put that in their pipe and smoke it. Or maybe put it in their nicorette. Sylvester has been off the fags for three months now and I really wouldn’t want to set him back.
Friday last saw a busy, busy day for the non-taxpayer here. The alpha rang me and relayed the great news of our attendance that evening at a Celtics basketball game in Boston! Excitement and fanfare erupted through the house, the blinds simultaneously opened and closed and the litter box self-cleaned. It was indeed a joyous moment, not least for the latter occurrence. As I leapt around the ground floor of our double family home, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t get a chance to take the fur off any tennis balls that evening so in my frenzied state I decided to treat myself to a run.
I donned my running attire. Let me point out that I don’t really like running and dress accordingly. Somewhat in the manner of a homeless person with a penchant for acquiring his clothes from a TK Maxx skip circa 1991. I don’t wear a beard though; I’d just like to clear that one up. Tennis attire is another matter altogether, but I digress. I hot footed it from the gaff, tied my keys to my runners and set off to run the massive 3 miles around Fresh Pond.
The name is ridiculously misleading. Ridiculously. It’s not a pond it’s the main source of drinking water for the city of Cambridge! It’s a great hulking mass of water that would house the entire population of Luxembourg attempting a world record breaking synchronized swimming program. The killjoys in Cambridge county council however won’t allow humans in the water. Short sighted in my opinion, imagine the revenue they could accumulate from such a record breaking attempt? Still, under the strain of record breaking I suppose not everyone could be counted on to hold onto their bladder.
About 3 minutes into my trot I realized that it was raining. I thought about turning back but I figured I’d be sweating like a person who had just completed a 3 mile run so a little rain wouldn’t do any harm. How wrong I was. Regular rain would have been tolerable but this was the special type of “wet” rain that previously I have only experienced in Galway. For 3.75 years of the 4 years I lived there to be precise. It’s the sort of rain that appears to defy the laws of physics and manages to soak you from the inside out. The disappointment I felt in arriving at the conclusion that irish weather was actually stalking me, another slap in the face for physics, almost led me to turn back. I was pretty soaked by the time all these thoughts has filtered through the remaining functioning sections of my grey matter so I ploughed on.
Ploughed on is another misleading statement. I spluttered, coughed, whined and dragged myself around the pond. I stopped for a cry at one point and the chipmunks came over for a chat. They informed me with great glee that Alvin, Simon and Theodore were in Hollywood finalizing the rights to another movie. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see man or chipmunk achieve success but I mean what gobshite thought it was socially responsible to make another chipmunks movie? Feeling somewhat rested if disturbed after the chat, I dragged myself the remaining 129 miles home on my elbows.
I arrived back to the porch and poured my remains through the keyhole. The alpha was home! I greeted him and the backyard raccoons and had a little rest. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Hobbes grappling furiously with an AK-47. I sighed and removed the aforementioned weapon from him, chastised him for his amateur attempts at raccoon assassination and handed him a proper sniper rifle. I was going to give it to him for his birthday but better him to have it now and not pick up bad habits.
There was little time to change and shower, although I was so wet anyway I could have just applied some soap and stood back out on the porch and washed it off. However, Americans are quite modest so I performed my ablutions in our rather nice bathroom. As I was in the shower Sylvester appeared to have been arrested by the thought that behind the shower curtain lay a treasure trove of mice, for he launched himself at the shower curtain with all the unbridled gusto of a psycho style serial killer. I looked out when I recovered my composure to see a monochromatic hanging from the shower curtain by three claws and managing to look somewhat apologetic. He lost one of his lives as a result of the eardrum shattering scream I emitted and I estimate I aged 7 years. Nonetheless I recovered and dressed sure in the knowledge that having gained the 7 years in age I wouldn’t need any iD to procure beer. The alpha suggested I bring it just in case.
We took the bus to Harvard. Well we took the fifth bus we encountered as the alpha had left his i-phone in the house and had to return for it. Good thing he remembered it too as Hobbes was on the internet ordering munitions and foot soldiers. Where did hey get the credit cards? This raccoon thing was getting out of hand. We got the fifth bus and subsequently progressed to the train where it transpires we were to spend a good portion of our evening. There was a “disabled” train ahead of us on the line resulting in delays. Disabled? I saw it pull out of the station before ours and there was no evidence of crutches or a wheelchair. To say the least we were confused. Eventually it lumbered to its destination with much apology and we met up with our irish friend and hit Boston Beer Works to meet the other lads.
The match was starting at 7.30 and we got to the bar, pardon me, the bah, at 7. Needless to say it was absolutely imperative, no crucial to the survival of the irish species, that we consume our own weight in beer in the short half hour we had before the match. This is a skill that almost every irish college graduate posseses. No, almost every irish person is born possessing this skill and college only serves to hone it to perfection. Indeed if you have attended college in Galway you are grand master of imbibing and generally invited to conferences around the world where you are revered in the manner of a good cult leader. The alpha had a Reeses peanut butter cup for his dinner and I had 4 peanuts. We hoped feverently that we hadn’t taken too much soakage on board. We had a stereotype to live up to. The alpha, I, the D man, the other irish guy, the Scot and the Kenyan partook of a half hour of concentrated merriment and then with lightning speed of foot, made haste to the Basketball stadium.
The game was great, a genuinely enjoyable experience. Celtics won but you got the feeling they weren’t trying too hard, I suppose it was a pre-season match. Having made that statement, you should be made aware that the only thing I know about basketball is that you use a roundy ball and have to be 8 feet tall to play it.
After the game we repaired back to the Boston Beer Works and honestly much of the night is a blurry haze of happy drunkenness. I have no recollection of any arrests but was so drunk myself that I spent the whole journey home convinced we were being ferried by a headless taxi driver to the other side to meet our maker. Thankfully I believe we made it home intact. It’s always a bonus.
Friday last saw a busy, busy day for the non-taxpayer here. The alpha rang me and relayed the great news of our attendance that evening at a Celtics basketball game in Boston! Excitement and fanfare erupted through the house, the blinds simultaneously opened and closed and the litter box self-cleaned. It was indeed a joyous moment, not least for the latter occurrence. As I leapt around the ground floor of our double family home, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t get a chance to take the fur off any tennis balls that evening so in my frenzied state I decided to treat myself to a run.
I donned my running attire. Let me point out that I don’t really like running and dress accordingly. Somewhat in the manner of a homeless person with a penchant for acquiring his clothes from a TK Maxx skip circa 1991. I don’t wear a beard though; I’d just like to clear that one up. Tennis attire is another matter altogether, but I digress. I hot footed it from the gaff, tied my keys to my runners and set off to run the massive 3 miles around Fresh Pond.
The name is ridiculously misleading. Ridiculously. It’s not a pond it’s the main source of drinking water for the city of Cambridge! It’s a great hulking mass of water that would house the entire population of Luxembourg attempting a world record breaking synchronized swimming program. The killjoys in Cambridge county council however won’t allow humans in the water. Short sighted in my opinion, imagine the revenue they could accumulate from such a record breaking attempt? Still, under the strain of record breaking I suppose not everyone could be counted on to hold onto their bladder.
About 3 minutes into my trot I realized that it was raining. I thought about turning back but I figured I’d be sweating like a person who had just completed a 3 mile run so a little rain wouldn’t do any harm. How wrong I was. Regular rain would have been tolerable but this was the special type of “wet” rain that previously I have only experienced in Galway. For 3.75 years of the 4 years I lived there to be precise. It’s the sort of rain that appears to defy the laws of physics and manages to soak you from the inside out. The disappointment I felt in arriving at the conclusion that irish weather was actually stalking me, another slap in the face for physics, almost led me to turn back. I was pretty soaked by the time all these thoughts has filtered through the remaining functioning sections of my grey matter so I ploughed on.
Ploughed on is another misleading statement. I spluttered, coughed, whined and dragged myself around the pond. I stopped for a cry at one point and the chipmunks came over for a chat. They informed me with great glee that Alvin, Simon and Theodore were in Hollywood finalizing the rights to another movie. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see man or chipmunk achieve success but I mean what gobshite thought it was socially responsible to make another chipmunks movie? Feeling somewhat rested if disturbed after the chat, I dragged myself the remaining 129 miles home on my elbows.
I arrived back to the porch and poured my remains through the keyhole. The alpha was home! I greeted him and the backyard raccoons and had a little rest. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Hobbes grappling furiously with an AK-47. I sighed and removed the aforementioned weapon from him, chastised him for his amateur attempts at raccoon assassination and handed him a proper sniper rifle. I was going to give it to him for his birthday but better him to have it now and not pick up bad habits.
There was little time to change and shower, although I was so wet anyway I could have just applied some soap and stood back out on the porch and washed it off. However, Americans are quite modest so I performed my ablutions in our rather nice bathroom. As I was in the shower Sylvester appeared to have been arrested by the thought that behind the shower curtain lay a treasure trove of mice, for he launched himself at the shower curtain with all the unbridled gusto of a psycho style serial killer. I looked out when I recovered my composure to see a monochromatic hanging from the shower curtain by three claws and managing to look somewhat apologetic. He lost one of his lives as a result of the eardrum shattering scream I emitted and I estimate I aged 7 years. Nonetheless I recovered and dressed sure in the knowledge that having gained the 7 years in age I wouldn’t need any iD to procure beer. The alpha suggested I bring it just in case.
We took the bus to Harvard. Well we took the fifth bus we encountered as the alpha had left his i-phone in the house and had to return for it. Good thing he remembered it too as Hobbes was on the internet ordering munitions and foot soldiers. Where did hey get the credit cards? This raccoon thing was getting out of hand. We got the fifth bus and subsequently progressed to the train where it transpires we were to spend a good portion of our evening. There was a “disabled” train ahead of us on the line resulting in delays. Disabled? I saw it pull out of the station before ours and there was no evidence of crutches or a wheelchair. To say the least we were confused. Eventually it lumbered to its destination with much apology and we met up with our irish friend and hit Boston Beer Works to meet the other lads.
The match was starting at 7.30 and we got to the bar, pardon me, the bah, at 7. Needless to say it was absolutely imperative, no crucial to the survival of the irish species, that we consume our own weight in beer in the short half hour we had before the match. This is a skill that almost every irish college graduate posseses. No, almost every irish person is born possessing this skill and college only serves to hone it to perfection. Indeed if you have attended college in Galway you are grand master of imbibing and generally invited to conferences around the world where you are revered in the manner of a good cult leader. The alpha had a Reeses peanut butter cup for his dinner and I had 4 peanuts. We hoped feverently that we hadn’t taken too much soakage on board. We had a stereotype to live up to. The alpha, I, the D man, the other irish guy, the Scot and the Kenyan partook of a half hour of concentrated merriment and then with lightning speed of foot, made haste to the Basketball stadium.
The game was great, a genuinely enjoyable experience. Celtics won but you got the feeling they weren’t trying too hard, I suppose it was a pre-season match. Having made that statement, you should be made aware that the only thing I know about basketball is that you use a roundy ball and have to be 8 feet tall to play it.
After the game we repaired back to the Boston Beer Works and honestly much of the night is a blurry haze of happy drunkenness. I have no recollection of any arrests but was so drunk myself that I spent the whole journey home convinced we were being ferried by a headless taxi driver to the other side to meet our maker. Thankfully I believe we made it home intact. It’s always a bonus.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Law and ORDER darnit!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m still putting up those feckin’ confidence sappers, I mean blinds (the sitting room is complete folks, rev up the Gillette, procure yourself a cat – not one of mine- and shave it!) and I’m taking a little break. Despite being built like a brick shithouse, working over my 5 foot 4 inch strapping frame is draining me.
I and the drill have called a truce. It’s lying on the couch beside me taking a nap. It looks pretty innocuous when it’s asleep really. So now that I feel my life is temporarily no longer in mortal danger I break out the cookies and chocolate milk and switch on the ol’ mind bending box. Would you feckin’ credit it, LAW AND ORDER is on again!! I think that in addition to my Chevy Chase counter I’m going to add a counter to total how many house straight they show it for! Yesterday it was on for thirteen hours. It also shows on several channels at the same time. It makes me want to take out my seeing orbs, jump up and down on them with the alphas steel toe safety boots and then put the remainder in the garbage disposal! Honestly, it makes the blind erection feel like sports day in National School! I’m beginning to pine for Garda Patrol, Mailbag, Nationwide and other home produced high production value classics.
Oooohhhh, got my paraphernalia from the USPTA today and I’m officially a trainee….imagine the brainwashing I can exert when I qualify!!! Oh the exciement, it’s unparalleled.
I and the drill have called a truce. It’s lying on the couch beside me taking a nap. It looks pretty innocuous when it’s asleep really. So now that I feel my life is temporarily no longer in mortal danger I break out the cookies and chocolate milk and switch on the ol’ mind bending box. Would you feckin’ credit it, LAW AND ORDER is on again!! I think that in addition to my Chevy Chase counter I’m going to add a counter to total how many house straight they show it for! Yesterday it was on for thirteen hours. It also shows on several channels at the same time. It makes me want to take out my seeing orbs, jump up and down on them with the alphas steel toe safety boots and then put the remainder in the garbage disposal! Honestly, it makes the blind erection feel like sports day in National School! I’m beginning to pine for Garda Patrol, Mailbag, Nationwide and other home produced high production value classics.
Oooohhhh, got my paraphernalia from the USPTA today and I’m officially a trainee….imagine the brainwashing I can exert when I qualify!!! Oh the exciement, it’s unparalleled.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Killer bathroom utensils
Trimming the ol' tootsies today (tmi indeed) to avoid them falling off from tennis activities and i was ruthlessly attacked by the nail scissors! Minding my own business and the next thing i know the tip of the scissors is embedded in my big toe!!
What i'm wondering, through a haze of quite pronounced pain, is whether the power drill has a hand in it. That demon device is still on the premises.
To the library to pick up one of Bill Brysons American travelling books, yay!!!!
What i'm wondering, through a haze of quite pronounced pain, is whether the power drill has a hand in it. That demon device is still on the premises.
To the library to pick up one of Bill Brysons American travelling books, yay!!!!
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