Mon Utd

I apologise to my throngs of followers out there; I haven't posted in a while. I've been distracted by football you see. Or to be more precise, a particular football ground which I have just visited. On Friday just gone, myself and a few hundred other clowns made the trip to Kingspan Century Park in Gortakeegan, just outside Monaghan Town.
Now when I say this ground is heroic, I don't mean heroic in the Guardian's Top 50 Football Stadiums You Absolutely Must Watch a Match at Before You Die And The Atmosphere's Quite Good Also sort of wanky way. Let me paint you a picture. On one side you have the main stand, holding no more than 400, and the clubhouse. On the other side there's nothing. Behind one goal there's an industrial estate. Behind the other there's cows on a hill. Now these cows are probably the second best thing about the ground. They watch the match and, if the mood takes them, form themselves into a sort of bovine scoreboard. Only if the Magic Mons are winning though. Otherwise they get into a bit of a mood.
If that's the second best thing about the place, I hear you ask, what the bloody hell is the best thing? Oh, dear reader. The Mon dogs. The Mon dogs! Oh, they'd melt your face. We all know normal hot dogs are made from bits of animal scraped off the road. Well Mon dogs are made from bits of animal scraped off the most salubrious roads in the world. A cat run over by Roman Abramovich in Monaco, a badger run over by a sheikh in Dubai. Boiled up and put in a bun made from bread painstakingly made from scratch by an armless woman in Castleblaney. Smothered in red sauce bought from Tesco.
That'll have to do yiz for now, I'm off to try and re-create a Mon dog using some caviar and a lobster. The lobster says he can't cook but I think he's being modest. Good luck.

I Just Wasn't That Into It

I went to the pictures with my mot the other night. Being the gentleman I am, I let her choose what film we went to. We ended up watching a yoke called He's Just Not That Into You. I assumed it would be a big pile of shite and, long story short, it was. The opening scene showed a little girl in a playground.(Women in cinema: "Awww!") A young fella comes over, calls her a poo head or something and pushes her over. She goes off crying to her mammy and her mammy tells her that the boy pushed her "because he likes you!" To which the little girl pulls a confused face and the whole cinema bar a few bewildered boyfriends breaks into thunderous laughter. Now that's clearly not funny. I can only assume that this is something that happens to every girl at that age and their mirth was triggered by the nostalgic value of the scene. If that is the case I would suggest to the writers that they could make it equally appealing to both genders by changing the young one's response from a puzzled expression to "Oh right. Remember Dan bars? And The Shoe People? They were brilliant weren't they? Where's my space hopper?"

Isn't it gas that we haven't heard anything about global warming recently now that we have real problems? All those bored housewives who were lobbying the government to "Please, think of the children" are now too worried about their banker husbands being thrown in jail (finger's crossed) to bother anymore. I remember, only a few years ago, if we had a good summer or a bad winter people would just say "Isn't it a lovely/miserable (delete as appropriate) day out" and that would be the end of it. Now it's a bigger threat to the world than nuclear war and it's all our fault for spraying deodorant and using the wrong light bulbs. That may not be true but I couldn't be bothered looking it up. I've better things to do than worry about whether Eskimos are getting a tan or not. Sorry, this is getting a bit serious. How many midgets can you fit in a phone box? I reckon ten, realistically. Or 30 if you liquidised them.

I'm going to have to wrap this up because I'm getting very hungry. Even typing the word "wrap" there made me think of a lovely chicken wrap with some lettuce and tomatoes and lashings of mayonnaise. There's an Aretha Franklin song on the radio and the first thing I thought of was that she plays a cafe owner in The Blues Brothers and that they order two full chickens. That's how hungry I am. I reckon I could eat two full chickens. I was in a similar frame of mind the other night. I went out drinking on an empty stomach. Ended up in MaccyD's at about eleven. Ordered three double cheeseburgers and a portion of curly fries! I managed to get through all of the curly fries and two of the burgers. My girlfriend was asleep when I got home so when I told her I'd brought her home a burger I didn't get much of a response. Falling around the room calling her an ingrate for not showing more interest in my extremely romantic gesture probably didn't help. So now you know why I had to let her choose the film. See yiz after.

Twenty shaggin' five to one

I failed a mock exam today that I've to do for work. Very few people mocked me though. Just the people there that I knew. And a few of the strangers that got carried away with the whole thing. And the examiner. Which was a bit harsh. Wanker. Anyway, what wasn't I talking about? Oh yeah, eggs. If you leave an egg in the fridge for long enough will it hatch a penguin? A smaller one than normal obviously, and the first thing it would see would be a lump of cheese and it would think that was it's mother. It's life ambition would be to be grated onto the top of a pasta bake and browned in the oven. Then, when it was old enough, it would mate with the most attractive Easysingle on the middle shelf and they'd have little yellow penguin babies wrapped in cellophane. That'd be weird. It would only work in your standard domestic fridge anyway. If it was in a restaurant the health and safety would be down on you like a ton of igloo-bricks.

How many French people does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One. Think about it. I always wanted to be a gardener but I thought if I spent too long in a garden some Frenchman would probably eat me. Just scoop me up with all the frogs, snails and horses and put me in a casserole. Call it Pie d'Irishman or something else pretentious with an apostrophe. The French aren't a bad bunch though. I was watching a documentary recently about when they completely re-located France to it's current site, which was just a plot of wasteland, from what is now Norway. The trickiest part was keeping it a secret from everybody, including the people they were moving. They had to invent a Norwegian flag, national anthem, history and Tor Andre Flo and hire actors to play the Norwegians. They just told their own people they were going on holiday and when people started asking when they were going back they denied everything. Worked a treat.

It looks like myself and the lads will be standing outside a lot of churches, smoking. Us, not the churches. It's either that or race OAP's against each other, and frankly I can see that ending in tears. I suppose we need old people though. If they weren't around the Werther's Originals and Farah slacks industries would go down the drain. And that's the last thing we need. See yiz in the funny pages.

Knobular

Listen, I really couldn't be bothered. What you've got to understand is that it's all the one to me. It's sort of "Say nothing until you hear more." You know? Anyway, a change is as good as a rest. Which is just as well. Outspan wants to give Nelson Mandela "Two bus timetables and a biro with which to mark them" for Valentine's Day. Or some such shite. Or so he would if he were his lover. He's not though, Outspan has more class than to knock boots with an ex-con. Joey went down the sex games-route with "A cheap pair of novelty handcuffs." Vinnie didn't say anything that might be deemed by some to be slightly racist. Still, we'll have to call him "Spawn of Satan" Gray from now on, and avoid bringing him to West Brom games. Or the BBC.

There's an ice cream van outside and Ray Wilkins is on the telly. I typed "in the telly" first there. Imagine Ray Wilkins was in my telly trying to sell ice creams. Just try it there . . . That would be ridiculous, he'd never fit and even if he could there'd be no refridgeration to keep the ice cream from melting. You'd probably have to pay extra for your Tangle Twister if an ex-footballer sold it to you anyway. You'd go along with it as well for two reasons:
a) It'd save you walking to the shop, and
b) They'd no doubt have a sign up saying '50% of all money made will help some charity or other. Feed the Bears maybe. Or C.R.A.C.K. - fighting homelessness through playing draughts.'

Did you know the world's first known pizza wasn't made in Italy? It was actually made, completely by accident, by missionaries in New Svartland (today's Togo.) They were trying to make an open toasted sandwich and they made a bollox of it. They immediately sold the idea to Four Star Pizza, who opened a shop on the Philipsburgh Avenue. It was consequently visited by Julius Caesar, who brought one to Rome. Got away with it as hand luggage. Customs wasn't as strict then. So I'm not friends with any racists. Rafter.