Dangermaus

by Twenty Major on March 8th, 2005

The latest edition has just been published with exclusives about Johnny Logan, Mick Lally, Colin Farrell, duck butter and much more.

Check out dangermaus.com

Why Jimmy the Bollix hates Howard Jones

by Twenty Major on March 8th, 2005

I was in the pub last night with Stinkin’ Pete and Jimmy the Bollix when over came Lightweight Larry.

We call him that because he was a former lightweight boxer. He also can’t drink more than three pints without getting absolutely scuttered. Which is bad because when he’s drunk he likes to sing the songs of spiky-haired 80s synth wizard Howard Jones.

Now, I’m a man of eclectic tastes and have no real problem with Howard Jones but Jimmy the Bollix hides a terrible secret which I am now going to reveal to you. In the video for Howard’s breakthrough hit, New Song, there was a wibbly-wobbly dancer in a weird costume (chains and stuff) dancing alongside Jones’ synth rack. Back then Jimmy the Bollix was struggling over in London. He’d been working with a criminal gang which operated around the Seven Sisters Road area but he’d become disillusioned with them after one raid on a petrol station in which his gang mates announced their names like Ninja Turtles:

“I am Achmed Wallbongala” - shouted one.
“I am Davey Murphy” exclaimed another.
“I am Sven Svenson” said the third man.

“I am leaving” said Jimmy the Bollix. “You are the most stupid cunts I have ever met.”

So he left and while his former gang chums were easily caught by police he had to lie low. One day, while in an alley counting the money in a handbag he’d stolen, he heard someone crying. He looked and saw a strange haired young man sitting at the back door of a recording studio.

“What are you crying for?” asked Jimmy.

“Oh, it’s terrible” said the young Howard Jones. “I’m recording my album but I’m worried about my girlfriend.”

“What’s the problem with her?” asked Jimmy.

“Well, I’m not sure our relationship is on an even footing. I love her whether or not she loves me. I love her even if she thinks that I don’t. Sometimes I think she doubts my love for her…”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Jimmy. “What is love, anyway? Does anybody love anybody anyway?”

And with that a hit song was made. The two got to talking and when Howard Jones found out his new friend was down on his luck he gave him the dancing job for his single. Jimmy was well paid and soon became a fixture in the London clubs hanging out with top starts like Kajagoogoo, Gary Numan and Men at Work.

The problem was at this exact time Vincent Hanley caught the hearts of a nation with his hit TV show, MTUSA, which showed music videos. ‘New song’ was a regular on the show and we, Jimmy the Bollix’s closet friends, immediately recognised his distinctive dance moves which we’d first seen around Dublin’s top discos.

When he came back to Ireland a few years later he got an unmerciful slagging leaving him extremely sensitive to any mention of Howard Jones or any 80s synth pop for that matter. So when Lightweight Larry came over and started singing ‘No-one is to blame’ things got a bit ugly. And by things I mean Lightweight Larry. He was no looker before but fuck me you should see the cunt now.

Poor Jimmy though, his Howardaphobia once cost him a torrid affair with top actress Kim Bassinger who was visiting Ireland on holiday. She saw him in McDaids one afternoon and was captivated by his swarthy good looks and air of menace. Plucking up the courage she went over to him and said “I’d like to get to know you well.”

Luckily there are many good plastic surgeons in Hollywood and nobody could tell the difference after a few months.

So if you see Jimmy the Bollix in the bar never put Howard Jones on the jukebox for he will break your arms. He quite likes Nik Kershaw though.

Emerald Bile

by Twenty Major on March 7th, 2005

Noreen and Ballbag hate stuff and it’s fantastic. I hope they can keep up this level of hatred and not have strokes and die, the vicious cunts.

Emerald bile.

Irish blogs

by Twenty Major on March 7th, 2005

There’s been some talk on some other Irish blogs about what exactly makes an Irish blog Irish. Is it Irish if it’s hosted in Ireland? What about if the blogger is Irish but the subject matter isn’t especially Irish? What if the blogger is not Irish but the subject matter is Irish related? Can we apply the ‘granny rule’ to Irish bloggers as we do to Irish footballers? Who is the Tony Cascarino of Irish blogs then? Who will the goalscoring John Aldridge and who will be the ‘Why did we bother with him anyway’ Bernie Slaven?

To end the confusion once and for all I have designed a set of easy to distinguish criteria which will make it easy for people to see if their blog is Irish or not.

Edit: To avoid debate about how many of these criteria need to be fulfilled to attain Irish blogger status I spent some time researching and analysing my post before choosing a number at random. Which is 3.

1 - It must be written in an Irish ‘voice’, if you will. By that I mean it should roll off the tongue like Sean O’Casey dialogue, there should be a hint of a Guinness fuelled Brendan Behan, sparkle with wit like Oscar Wilde and be full of authentic and not at all stereotyped, oh no, characters like any Roddy Doyle novel.

2 - The blog can be considered Irish if it’s immeasurably improved by reading aloud in the voice of Tom Cruise trying to do an Irish accent in Far and Away.

3 - If the author has ever considered murdering any of the following people then it can claim to be an Irish blog: Shay Healy, Dana, Christy Moore, Julian on Friday, Oliver Cromwell, former football manager Eoin Hand and behemoth Commitments star Andrew Strong.

4 - The writer must use some Irish colloquialisms such as ‘Bejaysus’, ‘begorrah’, ‘tooralooraloorlay’, geddusapint’ and ‘Feck off ya cunt.’

5 - Given a choice between an insipid European or American lager and a delicious pint of Dublin’s finest export the blogger must always choose Guinness if they are to be considered Irish.

6 - The type of food the blogger chooses to eat on the way home from the pub is a defining factor here. Anything other than a single of chips and a battered sausage or spice burger will immediately rule them out of the Irish category. Choosing curry for example would make them English, take away haggis would make them a Scottish blogger while roasting a wild boar in the forest with their enormously strong sidekick would make them a Gaul blogger.

7 - Obvious amount of green would immediately disqualify the blogger from being Irish in the same way that wearing an Aran jumper and taking pictures of the Molly Malone statue make ‘Irish-American’ tourists not Irish at all, at all.

8 - Owning any U2 album before The Joshua Tree came out is a qualifier. If the blogger has ever sung ‘Don’t forget your shovel’ by Christy Moore then they cannot be included for reasons of public safety and utter bollickery.

9 - Nothern Irish bloggers can be included if they do something good and interesting but if they are boring or offensive (in a bad way) then they must be considered UK bloggers. This is the ‘Reverse McGuigan ruling’ based on boxer Barry McGuigan who was considered ‘British’ by UK media when he was world champion but immediately became Irish when he lost his title.

10 - If the blogger is abroad but of Irish nationality he or she can only be considered if they talk publicly of Ireland’s verdant hills, whisper softly of the rainy days and speak fondly of the ‘craic’ and the wit of the people but privately moan about the weather, the immigrants, the traffic, the price of a pint and give out shite about the begrudgers and feckless thieves in government.

Using these criteria should now make it easy for anyone to classify their blog as Irish or not. This is the word of the Lord Twenty.

irishblog

Get a notebook, Twenty

by Twenty Major on March 4th, 2005

So yesterday evening, after a couple of beers, inspiration hit me. I thought of something for today’s blog that was not only topical, current and cutting edge - I’m not afraid to say it was probably one of the top 5 jokes of all time.

This was something that would have had you laughing all day. The sheer wit and genius of it would have made my name far and wide. Forget Oscar Wilde, forget Stephen Fry, forget Quentin Crisp and other top heterosexual wags, this would have put them all to shame.

‘Such perspicacity’, people would have exclaimed.

‘Where has this sagacious highbrow been all our lives?’ others might vociferate.

‘I don’t get it,’ giant-hootered model Jordan would have bellowed.

TV shows, book deals, my own radio station, perhaps an island or two - all these things were sure to follow as I dazzled all and sundry with those two lines. The two lines that this morning TOTALLY AND UTTERLY ESCAPE ME.

Not only do I not remember them I don’t even have a vague idea of what the subject matter was. It’s like the time Jimmy the Bollix was working as a bouncer in a Leeson Street club and some lad ‘forgot’ that he couldn’t go around groping the girls working there. Jimmy reminded him in the face a number of times and the young lad remembered all of a sudden.

So what to do? Do I give up now and accept that it’s gone? Do I try all day to remember and surely drive myself to the brink of insanity? Do I go about my normal business and hope it just flashes back into my head? And what if I do remember? After the hyperbole, the build-up, the grandstanding I’ve given it here even if I do remember it’s bound to fall flat if I do post it.

No! Its quality will stand-up to such embellishment and froufrou. Perhaps I need a beer. Beer made me forget. Beer will help me remember.

It is a bit early but it is Friday after all…anyone else fancy one?

Oswald Cahillpot

by Twenty Major on March 3rd, 2005

I can’t have been the only one who saw the picture of Martin Cahill’s son in today’s paper and thought this:

It’s uncanny, isn’t it? I think the police should be on the look out for anyone ordering parts to make a giant, driveable duck and if he runs for mayor we’re well and truly fucked without Bruce Wayne.

For those of you who don’t know Martin Cahill was probably the most famous Dublin criminal of all time. He pulled off a series of top robberies, lived in a massive house in a very posh Dublin suburb, wore Mickey Mouse underpants on his head outside of court and then got shot to death almost 10 years ago by the IRA.

They made some films about him too. One, which I think starred Brendan Gleeson, was quite good, but the other starring Kevin Spacey was one of the worst films ever made but apparently Spacey had a fine time walking his dog around Herbert Park at 4am each morning.

Anyway, be careful of Cahill Jr. He and his flightless black and white army will be coming to a neighbourhood near you, soon.

Guessing game - Father Vincent Mercer child abuser

by Twenty Major on March 2nd, 2005

You are a priest and a headmaster at a school. You prowl the domitories of the first year boys and sexually abuse six boys. You abuse another two boys on a holiday camp in Cork. You use your position of power to intimidate the boys into silence telling one that his father would lose his job if he told anyone.

As well as that you have previously been found guilty of four counts of sexual abuse on a 13 year old boy and you have spent 6 months in prison.

Now you’re in court and you face sentencing for what the judge calls a “reign of terror”. Do you:

a:Get a lengthy spell in jail as punishment for your crimes, or:

b: Get off with a 6 month suspended sentence?

If you chose b then you go straight to ‘GO’, you can collect €200, you can forget about the boys you touched up and you can live with your priest chums in a nice house, with heating, square meals, TV and all other mod-cons.

It’s a fucking joke, this country. The judge said he didn’t give Father Vincent Mercer (free registration required for link) a futher jail sentence because he’d already served 6 months for a similar offence. Amazing. By that rationale I can kill someone, get out of jail (some time later, of course) then kill someone again and the judge will let me off because I’ve already done time for killing someone. Can I spend time in jail for robbery then feel free to rob again any time I like because I’ve been punished before for the same crime? Can I fuck, so why is this cunt being let away with it?

These child abuse cases are being treated more frivolously than people who don’t have TV licences. The judges are way too soft on these fuckers. I’ve made my feelings clear on these cunts before. They treat sexual abuse like it was some kind of national pastime that was okay back in the day but not quite as acceptable now.

They make me sick. The dirty old bastards who have carried out this abuse for years, the religious orders that shield them and move them around knowing fine well they’re just dumping the problem elsewhere and the fucking arsehole bastard cuntfaced shitbag pissdrinking wanker ‘judges’ whose job it is to dispense justice yet fail time and time again to do so.

I hope they all get cancer of the bollocks. And the spine.

The Pope, Roy Keane and Brian McFadden

by Twenty Major on March 1st, 2005

He’s been sick for ages now with flus, colds, chest infections and breathing problems.

So why do they keep sitting him in open windows? He’ll catch his death.

Roy Keane - well done to him for putting some manners on a spotty little oik. The youth of today are so quick to run their mouths off at any opportunity it’s about time somebody put an end to it, and who better than a pyschotic footballer? It would be a travesty if Keane faced jail time for what he did. Who amongst us hasn’t wanted to clobber a youngster when they think they’re so grown-up and brave?

It reminds me of the time my traveller killing buddy, Stinking Pete, had to take a young scout to task for his rudeness. He’d been sitting at home when the doorbell rang and when he answered it there stood before him a young boy scout, resplendent in his uniform with kneckerchief and woggle, who asked him “Bob-a-job, sir?”

Now if you’ve ever been in Stinking Pete’s house you’ll know there are plenty of jobs that need doing. The back garden is still full of ostrich shite (he had a get rich quick scheme in which he tried to sell ostrich eggs - his pitch was ‘Why buy a dozen chicken eggs when just one ostrich one will do’. It didn’t work and he ended up drowning the birds in his coal bunker), it could certainly do with a lick of paint and the front lawn hasn’t been mowed in about 3 years. It’s like the Vietnamese jungle except with less rifle-wielding gooks.

So Pete got the youngster to clean out his gutters, again this is something that hadn’t been done for an age. He gave him a ladder, a pair of Marigold rubber gloves and a chisel to scrape out the really hard bits. Four hours later the scout called back to the door. “Your gutters are now the cleanest in the entire neighbourhood,’ he said. “Now, recompense for my hard work would be greatly appreciated.”

“Of course,” said Stinking Pete. “Hold on one moment whilst I go inside and get it for you.”

Just a few moments later he emerged. “Here you go, young man. Here’s the partially decomposed skull of former reggae music singer Bob Marley. Don’t tell anyone where you got it though!”

As he was closing the door, feeling good about his transaction, he heard the young scout mutter “What the fuck is this? Mad old cunt.”

They never did find that scout’s body and I have Bob Marley’s skull over my fireplace with an apple it its mouth. True.

Finally a word to the audience at the Meteor music awards last Friday. I’m told that when Brian McFadden came onstage (dirty pup, he’s insatiable) he was roundly booed. Afterwards McFadden remarked that he was fed up with Ireland, he was moving to Australia and never coming back. What a cry-baby, lump of old shite he is, but well done teenagers at the awards. You’ve done in 20 seconds what it would have taken me months of threatening phone calls, anonymous emails and stalking to achieve.