So, this whole book thing

by Twenty Major on March 22nd, 2007

As Sinead revealed last night I have signed a two book deal with Hodder Headline Ireland.

That means I’ll write two books and they will publish them and you, if you so choose, can buy them and read them. It’s revolutionary in its groundbreakingosity.

What is the first book about? Well, plot details are vague at this moment in time but it will contain many words put together in sequence to form sentences and paragraphs which will combine to tell a story in chronological order (although I’m not ruling out flashbacks). The press release says:

His two-book deal will see a major expansion in the escapades of Twenty and his pals Jimmy the Bollix, Stinking Pete, Ron the Barman, Splodge, Lucky Luciano and Dirty Dave, as they wind their way around Dublin’s backstreets as they try to find out who killed their friend Jim of Vinyl Records. Music, films, television and books will all be parodied and nothing is sacred in this irreverent look at modern Dublin.

I can assure you that some of the action will take place on Dublin’s main streets too, such as Nassau Street, Westmoreland Street, Parnell Street and Capel Street*

So there you go. That’s what’s happening. It should all be a right good laugh and the great thing is that - unless TV, books and movies have been lying to me all along - real writers are allowed drink as much as they want whenever they want.

Mmmmm, for breakfast I can have cornflakes with vodka instead of milk and I can gargle with creme de menthe instead of Listerine. This is going to be awesome.

Sadly this is not going to be the cover - with thanks to Gerry.

* I reserve the right to use different streets and perhaps even a road or avenue or two.

Update: I should point out that the book, although it features characters from the blog and may reference one or two favourite themes, will not be rehashing old blog stories and the blog itself will continue as normal.

Bertie is a traffic jamming cunt

by Twenty Major on March 22nd, 2007

Isn’t Bertie a cheeky chappy? Today, in the Dail, questions were asked why a failed sensor and two minor accidents brought traffic in Dublin to a standstill.

Bertie says “Well, I’m very sorry that a van crashed into a lorry. I wasn’t driving!”

Honestly, he’s the most belligerent, smart-mouthed, impudent little cunt I’ve ever seen. How some of the other politicians have stopped themselves going over and giving him a smack is beyond me.

“Taoiseach, twenty-three senior citizens have died in hospital waiting rooms in the last three days”.

“Well, I wasn’t the one who gave birth to them in the 1920s and 30s, was I?”

“Seventeen people have been shot dead in Dublin city this last week alone, Taoiseach. It’s unacceptable.”

“Pardon me for breathing but did I invent the gun?”

“The price of a house these days is forcing young people out of the housing market”.

“Weren’t people happy enough living in caves not so long ago? They should be thankful for what they’ve got!”

It’s like the time that loophole in the law was exposed and that fella was released from jail for raping a 12 year old and Bertie stood there with his hands in his pockets like a schoolboy who knew he had to pretend to listen to the teacher give out to him but in reality he didn’t give a fuck.

I mean, nobody said he was responsible for the van driving into the lorry or whatever the fuck happened, just that he and his witless clit of a transport minister are the ones who should hold their hands up and take the blame when two minor accidents and a faulty sensor in the port tunnel grind the city’s traffic to a halt.

It’d almost make you run in the next election so you could gain a seat in the house and then whenever he gave a smart arsed answer to something you could run up and punch him in the bollix.

Almost.

Dublin the most dangerous city in Europe

by Twenty Major on March 21st, 2007

Listening to the radio yesterday morning I was surprised to hear a new statistic: You’re more likely to be killed in Dublin than any other European city.

Obviously the hordes of gun-toting, LA Gangsta wannabes are bumping up the numbers, and as I’ve said before I couldn’t care less if they kill each other all day long, but it was interesting to hear some Fianna Fail guy say that while the government were making great inroads into all the criminality that surrounds us, ‘crime wasn’t falling as fast as they would like’.

Now, if previous to this statistic Dublin wasn’t the most likely city in Europe to meet your maker then I would respectfully suggest that crime isn’t really falling at all, so much as escalating. In that sense I can very much understand the government’s frustration at the rate of falling. Negative falling, I think it’s called. Maybe they can use that in their election campaign. Crime is falling negatively.

In fact, it might spark a whole series of double negative electioneering.

Reverse extra pay for nurses!

We’ll be contrarily tough on gun crime!

Thousands more manufacturing jobs vetoed!

It is a worry though. Statistics are easily written off and ignored but it’s you and I that make up those statistics. We’re the ones most likely to get killed living here not the government ministers in their reinforced cars. If the radio had said “Dublin is the place where you’re more likely to be killed that any other city…if you’re a politician” then I really wouldn’t have too many objections.

Like drug dealers and all the rest there’s always another shite-talking cunt to come along and take their place.

So what can we do? One school of thought says we should learn self-defence in case you’re attacked, keep a baseball bat under the bat and cave in the head of anyone that breaks into your house or hire private security firms to protect you and your family. That’s rather passive though, isn’t it?

The more proactive way would be to get them before they get you. The main problem with that is that you don’t know who exactly is going to get you but if you go on a spree then the law of averages says you’re bound to hit paydirt sometime. So let’s all go out and try and kill someone today. Eventually someone’s going to get you so you might as well knock off as many potential enemies as you can first.

With so many dead it’d make house prices cheaper too.

Win an iPod shuffle

by Twenty Major on March 20th, 2007

Seriously, Frank from Bifsniff is looking for captions. Go here to enter.  Here’s mine:

Ireland is like Crowded House

by Twenty Major on March 20th, 2007

Global warming is a myth, isn’t it? t certainly is if the last few days have been anything to go by. Cold, hail, sleet, snow and it’s the middle of March. If global warming was real then surely we’d be having warmer weather as we got closer to summer, not colder.

Perhaps it’s just a case that global warming, if it does exist, won’t affect Ireland at all. While the UK might become an arid, dusty desert with summer temperatures similar to the south of Spain, Ireland will retain it’s temperate climate with overcast, rainy days the norm.

Let’s face it, you could stick a large outboard motor on our country, drive the land mass over to the Caribbean and we’d still have grey, miserable weather most of the time. Everywhere we go, we always take the weather with us.

I prefer hot weather, I have to say. I like walking outside and getting a blast of heat. I like to walk about my house in just my underpants with only an endless supply of beer to keep me cool. I feel that this kind of weather should be my consitutional right.

The Fianna Fail candidate who come to the door the other week thought I was joking when I asked him to do something about it and the Green Party was positively shocked when I said I was going to incinerate as much fossil fuel as I could to bring about warmer weather. Last week I burnt 650 tons of coal and oil and now it’s fucking freezing. The whole thing is a swizz, if you ask me.

There are thousands and thousands of people who make their living from going around telling everyone that global warming is real and that we should be scared and that we’re all going to drown but none of the cunts ever have anything to say when the weather’s like this, do they?

Let them fuck off and build their arks or whatever the fuck they want to do. I’ll sit here and hope we get a couple of days this summer above 20C.

Oh few quiet pints

by Twenty Major on March 19th, 2007

Well, that was the plan when we headed into Ron’s on Saturday afternoon. However, some kind of strange pub crawl began and ended last night at around 11.30. Some highlights:

• A very tall man who looks like a sheep with his face painted green, white and orange telling me a very intense story or perhaps a story very intensely. I have no idea what that story was about.
• Some young lad clipping Jimmy the Bollix around the ear because he didn’t like the way Jimmy told some annoying girl to ‘go away’. This was swiftly followed by Jimmy introducing the young lad’s face to  a wall. Repeatedly.
• Dirty Dave snogging a bag lady on Talbot Street
• Stinking Pete punching a police horse in the face and running off before they could come after him
• Lucky Luciano walking past a hotel door, waving at the bloke on the front desk (it was 5am) then pressing his buttocks up against the glass and showing his Italian brown-eye
• A Polish taxi driver called Damien who, under repeated question from Dirty Dave who insisted on excitedly calling him ‘Cabbie’ and putting his hand up like he was in school every time he asked a question, decided he’d rather fuck Sharon Osbourne than Kelly Osbourne.
• Jimmy the Bollix doing his impression of the Jedi mind trick - “These are not the droids you’re lucking for” - in a place where we stopped to get chicken and jalepeno pepper sandwiches. “We have already paid for these sandwiches”, he said. They said “Ok” and off we went without paying.
• Walking into a packed bar on Camden Street only for a table to become free just as we got to it. We took this as a sign that we needed to drink lots of drinks there.
• Not being able, some time early on Sunday morning, to block out all the light from outside as we sat in Jimmy’s sitting room drinking Jamesons and smoking Cohibas. Light at that stage was scary and bad.
• Sitting looking at a plate with food piled as high as Everest on Sunday afternoon in a carvery somewhere and not being able to eat any of it.

There were some low-lights too but thankfully I’ve managed to block them out. Apart from that incident on Chatham Street when *I SAID I’VE BLOCK THEM OUT. LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA….*

Who?

by Twenty Major on March 16th, 2007

Popped into Ron’s for a lunchtime pint.

“Here, someone was looking for you earlier”, said Stinking Pete who’d been there since opening time and thought it was actually St Patrick’s Day.

“Yeah? It wasn’t some intrepid reporter with a spiral notebook and a stubby pencil, was it?”

“Nah. He didn’t say who he was. He just said Hoddle wanted to talk to you?”

“Hoddle? What the fuck would former Spurs and England coach Glenn Hoddle want with me?”

“Fucked if I know. I wasn’t really listening to him anyway.”

Perhaps he wants to let that faith healing lady lay hands upon me. I’m not one for violence but I would certainly have to break her wrist if she touched me. I don’t like to be touched.

Is it something we said?

by Twenty Major on March 16th, 2007

Why do all our most respected and top politicians always fuck off somewhere else to ‘celebrate’ Paddy’s day?

No scams here

by Twenty Major on March 16th, 2007

“Here, Twenty”, said Dirty Dave, “I got one of them emails yesterday saying I’d get $32,856,466 from some African dictator who died and I’ll I had to do was send $3,000 in unmarked bills to a bloke in the sub-sahara.”

“I hope you deleted it.”

“Of course I did. I’m not fucking thick you know.”

I had the good grace not to correct him.

“And then didn’t I go out and take some money out of the bank and there was this Nigerian lad standing over me at the ATM with a machine trying to capture my pin number so I says ‘Get the fuck out of that you, you cunt and take your Sealesque pockmarked face away from me before I plant my fucking shoe in it’.”

“Good man.”

“Then, this beggar comes up to me with a note about how her life is so hard and she has 19 children and they all need to eat so I says ‘Well, if you’ve had 19 children your gee must be absolutely ruined and the few coins I give you won’t make the slightest bit of difference’, and I walked off home.”

“Very impressive.”

“So, I went back home and there was this thing that came through the door which said I’d won a holiday to America and I’ll I had to do to claim the holiday was ring a premium rate phone number and give all my details and I figured if I rang up it’d be some cunt going ‘Wel….come. To … … … the … … … phone … … … num … … ber … to … … … win … the … hol … … … … … i … … … … day’ and I chucked the thing away.”

“Fair play to you.”

“And after that I went out and I passed by the bookies and who did I see outside but Johnny the Jockey.”

Johnny the Jockey is a little short arsed prick who used to be a jockey. In donkey races. He was always too pissed to stay on a real horse. Thinks he knows everything about the horse racing game.

“Oh aye?”

“Yeah! And he gave me a tip for the 3.15 at Cheltenham yesterday. Said it was a sure thing. Not a chance of it losing.”

“But, you obviously told him to stick his tip up his hole (if you’ll pardon the imagery that conjours), right?”

“Nah, put €2,000 on it.”

“And it lost, right?”

“Yes, in the sense that it came in first!”

“Fucking hell, you must have won a packet.”

“I did. And I went shopping. Put the whole thing into bear bonds.”

“You mean bearer bonds?”

“No, bear bonds. That’s what he said.”

Dave can now cash his horse racing winnings in for the equivalent value of kodiak bears.

Good for you, Tescos

by Twenty Major on March 15th, 2007

So the supermarket chain decides to do a promotion - buy 12 cans of beer and you get another 12 cans free. Sounds fair enough.

You can do these promotions with anything. Dog food, sometimes I get a buy one, get one free offer for the food for Bastardface. Orange juice, buy two cartons and get one free. Shampoos, razor blades, chicken fillets, bananas, tins of soup, bottles of wine and pretty much any fucking thing has been on special offer in the country’s supermarkets in the last month.

However, it seems beer is different. Why is that I wonder? Well, look at this quote:

Promotions such as this serve only to bring the industry and the products into disrepute.

Who could possibly have such a conscientious objection? Alcoholics Anonymous? Mothers against Booze? Other supermarket chains? My arse. It’s our old friends the vintners.

Yes, the same people who constantly put up the price of a pint for no good reason whatsoever other than to line their own pockets. The same people who actually wanted the government to subsidise publicans in rural areas after a clamp down on drink driving meant their customers were afraid to drive home drunk.

These cunts have the temerity to say supermarket promotions ‘bring the industry and products into disrepute’ when they have done more than anyone to ensure the drinking culture in Ireland remains third world. When McDowell spoke about introducting ‘cafe bar’ licences which meant alcoholic beverages could be sold outside of pubs the vintners lobbied their TD mates and ensured the changes to the legislation never came into place.

So, while they want everything done on their terms and to protect their members, they don’t really give a fuck about the industry or the products. They want to make sure their cosy cartel keeps as much power as possible. They must hate the off-licences now. Really hate them.

I mean, how can they possibly justify charging €4 for a bottle of beer when I can get 10 of those bottles in the off-licence for €10?

Stupid cunts. Well done, Tesco. Tell them to stick their objections up their fucking holes and keep selling the cheap beer.