stranger than fiction

I'm still shattered from the weekend. Had my boss with me all day today and was up late last night getting ready for his visit so hope you won't mind the abbreviated version.

Oh, and a Blogger spam-bot has LOCKED my blog so this post may never see the light of day. If they delete it I'm gone. Google, there are millions of spam and commercial Adsense link blogs out there, mine is NOT one of them. Get your shit together!


Did

• get drunk
• entertain guests
• had a laugh
• convinced a client to give me £1,200,000 instead of £400,000 later this month
• drank in many, many bars
• stayed out too late
• spent lots of money
• smoked a pack of cigs (sorry Sarah, Junq)
• see Ireland inflict the worst ever defeat in England's history, 43-13

Didn't

• talk to any girls (I know!)
• fall out with my boss
• spew
• get a stingy liver the next day
• take drugs
• go to a lap dance bar

I know, I did it all wrong.

Been there, done that

Saturday sees me get the train to Dublin, where the girls are so ...well, ugly actually. Most of them. If I were a U.S. political candidate my campaign would now be over, but as I'm not and I live on this moist sod of Atlantic turf I think I can say whatever the fuck I want, within reason.

The reason for my visit isn't girls anyway, it's the Ireland vs England rugby match. For those of you with little knowledge of rugby it's what American football was based on except it's not played with cissy helmets and headgear.


Foolhardy or cheapskates, you decide. Anyway, it's arranged through work, I'm taking 2 corporate guests who get the full corporate entertainment package £400/$800 worth plus hotel drink and transport. There's no room in the budget for me to actually attend the bloody (and it will be) match so I'll have to pick a Dublin bar and watch it on t.v. through a pint of Guinness. I lived in Dublin 20 odd years ago, it's changed much, the economy has grown from a poor 2nd world economy through the "Celtic Tiger" years and is now overheating. Drink costs a fuckin' fortune, I'll get a receipt, Coke is the hedonistic high of choice, and 1 in 5 people in the city are immigrants, mostly Poles and Nigerians and it's now an Irish caricature of itself.

Regular readers will know that me, work and drink seldom (read never) go well together. I dread to think what the weekend will bring. One thing's for sure, men playing with odd shaped balls will be the least of my worries.

Snappy gifts

I have a couple of cameras. It's sounds so grand. It's not. I bought a new one a few weeks ago so now I have a "big" one to go along with my "wee" one. So, as you can see, even in my own head, that doesn't make me a photographer. I don't have the eye for it. I have an eye for spotting false breasts or for measuring cup and bra size at a glance. Different strokes....I'm just a happy snapper ....with an unusual talent for breast quantisation.
Anyway, Sarah's are lovely. Photos, that is. She has the eye, perhaps even two of them. Lucky bastard.
Photojournalists however, it's probably more about being in the right place at the right time than technique or composition. They've got to put themselves in danger quite often, but even more than that they need to have a certain type of character to allow them to detach themselves from the very inhumanity they may be recording. For that reason I couldn't do it. I was reminded of that fact when I ended up on a web page recently for competition winning photos and the subject matter for the one that started me thinking is linked below.

If you're easily offended don't click here.

P.S. the photo at the top, anyone want to guess?

If only I'd thought of this....

Funny what you come across on the interweb.

I particularly like January 7th.

Do you have a favourite?

changes

Does anyone really enjoy Valentine's day? I don't. I'm not sure I can say I've ever actually enjoyed it so I suppose I'm ambivolent. I got my first Valentine card when I was about 12 or 13 in school. It was sent to me in sympathy because 2 of the most fanciable girls in class had heard me saying I'd never received one.

When I think back that was the start of my insecurities. I felt pretty ordinary, perhaps less than ordinary and certainly lacking in confidence. I can't remember if I got another Valentine card at school, I suppose I must have but I know I didn't have a girlfriend in any way until I was about 17. Self-assured I was not. For years after I struggled to think well of myself, still do.

Isn't it funny how we can allow ourselves to be mentally neutered and how this can stretch out over years of our lives affecting all our important interactions.

I never received a card today. I'm quite happy about that.
So some things don't change. Happily, other things do.




me, now 43. with my specs on. (fretting about focus hence the dour bake)

3, 2, 1 ...go

So this is the first post under the new private-ish regime. I took the decision I didn't want people who knew me reading this blog. Well, not personally. You know , in the web sense. So not strangers in the traditional sense, not friends in the conventional sense. That's probably the strangest thing about blogging, that sense that you know or are known but at the same time balanced with anonymity. If you're one of the original invitees however you're here because what you write interests me in some way. So, welcome! Again, that is. To begin with you're very small in number but that might not necessarily stay that way as you'll see below.

There's things I can't say here in case someone from real life or business accidentally stumbles upon it. My stat-counter shows me pages where some have come from and it's all getting a bit too close to home.

Good ol' Blogger gives us "author only" or "invitees only" as the two privacy options. Being the awkward bastard that I am that's not going to be enough. Therefore I'm inventing a third privacy option that you will be complicit in.

If you think someone you know (in the web or personal sense) might be interested in reading this blog then just drop their email addy to tinyworldreview@googlemail.com and I'll send out an invite.

So, in a way it'll be a private blog but growing, not so much virally, nor even mouldily, more Arctic lichen-y.

Option 3 then. Clear as mud?


I'll link to this post in the sidebar for any newcomers there might be and post something more newsworthy later in the week when you've had time to log in and all. In the meantime all my posts have been migrated over from the old Spaces blog (sans comments) and categorised so feel free to leaf through my archives.

notice to readers

I'm going to make this blog private but grant access to those who want to read it.

You'll need to leave your email address (I think it must be a Gmail one) so that you can view it.

If you don't have a Gmail account and want one just email me at the email address contained within my Blogger profile.

drugged