K8 the GR8

My poor kid’s going to be severely traumatized when she grows up and sees these, but hey, by the looks of it she’s pretty traumatised as it is already.

Go on… this should be as easy as swatting a fly with a Buick.

My new bloggybuddy Camron at Plenipotentiary left a comment on my last post:

I need to have my chimney swept, and don’t want to fork over the $75. Is this something you could teach me? (Online learning is all the rage now…) You could do a “How To�? post.

HOW TO CLEAN A CHIMNEY THE LAZY WAY

Difficulty: None, really.

What you need:

1 monkey
1 chimney cleaning brush and about 8 screw-on poles (depending on the height of your gaff), bought from DIY shop.
1 large sheet
1 empty coal sack or tarp/plastic sheeting
1 bucket
1 small shovel
Roll of Duck tape and scissors or knife
1 apron
Dust mask and goggles if you want to be extra cautious.
1 torch

Got everything? Then we’ll begin.

- Send the monkey out to the kitchen to cook up an Irish fry, which should be ready by the time you’re finished.

- Clear the fireplace of ash and debris, remove the grate and fire guard.

- Clear the area around the fireplace, and lay the sheet so that it covers as much of the hearth and surrounding floor as possible. Use duck tape to stick the edge of the sheet to the front of the fireplace. This ensures that sheet won’t slip and that soot won’t get underneath.

- Cover the front of the fireplace with the empty coal sack, leaving a loose gap underneath. Use duck-tape to keep the bag in place, but give yourself enough slack to be able to lift the sack to investigate the chimney flue.

- Use your torch to find the damper (if you have one), it’s usually just inside the chimney as you look up, and open it to allow air to flow freely through the flue.

- Connect the brush head to a pole, and shove it up the chimney. Jimmy it around to get the immediate soot out.

- The next bit is tricky. You need to connect another length of pole (twist her tight, you don’t want it to come undone halfway up…), then manoever the brush through the narrow part at the top of the firebox. You might need a torch to check for progress.

- From here on in, all you’re doing is connecting each pole length by length as you push the brush further up the chimney. When you run out of poles, or hit serious resistance, you can probably bet you’re near the top. Depending on the type of chimney stack you have, you might not want to push the brush all the way to the outside, either way I don’t think it really matters as most of the creosote should be brushed away by now. There’s nothing wrong with half-assed, anyway.

- Reverse the process, pulling the poles out and disconnecting them as you go. Do this carefully as you’ll be pulling an avalanche of soot into the grate, especially when the brush arrives back. Wrap the brush and poles and put them out of your way, then scoop the soot into a bucket. Brush any remaining blackness onto your sheet, unstick it, and bring it outside for a good shake.

- Done!

- Go and eat your fry-up, pet your monkey, and go have a shower.

We had a total kick in the nuts, today, careerwise.

We’ve been planning to operate a taxi business between the two of us, using our wheelchair-adapted family car. There are sod all wheelchair accessible taxis out there in Wicklow, so we would be in high demand - excellent! Also because there is such a need for these taxis, the gub’ment makes buying disabled taxi plates very very cheap and easy. We paid €270-something for the hardware, instead of the €6,500 a regular taxi driver would have to pay for his bumphf. Nice.

Nice except for that devil in those details…

Nobody told us we’d need to supply a wheelchair entrance and a seperate exit from the car! How bloody big would one’s car have to be? Everything else is tickety-boo, other than this tiny point. I almost took a tin-opener to the roof of the darn vehicle I was that pissed off.

Now we have to apply for a refund, sacrifice 50 squids for administration costs, then fork out the original six and a half grand!!! Sod that for a game of soldiers. We will just have to go Hackney until we earn that sort of cash. I hate Hackney. It’s so limited.

*bah*

I would have lost all faith in today if it weren’t for my chimney cleaning endeavours. Yep! I can add soot clearage to my C.V. now. I didn’t recarpet the sittingroom with creosote, didn’t snap the brush half way up, didn’t even get my jeans dirty!!! I’m so glad I watched Dad do this dirty deed so many years ago. I think it’s thanks to him that my skills are so versatile. It’s a talented person that can both re-wire a television and knit an aran cardigan without being branded a big Jessie. Not that I’d ever try and re-wire a television set, but I could sure as hell knit one…

Those leaflet racks in hospital waiting areas are always good for a laugh.

I’ve been using this one ‘info’ postcard as a bookmark for a few weeks now because it always makes me smile. It seems to be one of a set of information cards made by the Health Promotion Unit, to try to educate the public on the various types of drugs you can get out there. This one is for Magic Mushrooms.

The gas thing is, I’m afraid they’ve somewhat missed the mark, because this product looks damn attractive to me…

Look at the design - calm blue green aqua shades, a trippy jellyfish, the print looks mystical and inviting!

This is the science side of the card, in other words, this is all the information you need to score, and how great your buzz will be once you do;

- They give you a slang term ‘Mushies‘, so you won’t look like a knob in front of your dealer.

- If you don’t know a dealer, they tell you that they are ‘Hallucinogenic mushrooms that grow in the wild’, and they give you a picture so you can be absolutely sure what they look like when you go trapseing around in your wellies looking for them. No room for error there, so.

- ‘Users dry them and either eat them or make them into tea’. Kind instructions for naive experimenters everywhere! Sound!

- THE HIGHS: ‘In small amounts, users feel relaxed and happy.’ (that sounds lovely…) ‘In larger amounts, they experience hallucinations.’ (Pretty much like on the front cover, here… doesn’t that look tempting, children?)

- THE LOWS: ‘Hallucinations can sometimes be unpleasent and frightening.’ (still beats boredom, though…) ‘Another problem is eating poisonous mushrooms by mistake which may result in serious illness or possible death.’ (it’s ok though, because there’s a photograph here so we can double-check! Sound again!)

That’s all there is. Not very scary, is it? They should give a small case study to back up the horrors… like mine;

~:~

I had some Mushie soup once at a houseparty. While I was waiting for the giggles and hallucinations to arrive, I noticed that maggots had somehow gotten into my stomach and were chewing away at its contents. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop picturing these maggots all squirming around in there. I could even feel them.

I ran outside to a bunch of daffodils who all started screaming at me so I hurled on a patch of heather instead so as not to piss them off even further. A major fight began between the diced-carrots and the flowers which I watched with interest until the ground began to eat me and I had to move.

I went back into the house to find that the ‘Easy Rider’ soundtrack was still stuck on loop, but I couldn’t get close enough to the stereo to turn it off because all the trippy notes kept getting in the way and entangling themselves in my hair. This madness lasted a long time, with not a poxy giggle to show for it. Magic Mushrooms suck, if you ask me.

~:~

I wonder if the heroin information card has diagrams of the cardio-vascular system on it so you know what vein to aim for?

I had four hours notice to clean up the bombshell that was the after effects of our most excellent party in Casa Del Headrambles…

*phone rings*

“Yellow?”

“What are you at?”

“What’s it to you?” I kicked the dog for barking on hearing her master’s voice.

“We’re coming home” said Grandad. “There’s no point in staying any longer, it’s too expensive.”

“Mean fucker! Doesn’t your poor missus deserve the holiday?!” I implored, turning pale.

“I don’t like the staff here. They’re foreign, and I forgot my Uzi.”

Turns out Grandad got kicked out of his room for smoking, in a nutshell.

Twenty would be proud.

Will Ferrell, the big elf who starred in ‘Stranger than Fiction’, and o’ course the famous sketch The Landlord, is getting an award tonight from UCD’s Literary and Historical Society. The James Joyce Award, if you don’t mind!

When I saw this on the news, I’ve gotta say, I raised an eyebrow in confusion.

He hasn’t written anything, or done anything majorly historical, he’s just a darn funny actor worth €13.7 million per film!

I searched for more information on the superhighway, and I think I found the real reason behind it - Will’s just spent the last two weeks holidaying around Ireland! Of course… I betchya he found himself stumbling around Ranelagh one night and falling into a gang of UCD students, who of course being complete stoners, leapt on him and decided on the spot to award him the major accolade! (For the craic, fair play te ye!)

In the words of James Joyce himself;

“Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.“

Or, maybe Shane Hegarty has it sussed better;

…The (James Joyce) Award is:

a) a distinction bestowed on particularly worthy individuals whose achievements should be recognised.

b) a stunning display of flattery calculated to entice big names with big egos.

Will Ferrell - Feckin’ chancer!

I was skulking around Sixty’s blog recently, evesdropping on his comment conversations as you do, and I came across this:

“I’m not good at writing funny captions. I wish I was. I just love I Can Has Cheeseburger for that reason.”

I hadn’t heard of this ‘I can has cheeseburger’ before, but the second I heard it, I knew it would be excellent. It was like a knowledge from a past life or something. It’s cult. It’s cool. I googled it so I did…

I can has Cheezburger (Lolcats)

Medbh knows. So do most other people probably, I’m usually one of the last to notice these revolutionary sites. For those out of the loop like me, this is your one stop shop for animal pictures and grin inducing captions. They’ve also invented their own cutesey language that would normally make you cringe, but here it fits perfick!

I’ve mooched around the back pages and found these as a taster:

It’s an expensive old business, being sick.

This won’t be another rant about hospital services here in Ireland, there is plenty of material out there on the subject. This rant is about greedy fat cats making a ton of cash at the expense of sick people and their visitors.

Mothers like to spend hours on end by their childrens bedside when they are sick. Wives like to hold vigils by their husbands after operations. Friends sometimes like to drop into a sick buddy in hospital with grapes and magazines. No surprises here! What surprises me, is that some bright spark decided that there is potentially a lot of money to be made from this sort of concern that people feel for their loved ones, and have developed an empire on their pain.

For example, I’ve been trying to visit The Accidental Terrorist in a hospital near Glasnevin every day. He had an operation last Friday, and it’s expected that he won’t be kicked out for another four or five days. The easiest route for me is via the M50, over the tollbridge, all the way up to the Ballymun exit. (Have you seen Ballymun lateley?! The arsehole of Dublin has had a serious facelift, and is now Ireland’s first ‘Fair Trade’ town, whatever that means. Everything still shuts at 10pm though, so the fear is still very much alive I guess.) I then drive south to the hospital and park up.

So, that’s €4.00 for a round trip, there and back via the tollbridge alone. Seeing as I’m travelling so far, it makes sense to stay a while. If I stay for four hours, this will cost me €8.00. Four hours goes by pretty fast if you’re visiting someone you love and miss very much, but it’s all I can afford thanks to Park Rite and their like.

To visit TAT every day for six days, I face costs of at least €50. To include the tollbridge, this rises to €72. Each return journey uses almost half a tank of diesel, which brings the cost to a whopping €192!!!

I don’t mind the diesel. It’s worth it to travel to a respected and reliable surgeon. I don’t even mind the tollbridge, for the M50 is a wonderful road (seriously!) as long as you only use it between the hours of 11pm and 3am. It’s the car park charge that gets me fuming. Two euros an hour to park at a hospital?!? Scabby bastards.

I fought African lions to find the perfect choir. I practised the bongos for hours on end in the back of The Accidental Terrorist’s van. I studied Coltrane until his notes bled out of my ears and paid Santana for guitar lessons with endless twisted sexual favours, but in the end, it was totally worth it.

Here’s my CD. Dave Fanning just phoned and told me he wanted me to have his babies, which was a nice compliment. I hope they don’t overplay it too much on the radio. I hate that.