Thing 116 Put Something on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeuJ5Q8m7yg

There it is. Me getting the wax job from yesterday done. It's long, and I think maybe too long for the funniness to last. If it was me watching and you getting waxed, I'd probably be bored before the end - not because you're boring, but because my attention span is short. Like most people on YouTube.

There are pros and there are cons to most things in life- YouTube is no different. Pros include; free music, social interaction, greater exposure to new music and new talent, laughing at stupidity and Flight of the Concords.

Cons include Justin Bieber, people trying to drive up their hit count by sticking "Megan Fox sex scene" in the title. She's not that flaming hot anyway. I'm not saying she's bad looking, but she's not that hot.

And of course, the worst thing about YouTube. The worst possible thing, that's almost makes the whole thing worth shutting down. The commentary.

It's almost as though anyone with half a brain doesn't even see the comments section, but it's a bright neon sign for every tool and moron with a laptop and an index finger. The drivel... the stupidity. It depresses me slightly...

But I digress... it's still a most excellent site. Ever played YouTube game? I'm assuming the answer is no, even though it may not be. Six or seven people in a room, one by one, everyone gets to choose a video to play. If you're having a few beers, music is probably the way to go, if not, anything counts, and everyone gets a turn. Fun game. Pony Boy's obsessed with it.

So I had to do it for The Project. Ideally I'd like to have done something clever and witty. Something that would make people laugh, but that took some creativity to organise. Instead I just ripped the video that Aidin from Today FM put together for me, and jammed it onto the interweb. Hope it amuses you.

By the by, I got to thinking about the awesomeness of YouTube and kind of put together a little list of favourites. The links are all here. I hope you get a laugh out of it...

Terrible Terry Tate the Office Linebacker, from the old Adidas ads in the USofA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU1jra7RKCQ

John Lajoie the comedian raps his finest white rhymes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PsnxDQvQpw

I know this is cruel, but I can't stop laughing, and the remix is excellent... cyber police, hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUAn_dHMnbs

Flight of the Concords. Had to be at least one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY8jaGs7xJ0

This is horrendously cruel... you're going to think I'm a bad person, but it's too funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MD6Cx0qzRA

Cyanide and Happiness can do no wrong...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tpCRBgs-LE

I know they've got more popular songs, but this is my favourite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBT4ZWy6Lm4

Jim Breuer talking about the party in the stomach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g0AJPqKybs

I want to put more up here. We could actually do this all night. But I've got bed to hit... Now to sit back and wait to become a YouTube sensation...

Thing 115 Brazilian Wax

I love how salons do this advertising. Nice smooth feminine leg, comfy looking white towels, gentle manicured hands on a waxing strip that looks like it's made of clouds and happiness. Imagine the hands are a man's hands and the leg being waxed is my sweaty man-bits, and now picture searing pain on those man bits. This is the difference between reality and advertising.

Analytics tells me I have six regular readers in Minnesota, so for their benefit - Ray Darcy is the presenter of a national radio show on weekday mornings. He's also, along with Siobhan and the rest of his team, been an absolute legend for helping me to organise and execute some of the Things on the list.

So now imagine the waxing on national radio. With the swearing and the sadism and the man filming me while someone I don't know handles my junk. Honestly, I don't like people seeing me change before a swim. I think that letting someone else touch my bits was probably as big a deal as letting them rip out the hairs downstairs was.

The women of the country listening all broke themselves laughing while the men all cringed in unison. Thousands of women all knowing the pain better than any man, listening to me scream my way through ten minutes or so of ripping agony. Thousands of blokes all cringing on my behalf, and being relieved it's not them. Thanks for the empathy fellas. Don't ever do it. I'm not kidding.

So now I'm sitting on my ass, and my junk feels weird.

Male grooming is important. Not in any major way, but considering the amount of effort the ladies make, it's the least we can do. Bit more attention with the razor. Splash out on some fancy aftershave. Gel or mousse or something for the hair, as I say it's the least we can do.

I draw the line at waxing. There are some things that can and should remain undone for men. Unless you can do it painlessly - I've heard rumours of a technique which doesn't involve strips. Apparently Wax Works in Limerick does it. I'm not sure I'd be able for it again though...

Apparently I draw the line at my speedo-line...

Thing 114 Contact My Spirit Guide

What a spirit wolf looks like.
What an actual wolf looks like.

So my spirit guide is: A rabbit, a magpie, a badger and... a wolf.

Cliché or what. A wolf. I imagine there are fifty million* (*not a real guess) people out there that think that their spirit guide is a wolf. The reason for this is that no one wants a stoat to be their spiritual animal. Nor does anyone wish that the platypus is the creature that spiritually guides their steps. Nope. People want a noble animal that's wise and clever and is cool and edgy at the same time. The wolf fits the bill. No one ever stops to consider the snarling, drooling, ravaging beast aspect of the wolf personality. Just the cool bits they like. I'm cool with that though - it's clearly what I've done.

People like me, who don't believe in the relevance or possibility of a spirit animal, when asked to pick a spirit guide, even for a hypothetical game, will choose something cool. No one ever says cow, or ferret, or hippopotamus. Even the most skeptical people in the world, will sooner say fox or eagle than chinchilla or quail.

Tiny Fairy will kick my ass when she reads this - which is no mean feat, she's less than five feet tall, and weighs all of six stone. Bu she firmly believes in the spiritual and other-worldly junk that I think is... well, junk.

A guy with a PHD (which means he must be right eh?) called Steven Farmer wrote a book, which I went all the way out of my way to buy, called Animal Spirit Guides. It details the types of animals characteristics' that apply to your spirit guide. If you had a dream about a bull, then heard someone mentioning a bull in a conversation, and then turned on a tv show about bulls, it means that Bull spirit guide is trying to contact you. According to Dr Farmer (which sounds, ridiculously like two titles instead of a name), this means that: "This is a very fertile and dynamic time, so allow yourself to indulge in any creative projects you've been considering".

If you've been considering a creative project, I advise you to indulge the hell out of it right now and be damned with the "bull".

But this doesn't mean he's your spirit guide. For that you'll need forty minutes, a flat surface to lie on, a "crown chakra" which is up to you to find, and a healthy dose of suspended disbelief. I had all of those things. Hell, I've got barrels of suspended disbelief. I even like Nicolas Cage movies.

Lie on your back. Imagine your chakra swelling with inspirational white light... stop judging yourself for being stupid... allow the light to feed your body... continue trying not to feel like a twat... now step into the blackness in your eyelids. Yep. Step right in there. One foot at a time. Stop thinking about how stupid this is and step into the blackness of your eyelids. You there? Good.

Now you're faced with a door. Obviously. Behind the blackness of your eyelids there's always a door. Open it. Now there's a path. Well what else were you expecting? On the path is your spirit guide...

I'm so daft that this life has chosen four different animals to protect my spiritual path. One for everyone else, but the clown with the melon head gets four. I tried the spiritual journey, and for all my mockery, it was very, very relaxing. And sure enough at the end of it there was a badger, a wolf, a rabbit and a magpie. Apparently I need some proper spiritual babysitting.

Sitting right on the path, and judging the crap out of me were four animals. All of them small. I immediately considered kicking my own ass for even trying this Thing, but I surprisingly found myself enjoying sharing an awkward moment with four spiritual animals on an imaginary path behind my eyelids. Not often you meet anyone down that old road, but four animals at once...

I know I've spent the whole of this blog ripping the piss, but I'm actually glad I did it. I'm really pleased with it for a finish. And according to Farmer Doctor or whatever he's called, these seem like a pretty sharp combo of spiritual guides. They're attributes in the spiritual world pretty much cover all my bases. Thanks guys.

I think I've done pretty well for myself.

Thing 113 Tweet

First and foremost: here's the Twitter account: http://twitter.com/theproject366

Right, I'm not about to make this my new "don't swear for a day" (for further information see the eighteen pitiful attempts at not using foul language, which apparently I can't shut up about), but there's no way I'm not trying to start a fire from scratch again. I need another shot. It's the manliest thing in the entire world. Fire. Oh yeah. Oops. Starting to sound crazy...

So anyway... couldn't start the fire from scratch. Myself and The Frenchman are blaming the materials. Our technique was perfect. It's a straightforward job; block of wood for base with some tinder, top block to stop wood-burn on your hand, slim post in between the two, entwined with a fire-bow. It's a bent piece of wood with some string in the middle. Hard to explain, just look at the pictures down at the bottom. It's there.

So, our technique was fine, our building was grand, but the material let us down. We could smell burning, but nothing took hold. Fail. Nearly decided to set something on fire out of spite. Which i guess is probably not a good attitude... If I set everything on fire that annoyed me, the Token Northy would be toast by now.
So I'm going again. I will achieve. I will set fire to some stuff. It'll be manly. I'll be tough and cool and things. The people required weren't here though. Big Mac can set fire to things with some blue tac, a paper clip, half a straw and a day old copy of Ireland's Own. The Canuck can set fire to logs with his eyes. All I had was a damn Token Northy, Pony Boy and The Frenchman. Pixie Head was there too. She'd have been more use except that Pony and Token stole her material... bullies.

So fails all round.

See? Failure.
So anyway, I live a life of objections. Twitter? No. I object. It's popular and people seem to love it. So I want no part of it. Sushi? It's a fad - I'm against it. Fashion? I know nothing about it, and if it's popular then it's probably lame. I'm out. I'm not getting on to this Twitter thing either. Mind you, I did have a brush with fame when Stephen Fry tweeted about me, but that's a different story. The point is, I wanted to dodge the twitter bullet... but no longer. I caved. I tweeted. I signed up and added an account and now I'm part of that thing that I wanted nothing to do with.

Here's what I tweeted:

Fail fail fail... Start a fire from scratch my arse. Fetch the wine, it shall compensate...

So I've had wine to compensate for two failures today.

Thing 112 Hug My Binman

For reasons that should be obvious to all, you're just going to have to go with me on this one. Photographs simply weren't an option. To those of you who are stupid: it's because hugging a stranger is odd enough. Asking him to pose for a picture during or after is the kind of thing that gets people locked up. And we all remember what happened last time... less said the better really.

So ya. I gave my binman a nice hug this afternoon. I've never seen a big man look so frightened. I tried to make it fluid looking, a natural part of my day, but I'm just not that comfortable with other people's personal space so I came across exactly how I felt - weird. Poor dude. How would I like it if I was doing my job and some complete stranger walked up to me, thanked me profusely, offered me a handshake and then pulled me into a manly hug? If I'm honest, I think I might actually like that, but that doesn't mean it's the done thing.

That's how it went down though. I was going to go pick up a stranger at a bus stop - apparently I'm loving strangers at the moment - but I was pressed for time, and then he pulled up, like a smelly angel. It's on the List, this was my chance... I took it. I hugged it firmly to me. I resisted the urge to plant one on his cheek, as I say, there's a line here people. Honestly, the guy looked properly frightened. He kept saying "it's okay" and backing away from me.

The Frenchman makes an interesting point: Obviously he was going to be frightened. With the newly shaved head I look like someone on day release from an institute for insane offenders. I mean... just look at me...
Would you really want that hugging you? Thought not.

So why was hugging a binman on the list you ask? (I know you don't ask, but I'm going to tell you anyway). One of my old teachers used to threaten me with the job of binman when I was being less than industrious with my schoolwork. I remember thinking - that's kind of a lousy thing to say. I imagine there are plenty of happy and contented binmen out there. Why is there's a fate that I should be trying to avoid? Admittedly it's a smelly job, but it's a necessary one, and I bet it pays good too. Since then I've always felt that binmen get not enough thanks, and sort of a bum deal. So I thought I'd express my appreciation with an embarrassing act of personal space invasion and unsolicited affection. What better way eh?

It's also given me an idea... I wonder would they let me be a binman for a day?? Ride around on the back of the lorry all day. Waiting for strangers to give me hugs... never getting any... always wondering why not.

Seriously though, I'd get right in the way. Ever see how quickly these guys work? They're a model of efficiency. Truck backs up, two men go quick, bins are dragged, dumped and back in place as the truck makes off for the next corner. I just know I'd slow them down, and do it all wrong. Might be worth a try though.

What's more important to worry about now is next Tuesday... I really hope they don't decide to give the weirdos' house a miss on next collection.

Thing 111 Don't Swear for a Day

I did it. I f***ing did it. Take that everyone else.

F*** yeah! Get in there.

Hoo-f***ing-rah.

Oh man. That was unpleasant. I realise that boasting about it and being thrilled with myself because I managed to go one day without swearing is lame, and beyond stupid, but I don't give a good god-damn. I guess the old saying is true. Nineteenth time's the charm.

Here's a list of things that I'll be swearing at tomorrow:

The lady who cut into the lane in front of me at the Parkway Roundabout this evening on my way back to town. Nice. Just because you're driving a brand new Merc does not mean that you own the road. I'm going to dedicate ten minutes to swearing at you.

The name Thacary. I'm going to swear at the name Thacary. Pixie Head... you know why...

The Canuck. Because the last time I tried this he spent time, effort and money on attempting to make me fail. In fact, there's a good chance he'd have been successful if I'd seen him today. He's just one of those people that you like swearing at. You know the type? Sure. We all know the type.

Sour milk.

The word "irregardless". It's not a word. What you probably meant to say was regardless, or irrespective. Combining these two does not make a word. It makes a mess of two words.

My guitar. For playing it is stressful and I'm not very good at it (yet). So while practicing this morning, and failing, I was unable to properly vent frustration and I actually used the word "flip". For flip sake I said. I felt like Ned Flanders. I went back to bed in shame.

My alarm on my phone. It's the most annoying noise in the entire world, and typically when it goes off I hit snooze and curse at it a little as I roll over and go back to sleep. Not so today. I'm going to have to double up tomorrow.

It's little use in saying that this Thing has taught me much. I have a mouth like a pirate. I will endeavour to limit my swearing in certain situations, but not all that much. I enjoy swearing. It's cathartic. I like the flexibility the F-Word gives me - verb, noun, adjective. It's a word for all seasons. I really like the fact that the girls in college managed somehow to make the C-Word into a term of endearment, and I like using it on them. Especially for you 7-Times.

So it's done now. No more days wasted on shoddy efforts at behaving myself that I was never that keen on anyway. From here on out it's potty-mouth or no talking at all...

Here's a video for fun. I hope you like the F-Word...

Thing 110 Vintage Car Show

Just when I think I know it all about Limerick history, something comes along and invades my puffed up sense of Limerick knowledge. I'm one of those people who's delighted with being from here - like I had some kind of choice as to where I'd be squeezed out. I've made a point of knowing a lot about Limerick history - we had a city charter before London, meaning that at some point, this city was a bigger deal than England's capital.

I had no idea, none whatsoever, that Limerick staged two Grand Prix Races in the 1930's. Two. And they weren't naff and crap ones either. The best racers in Europe at the time came to Limerick to strut their stuff. Could you imagine Jensen Button bombing down O'Connell Avenue at two hundred miles an hour in his F1 racer? The chaps who like a pint in South's Bar would be fuming...
I'm not a petrol head. Never have been. My favourite car of all time was a snot green Opel Corsa that I drove when I was in college. Frequently referred to as the "Snot Rocket" or "Vomet Comet", Corky was an awesome little roadster. This does however betray my lack of car knowledge and insight. Hence the reason that I bought a Seat Cordoba when I could have had a Honda Civic for the same price. I realise now that this is not shopping smart. Having said all that, I can appreciate a good classic car. Not for its performance, but for its ability to stand the test of time, and still look awesome.
Look at that picture and tell me you don't want to be that guy in the driver seat. None of the stigma that goes with being the driver of a sports car (midlife crisis, compensating for "physical shortcomings", being a giant douche). All of the fun of having a piece of history to drive you from A to B. Mind you, this also means no CD player, so no chance to pop on some "tunes" and bass drum the car up William Street at one in the morning either.
In celebration of the Grand Prix's 75th Anniversary in Limerick two likely chaps got together to educate motorists and motoring enthusiasts about Limerick's role in staging what was really a massive deal at the time. Budding Jeremy Clarksons from all over the country and beyond converged in the capital of the mid-west to parade their awesome-mobiles for the benefit of other enthusiasts and rubber neckers like me.
I wanted nothing more than to slap on a leather helmet, some goggles and gloves and hit the road shouting "tally-ho". I don't know why I wanted that. I'm not a British World War Two pilot. But it popped into my head and seemed appropriate.
It's a shame that the experience was lost on me a little. I really enjoyed it and all, and there was a wonderful atmosphere, but as someone who learns about cars from Hammond, Clarkson and May, I feel I wasn't qualified enough to get the value from what I was seeing. I noticed a couple of more worthy than I fellas rolling their eyes when I took a photo of the Ferrari badge on one car. I was so embarrassed at being identified as such a "newb" that I didn't even post the photos here.
You may notice that there are a lot of photos today... I just thought you, like me, might enjoy looking at the pretty cars... Petrol heads: please don't hate me!!