When the Hurling Gods shine upon you.....

There are days in the GAA season which make you get down on your hands and knees and beg forgiveness for all those days you turned over to watch some pedestrian mid-Premiership soccer tie. The Prodigal Son has returned you say, no need to kill the fatted calf, just the subscription to Sky Sports.
There have been many memorable scenes to precede this climactic penultimate act, but few could've been as unpredictable as this. Limerick had long played the tormented Hamlet figure, feigning six years of madness, before finally dethroning their King Claudius.
Limerick vs. Waterford was one of those days. Had anyone in either county expected the game to turn out this way? Could anyone have forecasted Limerick would score five goals? Or that two high kings of their game, John Mullane and Paul Flynn, would be substituted like sacrificial lambs to the ye Gods-like performances of the Limerick players?

Mark Lawrensen and The Bearded Lady

Will former Liverpool player Mark Lawrensen wake up in the middle of the night laughing at the rich irony of his mockery of Rafael Benitez's new goatee? The words stones, those in glasshouses, pot, kettle, calling eachother black all spring to mind as the man who hid his upperlip for all of the 80s under a moustache thick enough to hide an Al Qaeda suspect, passed judgement on a radical facial styling of Liverpool's general.

Perhaps since shearing himself of his handlebar hair sculpture several years ago, he had also shorn all memories of being unable to eat his breakfast without collecting cornflakes around his mouth.

(above left) Mark Lawrensen having trouble with American security.
(above right) Rafael Benitez, Liverpool manager

Taxi Discrimination Against the Non-Dancer

A recent survey conducted by the Cambridge School of Nothing Better to Do has shown that taxi drivers are 72% more likely to stop for customers who are dancing than customers who remain static. Out of 100 taxi drivers surveyed across the Greater London area, 72 expressed a preference for a customer performing a well choreographed dance routine to one who merely stood upright with their thumb extended out in traditional 'taxi flagging' style. The report went further to show that, 29 out of those 72 even went so far as to say they would keep driving until he found a dancing customer, even on a quiet night.

The Officer for Public Transport Consumer Rights, Katja Tube, was outraged at the findings. "I always had my suspicions about taxi drivers' bias for dancing but this report is quite remarkable". When pressed on the consequences of this report, she went on to say "Of course, as always it will be hard to monitor illegal cabs on this matter but we certainly intend to put procedures in place for black cabs in the city". Among the proposed procedures mentioned are interview screening of taxi drivers who express an interest in dancing, or who have demonstrated a history of listening to 'movement music'.

The 60-page report also showed that ethnic background and demographics affected taxi drivers dance preferences, with 78% of Afro-Carribean preferring a more 'Beyonce-style booty-shaking', 75% of Asian drivers preferring 'Bollywood style' dance and 99% of Caucasian white males preferring 'the robot'.





(Above) Tom Reynolds, 62, on look out for 'the robot'

Here Comes The Night....

Holas and good evenings abound as the random musings of an Irishman abroad has, under an extravagant backdrop of shamrock-shaped fireworks, just launched itself onto the barren plains of the blogging world. As the night rolls in, i will leave you to ponder on a theory from Flann O' Brien's favourite philosopher and often-overlooked academic, De Selby who amongst other unpopular theories, tried to prove that there is no such thing as 'night time' :

De Selby on night-time, "There is no such thing as night-time. It is but an accretion of 'black air' i.e. a staining of the atmosphere due to volcanic eruptions too fine to be seen with the naked eye and also due to certain 'regrettable' industrial activities involving coal-tar products"

extracts taken from De Selby's 'The Album', The Third Policeman