Cats, interrupted.

Thanks to Rosie and her feline frippery, today I'm reliving one of my furriest college sex adventures.

Now that I have you sitting uncomfortably, I'll begin.

I was renting a box room in Drumcondra in my second year at third level. It was a compressed, functional existence. I had a bed, a window, a wardrobe, a radiator, a special place for dirty socks that other people call 'the floor', while in the rest of the limited space I stored air for breathing purposes.

The bed was wedged in against the walls and the bottom of it went right up against the window sill at the end.

I quite liked my funny little room. I used to stretch happily and look out the window on my early morning starts at about 2.30 in the afternoon, and look at the neighbourhood cats prowling around the alleys and red-brick backyards below. I used often muse that the window on my world looked out on repeat showings of the opening titles for Coronation Street.

The cats would often sun themselves and doze on the flat roof right underneath my window, there were about two or three regulars I'd see all the time. I'm not a cat lover by any means but I tolerated them.

Anyway, one weekend I skipped back to Cavan to sponge off my folks and I left my window open to let some fresh air in, or maybe a stiff breeze to chase the smell of socks out and, who knows, perhaps even windsweep them into a neat little pile in the corner.

I arrived back on the Sunday night to a stilled and empty house, puffing and panting with my bag and distracted by an overdue assignment on Saint Augustines's Confessions which is a stupid fact about the evening that has stayed with me all this time.

As I placed a foot on the stairs, I was stopped in my tracks by a faint, double-miaowing sound coming from above. I paused to listen, somewhat puzzled. It was definitely a cat alright, alternately miaowing high and low like he was miaowing in time with his own breathing in and out. But hang on I thought, unless there's a musical cat upstairs attempting the scales acapella, it's most likely I'm hearing two cats.

I walked on up the stairs. It was definitely coming from my room. Still puzzled, I opened the door and went inside.

And what did I see before my thoroughly aghast eyes only two cats riding each other like the clappers of hell. On MY BED. The one doing the giving was delivering the low-pitched miaow on his stroke, the one receiving issuing the higher-pitched one as her partner did his business. There was rippling, sinewy fur everywhere I looked and I'm fairly sure there was even a horribly stylised, head-tossed-back shudder of pleasure moment as he picked up the pace. OhmysweetJesusChrist I thought, there's two cats riding each other on my bed. Cats. Sex. Frickin' catsex. In front of me. Right there. MY BED.

Like, I had to sleep there that night and the likelihood was these fuckers weren't going to change the sheets.

I was going to shout "Oi!" but immediately possessed by some sort of crazy self-consciousness indisputably because of the two cats in the throes of passion on MY BED, I decided something manly and bellowing was best but in the heat of the moment, I just whimpered a little. Pathetic I know, but they still heard me.

So they stopped shagging. And bucking Bronco McStud Muffin himself turns his head slowly towards me, stares blithely at me, licks his whiskers, turns away again, and get this! RECOMMENCES SHAGGING. AGAIN! THE FUCKERS CLEARLY HAD NO SHAME WHATSOEVER!

I couldn't have been more outraged if the moggy Romeo had been chewing tobacco and spat lazily at the ground in response to my open-mouthed, agape horror. Jesus, there was a cat seemingly trying to bore a hole in another cat, on MY BED, and he hadn't even the decency to get up and put his fucking jeans on when somebody walks in on him. Little bastard, and as for her, well she must have been a right little whore altogether because she never so much as blinked once and just crouched there waiting for whatever himself decided to do next. Hopefully me, she was probably thinking. Disgraceful altogether. It was an open and shut case of Cattus Interruptus and neither of them so much as had the decency to blush!

I mean for Chrissakes there were two cats, swinging, in my room, in a room you couldn't swing a fucking cat in. What the fuck?

Eventually, I managed to dispel my disbelief, rage and (bizarrely), my coy embarrassment, and took a run at them. They scattered fairly quickly out the open window but I'm sure they found a dark corner somewhere and finished their business.

In fact, I know they did because I heard them fighting a few minutes later. By which I mean, the she-cat had turned and scratched and spat at the tom cat because apparently, a male cat's penis ejects spikes into the walls of a female cat as he climaxes, to stimulate her to produce eggs for fertilisation. This hurts the female and, not having an appreciation of the finer points of her own biology, she turns and angrily bates the face of the tom cat for a few minutes. So next time you hear two cats squabbling, they're probably just finishing off some hot cat lovin'.

And as long as it's not in MY ROOM, in front of MY EYES, and hose me down because I feel all dirty again, on (whimper) MY BED, then I don't care.

Things I don't see any more...

I'm not feeling myself today. Which is just as well says you, you'd hardly like to look at a thing like that. Instead, I'm actually feeling nostalgic for no particular reason and have been thinking about stuff I used to see about the place quite a bit and now don't see so much any more. I have a bit of a yearning for the old times, a touch of a hankering, you know, for stuff like doggy poo and women with beards.

Men combing their hair: My Dad and others of his generation (approx. Jurassic) used to comb his hair incessantly. He, therefore, always carried a sober black comb in his arse pocket so he could slide it out and languidly coiff himself back to a state of debonair elegance (or so he thought), whenever a mirror presented and he realised he was a bit shy of his usual slick sheen. (Just for fun, try reading that really quickly with a mouthful of jelly).
Like, he'd hop into the car, take a glance in the rear view and suddenly produce the comb to lick that drooping fringe back into place. Or if he happened to break the habit of a lifetime and go into a changing room in a clothes shop, (as opposed to sitting around outside one waiting for my mother), he'd always emerge with the hair perfectly set after encountering the mirror inside.
I've just realised he doesn't do it any more. He looks a dreadful fright.

People using proper hankies: I've always found the use of nice linen hankies something of a strange juxtaposition. On the one hand you've got these nice, folded, clothy/lacy things and then you go and do a humongous, trumpeting green honk right into the middle of it. The logic behind fancy hankies, when you think about it, is as misplaced as cutting up your best table cloths and using them as toilet roll.
Some fancy dandies even used to embroider their initials on them as well. So if they dropped their hankie, anyone who picked it up would know who owned it and could return their snots to them quick-smart.
Speaking of dropping hankies, what do women do now to give a handsome suitor a token of their affections? It used to be a perfumed hankie, (presumably stained only by the plaintive, mewling tears of her heartrending love, and not a stupendous blast of anything nasal), but what do they give now? A lock of hair? Knickers? A kidney?
I assume everyone just uses tissues now, or some bog roll. Which reminds me, it's quite some time since I saw an archetypal snot-nosed kid as well. Sigh, the memories. Didn't we all know a child at school that was permanently scarred with two silvery green streams under his nose that never seemed to go away? And is still probably called Snotser to this day?

Women with beards: I used to know a whole gaggle of bearded ladies and they weren't considered in the least bit unusual at all. I think they'd been showcased at just enough circuses and festival sideshows to steadily erase their novelty value, and after a time people just thought of them as normal. For instance, there was a woman used to work occasionally in the post office at home with a fair bit of a sprouting on her and although she was no Brian Blessed or anything we all still called her George Best. It was a bit of a dare to go in, buy a few stamps and then say "Thanks, you're the best," before bolting out the door, hand clapped to mouth in a fit of hysterics. I think sprouting a bit of a (nanny) goatee was considered a sort of late-onset puberty for female pensioners and nobody really batted an eye. Irish women are far too sophisticated to allow this sort of thing now though. Well, apart from John Waters.

Women wearing headscarves: Back in the 70s and 80s, Irish women everywhere used to love a good headscarf, for all kinds of weathers. Preferably a paisley one paired with a nice long trench coat of dull colouring suitable for the era. Then these old biddies could caper about from shop to shop in the rain, with their heads down and always, always, a hand pressed in front of their groin even though the coat was buttoned up. I never could understand that.
My Ma used to wear a headscarf but doesn't any more. Between the ould fella not keeping his hair in check and herself not making the effort any more, they're downright filthy crusties the pair of them.

White dog's poo: What's the deal here? I remember as a kid hanging about the village with the lads, and practically everywhere you went, you'd encounter a white dog turd up an alley or somewhere. And sometimes, a black and white one, together. Like the mystical ying and yang of dog shite. Was it a special diet dogs were on back in 80s Ireland I wonder, or were they just regular doggy poos that had been bleached by the sun? Maybe people just clean up after their dogs nowadays.
And I know it's an odd bit of nostalgia and you won't exactly hear old men leaning across gates bemoaning the loss of the white poo, sure it's all that modern brown stuff now, but I thought I'd throw it out there for debate like. And anyway, you don't see old men leaning across gates bemoaning things any more.

Cars with different coloured panels: There was a car round our way when I was a nipper and it had so many replacement panels on it we couldn't actually tell what colour it had been originally. It was a local mystery for years, still unsolved. The car itself was a really loud, rusting old splutter-farty VW Beetle driven by a skeletal 400-year-old man with no teeth and it had one green door, one red one, a brown bonnet and a mustard yellow front wing. And no door handles. And I think the boot-lid was brown. We called it the smartie box, because, er, it looked like a smartie box. Ireland is too affluent for people to drive cars like this any more but you used always see multi-coloured vehicles bombing about because whenever anyone had a minor accident, it'd be too penal to claim on the insurance and when they'd go to the scrap yard for a cheap replacement, they'd have to take whatever colour they had in. Hilarious.

Fianna Fáil church gate collections: I'm open to correction on this one seeing as I haven't been to Mass since Mammy McDanger's maternal right to drag me along to places I hated going to was revoked circa 1996, but even prior to that particular watershed, I hadn't seen a church gate collection for quite some time. Of course, as in the ancient joke about someone calling to the door collecting for the old folks home and the homeowner donates his grandmother, it would have been funny to actually present them with the church gates and tell them to fuck off.
Come to think of it I recall something about these being banned a few years ago and now you have to get a Garda permit. I just can't be arsed doing the googley thing but Fianna Fáil have more creative ways of getting their money anyway.

Old people boasting about not washing their hair: "Oh God yes, years ago people had no shampoo and never could wash their hair. Old Maggie McClafferty over in Bognamucky there, washed her hair just once a year with a raw egg, some Jeyes fluid and a bucket of butter milk. And she had a head of hair on her was the envy of all around, snow white it was and fluffy and tufty like a duck's arse. People nowadays have themselves ruined washing their hair with all that shit."

My greatest hit

I was tickled pink after seeing this at Grandad's. No, literally. Grandad's been playing about with some mental new spyware over there, so I'd barely settled in front of the laptop before twenty miniature, multi-legged versions of his beard hopped out of the screen, ran up my sleeves and tickled me half demented. They were like them weird yokes off Minority Report. It was all very strange.

Anyway, this little diversion is a quick and easy way to name your own musical act and title your first album. And Lord knows how many musical geniuses could have been on Top of the Pops but for the want of a catchy name for the ould band, only they never found the software in time and had to make do with "Three Hairy Golf Balls and a Bald Washing Machine" instead. Which sadly never quite hits the market with the yoof demographic.

All you do is click this and the title of the article you arrive at has to be the name of your band. I must say, I mucked about with this link for quite some time and some of the band names I subsequently found was Stratiomyomorpha (sounds painful but it's just an insect), Tom Fillingham (a dentist?), The Careful Use of Compliments (particularly apt for good old sugar-coated me I thought, cos' you're all a bunch of smelly fuckers) and finally, Musashi-Mizonokuchi Station and I'm at a loss for a joke on that one to be honest. It's a bit addictive once you start.
Okay so far? When you've got that done go here and the last four words of the very last quote on the page is the name of your album. Finally, the third picture on this page is the one you have to choose as your album cover click here please. Then you butcher it all together in Microsoft Paint or some other such easy peasy photo software for simpering fools like myself and hopefully you won't make too much of a hames of it and can produce something legible.

I was very pleased with how mine turned out, I must say. I think it's kinda edgy and cool. Not like me at all. Thank 'ee Grandad, and in turn, to the people at wherever he found it himself.

How did you get here?

You, my dear readers are all a bunch of mentlers, that's all I can say. With the obvious exceptions. I've been writing regularly on this blog for about four months now and some of the search engine terms that people use to find their way here would make a nun blush. I've just realised now too that some time in the future, some loony is going to search for a 'mentler blushing nun' and he'll find Moo-Dog.

Anyway, here's the best of my worst of:

"cute women doing nasty shit"
Nope, sorry, we're all out of cute women doing nasty shite. Come back on Friday when two gorgeous housewives from Tullamore will be pulling the legs off insects and then burning them with matches.

"dog erections"
The charitable part of me wants to believe this was a serious art student searching for the amazing sculptor-dog of ancient Greece, but we all know it was the other don't we? Ewww. There are other far more deviant searches involving dogs but even I won't put them in. And I'd publish practically anything. Although 'dogs in trilbies' was fairly safe even if the mind still boggles...

"Kerry Catona showing knickers and tits"
I take it all back about the person searching for dog erections, this is far worse.

"Lorraine Keane's legs leather trousers"
I take it all back about the person searching for Kerry Catona showing knickers and tits, this is far worse.

"Mind and knickers Cavan"
Is there a self help group in my home county now, where people can go and contemplate the meaning of underpants while aligning their chakras with some guru in a tantric tent? If so, why didn't anybody tell me about it? Hrmphhh.

"My dog Skip still wets his pants"
Sweet divine. Dogs in trousers is one thing, dogs with poor bladder control quite another, and some eejit searching the internet for it just takes the biscuit.

"Pictures of older ladies in their knickers"
If there's anything worse to chance upon while browsing the net than old women in their smalls, or not so smalls as if frequently the case, I defy anyone to tell me what it is.

"Piss pie"
Well, er, at least you could be sure it's definitely homemade...

"Sally Fletcher sex with midget"
Ah yes, "officially" it doesn't exist but sealed away in the secret vaults of Australian TV studios, resides the infamous, as yet unseen post-watershed pilot episode of Home and Away, where Sally eats too many bonza burgers and drinks too much OJ, has a bad allergic reaction, sheds all her clothes and then runs amok at the circus visiting nearby Yabbie Creek. Needless to say, the locals were aghast but the circus midget said he'd never had a more pleasant day at work and then everyone went to the surf club and on to the diner, then to the beach and finally back to the caravan park. Network 7 will air it someday, you mark my words.

"Show us your muff"
Sure thing buddy. Get a load of this girl's muff!

STILL want more muff? PHWOARRRR!!!!

Now, don't say I'm not good to the pervs out there.

"What should you look for to tell a dog's mood"
I'm no expert now, but I'll hazard a guess and say if he's growling and has his teeth sunk into your groin, he's a bit pissed off and probably needs feeding or a bit of a run in the fields to release tension.
And if he's wagging his tail and there's a strange smell in the air, he's just farted.

"What do you do when a dog drinks alcohol"
Again, I'm no expert and have little experience of depressed dogs hitting the sauce, but I reckon you should just take Skip's car keys off him, give him a hug and tell him he won't find the answer at the bottom of a bottle, and finally, put a pair of incontinence knickers on him because as we all know, he loses the run of himself and after a few pints of Smithwicks, can't be expected to take care of himself.

"Women with cow nipples"
I have nothing to add to this.

"Women's hairy arses"
Er...pass!

So there you have it. There's alot of oddballs out there and if you think the above is bad, you should see some of the ones I had to leave out for reasons of taste. And if I left some out for taste reasons, and dog erections, women with cow's nipples and piss pie still made it in, then you have some idea of just how bad it is.

Anyway, as an experiment today, I'm going to type a list of weird stuff just to see if some nutjob out there searches for it at some stage in the future. I'll let you all know if anything happens:

Elephant in nappies. Naked sheep eating a turnip. Women with no false teeth in. Bertie Ahern smothered in custard. Brad Pitt racing zebras in a microwave oven dressed as Flash Gordon. Knickers made out of sheet metal. Morris dancers sex orgy set to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Camogie stars' knickers. My dog Skip poos his pants. Two cows, one cup.

Let's all laugh at Ronnie

For no particular reason, today I've been thinking a lot about one of my heroes, comedian and actor Ronnie Barker.

Anyone alive and watching TV in the 80s or before will remember Barker, the taller half of the Two Ronnies duo, who of course starred in the long-running comedy show of the same name with namesake Corbett, and also in standout British sitcom classics like Open All Hours, where he played the stammering lecherous shopkeeper Arkwright, and as prisoner Fletch in the peerless Porridge. There was also the lesser known, later efforts such as Clarence and Going Straight.

It was a golden era of TV comedy, when you consider that Morecambe and Wise were tickling ribs on the other channel at the same time. It was the era before SKY and the multi-channel fragmentation of audiences that followed, so if there was something good on the box back then, you knew that the world and his mother was probably watching it. And I was mostly watching the Two Ronnies on a Saturday night after bath time, with the whole family and a few visiting neighbours sitting around the TV lapping it up. Good times, good laughs and one of the few reasons why glad I'm in my thirties; because if I wasn't I'd probably never have been around at the time and would be writing this about Alan Partridge instead.

There were the lavish musical numbers, the Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town sketches, the Tramps, the Yokels, Corbett's lost-in-the-chair monologues (which I always found intensely boring until I was old enough to understand them), the cod news items and one-liners at the beginning and end, and literally, just one brilliant sketch after another. I loved them at the time and still love them now, all the more for having watched (again) the re-runs of the Two Ronnies Christmas Sketchbook, a compendium programme which originally aired just a few months after Barker's death in 2005 and showcased the very, very best of their material.

I used to just laugh at them earnestly enough but it was only with an adult mind and some appreciation of good writing that I began to fully comprehend the depth of Barker's genius, for it was he who wrote 90% of the material, often under pseudonyms so he could be certain it would make the show for reasons of quality and not sycophancy. He never relied on vulgarity or smut, instead building his humour on vast intelligence, wordplay, punnery, mild innuendo, pin-sharp timing and a chameleon's ability to switch characters and accents. His ability to reel off complex lists and mispronounced words was staggering as well. Just a good old fashioned comedian who was genuinely funny and with such a wide-ranging appeal that the youngest to the oldest could watch and enjoy equally. Pure undistilled comedy it was with no diversionary gimmicks, just talent beaming through.

I'll never forget the BAFTA tribute they did for him a few years ago, again not long before he passed away, and he was choking with emotion after the glowing tributes he had been paid. I doubt he'd be similarly moved if he's reading this on Moo-Dog up in heaven, and come to think of it, it's somewhat conceited of me to assume that they have Moo-Dog up in heaven in the first place, but sure I've taken a go anyway.

Here is a short sample of classic lines from his shows over the years, I found these compiled elsewhere on the web. And if you're wondering why this is the first blog I've ever written where I haven't cracked a joke myself, it's because if I was making a speech about handsome men, I'd be smart enough not to stand beside Brad Pitt when I was doing it. Today, I'm leaving it to an expert.

(Barker is giving a speech as leader of a support group for people who can't pronounce their words properly. Absolute comedy gold):
I was going to provide the full script but trust me, it works far better if you listen to it, which you can do right here.
There's also a piece on YouTube where he revisits this sketch with some new script, so if you liked the above, you'll like this too, it's from the Parkinson chatshow, a rare public interview.

And there's no end to the clips on YouTube, have a look around yourself!

From the Two Ronnies:
The computerised doctor: (Ronnie Barker is a doctor on a computer screen speaking to Ronnie Corbett, the patient): "Please choose one of the following options: Do you suffer from any of the following: A - A bleeding nose, B - Getting out of bed in the morning, C - Terry Wogan, or D - all three: Terry Wogan getting up your bleeding nose every morning."
+++++
Barker: There now follows a sketch featuring ghosties and ghoulies.
Corbett: In which I get caught by the ghosties...
Barker: And I get caught by surprise!
+++++
Tonight, we'll be asking: "Should all married couples be frank and earnest, or should one of them be a woman..."
+++++
Serving dinner as a butler to two obnoxious upper-class toffs, who are oblivious to his clear contempt for them: "Your nuts, M'Lord. And your crackers, M'Lady."
+++++
"...and we will be speaking to the disillusioned vet who, in James Herriott style, is writing his memoirs, under the working title of "All Creatures Grunt and Smell."
+++++
"There was a strange happening during a performance of Elgar's Sea Pictures at a concert hall in Bermuda tonight, when the man playing the triangle disappeared."
+++++
"Next week we'll be investigating rumours that the president of the dairy council has become a Mason, and goes around giving his colleagues the secret milkshake."
+++++
"Following the dispute with the domestic servants' union at Buckingham Palace today, the Queen, a radiant figure in a white silk gown and crimson robe, swept down the main staircase and through the hall. She then dusted the cloakroom and vacuumed the lounge."
+++++
(Singing): "Little Mary-Ellen by the old barn door, I know just what she's a-waitin' for. Up in the loft where the lamp light flickers. I lost my heart and she lost her parasol!"
+++++
From Open All Hours
Nurse Gladys: Business is looking up.
Arkwright: Yes, but p-p-pleasure is looking down (gazing at her cleavage)

"Good morning Mrs fe fe fe fe ehh Jackson"

In Open All Hours to Granville who is yawning. "Close your mouth there's a b-b-b-b-bus c-c-c-c...oh don't worry, it's gone now."

"Don't just crit their siticising".

"Puberty? P-P-PUBERTY? We didn't have p-puberty when I were a lad, we went straight from s-school into hard labour!"

Handy my arse

I have the January blues and I have them bad. It's nothing to do with what you might expect; I'm not seriously in debt or frantically wondering how best to cook that adorable labrador puppy I got, now that I realise all too late that he's for dinner and not just for Christmas.

Granted, I am detoxing a little bit, but somewhat like Eleanor Rigby, I'm rotating my kidneys in a jar of formaldehyde I keep by the front door, I check them every time I go out and they seem to be coming along nicely.

Anyway, what's really grinding my gears is this. Peat Briquettes, that's what. For the uninitiated, these are little blocks of compressed bog peat (see pic) that burn really well and have been a staple at Irish firesides for years, after the watershed point in history where we all got too lazy to go and cut real turf. Like our gap-toothed forebears atop rickety donkey carts used to do, the ones on those postcards we flog to American tourists hoping they won't notice the con.

Now why exactly would humble peat briquettes cause me such anguish? Well first of all, it's a repressed anger that resides deep within me and I need to step back about twelve years here to explain fully. I was chatting up this fine looking young one in the pub on a college night out circa 1996 and I had cleverly steered the conversation towards fossil fuels, as you do. She was very much in thrall to my witty solid fuel patter but the whole thing hit the skids when I mentioned the briquettes, pronouncing them in my Cavan brogue as 'brickitts.' As opposed to the quasi French way you're, apparently, supposed to do it, i.e. brick-ettes. For some reason she found this absolutely hilarious and after cackling like a hyena for a few minutes, called over her friends so they too could hear the quaint bogman yokel and his backwoods mispronunciations. To make matters worse, I further erred just moments later in the course of continuing conversation (when they'd all calmed down) and instead of saying lorry, as in the trucks, I said 'lurry' - like we do, sigh, in Cavan. This was the last straw for yer wan who simply dissolved into breathless hysterics all over again and went off to the toilets with her clucking entourage in tow, all wiping their eyes and shaking their heads.

She hadn't come back three hours later, so says I to myself straightening my belt proudly, while cursing the brickitts and the lurries they rode in on, she's ruined her chance and is getting none of the ould sex off me tonight so she's not.

Now we can all agree that this is reason enough to have a slight aversion to the brickitts. But over the Christmas I was given a whole new reason to hate the little hoors. Mammy McDanger was getting into the festive spirit and wanted the open fire lit for the season that was in it, but she had no brickitts and no logs. (In case you're wondering, in Cavan we say logs like this: 'logs'.)

So I decided I'd go off and get the brickitts while brother McDanger went off for the logs. I opted to stroll the half mile or so to the tiny shop in the village that sells fuel, sweets, newspapers, fresh fruit and veg, hardware, groceries, pharmaceuticals, ornaments and not at all unusually, coffins. I was looking forward to getting all toasty in front of a crackling fire and was even whistling the tune they used to use on the ad for the brickitts, called the Marino Waltz if anyone wants to know. I also remembered the jingle from another, older ad. 'Handy peat briquettes' it used to say.

Yeah, well, handy my arse is all I can say. Ten minutes later I was puffing and panting up the street with a bale of the little feckers swinging from my hand and the strap on them digging into my palm and fingers, raising lumpy white welts. I kept swapping it from hand to hand but to no avail, me mitts were falling off me with the cold and stinging with the welts and it kept twisting in mid-air and banging off my legs and just feckin' annoying me the whole way home. (Edit: I'm reading this back now checking spelling and the double entendre in there is just too wacky not to mention. Sorry. Back to the post now.) They got progressively heavier as well. I was just a little bit pissed off with the whole lot and was very happy to get home so this ass could unburden himself so to speak.

The tale of woe might end there you'd think but no. My struggle was just beginning. Brickitts are supposed to be 'handy' because the strap on them is meant to peel away easily in one movement. So I expectantly grip the little tab and pull. And pull. And grunt. And pull. And grunt. And a little fart escapes. I wince, and grunt some more. And pull. No give. I pull again. There's veins starting to rise at my temple. I grunt. I heave. I groan. I hiss, and then I bellow: "For fecks sake you fecking infernal bastards of hell feck off back to damnation with your handy bullshit fugging Jesus arghhghhghg!!!!"

Finally, boiling and seething, I grab a hatchet and with one fell blow the strip snaps apart and the brickitts fall out, at last. But I don't stop, I just keep chopping and hacking and smashing the little bastards because if feels so good.

And then I burned them. And rubbed my hands and laughed demonically into the flames as they perished.

Don't. Fuck. With. Terence. McDanger.

Burp!

Fcuk me flkos taht wsa a sroiuelsy dnrkuen Crhitsams. Tahknflluy terhe dseno't apeapr to be ayn lsatsnig ecffets form all teh aclohol and one sitll retinas the aliblity to bolg.

I sberored up terhe lsat Staruday week I tinhk. It wsa a rmrakaeble epxreince to wkae up and be flluy cgosninet fro teh frist tmie in a frongthit, teh dwnosdie bneig taht I tehn had to hlod rasenolabe converosaints wtih all teh anyonnig popele I wsa prveuiosly albe to igonre. Taht, and hvanig to lsiten to Mciheal Blubé and Bnig Cbrosie wthiuot teh aid of smoehting to dull my sneses.

Aynawy, tahnkuflly I apaepr to hvae cmoe trhuogh wtih all my fcautleis itncat, atlhuogh terhe may be a tpyo, or two, in tihs pceie so hpofeully Ssuan will go esay on me.

Hci...