Tales Of How A Nickname Came To Be Born

My mate's called uzi as he has a wandering eye

As in 'uzi looking at?'

Some idiot in a bar called him it one day looking for a fight but it was so good we all just fell about laughing and the idiot walked off, bemused.




Another one of my mate's from school was a bit of a film buff and was famous for his massive collection of DVDs and legally obtained movies...... Another one of our mates went round to his house for the first time and upon noticing this vast collection of films the following exchange occurred:

'Jesus mate, you've got loads of films'
'Yeah I know'
'Do you mind if I bring my external round to copy some of them'
'Erm...I do actually mate, who the fuck is Mike Sternal I don't even know him'

Film guy is now regularly referred to as Mike Sternal.

Amazing Ending In Sport!

First video is Wales vs Ireland in The 6 Nations 2009. Ireland hadn't won the Grand Slam in 61 years, here is the last five minutes of that game:

Next video is the Gold Medal Basketball match between the USSR and USA at the 1972 Summer Olympics:

Inter Milan vs Sampdoria in the 04/05 Serie A season. Inter were 2-0 down with 5 minutes to go:

Lewis Hamilton going to the drivers championship is 2008. last race of the season he needed at least 5th to top the table. He stopped for wet tyres on lap 66 - a decision that could have cost him the title. It dropped him to fifth place behind Glock, with Vettel right behind him.Vettel pushed Hamilton hard and passed him with two laps to go, leading to the nail-biting finish:

Its the Champions League Finial in 1999, Bayern Munich are 1-0 against Man Utd. Its just gone into the 90th minute then this happens:

Brushes With The Law

When I was 17 and on holiday in Germany, I was on a night out in town with a few of the lads. Once we'd left the Irish bar (shithole of a place, but everyone else loved it), everyone was dillydallying about where to go next and I was desperate for a piss. When a decision didn't seem to be forthcoming, I nipped down the nearest side alley.

Once back with the group, they'd come to a conclusion and we moved on. Just as I was going through the door, I felt a hand on my shoulder which I just shrugged off. However, one of the doormen stopped me and turned me around, to see two of Germany's finest asking me outside for a chat. Turned out that they weren't too happy with me taking a piss down the side of the street, not so much for the fact that it was anti-social, more for the fact that the building I'd relieved myself on was their station.

They took my details. I spent the next month waiting for a letter from the Stadt Polizei to drop onto the doormat, and beating my parents to the post each and every time it arrived. After that I realised that it was unlikely that anything would arise.

Barnsley (I think, some lower league mob anyway) had just humbled Liverpool out of the F.A. Cup with a last-gasp winner. Me and a few friends, drunk on the romance of the cup and alcohol, decided that this would be an opportune time to have a kickabout ourselves. Only slight problem was that I was living in Taipei at the time, a city not renowned for its open spaces. Plus it was gone midnight.

Cue us breaking into a primary school to have a game in the playground . What made it worse was that this was the first time I'd kicked a ball in months due to a fairly serious ankle injury . 15 minutes later about half a dozen of Taipei's finest arrive, most armed with cameras to record us and one big fat prick armed only with bad English and an incredibly angry demeanour. Carted off to the station and only let out a few hours later. Our team had a game the next morning at 9.30am which we somehow didn't lose despite most of the team severely lacking in sleep.

Tales Of Interview Woes

My worst interview was a group assessment for teaching English in Taiwan. My group comprised of students and recent graduates (about 20-21 years old) had half an hour to come up with a lesson plan. Straight away some prick decides he's the boss and decides for us that we're doing it on London landmarks. Being the only one from London, we look to him to come up with ideas beyond Big fucking Ben, red buses and parliament. He’s stumped. Two more decide they're now the leaders so the half an hour is spent as an apprentice-style power struggle between three gobshites, with me and the other fella trying desperately to keep us on topic and within the allotted time. Thankfully someone was assessing all of this...

Eventually got some crap written down but we didn't have time to decide what we were presenting - then we had to present in front of 20-odd people. I had no idea what I was presenting and I really, really wanted the job so I was nervous as hell. Of course, the gobshites presented perfectly while I was a gibbering wreck. The other lad was left with about 5 words to say at the end. I was nearly sick after the assessment and was absolutely gutted with how it had gone.

Then came the interview where they asked us how the group assessment went. In a dignified way I built the group up, concentrated on the strengths and shit sandwiched the fuck out of it by saying what I would have done differently, got the ideas I didn't have time to express out of the way then went on to give the interview of my life and passed the assessment.

Another experience,  I'm certain I was denied a few interviews as I once sent about 50 copies of my CV to various law firms where I had opened my personal statement "I am a confident, outgoing individual who enjoys a challenge and is not afraid to shirk responsibility." I've no idea why I wrote that or how I failed to pick up on it upon proof-reading, but my housemate at the time spotted it a couple of weeks later when I voiced to him my confusion as to why no-one had contacted me yet about an interview.

Not sure how true this is but it makes me laugh so I'll post it. A mate of mine is a recruitment consultant, he tells me that mental candidates are the biggest positive of the job

According to him he once sent a candidate for an interview with Barcap in London.

"Do you have a new suit?" He asked the candidate, "Oh yes, I've just got mine back from the dry cleaners."
"Brilliant" He answered "Wear that suit, try and look professional"

Client calls to give him feedback

"Well, it was a new experience"

"Why?" He answered "You've interviewed loads of my candidates"

"But none of them ever wore a Tuxedo to the interview before"

Stories Of Your Failures When Trying To Get Some

Drunk as a 14 yr old and trying to grope the tits of a bird I knew before being sick on myself and having to be collected by my dad to whom I uttered the words "carry me daddy". This always gets a good laugh when its brought up at Christmas.



Young teenager. Chasing a girl for ages, finally get in there and we arrange to hang out at mine

Me: "By the way my parents are decorating so we'll have to hang out in my room"

Her: "Oh right, well I don't wanna get in the way. Lets just go bowling"



I think one of my worst is when I was about 17 on a night out, bumped into a girl that I did a few weeks before. It all ended pretty nasty because she claimed to be pregnant (I didn't wrap up as I had no johnnys, she didn't complain). Anyway, we were getting on in the club but it didn't lead to anything. By the end of the night, I had not seen any action and as I'd known this girl from a young age, I knew where she lived and I knew that she'd be walking home... So I took it upon myself to pretend to be sleeping on the streets on her route home in the vain hope that she'd see me, feel sorry for me and then sleep with me. Instead what actually happened was that she walked back with her friends... They saw me, laughed at me and then mocked me.

Then to top it off, I had to walk 6 miles home.

Creepy Good Reads on Wikipedia

Bloop Noise

The Bloop is the name given to an ultra-low frequency and extremely powerful underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1997. The source of the sound remains unknown.

Number Stations

Numbers stations (or number stations) are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. In the 1950s, Time magazine reported that the numbers stations first appeared shortly after the war (World War II) and were using a format that had been used to send weather data during that war.
Numbers stations generally broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters (sometimes using a spelling alphabet), tunes or Morse code. They are in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually female, although sometimes men's or children's voices are used.

Dyatlov Pass Incident

The Dyatlov Pass incident refers to an event that resulted in the deaths of nine ski hikers in the northern Ural mountains on the night of February 2, 1959. It happened on the east shoulder of the mountain Kholat Syakhl The mountain pass where the incident occurred has since been named Dyatlov Pass after the group's leader, Igor Dyatlov

The lack of eyewitnesses and subsequent investigations into the hikers' deaths have inspired much speculation. Investigators at the time determined that the hikers tore open their tent from within, departing barefoot in heavy snow. Though the corpses showed no signs of struggle, two victims had fractured skulls, two had broken ribs, and one was missing her tongue. According to sources, four of the victims' clothing contained substantial levels of radiation. There is no mention of this in contemporary documentation; it only appears in later documents. Soviet investigators determined only that "a compelling unknown force" had caused the deaths. Access to the area was barred for skiers and other adventurers for three years after the incident. The chronology of the incident remains unclear due to the lack of survivors.

   

Lead Mask Case

The Lead Masks Case was the name given to the events which led to the death of two Brazilian electronic technicians: Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana. Their bodies were discovered on August 20, 1966.

Wow! Signal

The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of The Ohio State University. The signal bore expected hallmarks of potential non-terrestrial and non-solar system origin. It lasted for the full 72-second duration that Big Ear observed it, but has not been detected again. Much attention has been focused on it in the media when talking about SETI results.
Amazed at how closely the signal matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal in the antenna used, Ehman circled the signal on the computer printout and wrote the comment "Wow!" on its side. This comment became the name of the signal.

Valentich Disappearance 

This video has some extracts of the radio transmission

The Valentich disappearance describes an event on 21 October 1978 when 20-year-old Frederick Valentich disappeared in unknown circumstances while piloting a Cessna 182L light aircraft over Bass Strait, Australia. His intention was to land at King Island, pick up three or four friends there, and return to Moorabbin Airport.

During the 127 Nautical mile (235 km) private flight, Valentich advised Melbourne air traffic control he was being accompanied by an aircraft about 1,000 feet above him. He described unusual actions and features of the aircraft, reported that his engine had begun running roughly, and finally reported that "That strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again. It is hovering and it's not an aircraft".

No trace of Valentich or his aircraft was ever found, and a Department of Transport investigation concluded that the reason for the disappearance could not be determined.
There were numerous belated reports of a UFO sighting in Australia the night of the disappearance. Ken Williams, a spokesman for the Department of Transport, told the Associated Press that "it's funny all these people ringing up with UFO reports well after Valentich's disappearance.

Vonynich Manuscript

The Voynich manuscript is a handwritten book thought to have been written in the early 15th century and comprising about 240 vellum pages, most with illustrations. Although many possible authors have been proposed, the author, script, and language remain unknown. It has been described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript".
Generally presumed to be some kind of ciphertext, the Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II. Yet it has defied all decipherment attempts, becoming a historical cryptology cause célèbre. The mystery surrounding it has excited the popular imagination, making the manuscript a subject of both fanciful theories and novels.

Taman Shud Case 

The Taman Shud Case, also known as the "Mystery of the Somerton Man", is an unsolved case revolving around an unidentified man found dead at 6:30a.m., December 1, 1948, on Somerton beach in Adelaide, Australia.
Considered "one of Australia's most profound mysteries", the case has been the subject of intense speculation over the years regarding the identity of the victim, the events leading up to his death and the cause of death.
While scrutiny of the case has been mainly centred in Australia, there has also been coverage of the case internationally.

Shadow People

Are supernatural shadow-like figures of both modern folklore and paranormal popular culture that believers describe as dark humanoid forms or evasive specters that are seen mostly in peripheral vision. They are commonly regarded as malicious or evil spirits 

Cash Landrum Incident 

The Cash-Landrum Incident was a reported Unidentified Flying Object sighting from the United States in 1980, which the witnesses insist was responsible for damage to their health. It is one of very few UFO cases to result in criminal court proceedings.
It can be classified as a Close Encounter of the Second Kind, due to its reported physical effects on the witnesses and their automobile.

Hazards of Drinking and Sliding

A few nights ago, after many post work beers, deciding it would be uber cool to slide down the bannister of the enormous escalator at Dublin Heuston station.

In my inebriated state, I neglected to consider the fact that that my cheap work trousers might be made of a fabric more slippery than greased teflon.  I had soon accelerated like a greyhound out of a trap, and by the time I reached the bottom, i must have been doing 20+mph. Launched off the end, through the air landing in a crumpled heap, with torn trousers all witnessed by several hundred people making their way home.

Not my finest moment,

Simpler times.... trip down nostalgia lane

Told my younger cousin last night about having to remember all your friends phone numbers. About a time where you could play outside all day without ending up as a discarded sex toy in a pedophile ring. The poor lad didn't believe me. I genuinely feel sorry for kids born in the last ten years. Their quality of life has diminished so much. No tip the can, british bulldog, kerbs, or builiding tree houses. No scuffed knees or water fights. No bike races down the hill of your estate. Now it's 'who has the highest prestige' on Call of Duty.

It was better when things were on tv just once. You'd make the effort (as if there was much effort aged 12!) to watch the one episode of the New Simpsons on Sunday evening on sky followed by Malcolm in the Middle, you'd look forward to it and enjoy it all the more. Now there must be about six episodes of the Simpsons on daily. Same with football - you'd stay up on a Saturday night to watch it and enjoy it all the more. Now if you miss it, well, screw it cause MOTD2 will have all the goals or Goals on Sunday will be on in the morning, miss that there is always YouTube and sure there's two games on tomorrow anyway for your fix.

I remember there being a Gerard Depardieu season on Channel 4 way back 99. Gerard Depardieu's French films were always good for some tits and fanny. I remember telling my mates in school that they'd be guaranteed to see some, if they watched them.

Anyway, I remember them all tuning in to watch Tenue De Soiree. True to my word, it had lots of sex and nudity. Unfortunately, most of it was male on male shit. As Ged played a massive gayer in the film.. .I still get abuse over it to this day.

Summers were spent outside, all the bloody time. If you were called in by your parents you made a fuss. You'd wake up at 7am on Saturday mornings and watch cartoons. When I talk to my younger cousins they are generally forced to go outside, only to go back in 30 minutes later because everyone is bored out of their minds. They are pale and monosyllabic. I was bouncing off walls (literally) when I was their age and I have a body of scars to prove it from my adventures. I used to love playing a game called Manhunt which involved one kid being chased by about 20 other kids, we were lucky enough to have a big park with a woods right across the road from us. They were pretty small but at a young age they seem as vast as the Amazon Rainforest. Sometimes you couldn't access it because sometimes there was a small river blocking your route in. You had to find rocks big enough that you could stick into the river and then use them as a platform to jump across. There was a shed in the middle of these woods which inevitably led to stories of it being an axe murderer's workshop. Just the typical stuff that gets made up when you're a kid. But nobody would go near it just in case.

My 5 year old niece has an MP3 player, Nintendo DS etc, she probably won't experience anything like growing up in the 90s and early 00's. Damn entertainment on demand culture ruining everything!

Give this 90's songs game a go and see how many you can get

Regale me with awkward experiences with your mate's bird

All round my mate's house. Me, my mate (who's house it was), then  another mate and his girlfriend. So we're all watching footy, playing Fifa, the usual. All of a sudden, the TV goes off. We're wondering what the fuck is happening. She grabbed the remote and turned it off because she wanted to watch Eastenders

We all told her to get to fuck. She then starts having a moan saying that her boyfriend said 'we werent just going to be playing Fifa and CoD'

After a massive fight she turns on his computer, loads up BBC Iplayer and starts watching Eastenders.Why she invites herself over I have no idea.



Same couple about a year ago, house party at the boyfriends house but the evening was ending, my mate had gone to bed and the gf was messing around with the hamster in the kitchen when the dog came in, anyway before anyone managed to get rid of the dog he had a swipe at the hamster, didnt look like he got him but i snatched the hamster bellowing "who let the fucking dog in ?!?!" Before it rather unceremoniously farted its last breath. Motionless in my hand I looked at the gf, who naturally burst into tears.....for about an hour.....Trying to fucking sing it back to life



                                                                             credit card
                                                 loans                              cancer
I stopped hanging round with them after a while, he fell out with a few of my mates over other things so regressed into his own world with her. Thankfully they split though and he has returned to being a fairly decent fellow.

Listening to bands you loved when you were younger

Listened to Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park for the first time in about 5 year's yesterday. Hybrid Theory was top notch, apart from that crappy little musical interlude track thing, and the Jay-Z stuff was brilliant too, but then the next album just seemed pretty much a whole lot of "meh". The song they did with the X-Ecutioners was pure quality mind!

When I got home I spent the next few hours listen to old songs that I loved

So far so good then I got to The Offspring..... Man what a load of fucking shite, That is when I stopped in fear of destroying any more memories. So has any attempted to recapture the sounds of your youth, how does it stand up today?

Pilot leaves it late

Lukla is the world's most dangerous airport apparently

Pets Escaping

When we moved house when I was 8, we didn't have enough space in the car to put two hamster cages in, so we put both hamsters in one cage for the journey. Less than two hours, and they'd shagged and we soon had 8 baby hamsters. My dad was fed up of the hamsters anyway, so he took them all to the pet shop to "donate". Came back, said they'd taken them all, and would re-home them, and that was that.

Fast forward six or seven years, we're all driving past this wasteground near our house, and my dad nudges my mum and says "Imagine if there's thousands of hamsters running around in there right now!"... turns out they wouldn't take the adults because they were too old, so my dad just let them out in the field.


Also, tale of escape: we got a new puppy, Rusty, a few years back. We'd traveled about 200 miles to Cork where the breeder we'd got our last dog was from, my mum "trusted them more". We stayed at my Aunts house overnight. They had a dog too, and in the morning, my uncle had got up early to open the back door and let them out in the garden, then gone back to bed. Somehow, Rusty had managed to get under the gate and went wandering the street. When we found out, we made posters and contacted the local shelters in case he turned up. Luckily, we got a call from a shelter the next day, a couple of hours before we were set to go home

Apparently, upon finding the postman in the street, Rusty had just followed him around for nearly an hour before another man out walking his dogs had found him nearly a mile away from my uncle's house and taken him home. Luckily, the man's next door neighbor worked at the local shelter, and had seen Rusty in the man's back garden and gone round to collect him.


Final story I have is when I went to the cousins house this Christmas, her dog barged his way out the door and headed straight for the woods. I started chasing after him and must have spent about 45 minutes wandering and following any little noises I heard. Then I realised I was lost. I called the cousin who said "the dog is here - where are you?" She had to guide me home.

Tales of travelling hell

I went to Vegas last year, I was suffering with the flu but this trip had been planned for months so there was no chance of canceling it. The flight from Dublin to London was pretty uneventful, on the flight from London to Dallas there was food going around so we had some pizza on board. I probably should have known better than to eat aeroplane food as it was like eating half a loaf of broad which unsettled my stomach a bit. Normally it can be quite painful but this time it was complete agony. It felt like i'd been stabbed. We were queuing up to go through customers and I was sitting on my knees on the floor doubled over in pain.

We then had to wait three hours at Dallas airport for our connecting flight which was spent in and out of the toilet throwing up from both ends. Then a four/five hour flight to Vegas which was spent in severe pain. Then at Vegas we had to wait an hour for our bags and again I was sitting on the floor with everybody looking at me.

The only good thing to come out of the trip was that we were able to book into our hotel from the airport. The receptionist saw the state I was in and upgraded our room to a suite. I managed to get some sleep at the hotel and I was fine the next day. I'm lucky I was with the family, if it was a mates holiday I'd probably just be abandoned when they saw me in the fetal position.

Rare Pictures Of Celebrities

Hunter S. Thompson, John Cusack, Johnny Depp and blow up doll - out for a drive

Promo pic from The Outsiders.

,

Ralph Macchino, Matt Dillion, Emilio Esteves, Patrick Swyze, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe. 1983.

Bearing in mind just how many young 'soon to be big' actors were in the movie there must be many more cracking pictures from the set around somewhere.

The Beatles, taken just before the famous Abbey Road picture.

Elvis and his dad.

Steve Martin........erm, ironing a kitten.

Jackson 5 and Bob Marley

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wilt Chamberlain and Andre the Giant

Micheal Jackson and two midgets

Tupac & Suge Knight playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Bob Dylan and Mohammed Ali

Ever been attacked by an animal?

I was walking home from the pub one night, drunk and happy when I saw a skunk rummaging through a pile of leaves. I was all excited, first time I'd seen one so I walked over to have a closer look. He just ignored me and acted like i wasn't there, drunk, indignant , annoyed at being ignored, I stamped my foot to get some attention...little fuck ran at me. In my effort to run away I tripped on the curb and fell into the side of a parked car.

Didn't get attacked by them but while trekking in Canada my mate and I climbed a large rock to chill in the sun and eat our sandwiches, when I say large I mean maybe 16 feet high, we'd been up there when a pack of Timberwolves came out of the forest and started wandering round the rock looking at us, one or two tried to climb up the first bit but couldn't.

All our gear including our cameras and two rifles were at the bottom. Obviously we were shitting ourselves but there was nothing we could do, we just had to wait it out, 5 hours we sat there til they'd all gone, we did get a pic of one we saw a bit later.

Also I tell this to people but no-one ever believes me, a raccoon threw an apple at me about 3 years ago.

Good Documentary

Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, presents a gripping courtroom thriller, offering a rare and revealing inside look at a high-profile murder trial. In 2001, author Michael Peterson was arraigned for the murder of his wife Kathleen, whose body was discovered lying in a pool of blood on the stairway of their home. Granted unusual access to Peterson's lawyers, home and immediate family, de Lestrade's cameras capture the defense team as it considers its strategic options. "The staircase" is an engrossing look at contemporary American justice that features more twists than a legal bestseller.

IMDb: 8.6 

For anyone who want's to see it

Don't read anything about the case, just watch it and then you can make a decision yourself. I can't recommend it highly enough, one of the best documentaries I have ever seen.