The Pony, The Robbery and U2

Here are somethings that have kept me amused over the last week or so.

The Pony
I was driving home from Belfast last thursday and was on the seven towers roundabout outside ballymena. It was rush hour. So I'm driving round and there running right towards me is a Shetland pony. Aw look at the pony I thought to myself while swerving to avoid it. Danger danger. It looked as surprised to see me as I was to see it. And then I drove away. Never found out what happened to that crazy pony. Wonder is it still alive. Lets hope so.

The Robbery
Last thursday I was driving down the Newtonards Road. And I was sitting at lights outside this pawn shop or something. Then I see these two guys in baseball caps running out of the building, jump into their illegally parked car and pull out immediately in front of a rather unamused driver. Then I seen some staff running out of the shop also looking rather unamused. Then when I was driving past it like an hour later I seen a police car parked outside. No idea if it was actually a robbery but whatever was going on was no doubt very illegal. Maybe this kind of thing happens all the time in East Belfast I don't know. Well I'm sure it doesn't. The day before I was thinking about the mural on the westlink saying 'I'm not your stereotype'. Hmm. You might not be but...

U2
Found a nice u2 video on you tube today. Its from the live video Rattle and Hum. This show was recorded on the day of the Enniskillen bombing in 1987. Bono talks a bit about this at the start of the video. Its cool hearing someone like Bono say Enniskillen! Then he goes on one of his rants in the middle of singing Sunday Bloody Sunday. Hes talking about the so called Irish revolution. The passion in his voice just makes me shiver. He sounds like he's just so genuinely pissed off with what had been going on in NI back then. I wish new bands had that much passion and motivation to change the world.

Watch it. Its worth it.



Music
I don't listen to much radio. So the other day in the car I thought I would. Try to get in touch with whats going on out there and all that. But it depressed me. New music sucks. There was seriously nothing good worth listening to. I just can't understand why all the crap music gets put on the radio and all the good stuff doesn't. Idiots.

That is all.

Duke Special, Limo And Flash

Me and Charlotte went to see Duke Special on monday night in the Empire. I'd never seen him in the Empire before so was quite excited about that. So what happened. Well the support was... interesting. Was this German guy called Torsten Harder. He was funny because he was german and played cello. He was real good but not quite a crowd warmer upper. And it was funny cause he played like one song. Then said some stuff about Bach that I couldn't really make out. Then he started playing another song. Then he broke a string and had to go away again. Was pretty funny at the time...

So Duke's piano was in the middle of the floor on a wee stage and we were standing right infront of it. Then out of nowhere he's there at his piano and he starts singing some songs. Which tends to happen a lot at these concerts. The theme for mon night was cinema. So quite a few of the songs were played to films. Crazyness. Then there was this great bit where some of his support came on his wee mini stage. Was the guy from Bell X1 there which some people found quite exciting. And then they sang everyone wants to be a cat. From Disney. Was great. I love that song.

Another interesting part was at the end when they decided they would finish with that song at the start of grease. So they start playing the movie on the big screen waiting for the song. About 10mins later Duke gets bored waiting for the song to start and just plays it himself. Then when that finished it started in the movie so everyone sang it again.

Heres couple of photos I took with my phone. They're rubbish. Forgot my camera :-(.


Claranet guy and Duke (yeah we were that close)

Peter Wilson, Bell X1 guy (Paul Noonan apparently) and Steven Seagal

And thats that.

Was a wedding in the city center yesterday. And they had a limo. And they locked the keys inside the limo and were trying to pick the lock with a big wire. Wish I'd taken a photo. Not something you see everyday.

This one's also about a dream...

I'll not turn this one into a song. But this was a fun dream.

I'll call it...

Enniskillen, a Tiger and Warren

So I was back in Enniskillen again last night. In my dream that is. Only this time it was looking pretty much normal. Me and Aggy were walking down the Dublin Road. Just along were the Model School is. And there we bumb into Warren. Warren is working. This time he has got a job just walking about the place making sure everyone is doing ok. The perfect job for Warren I think.

So as we're talking, this couple approach Warren and ask him for directions to Glengormley. The man says he and his girlfriend/wife are going there for the weekend because its valentines day weekend. How romantic. Glengormley.

Now we all know how to get to Belfast pretty well but none of us are too sure about how to get to Glengormley. So we jump into Chris's car where he rather convienently has a sat nav. Me, Aggy and Warren sit in the back. Man shotgun and woman driver seat. So we're working at this sat nav trying to find Glengormley. Unfortunately for us, none of us can spell Glengormley which makes things rather difficult. Its then that the man says he knows how to get to Glengormley from Belfast. He's just not sure how to get to Belfast. I tell him.

So all is well and the man jumps out of the car goes into his own. Now it must be noted that his girlfriend/wife is blonde. And not just in hair colour. For whatever reason she now thinks that Chris's car is hers and drives off. We just sit there in the back going hmm. So she drives up the road a bit past the Killy and then comes to a road bloack. A branch is blocking the road. This is strange. But not quite as strange as all the cars parked round in a big circle with a tiger sitting in the middle of it all.

The silly woman obviously fails to see any of this. So she jumps out of the car and starts moving the branch. This gets the tigers attention who then makes for her. Then some man comes out of nowhere and pushes her into a car and takes on the tiger. I'd like to say at this point I jumped out of the car and gave him a hand. I didn't. I sat in the car taking photos of the wrestling match that followed. Man v tiger. Might make some money selling these to a paper I think.

Not sure what happened the man. But the tiger did get a good chunk of his arm. Then a Focus races into the circle, the shotgun window goes down and a rifle points out. Bam the tiger is hit. With a dart. And that was that.

What a great dream.

Heres a fun picture.

Look how happy that dog looks. Its insane. Crazy dog. Grumpy cats...

This one's about a dream...

I had a dream last night. So because I've little better to do I thought I'd turn it into a song. Its basically new lyrics for the song Faust, Midas and Myself by the mighty Switchfoot.

Enniskillen, Disney Land and Warren

This one's about a dream
I had last night
How I made a trip back
To Enniskillen
I hadn't been there in 8 months
And was very excited
Fermanagh's great
Fermanagh rocks
Fermanagh is
Possibly the greatest place on earth

I heard the place has changed a bit
Its got bigger
But what I saw I was
Not prepared for
From when I used to live there
Everything had changed
Everything I'd seen
Everything I'd know
Everything I remember about that place

Enniskillen
Enniskillen
You have changed so much

Enniskillen
Enniskillen
You have changed so much

Now in my dream I see
Lots of skyscrappers
And huge big metal bridges
Over Lough Erne
And then most to my surprise
There among it all
Among all the buildings
In what was once very small
Is Disney Land Northern Ireland

Enniskillen
Enniskillen
You have changed so much

Enniskillen
Enniskillen
You have changed so much

Disney Land
Disney Land
What the flip?
What the flip?
Are you doing in Enniskillen?

Enniskillen
Enniskillen
This is so bizzare

I'm sitting inside a huge big Disney Land building
In a little cafe
And who was working there?
Warren Brownlee of course
What a surprise
He never let me know
I felt so out of touch
Left out in the cold
For a place I used to know had become so distant

I could not believe the change
I could not believe the change
I felt so out of touch
I felt so out of touch

What the heck?
What the heck?
What the heck?
What the heck?
How could this all have changed so soon?
What the heck?
What the heck?
What the heck?
What the heck?

I looked out of the window
At the streets outside
They were moving a huge monument
Into place
Then something did go wrong
The monument collapsed
Crashed into the building
That I was sitting in
Taking out the foyer
And that was that

Enniskillen
Enniskillen
You have changed too much

Enniskillen
Enniskillen
You have changed too much

The Great Ebay Scam

I have nearly been the victim of a horrible eBay scam. I had put a mobile phone up for auction and it came to an end last night. And it went for more than I was expecting. Yippee I said. But then I looked at who had bought it. They had only 2 feedback. One positive from years ago and a recent negative one. Ok. They were also American which is odd as I had stated UK buyers only.

So anyway I invoice them and I get an email this morning from 'Paypal'. This basically said the buyer (though the name of buyer they gave was different from the eBay name?) had paid me using Paypal. (Though they had apparently paid £80 more than they should have. And the shipping address was for Nigeria!) Then the email said that as a security measure the money would not be transferred to my Paypal account until I had posted the item and emailed them the delivery code. This is where I got really concerned. I had never seen this before on Paypal.

So I go onto my Paypal account and there was no mention of me being/going to be paid anything. Then I looked at the email again. I had read that the email was sent from a paypal email address. But when I looked at it again I realised it was actually sent by some random email address and whoever had registered it had used the Paypal email as their name. Hence why it came up. The email looked rather convincing with all the Paypal graphics etc. But was definitely a phishing email. I sent a copy of the email to Paypal who also confirmed it was fake.

So before all this I had got a rather confusing email from eBay saying they had removed my item listing. I didn't really get why. But then when I read it later I made more sense of it. Apparently whoever bought my phone did so using someone elses eBay account. So eBay had removed the item so as I couldn't get negative feedback etc. They knew nothing about the Paypal scam nor did they advise me not to go ahead with the transaction. Had to use my own wit to work that one out!

So there we go. Feel a little disappointed. I've used eBay for a while now and have never had any problems. Was interesting to see just how convincing these people can be. If I hadn't already been familiar with Paypal I probably would have been scammed out of a mobile phone. The moral of the story? Never trust emails from these companies. Cause they may not be from these companies. Any emails from eBay are also sent to your eBay account inbox so you can trust what it says there. And never post an item unless you actually have control of the money. No matter what an email from 'Paypal' might say.

So what else is fun. Well HMS Bounty (aka The Black Pearl!!!) is currently docked in Derry! Look. How cool is that! I quite fancy going for a wee look some time.

Got my tickets to see Duke Special today. Still not sure how I got these. I had tried to get tickets a couple weeks ago but every night was sold out. Then out of boredom I tried again a few days ago and it worked. Yippee. I've never seen him in the Empire so its quite exciting.