Ireland went out in Rome today and played quite well. They didn’t play as well as they could have, but they were still quite good – against an Italian team who played really well, by their own standards – and they won by a margin of 29 points… Italy 9 – 38 Ireland. I was following it live on RTE and on Twitter.

Some of the most entertaining stuff of the day, however, was produced by the Irish commentary and analysis teams… such as:

Ryle Nugent (during the match): “it’s made all the harder now that Ireland are now down to ten men…” (after Ronan O’Gara was sent to the sin bin – they were down to 14 men, not 10 – it’s rugby, not soccer).

George Hook (after the match ended): “If [Ireland] say ‘we knew Italy would be hard to beat’, I’ll vomit on my Jaffa Cakes.”

Tom McGuirk (post match analysis): “We could be analysing every scrum since Adam grabbed Eve…”

What are they trying to do… compete with Hamilton, Giles, Dunphy and Billo for comedy value? If so… fair enough! Keep it up, lads, I say

Heard about this on Phantom 105.2 today. Lake Superior State University have just published their "34th annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness" (although… what the feck the Queen has to do with the English they speak in America I don’t know…)

Anyway, I find myself pretty much in agreement with the majority of it (with a couple of possible additions).

The list goes like this:

Green, Carbon footprint/offsetting, Maverick, First Dude, Bailout, Wall/Main Street, ’something’-monkey (like script-monkey, code-monkey, etc.), <3, Icon/Iconic, Game Changer, Staycation, Desperate search, Not so much, Winner of five nominations, It's that time of the year again

I’d add the suffix “gate” … as in “Bertiegate” for the Bertie Ahern cash in the mattress controversy, “Soccergate” for the various FAI controversies, “Clintongate” for the time Bill shagged Monica, etc. etc. – Adding “gate” to a word to indicate that IT’S A CONTROVERSY, GOSH DARN IT is just … well … retarded. The Watergate controversy was so called because of events that took place in the Watergate Hotel – putting “gate” at the end of other words is just meaningless and silly – like most of the words in the above list.

Oh and that Internet-spawned habit of the “- much?” question (i.e.: changing a question such as “are you ignorant?” to “ignorant, much?” – often accompanied by a smiley face). Hate that. Let’s ban that too.

And maybe “That’s so hot”. (*shakes fist at Paris Hilton*).

Agree, much?

I’m impressed with a few people actually…

I was impressed with the people that turned up at football tonight in our local sports centre – enough, finally, that we didn’t have to call it a day and not play any more. I was impressed with how well they played – and somewhat impressed with myself that I made it through the night, could still hack it with the youngsters and that I actually managed to score a few goals! Good work football playing fellahs!

I was impressed with RTÉ’s new 4-part documentary, Bertie, (or what little I saw of it, at least) which documents the life and times of our last Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. It was made by the same (also impressive) team (Miriam O’Callaghan’s company) who made “Haughey” – about our most infamous Taoiseach. Part two goes out next Monday night. Good work, telly production fellahs!

I was even impressed to learn that there’s an Irish version of Wikipedia… although I guess I should have realised that ages ago… Good work, language loving online encyclopedia localisation fellahs!

I’m somewhat impressed by Barack Obama (as, it seems, are both Damien and Fergal) and would like – and expect – to see him become President Elect of the United States within the next 36 hours. Good work, America’s first black President fellah!

Incidentally, I’m also impressed with Damien himself, in all honesty – with the incredible work he did as Ireland Offline chairman – as well as his creation of both the Irish Blog Awards and the Irish Web Awards. Good work, hard-working comms consultant fellah!

Speaking of awards – well done to Michele Neylon, who won two of the gongs at the NetVisionary awards recently – those being the awards for business blogging and Internet marketing. Good work, ISP running net visionary fellah!

I’m impressed by a few radio DJ’s too… particularly with Today FM’s Ray Foley and his sensible stance on the Brand/Ross controversy. Honestly – it’s a ridiculous situation that’s been blown out of proportion by bandwagon jumping complainers who, for the most part, probably never even listened to Russell Brand – or possibly even to the excellent BBC Radio 2. Seriously – read Ray’s blog post on the issue – it’s clever and well written, and while the story is still unfolding and we have yet to see the results of the BBC’s investigation into the incident, I find myself agreeing strongly with him… so good work, just-a-bit-of-fun-for-your-lunchtime fellah!

At the same time, while he doesn’t want to comment on the controversy itself, Rick O’Shea brings up another point that’s well worth considering… where do we draw the line? How far is too far in comedy? What rules should there be? How should the BBC react? … and so on… Good work, hairy-whiskey-drinking-good-point-making-DJ-slash-blogger fellah!

Finally, more DJ’s I’m impressed with are these two lads from CKY Radio, Montreal – who prank called Sarah Palin in a way that helped showed off her… erm… “qualities” even further. (Good work, prank-calling Canuck fellahs!) As if everything that Saturday Night Live has done to her (not to mention her own performances) hasn’t walloped her credibility hard enough, here she displays her incredible (and I mean “in-credible” in the literal sense) intellect when she believes she’s talking to President Sarkozy of France.

Canada seems cool…

(Yeah, this has just been a post of links… sorry.)

The golf is on… 

In fact, the big golf event of the year, The 2008 Ryder Cup is taking place this weekend and is basically taking over the telly at home (my dad’s a big golf fan) and in work (pub). Right now the score is USA 5½ – Europe 2½ (but apparently, Europe have had a great start to their day). What amuses me though is the great sense of pomposity and grandeur that accompanies the tournament – particularly in the TV presentation of the event.

If you’re watching it on Sky Sports you may know what I mean when I specifically pick out their break-bumpers (the short RBS sponsorship clips that feature between the programme and the actual ad break) – which mention ‘classic’ moments or statistics from golfing history to the accompaniment of some incredibly over-dramatic and grandiose music – the same kind of music that accompanies the slo-mo replays of the more ‘iconic’ moments of the day.

It’s the kind of grand and majestic music that would almost make you think these guys must be superheros or something – and yeah, while we all know Tiger Woods can walk on water (see video), I now like to imagine that Padraig Harrington can fly, Nick Faldo has X-Ray vision and Miguel Angel Jimenez can shoot lightning bolts from his arse…

I find myself in the all too familiar territory of agreeing entirely with something Twenty Major has said… the Irish blogging scene does feel a little dead at the moment. It’s like we’re in the middle of a lull. A sort of blogging recession, if you will.

Mind you, it’s not like I’m doing much to combat that as my own blog has gone a bit quiet of late… I guess I’ve just not had much to say, really… must work on that. Especially if I’m going to be in with a shout at the 2009 Blog Awards (ha!), which are being held in Cork.

Here’s what Tommy Tiernan thinks of the Cork accent, by the way:

So… um… what’s happening with me ?…

Well, I scored a few goals tonight,- real ones,- playing football down in our local sports & leisure club, before coming home and being beaten 10 – 4 in FIFA ‘08 on the PS3 by my brother. He was Argentina, I was Liverpool (with newly added Robbie Keane ).

Saw The Dark Knight on Saturday in the VIP cinema in “movies @ Swords” and there’s very little I can say about it that hasn’t already been said. It. Was. Awesome.

Not much else going on with me… how are you?