Laugh Until You Cry

Postpartum depression is a very common condition that can effect either parent. It's mildest form is often referred to as "The Baby Blues", and usually sees parents just despairing over little things, or getting emotional over what would be an inconsequential event at any other time. Neither of these states is anything even remotely a matter to joke about, nor are they anything to be ashamed of.

But the pendulum swings both ways, and Claire and I have had our fair share of uncontrollable hilarity in the last three weeks as well. Here are my top three moments, in chronological order, where one or both of us have just lost it.

On Hold

The day we brought Ada home from the hospital was, obviously an important day for both of us. We got to be a family in the privacy of our own home for the first time. Because we were home early in the day, it was also our first chance to Skype family at home and show off our daughter.

I rang mum on Skype so I could video-chat with her and introduce her properly to her granddaughter. Ada was a bit sleepy, but awake long enough to sit in my arms and say hi. Mum couldn't manage to get her video on her end to work, but could see us fine.

About ten minutes into the call mum's house phone rang, and she answered it, explaining to whoever was on the line that she was talking to her son and grandchild. But instead of making an excuse and getting back to us, she continued to have a full half hour conversation, while keeping the Skype call open. That's not an exaggeration. Skype displays the length of the call. It was, literally, a half hour of listening to mum talking to her friend.

Claire had been working on her PC behind me all this time, but not really paying attention to the conversation. At some point, I wandered away into the kitchen, and Claire realised mum was still talking.

"Who's she talking too?"

"Someone on the phone."

And that's when we both broke. Claire started to laugh. I started to laugh. Claire laughed at me laughing. I laughed at her laughing. Then Claire's stitches from the c-section started to really pain her, and she tried to get me to stop laughing, which only made me laugh more, causing her to laugh more. The tears were streaming down our faces before Claire escaped to the bedroom to calm down.

We could barely look at each other for the next hour without falling to fits of giggles.

Not So Sleeping Beauties

Claire had just gotten Ada to sleep. She handed our unconscious little daughter, just a few days old, to me, and Ada didn't stir, resting on my chest, mouth wide open. Claire reached to grab a camera to capture the pose, but when I spotted what she had planned, I tried to mimic the pose myself.

This just lead to Claire and I both bursting out in laughter, Claire once again cursing my name for making her laugh enough to strain her abdomen, me trying my best to not wake up a sleeping Ada, and both of us struggling to see through tear filled eyes.

It took five minutes for both of us to be still long enough at the same time to get one simple photograph, but over an hour to cure our giggles sufficiently to allow us to talk to each other again.

Zapped On The Funny Bone

Ada had been sleeping for a few hours and was in need to feeding and a diaper change. Ada loves her diaper change time, and will lie out on the mat oohing and ahhing and smiling and making faces the whole time. Claire was changing the diaper, but I wandered in to say hi.

In the middle of wiping Ada's bottom, Ada did what comes natural and let out a little fart. Her bottom was still wet, so it came out with a splutter, sounding, in hindsight, like an electric spark, or, worse, an explosive poop! Claire's hand shot away like it had been hit with a cattle prod, and she jumped back.

I doubled over with laughter. I had to grip on to the changing table to stay standing. I was finding it hard to breath. Every time I took a steadying breath, I'd look up and see Ada smiling at me, and crack up again. Claire finished putting on Ada's diaper and getting more and more frustrated at my hysterics. Eventually, she called her parents who were in the living room and they came in, wondering what all the chaos was about. Claire told me to explain myself, which simply caused me to laugh even harder.

At that point, she picked up our daughter and left for the living room. I picked myself up, dried my eyes, and followed her out to start writing this post.

I've been giggling for over two hours now.

Bonus Giggles
Claire was exhausted one day, but Ada needed feeding, so she took her and started nursing while lying out on the couch. Both mom and daughter fell asleep, while Ada was still attached, and, while very asleep, still feeding weakly. Eventually, Ada detached, but stayed asleep against Claire's boob. It was incredibly adorable, cute and funny, but, obviously, no photos to remember the moment.

From Begins To Rises

With the third Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, due out tomorrow, I thought I'd post a quick recap for anyone who has forgotten the story up to now, or readers who plan on jumping in at this point without seeing the previous two[1].

Everything you need to know about the most recent movie version of Batman.

Steve Wayne is this dude who crashed to earth as a child and was raised by Amazonians before his uncle was killed in front of him down a dark alley. Wallowing in self pity, he was driving along a lonely road when an alien crashed, bestowing a powerful ring to him, powered by vengeance. Using the ring to form a hammer that can call down lightning, he hunted down this immortal dude from Star Wars, before battling the Clown Prince of Crime, Deadpool, and destroying most of the city he calls home, causing millions and millions of rupees in damages.

Somewhere along the way he successfully funneled billions of his own company's money, spending them on ridiculous inventions and experimental technologies for his own private, personal use.

Apart from that, all you need to know if that the police and, inexplicably, the citizens who have to put up with his wanton rampages and the resulting increase in taxes to cover city-wide repairs, allow him to continue operating. He's the hero the city needs, not the one it wants. Remember, he doesn't have to kill people, he just doesn't have to save them... which makes about as much sense as a cock flavored popsicle. While we're on the subject of nonsense, Batman never uses guns, unless they're on his car, the Quinjet, at which point it's okay to use only high caliber machine guns capable of shredding a person in half, but rockets as well. Also, he drives over people in their cars too while in his 2.5 tonne personal tank.

There's a reason the city doesn't want him.

You're welcome.

[1] - This was written for a friend who plans on doing the latter, so I hope I covered all the important points. In case I missed any, feel free to leave them in the comments.

True Tales From Childhood: The Price Of Air

When we were much younger than we are now, my brother Philip and I went to a childminder after school every weekend until mum and dad got out of work. She had two older boys, Adrian and Noel, and together the four of us would play Action Man (they had an Eagle Eyes figure and a pull string talking one!), dinky cars (which, for us, referred to all small metal cars), and, of course, LEGO.

We could spend hours on the floor building incredible constructions before playing out some adventure with our creations. Adrian and Noel had a big pile of LEGO that would get dumped in the middle of the living room floor and then it would be race to grab the choice bricks and figure out something wonderful to fabricate. We made a good team, and there was never any fighting over parts. As I recall, it was pretty collaborative, with everyone looking for their own pieces, while simultaneously keeping an eye out for a "red 3 by 2 flat bit" for Noel, the elusive "grey thick corner piece" for Adrian, a "long white one" for Philip and a "flat blue light" for me.

One afternoon Adrian had spent all his time building a garage and petrol station (gas station, for all you US readers). I had done my usual bang-up job of spreading the remaining pieces from the pile into a circle with a few free standing windows and calling it a "house", while focusing my attention on more important things, like a space ship or a rocket car.

Some time into our game Adrian exclaimed "Why isn't anyone using my garage? I spent ages building this. Come to my garage." As the youngest one in the group, Philip drove his car over to the front of the garage, parked by the pumps and requested, in a most matter-of-fact voice "£10* of air, please."

Noel, Adrian and myself exploded with laughter. Wiping tears from our cheeks, we informed Philip that you didn't pay for air for your car. People can pump their tires for free. It's air. It's everywhere. You can't charge for it.

I was reminded of this wonderfully happy moment from my childhood by a tweet posted recently from someone I follow. It read:

The compressed air at the local gas station just went up to $1.00 for 3 minutes. I should really get these tire rims fixed.

I was stunned. Garages are now charging for air for your tires! And at a dollar for three minutes! After the best part of almost 25 years, Adrian's garage can now charge for air!

What a strange and funny world we live in.

*- This was long before Europe thought the Euro was a clever idea, so Ireland was still using the Irish pound, or punt.

Post Script: This story remains very clear in my memory to this day, but just writing it now, I've begun to realise just how long ago it took place. I have no recollection of my other brother Stephen being around, so it probably took place before he was born, putting it at around 1987! I would have been 7, Philip 4, and Adrian and Noel 10 and 13 respectively! I wonder if any of them remember this story?

What Is Worse Than One Of Me?

Six of me! In one room!! Crazy!


Lots of Photoshopping here, obviously! Not very well done, just took lots of photos of me in various places around the room using the tripod, then used the lasso tool to carefully cut each of the clones out and paste them into a single image. It shouldn't be hard to work out which clone belongs to the full background. Things look great until you blow it up and start looking closer. But I'm just nit-picking! For a first attempt, self taught, with no masking or other neat PS trickery, it's not bad at all!

Overheard On...

Gmail. Sometimes, I wonder why I'm let teach small children...

Sinead: wondering what to do for an hour at my desk and not work

me: Should have brought your DS.

Sinead: good idea

or a book

so entertain me

me: Once upon a time...

Sinead: yes...

me: there was a little bear, that lived all by himself in the woods.

One day, Little Bear was out searching for food.

He looked under rocks.

He looked inside tress.

Sinead: what was his name

me: He looked in the water.

L.B.

Sinead: did he find any yet he must be starving

me: But Little Bear, whose name was L.B., could not find anything to eat.

"Where is all the food gaone?" thought L.B.

"Where are all the yummy bugs from under the rocks?"

"Where is all the yummy honey from inside the trees?"

"And where are all the juicey fish that swim in the river?"

Little Bear didn't know.

He looked high up in the trees.

He looked low down in the valleys.

And then, he looked deep down inside a dark cave.

Sinead: oh poor LB

Sent at 1:28 PM on Monday

me: That was when he found the illegally dumped bio-hazardous waste that some careless chemical company had disposed off, allowing it to leak out and kill all the grubs under the rocks, the bees in the trees, and the fish in the rivers. And it killed Little Bear too.

The End.
Sinead: oh

did he have a mam

can she have more babies?

me: No. He lived all alone in the forest, remember. It was at the start.

Sinead: where did he come from

was he little cause he was small, or young

me: His mam had been killed years ago by hunters and was now on display in a café where fat american tourists could pose for photographs.

Sinead: oh was she born in this forest too

me: Yup. She had spent a happy life here until the day a .22 ripped through her like a hot klnife through butter.

Sinead: did LB see it happen

me: Nah. He was playing with Mr. Squirrel and Fluffy Bunny, the Hare in a Rabbit Desguise.

Sinead: are they all dead too?

Sent at 1:35 PM on Monday

me: Yea. Mr. Squirrel had a massive coronary about 6 months ago, and Fluffy Bunny had an unfortunate accident involving an articulated truck and 8 large tires.

Sent at 1:36 PM on Monday

Television At Top Gear

Recently, I've spent a lot of time complaining about the ills of the newest season of television, suggesting, perhaps, that there was very little worth watching these cold winter nights. That could not be further from the truth, and while I still have to say that I cannot in good conscience recommend Heroes right now, there are some other shows that you should at least try and see if they're your kind of flavour as well.

How I Met Your Mother is a rare treat when it comes to Stateside comedies. In a show that proclaims from the outset to be about relationships, love, life and above all, friendships, all the cliches are avoided. No secret loves (even if there is a season long mutually obvious, but mutually avoidant one), no best friends sleeping with best friends girlfriends, and no "We were on a break" moments. It's hard not to see parts of yourself and your friends in the characters. They are realistically thought out, and deal with situations in a realistic manner... well, almost. This is a comedy after all. Sometimes things just get wacky! Worth watching for Barney alone, an ingenious idea for a character that feels so real, yet I hope doesn't actually exist in reality anywhere in the world!

House. What can I say about some of the best writing on television. Every episode follows an identical format. Patient arrives with unexplainable illness, team look at combination of symptoms and come up with the answer, treat, treatment fails and patient gets worse, team reassess symptoms, come up with new answer, treat, patient gets better for a while, then- OH NOES!!- patient crashes, almost dies, team stabilise patient, Dr. House remembers some random, inane fact from Act One, such as patient doesn't like hospital food, and suddenly the answer is obvious! Team treats patient, patient recovers, everyone goes home happy. What makes the show spectacular is that, despite this, every episode is griping TV, and the few that break the pattern are some of the best 45 minutes of drama you'll ever see. The patient and the treatment are not the important reason for the show, and only rarely for the team. Instead, it is the relationships, interactions and friendships that the extended cast of characters go through. Season four has added a new excitement, as House picks a new team, starting with a class of over thirty and eliminating it down week by week. Wilson still ranks as my favourite supporting character in any series.

Balancing karma has never been funnier than in My Name Is Earl. Jason Lee is almost unrecognisable as the title character, Earl, who, after winning $100,000 on a scratchcard and then getting hit by a car, realises he has to make up for all the bad things he's done in life to everyone. He creates a list, and, in a random order, begins to do good deeds related to the bad in order to cross them off. Some are easier done than others, and as the show continues, the list gets slowly added to, either because Earl remembered something new, or his emotions got the better of him for a moment. My Name Is Earl is kind of like Quantum Leap without the time-travel element. Both have to right wrongs, and both are controlled by God, fate, karma or whatever. I'm gonna leave that analogy there, because some people don't see the genius in connecting those two shows.

Top Gear is the reason I originally started this post. Claire and I watched episode five of season ten last night and both of us almost died of laughter and excitement! What other show could follow up a mind-blowing trek across the spine of Africa with a trek across London in rush-hour Monday morning traffic and have the London episode come out tops on the "Edge-Of-Seat" scale of television viewing?!? If you have yet to see it, the episode involves a race between James May in a four-wheel drive people carrier, the Mercedes GL, Richard Hammond on a bicycle (skin tight shorts and t-shirt included!), Jeremy Clarkson in a Cougar sport racing boat on the Thames, and finally... well, some say, when he was born, his heart was replaced with a miniature Formula One engine, and that because all he knows is speed, he has no concept of money or mobile phones. All we know is, he's called The Stig, and he took public transport. The race was from the extreme west of London, Knightsbridge, to the extreme east, at London City airport. It was riveting viewing, side-splitting all the way, and totally unpredictable in it's craziness. Favourite moment: The Stig stares blankly at his mobile phone, seemingly with no idea what this funny little noisy thing is for. The ring tune is the Coronation Street theme. But who won?!? You'll have to watch for yourself. The results are just too good to give away here!

So there's a selection of viewing material to watch while it's dark and wet outside on these long nights. Have I missed anything? Is there something I should be watching? I know there are lots of other good shows out there, but I only have so much free time. I need to blog too, you know!

In Case You're Not Aware

Sometimes you find something online, or someone tells you about some wonderful site they've found, and you laugh and enjoy it, and return for updates and hilarity on a regular basis, but you forget to spread the joy! No, I'm not trying to get you to promote my personal effort among friends! I'm here to tell you about one such site I visit regularly, and think you might like.

Zero Punctuation is a work of genius by a madman. Now part of The Escapist, it started life as simply another random computer games video review piece on YouTube. Admittedly, they were designed and put up there in hopes of being offered a paying job to continue them, but honestly, given how often that has ever happened, our madman's dreams were...well... mad!

But seemingly dreams do come true, and living in a world populated with three-minute attention spans meant that Yahtzee's reviews were akin to opium for the sound-bite generation of "brighter, shorter, faster" internet addicts who consider Bebo contacts on different continents their "bff". The people behind The Escapist were quick to see the new big-thing was talking to them at 100mph, and snapped him up after only two reviews. Since then, to date, thirteen new reviews have put, among others, Half Life 2, Super Paper Mario, Bioshock, Halo 3, and the consoles themselves into the firing range and mowed through them with the speed and power of a gattling gun, but far funnier.

So what makes these worth watching? The sheer speed at which Yahtzee talks is certainly a factor! Ireland's own motormouth Dave Fanning sounds like a moped next to Yahtzee's Formula One racer! The humour is top notch as well, coming across like a stand-up comedian who is blurring our razor sharp witticisms to an unforgiving audience! The metaphors, analogies and tangential tales keep you shifting back and forth between gut laughing out loud and gasping shock at "I can't believe he just said that" moments.

But possibly the most enjoyable element of the Zero Punctuation reviews are the videos themselves. All done in Flash, the videos have a simple cartoony style that often reflects the audio in an odd, strangely literal fashion! One of my favourite examples of this is when Yahtzee is describing one feature as "sublime", and a little cartoon submarine and a photo of a lime flash up onscreen! Simple, effective and hilarious!

Trying to write a review about a video-review site seems a bit pointless. In the length of time it can take some people to read these few paragraphs, Yahtzee would already be cutting whatever game he has been playing this week to shreds! In light of this, I'm going to wrap up and leave you with my own personal favourite review embedded below. Remember, there are lots more available on the official site, and he updates every Wednesday, so mark your calenders! Enjoy.

Just A Good Ol' Country Pa

This speaks for itself. Watch.

That sensation of something running down the back of your thoat? That's you melted brains, slowly seeping out of your skull.

No? Not doing it for you? Then how about this, or this?!?

Overheard On...

Gmail! To be truthful, it was less "overheard", and more typed back and forth, with intermittent "bings" being the only actual sounds, but you get the idea!

Bob: help am being abductd

me: WhA?!? Dammit! They're supposed to take MEEEE! Here! I'm here! I want to see you alien mothership!!!

Whisk me away into the stars! I'm ready!

TAKE MEEEEE!!!!!

Sent at 12:03 AM on Thursday

Bob: ZAadefn #

me: What?!? Yes! I understand! I'll happily allow that.

As your people say, ZETdefreww CWE ~~@S Eef.

Sent at 12:07 AM on Thursday

Bob: dam it

me: Buh? Did they leave? Are they coming for me?? Oh god! I need to pack.

Sent at 12:10 AM on Thursday

Bob: ack

me: Ack?

Bob: ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack

ack ack ack ?

me: Ack-ack-ack ackack!

Nanoo-nanoo!

Sent at 12:15 AM on Thursday

Bob: Durka-durka, durka-durka probe-u-later?

me: Probe-u-later? I hardly know 'er!! Ah-hahahahaha!!

Sent at 12:17 AM on Thursday

Posted direct and unedited, even leaving in the hurriedly typed awful spelling and grammar!

Torn Up Inside

This is simply hilarious! I saw British comedian David Armand as the character Johann Lippowitz performing his "interpretive dance" for Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" a few years ago while it was doing the internet rounds. But this is longer, updated and even better than the original! Just watch. I can say no more!

Happy Valentines Day

Actually, dispite being in a great relationship, I'm not really doing anything for it. Right now, right this instant, I'm posting to my blog and my very own special Valentine is playing World of Warcraft and talking to other guys somewhere else doing a dungeon run. She's been at it for over two hours while I'm here, more if you include the fact I was in college earlier. And there are some people that get annoyed when I trash-talk WOW. I feel I have good reason.

Anyway, I'm not here to complain. Valentines Day is all about the love, and I'm expressing mine by letting her be. Besides, we have a nice dinner planned for later and I got strawberries and chocolate for desert. Mmmmm.

Meanwhile, I hope you all remember that today should be about showing people we care, not just that we want to revert to our baser instincts and get all sweaty. On that lovely note, I wish all of you, my wonderful readers that check this thing regularly, a very happy Valentines Day, especially the females. I'm all for the females! The guys can take three good slaps on the back and a stiff handshake.

Wait!! Strong! Strong handshake, nothing stiff about it at all!