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I've had an email from Mr Ali Bashir (the only son of the late Mr. & Mrs. Musa Bashir) and he wants the temporary use of my bank account to house $8,500,000 while he makes some decisions about investing in Manufacturing, Health Care and Real Estate Management in my country.

I have no doubts about his credentials because he says he got my contact details from a "searching engine while searching for a nice country with safe investment opportunity where to invest my money". So he's obviously genuine because I've had a number of similar messages from people who found me the same way.

Here's the thing. Ali is offering me 20% of the sum, which would be $1.75 million, for my assistance. Can anyone tell me if this is a decent rate? Should I be holding out for more? What do you usually charge per million handled in this way?

I'm new at this. So far I've only concluded agreements with Prince Ngomo Mlele of Lagos, Nigeria and the widow of the former Finance Minister of Uganda. The Prince is giving me a lump sum of 5 Million as a fee, but I don't know what percentage that is until the full amount clears and the widow has already sent me her 17 million, of which she's letting me keep 15%. It hasn't arrived yet, but I know the transactiion is in progress because the handling fee has already left my account. (It leaves me with a zero balance in that account for the moment, but the widow's people are going to transfer a small amount from my other account temporarily, so that's OK. They're very helpful and they handle everything for you once you give them the details of all your accounts).

So anyway - if anyone can give me an idea of what they usually get for this kind of transaction, that would be great.

Orior (or anyone) - did you see the Horizon programme on infinity last night? Superb, fascinating, brilliant television, I thought. So often the media make a bags of trying to present mathematical/scientific concepts. Usually, they dumb it down or just plain get it wrong. This was the opposite – clear, cogent and superbly entertaining as a bonus.

The concept of the existence of an infinite number of infinite universes, which means that everything that's possible must happen and indeed is happening now, somewhere is calculated to have you staring at the ceiling for a while before you go to sleep.

I liked the fella who refuses to believe in infinity too.

To Infinity and Beyond

[Geezer a beazer.]

The tone of the board seems to reflect the mood of the times. We used to have good humour here in the good times.

ONeill
Registered User
Posts: 978
(5/4/06 22:38)

Reply   Re: All-Ireland short-joke telling competition

Geezer a beazer.

Kildare Times
4-4-06

Naas provided a fascinating backdrop to the All-Ireland Celebrity Joke Telling Gala last weekend in the heartland of the Lily-White folk. A plethora of horses sped past the arena that morning, resembling days of yore or something from For a Few Dollars More or the like. As with the Eurovision, the traditional standard has not been of a high quality at the joke-telling weekend in recent years though some may say therein lays the beauty of the contest. A look through the archives on the way down showed previous winners such as Willie Joe Padden, Mick O'Connell, Ray Silke, Peter Quinn, Barney Rock, Brian McEniff and Brian Stafford. This year's entrants meant that the unique standard would be maintained into 2006 – the 30th year of the competition. The trophy is named after that first winner, Pat Spillane who told the joke about the circus. Before the start it was revealed Pillar Caffrey had been replaced by Dessie Farrell and Ger Loughnane by Billy Morgan

39'003 crammed into the community arena despite safety fears emanating from the Leinster Board. However, as it was a field of 40 acres, their fears were unfounded. To a raucous chorus of boos, Dessie Farrell entered the arena drinking Lucozade Sport and bearing the legend GAP on his back, but everyone knew what he meant. Referee Geroid O'Cinneabhe sounded the commencement trumpet as the Dubliner cleared his throat for what he hoped would be a telling contribution that night. As the last boo was quelled, in a thick Jackeen brogue, looking downwards, he uttered:

"She says, 'To think I had to marry you to find out how stupid you are.' He says 'You should've realised that when I asked you to marry me!' "

Unfortunately, Farrell made the mistake of laughing at his own joke before any reaction from the crowd. As with a red rag to the bull, the crowd began baying for the blood of the Dubliner. One section of the crowd, wearing Kilmacud jerseys, were actually in hysterics because of the joke and this was not lost on the rather embarrassed adjudicators. One on-looker managed to run past the stewards, sprinted up behind Farrell, and kicked him mightily up the arse, much to the mirth of the now confused crowd. A mixture of hatred, hilarity and fear gripped the auditorium as the fan was escorted out of the county in a Nissan Sunny Automatic. Farrell was awarded 6.

Next up was Mickey Moran, an Ulster man representing the western province. Refusing to acknowledge the mildly-clapping spectators, the tall beanpole marched towards the microphone and bellowed:

"The diner says, 'This meat has gone off – fetch me the head waiter'. The waiter replied 'He's gone off too sir. It's his half-day.' "

Astonishment reverberated around the field. Never had such a consistently inept standard graced the All-Ireland final. Moran knew it. He dropped his shoulders, apologised with a meek "sorry" and trudged off the arena in deathly silence. He hit a man on the way. He was awarded 3.

Bursting with confidence was Billy Morgan. He had witnessed two of his closest rivals completely bomb in front of a demanding audience. He new he had a clinker up his sleeve. He had tried out his joke on three family members the previous week. Two had to be admitted to Cork County Hospital with rib injuries due to laughing violently. The third died happily. Billy knew he had the title in the bag and had waged upwards of E200'000 on himself in Cashman's the previous day. Many of the crowd were onto the tip and his rapturous welcome reflected their confidence in the Cork great. Lifting a title with Spillane's name on it would be a wee bit of a bane, but he was willing to grin and bear it for a cool E1.5m in his pocket. However, disaster struck as the great Rebel cockily approached the stand. Just as he was about to take the mic, O'Cinneabhe, inexplicably at first, showed Morgan the red card. Bedlam ensued. Billy remonstrated vehemently with the Roscommon/Galway official as thousands of punters clung despairingly to their dockets. Geroid approached the mic and uttered "Under rule 7.342 of the All-Ireland Joke and/or Story Telling Association, Billy has committed a cardinal error, for it states; 'On commencing the joke/story one must not look directly at the crowd for fear of endearing oneself to the affections of the aforementioned congregation, be it a cheeky smile or/and a delectable wink forthwith'. I have no choice but to disallow Morgan's attempt."

Mayhem broke out. Thousands of fathers had waged their weekly allowance on Morgan's side-splitting joke. Chairs were sailing through the cold Naas air as Morgan's followers fisticuffed their way onto the podium. An all-out brawl between stewards and audience was still on-going when the final contestant, Kieran McGeeney strode his way into the field of play. He grabbed the mic, looking at his feet for fear of a similar disqualification and roared "Get back. Get back." The forcefulness of the Armagh man's convictions halted violent proceedings as the crowd waited for the next instructions from Geezer. Undaunted, the Mullaghbawn man said

"How do you kill a circus?"

As one the crowd retorted "dunno."

McGeeney, with a hint of a smirk replied,

"Go for the juggler"

Well, they say the 60s were the decade of mass love. If you'd been in Naas at 4.45pm last Saturday, you'd have though you went back in time 40 years. Laughs, hugs and a wee bit of riding ensued. Geezer was automatically handed the Spillane Cup. He not only saved the day. He reaffirmed our belief in the AIJT series.

We knew it was coming. We just didn't know when. Until last night. That's when Eamonn Horan, giving the sports results at the end of the RTÉ TV 9 O'Clock News, broke the exclusive news we'd all been waiting for - "Joekernansgalway had a good win over Sligo".

Unbelievable

Congratulations, GAA on  your 125th  birthday today. I was asking around about what you were doing to celebrate today and all I can find out is that you're going to Mass in Thurles! I suppose that's par for a 125-year-old.

Sure enjoy it anyway and don't go too mad. I'd kinda hoped you'd have organised a centenary-and-a-quarter cup competition for the glass bowl we won in 1984 and that now for some strange reason reposes in Paidi Ó Sé's bar below in Ceann Trá, so that at least we'd have had a fighting chance of getting back what belongs to us.

Anyway, I hope that on the First of November 2134 you'll be celebrating the quarter-millennium in some more appropriate and imaginative fashion.

Fourteen years now since the team with a pick of over a million played in Croke Park in September.

But they're still the greatest, we all agree.

There was a bloke on the wireless the other morning flogging his book on the Tubridy "show". The book is about famous acts of sportsmanship. Tubridy had ould "Danger Here" Hamilton on as well to talk about it.

They talked about things like Paul McGinley giving an American lad a 15-foot putt in the Ryder cup because if he missed it that would be the one that would lose the cup and this was only a young lad and it wouldn't be right. (Except McGinley said later that wasn't the reason he did it at all). And some soccer team letting the other side score a goal in a refixed match because the first match had been abandoned at 1-0. Stuff like that..

They were on for 15 or twenty minutes and not once were GAA sports mentioned. I was driving along and I started to give out at the radio, saying "why didn't yiz mention ... ehhhh ... what about ..."  But I couldn't think of one famous act of sportsmanship in the GAA.

We can all remember plenty of examples of the opposite, like Mikey Sheehy making a fool out of poor ould Paddy Cullen and Darby pushing Tommy Doyle in the back (only jokin Biffs – it was a gust of wind) and Gerry McEntee saying to Chartlie Redmond "jayz Charlie, they're not lettin YOU take it, are they?" and of course, worst of all, the serial swan diving and face holding and rolling around that goes on these days.

But the nearest I can come to a memorable act of sportsmanship (and it's not very famous) is Oisín asking the referee to go easy on some player he was about to book for fouling him last year in the club championship. You'll see that a fair bit OK.

Can anyone think of better ones?

For those interested in such things, the International Space Station can be seen (cloud cover permitting) traversing the early evening sky in Ireland these days, from East to West. It's around 6 p.m. this evening, depending on your location.

You can get details here. Click "select from map" under "Configuration" to enter your location. Then click "ISS" under "Satellites" to see the times when the ISS will be visible at your location.

Apparently you can also see (though you need binoculars) a tool bag lost by one of the astronauts, which follows a similar path to the ISS, about a quarter of an hour earlier. Click in the link on the second paragraph of the home page for times.

Finally, the crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter are visible in very close proximity in the Western sky immediately after sunset. They are the brightest objects in the sky at that time and it's quite a sight. The moon actually passed in front of Venus on Monday, but I missed that.

I have two spare tickets for tomorrow night. My son and his mate are going and he has to pick up the four tickets at the box office, using my credit card and a reference number. So to collect the tickets, you'll have to arrange to meet up with him. The tickets are £42.35 each (including booking fee).

The first PM I receive secures the tickets.

(Well, it would be unseemly if you had to do it yourself, Zig).

Ziggysego was the first (before Reuters, BBC, Associated press, Pravda or any part of the Murdoch media empire) to break the news that Stephen O'Neill had returned to the Tyrone team.

Unfortunately, it seems that gaaboard.com administrative considerations conspired to bury his world exclusive in the middle of a composite thread on the subject, but I testify that I saw his post up there before anyone else's and long before any official news media broke the news. This post is to record  due recognition of the achievement and I invite others to corroborate.

Stay tuned to gaaboard.com for more breaking news. The Ziggymobile was spotted in Tralee this evening ...

Any ideas? Who's in the reckoning? Would Seán come back? Would he be the right man for the job? Who else? O'Rourke? What about an outside manager?

My opinion: I don't believe in outside managers. (Though if Jason Ryan wanted the job I might be tempted).

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Seán was offered the job and I wouldn't be surprised if he accepted. The man breathes Meath football and I'd say he'd take your arm off to do the job again.

If he did, it should be on the basis of at least a  three-year "contract", come what may. That's the minimum time it takes to build a team and some awful results can be expected and must be tolerated in the course of the building. 

Why Seán? Simple logic, to my mind - is there anyone else (in the county, anyway) who has shown the ability to build All-Ireland-winning teams from scratch? And he's done it more than once, so the fluke factor can be ruled out. For one thing, we could be confident we would never see again capitulations on the scale of Cork, Wexford and Limerick.

If Seán is not a runner, who? Before Coyle, I would have said anyone from any of the great Boylan teams would at least instill the basics of pride, spirit, fight and, above all, leadership. But we can't say that now. For me, O'Rourke is the other obvious candidate. Would he run for it and give up his lucrative TV work? Would he have to give it up? Is there a rule about that?

Since the sap is rising and to offer a token response to the soccer quizzes and all sorts going on over on the General Disruption board, I think it's time we had another GAA quiz thread. (Please post the question with your answer, otherwise it'll get all mixed up).

These are all fairly handy ones about All-Ireland Senior Football Finals:

1.   Which county has lost the most AIFs?
2.   Name all counties with a 100% record in AIFs.
3.   Name all counties with a 0% record in AIFs (not counting those who've never appeared).
4.   How many AIF's have been drawn?
5.   Which county has waited the longest since its last All-Ireland win?
6.   What's the highest winning score in an AIF?
7.   What's the highest losing score in an AIF?
8.   What's the highest number of goals scored in an AIF?

Tickets for Cork marquee and Malahide Castle went on sale this morning. My wait was about five minutes on ticketmaster, so not too hard to get. (Where do these hoors get off with a "service charge" of €6.35 PER TICKET?).

We invented a new party game last night – rewriting nursery rhymes.

Ring a ring a rosy
A pocket full of posies
Atishoo, Atishoo.
Excuse me.

Four blind mice
Four blind mice
See how they run.
See how they run
They all ran after the farmer's wife
She cut off one's head with a carving knife
Three blind mice

Any more?

Well it was very late. Maybe I'm not sober yet.

I was away for a few weeks there and I was reading Eugene McGee on the way home yesterday and he said the All Stars teams have been picked. I can't find anything about it on this site or on gaa.ie. Can anyone help?

I have been nominated to be the recipient of what I understand to be a large collection of GAA memorabilia, from a friend of a friend. The collection belonged to her father, recently deceased and I have been selected on the basis that I'm the only person she knows who is interested in GAA and she doesn't know what to do with the stuff.

Unfortunately, neither do I. I haven't received it yet, so I don't know what it contains, except that I'm sure there are a lot of match programmes in it. I'm not a collector, and don't want to start a collection of my own. I also don't want to see it go to someone who will just sell it and pocket the money.

I imagine a substantial collection should be worth something and I think the first thing I should do is suggest that she auction it. Does anyone know a good auction house for this kind of thing?

However, I have an inkling she doesn't want to do that and is just anxious to ensure that it finds a good and appreciative home. Any ideas?

This is in the mode of one of those calls to phone-ins where somebody wants to say a public thanks for a favour done. Maybe it can be a thread where people record decent gestures and good deeds, since we have more than enough of the negative and defamatory stuff here.

Anyway. The daughter of  someone I know well drove with a few of her friends from Lismore to the Waterford-Limerick match the other Sunday. It was her first time to drive to Dublin and, coming back, she missed the M50 and found herself going North on the M1 and seeing signs for Balbriggan.

So she pulled off the motorway and went into a filling station to look for directions to Waterford. The owner wasn't too sure, but there was a customer there who offered directions. It was former Dublin goalkeeper John O'Leary, who lives nearby.

As he was giving directions, it was clear from her questions that she wasn't too sure of how to follow them. So John says "look, I'll show you the way – follow me". He got into his car and led her back onto the M1 and took her all the way to the toll plaza, a distance of near 20 miles. (And he didn't start pointing at road signs and holding up fingers or anything like that  ).

Decent fella.

[Montenegro shark "Hungarian ruse"]

Why can't we have reporters like this? I'm going to subscribe to the Budapest Times.

August 11th, 2007

Montenegro shark "Hungarian ruse"

Hungarian Tourist Board operatives have been dressing up as sharks and patrolling seaside resorts in Montenegro in an effort to encourage tourists to holiday at Lake Balaton, the Montenegrin government alleged last week.

Sharks have been sighted off the coast of the popular holiday destination over the last few weeks, leading in one case to a lifeguard - who witnesses say looked a lot like Baywatch's David Hasselhoff except in tighter shorts - frantically ordering people out of the water. However, government spokesman Slobodan Mladic claimed the "sharks" were nothing of the sort.

Something fishy in the water

"We have credible information that Zsolt Zoltán, a local employee of the Hungarian Tourist Board and well-known agitator for affordable weekend breaks at Lake Balaton, is responsible," said Mladic. "We believe he has in fact fashioned a shark fin using empty cereal boxes, sticky-backed plastic and some model aircraft paint, strapped it to his back and taken to snorkelling around the beaches. He is clearly trying to scare people into holidaying in Hungary."

Mladic produced records showing that Zoltán had rented out all three Jaws movies from the local video store in the week preceding the first shark sighting. "This clearly proves that Zoltán was researching how to fake a shark attack," said Mladic. "I'm not sure which Jaws film it was in – probably the first one, as the other two were rubbish and I fell asleep during them – but I distinctly remember a scene where a teenager pretends to be a shark to frighten some large-breasted girls into having sex with him."

"I think he then gets his leg bitten off, but I suppose that's not relevant," Mladic continued.

Zoltán denied the allegations, saying that he did not have to go to such lengths to attract people to Balaton: "With its crystal-clear waters, top-class accommodation, wonderful food and copious amounts of women in tiny thongs, Balaton is clearly a holiday destination that needs no promotion. Just look at the beautiful pictures in this free flyer."

Zoltán just a pervert, not agent

Zoltán did admit to renting out the Jaws trilogy, but said that he simply got a perverse kick out of watching monsters kill people in increasingly gratuitous, pointless and bloody ways.

"I also rented out Friday the Thirteenth last week, but that doesn't mean I'm planning on donning a hockey mask and brutally butchering holidaymakers with various sharp implements in an attempt to create a mass exodus from the shabby, poor quality Montenegrin resorts to the paradise that is Balaton," he said. "Having said that, there is a good deal on chainsaws down at the local DIY store."

Original article at the Budapest Times

Brain Carthy has just broken the news that GG is back in the panel and available for selection.

[Edit: Apologies - didn't see rolloutking's post on the other GG thread. In any case, this thread now has the more appropriate title for comment on the current status. I'll just insert a sanctimony and piety warning here, in anticipation, for the easily nauseated].