I'm a geezer, init?

After watching a few of those modern, guy ritchie type gangster movies I decided to compile a list of rules for aspiring crime lords. Here's a few things that crime bosses should remember;



Never let some fast talking smart ass kid talk his way out of trouble. I'll admit, it's not every day you meet some teenager willing to crack jokes with an underworld figure who is clearly only here to get his money or kill a bitch, but this is no time to go soft and admire his moxy. Instead take the approach that if some little punk managed to lose/steal/gamble his way into a few hundred grands worth of trouble with you and has no way of repaying you that you should probably kill him. It's not going to tarnish your reputation, it will in fact only cement the bad ass image you have spent years cultivating. You are after all, a crime boss.
Under no circumstances should you decide to use him in a plan so fiendish in it's intricacies that it is doomed to blow up in your face even before you add the aforementioned smart ass who has absolutely nothing to lose by weaving a giant web of double crosses and back stabs. Let's face it, you're probably going to kill him anyway and he probably knows this. You are just encouraging him.
If you decide you have to kill someone, to get a point across, him or his friend, so the other one knows you mean business, try and kill the guy who is better dressed, has a bit more savvy and looks like he is more capable of formulating a plan to get back at your empire and leave you in the poor house.
If you do want to kill one of them, always use your own guys. And for choice, make it one of the burly ones who lifts weights, eats meat and has done some time in jail. But most importantly make sure it is one of your henchmen who is not likely to be overpowered by a brat in his early twenties who only shaves once a week for heavens sake.
And remember, there just aren't that many coincidences in the universe at any one time. If the last 48hours seems to contain an unnatural number of freaky synchronicities, then someone is almost certainly lying to you.

I am the Champions

I am the champions, no time for losers etc.

So I won my second fight. And the Irish in Chiang Mai were out in force to show their support. This one was a lot tougher against a better opponent for more rounds. This guy was tough, he even took a knee to the face in the second round which I thought would have finished him but he stood straight back up and got back in the affray. One of the tougher guys from our gym fought him before and had five rounds of hell before a points victory and a leg that took enough of a beating to make Rodney King blush. I am glad to have only found this out after the match or those kicks of his would have really hurt.
Had an alright first round, but needed Tim to remind me to relax and pace myself. I suppose it's just the bouncer in me trying to finish as soon as possible so I can get back to getting phone numbers from chicks and sending young fella's home for an early shower. Took a kick right on the side of the knee which hurt quite a bit and affected me, mentally more than physically, getting my leg up to block in subsequent rounds. I looked down at my knee at the end of the first round to assess the damage and instantly wished I hadn't bothered.
Second round was better and I got to more of his kicks than before. Took a couple of his punches but my extra thick skull and big neck meant I could ignore them for the most part. Gave it back to him as well and landed a few nice punches of my own, not least of which was a left hook from in close that shook him enough that I could see it. This was closely followed by a clinch in which I got the better of him and gave him a knee in the face, in the same style as won me my first fight. Unlucky though, I launched it half a second too late and he had already started to pull away so I didn't get a full touch. Followed this up with a left hook and I thought it was all over when he sat up. He looked around blankly and I figured he didn't know where he was, and even when he stood up he shook his head like he wanted to quit, but it was not to be. I had a bit of a cold going into the fight which I didn't think would make that much difference but when I went to inhale through my nose at the end of the second round, I could only breath through my mouth.
I came out in the third, starting to feel the effects of fatigue and we got to it again, with him turning the pace up a little. Not to be outdone I gave it back as hard as I got it. At one stage, in the clinch, I tried a very anaerobic movement which didn't pay off and I felt instantly drained. In fact it was thew very same feeling I get in training that prompts me to take a break, but there was no breaks to be had here. I went back in to him and he kicked me so hard I fell. There was a huge cheer from half of the crowd and I jumped straight back up. I don't mind him beating me, but I'll be fucked if I let him steal my audience. So we were right back in the clinch, and when I twisted him around, I knew it was all over, even before I fired my knee. My stronger one at that.
Unlike in my first fight where I sort of threw my knee by accident. Not by accident as such, but I wasn't looking for it, it just sort of happened, this time from the clinch I was actively seeking this exact position. And it paid off.
So what did I learn this time? Well my dropping hands is still an issue, even when I replayed the fight in my head, and I imagined the ideal response to his various attacks, I still imagined the perfect fighter I visualise myself as, with a dropped lead hand. Also, my cardio was an issue as the match wore on and I doubt I'd have made it through five rounds. Now I'd like to say my cold, the heat and humidity were contributing factors but the awful truth is, I didn't train long enough or hard enough or often enough as I could or should have and it could have cost me the match. This will definitely change for the next fight. And I learned not to be too relaxed. I was very tense going into the first fight but by contrast I felt almost no anxiety for the second. I was very relaxed, but maybe a little too relaxed as the first few hard shots were a bit of a shock. But then nothing focus the mind quite so well as being shot at, as Churchill would say. And he should know, because he's dead.

Those that do not remember the past...

Are doomed to have their head kicked in by me on Monday. Well hopefully anyway. In fact I'm going to make a point of not smack talking before a fight as those are always the guys who end up collecting their teeth with broken fingers.

Anyway, fighting monday at 3 o clock GMT, so have the head down for that. I'll post with details on tuesday and let ye all know how great I am/ corrupt Thailand is. (delete as applicable)

This would never have happened under the Nazis

Hello everybody, I've missed you.
Right then, serious news first, I've taken a fight for the second of July. I was actually a bit apprehensive about taking another fight, but as soon as I told the promoter, I was quite calm. So same as before I guess. Train like buggery then go at the poor bugger like a bear possessed. And now for more of my inane prattle.
First up, the homos. What is the deal with them anyway? I thought they couldn't reproduce. It seems to me that there's more now than ever. Not that I'm complaining, just an observation. I also applaud their ability to score pills year round, without fail, while the rest of us have to put up with the usual droughts. Bravo lads.
Now, to anyone who was out last Wednesday in Chiang Mai, I would like to apologise on behalf of the two singing dickheads on the motorbike. Although, if you weren't one of those dickheads, I guarantee you didn't have the most fun Wednesday night.
While I'm in the neighbourhood, I'd like to raise a point about drink driving. I always thought that you'd have to be pretty stupid to drink and drive as there were no possible benefits to be gained. But I had no idea it could be so much fun. I did so many stupid, drunk moped things, that after the usual, where am I?, what did I do?, who's blood is this? questions I had one of those Alfred Hitchcock moments, where the background is all zoomed out but the subject stays in the middle and I realised I cheated death at least a dozen times. In your face death.
I can't believe I forgot to mention my two mates, Cormac and Gene, from back home who were in the area for the last two weeks. We hung out a bit but unfortunately I was training quite hard so didn't get to see as much of them as I wanted.
My last bit for the week is for the guys only, or freaky women. I'm thinking of bringing back the Charlie Chaplin tache. Though given my frequent and obscene racism I'll need some help or people will use it's other name when talking about me. It's other name of course being a Hitler. Are ye with me lads?
Anyway, that's me. Enjoy youser selfs.

You say tomato...

and I say tomato. Hmmm. That's not such a good play on words when you write it down. For anyone who may have noticed that my last entry was a little subdued you should note that I just found out my parents read this blog, so was afraid of saying things like fuck, cunt and arsehole, although I'm over that now. In fact... FUCKYCUNTINGARSEHOLE!! Actually, it's just occurred to me that swearing is another luxury enjoyed by adults of all walks of like and denied to their offspring, until they are paying rent.
Anyway, this one will be a movie review as it's the only thing to do in Changers when it rains, and it's always fucking raining. So there'll be some new releases as well as some dvd's from a while ago that I've only bothered my arse to watch now. Or a 'retro' segment as it's known in the trade. So in no particular order...

Pirates of the Caribbean
I cant see what all the bad vibes are for. It's an action movie about pirates for fuck's sake. What did you expect? Not the best of the three, I'll grant you but Johnny Depp still melts my heart, and Jeffery Rush gives another stellar performance. Not to mention it's got Keef Richards from the Stones in it, and perhaps most importantly, pirates aaar cool!

Rocky Balboa
Well if you liked the first movie a bit, the second one a lot, the third one even more, the fourth one not as much as the second and the fifth one kind of hard to get into because it's not the big man doing the fighting, well you're going to like this one exactly the same amount as you liked the first one cause its basically the same story. Rocky mopes about for a while, decides to fight, everyone tells him no, cut to soul searching montage, then he realises he has to get in shape, cut to training montage, then he wins everyone back in a 'please forgive me, I'm just a simple man with a dream to follow' montage complete with speech and finally 9, 3 minute rounds of boxing, condensed into 4 minutes, followed by 1, final 3 minute round, stretched out over 12 and a half minutes. And I fucking loved every minute of it.

Spiderman 3
Meh.

Pathfinder
In keeping with the government warning schemes, this movie may well carry the Caveat;
Caution: This may be the shittest movie ever. Indeed this may well be the worst idea ever converted to celluloid.
Contrary to the title, the film meanders rather unskillfully through a series of ill-conceived plot hooks, like a German panzer through a Ukrainian farm, circa 1942. After only an hour or two of toothache like agony we come thundering towards a monumental anti-climax that leaves one feeling like a man leaving a 'happy finish' massage parlour staffed entirely by fat mama-sans. For those that don't know it's being just a little disgusted with your self for not getting up and leaving sooner. Not to mention wondering why you didn't stay at home and have a wank instead.
Right, on to the Dvd's...

The Last Samurai
Or should I say Dances With Wolves II: Dances With Samurai. Although Dances With Wolves should have been called A Man Called Horse II: A Man Called Dances With Wolves. So I guess The Last Samurai should have been called, A Man Called Horse III: A Man Called Dances With Samurai. Right, well now that I've cleared that up, I have to say I love this movie, even if Mount Fuji makes as many appearances as the Eiffel tower does in every movie to get within 100 miles of Paris. Having said that, during a particularly biblical rainstorm, when I was forced to stay in I ended up watching the movie with the commentary by Edward Zwick. Jesus Wept. How self absorbed is that guy. Fuck me, you'd swear he was there 13th fucking apostle, the sanctimonious prick. Wah Wah Wah, I worked so hard to make this movie. It's your job dickhead, someone paid you a shed load of money to sit around shouting at actors. I swear if he could suck his own dick, he'd swallow.

The break up
Comedy? Or painful reminder of how tedious existence becomes when your still going out with someone whose very hair you despise, a person for whom no traffic accident is too gruesome, but you haven't got the minerals to dump? Show some fucking backbone, for pity's sake.

Anchorman
Hell's fucking teeth. Have we become so jaded that anyone will do for a comedy hero? Are we so desperate for a comedic icon that we'll accept an open mike night runner-up, spoon feeding us 20 year old Monty Python rip offs? Don't get me wrong I got a few chuckles out of it, but for fuck's sake I can get a few chuckles out of the special Olympics too. Particularly the running events for some reason. But I digress. Does anyone remember when we started accepting sub standard comedy as ok? We are now drowning in the shit spewed forth from such hacks as Catherine Tate, those little Britain fucktards and the Hollywood cash cow, Will fucking Ferrel 'comedies'. And we have only ourselves to blame for watching it. For shame.

It may become apparent to some of you, as it did to me, that I have become an embittered old bollox and that I am just incapable of feeling good emotions any more. That's what I thought until I saw...

Clerks II
Could whoever is closest to Kevin Smith, please suck his dick. But tell him it's from me. Thanks.
All I'll say is, if you haven't already, watch this movie. Easily the funniest thing I remember watching.


Uuuuurgh! And I'm spent. Bus fare's on the table baby, beat it.

Hooray for everything

Greetings true believers. I have been very busy the last few weeks staging my triumphant return to the ring. Also, I've been humming the Rocky theme quite a bit. Though it's no biggie if I don't make it as a fighter, as I still have the options of guitar hero or bmx bandit waiting for me.
Found a decent enough restaurant but almost ended up staying the night. I kept trying to get the waitresses attention but she kept sailing past. I made a show of tossing my napkin down on my plate, audibly draining my glass for the tenth time. What else could I throw on the table to show her I was finished? Well, my fucking fist for starters, but I thought better of it.
I was heading into town the other day when a big guy on a moped offered me a lift, in exchange for some petrol money of course, but still cheaper than a taxi. The deal was struck and off we set, but ran into a detour which brought us miles away from the road we should have been on and into the sticks. I started to get a bit paranoid at that stage 'This is it', I thought, 'buggered to death in a field by some giant right wing fascist'. I hope they spell my name right in the paper.
Is anyone else pissed off with their parents telling them that life is no less 'unfair' for grown ups? I fucking am. As I smoked my head off on the roof an apartment block in town, watching the sun go down and chatting with friends I realised that this was a lot more fair than taking the garbage out on a rainy Sunday night, or doing homework while all the good telly was on. Even something as simple as ruining my appetite by eating sweets between meals has an almost perverse pleasure for me now.
Other than that I've been lashing into the training as hard as I can, though it's a struggle to get my fitness back up, now that the heat has gone up. Taking time off training is a slippery slope, much like a smack addiction. It starts as a 'once off' but quickly develops into a habit. It's a good time to get back into it as well as the gym is quietened down a bit at the moment, with people heading off and not many tourists. We even lost our resident London wide boy cockney. All guns and machetes. He rather reminds me of a guy I know in Dublin. He's a champion weight lifter, a security guard, a cage fighter, but mostly he's a bullshitter.
Anyway, I'm away. But I will return in a few days with my movie review of 2007.
Later squares

The Pacifier

Or the fucking blatant propaganda machine, as it should have been known. I watched this Vin Diesel classic the other day, and thought nothing of it until the near the end, when the bad guys turned out to be from North Korea. Of all the countries in the world it could have been, it turned out to be the the one that the Great American Warlord will probably be fighting in next. Call it a hunch, a bout of paranoia, women's intuition but mark my words, they are trying to get a generation of American to distrust the Koreans. And while we're on the subject of America, unless your name starts with an adjective and ends with an animal, you are not allowed to say word one about 'immigrants'. You ungrateful pigdogs.
Back training hard now, after a week on the beer with Kevin 'deathwish' Douglas. Not an entire week, but more than a couple of glasses of sherry, so I'm hurting all over. I will have to go back to the adult sweet shop, or the pharmacy as it's known locally. The law over here seems to be that if you can pronounce it, or point to it on a shelf you can buy it. Valium for instance, only comes with 2 questions; what strength and how many? God bless you drugs, you haven't let us down yet.
My last bit of news this week is a bizarre event that keeps happening. Infrequently mind you, but more than once or twice. When I take my shoes off to go in places (friends houses, net cafes etc.) dogs amble over and nick my shoes. This can mean only 3 things
1) I am part of an elaborate hoax, designed to make me think I'm mad,
2) I actually am mad, or
3) My feet smell like dog food.
I'm not sure which one I should be rooting for.

Anyway, that's all you're getting from me.
Bysies.