NiallOK’s Blog

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I was rushing to be ready for work this morning. I went to walk out the door at 09.20am, thinking “grand, I’ll actually be 5 minutes early (for once!)” and just as I open the door, there’s a young woman standing there just about to ring the doorbell.

“Sorry”, I said, “I’m just heading to work”. “Oh that’s okay,” she said, “I won’t take up much of your time… I was just wondering if you’d given any thought recently to our lord Jesus Christ.” …

My response?… “Err… no, not really. Why?”

The response I should have given? Probably “No! Feck off!” (or, as suggested by a co-worker, “No, I’m Jewish, feck off!”), but I’m sure these people get dogs abuse constantly from the people whose doors they knock on (fair enough) so it’d probably have been no surprise to her had I reacted like that. Anyway, I’m too nice, so I ended up speaking to her. I kept it as short as possible … and explained to her in no uncertain terms that no, I hadn’t thought about Jesus recently, wasn’t about to start thinking about him, and NO, I didn’t want to take her informative booklet from her and pay her for it the next time I see her!

No offense intended to my Jesus loving friends, I’m just not a believer. Not an “atheist” as such, just not a believer. I tend to agree with the guy who was on RTÉ’s “Big Bite” show who wanted to be defined as a “humanist” as opposed to an “atheist” because he wanted to be defined by what he believed in and not what he didn’t believe in.

I actually got an email from the Big Bite show once asking me to appear as a panelist. Apparently they thought I was still working in a bar at the time and the show was about minimum wage or working conditions in bars or some shite like that. I’d left bar work behind me at that stage so I politely declined. I wouldn’t mind being a panelist on a show like that some day, though - as long as the topic is relevant!

Anyway, the end result of Ms. Jehova’s Witness (or whatever she was) this morning was that I was 5 minutes late for work instead of 5 minutes early. Feck it anyway.

In other news, my good friend Sorcha is about to pop and deliver a new life unto this world at any minute now. To say she’s looking forward to getting it all over with is the understatement of the millennium!

The radio show on Friday evening was great. The lads from the band The Stormers provided me with an interesting, informative and frankly hilarious interview which went on for almost the full second hour of the show. I’ll encode it in RealAudio and upload it soon. Only two of them, Daniel and Raymond, were able to make it - so a substitute for Byrne had to be found. For that, Daniel brought a little box that emitted Mr. T’s best sayings from “I pity tha fool!” to “Shut yo mouth, sucka!”… and so on.

Valentines day is coming.

Bollocks, anyway.

Tonights show is shaping up nicely. It’d want to be after me being up ’til 2.30am putting bits together for it. (Okay, so I started late…)

The top ten is “top ten rock duos of all time”. The celebrity news is mildly interesting. The regular playlist includes such “lumaries” as Arctic Monkeys, The Killers, Black Eyed Peas, Jack Black, James Blunt, Nirvana, Ozzy Osbourne, Hard Fi and local bands the End again, The Realm, Leeway and The Gurriers. I’ll be explaining the off-side rule … for girls, there’ll be some weird world news, - oh, and local covers band The Stormers are in studio with me after 8 O’Clock.

Should be good craic.

It can be heard on Dundalk FM 100 ( 100FM in Dundalk or via their Windows Media stream at www.dundalkfm.com ) tonight from 7 to 9pm.

Boo-yah!

Bonjour, bonjovi and bonjela.

It turns out that three million men worldwide share a common ancestor - a most fabulous High King of Ireland, no less, - my own namesake, Niall (of the Nine Hostages)!

As revealed by a recent Register article, Mr. OfTheNineHostages was indeed a busy fellah. When he wasn’t running the country from his seat of power in Tara, he was splashing his seed around and thus securing Ireland’s future.

Or something like that!

…And there was much rejoicing! (Yay!)

In other news, my radio show continues tonight, and I’ve created a new intro for it, which (slightly) takes the piss out of Mr. Eddie Hobbes. It can be heard in a RealAudio stream here.

Last night I dreamed that I somhow and for some reason arranged for The Darkness to play a gig here in Dundalk. Not only here in Dundalk, mind you, but out on the green facing our house here in our estate. It was a very clear, vivid dream and the whole thing was great craic.

It got me thinking… in my dream I could get Justin Hawkins and the boys to perform live in a small open-air gig in a Dundalk housing estate… yet still in real life ™, I haven’t gotten a live band or interview organised for my radio show tomorrow night. Oh bugger.

Last week’s interview, with Ronan McRory of the band the End again was pretty good (and pretty short) and can be heard as a RealAudio stream on the show’s web site.

I’m also looking for a top ten list to do on tomorrow’s show. I’ve been looking through most of these on about.com but didn’t find anything too inspirational to be honest. I’ll probably end up just playing tracks from the current Gracenote Digital Top Ten (the most played albums on the Internet). *shrug*

So…! Anyway… the Portable Media Players forum (which I am moderator of) seems to be doing well, with little or no moderation needed from me for the most part… which is nice. Having a forum like that certainly helps me keep my finger somewhat on the pulse of what’s happening in the MP3 world - which is helpful in work, as I run the MP3 desk there.

A thread popped up on boards.ie the other day asking “How much porn do you have?”. While, in my reply, I said I have absolutely none (which is true), I found it somewhat shocking to find out that some people claim to have anything up to 3 terabytes and a good 1 in 4 of people who replied to the poll said they had over 20 gigabytes of the stuff. The mind boggles. No wonder nerds manage to fill up 250Gb or 300Gb hard drives. I’d been wondering about that… I’d never fill a drive that size… well, unless my PC was a Media Centre with the option of recording live TV to the hard drive …

An interesting note for any bloggers out there - time is running out if you want to be nominated for the Irish Blog Awards. I’ve (naturally) nominated myself (not expecting to win anything for this humble pile of shite, of course, but I might as well stick me name in there). As I don’t see any Big Brother-like rule against discussing nominations… I also threw mentions in for Sorcha, Michele Neylon and the infamous El Paso Times and would suggest you all vote for them too! (well… the first two anyway… oh, and me… )

For those who want to hear my voice (weirdos), I’ll be live on the wireless once again tomorrow night from 7 to 9pm. If you’re in the Dundalk area, you’ll hear me on 100FM. If not, there’s some sort of a streaming Windows Media wotsit on the station’s web site.

I have the weirdest and yet clearest and most vivid dreams sometimes…

Last night my dream involved a giant (23 foot tall) dachshund (dog) named Colin (why are they always named Colin???) who ruled the world and was covered in jam. It was possible to topple Colin from his position of ruthless world ruler if you somehow cleaned the jam off him. Don’t ask!

Oh, and he (quite irresponsibly) took a break from ruling the world on Thursdays. He also lived in an inside-out house, just like the one Wonko The Sane lived in, in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and he kept a vicious emu he called Frank as a pet.

Now, I know that, sometimes, dreams can have a deep and meaningful meaning - and can reflect in some way on what’s going on in your life or in your subconscious, I don’t, however, see the relevance to MY life of a quest I was sent on to California in a jet powered fire-engine to rid Colin the giant dachshund of his coat of jam and restore order to the world, getting past a vicious emu and a horde of killer four-legged televisions on the way.

ANYWAY…

In other news, we’re getting the digital telly installed some time this morning! I’m waiting for the installers to arrive as I type. Later on, I’m going to finish planning my new radio show (which is from 7 to 9 tonight) - at the moment, the basic schedule looks like this:

6.58 Ad break
7.00 Intro
7.05 Top Ten (10 to 5)
7.28 Ad Break
7.30 Top Ten (4 to 1)
7.45 Gig Guide
7.58 Ad Break
8.00 Against the Wall (Live interview & music from local bands)
8.28 Ad Break
8.30 Comic Clips (Comedy bit with stand-up comedy recordings)
8.45 Weekly Weird News (Odd Stories & Entertainment Update)
8.55 Sign off
8.58 Ad Break

The “Top Ten” bit in the schedule is a different top ten every week. This week, I’m looking at (and playing songs from) the top ten albums of all time, according to a poll in Q Magazine. Next week, it could be the top ten R&B/Hip Hop songs of all time, or the top ten cover versions of all time… who knows? I’m not doing the regular chart countdown slot in the show any more because the Dundalk chart show is on in the hour before me… and I’m not closing the show with a dance mix any more because the show has been slimmed down from 3 to 2 hours and the dance mix show “Musica” is on for the hour after it (from 9 to 10pm). Should be fun!