richardirvine.com

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  • It lives!

    Aaaaand… I’m back. Since January, I’ve been mostly blogging at sportreviewnz.sportreviewnz started with links to sports stories I found interesting, and reviewing my old sports books. Then I started doing my sporting ‘cartoons’ (I always put that in quotes. It doesn’t seem right to include my farking around with photoshop, powerpoint and swearing in the same genre as what Tom Scott, Bill Watterson and Charles Shulz do/did).

    There were two World Cups this year, Cricket and Rugby, and I started writing satire – I really enjoy this, NZ sport takes itself very, very seriously indeed and needs more stupidity, I say. Here’s one of my favs. And another. And another. And another. One more. Some of them got pretty random and got no reaction, like the All Black body parts and ‘Tagotown. I thought they were funny. Heh.

    Right now, I’m a little burned out on it. Real life work keeps getting busier also. I’ve dipped me toe in the water here, and it’s OK, but I’ll stick to the ‘keeping up with me mates’ angle rather than the ‘OMGZERS, I got BIG MOTORBIKE, Come RAce ME and BUY me a DRINK’ stuff.

    What about all the other stuff in life, like my new imac, my tightfisted approach to buying movies and music, and the sad fact I’ve spent much of my free time in the last week re-genre-ing my itunes library? Where does that fit on a shoddy sports parody blog? It doesn’t, so I’m getting the band back together here on Chartered Trips. I’ve missed it, and it’ll hopefully kickstart more writing on the other channel too.

    Update : I’ve just looked through the archives, and this blog has only ever had one comment! What a beauty.

  • That’s about it…

    This blog is OVER. When I started off this blogging lark I wanted to keep my sporting and ‘other’ interests seperate. I can’t be arsed doing that anymore, and have decided to have one blog for everything – sport / review nz. So get in there, quick smart.Thanks for reading Chartered Trips.

  • What I haven’t been doing

    Nope, none of this for me lately. And here’s a list of non-blogging excuses too – this should cover everything. My favorite is: “I just don’t enjoy it as much as I convince myself I do“.Procrastination is a killer, team, I’ve switched to the new blogger beta template and then spent ages making it look like it did before. I’ve got labels now, though, but I’m having real trouble coming up with a label for this post. How about narcissism?

    Hello again, anyway.

  • God bless the Croatian fishies


    Originally uploaded by richirvine73.

  • Pretty, innit?


    Originally uploaded by richirvine73.

  • Pretty, innit?


    Originally uploaded by richirvine73.

  • Blog neglect

    I’m on holiday in the UK, Italy and Croatia until early October. If I get any decent photos, I’ll post them here – the most part will be on Flickr.Righto

  • Alright, just one

    Link pinched from Spare RoomThis is like a documentary. One of the things I enjoyed about working life in Dublin was getting TOTALLY shitfaced with your colleagues on a very regular basis. Usually on a Tuesday. It was typical for our director to declare over a nightclub table swimming with drink – “If I see any of you in before 11 tomorrow, you’re sacked”. Luckily the company went bust shortly after, so drink induced tardiness wasn’t a problem for long.

  • Score! Report

    An ongoing series in which the blogger shares his budget orientated music and / or movie purchases, revealing something of both his refined taste and an unwillingness to shell out any decent cash for it.
    What? Beatles Box Set – 11 albums, plus the Yellow Submarine and Rarities making 13 bits of Beatles vinyl, all in a cool gold box.

    Why? I’ve been after one of these for a while. I first heard The Beatles at David Nichols’ place when I was about nine – his parents had The Beatles box, and we’d listen to them over and over. David was a mine of information – “they’re all recorded in Mono… this bit’s so high pitched only dogs can hear it…” and so on. My favorite song then was ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, the horrible little story of a serial killer with a whimsical melody from Abbey Road.

    A few weeks ago I sat down (after a few beers, something I never had at David’s place), and listened to Abbey Road again, and yes, side 2 is the best side in the history of music. And when I had a day to listen to the whole box in one go, it was quite overwhelming. There’s just so MUCH of it, and the difference between then and now is I’ve got all this Beatles lore floating around my head – the post-touring ones are the ‘real’ Beatles records, they did ‘Let It Be’ hardly speaking to each other and let Phil Spector rescue it, ‘Rubber Soul’ is the stoner record, not to mention the whole lot was done in ten short years give or take (THAT blows my mind). There’s the subsequent history to consider as well – John and George are dead, Paul did Wings and Ringo is Thomas the Tank Engine.

    Still, I’ve got them all now, and forever to listen to them – I never bought Beatles albums or CDs, I made do with ‘1’ and ‘Imagine’ on my iPod, becuase I knew one day I’d want the whole lot in a box like this. I love seeing it in the shelf and thinking “I’ve got all The Beatles”.

    Best bit Fark me. I’m going to go for last track, side 2 Abbey Road – The End.

    Damage? $130 bucks from TradeMe

  • Surf Spots 080806

    – 14 Classic Tom Petty opening lines I’m a big fan of Tom and his nuggety, honest songs that always use the same three chords – they take me back to road trips from The Mount to Tairua and back again listening to Full Moon Fever over and over and over. Or maybe just Silence Of The Lambs.- Ari Gold I’ve read a bit about this highly stressed, profane, nihilistic, mobile phone addict Ari Gold from Entourage. This is very popular in the US, and thanks to YouTube, we can have a look now, too. Looks like fun, not to mention the lamented Action.

    – Delia’s Half Time Snacks For the recent football World Cup, Guardian unlimited optimistically provided these recipes for UK footy fans to whip up at half time. Now I’ve experienced Brit ‘cuisine’ and if it’s not fried, battered, in pita bread or Chips, you’re struggling, really. Plus many of these require preparation pre-match, so she’s cheated there, but still, there’s some nice looking recipes.