Ian O'Doherty: Well that makes perfect sense
It seems that the queen's visit is going to be even more successful than people expected.
Veteran journalists admitted to being moved by her gesture of laying the wreath at the Garden of Remembrance and, dare I say it, she actually looked like she was enjoying the visit to Croke Park where, it should also be said, the GAA were magnificent.
But, Ireland being Ireland, we still have a contingent of gobshites who are totally against it.
Indeed, the sight of thugs throwing rocks at the cops to protest the visit of the British head of state while wearing British football jerseys -- Celtic, inevitably -- would have been grimly amusing if they weren't so potentially internationally damaging.
But the funniest objection to the visit has undoubtedly come from the ludicrously named People Before Profit party.
One of their ilk has come out and said that she objects to the visit because the Queen is responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which would surely come as a surprise to the 85-year-old monarch. But it doesn't stop there, oh no.
In fact, she is also against Barack Obama's visit because, she says, both his and the queen's visit are all part of a concerted effort "to drag us into an imperialist agenda" and she said that we were being deliberately lulled into passivity by a shadowy global elite.
Well, I guess we all know who Jim Corr will be voting for at the next election.
The dangers of Twitter
I'm going to take a wild punt here and suggest that it might be possible that Wayne Rooney has a bit of a temper on him.
Maybe I'm just a remarkably astute judge of character and far more perceptive than you lot, but I reckon he works off a short fuse.
And, given the fact that he looks more like a boxer with a bad headache than a svelte, elite footballer, he is certainly not the kind of bloke that you would want to annoy.
Unless you're a keyboard kommando who is brave when hiding behind a computer screen.
The idea of Rooney going on Twitter was a bad idea at the best of times, but he joined at the behest of team mate Rio Ferdinand and it didn't take long for trouble to break out.
One of his 500,000 followers decided to call him a "fat whore" before threatening to attack him -- and Wazza wasn't taking that lying down.
While most celebs ignore such stupid insults, Rooney simply responded "you know where I train, come on down you little girl and you'll be asleep in 10 seconds".
Now, this begs two questions -- shouldn't Rooney be more concentrated on the Champions League than battering a randomer and, far more pertinently, what sort of moron tries to pick a fight with Wayne bloody Rooney?
That's the footballing equivalent of suicide by cop.
Sure, he's a burger fan
How do you like your burgers? Well, for me, they have to be rib-eye and rare with cheese, chillies and bacon on top, but seeing as our stupid food laws mean you can't get a rare burger any more, I just cook them at home (rib eye burgers from Ennis Butchers in Rialto are the best in Dublin -- that's not a shameless plug, just a piece of advice for any burger lover; they're stunning).
But one man doesn't care about such niceties. Former prison guard, Don Gorske, has just celebrated eating his 25,000th Big Mac and has been eating them every day since 1972.
He says he first bought three Big Macs to celebrate the purchase of a new car, which is an odd choice in itself and then adds: "I will continue eating Big Macs until the day I die", which one would imagine, given his diet, could be any day soon.
He then admits that he may have a touch of OCD.
Well, given the fact that he keeps all the receipts for the burgers and marks all the dates in a calendar I'm going to take a wild guess and say that is indeed probably the case.
Still, it beats collecting stamps.
You cannot be serious
There seems to be a strange symmetry between daytime television and late-night telly -- they're mostly complete pants.
And seeing as I've been working from home this week, I've had ample opportunity to witness both strands -- and Colin Fry.
Colin Fry is the TV 'psychic' who fools stupid people despite the fact that he has already been exposed as a complete fraud simply using cold reading.
Cold reading is the technique where you pick up on a subject's answers and subtly direct them to tell you what you want to know, while the person thinks that you're a supernatural genius.
So, if you can stop yourself from vomiting at the sheer cynical awfulness of the man (I stood up and shouted 'cold reading -- you're a liar' during a show he did in Dublin a few years ago and nearly got lynched by security) tune into Living TV and see just how painfully obvious this charlatan is.
He threatened to sue me when I called him that on radio a while back. But he never did, though. Funny that.
But he's welcome to try now -- I'll call Derren Brown as a witness and we'll see how long he lasts.
You have to see this
Okay, I know there's nothing more tedious than people recommending or sending you viral videos but Ultimate Dog Tease is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life.
Never has animal cruelty been funnier. And before you say that cruelty to animals is never funny you need to look at this as a guy teases his dog about food.
The dog's voice is synced but its reactions are brilliant and it has already had millions of hits since it was posted on YouTube.
Go watch it and laugh your ass off.
- Ian O'Doherty
Irish Independent
