Fargo

Fargo

It's an imaginary scenario and you're an imaginary fly on the wall.

Two men sit at a table in what appears to be a common area of sorts. It's an animated conversation, not unlike one you've had with a friend or colleague in a similar format.

Let’s take a closer look.

"So you've never seen Fargo?" Dellymar asked, leaning forward slightly.

Keek glanced off to the side—not avoiding eye contact, just throwing in some contrived body language. "No," he said. "And I'll tell you why... I don’t like Martin Freeman. He always comes across as arrogant, and at this point, I can't tell if it’s the character or just him."

"So what? He's playing a role," Dellymar replied, eyebrows knitting. "Don’t overthink it."

"There’s too much to watch nowadays," Keek muttered. "I just don’t like Martin Freeman, so I’ll never watch Fargo."

"But you know it’s an anthology series, right?" Dellymar leaned back, crossing his arms. "Freeman’s only in the first season. You could skip right to the second."

"Like American Horror Story?"

"Exactly. And that’s what Heroes was supposed to be too."

Keek paused, considering. "Huh. Maybe I’ll check it out. I did like Heroes."

A theory as to why I don't wear watches.

There's a few constants which have followed me throughout my adult life: I am generally useless, I try to make up for my deficiencies through displays of affection and finally, above all else, I am not a watch person. I will look at them in the window of a jewellery shop and appreciate how cool they look, as well as openly admiring the watches of other people from time to time. I even follow some watch focused accounts on my favourite platform YouTube.

So why do I not wear them? It’s something I’ve considered for a long time. Is it because they don’t suit me? Do you need to be 5’11 to pull off a watch? Does a watch look strange against my pale / red tinted forearm and wrist skin? What could it be.

Well I think I have found the answer. To set the scene: I am a big ‘bed time thinker’, or some might even say ‘bed time philosopher’. Last night, I was navigating down some deep seeded memories which I hadn’t thought about for a while. It was a few days after my confirmation which would’ve made me around 11 years old, and I was feeling particularly flush as I’d just done the confirmation visits with my huge extended family. We’re talking about 100 - 150 EUR. I asked my Mam to bring me to Donaghmede Shopping Centre so I could buy some toys, probably Star Wars ones, in Pride & Joy. The best toy shop in North Co. Dublin and still there to this day. My heaven as a kid. As a juxtaposition to toys, I also made the very adult decision to branch out and buy my first mature purchase: A watch. I’d seen the various male role model adults in my life wearing watches and wanted to become that kind of person. This was my time and I needed to tell it.

I got the toy business done first and told my Mam to leave me to it in the jewellers. This was an adult purchase and as a confirmed adult myself, I was fully capable of handling the situation, thank you very much. I browsed for what felt like hours. I was surprised by the prices and the realisation was dawning on me that I’d need to make a few sacrifices when it comes to the maturity of the watch. I probably couldn’t really articulate the feeling at the time, but it basically meant that I couldn’t buy a cool metal watch, or a leather strap or anything that you might see on your typical cool adult male. I had to settle for a “kid’s watch”.

Side-tracking from the selection process for a moment. It’s important to mention that there was two workers in the shop and I would say now that they were about 18. Both women. One was working in the back and the other was working on the till, doing some bits and bobs unrelated to payments as I was the only customer in the shop. Nevertheless, she was at the till. I was growing into my phase of wanting to be cool in front of girls and the watch was going to help with that. The worker at the till would no doubt be impressed by this mature 11 year old who’s alone and buying a watch with the 30 euro cash overflowing from his pocket.

So I make my choice. It’s objectively a terrible watch but I don’t know any better. It’s a brown and black rubber band, it has a bright blue backlight and is digital. "So cool!", I thought, as I brought it up to my new girlfriend doing her bits and bobs at the till. I hand it over, smirking in my mind but sheepish to her gaze, and she starts to process it for me. A few seconds of busyness followed and out of nowhere.. She LAUGHS. Laughs while she is packing up my new watch. Writing this now as an adult, still horrifically self-critical, I wonder was she laughing at me because I was ugly? Because I was a very awkward customer? Or was she just laughing at something that her colleague said to her two minutes prior? Who knows. But in that moment, my joy around the new watch was shattered. She hated it. I’d spent what felt like hours picking it out and she knew it was terrible. So terrible that she couldn’t control her laughter. I became a kid again. I was unconfirmed, barred from heaven and felt myself unravelling at the thought of this ugly, immature kid being carted around on his confirmation tour just a few days prior. What was I thinking! Me? A man? A watch?

I handed over my money and took the box from her. A box of shame. I never wore the watch and recall it idly lying atop the family microwave. A pity.

Weird

Whenever there’s a death in the football world it brings about the oddest reactions that nobody tends to talk about.

What I mean is the people who reply with things like:

“As a Chelsea fan, all rivalries aside, RIP”

I appreciate that they’re just trying to respect the person who’s died but I think “putting rivalries aside” is something that should just go without saying when somebody has passed away. I mean congratulations you can put aside your love of a football team to offer condolences to someone who was affiliated with another team. Woah!

The day I stopped trusting people

Hi there,

Rory Fitzpatrick (Dublin, Ireland) here with another blog post.

I have been doing some self-analysis recently and felt it was worth sharing. Perhaps for therapeutic purposes.

If there is one thing I've realised about myself recently, it's that my level of trust for others is rapidly declining with each year that passes. I barely believe anything that somebody tells me unless I can verify it for myself. I also tend to be very skeptical of people's motives.

I went for a walk along the coast road over the last weekend and I thought about a lot of things. Not specifically about my skepticism, but many things. During this walk, a random thought popped into my head and it was so clear to me that it was the first real incident in my memory that impacted my trust of others.

The incident itself was related to a 'Fantasy Football Management' game that used to be very popular on football forums years and years ago. It was really primitive compared to what there is now, but it was great craic. I was a member of one called 'TFF' (The Fantasy Football) which was run by a guy (BillyBlue), his Dad (bluebrummie) and a friend (can't remember, but not important).

To understand the finer details of the story, I'll need to give some information on how exactly the game worked. It wasn't based on any real-life football results like common fantasy football systems. Each person managed a team and that team had a squad of players. Each player was assigned 4 statistics:

Goalkeeper Ability

Defender Ability

Midfielder Ability

Forward Ability

So, as an example, I had Sebastian Deisler in my team (Middlesborough) and his stats were pretty good. Like this:

Sebastian Deisler 1 , 5, 15, 12

The game was actually pretty easy to understand/win if you knew how it worked. Not many did. The tactics engine took into account the second highest statistic as well as the highest. So a forward who had 14 Attack and 14 Midfield was actually better than a forward who had 19 Attack and 1 Midfield.

But anyway, why is this important?

As mentioned, I was managing Boro. I had a defender, Ugo Ehiogu, whose stats were something like this:

1, 10, 10, 2

While his midfield score was high, the defender score was actually too low for him to be great. I had slightly better players already. So he was resigned to my bench and never really got used.

BillyBlue had put up an announcement on transfer deadline day that said any players who had a secondary ability stat higher than 10 would receive an automatic bump of +10 to their primary stat after deadline day. This would mean that Ehiogu would be:

1, 20, 10, 2

This made him by far the best defender in the entire game. I was obviously very fortunate to profit from such a scheme from BillyBlue. The problem? I didn't actually see the announcement.

So I am sitting at my computer chatting with my friends about the transfer window on MSN at around 11:30pm. Deadline was 12. Suddenly BillyBlue messaged me out of the blue and he was "slurring" his words *a lot*. An absurd amount in hindsight.

He was proposing a swap of my lowly defender, Ehiogu, with one of his better ones. He explained it away as him being drunk, "LOL" and various other incoherent reasons. I was delighted and accepted the offer and started to plan my new defence based around this mid-level guy that I had just received (from the best team in the game managed by BillyBlue).

The next day comes along and I realise that Ehiogu has gone straight into BillyBlue's team. And what's this? His stats are now very different to what I remember. I read the announcement about the ability changes and realised that I had been.. I don't want to say tricked. I was the one who didn't read it. But I felt violated and it bothered me for some time. I hated seeing Ehiogu, a guy I had riding the bench all season, was now enjoying being the main man for the best team in the league. I didn't deserve him, but the circumstances surrounding the move left a very bad taste in my mouth.

I also have some very serious complaints about another sleazy move that BillyBlue pulled to help out his Dad's team, but that's for another day.

So BillyBlue, if you're out there.. Fuck you. You have completely destroyed my trust in other people.

List of Pringles flavours ordered by preference (1 being best) :

• 1. Prawn Cocktail
• 2. Salt and Vinegar
• 3. Hot and Spicy
• 4. Paprika
• 5. Texas BBQ
• 6. Cheese and Onion
• 7. Original
• 8. White Chocolate

Please note that the list is limited to those that I have tried.