You know when you get “paint your own pottery” places?
This is an honest-to-goodness “brew your own beer” place. I like the sound of this place, and we’ll hopefully be brewing some soon.

You know what? Ikea is fun to hang out in. Everyone’s opening drawers, playing with stuff, lying on the beds and couches. It’s tactile. And the massive warehouse out back is like the warehouse at the end of raiders.

Fantastic Boat.

For these, and many, many more pictures, follow the link

Jimmy Doyle anyone? Gene Hackman in The French Connection? Anyway, this hat is very similar to Gene Hackman’s hat in that movie.

Got it in TK Maxx for a tenner. I love it when the shops get the winter hats in.

Check after the jump for the other hat I bought today.

I wanted a little felt hat that I could wear around instead of breaking out my more expensive or flashy hats. I think the rude boy was the way to go.

I’m tempted to go off Skankin’.

Move to America on January 31st.

I went back and forth to how best to start this process and like most processes it starts with cash.
This whole thing won’t be cheap and the primary expense is the plane ticket. It’ll probably cost anywhere between 550 and 650 euros. That’s a wedge of cash in my books and I think a lot of us would have trouble raising that sort of scratch in the current economic climate.

So I decided to start selling things. The first thing I decided to sell was a burberry coat that I own. I picked it up about a year ago, maybe a year and a half. I never wear it, because it’s too nice to wear. I know it’s stupid.

The knock back referenced in the title is my first attempt to sell the coat. It didn’t sell.
This was an immediate shock to me, least of all because it’s a genuine Burberry Coat; I’d assume people would have my arm off for it at that price. It’s missing the belt, but that’s the only problem with it.

It was difficult to understand that it hadn’t sold. I had to consider an unpleasant idea:

What if I can’t sell any of my stuff?

I spent the rest of the day rolling this over in my mind. Yeah, gamestop will take my DVDs, and any clothes and nick-knacks can be given away if I run out of time. It’s likely a lot of stuff will go to charity shops. But if I don’t sell my stuff, then that’s a significant amount of cash I had planned on being in the budget… not being in the budget.

Well you know what – fuck it. If I give up at the first hurdle I’ll sit here in this chair, in this house, in this place and I’ll never get anywhere. Sure, I might get a job, or find a woman, or any of that shit.

But that job won’t be my dream job and that woman won’t be Kimberlee.

No compromise, no surrender.

Go buy the coat. If you don’t have the money to buy the coat, spread this around until we find someone who does have the money for it.

The Burberry Coat

The next step is to get together enough cash to get the material loomed, and then made into a kilt.
There is a donations page if you wish to toss me a few quid.

By the way, Mc Girr means ‘Son of the short man’ so anybody with the surname Mc/Mac Girr, Mc/Mac Gearr, Mc/Mac Garr or even Short/Shortt can wear this tartan.

Was at a Halloween Party today. Went as one of Mussolini’s boys.

The rest of the set are available here.

This is actually an old hat. Bought it in a costume shop on The Strand Road in Derry. Derry takes it’s Halloween very seriously. It’s an army surplus hat, it has German information on the inside, and I have no idea when it hails from.

But for a hat in such great condition and for only 12 euros it was impossible to say no. Verdicts?

The party went on long into the night. Click after the jump for some pictures.

This is a moment between the various murders and gunfights that erupted. All it took was one guy walking too quickly, or putting a hand in a pocket at the wrong moment.

This is getting taxing, and I’m still partying, so I’ll get back to you guys later.

Check it out, it’s the whole gang.

From left: Tony Acapulco (our man in the Caymans), The Kaiser (Under boss), Don Waldini (The Don), Rocky Knuckles (From the 70′s) and Big Sal (The Don’s personal bodyguard)

From Left: Cuban Bob (Our representitive in Havana), Joe (The 90′s rumbler), Ace Fireball Snakebite “Chainsaw” Maverick McCoy (Inner city 80′s gangster), Dylan Phoenix (Our finest hit-woman) “Auntie” Mary (She takes care of all the ladies of the night)

Booms and Babyface Murphy. Guess which is which.

From left: Tallulah (The finest Moll on the east coast), Don Waldini in the back, Ace Fireball (etc) in the front, Rocky Knuckles, Luscious O’ Trigger (From 1885; the Edinburgh contact), and Lady Skulls (Don’t ask)

Luscious O’ Trigger, Dylan Phoenix, Ace Fireball…(Man I wish Frank had picked a shorter name), “Auntie” Mary, Joe and Texas Mike (From 60′s Texas)

From Left: Tony Acapulco (Big Sal behind him), Miami (The Florida man), Cuban Bob behind Miami, Dom Waldini, Rocky Knuckles, and The Ghetto Snowball (We needed an in on the music industry, so we backed a white rapper)

Nothing sorts the men from the boys like a mafia watermelon eating contest. They don’t call him he Kaiser for nothing.

Joey Bananas and Booms. Word around the campfire was that Joey Bananas was FBI, but he’s been personally vetted by the Don. He’s the crooked cop of our fine association.

I love it. Word to the wise though: if you’re getting one, order up one size. I ordered a 40, when I’m about a 38-39, and though it first I would have preferred a 42. It’s easier to adjust down that it is to adjust up.

I got mine from The Scotland Kilt Company, and I couldn’t be happier with it. The delivery was a lot faster than estimated, there were no shipping costs and it’s only 45 euros for the entry level kilts.

For the Americans out there you might want to try Sport Kilt. They have similar prices, similar offers and similar kilts, many of which with newer twists, like pockets.

Get one. Now. Seriously, go, get one.

So this arrived this morning, so I had to track down some big boy cigarettes (Standard production smokes, not roll ups) and it works great. It filters out some of the tar and nicotine, it keeps the stains off your fingers, and it just looks steampunk to boot.