Bad beat/Moan/Venting Thread - BBV Archive 1

[eagle eye]

In a poem, yes.

Tilted by primetime, the guy doing the voiceover gets paid to do voice overs/reports.

http://www.rte.ie/player/#v=1088724

Skip to 6:40 (if you are arsed).
He clearly says 'turd' instead of 'third'.
It's pretty distracting.

It'd be a great idea if RTE were to hire articulate people so we could focus on the report itself.

I've got just the man for the job.

SPOILER

[shrapnel]

edit...look up episiotomy...lol, glad i aint a chick (sometimes...)

and don't be shy about asking the gynecologist to add a couple of extra stitches when rebuilding. it'll feel like new in no time!! ;-))

[Raoul Duke III]

and don't be shy about asking the gynecologist to add a couple of extra stitches when rebuilding. it'll feel like new in no time!! ;-))

there won't be no gynecologist there (unless something goes wrong)

it'll be you, your burd and a midwife

chances are you'll be asked to do some work as well

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

...

[shrapnel]

there won't be no gynecologist there (unless something goes wrong)

it'll be you, your burd and a midwife

chances are you'll be asked to do some work as well

you sure? the gynecologist was there both times for us. he litterally came in for the final few pushes, and performed all the medical procedures (cut cord etc...), which i don't think the midwife is allowed to do

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

...

[BINGO]

This how Gholi got barred from the Wesbury obviously

No that is not how he got barred from the westbury i was there early on in the night wen we were playing 6 handed and so wer ever he got there was only three players left he obvosivly can not count! Tbh i didnt mind if he played HU against the other drunk guy but wats tyhe point in taking some absoult drunk guy who is pissed out of his head to the cleaners for a couple of grand its not a nice thing to do and just shows hes a hungry basterd for money in my view! and den also break the main cash table up wers the sense in it??????????

[shrapnel]

shrapnel seems like the man in the know, but am going to look up those exercises of Raoul. No probs with the kid and delighted by it tbh, but sex shouldn't be long-term ruined.

tbh, everyone who's had kids is in the know. When it's your wife and child, It's one of the most magical (yet still pretty gruesome) events you go through in life. When seen as an outsider, it's a pretty gorry event!!

[oleras]

tbh, everyone who's had kids is in the know. When it's your wife and child, It's one of the most magical (yet still pretty gruesome) events you go through in life. When seen as an outsider, it's a pretty gorry event!!

It stinks in that room, doesnt it...lol

[Raoul Duke III]

you sure? the gynecologist was there both times for us. he litterally came in for the final few pushes, and performed all the medical procedures (cut cord etc...), which i don't think the midwife is allowed to do

first one was an emergency (7 weeks early) so gynecoogist was there (in his golf shoes, LOL). His sole involvement seemed to leaning against the wall disinterestedly and offering the odd bit of encouragement. Midwife did all the work.

Second one, midwife seemed to do everything!

[Raoul Duke III]

Actually have to ring up the Blackrock etc doctors that were recommended by the trinity health care centre. Public health care means you get a multitude of doctors, whereas private means you just get the one doctor throughout the whole thing. Have to pay for it though as her health insurance doesn't cover it. How much would you say it costs? Are we talking maybe less than 5k or a bit more? Know am going to find out soon enough, but just curious nevertheless. Obv going to go for it anyway, but just wondering if going to be bankrupt or not.

Mrs Duke has private insurance and we still had to pay 3,500 in fees

[shrapnel]

first one was an emergency (7 weeks early) so gynecoogist was there (in his golf shoes, LOL). His sole involvement seemed to leaning against the wall disinterestedly and offering the odd bit of encouragement. Midwife did all the work.

Second one, midwife seemed to do everything!

agreed, he does fuck all till the last 10 minutes, but i think he still has to be there.

[Raoul Duke III]

agreed, he does fuck all till the last 10 minutes, but i think he still has to be there.

you might be right, can't remember him being there at all for the second one but it's possible that I was too busy editing the movie footage and posting it on YouTube

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

...

[shrapnel]

you might be right, can't remember him being there at all for the second one but it's possible that I was too busy editing the movie footage and posting it on YouTube

Nice!!! i see an epic father's speech including DVD and powerpoint presentation at said childs wedding!!!!

[Lord Sir Banter]

The kid won't give a fuck.
It's whatever is the best for the grandad.

[Raoul Duke III]

ah fck, even with private insurance?

it depends with what plan you're on, Mrs D is on a reasonably good one and still had to fork out quite a bit. As far as I know, she basically had to pay the consultant's fees and then got stuff like a private room etc covered under the insurance. I'll ask her tonight though.

Check your plan's details or ring your insurer.

Might have to give her dad a call. I'm happy enough with whatever the state has to offer - (it was good enough for me, etc), but her dad is insisting on the one doctor thing. meh, we'll make it happen either ways - whatever is best for the kid

tbh, you're getting 'public care' anyway so going private only really matters if:

(a) something goes wrong.

and\or

(b) you don't want to stay in a public ward. I don't think this matters too much as, if it's a normal birth, they will kick you out asap anyway!

Personally, if your g/f is (relatively) young and healthy, I'd say that going private is a waste of money. It's not your call though!

[Iago]

New BMW ad for used cars. Very good imo

that is excellent in fairness

[Raoul Duke III]

Nice!!! i see an epic father's speech including DVD and powerpoint presentation at said childs wedding!!!!

eh, I was joking

in reality, I was at the head of the bed, taking great interest in the contours of the wall

[Wesley Harms]

The level of illiteracy on this site is remarkable. I know 4 year olds who can spell better than some of these guys

[Iago]

Actually have to ring up the Blackrock etc doctors that were recommended by the trinity health care centre. Public health care means you get a multitude of doctors, whereas private means you just get the one doctor throughout the whole thing. Have to pay for it though as her health insurance doesn't cover it. How much would you say it costs? Are we talking maybe less than 5k or a bit more? Know am going to find out soon enough, but just curious nevertheless. Obv going to go for it anyway, but just wondering if going to be bankrupt or not.

worth reading this before you spend the money imo

http://www.herald.ie/entertainment/around-town/i-paid-euro4k-on-top-of-a-hefty-health-insurance-premium-but-still-had-to-go-into-labour-on-a-trolley-2486442.html

THE whole health system has always baffled me. Public versus private, health insurance, treatment purchase schemes, the endless HSE controversies. I don't really understand how it works and who's entitled to what.

But just before Christmas I had an up-closeand- personal view of just how undignified and under-resourced our health system is with the birth of my first baby.

I opted to have my baby at the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street after canvassing endless opinions from mothers. Some of them assured me that if anything went wrong it was the best place to be, that if anything serious goes wrong with other labours and births in other hospitals, the babies are always whisked in there.

I have been paying a hefty health insurance premium all my working life (my last annual premium was more than ¤700) and naively thought that this would cover the extra private care that I wanted. It doesn't.

If you want to attend a private consultant, you must pay for that separately. It was €4,000 in my case, but I believed it would be money well spent. If you're lucky and privileged enough to be able to afford it, why wouldn't you spend your money on something as important as your health and the health of the most precious thing in your life?

Dice

The €4,000 meant that I attended the same consultant that I chose, for antenatal visits during my pregnancy. Hopefully she would be there for the birth and hopefully I would get a private room after the birth.

To be fair, my consultant explained to me that there were no guarantees about her either being there or about getting my own room. You don't get your money back, by the way, if you don't get your own room. It's a roll of the dice.

When I went into labour and was admitted to the hospital, I sat outside an office, a nightdress and robe in hand, waiting to be brought to a room to be examined before I was brought into a delivery room.

A lovely young midwife came out and apologetically said to me that they were very busy that day and that there was no room available. I actually thought that I was going to be brought to another hospital.

Wrong. I was put on a trolley in a corridor, outside a delivery ward.

We could hear the cries of a newborn baby as I was hooked up to a machine to monitor my contractions and the baby's heartbeat.

A curtain rail pulled round, my husband holding my clothes, a new mum and her new baby were wheeled out of the delivery room past me, dad walking alongside. As soon as they were out, the cleaners went in.

Meanwhile, my waters were broken on the trolley. Any woman who's had this done will tell you how uncomfortable and painful it is.

Hopefully most hadn't the indignity of having it done on a trolley in a corridor. Because my baby had a bowel movement inside me, they also had to insert a tiny monitor on his head. All of this happened on the trolley, the midwives apologising, my husband doing his best to reassure me.

Hours later, in the delivery room, my consultant wasn't available as I was about to give birth. Another appeared briefly before rushing out of the room after her beeper went off. In the end, a registrar delivered my baby boy by ventouse, after my temperature went up, with a team of mighty midwives encouraging and helping me all the way.

Nikki and Helena, the midwives from heaven, who had spent the day with me, were as good as their word and stayed with me until my baby boy came into the world, even though their shift had ended. After my little boy was whisked off to ICU, I was told that there was no private room available.

I spent the next two nights in a room with five other women and their five crying newborns. I didn't sleep the entire time I was there. I can't believe that any woman in the room did. By day three, I just couldn't cope with the lack of sleep and decided to leave early.

I packed my bag and was waiting for a prescription when a nurse popped by to tell me that a room had become available. And so I stayed for a third night, finally in my own room.

I still don't know how they decide who gets a private room, if there are more who paid for it than there are rooms available.

Is it first come, first served? Are you more likely to get one if you had surgery or twins? What are the chances on any given day? Why bother paying if the odds are bad?

Women often talk about the pain of childbirth and how they could never go through it again. In my case, the birth itself was verging on pleasant. I literally couldn't feel a thing, thanks to an epidural administered by a fantastic anaesthetist.

Dignity

Neither the pregnancy nor the labour itself would put me off or make me anxious about having another baby. What would put me off, was the lack of dignity and privacy of being examined and having my waters broken on a trolley in a corridor.

Private or public care aside, it is an indictment of the shambles of a health system that any woman is forced into a situation like that at a time when they are so vulnerable.

That day, every time I got upset or panicked, I focused on my little baby, and that's what got me through. Oh and those mighty, mighty midwives...

[Lord Sir Banter]

The level of illiteracy on this site is remarkable. I know 4 year olds who can spell better than some of these guys

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/10-rules-for-writing-numbers-and-numerals/

The small numbers, such as whole numbers smaller than ten, should be spelled out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop

/Kayroo

[Emmet]

The level of illiteracy on this site is remarkable. I know 4 year olds who can spell better than some of these guys

Have you been on TaxiDriver.ie? There's people there who can't spell car and use ur because they have no idea whether it's your our you're. Not to mention their general unintelligence!

[Solskjaer]

I'm just going to get rid of breakfast. The BBV had dug the depths this morning. Yesterday it turned ghey today they are talking about wimmins bowel movements and wrecked vagines. I'm thinking this is some kind of plan to turn the rest of us to the ghey. Ciaran Corbett will have a field day at the next IPB game. If I wanna wreck a vagine I'll do it the old fashioned way. HH as always the legendary Dave Barry has the best read on these things.

Old but still funny.

SPOILER

N A T U R A L C H I L D B I R T H
My Least Favorite Spectator Sport
By Dave Barry

Reprinted (without permission, naturally) from THE PLAIN DEALER magazine, 8/2/81

Let's take a quick look at the history of baby-having. For thousands of years, only women had babies. Primitive women would go off into primitive huts and groan and wail and sweat while other women hovered around. The primitive men stayed outside doing manly things, such as lifting heavy objects and spitting.

When the baby was born, the women would clean it up as best they could and show it to the men who would spit appreciatively and head off to the forest to throw sharp sticks at small animals. If you had suggested to primitive men that they should actually watch women have babies, they would have laughed at you and probably tortured you for three or four days. They were real men.

At the beginning of the 20th century, women started having babies in hospital rooms. Often males were present, but they were professional doctors who were paid large sums of money and wore masks. Normal civilian males continued to stay out of the baby-having area; they remained in waiting rooms reading old copies of Field and Stream, and activity that is less manly than lifting heavy objects but still reasonably manly.

What I'm getting at is that, for most of history, baby-having was mainly in the hands (so to speak) of women. Many fine people were born under this system, Charles Lindbergh, for example.

Things changed though in the 1970s, The birth rate dropped sharply. Women started going to college and driving bulldozers and carrying briefcases and freely using such words as debenture. They just didn't have time to have babies. For a while there, the only people having
babies were unwed teenage girls, who are very fertile and can get pregnant merely by standing downwind from teenage boys.

Then young professional couples began to realize that their lives were missing something - a sense of stability, of companionship, of responsibility for another life. So they got Labrador retrievers. A little later, they started having babies again, mainly because of the tax advantages. These days you can't open your car door without hitting a pregnant woman. But there's a catch:

* Women now expect men to watch them have babies.

* This is called "natural childbirth", which is one of those terms that sound terrific but that nobody really understands. Another one is "pH balanced".

At first, natural childbirth was popular only with hippie-type, granola-oriented couples, who lived in geodesic domes and named their babies things like Peace Love World Understanding Harrington-Schwarz. The males, their brains badly corroded by drugs and organic food, wrote
smarmy articles about what a Meaningful Experience it is to see a New Life Come Into the World.

None of these articles mentioned the various other fluids and solids that come into the world with the New Life, so people got the impression that watching somebody have a baby was just a peck of meaningful fun. At cocktail parties, you'd run into natural childbirth converts who would
drone on for hours, giving you a contraction-by- contraction account of what went on in the delivery room. They were worse than Moonies, or people who tell you how much they bought their houses for in 1973 and how much they're worth today.

Before long, natural childbirth was everywhere like salad bars, and now perfectly innocent civilian males all over the country are required by federal law to watch females have babies. I recently had to watch my wife have a baby in Bryn Mawr. *Bryn Mawr*, for God's sake.

First we had to go to 10 evening childbirth classes. Before the classes, the hospital told us, mysteriously, to bring two pillows. This was the first humiliation, because no two of our pillowcases match and many have beer or cranberry-juice stains. It may be possible to walk
down the streets of some towns with stained, unmatched pillowcases and still feel dignified, but that is not possible in Bryn Mawr.

Anyway, we showed up for the first class, along with about 15 other couples consisting of women who were going to have babies and men who were going to have to watch them. They all had matching pillowcases. In fact, some couples had obviously purchased tasteful pillowcases
especially for childbirth class; these were the Main Line-type couples, wearing golf and tennis apparel, who were planning to have wealthy babies. They sat together through all the classes, and eventually agreed to get together for brunch.

The classes consisted of sitting in a brightly lit room and openly discussing among other things, the uterus. Now I can remember a time, in high school, when I would have *killed* for reliable information about the uterus. But having discussed it at length, having seen actual full-color diagrams, I must say in all honesty, that although I respect it a great deal as an organ, it has lost much of its charm
.
Our childbirth-class instructor was very big on the uterus because that's where babies generally spend their time before birth. She also spent some time on the ovum, which is near the ovaries. What happens is that the ovum hangs around reading novels and eating chocolates until along comes this big crowd of spermatozoa, which are tiny, very stupid one-celled organisms. They're looking for the ovum, but most of them wouldn't know it if they fell over it. They swim around for days, trying to mate with the pancreas and whatever other organs they bump into. But eventually one stumbles into the ovum, and the happy couple parades down the fallopian tubes to the uterus. In the uterus, the Miracle of Life begins, unless you believe the Miracle of Life does not begin there, and if you think I'm going to get into that, you're crazy. Anyway, the ovum starts growing rapidly and dividing into lots of little specialized parts, not unlike the federal government. Within six weeks, it has developed all organs it needs to drool; by 10 weeks, t has the ability
to cry in restaurants. In childbirth class, they showed us these pictures of a fetus developing inside a uterus. They didn't tell us how the pictures were taken, but I suspect it involved a great deal of drinking.

We saw lots of pictures. One evening, we saw a movie of a woman we didn't even know having a baby. I am serious. Some woman actually let some moviemakers film the whole thing. In color. She was from California. Another time, the instructor announced, in the tone of voice you might use to tell people that they had just won free trips to the Bahamas, that we were going to see color slides of a Caesarean section. The first slides showed her cheerfully holding a baby. The last slides showed her cheerfully holding a baby. The middle slides showed how they got the baby out of the cheerful woman, but I can't give you a lot of detail here because I had to go out for 15 or 20 drinks of water. I do remember that at one point our instructor cheerfully observed that there
was "surprisingly little blood, really". She evidently felt this was a real selling point.

When we weren't looking at pictures or discussing the uterus, we practiced breathing. This is where the pillows came in. What happens is that when the baby gets ready to leave the uterus, the woman goes through what the medical community laughingly refers to as contractions; if it referred to them as "horrible pains that make you wonder why the hell you ever decided to get pregnant", people might stop having babies and the medical community would have to go into the major-appliance business.

In the old days, under President Eisenhower, doctors avoided the contraction problem by giving lots of drugs to women who were having babies. They'd knock them out during the delivery, and the women would wake up when their kids were entering the fourth grade. But the idea with natural childbirth is to try to avoid giving the woman a lot of drugs, so she can share the first intimate moments after birth with the baby and father and the obstetrician and the pediatrician and several nurses and the person who cleans up the delivery room.

The most important thing to the natural-childbirth people is for the woman to breathe deeply. Really. The theory is that if she breathes deeply, she'll get all relaxed and won't notice that she's in a hospital delivery room wearing a truly perverted garment and having a baby. I'm not sure who came up with this theory. Whoever it was evidently believed that women have very small brains.

So, in childbirth classes, we spent a lot of time sprawled out on these little mats with our pillows while the women pretended to have contractions and the men squatted around with stopwatches and pretended to time them. The Main Line couples didn't care for this part. They were not into squatting. After a couple of classes, they started bringing little backgammon sets and playing backgammon when they were supposed to be practicing breathing. I imagine they had a rough time in childbirth unless they got the servants to have contractions for them.

Anyway, my wife and I traipsed along for months, breathing, and timing, respectively. We had no problems whatsoever. We were a terrific team. We had a swell time. Really.

The actual delivery was slightly more difficult. I don't want to name names, but I held up *my* end. I had my stopwatch in good working order and I told my wife to breathe. "Don't forget to breathe," I'd say, or, "You should breathe, you know." She on the other hand was unusually
cranky. For example, she didn't want me to use my stopwatch. Can you imagine? All that practice, all that squatting on the natural-childbirth classroom floor, and she suddenly gets into this big snit about stopwatches. Also, she almost completely lost her sense of humor. At
one point, I made an especially humorous remark, and she tried to hit me. She usually has an excellent sense of humor.

Nonetheless, the baby came out all right, or at least all right for newborn babies, which is actually pretty awful unless you're a big fan of slime. I thought I held up well for the whole thing when the doctor, who up to then had behaved like a perfectly rational person, said, "Would you like to see the placenta?" Now let's face it, this is like asking, "Would you like me to pour hot tar into your nostrils?" Nobody would like to see a placenta. If anything it would be a form of punishment:

Jury: We find the defendant guilty of stealing from the old and crippled.

Judge: I sentence the defendant to look at three placentas.

But without waiting for an answer, the doctor held up the placenta, not unlike the way you might hold up a bowling trophy. I bet he wouldn't have tried that with people who have matching pillowcases.

The placenta aside, everything worked out fine. We ended up with an extremely healthy, organic, natural baby, who immediately demanded to be put back into the uterus.

All in all, I'd say it's not a bad way to reproduce, although I understand that some members of the flatworm family simply divide into two.

THE DAVE BARRY PARENTAL APTITUDE TEST

How do you feel about having partially digested food on your self and virtually everything you own?

a) Fine b) No Problem c) Very Attractive

How much sleep do you need each night?

a) Less than one hour b) None c) Sleep makes me very irritable.

How much do you want to know about excretions?

a) A great deal b) Everything c) The more the better.

Scoring: 0-10 You should have a baby immediately.
10-20 Go ahead and have a baby.
20-30 A baby would be very good for you to have.

[Megatron]

I'm just going to get rid of breakfast. The BBV had dug the depths this morning. Yesterday it turned ghey today they are talking about wimmins bowel movements and wrecked vagines. I'm thinking this is some kind of plan to turn the rest of us to the ghey. Ciaran Corbett will have a field day at the next IPB game. If I wanna wreck a vagine I'll do it the old fashioned way. HH as always the legendary Dave Barry has the best read on these things.

Old but still funny.

SPOILER

N A T U R A L C H I L D B I R T H
My Least Favorite Spectator Sport
By Dave Barry

Reprinted (without permission, naturally) from THE PLAIN DEALER magazine, 8/2/81

Let's take a quick look at the history of baby-having. For thousands of years, only women had babies. Primitive women would go off into primitive huts and groan and wail and sweat while other women hovered around. The primitive men stayed outside doing manly things, such as lifting heavy objects and spitting.

When the baby was born, the women would clean it up as best they could and show it to the men who would spit appreciatively and head off to the forest to throw sharp sticks at small animals. If you had suggested to primitive men that they should actually watch women have babies, they would have laughed at you and probably tortured you for three or four days. They were real men.

At the beginning of the 20th century, women started having babies in hospital rooms. Often males were present, but they were professional doctors who were paid large sums of money and wore masks. Normal civilian males continued to stay out of the baby-having area; they remained in waiting rooms reading old copies of Field and Stream, and activity that is less manly than lifting heavy objects but still reasonably manly.

What I'm getting at is that, for most of history, baby-having was mainly in the hands (so to speak) of women. Many fine people were born under this system, Charles Lindbergh, for example.

Things changed though in the 1970s, The birth rate dropped sharply. Women started going to college and driving bulldozers and carrying briefcases and freely using such words as debenture. They just didn't have time to have babies. For a while there, the only people having
babies were unwed teenage girls, who are very fertile and can get pregnant merely by standing downwind from teenage boys.

Then young professional couples began to realize that their lives were missing something - a sense of stability, of companionship, of responsibility for another life. So they got Labrador retrievers. A little later, they started having babies again, mainly because of the tax advantages. These days you can't open your car door without hitting a pregnant woman. But there's a catch:

* Women now expect men to watch them have babies.

* This is called "natural childbirth", which is one of those terms that sound terrific but that nobody really understands. Another one is "pH balanced".

At first, natural childbirth was popular only with hippie-type, granola-oriented couples, who lived in geodesic domes and named their babies things like Peace Love World Understanding Harrington-Schwarz. The males, their brains badly corroded by drugs and organic food, wrote
smarmy articles about what a Meaningful Experience it is to see a New Life Come Into the World.

None of these articles mentioned the various other fluids and solids that come into the world with the New Life, so people got the impression that watching somebody have a baby was just a peck of meaningful fun. At cocktail parties, you'd run into natural childbirth converts who would
drone on for hours, giving you a contraction-by- contraction account of what went on in the delivery room. They were worse than Moonies, or people who tell you how much they bought their houses for in 1973 and how much they're worth today.

Before long, natural childbirth was everywhere like salad bars, and now perfectly innocent civilian males all over the country are required by federal law to watch females have babies. I recently had to watch my wife have a baby in Bryn Mawr. *Bryn Mawr*, for God's sake.

First we had to go to 10 evening childbirth classes. Before the classes, the hospital told us, mysteriously, to bring two pillows. This was the first humiliation, because no two of our pillowcases match and many have beer or cranberry-juice stains. It may be possible to walk
down the streets of some towns with stained, unmatched pillowcases and still feel dignified, but that is not possible in Bryn Mawr.

Anyway, we showed up for the first class, along with about 15 other couples consisting of women who were going to have babies and men who were going to have to watch them. They all had matching pillowcases. In fact, some couples had obviously purchased tasteful pillowcases
especially for childbirth class; these were the Main Line-type couples, wearing golf and tennis apparel, who were planning to have wealthy babies. They sat together through all the classes, and eventually agreed to get together for brunch.

The classes consisted of sitting in a brightly lit room and openly discussing among other things, the uterus. Now I can remember a time, in high school, when I would have *killed* for reliable information about the uterus. But having discussed it at length, having seen actual full-color diagrams, I must say in all honesty, that although I respect it a great deal as an organ, it has lost much of its charm
.
Our childbirth-class instructor was very big on the uterus because that's where babies generally spend their time before birth. She also spent some time on the ovum, which is near the ovaries. What happens is that the ovum hangs around reading novels and eating chocolates until along comes this big crowd of spermatozoa, which are tiny, very stupid one-celled organisms. They're looking for the ovum, but most of them wouldn't know it if they fell over it. They swim around for days, trying to mate with the pancreas and whatever other organs they bump into. But eventually one stumbles into the ovum, and the happy couple parades down the fallopian tubes to the uterus. In the uterus, the Miracle of Life begins, unless you believe the Miracle of Life does not begin there, and if you think I'm going to get into that, you're crazy. Anyway, the ovum starts growing rapidly and dividing into lots of little specialized parts, not unlike the federal government. Within six weeks, it has developed all organs it needs to drool; by 10 weeks, t has the ability
to cry in restaurants. In childbirth class, they showed us these pictures of a fetus developing inside a uterus. They didn't tell us how the pictures were taken, but I suspect it involved a great deal of drinking.

We saw lots of pictures. One evening, we saw a movie of a woman we didn't even know having a baby. I am serious. Some woman actually let some moviemakers film the whole thing. In color. She was from California. Another time, the instructor announced, in the tone of voice you might use to tell people that they had just won free trips to the Bahamas, that we were going to see color slides of a Caesarean section. The first slides showed her cheerfully holding a baby. The last slides showed her cheerfully holding a baby. The middle slides showed how they got the baby out of the cheerful woman, but I can't give you a lot of detail here because I had to go out for 15 or 20 drinks of water. I do remember that at one point our instructor cheerfully observed that there
was "surprisingly little blood, really". She evidently felt this was a real selling point.

When we weren't looking at pictures or discussing the uterus, we practiced breathing. This is where the pillows came in. What happens is that when the baby gets ready to leave the uterus, the woman goes through what the medical community laughingly refers to as contractions; if it referred to them as "horrible pains that make you wonder why the hell you ever decided to get pregnant", people might stop having babies and the medical community would have to go into the major-appliance business.

In the old days, under President Eisenhower, doctors avoided the contraction problem by giving lots of drugs to women who were having babies. They'd knock them out during the delivery, and the women would wake up when their kids were entering the fourth grade. But the idea with natural childbirth is to try to avoid giving the woman a lot of drugs, so she can share the first intimate moments after birth with the baby and father and the obstetrician and the pediatrician and several nurses and the person who cleans up the delivery room.

The most important thing to the natural-childbirth people is for the woman to breathe deeply. Really. The theory is that if she breathes deeply, she'll get all relaxed and won't notice that she's in a hospital delivery room wearing a truly perverted garment and having a baby. I'm not sure who came up with this theory. Whoever it was evidently believed that women have very small brains.

So, in childbirth classes, we spent a lot of time sprawled out on these little mats with our pillows while the women pretended to have contractions and the men squatted around with stopwatches and pretended to time them. The Main Line couples didn't care for this part. They were not into squatting. After a couple of classes, they started bringing little backgammon sets and playing backgammon when they were supposed to be practicing breathing. I imagine they had a rough time in childbirth unless they got the servants to have contractions for them.

Anyway, my wife and I traipsed along for months, breathing, and timing, respectively. We had no problems whatsoever. We were a terrific team. We had a swell time. Really.

The actual delivery was slightly more difficult. I don't want to name names, but I held up *my* end. I had my stopwatch in good working order and I told my wife to breathe. "Don't forget to breathe," I'd say, or, "You should breathe, you know." She on the other hand was unusually
cranky. For example, she didn't want me to use my stopwatch. Can you imagine? All that practice, all that squatting on the natural-childbirth classroom floor, and she suddenly gets into this big snit about stopwatches. Also, she almost completely lost her sense of humor. At
one point, I made an especially humorous remark, and she tried to hit me. She usually has an excellent sense of humor.

Nonetheless, the baby came out all right, or at least all right for newborn babies, which is actually pretty awful unless you're a big fan of slime. I thought I held up well for the whole thing when the doctor, who up to then had behaved like a perfectly rational person, said, "Would you like to see the placenta?" Now let's face it, this is like asking, "Would you like me to pour hot tar into your nostrils?" Nobody would like to see a placenta. If anything it would be a form of punishment:

Jury: We find the defendant guilty of stealing from the old and crippled.

Judge: I sentence the defendant to look at three placentas.

But without waiting for an answer, the doctor held up the placenta, not unlike the way you might hold up a bowling trophy. I bet he wouldn't have tried that with people who have matching pillowcases.

The placenta aside, everything worked out fine. We ended up with an extremely healthy, organic, natural baby, who immediately demanded to be put back into the uterus.

All in all, I'd say it's not a bad way to reproduce, although I understand that some members of the flatworm family simply divide into two.

THE DAVE BARRY PARENTAL APTITUDE TEST

How do you feel about having partially digested food on your self and virtually everything you own?

a) Fine b) No Problem c) Very Attractive

How much sleep do you need each night?

a) Less than one hour b) None c) Sleep makes me very irritable.

How much do you want to know about excretions?

a) A great deal b) Everything c) The more the better.

Scoring: 0-10 You should have a baby immediately.
10-20 Go ahead and have a baby.
20-30 A baby would be very good for you to have.

I hope your not calling me a ghey Willie!

[shrapnel]

eh, I was joking

in reality, I was at the head of the bed, taking great interest in the contours of the wall

i know. i didn't have you down as the camcorder type, although i'm sure the speech will be suitably embarrassing nonetheless :-)

[Denny Crane]

I think if I'm ever in that position I'm going to copy don and just sit in the waiting room drinking whiskey.

[Solskjaer]

I hope your not calling me a ghey Willie!

LOL. Just picked a randomn IPBer and you lost. No offence Icarus.

[Strewelpeter]

What is with all the CHD bashing?
For shame.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcKvCjO4JlM[/ame]

[Wesley Harms]

Have you been on TaxiDriver.ie? There's people there who can't spell car and use ur because they have no idea whether it's your our you're. Not to mention their general unintelligence!

I will not dispute this, however due to my superior intelligence, verbosity and general literacy skills, I am obviously a cut above

[Icarus152]

I will not dispute this, however due to my superior intelligence, verbosity and general literacy skills, I am obviously a cut above

A cut above a pregnant monkey with a hearing aid and a learning difficulty.

[Ste05]

I liked that article Solks!!

shrapnel seems like the man in the know, but am going to look up those exercises of Raoul. No probs with the kid and delighted by it tbh, but sex shouldn't be long-term ruined.

When you hear about what the woman should do with Vitamin E oil, for the love of god make sure she uses it!!!

Considering the situation you're in and all the disgusting stuff you see in the delivery ward, it's particularly off putting to hear "You should probably look away now!"

Vitamin E oil!! Fun running up to the event, and might prevent the above statement being said during.

[max_power]

wow 20/20 cricket is so much better than test cricket.

[Raoul Duke III]

wow 20/20 cricket is so much better than test cricket.

die, infidel

Kev, kindly deal with this maniac in a suitably harsh manner

[Raoul Duke III]

what are the best websites for booking winter sun holidays?

btw looking at somewhere within a 'one flight' radius of Dublin, for some strange reason Vegas has been decreed unsuitable for small children and Carribean would involve too much travel hassle.

So I guess we're talking Canaries\Madeira etc

[aodea]

Well catching up today on this has depressed me,

[Mellor]

They're not all midweek are they? Melbourne wasn't anyway.

The 500 6 max is Sunday wit a Monday FT
There is also the 6 max shoot out. Would like to play that, but figure the regular 6 max is less variance

This is all dependant on me being still in the country. Its months away yet as I'll most likely not get to adelaide or any other early one

[max_power]

It's great, they just smash it around. I spent a day at the cricket and didn't see one 6, saw one straight away when I turned it on. Morgan just started batting for Ingerland.

[max_power]

The 500 6 max is Sunday wit a Monday FT
There is also the 6 max shoot out. Would like to play that, but figure the regular 6 max is less variance

This is all dependant on me being still in the country. Its months away yet as I'll most likely not get to adelaide or any other early one

Ah right, thought you were talking about the Main Events, is the schedule up yeah? Link?

[Wesley Harms]

A cut above a pregnant monkey with a hearing aid and a learning difficulty.

I can't believe you have the temerity to insult me. You don't know who your dealing with.

[shrapnel]

what are the best websites for booking winter sun holidays?

btw looking at somewhere within a 'one flight' radius of Dublin, for some strange reason Vegas has been decreed unsuitable for small children and Carribean would involve too much travel hassle.

So I guess we're talking Canaries\Madeira etc

Florida? Dubai and co?

[Raoul Duke III]

Florida? Dubai and co?

Florida might work if the flights were direct

not crazy about the idea of Dubai

[Keane]

It would seem Kerry people are still a bit tick....

Google actually appears towards the top of every "most googled" list ever compiled. The reason is that if you just type a word into your browser's address bar, most browsers automatically google it for you.

The quickest, easiest way to bring up the main google search page is just to type "google" into your address bar, effectively "googling google".

Reading that back in my hungover state, the word "google" has lost all meaning to me.

Or start saying they sound like they're from Cork.

They friggin hate that

[Bless You]

GAA considering testing this yoke at the hurling on St Patricks day
with a view to introducing it full-time.

Bad news for Meath footballers*

http://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/championship/2010/1214/gaa_hawkeye.html

*just kidding, don't hurt me Bubbleking

[Keane]

Florida might work if the flights were direct

not crazy about the idea of Dubai

Didn't see any direct flights to Florida when I was booking, I'm going Shannon -> JFK -> Orlando.

Think you can fly direct from London, but that's the best you can do afaik. (take info with pinch of salt for best results)

[Keane]

GAA considering testing this yoke at the hurling on St Patricks day
with a view to introducing it full-time.

Bad news for Meath footballers*

http://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/championship/2010/1214/gaa_hawkeye.html

*just kidding, don't hurt me Bubbleking

Isn't Hawkeye that thing they use in tennis?

How would that have helped in the Meath situation?

It tilts me so much that we have perfectly usable technology in the form of simple, old fashioned TV replays, and they insist on overcomplicating the matter with all this "goalline sensor technology" bullshit.

I think they deliberately fuck stuff up in the GAA so they can come back and say "Well we tried it and it was terrible so we're just going to stick to the way we have it already".

[Bless You]

Isn't Hawkeye that thing they use in tennis?

How would that have helped in the Meath situation?

Yeah, you're right of course. I think Hawkeye's job is just to say whether the ball was across a line/ between two posts. Certainly wouldn't have helped with the Meath situation last year.

Seems a bit ott alright.

[Lord Sir Banter]

This is pretty impressive really.
Can think of other Michael Jackson songs I'd prefer.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BE9m-RK4ks&feature=fvw[/ame]

[Keane]

Yeah, you're right of course. I think Hawkeye's job is just to say whether the ball was across a line/ between two posts. Certainly wouldn't have helped with the Meath situation last year.

Seems a bit ott alright.

It would be trivially easy to use regular TV replays for GAA as well (well, football anyway). Terribly frustrating IMO.

[Silver-Tiger]

Raoul i'm pretty sure Aer Lingus have one direct flight to Florida per week.

[BabyHawk]

Didn't see any direct flights to Florida when I was booking, I'm going Shannon -> JFK -> Orlando.

Think you can fly direct from London, but that's the best you can do afaik. (take info with pinch of salt for best results)

Direct flights available from Belfast International to Orlando (MCO), but it does mean having to travel into the north

[Raoul Duke III]

Raoul i'm pretty sure Aer Lingus have one direct flight to Florida per week.

I see that, it's a long trip though

will play it safe and stick to the Canaries or somewhere similar. Any recommendations? will probably be going around the end of Feb and will really need the holiday by then

[6starpool]

Yep, aer lingus does direct to Orlando.

[Strewelpeter]

Woakes on strike needing three from two balls... exciting stuff

Edit: LAst ball one run needed to win

Edit2 - he got it WP Woakes what a debut

[Keane]

Some more info about the upcoming Elder Scrolls game for anybody interested:

http://ie.pc.ign.com/articles/114/1143498p1.html

SPOILER

The latest issue of Game Informer contains fresh gameplay details on Bethesda's next massive title, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, set for release this November.

Skyrm's story is set 200 years after the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and the world of Tamriel is in shambles. The empire has fallen to the elves, the Blades are gone, the Nords hate each other, and a civil war is about the break out. Oh, and that big dragon the Elder Scrolls prophesied about? Yeah, he's arrived, too. Players will take control of the last remaining Dragonborn, a dragon hunter anointed by the gods to help fend off the threat.

Bethesda's newest title features a brand-spanking new engine where every object in the game now casts a shadow as well as improved draw-distances. Textures are sharper and more detailed and the environments are livelier. There's also the addition of a HUD-less first-person view and "improved" third-person camera option.

There will be five massive cities that span Skyrim's environment, which ranges from frozen tundra to rocky mountain tops. There is also new wildlife, such as Sabre-toothed Cats and Wooly Mammoths.

The combat is getting a bit of an overhaul, too. Players will be able to equip any weapon or spell to either hand at any time and even duel wield two of the same weapon. A new customizable menu is being added to help swap load-outs easily in battle.

Bethesda has also done away with the character class system and reworked the game's leveling mechanic. Players' skills will level up the more they are used, contributing to your overall level growth. "Raising one skill from 34 to 35 is going to level you faster than raising one from 11 to 12," Bethesda designer Todd Howard told the magazine. Players can also level pass 50, but it becomes much slower after that point.

The team has also added Fallout 3's perk system, where each new level gained allows players to add special abilities to their character, including increase in damage to dagger stealth attacks or allowing your mace to ignore enemy armor.

Skyrim's NPC conversations are a lot more realistic. Aside from including even more voice actors, the AI-controlled characters will actually move about and continue on with the activities they were doing before being interrupted. Towns also include more activities to do, such farming, mining, woodcutting and cooking.

Bethesda also revamped the game's menu system. Howard said the team used Apple's iTunes as inspiration and direction. Players will be greeted with a compass-style overlay with four options: Skill, Inventory, Map, and Magic. Weapons and spells can be tagged as a 'favorite' for quick selection. Every item is a 3D object than can be viewed and examined.

Check out the latest issue of Game Informer for additional details.

Skyrim is set for release on November 11, 2011 for Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3.

[tylerdurden94]

New low for the BBV as Raoul would say, had to skip a lot of the last few pages you guys are pretty sick

[ArmaniJeans]

It would be trivially easy to use regular TV replays for GAA as well (well, football anyway). Terribly frustrating IMO.

Definitely not 'trivially easy', unless every incident is going to be like the Meath/Louth goal.

My limited knowledge of GAA would suggest that its football rule book is even less clear cut than soccers, such that almost every score is open to interpretation as to whether it should be allowed or not. In the build-up to every score there seems to be a plethora of shoulder charges, pushes, body checks, 4 step marginalities, hand pass legalities etc which the ref on the pitch may or may not allow, and the TVMO may or may not allow.
And because the rule book is full of 'in the opinion of' stuff then the ref on the pitch and the ref in the stand may come to opposite conclusions and yet both be 100% correct.

TVMO in GAA would be a can of worms type disaster, until such time as the rule book is more clearcut. Hence concentrating on the Hawkeye 'was it over the line or not, was it a point or not' issue seems a more sensible place to start.

[DeadParrot]

On the skiing front there is a place near me small scale job. Should i go for lessons or just chance my arm and rent the gear?

Calbogie or The place near montreal?
Been to both, the one in Calabogie is fantastic for beginners
Lessons are worth it.

[Kayroo]

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/10-r...-and-numerals/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop

/Kayroo

Nice work. He'll go far this lad.

The numbers thing is a bit pedantic but catching the lack of a period was right up my alley. Can't beat a solid bit of pedantry though.

[Icarus152]

Nice work. He'll go far this lad.

The numbers thing is a bit pedantic but catching the lack of a period was right up my alley. Can't beat a solid bit of pedantry though.

Alot of this going around at the moment.