I’ve given in and am on Twitter. Have been for a wee while now, largely just to announce new installments of the comic, but I got a bit carried away with the #booksmadeirish trend last night. Here’s a selection of some that tickled me…

And, of course…

• Bring Me the Head of Alfredo O’Garcia!

I made far too many suggestions, and most of them were crap, but I like these ones:

• Belleek House
• Gulliver’s Travellers
• I Am Legend, So I Am
• Cyrano de Mullaghbrack
• The Rig Veda Bread
• The Rape of the Lough
• One Hundred Years of Holywood
• The Gulag Arklow
• Dunfanaghyxote
• The De Valera Rides Out
• Robinson Cruise O’Brien
• The Call of the Wild Rover

I’m going to be on the telly! On Tuesday I will be travelling to Glasgow with the League of Just Us, a team of Belfast-based comics folk, to appear on the BBC’s quiz show Eggheads! From left to right: PJ Holden (Judge Dredd, Battlefields); Me; Reggie Chamberlain King (the forthcoming Layer Zero: The Exile); Aidan Largey (Layer Zero: Choices, our reserve); Aimee Durkin (Stephen Downey’s model and girlfriend); and our intrepid leader and team captain Stephen Downey himself (artist of Cancertown, Slaughterman’s Creed and the team drawing; also a man who talks faster than the human mind can comfortably process). Wish us luck!

Then, on Sunday 17 January, I will be stallholding again, selling an ever-growing selection of Irish small press comics at the Black Books book fair, the Black Box, Hill Street, Belfast. Andy and I have decided to call our stall, to tie in with the theme, The Black Panel. Unfortunately Andy will not be able to make it as he’ll be in London to hear Mark Thomas, so the role of glamourous assistant will have to be filled by someone else. More when confirmed.

And finally, someone who has too much time on their hands has rewritten The Big Lebowski in the style of William Shakespeare. As The Knave says of his rug, while playing ninepins:

It was of consequence, I should think; verily, it tied the room together, gather’d its qualities as the sweet lovers’ spring grass doth the morning dew or the rough scythe the first of autumn harvests. It sat between the four sides of the room, making substance of a square, respecting each wall in equal harmony, in geometer’s cap; a great reckoning in a little room. Verily, it transform’d the room from the space between four walls presented, to the harbour of a man’s monarchy.

When I was at school I idly thought about becoming a journalist, but didn’t pursue it as it sounded difficult. That was before the internet.

The Guardian today has a story about frivolous 999 calls, in which they claim that “Greater Manchester police said it received almost 1.4m calls between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, only a fraction of which were genuine emergencies”.

That’s 1.4 million calls. According to Wikipedia, Greater Manchester has a population of 2,573,200, so more than half of the population of Greater Manchester has apparently called 999 in three days.

A commenter on the article nailed it. An article on the BBC website, from which the Guardian article is cribbed (or possibly both are cribbed from the same press release), says “Between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, GMP said it received 1,377 999 calls, but only a fraction were genuine emergencies”. That’s 1,377 calls to 999, not 1,377,999 calls.

Eejit.

From The Daily Mash:

“Meanwhile social workers in Dewsbury were last night under pressure to explain why they did not know Karen Matthews would team up with the halfwit uncle of her sleazy boyfriend to kidnap her own daughter and keep her on a nine foot leash until she could con £50,000 out of the News of the World.”

Elswhere on the same site, this photo:

is captioned “Keane says his nuclear programme will be used for peaceful purposes”.

Genius.

Like everyone else on the interweb I get a lot of unsolicited emails. A lot of them promise female celebrities in various states of undress, and would no doubt do something nefarious to my computer if I opened them. Got one today entitled “Britney Spears to Study Theoretical Quantum Mechanics at MIT”.

Spammers. You may be a bunch of parasitical scum, but at least one of you has a sense of humour. Cheers.

A marvellous variation on the Lolcats thing has come to my attention. Lines from Frank Miller’s Batman comics, superimposed on pics from the old Adam West Batman TV show.

Fabulous.

This is brilliant.

A wee cartoon I drew ages ago and have unearthed from the piles of papers in my study…

In my civilian identity I work in public liability claims. We have a personal injury claim in Lurgan, County Armagh, and here’s a photo of the trip hazard:

You can’t tell me that’s not a dinosaur footprint. Call in the Primeval team to search for anomalies!