Eoin Butler: writer, journalist and Mayoman of the Year
Tripping Along The Ledge
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DECENT PROPOSAL
Received an intriguing email a couple of hours ago, which I’m currently mulling over. Anyone got any advice for me here? I haven’t been faced with a moral and ethical dilemma of this magnitude this since I attended teenage discos in Gorthaganny…
from [NAME REDACTED] 9:23 pm (3 hours ago)
to eoinfbutler (AT) gmail (DOT) com
date Aug 16, 2009 9:23 PM
subject Will you please go out with my friend?Eoin,
I figured that this is as good a time as ever to write you. To be honest, I have been threatening to do this for a long time but something (my conscience probably) has been holding me back. Last night as I lay tossing and turning in my bed my thoughts turned to you and I resolved to put my feelings to paper. You see Eoin…I have this friend! It always starts like that doesn’t it
.
Well yes, I have this friend called [NAME REDACTED]. To be quite blunt about it she has got quite a thing for you Eoin. Quite a thing indeed. She checks your blog quite regularly and loves reading your articles.I have spent too many evenings sitting in the [REDACTED] Bar downing pints of cider supporting [FRIEND] in her quest for love ( if I’m honest I think that might mean you Eoin!). So instead of gaining the mortifying pounds which come with drinking copious pints of [POSSIBLY INCRIMINATING DETAIL REDACTED] I have decided to bite the bullet. [FRIEND] will never have the balls to do this, so I’m going to do it for her.
Eoin. Will you please go out with my friend?
She’s an established [REDACTED] at a [REDACTED] agency. Witty, funny and not too messed up she’s always up for a laugh.
She’s pretty cute as well.
So Mr. Butler, I am requesting that you consider the above letter as an invitation to date my friend [REDACTED]. You sound like a cool guy and I think it could work wonderfully.
This could be the start of something huge.
Failing this, my name is [REDACTED] and I have always flirted with the idea of becoming [REDACTED] Butler. So if [MY FRIEND] disappoints then you know where I am.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Who am I kidding? This practically never happened to me in Gorthaganny. Granted, girls would occasionally ask whether one of my friends was interested in getting with one of their friends. But that hardly counts, does it? I suppose it kinda does, doesn’t it? Yeah, I was a player alright. Definite player.
August 17th, 2009 at 1:13 am
It would help Eoin if we were privy to more of that redacted information.
For example, if shes an established rep at a travel agency, I’d say “go for it!” If on the other hand hse’s an established escort at an escort agency I’d say “what are you waiting for, fucking definitely go for it!!!”
August 17th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Oh. Dear. Jesus.
[PERSON WHO SENT THE EMAIL], you’re a f**king dead woman.
August 17th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Just one question Eoin-how was this email sent Aug 16 if this post was put up Aug 15??
August 17th, 2009 at 11:09 am
@ Matt – posted this last night. Still so chuffed about meeting Dan Rooney, however, that I backdated this and the Honky Tonk Badonkadonk post in order to keep the Dan pic at the top of the page.
@ [NAME REDACTED] – are you actually trying to get your name on here?
August 17th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Please tell me you’ve at least tried facebook stalking her?
August 17th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Not to be a lone voice of sense in the wilderness here or anthing but have you considered possibility that she’s mental?
August 17th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Just to point out that I did not leave that earlier comment.
I am also not mental.
August 17th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Claiming not to be mental – oh yea a mental person would never think of doing that……
August 17th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
@ Massey – Stop it, no one is calling anyone mental. And if we are, we’ll probably start with the guy who models himself after a brand of tractor.
@ Name Redacted – Apologies, you are quite correct. On closer inspection, the previous comment was posted by someone who gave the email address [email protected].
I wouldn’t have gotten you into trouble by any chance?
August 17th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Didn’t mean to cause offence but,s eriously, if you go out with her will ya meet her somewhere public and let a friend know where you’ll be, yeah?
August 17th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Sleepless nights over a friend’s crush on you and then makes a move on you herself. Hard to believe.
It’s one of three things. A joke, the same person or you have a damn rare opportunity here for an Irishman. However the latter chance opens up Seinfeld style shennanigans involving “The Switch” and perhaps growing a moustache, wearing hawaiian shirts and getting a velvet bedspread.
It just isn’t you, is it ?
August 17th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Ah Jesus girls – come on
He’s never going to agre to go out with some one hes never met, knows nothing about & has no friends in common with.
Cop on.
Why don’t you just find out where he drinks / eats lunch / goes to the gym / whatever and accidentally on purpose bump into him there?
And if I was you I wouldn’t mention you’re the same person who sent him this email……
August 17th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Or failing that you could clamp his car. See how that inflames his passion!!
August 17th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Michelle,
Sorry but find out where he “goes to the gym” and accidentally on purpose bump into him there? In what parallel universe is the gym somewhere you go to meet men?! You’re sweaty, probably wearing no make-up and, if you’re me, some instructor is attempting to make your limbs burn like you’ve been sent to Dante’s seventh circle…
I would gather the part where the email-sender propositions you is a joke, to ease any awkward tension, should you say no.
Do you know who this girl is, or the girl to whom she is referring?
Anyway I’d go for it. I met my fella online, had seen one pic and read lots of witticisms from him but turns out he’s nothing like that in real life anyway. Ha ha!
August 17th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
This could be the start of something huge… what? a covert weapons programme? movie franchise?
August 17th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
@ Rosemary – I met my current boyfriend at the gym. But thats not even the point. The point is that I doubt hes going to out with someone he knows nothing about except she works for some sort of an agency and she’s “not too messed up!!”
Oh and she has a friend who propositions people on the internet on her behalf.
Well I wouldn’t if I was him anyway. And no I don’t know any of the people involved.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
@Michelle I was actually asking Eoin if he knew either of the girls involved, sorry for confusion. I guess people do meet at the gym but it seems like an odd place to seek someone out, which is what you were suggesting (but like, each to their own, I wasn’t trying to start a scrap).
And speaking of each to their own, I would easily go on a date with somebody I didn’t know and had never heard of, were I EB. I’d be flattered, for one, and totally curious, for another, and think, ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’ (Obviously, Eoin, the worst is murder and intrigue, so do tell someone where you’re going.)
August 17th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Also, I wish I had a friend who would proposition people on my behalf!
August 17th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
@ Rosemary – more to the point, in what parallel universe would you ever expect to bump into Eoin in a gym?!
August 17th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
“In the end we only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were too scared to have and the decisions we waited too long to make.”
Go for it, whats the worst that can happen?!
August 17th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
This was supposed to be about wonderment and romance. Instead this thread is tearing us apart. Friend pitted against friend. Stranger pitted against stranger.. Hell, even my own sister has been on to take a potshot at me…. I dunno at all…
August 17th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
This IS about wonderment and romance (and also, the weird world we now live in where people might go to the gym in order to meet someone). As an aside, wouldn’t it be more weird to stalk someone at their gym than for your friend to attempt to set you up via e-mail with the object of your affections, however remote those affections may be?
So what are you going to do?! This is like a little blogging soap opera. Like that girl on the tube thing, or something I vaguely recollect happening in America (of course).
August 17th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
@UB, I actually laughed out loud at that, despite having made a rule for myself a year ago that I would never lol at the interweb. That’s five Hail Marys before bed for me…
August 17th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
@Rosemary I reckon you should start a scrap, get Dan Rooney to promote it.
@Eoin How devastated would you be if you found out that one of your “mates” wrote the e-mail purporting to be a girl pretending to proposition you on behalf of their imaginary friend?
August 17th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
@Rosemary you’re thinking of this http://www.nygirlofmydreams.com/
At least she didn’t use the word ‘shift’, girl’s got class.
August 18th, 2009 at 11:58 am
So Eoin are you going to go out with this girl or not???
August 18th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
God, I’ve really tapped into a kinda Grazia magazine demographic here… I don’t know.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Excusez-moi? What is a Grazia magazine demographic, and am I mistaken but is that not a horrendously condescending thing to say to people who read your blog and take an interest in your musings, however banal they may be?
August 18th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
!
My sister reads Grazia magazine, she’s never commented on here before, I was over in her house playing with her kid and she was interrogating me about this… I didn’t mean anything more than that.
August 18th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
dare i suggest that the man is avoiding the issue at hand here, one girl’s plea for love online…dont leave her dwindle
August 18th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Eoin go on and ask her out. It’s wot William Carlos Williams, or Ginsberg or Kerouac or any of those other impulsive, literary thrill-jockeys you admire would want you to do.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Anyone urging caution, feel free to jump in now!
August 18th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Eoin, if there’s a ‘comments off’ option in your blog, think of it as the little orange toggle on your parachute.
You are falling from the plane.
Pull the damn toggle.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Remember,
One, look for a safe place
Two, don’t hurry, stop and wait
Three, look all around and listen,
before you cross the road,
Remember,
Four, let all the traffic pass you
Five, then walking straight across you
Six, keep watching
That’s the Safe Cross Code.
Then ask yourself, what would Hunter S. Thompson do ?
August 18th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
@ Colin – ahm, take lots of drugs and shoot things. Yeah, that’s an idea alright.
@ Markham – thanks, I’m frantically searching for it even as we speak!
August 18th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
@Eoin It’s something to do, on the way to the date. Eases nerves too.
Fear and Loathing in Internet Dating.
August 18th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
To summerise then Butler:
You went in rashly with incomplete intelligence. A bloodbath has ensued and you have no clear exit strategy.
As you yourself once told me, Butler, when you were drunk and talking shite:
THOSE WHO IGNORE HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT!!!
Mission Accomplished, mate 😉
Good luck getting out of this…
August 18th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
A wankerish, but not entirely inaccurate synopsis EK.
August 18th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
But I’m sure I didn’t YELL IT IN CAPS!!!
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