Eoin Butler

The Big Romance

Sharon is a lovely girl. If she has one flaw though, it’s her woeful taste in who she goes out with. Her last boyfriend, the only time we met, segued directly from ‘How’s it goin’?’ into a story about someone’s house he’d broken into the other night.

Now I’m not knocking the guy’s profession. Everyone has to make a living. He just didn’t strike me as having an aptitude for that particular line of work. I mean, we hadn’t even been introduced yet. I could have been anyone. Read the rest of this entry »

Are these the most misleading public information notice ever?

Spotted on the Luas today. Non-English speaker has got to be thinking, right, no luggage on board and all loud music must be amplified. In a similar vein, see also here and here.

Life is not a Mongolian Restaurant

If you should ever find yourself in a Mongolian restaurant, take a bowl and make your way to the table where the uncooked meats and vegetables are laid out. Its there somewhere, look around. Fill the bowl with whatever you want, and then pass it to the mean looking man with the long sticks. He’ll throw it on top of a clay oven and shuffle it around until it’s cooked. Then, with the deftest of touches, he’ll deposit the resulting stew into your bowl.

Now all you have to do is find yourself somewhere to sit down and you can stuff your face. Read the rest of this entry »

And your new flatmates are…

So you’re finally moving into a place of your own? Congratulations, first and foremost. In a world that never fails to deliver its share of letdowns and crushing disappointments, this is one rite of passage that actually lives up to the hype. Before outlining some of the comparatively minor pitfalls that may lie ahead, it is worth taking stock again of what precisely you stand to gain. Read the rest of this article here.

“That’s shit. They could at least remember you as the ‘anti-war activist’ who dressed in a cat suit…”

Read the rest of this article here.

Where Europe Meets Asia (and some dude has parked his car…)

We left Dublin (and Amsterdam) a couple of weeks ago, some old school friends and I, with a plan. Our mission was to cross the vast expanse of continental Europe to Istanbul, with railways as our only means of transportation. It was a pointless mission. It was an unoriginal mission. Hell, it wasn’t even a challenging mission in this day and age. But we refused to be cowed.

Two days ago, we crossed the shimmering Bosphorus and finally set foot on Asian soil. We were sunburnt. We weren’t all speaking to each other. And we’d actually done the final leg of the trip by airplane because of flooding in Bulgaria. But fuck it. We’d gotten crazy drunk and had a shitload of fun in about a million different countries. Read the rest of this entry »

This enormous woman will devour us all.

Screw it, I’m going to the airport anyway. I’m off on holidays. Proper holidays this time. If you hear from me between now and September, I’m a sad, sad loser. In the mean time, if you haven’t visited this site in the last few weeks, this article is probably the funniest one you missed. (But you have to read the comments too.) This one is the most freakishly popular. (Ditto.) And this one actually caused someone I know in real life to come on and tell me I’m a wanker. (Ditto.) Read the rest of this entry »

They don’t stand on ceremony in this house? For shame.

Urgh. Posting this today mainly because (a) it was requested by regular reader Gueuleton and (b) I’m about to go on holidays tomorrow and haven’t time to write anything new. I should mention that this was published quite a few years ago now and that I don’t necessarily stand over one single word of it today. Except the bits that are funny, obviously. Read the rest of this entry »

Published: The Dubliner, August 2010

“Tommy might have a few days for you in the warehouse. Only if you were interested, like?”

In my childhood bedroom, the detritus of my youth lies all around: Tintin books. Football medals. Handwritten cassette tapes of The Smiths. But I’m not here to reminisce. My mother is hovering at my shoulder. She has an agenda. She always has an agenda.

Last time I was here, there was a skip waiting outside the front door when I arrived. When I asked about it, she just shrugged. “Come in”, she said. “The dinner is on. The tea is wet. We can talk about it later.” Read the rest of this entry »

Your Mother Should Know (1967)