Posts

Showing posts from 2026

The Best of Foo (from the Goat Island show, Wasting Light tour, 2011)

Image
This piece is from 2011. My partner is over it (mostly) How I won tickets to Foo Fighters' Goat Island show in 2011 Last night I was on Goat Island watching the Foo Fighters play their new album. And all I had to do was betray my fiancĂ© two days before our engagement party. I won by entering a competition on V Music . They wanted vids from fans on why they should go. I figured they'd get a billion, "OMG I luv the FOos!!1!" type entries, so I took a different tack Send me for science. The exact science was that, with our engagement party in two days, I needed to check my bloke, P, was in fact hotter than Dave Grohl (who I believed to be the hottest man alive before meeting P).  Need to check. Before the wedding, donchaknow. For science. P has forgiven me. Probably. I discovered something useful for our relationship at the gig - curling my hand into the RAWK horns symbol stops my engagement/wedding rings from flying off while moshing. This is a useful thing t...

From the MX archive: Running from Madonna

When it comes to diet and fitness, it seems that people don’t think the oldies are the goodies. It’s weird. If I announce I am following the latest celebrity diet, everyone is interested. After all, how what can go wrong when you follow the advice of people who believe in size zero and Scientology? But when I mention I’ve taken up running people respond with horror. It won’t work, they tell me. Jogging is too hard. It’s bad for my joints, they wail. I’m doing the Couch to 5k, a beginner-friendly plan designed to get you to running 5 kilometers without tears, injuries or requiring illegal steroid injections twice a week from someone called Big Boxing Bob. I can see the results and I’m enjoying it. But people insist on worrying about my knees. Won’t someone please think of my knees? From the stories I have heard, a small but significant proportion of the population has explosives in their patella. Much like the bus in Speed, they’re fine at a walk.  But i...

I told 5 million Australians how I got stuck in a vending machine.

Image
This was published in MX, Australia's free daily newspaper, and yes, it did actually happen. Not in my current job, thankfully, but back when I was back-packing: working by day, drinking like a fish by night... Stick Your Job I’m tired and cranky and falling over when I try to put on my trousers. Not really an ideal state to go to work in. Drinking with friends until 4am always seems like a great idea at the time. Not so much the next day, and even less when you have to work. So, what’s good for exhaustion and hangovers? Caffeine’s always good - for everything. But unfortunately the killer hangover means coffee is not an option. The mere thought of it makes me feel sick. So, I decide I can probably handle a cup of tea. Tea has anti-toxidants or anti-oxidents or something. I'm unsure which, but I am figuring that it will either kill the toxic stuff (good) or the oxygen in my system (bad, but at least I'll be too dead to be hungover). Picking up my MP3 player, I hea...

No, the *other* type of wet willy.

This was published in MX, Australia's free public transport daily, on 1 September. The most amusing bit, for me, is that in Ireland the term "wet willy" means when someone dampens a finger and sticks it in your ear and wiggles it, to squick you out. Over here in Australia, it just means damp penis. So. I have told MX's readership (three quarters of a million and counting) that a hairdresser stuck his penis in my ear. No, wait - BOTH ears. Sadhbh Warren on haircuts I’m beginning to regret deciding to save cash by getting a haircut at a hairdressing college. I’m the only person there, and all the other students are merrily chopping away on mannequins. A trainee starts swearing and frantically rubbing her doll’s head with a cloth – she has mixed up something wrong and it’s a good thing she’s not using a real person (things you never want to hear your hairdresser say: ‘‘Oh my God, her ears! They’re melting!’’). So far, I’m not too worried. They tell me that they ...