meditations in green

Coffee with Doctor Barn in the Whitewater.
"Have you really got readers from Saudi Arabia visiting your website?" wonders the brother.
I quaff some coff.
"Yup," I tell him, "The Saudis are dropping in all the time. Also an occasional visit from my homies in Iran. And about once a month someone from Turkey. Oh and the same for Pakistan. It looks like I'm doing very well with that much sought after Jihadi demographic. Going to sell a lot of advertising on the strength of those readers."
The brother's eyes widened.
"What do they read?" he ventured.
I thought for a moment.
"The last bunch from Saudi Arabia spent a lot of time in the archives," I explained. "They went back to February 19th 2008 to read a cute little article I'd written about the secession of Kosovo from Serbia. The title was To The Devil A Daughter. I wrote something along the lines that Kosovo was Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski's eldest child. I asserted that Bill had bombed the Serbs out of Kosovo to distract attention from his Lewinski problem. I pointed out that it was the first new Muslim State in Europe in 500 years. I finished with the classic one liner: Thanks a bunch Bill."
"Why would someone in Saudi Arabia be reading that?" enquired the brother innocently.
I shrugged.
"Maybe they're just exploring their limits," I mused.
Doctor Barn swigged his beverage and changed tack.
"Is your website still getting visits from your former employers?" he asked, with the air of one not averse to rattling a tiger's cage.
My handsome preraphaelite features took on a look of noble suffering.
"Oh yeah," I murmured. "The great men of the Johnston Press are logging on every day, sometimes ten times a day. And I gotta tell you Barn, when it comes to a choice between the Johnston Press and the Jihadi's, personally I'd prefer the Jihadi's every time."



NB: James Healy was fired from the Johnston Press owned Leinster Leader newspaper three weeks before Christmas.