The Heelers Diaries

the fantasy world of ireland's greatest living poet

My Photo
Name:
Location: Kilcullen (Phone 087 7790766), County Kildare, Ireland

Saturday, March 01, 2008

toewatch five resistance is futile

The beautiful chermopodist in the short skirt and boots instructed me to take off my shoes and lie back on the table.
Her voice contained nothing a normal human being could mistake for a sensual sexual quasi-erotic invitation to tryst.
Every fibre in my being quivered with wishful thinking.
The word "zorgonianvorgs" flashed through my mind briefly.
How very odd.
I did as the chermop had instructed.
She leaned over my toe.
A curtain of dark hair fell across my ankle.
It was hers.
Still attached to her head too.
How tee totally alluring.
We were alone in the dimlit office but I distinctly heard Captain Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise at my shoulder shouting: "Open fire Mr Worf. All weapons."
I ignored him.
The chermop straightened up.
"I've got good news and bad news," quoth she gently, "which do you want first?"
"I'll take the good news please Doc."
"It's not an ingrown toenail."
"It's not?"
"No."
"What is it?"
"Gout."
And from somewhere not too far away Ennio Morricone's epic soundtrack to The Good The Bad And The Ugly went: "Aaiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."
The moment passed.
"There's no shame in it," said the chermop. "In the past it was called the rich man's disease. It was thought people got it from drinking lots of port and eating sumptuous meals all the time."
I nodded bitterly.
"No shame in it Doc?" I muttered. "Obviously you don't know my family."

Friday, February 29, 2008

tilting at colonels

The Dad was in the kitchen chatting to Colonel O'Connor.
Me?
I was just passing through.
Bunged a dinner in the microwave oven.
Retrieved it.
Headed towards the door.
Only as I headed out stage left, I couldn't resist a cheap shot at the military man.
It was pure divilment.
"Well Henry," sez I, "Do you think Ireland should be doing more in the War On Terror? Or doing anything even?"
The Colonel looked up mildly.
"We are doing something," he said. "We've got six men in Afghanistan."
"Doesn't count," sez I. "Six men in Afghanistan means we're doing nothing."
"The Americans were very keen to have those six men," he said. "They wanted an extra flag there at all costs."
"Six is the same as no one," I told him. "Islamic fascism is advancing across the world. We're doing nothing. We should be going willingly not grudgingly. We should be going because it's the right thing to do. You sent enough to South Lebanon as supposed peace keepers when the Jihadis needed someone to protect them from the consequences of their actions. Much good that did."
The Colonel stiffened a little but remained genial.
"I know you're a learned man," he said. "I'm not going to get into a big row with you tonight."
It was an interesting comment.
I had my doubts he'd stick to it.
"The UN peace keeping mission in South Lebanon always looked to me like a mission to protect Muslim terrorists from the Israelis," I confided pleasantly. "I never really believed it was peacekeeping as such."
The Colonel sighed.
"That's not true at all," he said.
I changed tack.
"Why wasn't Private MacAleevy prevented from serving in South Lebanon?"
"There was no reason to prevent him," said the Colonel uneasily.
I nodded a tad bitterly.
"No reason?" sez I. "He was known to have made racist remarks about Jews and had openly expressed his admiration for Hitler. In Lebanon itself he racially abused Israelis and their allies at checkpoints. And this behaviour was no barrier to service in the Irish army or with UN peacekeepers? Pity isn't it? Pity he wasn't given a dishonorable discharge and sent home before he murdered three of our own soldiers."
The Colonel reddened.
"You can't stand over those statements," he said dangerously.
I returned to my main theme.
"Was there an anti Israeli bias in the officer corps of the Irish army?" I asked.
"No there was not," he told me firmly.
"Did you have an agreed policy of allowing Muslim terrorists through your checkpoints?"
"Never!"
"I think you did."
"It's not true."
"Really?"
"Alright. You know nothing about this sort of stuff. In a combat situation when we knew the Israelis were in hot pursuit, sometimes an officer on the ground might make a decision to allow armed elements through to prevent us all from being engulfed in a firefight. The alternative was to be wiped out."
"Armed elements?"
"The people you're talking about."
"The Hezbollah?"
"Yes."
"No standing order to let the Muslims through?"
"No."
"No unofficial standing order?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure. What you're implying is outrageous."
The Colonel was still composed.
But he is a tough man and he was getting tired of this sort of cheek from a failed provincial journalist.
"Listen," he said, "who do you think killed the most peacekeepers in South Lebanon?"
"Tell me."
"It was your friends the Israelis."
I allowed the statement to float for a moment.
"No it wasn't," I said.
"Yes it was."
"It wasn't Colonel. It wasn't unless you only include deaths among Irish peacekeepers in your statistics. I'm not quite sure why you would exclude other nationalities. Surely you were all on the same side. You were all peackeepers serving with the UN. If we include the 250 Americans murdered in 1983 in a typically cowardly Islamic terrorist bombing, if you include the 50 French soldiers murdered the same way, then the number far exceeds the deathtoll at the hands of Israel and her allies. I don't know why you wouldn't automatically include the Muslim murders of your brothers in arms in your statistics. Unless perhaps you were actually rooting for a different side."
"Be careful James. There's limits to what I'll tolerate here."
But I had warmed to my theme.
"It seems strange to me that when less than 20 UN personnel got blown up in Iraq, the UN left Iraq in the space of a few days. Yet for a full quarter of a century after the murder of 250 Americans and 50 French on peacekeeping duties in Lebanon, the UN has stayed right where it was, right in the heart of Lebanon, never budging an inch in its commitment to run pass defence for the Jihadis."
"How dare you."
It was a Kodak moment.
The scene you'll see in the film version.
I shouted at the Colonel.
"You didn't like the Israelis did you?"
He bought it.
"Of course we didn't like them," he shouted back.
There was a pause.
I said nothing.
He continued.
Not shouting.
Loud enough.
Flushed enough.
Angry enough.
I could see we actually had a chance of getting at the truth.
"How could we like them?" he spat. "They'd caused the whole thing. Every day we experienced for real what you've only read about in newspapers. Every day we experienced precisely what they were doing to the Lebanese. You wouldn't like the Israelis either if you had a clue what you were talking about."
"So you've admitted it."
"Admitted what?"
"You've admitted there is an institutional bias in the Irish army officer corps against the State of Israel."
"Don't you dare put words in my mouth."
I lifted my dinner and delivered the exit line.
"Thank you Colonel," I said, "it's been most enlightening."
Alone in the TV room I sat pondering the epic quality of what had happened.
What on earth had I been playing at?
I haven't done anything like this in more than a decade.
There was a time when I thought I might stand for truth in the world.
But not now.
It's no longer who I am.
And the blasted dinner was cold.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

perfect day

Day of ordinary simple goodness.
Robins on the back doorstep answering my call.
And Charlie Chaffinch.
And Billy Blackbird.
And the hover boy starlings.
We praised God together surrounded by burgeoning morning light and the first daffodils of Spring.
Coffees with the Lildebeest in Newbridge.
Phonecalls to Doctor Barn, Hoddlebun and the Spanish Onion.
Hug from Pauline in her freshfood store.
Snub to the Brigadier on main street.
Walks with Paddy Pup.
Feeling like a terribly dangerous writer as the Jihadis are once again logging onto my website from the Philippines and Iran.
CIA logging on from Redwood City, California.
An evening deriding Darwinism in front of the television with the Dad.
Steak dinner courtesy of bank executive Jackie.
As good as it gets.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

februaria


though dynasties pass

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

barak obama's kitchen cabinet

President: Barak Obama.

Vice President: Noam Chomsky.

Secretary of Defence: Michael Moore.

Department of Homeland Security: John Pilger.

Secretary of State: George Clooney.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Cindy Sheahan.

Attorney General: Tom Hanks... Horrendous, horrendous, horrendous Hanks. Nominated to cabinet for his recent blame-America-for-Muslim-terror film Charlie Wilson's War. No doubt if Al Qaeda's illustrious air hostess conquering forces of Islamic fascism manage in the next couple of years to murder an extra few million non-Muslims (Hindus, Thais, Filipinos, Russians, Chinese, Africans, Israelis, Europeans, Yanks, they're at war with all of us) using their atomic bomb or their anthrax or some other way, no doubt Bloody Hanks will rush out a film showing how everyone but Muslim terrorists is to blame for every miserable cowardly racist murder Muslim terrorists commit.

Chairman of the Federal Reserve: Louis Farakhan.

Department of the Treasury: Katie Couric.

Ambassador to the United Nations: Oprah Winfrey.

Ambassador to the Vatican: Betty Shabazz.

Ambassador to the Communist Republic of Vietnam: Jane Fonda.

Ambassador to the Clintons: Monica Lewinski.

Ambassador to James Healy: Rhianna.

Ambassador to Hell: Germaine Greer.

Special Envoy to the Middle East: Vanessa Redgrave.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: Michelle Obama (If she's not still too ashamed of being an American to accept the job.)

Surgeon General: Madonna Ciccone.

Department of Surrender to Muslim Terror: All of the above.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

an open letter to the daily mail

Dear oh dear oh dear.
Now is not the time to worry about the view of the Daily Mail expressed by British anti contraception campaigner Victoria Gillick when she was unsuccessfully attempting to prevent the House of Lords from passing a law that would permit doctors to put female children on the pill without informing their parents, for which heinous crime the Daily Mail saw fit to publish a picture of Victoria Gillick's teenage daughter (I think the girl was 13) topless on a beach kissing a young man, and on publication of which, Victoria Gillick commented simply and dignifiedly "The Mail are bastards," a comment that has always seemed to me to most aptly nay perfectly sum up the Daily Mail and all who sail in her and all her manifold editions in Britain, Ireland and Hades.
So.
Wednesday okay?
James Healy

special guest artist divyavibha sharma