interlude

Morning at the chateau.
"What do you think of me turning eighty?" enquires the Mammy from behind a cup of tea.
She is talking to her poet son who is eating a sanger at the kitchen table.
A Robin Red Breast is perched on a chair at one end of the room, expectantly waiting for crumbs.
A Paddy White Breast has his snout on the poet's knee, hoping for some sanger but perfectly willing to settle for a piece of Robin.
"What do you mean?" asks the poet of his mother.
She eyes him keenly.
"You know what I mean. Any thoughts on the big day? Any tributes you want to make?"
The mighty Heelers ponders briefly.
"Dearest Mother," he says with great tenderness, "you are the womb that bore me. And to be honest there are times when you bore me still."
The Mammy responds with the very first malediction of her eighty first year, and adds something convoluted along the lines of always suspecting I wasn't hers at all, but had somehow been substituted with another baby at the maternity hospital by Free Masonic nurses in league with satan.
Well, gentle readers, it's the best theory we've had so far.

80 years a growing

The Mammy (Photographed this evening on her birthday by my nephew Peter Maloney Cummins.)

and now for some light relief

Hitler and Stalin are sitting at their customary table in a swish cafe overlooking the seventh ring of hell.
"What are you reading?" asks Stalin.
"The Irish Times," says Hitler.
"How did that get here?" wonders Stalin.
"Their readership has collapsed and they're leaving copies in cafes everywhere from hell to Bethlehem," explains Hitler.
"I hate the Irish Times," mutters Stalin.
"Me too," says Hitler.
"So why are you reading it?" asks Stalin.
"This is hell, I don't have a choice," explains Hitler.
"It could be worse, it could be Independent Newspapers," grins Stalin.
"Oh don't get me started about Independent Newspapers," groans Hitler.
"The anti Catholic bastards," avers Stalin.
"Indeed," agrees Hitler.
"Any news in it?" enquires Stalin indicating the rag in his friend's hand.
"Just more stuff about Muslim terrorists committing mass murder in every free country on earth," answers Hitler.
"Amazing that the same countries who kicked both our arses during World War Two and the Cold War seem to be having so much trouble with the Muslims," murmurs Stalin.
"Imagine what we could have done if the west had permitted unlimited immigration in our day," says Hitler shaking his head sadly.
"We were born too soon," muses Stalin.
"Forty years ahead of our time," assents Hitler.
"In our day you had to fight to invade a country," recalls Stalin.
"And there was zero tolerance for declaring yourself a refugee then blowing up tube trains," says Hitler.
"The Muslims have it easy, the present generation in the free world is in denial," says Stalin.
"Do you remember how these same free countries of the west turned their noses up at our murderous Nazi and Communist ideologies?" says Hitler with a wistful look.
"The present generation thinks freedom grows on trees," chuckles Stalin.
"I wonder how they'll like Sharia law," murmurs Hitler.

vignette

Newbridge Pet Emporium.
Thursday afternoon.
The shop is full of listless citizens examining fishing rods.
Enter Ireland's greatest living poet stage left.
He is seeking a toy for MC Hamster.
He has heard tell of little plastic spheres with doors on the sides that you can put hamsters in, to allow them to exercise freely around a floor space.
He thinks MC will love one of those.
He goes up to the counter where a listless teenager awaits.
"Have you got any hamster balls?" he asks brightly.
The listlessness both of the clientele and the teenager dissipates instantly.
The pet shop fills with a most seditious laughter.
Moments later, red faced and clutching a newly purchased hamster ball, I flee.

an open letter to the irish times

Dear Sirs and Madams.
I found one of your newspapers in a Dublin cafe last week and chanced to read an article in it.
Lying in a cafe it was.
Free of charge.
Can't give em away, eh?
The article was a feature about Muslims in Ireland.
It was a cutesy pie thing, a report from sugar candy land, about how wonderful everything is, with pixies and unicorns and daffodils, and oh, it was lovely.
You could almost smell the roses raining on the love parade.
There was no mention of a Muslim project to colonise Ireland and introduce Sharia law.
There was no mention of the "Black Jackets," the Muslim crime gang currently asserting itself in Dublin city centre, the gang that meets on a daily basis, and maintains a presence throughout each day, at the Kylemore cafe on O'Connell Street from where it runs its operations, the same Muslim gang that harrasses Irish people on Grafton Street, O'Connell Street and elsewhere in the city, the same Muslim gang that has members working as employees at the Kylemore cafe, and in the Food Court at the Stephen's Green Centre (formerly a Kylemore Cafe), and at the Westbury Hotel, and as security staff at McDonnells on Grafton Street and at sundry other locations, and as sign holders for Timberland on Grafton Street, a particularly useful job as it permits Muslim gang members to monitor the street constantly, but anyhoo, no mention of that in your article because mentioning all of that would take research, and er, a commitment to actually telling the truth.
There was no mention of the murders Muslims have committed in Ireland.
There was no mention of the current and growing prevalence of girls wearing the Hijab, traditional Muslim attire in Irish schools.
(This last should have been mentioned because even in Muslim Turkey those citizens who are interested in preserving their freedoms and quality of life, are desperate to forbid by law the wearing of traditional Muslim dress by girls in schools. Funny isn't it? That this would be an issue in Turkey and not in Ireland... They know what the Hijab means in Turkey. It means power and intimidation and Islamic dictatorship. That's what it will mean in Ireland also. As those insightful love parade Irish Times journalists should know.)
And there was absolutely no mention in your article of the three asylum seeking Muslims who were found in a refugee centre in Ireland last year with their rooms crammed to the brim with timing devices and electronic gadgetry and afterwards released by the police without charge.
No mention at all.
Not really relevant is it Irish Times?
We'll worry about it when it turns bad.
And of course there was absolutely no mention in your otherwise sublime update on Muslim Irish relations, of Privya, the Muslim girl associate of the "Black Jackets" who works at the food court in the Stephens Green Centre, and who on Sunday served me a cup of hot milk instead of a caffe latte, and acted all confused when I asked why she had neglected to put any coffee in a drink for which I'd paid three quid fifty, and truly my honorable Irish Times friends, if nothing else alerts you to the unfolding doom in our midst, then Privya's behaviour should, because I'm telling you it was nothing short of a crime against humanity, serving an innocent poet milk instead of coffee, I mean what kind of evil bastards are we dealing with?
But I digress.
Your article did feature quotations from an Imam at the Muslim Centre in Clonskeagh.
He was quoted fulsomely.
He was like the last unicorn in sugar candy land.
No problems with the Irish.
Muslims are part of this community.
No anti Muslim feeling here.
It's all ticketyboo.
In the final paragraph of your full feature length article, this same sugar candy land Imam was quoted saying he didn't accept that suicide bombers were doing anything wrong.
Some afterthought eh?
It was just a small smidgin of truth that somehow crept into an otherwise disingenuous and misleading article.
Perhaps the subeditors missed it.
Here is the news.
A hundred thousand Muslims have smuggled themselves into Ireland since Nine Eleven.
They are not integrating with the native population.
They are not here as friends.
They are not as you put it "keeping a low profile."
Anyone who walks around Dublin city centre on a daily basis and meets the "Black Jackets" knows this.
An Irish Times feature writer who has spent thirty years sneering at the Catholic church should certainly know it.
(Heelers is not with us - Pope Benedict XVI note.)
Nor is there any equivalence between Muslims coming here and any other national or ideological grouping that is coming here.
Ah yes.
Equivalence.
I was fascinated to see that on Monday this week the Irish Times printed six cartoons relating to the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel.
All six cartoons were slanted against the State of Israel.
All six cartoons were pro Muslim caricatures of the State of Israel.
All six positively derided the State of Israel.
How dare you.
I found it remarkable that the Irish Times would not print even one cartoon saluting the courage, resiliance, honour, heroism, genius, humanitarianism, and moral legacy of the Jewish nation incarnate in the State of Israel.
I found it astonishing.
One of your cartoons was particularly salient.
It showed Gaza and Israel raining missiles on each other.
It implied EQUIVALENCY between the State of Israel and the Iranian backed Hamas Muslim terrorists of Gaza.
But here's the thing.
If there was such an equivalency between Israel and Muslim terror, if they were just two sides of a single coin, why has the brave noble august Irish Times failed to publish even a single cartoon from that witty Danish sequence featuring the prophet Mohammed?
Not even one.
Half the world was publishing them at one stage.
But not the Irish Times.
The Irish Times prefers to satirise safer targets.
And so the Irish Times publishes six cartoons deriding the State of Israel in one day.
Hoo boy.
We're two years on from the Muslim Jihad against cartoons, and you lot have still to stand up and be counted.
Here's some more news.
The State of Israel is in no way EQUIVALENT to terrorists in the Gaza Strip or to those in any part of the Muslim terrorist world.
The proof of the pudding dear Irish Times is that you will print anything you like about Israel but you're very very very much afraid to print cartoons about those peaceloving Muslims.
As is anyone in their right mind.
But if there's something to be afraid of from the peaceloving Muslim community in Ireland, perhaps it would be appropriate for your feature writers to tell us just what that something might be.
The alternative is for you to continue immersing yourselves in sacharine irrelevancy, verbiage and dross.
You've been trading on rep for a long time Irish Times.
Time to start working for a living.
James Healy

when the moon was blood