moon rise over the heartland

miscellaneous extraneous aneous

Ora Pro Nobis
Evening at the chateau. The Dad is in the front room conversing with the Deity. The Mammy passes the door and looks in at him. "Who are you talking to?" quoth she. There is a moment of silence richly overlain with near cosmic exasperation. "I'm praying," manages the Dad finally. The Mammy snorts. "That's rich," sez she, "you spend most of the day cursing."

By The Book
Browsing in Easons book shop this afternoon I came across Call Of The Amateur by Andrew Keen. It's an attack on bloggers and blogging by a Guardian/Evening Standard/Esquire journo trying to pass himself off as a blogger. In fact he claims to be nicknamed The Antichrist Of Silicon Valley, a term obviously dreamed up by his publisher's singularly unimaginative marketing department. Andrew Keen is no rebel. He's the ultimate old media conformist whining about the democratising internet revolution that's left his formerly unassailable uncritisizeable employers high and dry. His book has all the credibility of Goebbels last broadcast from the Reichstag. They're going down alright. And they're getting desperate. On its cover Call Of The Amateur carries the endorsement of sundry old media has beans. "It's a staggering new book," according to something called AN Wilson of The Daily Mail. A pseud radical artist called Ralph Steadman opaquely calls it: "Uncompromising and clear." While the legendarily uninteresting lefty shillbag The New York Times proclaims: "It's a shrewdly argued Jeremiad against the digerati effort to dethrone cultural and political gatekeepers and replace experts with the wisdom of crowds." Well that's honesty in a way. So there were gatekeepers then? That's the closest the New York Times has ever come to admitting it has spent the past fifty years crassly and mendaciously manipulating the discourse in favour of atheistic pro abortion scruff who haven't a clue about anything and who the public obviously doesn't want to read. Gatekeepers indeed. To hell with them. And to hell with the driveling Andrew Keen. Others abide their question. We are free.

Titanic Proportions
Caught the end of the film Titanic on the box last night. For years I refused to watch the film at all. Director Jim Cameron had never made a decent movie. His output consisted of a few porn films starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar, and, er, that's it. By porn films I am referring to The Terminator series. Pornography of violence, we're talking about. So I had no hope that he could evoke the Titanic story with anything but the same dire exploitative turpitude. I stayed away when the cinemas were packed. When Cameron received his Oscar for the film, I watched him crow: "I'm the king of the world." And I thought: You're not my king. Then I discovered Cameron had been financing supposedly documentary programmes designed to cast doubt on the divinity of Jesus. You know the gag. Every Easter some half wit faux academic in Palestine claims to have found the tomb of the Lord with Jesus body still in it. Ergo, no resurrection. This was the angle pushed in the documentaries financed by Cameron. I saw no reason why I would ever watch one of his films again. And then a few years ago I did sit down and watch Titanic. And the thing is a work of art. Inexplicably. Tasteful. Poetic. Grand. A classic Hollywood film like they never make any more and like they never quite managed to make in the past, truth be told. Only the rarest excursion into sexualised bad taste. Let me say, the thing looks to me almost like it was made by a Christian. How very strange. After a life time of dross, Cameron makes this. And last night I saw the end again. The lady dies and goes to heaven where she meets all her loved ones again. At least that's what I thought was going on. It was subtle enough. Blatent enough too. Pure poetry. I can give no greater praise to a film or film maker.

Apologia Pro Neo Classicism Mea
Mark Anthony strode up the steps of the forum and addressed the milling crowd. "Friends, Romans, Countrymen," quoth he. "Lend me your newspapers. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with the bones. So let it be with the Johnston Press. When the Johnston Press hath bought up 25 Irish newspapers using money they'd borrowed from idiot banks and then run those newspapers into the wall in the space of twelve months, did this in the Johnston Press seem ambitious? And yet Heelers hath told you the Johnston Press are a shower of parvenu free masonic clypes without a clue how to run a business, and sure Heelers is an honourable man. And they are all all honourable men. All the people who got fired, made redundant, or retired hurt from their newspapers after the Johnston Press took em over. When the poor hath cried the Johnston Press hath wept. Did this in the Johnston Press seem ambitious? And yet Heelers hath told you the Johnston Press are low life. And sure he is an honourable man. When the Johnston Press hath alienated whole sections of the community by jettisoning vast tranches of their workforce and hiring semi literate teens, did this in the Johnston Press seem ambitious? Granted, it was a bit f---ing stupid. But ambitious no. Ambitous would have been if they'd tried to run the newspapers properly and recognised the basic humanity of their workforces, and their social responsibilty not to fire anyone. But that's not the sort of ambition you find too often among a certain class of low life business executives. But I digress. And when the Johnston Press shareprice collapsed from £4 to 5 pennies after the firing of Heelers, did this in the Johnston Press seem ambitious? Clearly they hadn't got a clue. In fact at that stage a bit of ambition mightn't have done them any harm. And of course the collapse of the share price wasn't the fault of overpaid management executives whose only response to a recession was to fire more people. What imaginative fellows those management executives were. Positively enlightened. Nothing was their fault. The collapse of the Johnston Press is the fault of the people they fired. Obviously. Or maybe the collapse of the Johnston Press is the fault of underlying economic conditions that no one could have foreseen, not even the plush bottomed executive toe rags who were being paid through the nose to foresee such things. Fire me would you? You low life scum. We're all gonna remember you. You gonna be famous. I'm gonna build you a monument more lasting than bronze. Life is local indeed. And the collapse of the Johnston Press was the fault of a Voodoo curse imposed by a certain Baron Samedi of Jamaica while throwing a dead cat over his shoulder at midnight in the cemetery at Port Au Prince. I kid you not."

Television Listings
RTE One, (The Irish National Broadcaster) Friday.
5.30 The Bill. Antique British police drama that no one has ever watched.
6.00 The Angelus. Rte's sop to the Catholic church.
6.01 Rte News: Six One. Long running crime drama filmed in the style of a news programme. A bunch of anti Catholic left wingers with links to Moscow take over a television station and recreate the world in their own image.
7.00 Capital D. No one cares what this programme is.
7.30 Eastenders. Dreadful British pornography that no one watches.
8.00 Fair City. Dreadful Irish pornography that no one watches.
8.30 Showhouse. No one cares what this programme is.
9.00 Rte News: Nine O'Clock. The lefties are back. And this time they've got coffee mugs.
9.30 Prime Time. Atheist lefty panel discussion show. A group of corrupt pseuds agree with each other about the evils they dishonestly ascribe to the Catholic church. Dreadful, dreadful people.
10.10 The Mentalist. No one cares what this is.
11.05 Brothers And Sisters. Drivel.
12.00 (Midnight.) Where's My Job Gone. Film about Rte employees who suddenly have to compete in the real world when James Healy is elected Prime Minister of Ireland and permits free competition in the broadcasting industry.

And Now This (by Irina Kuksova)

His Holiness meets His Healyness...

an easter email

From: Jim Delaney

Hello James, I hope you have a lovely Easter lunch today with your family.
Thanks for praying for me, I go to Buckfast Abbey very often and when there I always light a candle for you and your family. It is a beautiful place, it is possible to feel the spirituality or holiness that exists there. The monks pray 7 times a day in public and also pray in private, so I think that is why I feel the existence of something special there. Even in the Summer, when there are hundreds of people.
I was diagnosed with a serious kidney disease when I was 15 years old. I know some people who are half my age who have had their second transplant, they have the same renal condition.
I am still going strong, Mr McGonigle the renal expert cannot understand why I am so healthy. Perhaps in the future I will need dialysis, but for the moment I am very healthy for someone with my condition. That is my first miracle.
A couple of years ago, I was admitted to hospital and the heart specialist said I would probably have a heart attack or a stroke within a week. So I had an operation to unblock my arteries, which the tests done by the specialist indicated was necessary. After the operation the specialist said he could find nothing wrong, he can't understand it. 3 weeks later I was cycling 8 miles a day, return journey to work. That is my second miracle.
18 months ago I was rushed into hospital by ambulance to A and E. 4 weeks later when I was talking to my GP, she told me she'd been ringing the hospital to see how I was. I said I thought that was unusual, but I thanked her for caring. She said she rang because she didn't think I would get to the hospital on time. My kidney condition had deteriorated so quickly. She thought I was dead. I am not and that is my third miracle.
So you and the Divine Mercy are doing a good job. Because of my experiences the thought of death is constantly on my mind, but I have no fear of dying, in a way I am looking forward to it.
We live in a very sad world of greed and selfishness. Millions of acres of rain forest are being destroyed to grow beef burgers. That land ends up damaged and useless in most cases. When my oldest daughter was a teenager she had a poster on her wall which went something like this: When the last tree is felled, and the last fish taken from the sea, only then will man realise that MONEY cannot be eaten.
It is a lovely day here today. I think I will drive to Buckfast Abbey. Not just to pray. They serve a lovely treacle tart with hot honey and clotted cream. It is better than sex.
God bless for now. It is a great honour to be able to talk to the greatest living Irish poet. Have a lovely Easter weekend.
Jim

flashback

On Language
(From The Heelers Diaries, August 1995.)


The American pseudo Marxist Noam Chomsky has called for the dissection of language.
He says it should be isolated like any other bodily 'organ' (his word) and analysed in laboratory conditions.
The Marxists think they have conquered everything.
ie Many nations of the earth and most of academe.
And if Marxism is observably failing any and every country where its precepts are applied, it is growing stronger in academe.
The teachers are Marxist.
The writings are Marxist.
The options of thought are Marxist.
Noam Chomsky wants language.
He wants to reduce it.
To make it his creature.
If the Marxists rule language itself, all other victories will follow.
But of course they cannot rule it.
There are no great Marxist writers.
No great Marxist poets.
Not even any great Marxist musicians.
Because language is of the soul.
And the Marxists will never be able to dissect what they cannot see.
They cannot own what they do not believe in.
Even as they pin it down, isolate it, reduce it, analyse it, it grows, swirls, becomes something else... eternally... eternally beyond them.

kilcullen easter

the lambing time
evanescent leaves
provincial poets stitching worn out rhymes
into patchwork quilted semaphores of praise
all of these
mist like matting on muddy fields
old men rejoicing in campaniles
all of these
everything that breathes is on its knees
for the coming of the lord
peace

quoth the hamster

heelers returns to the workforce

Afternoon rendezvous with Hyunjin a Korean bloke who contacted me via the internet looking for English lessons.
When we met at the Cafe Aroma on Abbey Street, I was not displeased to discover Hyunjin was an extraordinarily pretty girl.
Dig those crazy Koreans and their masculine sounding forenames.
The first thing she did was to inform me she didn't want to study grammer.
She just wanted to work on her conversation skills.
At the end of an hour's conversation I glanced at the table.
She had placed fifteen quid there.
I picked it up.
I was thinking: "This is the first honest fifteen quid I've ever earned."