let us seek the treasures that will last

ten books i never wrote

During my teenage years, my mind brimming with ideas, I planned to write the following books.

1. Sov Staat Ireland.
This was about a Soviet Russian invasion of Ireland. In the opening scene, the Russians infiltrated the country on commercial airliners, just as they had done for real in Afghanistan in 1979. A coordinated terrorist onslaught was unleashed by the IRA acting as a fifth column for the Rooskies on government offices, police stations, army bases, etc etc. The Russians took control. The rest of the book was a shoot em up as the people fought back.

2. Hunter Hunted. An IRA terrorist assassin repents. He's hunted across Europe by the IRA and the British elite military unit the SAS. The title was later used in some television show.

3. General Kwan, The Scourge Of Vietnam. A counterblast to the anti Vietnam war films which were stock in trade at the time. General Kwan's communist army function as a virtual religious sect. They kidnap a white woman. Two school friends chase around the battle fields trying to rescue her. Lots of shooting and explosions. Characters were all drawn from my school, Newbridge College. A helicopter pilot was based on my history teacher Bill Walshe who went renegade and risked provoking the third world war by attacking a Russian ship clandestinely supplying the North Vietnamese communists. (The helicopter pilot in my book did this. Not the real Bill Walshe.) I got into mild trouble at school for doodling scenes from General Kwan The Scourge Of Vietnam in my Irish copybook along with Irish language phrases such as "Is leasc le General Kwan," and their attendant translations, in this instance "General Kwan is reluctant." In my doodles, I had given General Kwan a big sron. (Nose.) Miss Griffin, my teacher may have thought I had based him on her as she had a big sron too.

4. Games People Play. An actioner. Three friends get sucked into a war with the Mafia. The three each play different games in life, namely sports, women and cars. I inadvertently lifted the title from a book by some 1960's hippy sexologist.

5. Heelers Republic. A Star Wars rip off, with politics. The President of Earth based on me, rallies the planet to fight off alien attacks. Because the alien attacks are of a comparatively low intensity, there is a strong world wide peace movement arguing that the aliens are not a priority. I prevail in having parliament sanction limitless funding for a task force to fly to the aliens home planet and give them a taste of their own medicine. A military man based on my school friend Mugs Baines is given command of the task force. He flies to the alien star system, conquers it, conquers a few neighbouring star systems, and returns home. Meanwhile the President is sitting in his office on top of the world parliament sky scraper. The windows are open. The curtains are billowing. There is an impression of mental illness. A little wind direction instrument on the table whirs. The President's chief adviser, based on one of my Uncles, arrives to enquire what's going on. I tell him: "The wind is to the east. Napoleon is returning. Napoleon cannot serve. Napoleon must rule." The counsellor points out that I'm the democratically elected President of earth. I shake my head allowing him to see the full extent of my cowardice. The counsellor tries to persuade me to remain in power but eventually, disappointed, goes to leave. The President cries out: "Wait. I had to know your true mind on this." It's like the good bit in Macbeth where the lad says he can't be king because he is a worse scoundrel than Macbeth but he's only saying it to see, well, whatever. The wind from the open windows has stilled. Now the curtains billow inwards again. But from a new direction. The little weathervane instrument on the table swings around slowly to point in the opposite direction. Meanwhile the victorious army returns. The commander is shown into the President's office. They have some sort of epic debate on the merits of democracy over military rule. The President detonates some sort of an explosive device which obliterates the top floor of the world parliament and compels the people to find new leaders.

6. Knackers. The title is a pejorative word for street thugs in Ireland. It can also be a racist term for members of the travelling community. This story was a Death Wish rip off about a moderate middle of the road type of guy taking on the street gangs. Plot spoiler: He doesn't try to reform them.

7. The Lords Of Dublin. A crash and smash Mad Max rip off. Dublin cops take on the joyriders at their own game. Fighting them to a standstill in a serious of whap blam thud street encounters. The title is ripped off from a Pat Conroy book set in a military academy called The Lords Of Discipline. Pat Conroy went on to write the much less macho Prince Of Tides whose tag line "You will come to know the truth and the truth will set you free," was ripped off from the Bible. Not many people know that.

8. Gwyneth. A pro life thing. Gwyneth is a teenage girl who has a baby. Everyone she touches is touched by joy. Hardened cops, social workers, cynical urban oldies, etc etc.

9. Trail Of Sapphires. What a title, eh! It's set during World War Two. The Germans have developed atomic bombs and are racing to detonate them across the forward positions of the allied armies in Normandy and the Eastern Front. A bunch of commandos based as per usual on people I know race to stop them.

10. Bolonia State Of... My only proposed book length venture into the realms of humour. The opening line read: "Our prison was run by a Guerpo Alvarez, a bald psychotic loon with one eye, one arm, one leg and one testicle. We could have called him a lot of things but we just called him Old One Eye." I had ripped off this line from Mugs Baines.

11. Stunt Riders. Kids book. Intended as source material for a television cartoon. A bunch of children are super heroes whose abilities stem mainly from their bicycles which can fly and go really fast and so on.. The title was intended to have the resonances of the cartoon title Transformers and to have lent itself to a similar theme tune. Think: "Stunt riders, heroes in the skies," as opposed to "Transformers, robots in disguise." Subtle eh. The kids would be a cross section of kids with real lives, except when they're crime fighting on their bikes. Nice possibility of evoking various lives and interactions and kids problems and what have you. I mean I don't want the pseudo social realism of Grange Hill. But something that wll show real kids that real life is worth living even if you're a superhero who must protect his secret identity and pass certificate exams prior to making serious career choices and helping your mother feed the cat. So the characters will have stern teachers, bullies, nice teachers, teachers who are stern but only to bring out the best in them, harassed parents, groovy parents, stern harassed groovy parents everyday situations, the gamut of childhood worries, joys, adventures, along with super villains and c. Particularly c, The whole thing overlaid with life affirming humour. Dammit I'm beginning to think we should do this. Live action, not just a book or cartoon. And eventually a movie.

The Scum Are On The Streets... Actioner about yet another nice guy taking on the mafia and the IRA. Basically just another of my proposed Death Wish/Mad Max rip offs. It is a rum fact that the mafia and the IRA generally, and Mad Max and Charles Bronson in particular, seem to have figured to such a disproportionate degree in my early bouts of creativity.

None of these books were written. In the Summer of 1983, aged seventeen, I was cycling over the crest of a hill outside Kilcullen. At the bottom of the hill a car appeared. It was driven by a little old lady. Both of us had plenty of time to avoid a collission. She swerved. Unfortunately I swerved at exactly the same moment. Still plenty of time. She swerved back. Unfortunately I swerved back too. She swerved a third time. I swerved too. My last thought was: "Uh oh." I had no memory of the impact. I became conscious of something cold against my face. I lay there. I could hear voices shouting in alarm. They were saying: "Get up, get up, oh please get up." I realised the cold thing against my face was the road. I remember thinking to myself: "I could be badly hurt here. No need to open my eyes until I know if there's anything missing or hanging off." I lay there without pain. After some more shouting from the people around me, I opened my eyes. The people helped me stand up and drove me home. As we drove, I had something that seemed like a near death experience. I didn't see heaven. I saw my own life as it really was. I saw that everything I'd ever worried about was utterly irrelevant. Every oppression, every obsession, every fear, every anger. None of them mattered. None of them had any authority. It was a most profound feeling of detachment. And of course I saw my books. All of them. I saw that none of them mattered either. None of them were what I had been sent to accomplish.

150 years of the irish times

The Irish Times has in its long history only ever accomplished one worthwhile thing. They provoked me into writing the most astonishingly dark elusive elegiacally gothic poem in the English language. About a decade ago, an Irish Times feature writer innocently enquired: "Why does the Catholic church have such difficulty attracting great minds?" I was rather struck by the irony of the little atheist's overblown self image. I decided to show all the little atheists what real atheism is. In between I would teach them that the Catholic mind is the only mind that really dares to speculate. For them I wrote...

bleak heart

a boy stands in a field above the town
he does not know what the years will bring
dark night touches him and the rain
his spirit leaps in his imagining

a man writes at table in the dark
he wonders of all things what we are
spirits creatures matter worse
pitched forth comets about a dying star

tell me if all time is one time
and what is was and will be
was the boy already corrupt as he looked upon the town
am i already dead as i write

advice to young journalists

Don't work for the Johnston Press.

harvey approaching corn flakes

a claim to future fame

in an age that is yet unborn
will come some student of the written word
to the words that i have written down
he'll look askance at my little hoard
and shake his head and cough and frown
then in a voice quite ponderous
my god carruthers what was all the fuss

but that night by the light of a lantern moon
he'll toss and turn in fevered swoon
he'll wake with eyes staring wide
and heart beat pounding terrified
and cry my god i am alive

150 years of the irish times

(Episode Five: You Are Awful. But I Like You.)
It's been a roller coaster ride. All this week we've been celebrating one and a half centuries of anti Catholic drivel from those fervourless fembo commie pinkos at The Irish Times. The paper, known to most of us as The Auld Bitch of D'Olier Street, has spent the last fifty of those years remodelling Ireland in its own image. We are all living with the results. If I have one thing to say to the Christians of Ireland it is this. You don't have to accept your government using our money to finance the Irish Times through Health Board advertising. You don't have to accept the government of Ireland giving our money to the Irish Family Planning Association to finance a court case before the European Supreme Court, aided and abetted by the Irish Times, with the intention of forcing abortion legislation on our country. You don't have to accept any of this. For Christ's sake, get up off your knees.

Favourite Memories of The Irish Times: Today's memory is a little different from what came before. Cast your minds back to the dulcet Summer of 1989. Yugoslavia which had been a communist dictatorship for forty years was breaking up into its constituent Republics. The captive peoples were seizing their opportunities to break free of what had oppressed them. First Slovenia, then Croatia, then Bosnia broke away. Serbia was the Republic which had effectively ruled Yugoslavia. Serbia still had control of the old communist army. By 1991, Serbia had unleashed this army separately on each of the breakaway Republics. Interestingly enough, The Irish Times' coverage of this conflict was initially strongly pro Serbian and indeed even more strongly pro Slobodan Milosevich. Irish Times feature writers had not quite adjusted to the end of the Cold War. They still thought some of their glorious communist dictatorships might be saved. I kid you not. Irish Times feature writers informed us that Serbian actions must be seen in the context of the actions of Croats during World War Two. The Irish Times feature writers' view was that the Croats had sided with Hitler and had committed genocide against the Serbs. The Irish Times feature writers argued that the Serbs had legitimate concerns that an independent Croatia might quite readily revert to fascism. I was mildly perturbed by this Irish Times' justification for Serbian atrocities. The Balkans had become a charnel house with the Serbs using the communist rump army of Yugoslavia to rampage at will through towns, villages and cities. I wrote a gently corrective piece addressed to the Irish Times. This was published in The Bridge magazine. We're reproducing it for you here today folks. It is the last thing you shall read of mine about the Irish Times. I print it with my own crass errors intact. See if you can spot em. I was a complete slob even then.

************************

LEARNING CAN BE FUN
(From The Bridge magazine, Christmas 1991.)

See the Irish Times editor sitting in his office.
He is smoking his pipe.
He is a nice man. Hello Irish Times editor, hello...
See the Irish Times journalists.
They love reporting wars.
There they are trooping off to Croatia.
Hello, Irish Times journalists, hello...
The Serbs and Croats are having a fight.
They have been fighting for five hundred years.
The Irish Times journalists have been in the country for only two weeks, but they have already figured out the cause of the conflict.
Clever Irish Times journalists.
Clever, clever, clever.
They write:
"The Croats are Catholic. During World War Two they sided with Hitler and murdered many thousands of Serbs. Thus the violence may be seen in the context of Serbian revenge."
Clever Irish Times journalists.
Clever, clever, clever.
Bad repressed Catholic Croats.
(Always having babies and refusing to use condoms.)
Bad, bad, bad Croats.
Good old Muslim Serbs... Teach those Croats a lesson... Come on Serbs.
See the Irish Times journalists.
They are slightly taken aback.
The Serbs have just killed three thousand Croats.
(Bad Hitler loving Croats.)
Three thousand is rather a lot.
The Irish Times journalists are crying.
See the crocodile tears.
How shiny they are!
There, there Irish Times journalists, don't cry.
Look at the lovely city. (Wipe away those tears now.)
It is called Dubrovnik.
People call it the pearl of the Adriatic because it is so beautiful.
There are many five hundred year old buildings in it.
Such wonderful historic buildings.
(With some bad repressed Catholic churches.)
Oh look.
Here come the Serbs.
They seem angry.
They are still annoyed about that Hitler business.
At least the Irish Times journalists think so.
And they know about these things. Ha, ha.
The Serbs have got tanks and heavy artillery. Bang, bang, bang.
They are razing Dubrovnik to the ground. Bang, bang, bang.
That will teach those Hiterites to be Catholic. Bang, bang, bang.
That will teach those Catholics to be Hiterite. Bang, bang, bang.
That will teach those Croats to be Croats. Bang, bang, bang.
See those crocodile tears. Bang, bang, bang.
See the ruined city. Bang, bang, bang.
See the wasted lives. Bang, bang, bang.
See the darkened land. Bang, bang, bang.
See the Irish Times journalists.
Perhaps they will explain it all to us.
Please Mr Irish Times journalists, tell us why.
"Croatian Catholics committed genocide against Muslim Serbs during World War Two."
Thank you Irish Times journalists.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
You are so clever, clever, clever.
The nice Serb raising his flag over the ruined city of Dubrovnik likes the Irish Times too.
(When he misses it he feels like he's missing part of the day.)
See the Irish Times editor, smoking his pipe in his office in Dublin.
He is preparing tomorrow's edition.
He is a nice man.
He is looking at a photograph of a smiling Serb raising the Serbian flag over Dubrovnik.
The Irish Times editor says:
"See the happy Serb.
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a Serb.
My God, perhaps I am."

so no surprises there then

Laura Noonan reported the following on the business page of the Irish Independent on Thursday:

"The substantial Irish operations of Johnston Press could face job cuts and closures under a new £30m cost cutting plan unveiled by its UK parent company yesterday. The inclusion of the 15 Irish newspapers and two printing presses in the fresh cost cutting drive emerged when Johnston press announced it had abandoned plans to sell off its Irish business after failing to attract "sufficiently" high bids."

I love you Laura Noonan and I want to have your babies.

all the gold in the world

the night visitor

you stood by my bed
i thought to plead
how can you be phantom
you are not dead
and you replied
except that i live
truly have i died
but i came here to forgive
outside in the east
the sun took dominion
never was a dawn
so like redemption

150 years of the irish times

(Episode Four: Abort The Mission, I Mean The Babies.)
All this week we've been celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Irish Times, a newspaper known to friends and foes alike as The Oul Bat of D'Olier Street. It has sometimes been difficult to pick out the best moments from the Irish Times' illustrious history. Whether it was rooting for the Russians throughout the Cold War, justifying dictatorships in Africa, or simply trying to destroy the Catholic church as a platform for public influence in Ireland, the Irish Times has never been shy about manipulating the news for its own ends. At heart the Irish Times is an ideologically driven deeply dishonourable entity. How its particular ideological posture arose, has never been adequately explained. In the 1980's an editor sought to secure full disclosure from his journalists of any political movements they might have been a part of. He was not successful. One wonders why he bothered. Actually we know why. From the 1980's the dogs in the street were aware of someone or something pursuing societal agendas for Ireland from within the Irish Times. Was the Irish Times a front for the Soviet KGB? Was it infiltrated by Free Masonic elements? Were staff members and editors simply a collection of intellectual duds? The answer to all these questions is of course yes.

Favourite Memories of The Irish Times: Several decades ago, a teenage girl called Ann Lovett gave birth to a child in a field near a church. Ann Lovett and the baby died. The media groups of Ireland, television, radio and newspapers, seized upon Ann Lovett's death and attempted to construe it as an indictment of the Catholic church. The Irish Times was to the fore in hijacking this young woman for its own propaganda against the Christian faith. The Irish Times ran copious coverage from its various dimlight feature writers suggesting that Ann Lovett's death was to be laid at the door of believing Christians. On RTE radio and television, the coverage was similarly manipulated. The most cretinous among our political classes emerged to sneer at Christianity. A politician called Nuala Fennell, a particular favourite with the Irish Times, was most vociferous in her castigation of the Catholic church and of Christian values generally. One ray of light emerged during that dark time. A teenage friend of Ann Lovett's was being interviewed on the radio. The RTE interviewer dealing with Ann Lovett's teenage friend had been disappointed that the friend had made no remarks criticising Christian values but had simply shed tears for the death of Ann Lovett. Hoping to gain an anti Catholic sound bite, the RTE interviewer asked Ann Lovett's teenage friend what she thought of Nuala Fennell. Ann Lovett's friend replied spontaneously: "Nuala Fennell is a silly bitch." It was the most insightful remark ever uttered on RTE radio or television. That remark came on a morning news programme. RTE edited it out from all later transmissions. Not bleeped it out. Censored it. It was as though it had never been uttered. The Irish Times certainly didn't care to report it. But Nuala Fennell is indeed a silly bitch. And so are they all, all silly bitches. Independent Newspapers. RTE. And of course The Irish Times. Between them they've been attempting to destroy the Catholic church for forty years. And look what they've done to Ireland. Look what they've given us. The violent society. Drug dealers in every primary and secondary school. Hospitals where nursies murder patients. More and more children being murdered by their parents. Strange that. The Irish Times had told us that if we legalised divorce, there would be less violence in the home. Very strange indeed. But keep looking at what we've become. The church is indeed marginalised. Promiscuity is a norm. Suicide is off the scale. Judge Liberal refuses to send criminals to jail. Social Worker Liberal refuses to remove children from violent homes until the kids are dead. Prison Warden Liberal (I mean John Lonnergan) lets the crims out at weekends so that they can kill and kill again. The McCarthy Dundon crime gang has taken over the city of Limerick. The number of crime gangs carving up Dublin is too high to name them all. And a nifty little social work outfit called Al Qaeda is now using Ireland as a forward operations and planning base for its missions against the United Kingdom and the USA. Seriously though Irish Times. Seriously. You're doing a brilliant job.

the ineluctable modality of has beans

Coffee with Doctor Barn in the Costa cafe.
The place is full of mid morning shoppers and mischievous truanting teens.
It cacaphones with rich vibrancy around us.
A warm September sun splays through the windows.
The goodish Doctor is snatching a few minutes to chat with his brother between saving lives.
He has a moderately stern expression on his face.
"What are you playing at on your blog?" quoths he severely. "You're still writing about your former employers. I thought you told me you'd forgiven them. I thought you promised me you'd stop writing about them."
The mighty Heelers looks a bit sheepish.
"I have forgiven them," sez I. "Sure you know me well enough to know that once I'd have moved on a bit, there'd be no room for bitterness in my heart towards anyone. Not even towards such consummate worthless bast--ds."
Daktari sat back in his chair.
"That doesn't sound like forgiveness to me," sez he.
I grinned.
"Okay," sez I with the air of one coming clean. "They fired me from the Leinster Leader, where I'd been working for ten years. Sometimes I can't help wondering did they fire me in order to bring in staff that would work for less and would have no pension entitlement. Is that the calibre of low rent toe rags they are? I wonder. Hmmm. We'll probably never know for sure. But I'm telling you I've forgiven them. There's nothing personal in it any longer from my point of view. I only mention them on my website now when it's getting near the end of the month, and I'm trying to bump up the ratings. If I'm lucky this month Barn, we'll break the thousand visitor barrier for the first time. It's true. You see, whenever I make a few innocuous remarks about the Johnston Press, they never fail to come running. Why I've only to mention the words Johnston Press and scumbags, and my stat counter lights up with log-ons from across the United Kingdom. All their regional sicherheitsdients seem to tune in for a conference call. There's visits from their mouldy ould lawyers in Glasgow, from their woeful cheap executives at The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh, (Chief Executives surely? - Ed note), not to mention visits from their data monitoring companies in Herefordshire, and from their dreary little High Command in Derbyshire. I welcome them all. I have no room for bitterness or recriminations in my heart."
The brother eyed me keenly.
"You haven't forgiven them," he mused with a hint of weariness.
A baby in a push chair squalled nearby.
I leaned forward.
"Okay Barn," I murmured. "Let's face it. Whatever I write is literature. If I write a grocery list, the thing is liable to be laced with an elegaic ethereal musicality. A lissom melodiousness that tugs at the heart strings in ways all may savour but none may understand. Seriously though. My website is literature too. More so even than my grocery lists. No really. And literature needs a villain. Sherlock Holmes needs his Moriarty. Churchill needs his Hitler. Sir Galahad needs his Mordred. Maybe, just maybe, Ireland's greatest living poet in some mystical symbiotic sense needs his Johnston Press."
Doctor Phibes groaned.
"Would you just stop," said he.
I gazed into the middle distance.
"Not only have I forgiven them," I told him gently, "I've written them a poem. It's called England My England."
Doctor Barn's silence could legitimately be interpreted as an invitation to recite.
I needed no further invitation.
A strange otherworldly pallor suffused my handsome preraphaelite features.
When I spoke it was as though a young Johnny Gielgud was declaiming right there in the cafe.
A stillness fell.
Heads turned.
The poem ran:
"There'll always be a Johnston Press.
Of this I'm nearly sure.
For the world can never do without,
Its share of horse manure."

thingummies in bloom

me and the mammy and the music

Driving along the open road to South Kildare.
The Mammy is accompanying me.
It's the first time she's consented to come for a drive since her brief stay in hospital a few months ago.
The sun is bouncing off the fields.
My early gentle conversational sallies, about the oxygen cylinder making her look like Darth Vader, are decisively rebuffed.
There is silence.
Time for a little of my trademark heartfelt communication.
I begin to sing.
I am singing the John Lennon song Woman.
With strange high soulfulness I intone as follows:

"Woman,
I can hardly express,
My gratitude for all your love,
And tenderness,
After all I am forever in your debt.
And woman,
What I mean by debt of course,
Is the money I've been stealing regularly from your purse,
Although when you catch me you sometimes curse,
Ooooh, oooh oooh.
Yeah, yeah.
Doo den doo doo dooooo."

We drive on past the Moat of Ardscull.
"Well what do you think of my tribute?" sez I eventually.
The Mammy sighs.
"I'd like it a lot better," sez she drily, "if I hadn't heard you singing the same thing to the hamster last night."
This of course brings forth another impromptu performance.
I sing:

"Hammy,
I can hardly express
Your orange fur and your wooliness,
When you pee on the kitchen table you make an awful mess.
And Hammy
You're nearly always nice.
You've got two great big bulging shiny black eyes.
For staring at things you want to give bites.
And Hammy,
Please don't bite my nephews,
Even when they squeeze you because they haven't a clue.
After all one is six and the other is only two.
Oooh, ooooh, ooooooh.
Yeah Yeah.
Doo den dooo, dooo, doooooo."

As if by magic the ghost of John Lennon appears in the car with us.
"Heelers," quoth he, "You're still the man."

150 years of the irish times

(Episode Three: The Dills Discover Poetry.)
Over the course of its history The Irish Times, which is known to its fans as The Old Bolshevick of D'Olier Street, (Old Bolshoiter surely? - ed note) has often attempted to position itself as an arbiter of cultural taste. This has involved publishing some of the most anodyne insipid atheistic conformist left wing fembo poetry in the history of the human race. I think history will judge em harshly for it. Both The Irish Times and the poets so favoured. The Irish Times has also attempted occasionally to associate itself with poets of genuine merit. If you do an internet search on the name Patrick Kavanagh you will be steered first and foremost to Irish Times websites. It is interesting to me that The Irish Times of the present era would pose as an aficionado of Kavanagh's work. Velly intellesting. For lo! In the 1950's Kavanagh published a not altogether admiring poem about The Irish Times itself. The poem highlights the paper's self indulgent mendacious piously hypocritical sneering war against the Catholic church. The Irish Times had already undertaken to destroy the Catholic church as a locus for public influence even then. Kavanagh's poem recreates an Irish Times theatre review. He gives us the bare outlines of a play that exposes what the playwright and The Irish Times regard as the outdated uselessness of the Catholic church. Then the poet shows us the play's actors, producers and writers sitting in a Dublin Four drawing room savouring their Irish Times review. The review refers to the Catholic church as a "monster's dying roar." Kavanagh then delivers the most deadly lines in poetry which to this day sum up perfectly the disparity in insight, courage and wisdom between champagne socialist conformist marxians and the heroes of the Catholic Church:
"While priests walked homeward barefoot through the parishes of Cork and Kerry,
Breda poured another dry white sherry."

pardon me but your plagiarism is in my soup

Evening at the Chateau de Healy.
Ireland's greatest living poet is sitting in the kitchen munching a steinervortzel and quaffing a coffee.
Enter Doctor Barn stage left pursued by a nephew.
"Hey Heelers," quoth the bad Doctor cheerily. "Have a look at this."
He dumps an Irish Independent on the table in front of me.
I shoot him a wounded look.
"The Irish Independent," sez me bitterly. "Et tu Daktari. Then fall Heelers."
The Doc snorts with impatience.
"Just read it," sez he.
I glance at the page he has opened.
It is the Ian Doherty Heelers Diaries rip off column entitled I Spy.
A sort of atheistic Tony O'Reilly worshipping joyless version of what you're reading here.
There are flashes of brilliance of course.
He uses words like discombobulated, claims to have pro-life friends, and mentions George Bush occasionally.
Aside from that it's worthless.
I look up at the brother.
"Bloody Doherty?" I moan. "You're asking me to read O'Doherty. This is the unkindest cut of all."
Doctor Barn gestured towards the paper.
My eyes followed.
And behold.
A picture of the character Yoda from Star Wars swinging a light sabre and looking like a demented muppet.
The picture had been published a day after The Heelers Diaries presented a droll little Star Wars satire which had touched hearts worldwide.
The satire concerned Tony O'Reilly as Darth Vader lecturing O'Doherty on how to rip off this blog more efficiently.
Hilarious no?
And now this.
Doctor Barn chuckled.
"Is it deliberate?" sez he.
"I don't know what you mean," I answered.
"Is he really reading your blog?"
"Him, John Waters, Kevin Myers and every other talentless git in Irish journalism."
"Ah come on."
"Consider it Doc. Waters tribute on the death of Pope John Paul the Second. After so many years showing us how to live, he showed us how to die. The exact same as my tribute to Grandad. And Myers. Myers has just discovered a concern about over paid teachers, nursies and police officers. Not only that. He claims to have been writing about them for months. Years. Possibly even decades. I know where I think he got the idea."
"You're paranoid," quoth Doctor Detroit.
My handsome preraphaelite features creased into a frown.
"Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean the swines aren't ripping me off," I mused. "The Irish Independent even ran a headline recently from Wordsworth's poem about the French revolution. They used it to mark Ireland's rugby victory. It was a well chosen piece. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was the very heaven. Only ever used as a headline once before. By me in the vomitous Leinster Leader to mark a Kildare Leinster Final victory. Coincidence? I don't think so."
"Ah Heelz. Just stop."
I stopped.
The Doc pointed at the Irish Indescuzzdent once more.
"Does he ever mean this as a kind of salute?" he wondered.
I looked again at the picture of Yoda.
My words came slowly.
Ponderously.
"The Force is strong with this young canabinoid taking Jedi," I murmured. "There is much he dares. But he'd better watch himself. He's starting to p-ss me off."

the aristotelian method of investigative discourse

Aristotle sat on a low stone bench in the shadow of the Parthenon.
Around him Athens pulsed with the poetry of life.
The great man did not seem to give any attention to the townspeople who thronged the streets.
Occasionally his eyes strayed to the white temples on the hill.
His face remained calm.

He sat there, amid the bustle of the city, weighing the eternal questions of existence.

Aristotle was murmuring to himself:

"Why? Why would the world be so ordered that people of the calibre of the management at the Johnston Press would ever be in a position to fire someone of James Healy's humanity, intellect and soul? How could it happen? What have we become? And what sort of people would want to fire Heelers anyway? What class of people were they? I can picture them. Shifty pseudo managerial types. The eternal office sneaks. Constantly looking over their shoulder in case they might be next. Such is the fate of people who fire other people. No one ever thinks too highly of em. But I wonder. Do any of them have friends? Do any of them believe in God? Do any of them have a happy family life? Do they live in constant fear of the man one grade above them in the office hierarchy? Do any of them have even the merest capacity for the finer human feelings? Have any of them ever done a courageous thing? Have any of them ever stood up for what is right? Is their conception of morality bound solely by whatever the boss pf the day wants? Is their business acumen solely defined by a predilection for firing people who've been on the staff ten years and hiring cheaper ones so that the management can pay themselves bonuses without actually running the company properly at all? Is their conception of profit based solely on accountancy tricks? Is their vision defined completely by the morality of the brothel? Have they brought an august 250 year old British company to the brink of the status of a penny share? What state are they going to leave the Leinster Leader in? What sort of people fire James Healy? Are any of them worthy of the name human being? Are they just beastly miserable back biting incompetent parvenu scum unable to recognise greatness when it's right before their eyes? Is this what they are? Fervourless unhappy self serving porcine cowardly servile gits?"

Aristotle had no way of knowing the answer to those questions.
But he had his suspicions.

dining out at the chateau

meet the candidates

Following the unlikely success of Mary Lou McDonald for Sinn Fein in the last European elections, Irish political parties have rushed to get in on the Attractive-Young-Women-As-Candidates act. Subtlety has never been a valued commodity in Irish politics. The present electoral season sees an unprecedented number of personable young women candidates lining out in Dublin constituencies. Heelers helps you tell them apart.

Mary Lou McDonald (Sinn Fein): Yesss. Still got it. If I'm ever kidnapped by the IRA and interrogated in the basement of the Dillis Flats complex, I hope they'll hit me with the Mary Lou. Oh, take me to the torture chamber and swear that you love me. Still the original and the best of all the honeychiles in Irish politics.
Claire Byrne (Fine Gael): Ride. Bottomless eyes. Sublime eyeless bottom. A body that won't quit. I mean there's nothing else to be said, except perhaps Arooogahhhhh. And come to Butt Head.
Maria Parodi (Labour): Honey. Latin soul, wild tempestuous zorgotrons. The emergence of Italian women in Irish political life is long overdue. Take me. Take me now. Nyah ha ha, G Force. Sorry. I lost it there for a moment.
Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail): You'd better wise up, Catherine Ardagh. You're a sensual attapensual. When we made it, did you hear a bell ring? Ding, dong. When we made love, I shouted hurrah. "Up the Republic," said Catherine Ardagh. Ah, if we could only have our druthers.An arrogant smile playing about her magnificent porcelain features. There's only one thing on her mind. Phwoarrrr indeed.
Sarah Ryan (Fianna Fail): Sweet sensual maiden of burgeoning allure. Who knows what she's thinking? We can only hope. If only I could tame her. Hubba hubbah. She wants me Beavis.
Rebecca Moynihan (Labour): Sex on legs. Brown eyes of the gazelle. Thou art indeed more fair than all the tresses of Naiera's hair. Thy beauty it has brought me home to the grandeur that was Greece, and the glory that was Rome. Well, you know what I mean.
Emer McDaid (Fine Gael): Babe. Lissom and lithe. A face and form that beckons like a siren. Not one of those Woo Woo Woo sirens either. I mean one of the good sirens. Although let's face it, Woo Woo Woo is also the most likely and most coherent comment that will arise from any serious contemplation of her manifold irresistible psycho sexual aura.
Anita Reilly (Fianna Fail): An honest, intellectual and principled parliamentarian.

150 years of the irish times

(Episode Two: The Party Continues.)
The long history of the Irish Times, known to many as The Ould Biddy of D'Olier Street, has seen some curious evolutions in the paper's mindset. Initially a snob bound tract intended for what passed as an Irish upper class, the paper's stock in trade was often marked by an overweening contempt for the Catholic faith. By the mid 1960's the paper had also developed clear Marxian leanings. The possible influence of the Soviet Union and the KGB on staff members at the Irish Times has never been properly explored. The closest there has been to open discussion of the possibility of Communist Party control over elements within the Irish Times came with a short article recently in The Phoenix Magazine. The Phoenix suggested that a now deceased Irish Times journalist had been involved in drawing up a list for the KGB of Irish journalists who were considered enemies of the revolution and who would be detained when the Russian Communist Party took over Ireland. I am no friend of The Phoenix. I once wrote ads for them. But they are a skank paper who know a little bit too much about what the IRA thinks of things for comfort. When the McCartney sisters were campaigning to have the IRA men who murdered their brother arrested, The Phoenix printed a picture of the sisters labelled: The Spice Girls. So The Phoenix are scum. This is my analysis. But The Phoenix has provided the sole open expression in Ireland of what many of us have always suspected about The Irish Times. For this The Phoenix deserves some credit. But I digress. The Irish Times international reportage throughout the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's, and onward to the present day, has remained tainted with anti Americanism. Domestically the paper adopted a radical feminist agenda, championing contraception culture, divorce culture, abortion culture, stem cell research, and every other pissant cultural dysfunction that was already observably destroying the Free World. The Irish Times exercised profound influence over Irish legal professionals who in forty years have more than anyone else strived to create the Violent Society in Ireland. The legal professionals are more responsible for the fear we live in than the thugs themselves who commit the violence. And let's be clear. Judge Liberal didn't just happen. Judge Liberal was nursed at the teat of the Irish Times. A recent murder in Ireland involved the violation and killing of a 17 year old Swiss girl called Manuela Riedo. The Swiss girl was killed by a Galway man who had already murdered two people and blinded an old pensioner. None of these crimes had brought him a life sentence or indeed the death sentence he deserved. Three separate crimes, the first of which should have sent him to jail forever. To jail or to the electric chair, I mean. Judge Liberal had sentenced him for a few years on one of the murder raps which of course Judge Liberal referred to as manslaughter. Nothing is murder these days. Although you're just as dead when the scumbags kill you. Then the second murder happened. Judge Liberal and Jury Liberal failed to convict at all for the second murder but the victim was just as dead and the murderer just as guilty as if they had. Judge Liberal also failed to impose any significant sentence for the blinding of the pensioner which actually I consider a third murder. The Swiss girl, the Galway man's fourth victim that we know of, died because the man who killed her was free. The Swiss girl died because of Judge Liberal and because of the liberal ethos propagated shamelessly through our courts and our prisons and our laws, by the invidious incompetents of the Irish Times.

Favourite Memories of The Irish Times: Back in 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded the independent sovereign city State of Kuwait. The Americans led a military invasion to evict him. Before the American liberation could happen however, the Irish Times did its level best to save Saddam Hussein and to uphold his invasion. Irish Times columnist Sean Cronin wrote that he had in his possession a hundred year old map of the world, and that there was no country called Kuwait on it. I remember at the time remarking that the Sean Cronin/Irish Times benchmark for recognising countries would mean the dissolution of most of the nation states of the planet earth, including the Republic of Ireland. Maggie O'Kane also writing in the Irish Times in 1990 filed the most curious reports ever to come out of Iraq. She claimed she knew a taxi driver and that he was "a peaceful man who breeds budgies." He had told her that if he got his hands on the Americans he would wring their necks. All very unrepresentative of what Iraqis really felt. But who was to know? Even today the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies in Al Qaeda have had to murder Iraqis in their hundreds of thousands in order to prevent recognition of the will of the Iraqi people to be a pro American western democracy. And lo! How little things have changed at the Irish Times. Just this week the Irish Times printed a report from Afghanistan written by something called Mary Fitzgerald and illustrated with photos by something called Brenda Fitzsimons. This report featured interviews with Taliban/Al Qaeda members. It is my opinion that they were Al Qaeda by the way. The daft Irish Times bints did not make this clear. I wonder did the Irish Times pay a fee to the Taliban/Al Qaeda for those interviews. It would be a new low, wouldn't it? At least it would, if you didn't know about their other lows. Arf, arf. A little low humour there. These twittish Dublin Four birds allowed their terrorist hosts to differentiate themselves from Al Qaeda with the unlikely claim of being Taliban who only wanted their own country back but who are willing to help Al Qaeda if need be. An interesting distinction. The salient quote ran: "I don't like war but I have to fight the Americans." Why it was just like Maggie O'Kane back in the glory days of 1990. And the two Irish Times reporters never so much as mentioned to their terrorist hosts, the organised violation of women at the hands of the Taliban, the murders, the rapes, the closing and burning of girls' schools, the murder of little girls walking towards those schools, the terrorising of little girls in villages, the kidnappings, the slaveries, the enforced illiteracies, the sheer vitiating malign desecration of a generation of young women. Nothing. The great fembo Irish Times journalists didn't say a word. Not a question breathed about the Taliban/Al Qaeda subjugation of women in Afghanistan. Not even a whisper. Damn them to hell. Apparently the Irish Times has decided that women's rights means the provision of therapeutic abortions, and, er, that's it. If the women of Afghanistan wish to have rights to education, freedom, life, a future, why then, they must look to their own devices. They ain't gonna get no help from the Irish Times. Don't get me wrong. The Taliban/Al Qaeda murder little boys, and adult men, and adult women as well in equal numbers. But I just thought the card carrying feminists of the Irish Times might at least have troubled themselves to beard Allah U Akboom in his den on a most poignant women's rights issue of which they are surely aware. Maybe raise the specific case of the two women recently tortured and violated and murdered by the Taliban while a Taliban member working for the Associated Press snapped photos of their violation for worldwide distribution. And these are the scum trying to impeach President Bush. Come back Maggie O'Kane all is forgiven. I gotta tell you. This pair of bitches made Sean Cronin look good.

break of day

leafen wood enwintered
by a soft ice surplice
fallen forth on timbers
in a fronded fretwork charabanc
that neath a network braided
steaming cattle breathed
earthen kingdoms frothed
into dying into life

on with the motley
rejoice rejoice

150 years of the irish times

(Episode One: A New Dope.)
All this week at The Heelers Diaries we're celebrating 150 years of The Irish Times.
Yes, barely a century and a half ago the old lady of D'Olier Street, as her promoters and apologists call her, was established by a group of syphilitic faux British pseudo upper class landlords keen to promote a healthy self image for landlordism, syphilis and themselves.
(Sybaritic faux British pseudopods surely? - Ed note.)
The paper's early readership consisted of 200 people who were more or less the ruling class in Ireland.
So no change there.
They've still got about 200 readers.
And it's still the same 200 half wits who think they're in charge of the country.
For The Irish Times does not survive on revenues from papers it sells.
The Irish Times survives only because our corrupt kleptocratic government (now based in Dublin but no less corrupt for all that) finances them with State money even though many of us who are citizens of this State find The Irish Times a deeply opprobrious, nay abhorrent, entity and have no wish to finance it.
Let me speak for myself.
I have no wish to buy The Irish Times. And so I don't buy it. I have no wish to finance it either. But our kleptocratic Fianna Fail government doesn't allow me the luxury of that choice. I finance The Irish Times whether I like it or not.
The Irish Times floats on Health Board advertising.
This is public money.
My money.
My money is forwarded to The Irish Times in millions every year.
Outrageous, no?
There's more.
Just last week The Irish Times began to publicise a court case being taken to the European Supreme Court by the Irish Family Planning Association.
The case is an attempt to bring about the enforced legalisation and practice of abortion in Ireland.
It is my opinion that The Irish Times and its staff and their allies in the legal profession, have been to the fore in promoting other such pushes towards coercive abortion culture in Ireland.
The present push is being financed in a most interesting fashion.
The Irish Family Planning Association, on the surface of it, is just another vociferous atheistic contraception promoting body.
In fact it is also a militant abortion advocacy group.
And it's financed...
Yes.
By the Irish government.
That is to say, it's financed by me.
Those kleptocratic Fianna Failers really know how to talk Catholic while pouring my cash into the pockets of abortionists.
Someday they will answer to God for it.
So I am financing the Irish Family Planning Association's present attempts to bring abortion culture to Ireland.
And I am financing the Irish Times.
Against my will of course.
But when has that ever mattered to the Forces of Darkness?

My Favourite Memories Of The Irish Times: Back in 1989 the Chinese Communist Party government sent tanks into Heavenly Peace Plaza to crush the country's nascent democracy movement. This was the place soon to become known to the world as Tianamen Square. Unarmed Chinese men and women and children were slaughtered in the streets of Beijing while the world looked on in horror. The massacre was particularly shocking to the sensitive souls at The Irish Times. One Irish Times journalist, a notorious left winger, wrote piously: "The army of the people has fired on the people. This will never be forgotten." I nearly had a cow when I read this. In the previous decades, Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China had killed at least 70 million Chinese. The Irish Times was arriving very late to this particular party. "The army of the people has fired on the people." Indeed. Where was The Irish Times for the first 70 million murders? The murders hadn't exactly happened in secret. As a teenager I myself had read about Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China's penchant for mass murder in The Guinness Book Of Records. I kid you not. CIA propaganda maybe, eh Irish Times? Only the wilfully ignorant, only the wilfully blind, only the wilfully cretinous, could have failed to know what Mao and the Communist Party of China were doing to those people. They were doing the exact same as Joe Stalin and sundry Communist leaders did to the Russian people. The exact same as Pol Pot did to Cambodia. The exact same as Jose Maria Dos Santos did in Angola. The exact same as Robert Mugabe is doing this week in Zimbabwe. And so on. There's no mystery about it. There hasn't been a Communist Party ever which took power, and then failed to massacre its own citizens. Yet The Irish Times spent the Cold War rooting for the Russians and by extension for the Chinese Communist Party which was never more than a Russian proxy, and could never have existed without the perpetual support, succour and guidance of the Russian Communist Party . The Irish Times' willingness to ignore the psychopathology of Chinese Communism, in fact of any communism, is almost more grievous than The Irish Times apologias throughout the Cold War for the excesses of the Russian Communist Party as the Soviets shamelessly (and murderously) promoted dictatorships throughout Africa, the Middle East, Asia and even South and Central America. All those murders. All those incalculable barbarities. All caused by atheistic communism. Why it was positively satanic. Yet for twenty years I was reading every week in the Irish Times about the threat to the world from the evils of American imperialism. Abysmal. Abysmal newspaper. Dishonourable. Dishonourable communist propagandists. And now they want us to legalise abortion in Ireland. You know what folks? I really think we should tell them no. Once and for all. And if there's any Fianna Failers reading this, let me tell you. I grow weary of financing the Irish Times agendas. Their judgement has not proved all that sound in the past. Some one among you must have an iota of courage. A smidgen of integrity. Put a stop to this. Do it Ireland.

chessnutz

(our weekly chess puzzle)
************************
*************************
Snurdlingham Smythe versus Von Spoon
*************************
The sides look about level. But white to play seizes the initiative with an unusual gambit. Can you spot it?
*************************
Solution: Snurdlingham Smythe produced a gun and demanded Von Spoon concede. Von Spoon had no choice but to comply.

king heelers the second

Enter King Heelers The Second stage right, carrying a copy of The Daily Mirror. On the cover of the Daily Mirror the audience can see fake photos of fake British soldiers peeing on fake members of Al Qaeda. The pictures have been knowingly published by an editor called Piers Morgan.
King Heelers turns to face the audience.
He is a handsome dog. I'll give him that.
There is a hush.

King Heelers: "This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi paradise,
This fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England..."

King Heelers The Second breathes heavily a la Richard Harris and resumes speaking.

King Heelers: "This England that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
I mean when PG Wodehouse made a few radio broadcast for the Nazis,
He never dared show his face in Britain again.
He could never return home but had to move to America after World War Two.
And look at this git.
He hath not the wit, nor the brain, nor the mind of a Wodehouse.
His treachery like his life is pissant through and through.
But all the more traitorous for it.
He hath pissed upon our dead soldiers.
He hath gone in to bat for Al Qaeda because he thought he might sell a few Daily Mirrors.
And look at him.
Not for him the honorable shame of a Wodehouse.
No.
He swans around the Free World as though he owns the gaffe.
Presenting chat shows.
Interviewing other traitors like unto himself.
Publishing books that augment his lies.
Judging talent competitions as though he could ever judge anything except treachery.
This purbloind bastard who was wont to betray England,
Now sings his bastardy in nightly show.
This Swine.
This Scum.
This Vomit.
This B-ll-cks.
This... Piers Morgan."

mere trifles

Driving along the open road to South Kildare.
Paddy Pup is sitting in the passenger seat.
He's singing his own inimitable version of Nutbush, a famous Tina Turner song.
His song goes:

"They call it Snufflebutt.
Oh Snufflebutt.
Snufflebutt city limits.
Dogs are in command in it.
Postmen gotta run through it.
Cats not allowed in it.
You can knock over bins in it.
They call it Snufflebutt.
Wo oh oh Snufflebutt.
Snufflebutt city limits.
Rubber bone outhousies.
Sprinkles on the lamp posties.
Stick throwing subsidies.
Government of and by the puppies
Snufflebutt.
Yo Snufflebutt.
Snufflebutt city limits.
Little ole town.
Made for sniffing around.
With no human laws.
Just perfect for licking paws.
Cos that's what a doggy does,
In Snufflebutt,
Oh Snufflebutt.
Snufflebutt city limits.
Tumbledown jail.
If you get drunk, no tail.
Compulsory to wag in it.
Great to chew a rag in it.
Yeah we call it Snufflebutt,
Oh Snufflebutt,
Snufflebutt city limits."

The expression on my face shows I'm not too impressed.
"If you think you can do any better..." suggests Paddy Pup grumpily.
I need no further invitation.
I sing:

"I study Spanish with Spanishies.
I love my classes.
My teachers are lovely girls,
They've got great asses.
Things are good.
And they're only getting better.
The Iranian proxy army in Gaza,
Will be mounting no more raids.
The future's so bright,
I gotta wear shades."

We drove on in a somewhat awkward silence.
"What's that song about?" enquired Paddy Pup after a minute.
"It's about nuclear war," I replied softly.

cooee johnston press

Laura Noonan in an excellently researched piece in the Irish Independent on Saturday, referred to growing doubts about the proposed sale of Irish newspaper titles owned by the Johnston Press.
Her exact words were:

"Embattled UK publisher Johnston Press is expected to update the market on its efforts to sell 14 Irish newspapers in the company's interim management statement on Wednesday. Johnston had hoped to identify a preferred bidder this week, but deliberations are understood to be ongoing. Some now speculate the papers may not be sold if the bids come in around the €40 million mark, as recently reported."

Good girl Laura. Nicely done. I love a little light reading in the morning.
But I gotta tell you.
Some of us are speculating that there are no real bids at all.
Some of us have been predicting no real bids for the Johnston Press titles for months now.
My own personal analysis is this: After the Johnston Press fired me from the Leinster Leader, they incurred the wrath of God in which case they will have no luck with any of their business ventures but will instead be sent down to Gehenna.
Something else I've been wondering.
If the Irish titles are generating the millions Johnston Press say they are...
Why the hell are they selling them???
Can't wait for that interim report on Wednesday.
It should be a hoot(s mon).

Hey Johnston Press...
Is it possible...
Is it just a teensy weensy bit possible...
... That the wrong people have been getting fired?

what hath God wrought