The Photographer's Eye (with Enrica Cecchini)

through restful fields he leadeth me
*********************************

A sunny and quiet corner of the northern Lazio countryside, in central Italy. The hammock beckons. This is one of my favourite places when I need to get away from the stresses and strains of big city life. Enrica

a summer storm at kilcullen

the evening concerto has begun
sweeping through twilight from the fields
a masterwork of music at random
rain drums on window sill and eaves
its off note lyric rhapsody in grey
as squalls gust lustily in sprays
a bullock bells forlorn out of sight
light sound and shadow harmonise
at once a dreary monotone of night
at once a heady gloriole of praise
that says it all about this place
it's torn me in my love and hate for it
village prison earthly paradise
small town insensate to my spirit
oh universe in me and i in it

top ten scandals of irish journalism

1. The Phoenix magazine publishes a picture of the McCartney sisters labelled The Spice Girls. Possibly the singlemost disgusting editorial decision ever made in this country. The sisters had been involved in a high profile campaign to expose the murderers of their brother. A group of Sinn Fein/IRA members had slaughtered the McCartney sisters' brother (himself a Sinn Fein activist) by slashing him open with a knife. It is remarkable that State Sector money, in particular FAS Board advertising, should continue to be placed with the Phoenix magazine. Who exactly makes these decisions? Why do people like me end up supporting the Phoenix magazine through the placing of public moneys with their advertising department?

2. A senior editor at the Irish Times comments after Nine Eleven: "I am terrified of what the Americans will do." Well folks, I thought it was a vomitous thing to say. I always remember it when the Irish Times tries to pose pro American at this time of year around the Fourth Of July.

3. Ian O'Doherty writing in the Irish Independent newspaper, falsely, mendaciously, malignly and coward-lily claims that the Catholic church is a paedophile ring.

4. Ger Colleran, editor of the Daily Star, falsely mendaciously, malignly and coward-lily claims on RTE television that children were screaming for help in every Catholic church presbytery in Ireland.

5. Heather Parsons, editor of a television listings magazine called The RTE Guide, has a Christian conversion at the town of Medjugorje where several people have claimed to be having visions of the Virgin Mary. Heather Parsons herself claims to have seen Jesus Christ in the sun at Medjugorje. When she returns to Ireland, for some reason, her position at RTE becomes untenable. She leaves and initiates legal proceedings against RTE. These proceedings are settled out of court with a large cash payment to Heather Parsons. Meanwhile sales of the RTE Guide collapse. It transpires that Heather Parsons was in fact the most successful editor of any publication in the history of the Republic of Ireland. It transpires that while she was in charge The RTE Guide was selling nearly half a million copies. This in a country with a population of three and a half million people. After she leaves, sales of The RTE Guide plummet to a level of less than one hundred thousand. We might wonder who exactly decided Heather Parsons should no longer work at The RTE Guide. We might wonder did some of the heroes at RTE take a dim view of her Christian conversion. Management at RTE pretend the decline in The RTE Guide's fortunes came about through increased competition and changes in the marketplace. But there has been no precedent in the English speaking world for the collapse in sales at The RTE Guide. Nothing like it in Ireland, Britain, Australia, Canada, or America.

6. The only case whose aftermath I find vaguely likenable to the treatment of Heather Parsons at The RTE Guide, was my own firing by a British company called the Johnston Press from an Irish provincial newspaper called the Leinster Leader three weeks before Christmas of 2007. When the Johnston Press fired me, the company had a share price of £4. A year later the same company was listed on the British stock exchange for a few pennies per share. I've always wondered about the Johnston Press and the Leinster Leader. Is it at all possible that the wrong people were getting fired?

7. Journalist Charlie Bird, long a stalwart of the RTE newsroom, is revealed to have been a member of the Communist Party. When challenged about this Charlie Bird replies: "I was a member of a fairly innocent Communist Party." I often wondered did his membership of this fairly innocent Communist Party affect his objectivity when reporting on the United States of America, the Cold War, the War On Terror, and everything bloody else. History will decide.

8. Carole Coleman of RTE makes a name for herself by barracking President George Bush in an interview. Determinedly putting Ireland on the wrong side of history. I wonder how she'll like Sharia Law. We'll find out soon enough.

9. Metro, a new free sheet newspaper in Dublin, publishes a photograph of a naked woman in bed with a pig. The woman is an artist and the picture part of her exhibition. The photo is presented to the readers as though the newspaper is inviting us to make up our own minds about whether her violation of an animal as depicted in art can ever be justified. But really it is just a salacious piece of sad tasteless pornographic tripe. The saddest piece of sensationalism I have ever seen. It was just mean. To do that to the pig. It was just lousy. It left a very sour taste. I took one look at it and said: "Well, well, well, that's not so clever. I shall never look at Metro again." It has been remarkably easy to stick to that resolution. I would suggest that whoever decided to publish that photo single handedly killed any chance of success for the new free sheet. I wonder how many people felt the same as me when they saw the silly little half witted girl disrespecting the innocent creature. Metro is hemorrhaging cash. Literally, they can't give it away. Always a bad sign for a free sheet. I'm told it's part owned by the Irish Times. The great liberal, fembo, commie, environmentalist, animal rights, free the gay whales from Guantanamo bay, galoots. Hilarious, no? Ah that the Lord the grace would g'ie us, to see ourselves as others see us.

10. All media groups in Ireland continue to turn a blind eye to collusion during the Cold War between Irish Times journalists and the Russian KGB in Moscow. This untold story is the greatest scandal of the last fifty years of Irish journalistic life. Ironically only the opprobrious Phoenix magazine has sought to bring the story into the public domain with some oblique mentions. The Phoenix described how one recently deceased Irish Times journalist had been in Moscow during the Cold War and implied he was taking directions from KGB handlers. It was suggested that he had been drawing up for his Soviet masters a list of non communist Irish journalists to be detained when Russian Communists finally succeeded in taking over Ireland. Are these suggestions by the Pheonix magazine about an Irish Times journalist in cahoots with the KGB, true or false? I think we should be told.

the trouble with uighurs

Watching the rather surrealistic reportage on the news channels of this week's Al Qaeda uprising in north western China. Most of the satelite news channels are in a state of denial about what is going on. We are told the riots involve members of the oppressed Uighur Muslim ethnic minority who our gullible newsmen insist are merely attempting to assert their rights in the face of Chinese repression. I do not agree with this analysis. I am loathe to judge any people harshly who have been compelled to live under a communist dictatorship. But the Uighurs are not an oppressed people. Here is the news. The Uighurs are Al Qaeda. And over the course of the last few days none of the satelite television channels, and almost none of our liberal left decayed obsolete declining ceasing to exist newspapers, almost none of em I say, have deigned to so much as mention Al Qaeda in their coverage of the situation. Most hilariously, Al Jazeera, the Nazi channel managed to report on the Uighur violence tonight without even once mentioning Muslims. The gorgeous Ghida Fakhry Nazi who presents the flagship news programme for Al Jazeera was questioning the station's on the spot China reporter the delectable Melissa Chan. "What has brought these tensions to the fore?" wondered Ghida Fakhry adorably. "I can't hear you," answered Melissa Chan. Seriously though they're doing a wonderful job. You've got to feel sorry for Al Jazeera. They're anxious not to offend the Chinese because many Arab Muslim Nazis regard China as a useful tool for distracting the United States of America and the free world. China is playing a key role in propping up the Arab murderocracy in Sudan at the moment. Without China, that particular Al Qaeda affiliate in Sudan could no longer exist. So Al Jazeera, normally so partisan in favour of Al Qaeda terrorists, whom it still insists on referring to rather quaintly as "fighters," has positively dithered in its coverage of the Uighurs. Poor old Al Jazeera can't make up its mind whether the Nazis can afford yet another superpower enemy. Al Qaeda itself is in no doubt. Al Qaeda has always shown a certain disinclination to play the long game. Truly it is at war with everybody. Even with those idiot countries (Communist China and Putin's Russia) who it uses occasionally as allies to disrupt American interests in various regional conflicts. Thus after Nine Eleven, rather than just playing smart and focussing on riding out the American backlash, the Muslim Al Qaeda psycho Nazis opened up other fronts all over the planet earth, bombing schools and theatres in Russia, murdering policemen in China, launching a wave of intercommunal blood letting in the Philippines and Thailand, and carrying out massive bombings across the Muslim world, particularly in Indonesia and Pakistan. All this while blowing up trains and buses in England and Spain, murdering a Prime Minister and a film director in the Netherlands, attempting to poison the water supply in Rome, slaughtering an Irish teenager on Grafton Street Dublin, and torching French cities nightly for the sheer hell of it. No one has ever accused Al Qaeda of being logical. Yet as long as CNN, Sky News, ABC, CBS, NBC, the BBC, Channel Four, Newsweek, Time Magazine et al (particularly Al, I hate him) as long as these appeasing shites continue to turn a blind eye to what Al Qaeda is doing, as long as the reporters of the free world continue to seek ways to interpret each new terrorist outrage as resulting from localised conditions and nothing to do with the broader Al Qaeda conspiracy against the world, as long as our half witted media group shills play the Demonise-George-Bush-Game, as long as they do so, the human race will live under the shadow of the scythe. Here is the news. The current attempted uprising in China is an Al Qaeda operation. The Uighurs are not like the innocent peaceloving Tibetans whose country was invaded by the Chinese Communist Party in 1959. The Uighurs are not a peaceful people. The Uighurs are an Al Qaeda franchise. They are a Muslim separatist movement operating in a region that is an historic part of China. Among the detainees cheerfully released from Guantanamo Bay last month by President Stylish, were more than a dozen Uighur Al Qaeda terrorist killers who could scarcely believe their luck at being set free to kill again, and immediately went into CNN mode: "I don't know how I got here. The Americans tortured me. George Bush, him heap bad man." Bloody hell. Barack is going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Why don't you nuke swine flu Barack? That's about your speed. Oh yeah, and save the environment. Dreadful incompetent. Dreadful dreadful. Dreadful. Barack's slogan "yes we can" should now be taken up by Al Qaeda. Meaning, yes we can get out of Guantanamo Bay. Yes we can plan new and limitless massacres of citizens of the free world. Yes we can detonate atomic bombs in western cities. They can and they will. Or if not, why not? Bloody hell. But I digress. I would counsel you all to withold your support from this new Muslim secessionist movement composed of Uighur Muslims attempting to detach Xinjiang province from China. In our lifetimes we have seen inmigrating Muslims detach regions from several other countries, most notably Kosovo from Serbia last year, and Northern Cyprus from Cyprus in the 1970's. I would say it is not a good idea to encourage Muslim immigrants to detach provinces from countries that give them a home. It sets a bad precedent. It confuses em. You won't hear it on CNN but the Uighurs are not worth your sympathy. They are a separatist movement working for Al Qaeda. They are nothing else. In fact already, they have become the purveyors of a singularly twisted Al Qaeda miracle. They have put the Communist Party of China in the right.

the poet's dilemma

there is no rhyme for arses
that parses

vignette

Feeling laid low by life.
Uncle Jim dropped in for a visit and my spirits rose.
Somewhere in the midst of the chat he remarked that Aunty Philo had told him an interesting thing on her death bed.
"It was the night she died," he recalled. "She told me that she had been visited every night throughout her sickness. That she had never felt love like it. That it was so much better than human love."
I grinned.
This sort of thing shouldn't come as such a surprise for one who thinks he's believed for years.
But here's the thing.
If you take a step towards Jesus you're going to be surprised.
And you're going to keep on being surprised.
If you take a single step towards Jesus you will discover not only that he is true, but also that his truth is greater than anything you have ever imagined.

testify heelers testify

Bagel Cafe in Lucan waiting for the Light of the Russias.
By chance I came across a copy of the Irish Independent.
It was lying on a table beside me.
The cover date was Thursday 2nd of July 2009.
I picked it up distastefully and began flicking.
On page four there was an article by something called John Cooney.
John Cooney's article claimed parishioners had walked out of a Tipperary church to protest at the unavailability of a priest to say mass.
John Cooney noted that he himself "applauded the gesture as a sacramental boycott."
Hmmm.
Let us try to explain to this dedicated servant of Independent Newspapers who now seems to wish to pose as a Catholic, let us try to explain to him the sheer cretinism of his notion about boycotting the sacraments.
Let us try to explain to him what the sacrament of communion means to those of us who really are Catholic.
And not just posing.
We shall use small words so he'll have a chance of understanding.
The sacrament of communion is the real presence of the creator of the universe in bread and wine at the mass ceremony.
None of us are going to be boycotting the sacrament of communion.
Not now.
Not ever.
The sacrament of communion doesn't owe us anything.
Nor does the Catholic church owe us anything.
Nor does God owe us anything.
We rejoice in the church.
We live in communion.
We serve God.
Not the other way around.
None of us are going to boycott our own rejoicing.
None of us are going to boycott the source of our own lives.
None of us are going to boycott God.
We may boycott John Cooney's God though.
By which I mean we may boycott Mr Tony O'Reilly and Sons, Prop Independent Newspapers.
In fact, many of us, perhaps most of us, have already been boycotting Independent Newspapers.
The irony is that we still end up financing Independent Newspapers and its huge bank debts, because our kleptocratic Fianna Fail government insists on giving Independent Newspapers limitless amounts of our money in the form of State Sector and Health Board advertising.
But we're not going to be boycotting the royal truth of the universe any time soon.
For those who boycott the unutterable truth of God are merly choosing to cease to exist.
That is how Catholics feel about communion.
And John Cooney doesn't speak for us.
Not for any of us.
Not now.
Not ever.
Towards the end of his article John Cooney writes: "In calling for a sacramental boycott, the Irish laity need to challenge Rome and Maynooth to supply leaders at the eucharistic table."
Pure drivel.
No member of the Irish laity has called for a sacramental boycott.
The phrase is John Cooney's.
His alone.
Let him take responsibility for it.
Before God and man.
I flicked on through the Irish Independent.
On page 24 there was an article by someone called Kevin Myers.
Kevin Myers' article touched on various recent events, including the death of Michael Jackson, the rescue of a little girl called Bahiya Bakari from the Indian ocean after an airline crash, and the death of a little boy called Mohammed Junaid Hussein who Myers says was struck by lightning last week in England.
Myers concludes with the following words:
"There is no reason to birth, to death, nor to those events between the two, which we call life. They just are, and that is that."
Ah yes, gentle travellers of the internet.
At least Myers is honest.
This is his world view.
In truth it is also the world view of the whole of Independent Newspapers.
Most of them attempt to conceal it.
So Myers in his miserable egotistical unctious presumptuous vanity has at least a smidgen of integrity, and I salute him for it.
But his keynote is not integrity.
His keynote is arrogance.
Of course Myers is not merely arrogant but also wilfully ignorant.
But still let it be said moderately honest about his own misery.
He doesn't for a moment believe he is accountable to God for what he does.
And I say again.
Neither does anyone else in Independent Newspapers.
And at least Myers is honest.
As honest as a miserable lying atheistic servitor of the O'Reilly family and Independent Newspapers can be.
So Myers says life has no meaning.
We might wonder as to his qualifications to come to that conclusion with such gormless certitude.
I say gormless certitude.
There is another sort of atheistic certitude, well informed though just as misguided.
I had the privilege of being terrified once by the confident anti God statements of an Oxford Univerisity Brit atheistic genius called Professor Flue.
Flue was genuinely a genius.
He was genuinely terrifying.
All my own atheisms were laid bare by his clinical rationalistic expose of faith and belief.
Flue was sneering about the Catholic church and the possibilities of there being a God.
He sneered with such elan.
His beautiful cut glass finely modulated British accent rang with clear unswerving irresistable godlessness.
I have never felt so defeated.
I felt a stone in my heart.
I could never match this.
Unlike the fervourless O'Reilly apparatchik Kevin Myers, this Professor Flue knew his stuff.
Perhaps at the end of the day, we might honestly conclude that Professor Flue is one of the two finest minds of a generation.
(Modesty prevents me from naming the other one.)
I was privileged to be terrified of Professor Flue's sneers about God.
And I was privileged again to see Professor Flue on television twenty years later saying with quiet dignity:
"You see we thought there was limitless time for evolution to have occurred. But that's just not so. From the rationalist point of view it's just not so. From the scientific point of view it's just not so. And then for me the big difference came as we found out more and more about the complexity of the DNA molecule. The building blocks from which human beings are composed. It was just so impossibly wondrously complex. In all honesty I do not see how it is possible either rationally or scientifically to say it came about by chance."
Maybe Kevin Myers knows better.
Maybe his simple sneering is more finely evolved than the analysis of the world's finest theoretical scientist.
We hear lots about atheistic scientists, don't we?
We hear less about atheistic scientists who state honestly and openly that atheism is now for them rationally and scientifically untenable.
But maybe Kevin Myers and Independent Newspapers for all their lack of principle, qualifications, wisdom, experience, intellect and insight, maybe these worthless buffoons, maybe they know better.
Better than the simple peasant theoretical biophysicists anyway.
Everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame, eh Kevin?
Get off the toilet you horrendous c---.
You're shat around too long for any good you've been doing.
But I digress.
Kevin Myers lists a few tragic accidents and thinks he's disproven the creator of the universe.
Be assured.
Myers is gormless.
Yes indeed.
Genuinely gormless.
Tragically gormless.
All the more gormless because he claims he's an intellectual.
I flicked on a few more pages through the Irish Independent.
I came to page 36.
And lo.
What clown through yonder window breaks.
It is the east.
And Ian O'Doherty is the scum.
Sure enough my eyes had fallen on an article by a nobody called Ian O'Doherty.
Here's larks, thinks I.
Ian O'Doherty is most famous for having written a few weeks ago in the Irish Independent that the Catholic church is a paedophile ring.
Now he was writing about an advertising campaign for ice cream featuring a male model dressed as a priest kissing a female model dressed as a nun.
A picture of the advertisement gilded O'Doherty's semi literate prose.
O'Doherty asserted that it was baffling how anyone could be offended by an ad for a frozen milk product.
Missing the point surely?
It wasn't what the ad was for that had caused any concern.
It was the crass insulting commercialistic manipulation of the symbols of our religion which some of us considered to be, well, crass insulting commercialistic manipulation.
We weren't really offended though.
It's only people like O'Doherty who get offended.
The rest of us actually have a vibrant intellectual critical faculty about life, the universe, and our popular culture, which we express freely wherever and whenever we want.
(Except when it applies to Monica Leech. - Ed note.)
We're not really all that offended by the persecution of the Catholic church in the modern era.
But we certainly know what it is.
And we call it what it is.
Persecution.
The media of Ireland and certain shadowy figures within the judiciary and the political establishments of the Republic of Ireland and elsewhere, and certain cosmically cretinous hangers on like O'Doherty, are seeking to destroy the Catholic church as a platform for public influence.
There's no mystery about what they are doing.
They are doing so either knowingly or unknowingly in service to satan.
There you go.
That's my analysis.
The interesting thing gentle travellers of the internet, is that I'm rarely wrong.
When I call O'Doherty a worthless tit.
When I suggest there's an international satanistic conspiracy to enslave the human race.
Rarely wrong.
After that you make up your own minds.
Offended, moi?
What's to be offended by?
Some little scruff in Independent Newspapers telling lies about the ancient religion?
Offended by it?
Really?
Me?
No.
I call a scruff a scruff.
And a bastard a bastard.
And a worthless oleaginous toad a worthless oleaginous toad.
I'm not in the business of being offended by an atheistic Tony O'Reilly adoring coward like O'Doherty whose lies about the Catholic church will never be forgotten.
No, I'm not in the business of taking offence.
I'm in the business of causing offence.
It's how I get my jollies.
B-st-rd.
Thank God I'm perfect, that's all I say.
Arf, arf.
A little James humour there.
It always does to lighten the mood now and then when you're writing about cowardly mendacious Tony O'Reilly worshipping scum.
Speaking of which, Ian O'Doherty finishes his article with the following sentence:
"But perhaps these people are missing the point - after all in the wake of the revelations about child abuse we've had to try and stomach over the last few months, most people would actually be quite content to think that Irish priests and nuns are having sex with each other rather than the children in their care."
Ah yes.
It's a measure of his class isn't it.
Ian O'Doherty wrote those words and the Irish Independent printed them.
I folded the newspaper.
You've got to understand folks.
These people have no courage, no insight and no journalistic ability.
On the same day that John Cooney called for a boycott of God, and Kevin Myers asserted manfully that there is no meaning to life, and Ian O'Doherty once more compounded his cowardice with yet more lies about the Catholic church, all in the Irish Independent, on precisely the same day, figures were published showing the net indebtedness of Independent Newspapers to be in excess of 1.5 billion Euro. That's one thousand five hundred million.
You must understand folks.
They can't run a newspaper more incompetently than they are doing at present.
There are no losses that can compel Independent Newspapers to wake up and smell the heather.
There are no losses that will ever force these people to end the mendacious liberal posturings of John Cooney, or the mendacious atheism of Myers, or the mendacious juvenile cowardice of O'Doherty.
If losses of 1.5 billion can't stop them, nothing on earth can.
Except God.
You know Cooney, Myers and even the omnipotent O'Doherty really are accountable to God.
(Impotent O'Doherty surely? - Ed note.)
I am not their judge.
They will answer to God directly.
I hope he gives em a good root in the bawls.
(I will. - God note.)
Independent Newspapers though, before facing God, will probably more immediately be accountable to the market.
It will go bust.
Like the Johnston Press who fired me from the Leinster Leader three weeks before Christmas, it will cease to exist.
I say it again.
Independent Newspapers is not going to change.
Short of a Christian conversion among senior management nothing can change them.
Certainly not the collapse of their business.
They owe 1.5 billion quid.
You can't run a company any worse than in such a way that it produces losses of 1.5 billion quid.
That's like a corrupt collapsing bank debt.
Yes they've declared annual profits for the past two decades.
But we can all use accountancy tricks to declare annual profits of a few bucks if in actuality we are in hock to idiot banks to the tune of 1.5 billion quid.
The Heelers Diaries could declare profits of a hundred million a year if some idiot bank would give me a billion to play around with over the next decade.
That's how it's done.
So they're not going to change for commercial reasons.
They've been given money by idiot banks regardless of whether they have any readers or not.
There has been no requirement for them to change.
Until now when the reality check has kicked in.
You know, anti Catholicism was never as clever or profitable as these aardvarks claimed it was.
Aardvarks?
Independent Newspapers management and editorial cadres are made up of poor little Marxist rich kids the flotsam of pseudo intellectual Irish university life in the 1960's.
They were recruited from our universities to form the core ethos and values of Independent Newspapers management from the 1970's through to the present day.
After all the pseudo radicalism of their university days, they suddenly found they weren't so opposed to capitalism after all.
Or at least not to corporatism.
The worst dysfunction of the capitalist system.
The rise of large companies who aren't really accountable to anyone.
The poor little rich Marxists found they could happily serve in such corporate entities.
Tities, indeed.
The great Aonghus Fanning at the Sunday Independent.
The immortal Emmylou Harris.
Dribblers all.
They became champions of hedonism and the atheistic lifestyle.
Perpetually at war with the Catholic church which was the only real threat to their power.
Every year they told us how popular they were.
Every year they declared magnificent profits.
Until at the end of twenty years we discovered that the whole newspaper group is drowning in 1.5 billion dollars of debt.
Seriously though, they've done a brilliant job.
This decrepit outmoded crop of anti Catholics on Independent Newspapers' management and staff have all but killed a 200 year old company.
There's no going back.
Most of us wouldn't p-ss on them now if they were on fire.
The market has already given them all the warnings they're going to get.
Independent Newspaper is going to sink beneath the waves.
And the last thing you'll hear as Independent Newspapers finally does go down, will be John Cooney, Kevin Myers and Ian O'Doherty hunched on the poop deck still screaming their infantile lies about the Catholic church.
And the band played on.
Glub.
Glub.
Glub.
It's the only song they know.
Let's see if I'm right.
Again.
Here endith the lesson.

hartigan's stallion

animal from birth
the fire within
drove to the hill tops
creature of the wind
sinew spirit storm
smitten into form
with half forgotten dreams
the mountains the forests and the streams
your temple
your refuge
your domain

a rooskie in dublin

TANNING OBSESSION!

by Irina Kuksova

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

It's written in the Commandments of our culture that a tan equals health, wealth and a better quality of life. It gives you a certain status. If you are really tanned, you:

(a) Have money to burn on an exotic holiday or lead an active life outdoors.

(b) Take care of the way your body looks.

The above is true for the countries that can boast proper Summers. What I find incredibly strange is why the tan is so fashionable in Ireland where the most likely way of gettting it, seems to be in a solarium or by using immoderate amounts of fake tan cream. (And before you say that a tanned Irish person is a just-back-from-a-holiday Irish person, let me point out that the latter is much more often BURNED, not tanned.)

Now being tanned is an intrinsic part of life in Mediterranean countries. There you get that 'brownie' look just by leaving your house once in a while. Plus since you are likely to get heatstroke if you wear anything more than a bikini/trunks, at least you know by the end of the day you are going to get more than just a bit of colour in your nose. Mediterranean tanning fans keep their status quo through the Winter by getting a five minute solarium session for hands and face only. Note that this is not to get from 'white chocolate' to 'milk chocolate' tint. It's to get from 'milk chocolate' to '80 percent cacao.'

In Ireland if you want a golden tint, you gotta seize that sunny weekend. Even if you're lucky though, on Sunday night we see more red tanners than golden ones. It always seems to come as a surprise to the Irish that one can have too much sun. But not too worry. Once the flaky skin is gone and the new tender white layer is revealed, the whole process can be repeated time and time again. It gets technically understandable why you might want to consider using fake tan after all.

We keep wanting to be the opposite of ourselves. Filippino beauties hide from the sun under umbrellas, popping tan inhibiting tablets. Irish beauties loll beneath the occasionally blazing sun trying to get a Cadbury tint at any cost... The answer probably lies in a more natural approach. Liking yourself, accepting yourself the way you are, and more to the point enjoying who you are. Fashionable things are usually the least natural. It's more natural to like all kinds of chocolate.

The Photographer's Eye (with Enrica Cecchini)

My Blue Heaven
****************

Howth on a lovely sunny day. My second day in Ireland. When I saw this I thought: "Oh my God, I want to live here, right here in the lighthouse." The very next day the weather was terrible. I thought: "Thank God I don't live in that lighthouse." So you see, everything depends on the moment. Everything is relative. Enrica

one man can make a difference

Another day, another demo.
If you had passed through Dublin late yesterday evening you might have seen a very handsome poet halted in his tracks in the middle of O'Connell Street.
He was looking at the latest batch of protestors to set up shop near the Spire monument.
These ones had placards condemning the Iranian government's theft of the recent elections in that country and the ensuing murders, intimidations, crackdown and imprisonment of ordinary people there.

There were maybe about forty protestors standing at the roadside in the centre of Dublin.

But no Irish Times types this time.

No Irish at all.

Apparently this cause isn't so trendy.

Wordlessly I crossed the road.
I shook hands with one of the protestors.
"Well done," I said.

on the turn of the tide

in the clammy stillness
of a calm monsoon
you came to me
pointed to the window
and a spanish galleon moon
sail with me
sayeth thou
the tide is turning soon

i woke to find i slept
i wept

darkness visible

Coffee with Valeria in Arnotts Cafe.
She took off her jacket as she sat down.
Underneath she was wearing a low cut blouse.
My eyes widened.
Ah, the trembling of the leaf indeed.
When I'd managed to restore my equilibrium, I espied a collection of ornaments hung around her neck.
"What are those?" I enquired, pointing.
"My breasts," shot back Valeria.
The noble Heelers released a deep sigh.
"You don't need to tell me that," I said. "I'd have figured it out eventually. And that's an arm, right? And down there, you've get legs? Okay. What I was asking about are your jewels. What are they?"
She grinned.
A baby at the table beside us let out a single shriek loud enough to wake the dead.
"They're religious symbols," explained Valeria unperturbed by the baby or by my roving eyes. "I don't believe in any one religion. So I have these."
The noble Heelers peered closely, trying not to let his attention wander southwards.
"Who's that?"
"He's Buddha."
"And this one?"
"That's Christian."
There was a a third symbol.
I couldn't see it clearly.
"So you don't believe in any one religion?" I asked.
"No, they're all the same."
"But do you not think Jesus is real?" said I.
"I think he existed but that's it," she replied.
"And you've no other opinion of him?" I wondered.
"I wear his symbol because I think he was a great guy," she said carefully.
"But if you think he's a great guy why don't you accept what he said about himself?" I persisted.
"I don't know what he said about himself," she said without hesitation.
"What about the Bible?"
"I don't believe that."
"But it's the source of the reasons you think he's a great guy."
"Look James, I don't care about any of that. I believe what I believe and I'm not going to change. Just like you're not going to change. You only believe in Jesus because your parents taught you to believe. I believed it once. But I don't believe anymore."
Gentle readers of the internet a part of me wanted to debate with her and win.
But nowadays I know the only act of faith I can make is for myself.
I became quite calm.
I waited just in case God would tell me to come out with some cracking one liner.
No words came.
My spirit grew still.
Something directed me.
"Valeria," I said softly. "Tell me that third symbol is not a picture of the devil."
Her beautiful hispanic features shrouded in confusion.
Her eyes fell.

an open letter to garry o'sullivan editor of The Irish Catholic newspaper

Dear Garry O'Sullivan Editor Of The Irish Catholic Newspaper.
It has come to my attention that you are editor of a newspaper styling itself The Irish Catholic.
By what right do you use this title for your newspaper?
Have you been given a dispensation from heaven to describe yourselves as The Irish Catholic?
I want you to understand Garry O'Sullivan of The Irish Catholic newspaper, that I do not consider you a Catholic, nor do I consider your newspaper is Catholic, and nor do I accept you have the right to use the title The Irish Catholic for the commercial trading entity you currently edit which is known as The Irish Catholic.
Just so's you know.
I'd hate to think you were doing all this without realising I opposed it.
Garry O'Sullivan you asserted in your editorial this week that The Irish Catholic newspaper would have been driven out of business if it had attempted to expose sex abuse cases within the Catholic church twenty years ago.
More precisely you stated:
"If that had happened I firmly believe there would be no Irish Catholic newspaper today. It just would not have been tolerated. It would have been seen as disloyal, beating a liberal secular drum."
Ah yes.
Us evil self styled Catholics would have been determined to hide the truth eh?
Remind me again.
How many newspapers have we driven out of business during the past twenty years of blatent anti Catholic media manipulation of sex abuse cases?
How many of em have we shut down exactly for their egregious and foul and mendacious attempts to destroy the Catholic Church by continually recycling the same sex abuse cases involving the same priests and ignoring the huge majority of cases which have taken place and are currently taking place in family homes at the hands of people who have no association with religious belief whatsoever?
Congratulations on your appointment as a Supreme Court Judge Garry O'Sullivan.
Presumably your appointment has come through.
Or else you wouldn't be in a position to find a whole generation of Christians guilty of a crime you just made up.
"If The Irish Catholic had exposed sex abuse..."
Really Garry O'Sullivan?
If!
Your newspaper exposed nothing, did it?
Because then as now it was a heap of crap.
But it's us vile peasants who are to blame because who knows what we'd have done if your newspaper had actually been doing its job!
Sound analysis there Garry O'Sullivan.
I don't think.
You just feel sure all us vile repressed peasants would have tried to shut down your whole enlightened saintly operation.
An instinct eh?
If, indeed!
The Irish Catholic never exposed anything.
And it never will.
It is the ultimate conformist rag usurping a name and title that does not belong to it.
I wonder will God recognise your copywright of the title The Irish Catholic.
You invidious commercialised little shits.
When The Irish Catholic as a trading entity perceived the country was generally culturally Catholic, it purveyed a most fervourless anodyne Catholicism for Catholic consumption which even today leaves a sour taste with those of us who remember it because its keynote was insincerity.
Now that your board of management thinks Independent Newspapers style liberalism is the order of the day, we are treated to you Garry O'Sullivan posing as a Catholic, clothing your liberal tosh with pseudo Catholic verbiage, and editing a publication which calls itself The Irish Catholic but which most of us regard as just another liberal atheistic propaganda hand out leaflet.
Your board of management has missed the boat by the way.
Even with State Sector and Health Board advertising Independent Newspapers has managed to run up debts of one thousand five hundred million quid.
Abysml scruff.
What do you think Garry O'Sullivan?
Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times and RTE all going down the toilet because us evil Catholics won't support them?
How evil of us.
I mean what right have we not to buy or finance newspapers and television stations we don't like.
How dare we.
To dare to actually have our own opinions and to act on them.
It's unthinkable.
How utterly autonomous, dignified, blessed with souls we are by the one true God.
It must be very frustrating for an enlightened fellow like yourself Garry O'Sullivan.
What do you think Garry O'Sullivan?
You that's so close to the Almighty that you can, at a stroke, condemn his followers to small minded hell.
What do you think?
Is Jesus coming back soon?
Or is that just stuff that evil Catholics make up to scare the children at night?
Give em condoms and let em off, eh Garry O'Sullivan?
The alternative is evil repressed Catholicism.
And we don't want that?
Do we?
Well you don't.
Let's be quite clear.
What you have written in your editorial is utterly false.
Every single newspaper in the Republic of Ireland has been beating a disloyal anti Catholic secular drum for the past forty years, never mind twenty.
In all that time, evil Catholics have driven a grand total of nought newspapers out of business.
Your premise is mendacious.
Those newspapers are actually finally going out of business through their own incompetence.
They forgot who their audience was.
They committed the same crime as newspapers everywhere.
They thought advertising was enough to make them viable.
They actually thought they didn't need any readers.
The Evening Herald, The Irish Independent, The Sunday Independent, The Sunday World, The Irish Times and The Daily Star have all blatently and consistently beaten the anti Catholic drum.
The real tragedy is not that Catholics tried to drive them out of business.
The real tragedy is that Catholics were required to finance them through government State Sector and Health Board advertising, even when many of us considered financing such entities to be entirely opprobrious, and when many of us were exercising our right as freely autonomous individuals not to buy the aforementioned anti Catholic crap sheets.
Freely autonomous individuals Garry O'Sullivan.
Entitled to buy newspapers if we want to buy them, or not to buy them if we don't want to buy them, as the case may be.
Entitled Garry O'Sullivan to make our own newspaper purchasing choices without a fake Catholic like yourself from a fake Catholic newspaper, standing in judgement on us and telling us how parochial and small minded and just plain evil we are.
Yes, many of us consider that The Irish Times, Indpendent Newspapers, RTE, et al, have no real concern about sex abuse.
If they cared about the victims why not make clear where most victims arise?
Why permit Ian O'Doherty to write in The Irish Independent that the Catholic church is a paedophile ring?
Why permit Daily Star editor Ger Colleran to falsely, malignly and mendaciously claim on RTE that children had been screaming for help in every Catholic church presbytery in Ireland?
Is there to be no compensation for religous people and churchmen who have been grotesquely libelled by O'Doherty and Colleran's utterly false and utterly cowardly lies as disseminated by Independent Newspapers and RTE?
A Public Relations consultant called Monica Leech got 300,000 quid in compensation from RTE after an anonymous caller suggested live on RTE radio that she had been giving blow jobs to a government minister in return for government contracts.
Monica Leech has just been granted 1.87 million in court against Independent Newspapers for their reportage of the events surrounding the same government contracts.
The Daily Mail paid her a paltry 100,000 for their attempts to describe the situation.
All this for Monica Leech.
And O'Doherty and Colleran via Independent Newspapers and RTE are to be permitted to calumniate and trahaise the faith of our fathers with impunity?
But I digress.
Catholics know that our media have been focussing on the tiny minority of sex abuse cases involving priests and ignoring the vast preponderance of cases which occur in the home or at the hands of passing pyschotics.
We know it well.
We know what's going on.
But through State Sector and Health Board advertising we were all compelled to finance Independent Newspapers, the Irish Times and the broadcaster RTE regardless of whether we approved of their manipulative atheistic anti Catholic agendas or not.
Joe Stalin would have been proud.
I gotta tell you Garry O'Sullivan.
This is an age of massive sexual dysfunction.
The only effect cultural Catholicism has had on this vile evil, has been to limit its effects.
In non Catholic countries, or countries where the faith has been marginalised more completely, the effects of psychosexualised, murderous, satanic sex abuse are everywhere more virulent and observably more prevalent.
Your assertion Garry O'Sullivan that any Christian would boycott a newspaper for telling the truth about sex abuse offends me deeply.
We have never had any fear of the truth.
And since the truth is that the media in Ireland has been using sex abuse cases to fulminate an atheistic pogrom against the ancient religion, why then, let that truth be told too.
And since the truth is that the media in Ireland, including your self styled Irish Catholic newspaper, have actually created the most violent atheistic society Ireland has ever seen, why then let that truth be told also.
And since the truth is that the media in Ireland have actually wilfully, knowingly and invidiously sought to destroy the church, and in the attempt have fostered the must unprecedented levels of child rape, child murder and child sacrifice to satan ever seen in this country, since this is all indupitably true, and since the media are hugely responsible for it and complicit in it, why then, let this truth be told as well.
Nay.
Let it be proclaimed from the rooftops.
Let truth be told and let heaven rain.
Here is the news.
The Irish Catholic newspaper is not Catholic.
The Irish Catholic newspaper is owned by another trading entity known as The Farmers Journal.
The Irish Catholic newspaper is a business.
I resent the fact that my seventy year old Aunty Teresa sells The Irish Catholic at the back of Kilcullen Church thinking she's supporting the ancient religion and faith of our fathers, when in fact she's supporting the balance sheet of The Farmers Journal and ensuring that you clypes have enough petrol to put in your BMWs.
Imagine my aunt and thousands of volunteers like her working for nothing to bring in money for the board of management of the Farmers Journal.
It's a fact.
She does.
I resent this seemingly inconsequential fact most of all, Garry O'Sullivan.
It seems to me to be a manipulation of an old lady by cynical skanks with no real commitment or belief in anything beyond the great god of cash flow.
I want you to put a stop to it Garry O'Sullivan.
Thank you for your time.
James Healy

special guest blogger the prophet joel

After this I shall pour out my spirit on all humanity.
Your sons and daughters shall prophesy,
your old people shall dream dreams,
and your young people see visions.
Even on the slaves, men and women,
shall I pour out my spirit in those days.
I shall show portents in the sky
and on earth,
blood and fire and columns of smoke.
The sun will be turned into darkness,
and the moon into blood,
before the day comes,
that great and terrible day.
All who call on the name of Yahweh
will be saved,
for on Mount Zion will be those
who have escaped,
as Yahweh has said,
and in Jerusalem a remnant
whom Yahweh is calling.

life and nothing but

Morning coffee with Doctor Barn at the Newbridge Silverware Cafe Des Beaux Parvenus Et Sexy Russian Waitresses.
I told him I had been thinking of confronting a sister in law I was feeling under pressure with.
He looked at me with undisguised horror.
His brotherly professorial doctoresque demeanour vanished.
He looked like nothing so much as the haggard old boxing coach in Rockie Three at the moment when Rockie told him he wanted to fight Mr T.
"Heelers," he rasped. "Are you mad? She'll kill you to death."
I left him and drove to Dublin.
Parked the car and took a stroll down O'Connell Street.
Found myself in the middle of a Palestinian pro terror rally.
I didn't exactly fit in.
Detaching myself from the valiant little group, I crossed the street and stood outside the General Post Office.
From there I contemplated the knot of demonstrators.
There were about twenty of them.
Some Irish Times types with their classically gormless faces.
Poor little rich boys.
Their worldview writ large in spoilt infantile expressions.
Catholic church repressed us.
If we can't have Soviet Rule we're gonna surrender to something worse.
My gentle preraphaelite features became a tad grim.
Those galoots are gonna just lap up Sharia law.
Hoo boy.
The rest of the demonstrators were real deal Palestinians, Pakistanis and a couple of Iraqis.
The sort of Iraqis who felt they had to leave Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government.
Lovely people.
Our kleptocratic Fianna Fail government has been handing out passports to the Muslim world hand over fist.
I'm sure they'll all make fine citizens.
They can't be much worse than Fianna Fail anyway.
The street rang briefly with mildly bigoted anti Israeli slogans.
Some of the Muslims had gotten a bit bored and were shouting about what they perceived to be the plight of the Gaza Strip.
Hint: They don't blame their own terrorist rulers or their own terrorist sponsors in Iran for their own wrecked society. It's all someone else's fault.
I toyed with the idea of shouting a few slogans of my own.
No more Al Qaedas.
No more Arab terror.
No more Islamist dictatorship in Iran.
No more Muslim holocaust deniers.
No more Syrian murders of Lebanese Presidents.
No more suicide bombings.
No more crashing passenger jets into sky scrapers in New York.
No more blowing up passenger airliners anywhere.
No more murders of Dutch Prime Ministers and Dutch film directors.
No more torching of French cities.
No more murders of French Jewish citizens.
No more blowing up trains in Madrid.
No more blowing up trains and buses in London.
No more Algerians murdering Irish teenagers on Grafton Street with baseball bats.
No more Saudi Arabian and Lebanese pseudo Sheikhs murdering their Filippino and Hindu housemaids whom they have reduced to the level of indentured slavery before they kill them.
No more murders of Arab girls by their fathers and brothers for the evil crime of wearing a short skirt.
No more Black Jacket Muslim crime gangs.
No more murders of young mothers like Baibite on the doorstep of her house in Dublin for the crime of wanting to leave her Lebanese gangster jailbird husband.
I thought of shouting these.
But I decided there have to be easier ways of committing suicide.
The sun was flooding through the city centre in a sea of light.
This should be a day for joy.
I walked around the corner onto Henry Street.
And lo!
I was slap bang in the middle of another demonstration.
Truly my cup runneth over.
A leggy girl pressed a pro abortion leaflet into my hands.
I eyed her legs keenly.
Here was a moral dilemma indeed.
Around me a swirl of young dudes lolled protestingly.
This demo had been organised by the Socialist Workers Party.
Socialist Workers indeed.
They didn't look like they'd ever done a day's work in their lives.
Arf arf.
A little socialist worker humour there.
I gave one last wistful look at Miss Legs.
It was time to find a quieter more protestor free environment.
I wandered off towards Arnotts cafe.
Perhaps there I would finally find a suitable outlet for my sublime talents.
Coffee drinking and idleness.
You know gentle travellers of the internet, we must all seek to make a difference to the world in the way we know best.

orchid at the chateau

my kingdom for a horse

Evening at the Chateau De Healy.
The noble Heelers enters the kitchen stage left in search of croissants.
He espies a bag of ye aforementioned croissants on the table.
He reaches for the bag and withdraws a croissant.
He stares.
The ends have been bitten off the croissant.
The mighty Heelers withdraws another croissant.
He jumps.
This too has had the ends bitten off it.
The finest mind of a generation withdraws the third and final croissant.
As expected the croissant has been serially bitten on both ends.
Heelers' gentle preraphaelite features go a bit gothic for a moment.
"Those bloody kids," he snarls. "They're taking the croissants out of the bag, biting them, and then putting them back in the wrapping."
The Mammy looks up from her crossword.
"It wasn't the kids," sez she mildly. "It was me."

at evening

footballers cheer a score
pat carroll shoots rabbits in the gloom
children steal crab apples
and farmer byrne calls the cattle home

perhaps this chaotic place
is not kilcullen in 1989
but a dusty frontier town
at the heart of ancient palestine

the sounds dissolve
into a muted half felt bliss
fluted by fond memory
and a strange provincial holiness