that old gag

Dedicated to Agents 98, 99 and 106 of the Russian FSB.

the monica leech sensitivity training in

The Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama Bin Laden meet in a pub in hell.

"What's the Prophet Muhammed like?" asks Osama.

His friend shrugs.

"Nobody knows," says the Ayatollah. "He has to walk around all the time with a rectangle in front of him that has the word CENSORED written on it."

idea for a pop music video that's unlikely to be aired any time soon

The song is a parody of a parody.
It is based on a tune called Star Trekking which was itself a homage to the old Star Trek television series.
Star Trekking as originally conceived featured a discordantly catchy beat and maniacal voice impressions of the television show's characters Captain Kirk, Mister Spock, Doctor McCoy, Lieutenant Uhuru and Engineer Scotty.
It's lyric ran in part:

"Star Trekkin
Across the universe,
On the Starship Enterprise
Under Captain Kirk
Star Trekkin
Across the universe,
Always going forward,
Cos we can't find reverse."

The new version will be called Star Muslims.
It begins like the original with a raucous burst of chorus.
It's best sung in the bath, or at United Nations conferences on the environment, or at Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies.


Chorus: "Psychotic Muslims
Across the planet earth
Trying to enslave humanity
Cos we are Muslim jerks.
Star Muslims
Want to kill you all
Or better yet a living death
Under Sharia Law."


Breathless female narrator: "Introducing... Captain Osama Bin Laden."


Osama's voice: "Islam is a religion of peace.
Blow you up.
Blow you up.
Islam is a religion of peace.
Blow you up Jim.
Islam is a religion of peace.
Blow you up.
Blow you up.
Islam is a religion of peace.
Blow you all to hell.
Scotty where's my suicide vest?"

Chorus: "Suicide bombin
Across the universe
On the star ship Al Qaeda
Cos we are Muslim jerks.
Star Muslims
Now you all must die
We just torched the city of Paris
And poisoned Rome's water supply.
Star Muslims
This song contains a clue.
We're gonna either kill
Or enslave the lot of you."


Breathless narrator: "Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini..."


Ayatollah Khomeini: "It's worse than that, it's a Fatwah Jim.
Fatwah Jim.
Fatwah Jim.
It's worse than that, it's a Fatwah Jim.
Kill Salman Rushdie
It's worse than that, it's a Fatwah Jim.
Fatwah Jim
Fathwah Jim
It's worse than that, it's a Fatwah Jim.
Kill Salman Rushdie.
And anyone else you feel like killing,
Nyah ha ha Gee Force."

Chorus: "Star Muslims
Across the universe
On our hijacked aeroplanes
Cos we are Muslim jerks.
Star Muslims
With more gory Muslim schlock
We just hacked up a Dutch PM
And slaughtered Theo Van Gogh."


Breathless Narrator: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran..."


President Ahmadinejad: "I'm a psycho Jim
But not as you know it.
Not as you know it.
Not as you know it.
I'm a psycho Jim
But not as you know it.
I'm full of Muslim crap.
Killin a few just ain't enough.
Ain't enough.
Ain't enough.
Killin a few just ain't enough.
Wipe Israel off the map."

Chorus: "Star Muslims
Across Western Europe
Infiltrating day and night
Cos we want to blow it up.
Star Muslims
You dunno what we did.
We just blew up trains and buses
In London and Madrid.
Star Muslims
We like our red meat raw
We love to commit mass murder
While invoking Sharia Law."


Breathless Narrator: "Libyan Leader Colonel Muammer Gadaffi."


Colonel Gadaffi: "Ye cannae change the laws of physics.
Laws of physics.
Laws of physics.
Ye cannae change the laws of physics,
Laws of physics Captain.
If you offer the Scots a billion dollar oil deal
A billion dollar oil deal
A billion dollar oil deal
If you offer the Scots a billion dollar oil deal
And concessions for British Petroleum
Then the Scots are always gonnae release the Lockerbie bomber
And reward mass murder with appeasement."


Chorus: "Star Muslims
Across the universe
On the star ship Mass Murder
Cos we are Muslim jerks.
Star Muslims
You gotta give us top billing
Our hobbies are Sharia Law
And an occasional honour killing.
Star Muslims
You've got nothing to fear
An occasional honour killing
Means just 5000 dead girls in Egypt alone every year."


Breathless Narrator: "The Profit Mooooohammed..."


Muhammed: "We come to kill.
Shoot to pieces.
Shoot to pieces.
Shoot to pieces.
We come to kill.
Shoot to pieces.
Scotty where's my tea?
We come to kill
With Saudi backers
Saudi backers
Saudi backers
We come to kill
We are head hackers
We are head hackers Jim
We come to kill
We are head hackers
We are head hackers
We come to kill
We are head hackers
Scotty watch your back.
We come to kill
With Saudi backers
Saudi backers
Saudi backers.
We come to kill with Saudi backers
Hey everyone
Fill your cars with oil."


Ayatollah Khomeini: "It's worse than that, it's Jihad Jim."


President Ahmadinejad: "Israel is dead Jim, dead Jim."


Colonel Gadaffi: "It's a billion dollar oil deal Captain, but not as we know it. Och aye. Allah U Akbar."


Osama: "Let us usher in the rule of the Mahdi by erasing the human race from the planet earth."


Lieutenant Uhura: "There's Muslims on the starboard bow,
Starboard bow
Starboard bow
There's Muslims on the starboard bow,
Scrape them off Jim."

Colonel Gadaffi: "Israel's nae gonna take it Capn. She's gonna blow."

And fade to black.

living water

 

stephens green

lesser spotted yobs

spreadeagle on the lawn

a long tied businessman

chirps into his phone

golden breasted secretaries

cluster round the fountain

preening at their feathers

and cackling with abandon

whilst an elephantine matron

trumpets for her young

and a herd of student sexalopes

gambol in the sun

each creature happy

in its cacaphonic fate

save a lone wolfen poet

hunting for a mate

the divine afflatus of archbishop diarmuid martin

 

the monica leech impoverish in

Some people say Ireland could not have been expected to avoid a banking crisis since a banking crisis has simultaneously hit nearly all developed countries worldwide.

Such analysts pretend Ireland could not be expected to be any different from the rest of the world.

They claim there really was no choice.

But Ireland is different from the rest of the world.

Ireland is different from the rest of the world in one respect.

Ireland is different from the rest of the world in that Ireland has the single most indebted bank on the planet earth.

That's how different we are.

No other bank on earth lost as much money, or owes as much money, as the corrupt gangster bank known as Anglo Irish Bank.

No other thief in any other bank on earth, stole as much as the boss of Anglo Irish Bank Sean Fitzpatrick stole, along with his board members and senior managers, aided and abetted by a bitch called Gillian Bowler who was head of another bank called Irish Life And Permanent which temporarily contributed 7 billion dollars to Anglo Irish Bank to help gerrymander its accounts and conceal its imminent collapse.

Anglo Irish Bank lost more money tham the largest American lossmaking bank Citibank.

Anglo Irish Bank is unique on the planet earth.

And get this.

Anglo Irish Bank was not even one of Ireland's three main banks.

It was a niche bank.

It could have been let go bust and it wouldn't have mattered one whit to the Republic of Ireland.

But it wasn't let go bust.

Because its customers, investors and borrowers, were members, friends and associates of Ireland's corrupt kleptocratic party of government Fianna Fail.

And now Fianna Fail has chosen to spend Ireland into the Third World in order to bail out Fianna Fail's personal bank.

The next generations will live in penury because of these thieves.

Penury being the new name for Sharia Law.

We're different from the rest of the world alright.

Our leaders chose to bankrupt our country and sell us out to the Islamists when there was absolutely no necessity to do so.

an open letter to gerard moloney editor of reality magazine

Gerard Moloney.
Your magazine which you title Reality claims in its front page slogan to be "informing, inspiring and challenging today's Catholic."
Like other essentially liberal atheistic publications which do not have the courage to admit their liberal atheism, you use the ancient, beautiful and true Catholic Church as a flag of convenience.
Gerard Moloney I am asking you to stop doing this.
I came across an edition of your magazine several months ago.
You had commissioned a female provincial journalist to write an article enquiring as to whether the Irish media was generally biased against the Catholic Church.
Gerard Moloney I wish to suggest to you that commissioning a provincial journalist with no hard news analytical skills to write on such a subject was disingenuous in the extreme.
A girl with a weather eye on a possible career beyond provincial journalism was never going to risk alienating the only three national media groups in the country, to wit Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times and the broadcaster RTE.
She was never going to risk alienating them even assuming she might have had the vocabulary or the principles to do so.
You knew full well that her soft soap and tosh talk about occasional anti Catholic bias from individuals was pure nonsense.
You knew Gerard Moloney,as well as I know, that Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times, and RTE are virulently anti Catholic organisations.
You knew Gerard Moloney that these organisations have for four decades manipulated sex abuse victims as a tool in their war against Christian values.
You knew Gerard Moloney as well as I do, that these organisations have hypocritically pretended to care about sex abuse victims while ignoring the 99.99 percent of sex abuse victims who weren't abused by Christian people and who were therefore no use to Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times and RTE in their propaganda war against the church.
You knew the identities of Soviet sympathisers, IRA terrorists and communist infiltrators working at the upper levels of RTE, Independent Newspapers and The Irish Times.
You knew all this Gerard Moloney.
Because everyone in journalism knows it.
And you knew the individual you commissioned to write an article about such bias would not have the insight, the vocabulary or the wherewithall to confront the anti Catholic bigots who have been seeking to destroy the church so that they themselves can remake Ireland in their own image.
You knew that the little girl writing the article could not begin to describe the conspiracy that is before our eyes.
You knew.
So her article was a tissue of flannel stating one thing, then stating the opposite and concluding nothing.
The girl's incompetence does not excuse her criminal concealment of what Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times and RTE have been doing to the church for forty years.
But the real responsibility is yours Gerard Moloney.
The premise of that article was a grotesque falsehood masquerading in cliches and designed solely to conceal the blatent media persecution of the ancient church while purporting to investigate the possibility of such bias.
That was the premise of the article Gerard Moloney and that was the lie you intended to propagate in commissioning the article from such a source.
I came across another copy of your magazine in May.
This edition purported to be examinging "the church in a time of crisis."
This edition was full of faux pious articles from liberal padres about what you and they alleged was a crisis in the church.
Several of your contributors feigned concern for sex abuse victims but none cared to feign concern for the hundreds of thousands of sex abuse victims in Ireland who are ignored because their abusers were not Catholic and whose victimhood therefore is of no use to liberals in their attempts to destroy the Catholic Church.
All sex abuse victims are important Gerard Moloney, but some sex abuse victims are more important than others, eh?
Not once did your contributors refer to the massive worldwide cultural conspiracy against the church, a conspiracy which is predicated on the misrepresentation of child abuse and the concealment by the media of the vast preponderance of child abuse victims who cannot be hijacked as tools against religion.
Your own editorial, heavily laden with puerile inuendos, called for the appointment of an "outsider" to investigate the church.
I think you showed your colours there.
But thinking people already know your colours.
I was interested enough by your May manipulations Gerard Moloney to check out your magazine a third time.
I purchased the June edition.
Your editorial in this edition adoped a new posture.
You posed as one who recognises the broad extent of sex abuse in society outside of the church.
You pretended that you too were concerned about broader societal abuses, and not just about the tiny minority of cases which have involved those posing as church members.
Your editorial was a snowjob Gerard Moloney.
It was designed to protect your own negligible credibility as a commentator on events.
And even as you posed and preened, you still found time for yet another bright shining lie.
Your editorial in this edition contained the following magnificently false statement:
"The media have done the Catholic Church in Ireland and throughout the world an extraordinary service in highlighting the problem of clerical sex abuse and its cover up."
It was perhaps the most crass of the lies you've been peddling.
It came, as I say, couched in an editorial which attempted to preserve for yourself some personal credibility by at last making minor mention of the facts about the true extent of sex abuse in our society, the epidemic of sexual dysfunction throughout our atheised culture that people like me have been struggling to bring to public attention.
Your editorial even deigned to refer to concerns about the care of children in Health Board custody.
Mighty big of you.
Big.
But perhaps a tad late.
Ireland's laicised liberal atheistic Health Boards have been presiding over the deaths of children in their care at a rate that would embarass the Marquis De Sade.
Yeah Gerard Moloney, you mentioned concerns about Health Boards in your snow job editorial.
Yet you made no reference to the deaths of the children in their care.
You made no reference to the fact that at least 160 children have been murdered in Health Board care in the past ten years.
Nor did you trouble to mention the fact that the Health Boards have been refusing to release files on the children murdered in their care.
Nor did you even so much as mention the deliberate Health Board concealment of these murders.
As you well know Gerard Moloney, up until a few months ago, the Health Boards were claiming only a dozen children had died in their care.
Hilarious Moloney.
Obviously when you're telling a lie, you like to tell a big one.
Your article admitted belatedly and in terms still designed to uphold the anti Catholic media pogrom against the church, that there was indeed an epidemic of sexual abuse across our society.
Well Gerard Moloney.
Your editorial was many things.
Machiavellian.
Dishonourable.
Venal.
Vile.
But never for a minute stupid.
I turned to the back of your magazine.
At the back of the June edition of your magazine, you have a quotes column.
The column featured a cornball quote from the American television personality Oprah Winfrey.
You quoted Oprah Winfrey as saying:
"My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment."
Semi literate cornball drivel.
Strangely while holding up the wisdom of Oprah Winfrey for our admiration, your magazine, which is so concerned about child sexual abuse, made no absolutely no mention of the systematic child sexual abuse at a school established by Oprah Winfrey in Africa.
Why?
Admittedly Winfrey is a bit new to the Educating The Starving Millions game and has arrived at the party a full two thousand years after the Catholic Church.
But why does she merit a free pass from you Gerard Moloney when the very first school she establishes turns out to be a cover for paedophiles violating and abusing children?
Your quotes column also featured a statement from South African revolutionary Nelson Mandela.
You quoted Nelson Mandela as saying:
"As we let our own light shine we unconciously give other people permission to do the same."
At least his speech writer's grammer is moderately superior to that of Oprah Winfrey's speech writer.
So you quote Nelson Mandela.
Yet you made no mention that Nelson Mandela's then wife Winnie Mandela had violated and murdered a 13 year old boy called Stompie Moeketsie at the Mandela family home in Soweto while Nelson was serving jail time in the 1980's.
She killed the boy with a garden shears Gerard Moloney.
Other children died in mysterious circumstances in the Mandela family home.
I have been unable to ascertain whether she used the garden shears on all of them.
Tell me Gerard Moloney.
At what point do people like you have a duty to victims like those?
I mean a duty to even mention them while you're busy eulogising Nelson Mandela and Oprah Winfrey.
At what point do you have a duty to display even a modicum of concern for the tens of millions of sex abuse victims all over the world, the 99.99 percent of sex abuse victims, who are ignored because they weren't abused by someone the media could use in their culture war against Christianity?
At what point Gerard Moloney do you have a duty to the truth?
James Healy

dawn becomes electra

 

scenes from a childhood

I was 14 years old.

My best friend Mugs Baines had asked his mother Drusilla to drive us home from school.

It was a wet November evening.

Dark early.

Cheerless Irelandia.

Out of the mist came that famous battered Ford Cortina.

It screeched to a halt at the gates of Newbridge College.

Drusilla Baines had come directly to pick us up from some charity where she was a volunteer counsellor.

She was a birdlike woman who spoke with an exagerrrratedly clear voice.

Every word perfectly pronounced.

A musical voice heavy with dangerously repressed emotions.

The worst vulgarism I ever heard her utter was "sugar."

Boy did she say it with venom.

In polite conversation, she insisted on calling me Jamesie for some reason.

She could get an astonishing array of inflections into the single word Jamesie.

A woman with a strong conventional streak, I always feared she was on the verge of throwing off all conventions and shooting the lot of us.

And I dreaded to think what sort of people were coming to Drusilla for counselling.

You know what folks.

Even at this tender age it was difficult for me to hide my emotions.

My big rubbery red face spoke volumes more than I wanted it to.

Every time she looked at me I felt sure she knew exactly what I thought of her.

So on this rain filled evening in the dawn of years, when Drusilla began to tell me about a potential suicide victim she'd been advising, it was a battle royal for me, a shy and sensitive soul, to prevent myself from guffawing hysterically in her face.

I was in the passenger seat right beside her.

Mugs was in the back.

"Oh Jamesie," she murmured as she drove. "It was awful. The poor man had been so depressed... He had been so depressed.... So, so, depressed... So, so, so depressed..."

With difficulty I resisted the urge to ask her: "So how depressed was he?"

The car swerved around a bend.

"He was so depressed," continued Drusilla, "that he'd been on the point of walking into a meat freezer and closing the door."

I stared straight ahead of me.

If I opened my mouth at all now, it would be to say: "Wah, ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee."

And so on ad infinitum.

The moment passed.

Feeling more confident in my self control, I ventured a question.

"So how did you help that guy?" I asked.

At this point Drusilla's angelic son, the immortal Mugs, from the rear of the car leaned forward and whispered in my ear:

"They pulled the plug out of the meat freezer."

And I said:

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaah, haaaaaaaaaah, haah, haaa, haaaa, hoooo, haaaa, haa, heee, heee, ho, ho, ho, waaaaaaaaaaah, ha, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaah, hee, hee, hee, wheee, heee, heee, heeee, ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho."

I don't know how long I laughed.

It is to date one of the best laughs I ever had.

And devil take the consequences.

When the dust cleared Drusilla murmured more in sadness than in anger:

"Oh Jamesie."

then longen folk to go on pilgriage

"I'm thinking of going on a pilgrimage to Spain," quoth me.
"Really?" wondereth the Mammy.
"Um yeah," sez me. "There's a thing known as the Camino where people walk all the way to a town called Sant Iago De Campostela. It's rumoured one of the apostles is buried there. Some people walk hundreds of miles from their home towns. The pilgrimage has been going on since the middle ages."
"Well you're middle aged so I suppose that bit makes sense," grinned the Mammy.
"That's not funny Plisskan," I told her.
"You're not that fond of walking at the best of times," she reminded me pleasantly. "And now you think you're going to walk a couple of hundred miles in one go?"
"The whole thing is more a spiritual journey than anything else," quoth me with elan.
"I don't see you doing it spiritually or for real," pronounced the Mammy judgementally.
"You might be surprised," sez me.
"Why don't you just do one in Dublin?" suggesteth she.
"In Dublin?" expostulateth me.
"I read in the paper they're holding some sort of pilgrimage walk in Dublin," sez she. "I think it's in celebration of Ireland's links to that Spanish one you're talking about."
A wave of nausea swept over the Mighty Heelers.
"I can just imagine what the Irish pilgrimage will be like," exclaimed me coldly. "Stop offs at each Condom Emporium, spiritual breaks at the Drugs Shops, a mystical highpoint at the Irish Times HQ where there'll be a reading from the gospel according to Karl Marx, all finishing up at Independent Newspapers House for mass abortions and ritual burning of an effigy of the Pope. I think I'll pass on the Dublin Four version of the Camino thank you very much."
"Son you gotta let go of your anger," sez the Mammy.
"I know," sez me agreeably.

more from the night THEY came home

THE LIGHTS OF JULY

The largest ever UFO sighting in Irish history, known as The Kilcullen Incident, took place four years ago after midnight on 23rd June 2006. It was followed by a more limited sighting in July of 2006. The second sighting differed from the first in that it was much shorter, took place at dusk, and featured fewer airborne objects. The objects in the second sighting also differed in that they radiated red light while the objects in the earlier sighting radiated white light. This is the only known photo of the July sighting.

The general consensus is that both sightings consisted of parachute flares discharged by the Irish army while on manoeuvres in the Wicklow mountains, and nothing more.

the monica leech laugh in

Little Boy: "Why is Granny always reading the Bible."

Mother: "She's cramming for her Finals."