the snurds have landed

Morning at the Irish parliament.
Swastikas fluttering in the breeze.
In the cabinet room, Nazis are dancing.
Reichsminister Alan Shatter, Head of the Gestapo, is waltzing Finanzminister Michael Von Noonan around the room.
Fuhrer Enda Kenny and other lesser Nazis such as Re Education Minister Herrless Ruairi Quinn clap their flippers in time to the music.
The music comes from an old gramophone.
It is a vintage 1970's recording of Bernard Cribbins singing The Wombles.
The song goes:

"Underground overground
Wombling free
The Nazis of the Republic of Ireland
Are we
Shamelessly vitiating
Every Christian tradition that we find
Things that the debauched citizenry
Have been narcoticised into leaving behind
Wombles nefarious
You'd think we'd be ashamed of our murderous atheism
Our contraceptivism
Our life in test tubes ism
our packing of the Judiciary with political appointees-ism
And our general vileness-ism
But we're not
Wombles delirious
our every platitude wrapped in a miasma
Of abortions
Distortions

Contortions  
Bail outs with public money for Ruari Quinn's brother's bank
And congealed snot
As we repudiate
1500 years of holy Catholicism
With our contrived corporatist fascist Marxian tommyrot
And what not
Underground overground
Wombling slavery
Puny earthmen
Nothing can save you now
Nya ha ha Gee Force"

As the music ends an odd silence reigns in the conference room.

********

The camera cuts to the bedroom of a suburban house.
There is a little boy sick in bed.
His grandfather, played by Peter Falk, is reading him a bedtime story.
The little boy can stand the tension no more.
"But Grampa," he says. "The Nazis aren't going to win are they? James Healy is going to burst into the cabinet room riding a death's head motorcycle, give a punch on the snot to Alan Shatter and a root in the bawls to Enda Kenny before tossing Ruairi Quinn out the window and roaring: Never mind the bolloxes, here's the Catholic Church, isn't he? Grampa? The Nazis aren't going to win in Ireland are they, Grampa? James Healy is on the way? He's going to stop them, isn't he? Grampa?"

all shite on the western front

Morning cabinet meeting in the Fuhrer bunker at the Irish parliament.
Top Nazis are seated around a long table with the Fuhrer himself Enda Kenny at its head, playing on a swivel chair.
Reichscancellor Ruairi Quinn is plushbottomedly addressing the gathered Nazis.
"I am happy to report zat vee haff successfully purchased my brother's bankrupt bank for the bargain basement fee of ten thousand million dollars of public money," says the Reichscancellor. "Ziss purchase of ze vorthless Allied Irish Bank means zat my brother Lochlainn can continue to live in the style to which vee Quinns haff become accustomed. For a start he vill be able to keep his vineyard. Just like zat ozzer thieving gypsy tax evading stealer of millions from gangster banks basta-d Mick Wallace. Sieg Heil."
"Vot does vorthless mean?" whispers Fuhrer Enda Kenny to Gestapo Chief Alan Shatter.
"Worthless," explains Herr Shatter.
"Ah," says the Fuhrer.
Feeling his audience attention wandering, Herrless Quinn clears his thoat.
"Ahem," he says. "As Reichscancellor it is also my pleasure to inform ze meeting zat I have cancelled Catholic Church control of Secondary Schools in Irelands. Now zey belong to ussssss. And soon Mein Fuhrer, very soon, ze whole vorld vill be oursssssssssssssssssssssssss."

twilight of the gods

Morning in the Irish parliament.
Newly washed swastikas flutter redly.
The Eagle Has Landed music plays softly on the public address system.
Reichsminister Alan Shatter strolls along the corridor towards the Cabinet Room.
This is a big day for him.
The Fuhrer himself wishes to consult about certain matters nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Herr Shatter enters the room and finds Herr Ruairi Quinn sitting at the long table with Finanzminister Michael Von Noonan and other lesser Nazis. (Herrless Ruairi Quinn surely? - Ed note)
All are wearing the regulation blue shirts of Ireland's Nazi Fine Gael Party.
NB: This is not a joke.
Fine Gael is the only party of government in Western Europe which actually once openly styled itself a fascist party.
Blue shirts were the order of the day in those high old times of 1935.
Le plus se change le plus se reste meme.
You can take the man out of the blue shirt but you can't take the blue shirt out of the man.
Etc etc.
Well you know what I mean.
Another little known fact is that in recent months Fine Gael has made German the official language of the Republic of Ireland.
Not real German.
The sort of German that the Nazis once spoke in Warlord Comic.
Hilarious no.
Reichsminister Alan Shatter sits with the other Nazis.
The door opens behind him.
The Fuhrer himself, Enda Kenny enters.
Enda Kenny is a weak vacuous vapid vascillatory hairstyle of a man.
Even for the purposes of biting political satire he makes a fairly pathetic Fuhrer.
But that is what he is.
"Heil myself," he exclaims in homage to Mel Brooks, then sits and calls the meeting to order.
The work of the day begins.
"Mein Fuhrer," announces Reichsminister Alan Shatter importantly opening his plain brown folder. "Today I wish to propose a Final Solution to the Catholic Problem."

moment aria

the heat descends on the city
the city towers and teems
with a million heartless miracles
that the vain say last forever

a man and a woman on a bridge
kiss once the sky unfurls
oh the beauty of that kiss and the briefness
thus passes the glory of the world

the rich are different

At a family house party in the west of Ireland.
Heelers clutching a coca cola and plate of ham.
I scan the crowded room for a place to sit.
I was not born yesterday.
I'm not going to sit just anywhere.
Family parties are tricky things.
This calls for wisdom.
I steer myself to a table containing a smattering of relatives I can tolerate.
Fate has other plans.
Three relatives whom I find difficult to tolerate follow in my wake, bunch up, squeeze in, and sit around me.
Veritably.
Veritably.
I kid you not.
Three I was expressly avoiding are now crowded around me.
It's as if God is playing dice.
Or punishing me.
Or both.
Seriously though.
I haven't had such an overweening sensation of fatalistic entrapment vis a vis the Deity, since the time God put corrupt anti Catholic newspaper mogul Tony O'Reilly, proprietor of Independent Newspapers the most virulently anti Catholic newspaper group in Europe, and his Greek trophy wife Stavros Niarchos sitting directly in front of me at mass in Kilcullen Church, while at the same time he put my old third class school teacher Montie O'Brolchain and his Fishwife, the same fishwife with whom I'd had an epic street battle in the 1980's over American foreign policy in the Philippines (the street battle was in Kilcullen not the Philippines) sitting in the pew directly behind me, and at precisely the same time, he'd put Linda Baines, a girl I'd appallingly mistreated in my teenage years during the famous 1980's Kildare County boundary wars (we shouted abuse at each other over the fence) when the sheep farmers and cattlemen of Kilcullen were regularly knocking down each other's boundary markers (and egos), I kid you not, sitting in the seat right beside me.
The substantive issue re said fatalistic seating arrangement being, that at Catholic Church ceremonies there is a moment in the service when we all turn and hug or shake hands with each other.
And God had put me in one of his Churches beside the three people in the universe I least wanted to shake anything with.
Gentle readers, I am a deeply religious man, hewn from the granite of Ireland, and unafraid of the vicissitudes of life.
But that day I all but screamed: "Why me oh Lord?"
And rent my hair.
And put on sackcloth.
And wrote about it on my blog.
And when the key moment came in church, I shook hands with Linda Baines and held the handshake long and tender and full of humble apology, so that I wouldn't have to shake hands with the others.
Anyhoo.
Back to the present.
Three relatives I can't abide have surrounded me at a house party.
There's Roderick who works for Anglo Irish Bank, the Bank that used now deceased corrupt kleptocratic Fianna Fail government Minister Brian Lenihan to loot the treasury and bankrupt the nation in order to conceal invidious bank officials Sean Fitzpatrick and David Drumm's burglarisation of their own bank through billion dollar loans to themselves and their IRA Russian mafia collaborators, to wit arch crook businessman (Keep your hair on Archie. Nothing to do with you. - Heelers note) Sean Quinn and his family.
Next among today's rellies I can't stand, there's Marissa who's an accountant for Denis O'Brien, a rackateering white collar gangster who bribed criminally corrupt kleptocratic Fine Gael government minister Michael Lowry to illicitly obtain State mobile phone licences at bargain basement rates.
How can I explain Marissa to you?
Well picture the accountant in The Untouchables film. The accountant for the Mafia that Kevin Costner has to capture if he wants to take down the mob boss. The little gnome like fellow that Kevin ambushed in Grand Central Station in a scene lifted from Battleship Potemkin. (Homage - Brian De Palma note.) That accountant. The bean counter. Yes. That's the one. That's Marissa.
Finally there's Craig who deals in tupperware.
Craig doesn't make any money off tupperware.
He lives off his wife's immoral earnings.
His wife is a bank manager with the collapsed bankrupt kleptocratic gangster bank styling itself Trustee Savings Bank.
She obtained her job through the simple procedure of having her rich Daddy ring the bank and order them to give her a job on pain of losing his account with them.
The Irish government has now purchased and nationalised and is propping up this collapsed gangster bank along with every other bank in Ireland.
Hence the immoral earnings.
The three relatives begin talking.
They are not deliberately trying to offend me.
They are decent people in their way and any offence caused is inadvertent.
Craig says: "I put out an ad for staff. I had a deal with the social welfare department. People could keep their social welfare and get an extra twenty Euro. Do you know how many applicants there were? None. None. They don't want to come off the dole."
"They're just living off the State," murmurs the bean counter for Capone.
"They haven't got a clue about life in the real world," remarks Cousin Anglo.
With all the calm dignity of an exceptionally vituperative unemployed man who doesn't want to dirty his bib any further in tirades against my nearest and dearest, I get up quietly and leave the table.
A man's got to know his limitations.

goutman lives

A widow woman crying into her gruel.
Unfed children sitting at the table with her staring vacantly into space.
"What am I going to do?" she sobs. "I can't afford a TV. How are my children going to learn to commit sex and violence? Waaaaah. Boo hoo hoo."
Her crying is halted by the sound of the kitchen door banging open.
She looks up.
Framed in the doorway is the superhero known as Goutman.
Under his left arm he clutches a Philips 52 inch television complete with sound system.
"Here," he says thrusting the television at her. "I can't abide these things myself. And if you ask me by owning one and paying the Irish government's Stalinist licence fee, you're going to be financing a satanic Marxian atheistic culture war against the Catholic Church while encouraging our governmental idiots to continue living the high life without ever sorting out the inherent structural injustices of funding an anti Catholic television station like RTE through compulsory taxation on the citizenry, as this means that RTE has a near limitless revenue stream regardless of whether any of us watch it, despise it, excoriate it, or not. But here."
The widow woman's eyes shine with joy.
"Oh Goutman," she sighs. "Oh Goutman how will you live without a TV?"
But he was already gone.

our television listings

RTE1
(Ireland's national fraudcaster run by the Marxian atheists of the Marxian atheists and for the Marxian atheists, but financed by compulsory taxation on the Christian citizens of Ireland who are compelled to finance whether they watch it, despise it, or excoriate it, or not, and who are also prevented by law from setting up television stations to compete with it.)

10.00 Murder She Wrote. Jessica is arrested on suspicion of being a serial killer after Sheriff Tate realises that everywhere she's been for the past twenty years has had at least one murder per week.
11.00 Friends. Monica gives an Irish government Minister blow jobs in return for a contract to design websites no one ever visits. She gets collossally rich on libel awards granted to her by Judges who political allies of the government Minister. Rumbunctious New York comedy with a topical twist.
12.00 Midday News. The news is that RTE is an unwatchable Stalinist crap house and we're all forced to finance it whether we watch it or despise it, or, oh you know.
1.00 Mindless Atheism Hour. Every hour on RTE is mindless atheism hour.
2.00 Afternoon With Unwatchable Hags. Title says it all.
3.00 Children's Programmes. RTE's attempt to prepare children for adult life by sexualising them out of their tiny minds.
4.00 Ironside. Ironside investigates RTE for framing a priest for child rape.
5.00 The Archbishop Diarmuid Martin Love In.
6.00 Angelus. Bell ringing sop to believing Christians.
7.00 Coronation Street. Unwatchable British class porn.
8.00 That's enough RTE. - Ed note.
9.00 I f--king know. - James note.

the well folks show

Well folks.
I've travelled on the Paris metro.
I've been many times on the Rome metropolitana.
And on the London Underground.
And on the Boston T.
But I ain't never tasted the fear like on Dublin's rootin tootin State subsidised lawless west of the Pecos Dublin Luas tram system.
It's absolutely f--king insane.