obitcheries

The singer Delores O'Riordan was a genius sprung from the heartland of Ireland.
By a providential twist of fate, she found a unique combination of talent in her musical collaborators and produced with them in her performances and studio recordings an extraordinary meshing of contemporary music trends with the ancient rhythms of old Ireland.
She sang fearlessly and uniquely, as she lived.
Her singing voice is instantly recognisable and utterly inimitable.
Nor in gaining super stardom did she restrict herself to the conventions of credibility or popularity.
One of her most striking songs is called Salvation.
It warns in uncompromising terms of the drug cult that is stealing lives from all age groups across the world.
Another of her songs simply eulogises her family and indeed any families in the most vulnerable and poignant expository style.
Soon after finding fame, she spoke publicly against the killing of unborn children.
Many of the media hacks from Independent Newspapers, the Irish Times and the Stalinist Irish State monopoly broadcaster RTE, who are today clustering in onanistic adulation around her coffin, many of these cravens I say, were the very ones who tried to destroy her for daring to oppose abortion when as a young woman she first became famous on both sides of the Atlantic for her warbling trill of an ordinary little love song that yet manages to be somehow unlike anything else you've ever heard, called Linger.

sympathy with the feldwebel

Feldwebel Steiner gulped.
The entire prisoner compound was empty and a gaping hole under the wire showed where they had all escaped.
He turned to Captain Kluger.
"Zey are all gone," he gasped.
"Yes," said Captain Kluger, "report the matter at once to General Von Kikinzebawlz."

pro milo

"Don't you think it's terrible?" said the lady.
"Ah not really," I answered mellow as I get.
"But look what they've done," she spluttered.
"Most of the allegations haven't been tested in a court of law," I told her.
"That makes no difference."
"It does, yeah."
"What difference does it make?"
" Listen to me. These claims of molestation against Hollywood producers are primarily emanating from  ageing courtesans looking for a pension. That's what's going on. The actresses making their clearly coordinated claims don't pass the smell test. And let me tell you, if Harvey Weinstein was foolish enough to go into a hotel room with Dario Argento's daughter or with the lamentably post texilic Rosie McGowan, my concerns in that case would be solely for the safety of Harvey Weinstein. A billionaire alone with a girl like that is not necessarily the most powerful person in the room. I'm just saying. Then there's the slew of accusations against television presenters, none of which, mark you, have been subjected to legal scrutiny or defence before a Judge and Jury, and all of which, mark you, have a flavour of arbitrary vengefulness, score settling, cynical opportunism and extortion. Bringing us neatly to the ludicrous claims involving British politicians patting female journalists knees. These are faintly evocative of an episode of the Benny Hill show and would be absolutely hilarious except for the fact that the guys are killing themselves when their reputations are casually ruined by a tricoteuse media seemingly intent on replacing presumption of innocence with presumption of guilt. Oh! You might have noticed that an awful lot of the American cases are being handled by Gloria Allred or by Goria Allred's daughter who is Gloria Allred by another name."
"What's your point?" fumed my friend.
"Gloria Allred is a shakedown artist. Her actions are the conflict theory feminist equivalent of the Reverend Jesse Jackson's race baiting shakedowns of the 1980's and 1990's. Thirty years ago, Jesse Jackson had devised a business model using public sensitivity about black issues, whereby he went to large corporations, accused them of not employing enough black people, and accepted million dollar payments from them in order to go away. It was a classic shakedown and it made him a multi millionaire. Gloria Allred has devised a million dollar feminist shakedown of her own. Of course in her client Gretchen Carlson's case it was a twenty million dollar shakedown. But the point stands. The methodology is always the same. Gloria Allred coaches her clients, prepares a series of allegations against the targeted wealthy celebrity du jour, often based on tenuous uncorroborated claims of purely notional wrong doing, and then springs her trap with multiple claimants timed to emerge simultaneously in a media blitz. It's the perfect blagg. Gretchen Carlson's victim Roger Ailes is dead by the way. Would you shoot someone for twenty million dollars. Gloria Allred and Gretchen Carlson would. In fact they did. Two Labour Party politicians in England are dead as well following similar tosh talk character assassinations. It looks like the pols suicided. These shakedowns and score settlings come with a body count you know. They're not victimless crimes. And like I said so far none of these slanderous gold digging ruinations of reputations, none of them I say, have been tested in open court."
"That makes no difference," she cried.
"Do you really think it makes no difference?" I asked.
"None whatsoever."
"You think an allegation should be enough to destroy someone?"
"This sort of allegation, yes."
"In that case... who could stand?"

to the overthrow

the worm things from the soft earth
in the rainfall night crawl forth
onto pavement doorstep or road
into the concrete certainty of death

they do not think but they know
that in a darkness yet to fall
there will be an overthrow
and those who rule will crawl

and those who crawl will rule
though tonight in their impossible thousands they die
crushed under wheel trampled under foot
conquered by a nation that knows them not

wouldn't it be great

Watching Pope Francis during some ceremony on television.
He is advising a group of women to feel free to breast feed their babies in the Sistine Chapel.
Oh for a Scottish accent to shout up:
"If you want to see a bit o' tit laddie, you'll pay for it like everyone else."

the feldwebel's dictionary

EU: Exclamation of disgust favoured by teenage American girls. Also, European political project to collapse borders, debauch the peasantry, and end sovereign nationhood by replacing the Christian faith with a culture of sensual gratification, drugs, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide.

Marble: Small glass orb used as a play thing by children. Also, basic unit of mental health.

Popular Fiction: (generic noun/misnomer) Books no one wants to read or buy.