the how odd column

How odd that a man callled Arsene Wenger who managed a football team called Arsenal, should name his autobiography My Life In Red And White. The book clearly should have been called Arsin Around. It might actually have sold a few copies if it was.

How odd that the Israelis, having purchased and imported tons of the new Corona Virus vaccines (developed using cells known as Cell Line HEK 293 cultured from the body of a baby murdered by abortion in the Netherlands in the 1970s) how odd I say, that the Israelis having bought the concoctions, are still insisting that they won't distribute the stuff to the population until they've done their own tests on it. Silly Israelis. Don't you trust the pharmaceutical company Pfizer? Don't you trust Astra Zeneca? Don't you trust Irish broadcaster Brian Byrne? Don't you trust retired Kilcullen secondary school science teacher Noel Clare? Stop listening to people like me. Stop listening to United States Senator Joe Kennedy who pointed out in July that the companies we are trusting to develope vaccines have over the years caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans through medicines the companies knew were unsafe. Ignore Senator Kennedy's warning that these companies have paid out 34 billion in known compensation for previous cases of medical homicide, malpractice and culpable neglience. Get with the programme Israelis. Take your vaccines. And eat up your sprouts.

How odd thinks I this morning as my phone wrings and Padre Baines announces he is going to pay out on the hundred pound bet he had with me a few months ago on President Trump to retain the American presidency. The American Electoral College has certified the result. And the Padre has given up hope. I'm still not sure it's over but I'll be darned if I'm going to refuse to accept the hundred quid. "Unless of course you want to let me off as a Christmas present," says the Padre. "I think you'll feel better if you pay your debts," I tell him hubristically.

How odd thought I this morning when I found a monogrammed missive from the electricity company in my letter box.  Presumably they're appealing to my better nature to settle my acccount, ie pay them what I owe them for previous unpaid bills. "Ah lads," I muse aloud, "it's Christmas." I open the letter. It says: "James, you have been registered as a Vulnerable person with us. You will therefore receive a 100 Euro credit on your next bill." It's a Festivus miracle. So the electricity company knows I'm vulnerable. They're not the only ones. The Hutch gang know I'm vulnerable which is why they keep calling to my door offering to cut my hedge while continuing their established practices of vehicular harassment and stomping the odd cat to death in my garden. Kinneavey knows I'm vulnerable because he's still alive after ten years of criminally harassing me. So from his point of view, I'm either vulnerable or a very nice man. The clan gang that operates out of the Alke Babish chipper and outlets run by Zeytoun Restaurants Ltd knows I'm vulnerable because like Kineavey they're still alive. The Maloney gang knows I'm vulnerable ditto. Retired vaccine advocating secondary school teacher Noel Clare knows I'm vulnerable because he sat looking at his shoes a few months ago while two low life were hassling me in the Tearrman cafe. The whole world knows I'm vulnerable except the fucking cops who are too busy riding their wide boy boyfriends to do anything about it.

How odd that the only atheistic speculation that bothered me in recent years should be the argument from my experience of non awareness under anaesthetic at Tallaght hospital in January 2019. It seemed to me a quite distinctive experience. (This non experience of the passage of time.) I had no consciousness of consciousness, as it were. My experience of not being aware of experiencing time provoked a quite seditious mental exploration. Five hours of time seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Bear in mind gentle readers that I have elsewhere argued that time does not exist. I have suggested that what we call time is merely a list of events. So it's a bit Irish for me to take a non awareness of time which I don't necessarily believe in anyway, as an argument against the Deity and, even more rum to see it as an argument in favour of the Darwinian notion that I'm just a machine. The interruption to my consciousness of consciousness, a five hour lacuna in my awareness of the list of events that make up a person's experience of life, should not necessarily have any implications as to the existence of my soul or the existence of God. I mean in daily life, I'm not aware of every moment when I'm asleep and I don't wake up every morning, check the clock, and exclaim: "Right, there's no God." Consciousness itself has not been explained. No atheist can replicate consciousness in a laboratory. Consciousness is explicable only as a miracle from God. Atheists will sometimes argue: "Ah James, you only believe in the God of the gaps. He only exists for you in regard to things like consciousness which you can't explain. As science explains more and more, there will be fewer places for you to hide your God." The atheists are being a bit coy with this. The wiser ones admit the following. Here is the news. For all our knowledge and harnessing of energies we still don't know what light is, what electricty is, what the atom is, what time is, or indeed what consciousness is. If everything we experience in common existence is made out of pure wondrousness, ie it's inexplicable without a miracle, shouldn't even the atheists being to admit, God is.