rum paradox

I am infinitely depressed about the number of people taking anti depressants.

from the young heelers notebooks

Interview with Labour Party parliamentarian Michael D Higgins, circa 1993.

James: "You squired Danilo Ortega De Saavedra around Dublin during his recent visit to Ireland."

Michael D Higgins: "I met Senor Ortega. He is a friend of mine."

James: "You squired him around Dublin even though his government has been shooting and jailing opponents in Nicaragua."

Michael D Higgins: "The opponents you speak of are the Contras, fascist terrorists illegally financed and trained by the United States in order to overthrow the legitimate government of Nicaragua.."

James: "Your friend Danilo Ortega De Saavedra has shut down the free press."

Michael D Higgins: "Well it's war."

(Twenty seven years after this interview, Mr Higgins is currently in his second term as President of Ireland.)

there should be a moment in this one where the sound track to the good the bad and the ugly goes aaaiiiiiaaaiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh

The poet Desmond Egan entered Newbridge church by a side door and walked up the aisle.
Dark, sepulchral, haunted, and with a face on him like a boiled shite.
In his stance and motion very much a Phantom Of The Opera type figure.
Seen from behind maybe tending a bit more towards a posthumous Heathcliff on a night off from chasing the ghost of Cathy around the Yorkshire moors.
Or Mr Rochester.
Or Dracula.
Gothic is the mot juste.
Of course, some of you will know of him.
I mean some of you will know of Desmond Egan, not those also rans the Phantom Of The Opera or Heathcliff or Mr Rochester or Dracula or the famous Muslim terrorist Mohammed Juste.
He is a neo classicist and academic, with an international reputation.
There are indeed those who like him.
I was in a prominent pew doing my Saint James of Compostela routine.
As Desmond Egan crossed the front of the church, our eyes met.
In spite of myself I gave him a jaunty wave, segooing (as my cousin Pauline would say) neatly from James of Compostela to a broth of a boy.
Desmond Egan halted, and turned, and favoured me with a cold stare.
The stare was laced with withering elements.
It was as though he was looking into my immortal soul.
Heavens to Murgatroyd.
This is awkward.
My soul wasn't expecting visitors today.
Then.
He allowed himself a curt almost contemptuous nod.
And he was gone.
If he'd been wearing a dark, billowing, cloak, I suppose he would have flapped it about a bit and accentuated the pivot and whirl prior to exiting.
These things are for the scholars to sort out.
I sat there getting slowly worked up.
The curt nod.
To me.
Really?
"What the ****!" I murmured reverting to an old Anglo Saxon saw from my Revenue Commissioners days, which in the corridors of taxation we generally used to express bemusement at the proles attempts to avoid giving us their money.
A curt nod.
At point blank range.
He could have had my eye out.
Outrageous.
Oh the humanity.
Nobody gives me a curt nod.
I invented the curt nod.
In the sensation scene of my theatre play Poets In Paradise, the ghost of WB Yeats gives a curt nod to the ghost of Brendan Behan.
He's not a bit nice about it either.
Although in my work it represents a grudging accomodation among two immortals.
A lesser poet doing it to me is an infringement of copyright right there.
And here.
In a church for crying out loud.
I gotta tell ya folks, anyone who gives me a curt nod and leaves me alive, he know nothing about Tuco.
And so on.
Seriously though gentle travellers of the internet, when these Rah poets give you a dirty look, you can feel the devil bite your ass.
I wonder what I did on him.

sympathy with the devil

The leaders of two of Ireland's main political parties Michael Martin of  Fianna Fail and current Prime Minister Leo Varadkar of Fine Gael, are debating on television this evening.
No one is watching the event because of a criminally manipulative decision by a bankrupt network ridiculously styling itself Virgin One, to exclude Mary Lou McDonald the leader of Sinn Fein from the proceedings.
The State broadcaster RTE is proposing a similar shenanigans exclusion of Mary Lou McDonald from another debate among Prime Ministerial candidates in a few days time.
Here is the news.
Sinn Fein is consistently polling at a little over 20 percent among people who express a preference.
The other two parties are polling similarly at a little over 20 percent.
The pollsters claim their figures can err up to five percent either way, so if we accept the pollsters' purely notional limitation on their own margin of error, Sinn Fein may even be ahead of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael in terms of real electoral support.
My own animosity to Sinn Fein notwithstanding, (cf my modest internet efforts to remind the peasantry that Sinn Fein is the proxy political party for Ireland's drug dealing, child abusing, people trafficking, bank robbing, fingernail pulling, IRA mafia) Mary Lou McDonald, by virtue of the fact that one fifth of the electorate who express a preference say they intend to vote for her, is entitled to a place in any public leaders debate prior to the general election in February.
That is all.

from the young heelers notebooks

Interview with Bob Geldoff, circa 1986.


James: "You kissed President Hillery on the lips."

Bob Geldoff: "That was symbolic. I was symbolically kissing the President of Ireland on behalf of the Irish people. In effect it was the Irish people kissing their President."

James: "So why did you give him the tongue?"

no truth in the rumour

There is no truth in the rumour that the party of government in Ireland, styling itself Fine Gael, is incepting a new form of abortion as a cost saving measure by issuing doctors with rubber mallets with which they will play whackamole as soon as any unborn babies dare to peep out of the birth canal. No hang on...

false modesty routine on safari for a poem at the old chateau

interim moods
frosty midnight
budgies chattering
dogs asnooze
parrot roosting in the curtains
i want a poem
something unique
the odds aren't good
for what i seek
but what have i got to lose
shut your beak
greeny if i was alfred lord tennyson
maybe i'd worry
that these words are silly
i mean coming out with this
after inversnaid
enough said
there's no hurry
wonder can surprise
melodies may comport profundity
beyond consciousness
to the soul not the eyes
mystique sometimes shows up
where least expected
right now
if eternity touched this page
frankly
i'd be amazed

the story of my argument with einstein

Does "e = m X c squared" have any real meaning?
Is it simply an untestable mathematical fanstasy?
Is it in any way coherent?
Ascribing notional numerical value to notional quantities of energy and then ascribing similar numbers to mass and then multiplying the notional quantity for mass by a notional quantity for the notional speed of light and then equating both resultant numbers for energy and mass with an equals sign, and calling it an equation, is like making sheep dogs equal to the colour blue.
It is not coherent.
It is not testable.
And it probably isn't true.
Of course we can make mass equal to energy by inducing notional values to both and imagining a speed for light, and then performing some hokum with a maths equation and then introducing a Universal Constant if needed which we have made up out of our heads when the equation doesn't balance anyway.
And we can equate sheep dogs to blue with similar mathematical hocus pocus, ascribing numbers to genetics and numbers to spatial dynamics and numbers to light waves under the guise of notional frequencies such as we imagine them to be, and then a universal constant for tails since all dogs have tails, and then a few parametric equations and a nifty new extra Universal Constant wherever things don't add up, throw a dead cat over your shoulder in a graveyard at midnight and hey presto "Sheepdogs = Blue X C to the power of a lamp post when the moon is full."