the ineluctable modality of you wot guv

 

There was consternation at a medical clinic in Kilcullen today when Isaac Hayes, also known as the character Chef from the opprobrious television cartoon Southpark, burst into the room and began singing thusly:

"Hey everybody have you seen my vaccine

It's big and chocolaty and brown

If you need a quick pick me up

They put my vaccine in your mouth

Oooooooh

Suck on my chocolate salty vaccine

Stick it in your mouth

It's flavoursome and good for you

Oooh

Suck on my chocolate salty vaccine

It's bite sized nutritious and healthy too

Suck on my vaccine

Ner ner nerdle ner ner

Ner ner ner nerdle ner ner ner

Ner ner ner nerdle ner ner ner

Ner ner nerdle ner ner ner

Half a pound of vanilla

Two tea spoons of egg whites

Mixed in with some unborn babies we murdered earlier

Until it's just right

Hey everybody have you seen my vaccine

It's big and chocolaty and brown

If you think you might get a Corona virus

Then put my vaccine in your mouth

Oooooh

Suck on my chocolate salty vaccine

Stick it in your mouth

It's bite sized and good for you

Oooooh

Suck on my chocolate salty vaccine

You'll live forever

You know it's true

Suck on my vaccine

Ner ner ner nerdle ner ner

Ner ner nerdle ner ner nern nern

At this point Albert Bourla the chief executive of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company and Pascal Soriot the chief executive of the Astra Zeneca pharmaceutical company also burst into the room and joined Chef to sing a few verses themselves.

The two men sang as follows:

"Half a gallon of anti depressants

A generation hooked up tight

Some riddilin for the kiddies

Melted

And chemical gender suppressants for the under fives

Now turn the oven to three fitty

And launch a publicity campaign in bankrupt corporatist left wing media groups

Gerrymander the statistics

Because I hate it when public hysteria droops

Put it in your mouth baby

Don't worry about the blood clots

That only happens in Norway

as does the blindness, deafness, strokes and sudden deaths

Hey everybody have you seen our vaccine

It's big and chocolaty and brown

If you want to live forever

Then just be clever

Put our vaccine in your mouth

Oooooh

Suck on our chocolate salty vaccines

Put em in your mouth

They're bite sized and good for you

Ooooh

Suck on our chocolate salty vaccines

Suck em down

You know that's what you gotta do

Suck on our vaccines

Ner ner nerdle ner ner ner

Ner ner nerdle ner ner"

a short mongraph on the development of political thought in the early poetry of desmond egan

 

In 1972 at the height of an IRA bombing campaign, the Irish neo classicist Desmond Egan published what will probably be the poem he is remembered for, a fragmentary almost throwaway piece.

It went as follows:

The Northern Ireland Question

two wee girls

were playing tig near a car

how many counties would you say

are worth their scattered fingers?

The idea behind the poem is that the car containing an IRA bomb blew up and killed the little girls.

In 1975, a few years after Egan published the above poem, the IRA kidnapped Doctor Tiede Herrema. There was a standoff when the Irish police and army tracked the kidnappers to a safe house in the town of Monasterevin near where I live. After 36 days in captivity, including a two week siege in Monasterevin, Dr Herrema was rescued.

The events led Desmond Egan to rethink his political stance and shortly afterwards he published a collection inspired by the Monasterevin denouement to the kidnapping entitled Siege!

To my febrile imagination this collection had a much more romantic view of the IRA and indeed of political violence generally. Lots of intellectual mullagroaning about the role of the rebel in society, that sort of thing.

What it all added up to was that Desmond Egan had decided that the answer to the Northern Ireland Question was six.

news round up storms in small town tea cups caused by climate change official etc etc

 

There was consternation at a Kilcullen medical clinic today when Charlton Heston burst out of a vaccination room screaming: "Soylent Green is people." The waiting gulpens had no idea what he was talking about and Charlton was quickly restrained, forced to down ten extra quarts of vaccine and hustled back to the old folks home.

There was hilarity in financial circles today when working class hero Senator Mark Wall of the Labour Party presented a signed petition to Bank Of Ireland Chief Executive Francesca McDonough requesting that the closure of the Kilcullen branch of Bank of Ireland be cancelled. The hilarity ensued when Francesca McDonough for her part presented Mark Wall with a petition from Bank of Ireland asking Kilcullen people to pay their bank debts, to stop burning their own restaurants to the ground in order to avoid paying their bank debts, to stop allowing their town be turned into a mobster enclave for the Hutch gang, the Maloneys, the Alke Babish chipper clan gang et al, to stop dealing drugs, and to tell community broadcaster Brian Byrne and top climate change boff Noel Clare to give it a rest.

There was shock in the European parliament today when a Corona Virus claimed live on air: "I'm the flu."

no truth in the rumour

There is absolutely no truth in the rumour that Corona Virus vaccines made out of murdered babies are to be renamed Soylent Green. No hang on... 

idea for a novelty music video in aid of charity

 

The song is a parody of Al Stewart's Year Of The Cat.

Year Of The First Series Of Star Trek

On a morning from the first ever series of Star Trek

On a planet made of papier mache

You go strolling through a time portal like William Shatner

Starting his day

She comes out of the sun

In a short skirt

Running

In black boots in the rain

Don't bother asking

For explanations

That's regulation Star Fleet Uniform for women

In the year of the first series

Nirdle Nirdle ner ner

The year of the first series

Nerdle nerdle ner ner

Morning comes and she's still with you

And the star ship and the Klingons are gone

And you've thrown away your phaser

You've lost your communicator thingie

So you've got to stay on

Near the blue tiled walls

Of the market stalls

There's a hidden door she leads you to

I know it's crazy she says but unless you kill me

Hitler wins World War Two

In the year of the first series

Nerdle nerdle ner ner

The year of the first series

Nerdle nerdle ner ner

She looks at you so coolly

And her eyes shine

Like incense in heaven

And she loves you

Oh so truly

But you find Spock waiting outside

In the year of the first series

Nerdle nerdle ner ner

The year of the first series

Nerdle nerdle ner ner

Ner nerrr

Ner  ne ner ner ner ner

Nerdle ner ner ner

Nerdle nerdle nerdle nerdle

Ner ner ner ner ner

So the drumbeat strains

Of the  night remain

And the rhythm of your broken heart

You got lucky finding Joan Collins in a time portal

But now you've got to part

In the year of the first series

Nerdle nerdle ner ner

The year of the first series

Nerdle nerdle ner ner

ode to a thought

oh glistening thought

tell me you are more

than chemistry

woven into cell structure

electronically varied

by genetic depositions

in the voodoo of my biology

and apelike inhibitions

tell me you are more

tell me you are an ontology

and not just some whiff of the primordial soup

wafting through my necrology

come now glistening thought you can be blunt with me

surely you are more than a meaningless emission

an excescence of physicality

arbitrarily dialled up

by jewelling jeans

over centuries of heredity

is the wondrousness of my speech

nothing but a bullock belling in the fields

an elephant trumpetting in the forest

a batsqueak

but even these

are wondrous enough for me

cogito ergo sum

i think therefore i am

neigh neigh and thrice neigh

sum ergo cogito

i am therefore i think

tell me you are more

i need you to be more

say you are an ontology

not just some ghastly pseudopod

of relativist atheistic codology

let us be frank with one another glistening thought

if i am chemistry merely

what is your role

what is the keynote that makes you shine

and how can i ask this and be without a soul

for you an emblem of god

and yet your mine

ROMANTIC INTERLUDE

(Never has the internet dared to be so explicit)

Picnic with Melissa Tarkington at the lake.

A few ducks amble past, laughing about something.

I begin telling her about my new film The Rah Thing.

She favours me with her full attention.

I get really into it, acting out the scenes, doing the voices.

From far away in the world I am weaving, I am aware of her attentive silence.

I think to myself: Wow, she's really going for it. She's entranced. This film could actually work.

Briefly I emerge from the mists of imagination to check in on her. I want to gauge her reactions more precisely, see which bit she likes best, get some critical feedback, and so on.

She starts guiltily.

"Oh sorry," she says. "I took your crisps."

With horror, I realise it is true.

She is munching my bag of Tayto crisps.

Not her bag.

My bag.

I had brought her a bag of Tayto crisps for herself but she's finished that, (I suppose while the Rah were chasing the heroes around the Ring of Kerry) and has moved on to my crisps.

My crisps.

Realisation dawns.

The sheer excruciating insufferability of listening to my voice even for five minutes is so unendurable to her that she's gobbled one full bag and another half bag of crisps rather than actually risk hearing a word I'm saying.

For the record I was more offended that she took my crisps than that she can't or won't listen to my voice.

I do like Tayto crisps.

We will die alone.

death of the west

 

Driving to meet Melissa Tarkington at the lake.

I switch on the radio.

Immediately there comes the sound of a news reader dramatically being dramatic about something dramatic.

"... Police have arrested nine people..." dramaturges the Classic Hits 98 FM news reader.

"Yes," I cheer, "this is more like it. Yes Beavis. Yes, yes, yes. Who did they arrest? What did they arrest them for?"

"... the arrests took place at an anti lockdown rally..." continues the reporter.

I groan like a heffalump in pain.

They're arresting people for protesting against hysterical and incompetent government policies restricting our movements during an induced flu virus panic.

You can be arrested for that?

Well maybe some of the demonstrators were unruly.

I wasn't there.

Ho hum.

Here was I hoping the police might have finally swooped on Kinneavey or the Hutch gang, or the Maloneys or the clan gang operating out of the Alke Babish chipper, I mean that the cops might actually be about to start fighting crime.

"... some of the protestors were carrying placards displaying untrue statements about the vaccine..." intoned the reporter with horror in her voice.

Untrue statements about the vaccine?

Oh the humanity.

Ye gods.

What did the statements say? It's safe? Those vicious bar stewards. 

Well this is quaint. The heroic news reader from Classic Hits 98 FM is making value judgements on the truth or falsehood of protest placard slogans.

Without actually telling us what those slogans were.

Youth oriented radio stations ain't what they used to be.

Well, youth-ish.

At the lake I meet Melissa.

As I walk towards her, she turns sideways, with one elbow sticking out, and her bum protuberant.

This is quaint.

Are woman in the Western World going to spontaneously start trying to twerk me in public?

Richard Dawkins would say it's possible.

An evolutionary wrong turn he might call it.

Twerking is a salacious dance move which involves gyrating the anus of the first party in the vicinity of the crotch or crotches of the second party or parties.

What you're reading right now is the first known instance of the word being used by me.

As per my usual practice, I'm arriving somewhat late at the party or parties.

But no.

Melissa is not attempting to twerk me.

Her bizarre posture, akin to a duck trying to persuade another duck to mate, is a form of greeting approved by the Irish government from which the government maintains you can't catch the flu they're panicking about.

Some watching ducks fall about the place laughing.

"Ah come on Melissa," I plead.

"It's the recommended safe way to say hello," she insists.

"You look like a duck trying to mate," I tell her sensitively so that she'll know what the ducks are laughing about. "If our atheistic abortionist World Health Organisation soviet puppet government told you to stand on your head and fart your greetings as the only safe way to say hello, would you do it?"

She looked troubled.

Difficult to be sure whether she was having second thoughts about the government or about me.

Later I wandered into a church.

The rector came over when he saw me in the forward aft pew.

"James," he said turning sideways, stretching out an elbow, and waggling his bum.

"Ah John," I said. "This is all very silly."

"Stay safe James," he said in an earnest, husky, sincere, dramatic, demented Classic Hits FM news reader type voice, moving away.

I resisted the urge to exclaim: "Bloody hell," and instead contented myself by fulminating quietly: "I've been harassed by Steven Kinneavey, the Hutch gang, the drug dealing Maloneys and the Alke Babish clan gang for the past ten years and now for the first time people are expressing concern for my safety. And they're talking about the ****ing flu. For ****'s sake."

towards a definition of science

 

I would define science at its best as a quest for understanding emerging from Christian scholarship and more specifically from the university system established worldwide by the Catholic Church, an approach to the study of existence, an aspiration to assess reality using observational data, a principled methodology underpinned by the religiously derived notion of the primacy of truth, to wit "Thou shalt not bear false witness."

Without the primacy of truth there is no science.