second blood heelers the mission

 

There is a little known dive bar in a side street near Pennsylvania Avenue.

The place is earthy but discreet.

The world weary clientele knows when to look the other way.

At the bar a striking male figure, knocking back whiskey sours, attracts little attention.

President Donald Trump, for it is he, mutters to himself: "What in heaven possessed God to make a man like Mark Steyn?"

He is referring to an internet commentator who formerly championed Mr Trump but has now turned Turk on him over the Iran war.

A jaunty Richard Crenna like voice rings out from across the bar.

"God didn't make Mark Steyn. I did."

President Trump looks up to see James Healy played by Richard Crenna, standing behind him.

"You? How did you make him?"

"Well he stole a quite sublime joke referencing Sunset Boulevard from my blog. I mean this was really top class stuff, Trumper. The original had me being told by an acquaintance that my mild mannered critiques of the dysfuncts in Islamic culture had cost me readers, 'You used to be big,' the person says. And I reply: 'I'm still big. It's the internet got small.' Steyn thought that it was so funny that he used it with himself in the Gloria Swanson role. You have to admire his taste. And as if that wasn't enough he then started plagiarising neologisms from my website, to wit the words maunderings and moronification which had gilded my more serious cultural analyses and were considered by some to be the finest additions to the English language in half a century."

"By some?"

"Me n the dogs like em."

"That hardly amounts to you making him," ventured President Trump delicately.

"Well they were lynchpin moments in his career," answered me, downing a Furstenberg snakebite.

"Why is he attacking me ?" asked President Trump.

"Could be a whim," sez I. "The internet loves clicks. Could be principle. I thought he was a man of principle. I'm normally right about these things. It could be his judgement has gone a bit off. Sometimes even great Homer nods as they say in the staff room at the Simpsons cartoon. The one thing I wouldn't like would be if someone had got to him. You know he was a man of influence so he was certainly a target for even State actors but also none State actors among the Jihadis and elsewhere. And they're not short of money, resources or spite. Vexatious entities at least twice have tried to destroy him through the courts and that didn't work. Maybe some of them infiltrated someone into his entourage who's been slipping Steyn the occasional amphetemine without his knowledge. His writing goes haywire and Steyn never even suspects he's a junkey. It's a nifty way to destroy a person. And you save money on the assassins bullet.  There's people who do those sorts of things Mr President. I've met them."

"So what do I do about him?" wondered the Prez.

"Leave him alone," advised James. "He's wandering around Ukraine at the moment trying to undermine their war effort. His internet site has haemhorraged readers since he started trying to come up with  his own neologisms. The closest he got was sodbollocking. I ask you. Ho hum. Leave him alone. That's my advice. If the Ukrainians don't kill him, you'll find him working at a garage in Montana in few months time and you can arrest him then quietly with no trouble. The worst thing you could do is confront him. If you confront him, you'd better bring a lot of body bags, I mean legal writs for plagiarism and ear muffs to drown out his wearisome iterations of sodbollocking."

kilcullen easter

 

the lambing time

evanescent leaves

provincial poets stitching worn out rhymes

into patchwork quilted semaphores of praise

all of these

mist like matting on muddy fields

old men rejoicing in  campaniles

heart breaking heart mending threnodies

everything that breathes is on its knees

for the coming of the lord

peace

heelers agonistes

 

Sitting on the edge of the bed, racked by pain.

My eyes turn to a photo of a tree hung on the wall.

The photo was taken by an aunt.

Sometimes when I look at it the pain ebbs a bit.

So it is today.

As the pain ebbs I feel an intimation.

My pain is caused by resentment.

"Oh for heavens sake God," I cry aloud, " if that's the case, I won't be able to write anything."

In my heart, I imagine I hear God replying: "Do you want to write anything or do you want to walk?"

obitcheries

 

The actor Chuck Norris has died. He had an appealing manner and easy charisma. He is unique among action movie heroes in that during fifty years of continuously making films, he never made a good one. The closest he came was Lone Wolf McQuade, a nasty piece of work whose opening credits with a wolf filmed in silhouette and a marvellous music score from Francesco De Masi, are laden with a poetic sensibility redolent of great art. The director of that movie was an exploitation veteran styling himself Steve Carver who later unsuccessfully sued Chuck for purportedly using elements of the movie in a TV series called Walker Texas Ranger. The poetic sensibility shouldn't surprise since a lot of the exploitation guys are poets who chose wrong.

considerations regarding the behaviour of pharmaceutical companies

 

My concerns about what I deem malfeasance in the corporate conduct of major pharmaceutical companies, are as follows.

1. The mass marketing of drugs styled anti depressants and anti psychotics has been couched in a monumental lie, to wit that the substances in question rectify brain chemistry. My assessment is that these drugs block or accelerate brain function. They rectify nothing. Initial legislation governing the prescription of anti depressants carried the stipulation that they should only be used for several weeks by any patient. This has been quietly ignored and people are on the things for life.

2. I am convinced by current US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy's assertion that the Mumps Measles Rubella vaccines have caused a wave of autism among human populaces across the planet earth.

3. During the 1960s, the distribution of Thalidomide as a cure for morning sickness in pregnant women resulted in severe injuries to unborn children. The pharmaceutical companies have never been made properly accountable for this. I think the appropriate penalty would be closure, not in the Oprah Winfrey tree hugging sense of  moving on emotionally, but in the precise ethical legalistic sense of shutting down permanently those pharmaceutical companies responsible for harming people with Thalidomide.

4. The distribution of abortion pills is an atrocity.

5. The promotion of contraceptive culture has harmed civil society and debased family values. Many contraceptive products for women cause deep vein thrombosis.

6. The vaccines for Covid 19 were made out of aborted babies. This alone should have been enough reason not to use them. The Covid 19 vaccines have been killing and crippling people since government and media colluded to stampede the general public into taking them. Reportage of deaths due to Covid 19 vaccines is being suppressed.

7. Pharmaceutical companies have clientalised Academia through endowments to universities and medical schools.

8. Pharmaceutical companies have clientalised media through advertising.

9. Pharmaceutical companies have clientalised governments using methods that are not entirely clear.

10. The marketing of a drug styled Ozempic to make people thin is a monstrous manipulation of vulnerable people and will do enormous harm.

11. The policy of selling unnecessary medications to vast swathes of the populace in a target group styled by the pharmaceutical companies as "the worried well," is vile.

the flu has flown

 

Coffee with the professional woman in an eatery.

"I'm noticing a lot of people are getting flu, or pleurisy, or coughs, or different things," she said.

"I've noticed it too," I told her. "In fact I'm noticing far more of it than during the supposed Covid 19 pandemic a few years ago."

"What does it mean?" quoth she.

"It means something," I answered cautiously. "It might be the cumulative effect of Covid and flu vaccines distilling new forms of the flu into the general population. Or it may be a detrimental effect of those same vaccines on herd immunity. Or it may be Russian President Putin or Chinese President Xi or both, releasing flu viruses into the Western biosphere."

There came the sound of screeching brakes on the street.

An adjoining diner leapt up with their mobile phone ready to film.

"I'm convinced," I told the professional woman calmly, "that if an atomic bomb fell on Kilcullen right this moment, there would be gulpens at their windows trying to get a good camera angle on the mushroom cloud."

top ten allies of the islamic republic of iran in the present conflict

 

1. The BBC.

2. CNN.

3. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.

4. Xi Jinping, President of China.

5. Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the self styled United Nations organisation.

6. The commentator formerly known as Mark Steyn.

7. Whatever's left of Hezbollah.

8. Whatever's left of Hamas.

9. Whatever's left of the Houthis.

10. Er, that's it.

of cousins and cozenage

 

Sitting around the table at Aunty Teresa's.

Cousin Frances, the scientisty one, leans across the table and indicates to me a photo on her mobile phone.

The photo is of a car in an underground car park in Dublin.

The car is submerged in water.

"I'd hate to own that car," said Frances meaningfully.

I knew there must be a point to her showing me this.

It's not like Frances to excoriate gulpens for parking their cars in underground car parks during a rain storm.

Maybe the car belonged to a polar bear who was swimming for an ice floe which had already melted due to climate change and now he doesn't even have a car.

Oh the humanity.

(Oh the bearity, surely - ed note)

As I contemplated the image Frances had show me, my feminist cousin Pauline called for my attention at the other end of the table.

"James do you remember the episode of Father Ted where..."

This was too much.

First Frances wanting to give the vote to polar bears or whatever it was and now this.

"Pauline," I interjected firmly, "you and I have enjoyed twenty years of peace because I never ever discuss Israel and Palestine with you, and you never ever mention Father Ted to me."

At this point Cousin John entered the room and began rummaging in the kitchen.

"Where are the biscuits?" he called.

All eyes swung towards me.

Being a known cookie monster has certain disadvantages.

"I think we're all out," I said brushing a few stray crumbs from the irreproachable mechlin lace of my Dunnes Stores shirt.

meditations on my 60th birthday

 

Top Ten Regrets Of A Lifetime

1. In 1985, I sat through Mad Max Three with some people that I'd forced to go to it. They were surprised to be liking it. I just sat there thinking George Miller had blown his modern myth and turned it into nothing.

2. Er, that's it.