The Heelers Diaries

the fantasy world of ireland's greatest living poet

My Photo
Name:
Location: Kilcullen (Phone 087 7790766), County Kildare, Ireland

Saturday, June 27, 2009

meditations in gold

Night time at the Chateau de Healy.
I am sitting in the front room flicking through the channels on the sexevision.
By chance I alight on Southpark and sit back happily to disapprove of it for the next half hour.
It's one of the good episodes.
The one where the kids are made junior detectives by the local police department and then they get sent on real cases.
There's a bit where the Chief Of Police says to them something like: "You junior detectives and your unpredictable rogue cop ways. Your shoot first and ask questions later routine may be okay in that dog and pony show you call the fourth grade but it's not acceptable behaviour in this police department. Now there's a meths lab on Malavista. Get down there right away. I want it taken down by the book. Or the mayor will have my ass, blah blah blah, my ass, blah blah blah, the mayor, blah blah blah."
He actually says the blah blah blahs.
They didn't even bother scripting it properly.
Funniest thing I ever saw.
There is a cup of coffee on the armrest.
MC Hamster is asleep up my sleeve.
All is right with the world.
Presently the hamster's head appears where it shouldn't.
That is to say, it emerges through the fibres of my jumper.
Right at the elbow.
She squeezes through the hole she has made and posits herself on my belly.
Her shiny eyes shine shinily.
"Hammy," I cry, "you've put a hole in my best jumper."
The golden mouse shrugs.
"It needed a hole there," she explains. "There was no way to get in or out at the elbow."
My gentle poet's face shows signs of profound discombulation.
"It's not even my jumper," I fume. "It's Doctor Barn's. He'll kill me."
Hamble grins grinnily.
"These are the breaks," she muses. "You want to live forever?"
I fix her with my most reproving stare.
"Hammy," I intone. "Oh Hammy, thou little knowest what thou hast done."
(And somewhere the ghosts of Sir Isaac Newton and his dog Diamond are smiling.)
The Hammer begins to wash her face.
Suddenly I am struck by the strange dignity of creatures.
"What is it with you hamsters?" I wonder. "Why are you always on the go? It's as though you're searching. It's as though you're seeking some mystical hamdorado. It's non stop motion with you. What is this search? What has God told you to do? What quest has he programmed into you? You're always breaking out of your cage, drilling your way into the piano, drilling your way out of the piano, climbing on top of book cases, chewing your way into the couch, chewing your way out of the couch, falling off the curtains, making holes in jumpers, and all this after running about a hundred miles on your hamster wheel. Why can you never be content? Why can you never sit still? What drives you on? What is the dream that impels you? What is the secret of your quest?"
Hammy thought for a moment.
"I want to be a googlebot," she says simply.
And there our story ends.

Friday, June 26, 2009

wheel of destiny


heeler the peeler's supernatural tales of horror and suspense

Afternoon meeting with Jinwoo, a Korean friend, in the Costa Cafe on Nassau Street.
We are getting together to discuss an article I wrote recently on supernatural nightmares.
Jinwoo is a personal acquaintance of Hyunjin, the girl who provided my original information.
The cafe buzzes with life.
Summer rain is dusting the pavements outside.
"These experiences are very common in Korea," Jinwoo told me. "And not just Korea. In China and Japan as well. In fact all over Asia. We are not surprised when these things happen."
"But could they be just dreams?" I ventured.
"No. They are real."
"How can you be sure?"
"We know what we are experiencing."
I drank some latte.
"So tell me what happens again."
"You wake up. You cannot move. You are aware of a presence near you. All your senses are working. But you cannot move."
"And it's not a nightmare?"
"No. Our name for it in Korean is Ka Wi. It means: The ghost wants to play. Scientists in Korea have investigated what's going on. They concluded that the experiences were related to REM sleep. You know. The deep stage of sleep where you have dreams. But they are wrong. I am very surprised that people in the West do not have these experiences. I don't understand why you don't believe they are real. We are afraid to tell Westerners these stories because you all think we're crazy."
I grinned handsomely.
"I never said I didn't think they're real," I told her. "I have to ask you the best journalistic questions I can in order to have a chance of finding the truth. But for myself, nothing you've said seems impossible. And plenty of people have contacted me to say they've had similar experiences since I published Hyunjin's story. In the West we often explain away the supernatural by suggesting it is merely a human mental perception arising from biological processes. Sometimes this explanation is true. I doubt that it is always true though. Again, speaking for myself, I've had some sort of sleep disruption from early childhood up through my adult life. I usually explain it away as arising from psychological fears about life or about myself. Childhood traumas. Blah, blah, blah. But I have had the occasional perception that more was going on. That there is a spiritual component. In the last few years the disruptions have ceased altogether. I mean I still get bad dreams but they no longer bother me at all. It is as though they have no authority over me. I believe I conquered whatever was going on, either psychological or supernatural, through the grace of Christ. I believe Jesus has authority over the physical and biological realities just as he does over the supernatural ones. It was only when I seriously started praying and turning to Jesus and his church and his word and the sacraments, it was only then that the fears which had haunted me for three decades were repudiated."
"So you think Jesus helped you?" wondered Jinwoo.
"Yes I do," I answered. "The Lord has a one liner in the Bible after he healed someone: Go and do not sin again lest something worse happens to you. This speaks to me. It suggests that sometimes when we're doing wrong, we allow evil spirits to have power over us. Even without meaning to. I think that's what Jesus was warning against. I'm a bit suspicious that some of these night time phenomena which we all want to believe are dreams, are actually related to this level of reality. But if we even take the smallest step towards Jesus, their power over us is diminished, much much less, and then nothing at all."
Jinwoo nodded.
She is a Christian.
"I think this too," she murmured. "We have the Ka Wi all over Asia. And all over Asia we have Shamanism. A sort of magic. The worship of trees and rivers and idols. I think this could be releasing evil spirits. Or giving evil spirits power over people."
Her words intrigued me.
"In Ireland we had the tradition of the fairies," I recalled. "They were meant to be magical spirits inhabiting country areas. Belief in them has all but died out. At one time many people actually lived in fear of them. Perhaps they are a reality related to the reality of the Ka Wi in Asia. Perhaps they can only gain influence in the mortal world when mortals have dealings with evil or with magic. I think Jesus has ended the power of all such things. Their power was always based on fear anyway. And Jesus doesn't ask any human being to live in fear. One of my favourite prayers goes: Jesus you are perfect love, and perfect love casts out fear."
Jinwoo smiled.
"It is a good prayer," she said.
We got up to go.
Outside the rain had cleared.
Dublin clamoured around us.
In the gentle light of evening, the dirty old town seemed really quite heavenly.

a rann for rwanda

half a million leaves
fell from the tree
a man might count forever
before he'd count their beauty

i wake or sleep
sitting or standing
in a vision of leaves
and everything ending

sympathy with the devil

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE JUDICIAL ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

Dear Sirs and Madams.
I am writing to you as an Irish citizen.
I wish to protest against a recent court decision to award 1.87 million quid in damages against Independent Newspapers in a libel trial.
I believe this decision is an outrageous travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a sham of a travesty of a sham of a mockery of justice.
Well you know.
I am disquieted by the amount of the award and by the circumstances in which it has been made.
I do not think any such payment should have been ordered by the court.
I think the case should have been thrown out.
I think that the plaintiff, who has already received several hundred thousand quid from other media organisations in separate libel actions relating to the circumstances of this case, should have been given a good kick on the arse and told to f--- off home with herself.
These are my opinions.
These are my opinions as a citizen of the Republic.
I trust I am still entitled to hold and express them.
Or am I now also suddenly in hock to Monica Leech to the tune of a couple of million quid?
You useless incompetent deleterious swines.
You are placing an improper halter on the press which amounts to a subtle yet egregious form of censorship.
You are moving the country closer to a cultural dictatorship of vapid asinine conformity.
You are empowering an abjectly corrupt political class of malign usurpers who will sell Ireland even further down the river once they are no longer subject to due commentary.
You blocks, you stones, you worse than useless things.
You are discrediting both the Judicial Process and the Jury System.
I want you to stop.
You cannot know how much it grieves me to find myself on the same side as Independent Newspapers.
I gotta tell you Judge Liberal.
I will never forgive you for this one.
James Healy

Thursday, June 25, 2009

father and son


heeler the peeler's supernatural tales of horror and suspense

This in my inbox from the blogger MJ (Jean Balconi) in Chicago.
Re: The Korean ghost story.
"For your information. I had a similar experience. I woke up and couldn't move but could hear, see and smell things. I had the sensation of someone standing in the window (beyond my line of vision) and then sitting on the bed.
I told a friend about it and she informed me that we can be semi conscious but unable to control our bodies because part of the brain is not "awake" yet. I do not know the technical jargon she uses but she said the sensations were dreams overlapping with conscious thought.
On the real ghost story front, my nieces and nephew informed me that there was a ghost in their old house. Their mother woke up with the sound of a girl screaming. (All but one of the children slept through it and he was scared most because his mother came upstairs with a weapon thinking there was an intruder.) There was a little girl in the boy's room and it spoke. My sister in law told it that it didn't live there anymore. It never showed itself again."

Heelers replies: I am reminded of Eddie Murphy's most insightful commentary on the The Amityville Horror. To wit: "I don't understand white folks. They go into a house. The house says in a real scary voice: GET OUT. And the white folks stand around saying things like: Hmmm, that was strange, did you hear that honey? Me, if I go into a house, and the house tells me to get out, I get the f--- out."

obscenities

Tim Marshall (Sky News): "Ayatollah Khatemi is claiming that outside interference from Britain and America lies behind the protests. This may not be very convincing for the protestors but it will strike a chord with all those who remember British and American interference in Iran in the 1950's."

James Healy: "In the 1950's? You cosmic arsewipe. The Iranian people are doing their level best to show us they do not want war or enmity with the west. If the Russians and the Chinese would stop propping up the Muslim dictatorship we could have those people freed by 9am tomorrow morning. The Iranian government is slaughtering its own citizens in the streets. And Tim Marshall of Sky News claims Iranians who remember the 1950's are advocates of his own twee outmoded Hull Journalism School anti Brit anti Yank maunderings. Here is the news. Iranians who remember the period when America and Britain had influence in their country, by and large remember that period as the good old days. Only the Islamists and Tim Marshall and apparently Sky News traffic in the other pro Ayatollah pro murder pro dictatorship view.

Euronews journalist: "The Ayatollah has called for peace. But the protestors seem to want a fight."

James Healy: "Who the hell is financing Euronews? This can't be accidental advocacy for the psychopathic government of Iran. This is malign."

CNN reporter: "The protestors allege... The protestors claim... The protestors disagree..."

James Healy: "Allege? Claim? Disagree? Does CNN really think this faux objectivity, this faux balance, this faux equivalencing of the Iranian democracy movement with the government which is murdering them in plain sight, do you half wits really think this is an acceptable way to report the enslavement of a people? Shame on you. Again."

our television listings

RTE1
(The Irish national fraudcaster. A television station of the liberal atheists by the liberal atheists and for the liberal atheists. But financed by a compulsory tax on the Catholic citizenry of our country. Clever, what!)
4.25 Murder She Wrote. Anti Catholic dross. Ooops. Sorry. That's all the other programmes on RTE. Jessica tries to help a woman clear her name after the woman is accused of murdering a famous artist. Yawn. I bet the bitch did it.
5.20 Nuacht. What the hell is this?
5.30 The Bill. The bill is 500 hundred million quid. That's what it costs to run this irreligious doss house. RTE, I mean. Detective Superintendant Mickey Webb obtains information that suggests a colleague is corrupt.
6.00 The Angelus. Rung by Quasimodo.
6.01 News.
7.00 Capital D. How they get a half hour programme out of a single letter of the alphabet is beyond me.
7.30 Eastenders. Cor blimey, Denise's dinner party for Jordan cor blimey falls apart, cor blimey.
8.00 Fair City. The two frantic searches for Rachel's missing gerbil and the mislaid Lotto ticket, finally converge. The gerbil has the Lotto ticket in her cage. I can think of no joke about this plot line. It is beyond the reach of my callow mockery. For the first time in my life I must accept defeat. Fair City thou hast beaten me.
8.30 The Enforcers. Tonight's programme follows Fisheries Inspector Karen Griffen on the trail of malefactors fishing without permits. I hope she doesn't catch me.
9.00 News. In case anything has happened since 6 o'clock.
9.30 Prime Time. You couldn't kill John Bowman and his carefully selected panel of liberal atheistic conformists if you were to ram a stake through their black hearts. But I'm willing to try.
10.10 The Mentalist. A convicted killer persuades Jane to reopen his case and prove him innocent. I bet the b-st-rd did it.
11.05 Peadar King investigates pesticide poisoning in Paraguay. I wonder did he stay at a cheap hotel during his brave and essential mission to unmask repressive government pesticide policies in the sun splashed South American holiday paradise of Paraguay.
11.35 Oireachtas Report. Gesundheit. I met the presenter of this programme Ursula Halligan in the Costa cafe on Nassau Street in Dublin this afternoon. I thought she was the red haired bird from The Clinic soap opera television series. I asked her for her autograph and she very kindly obliged. Didn't scream. Didn't shout: "Get this man away from me." For my part I too was as nice as pie. Not a trace of anti RTE rhetoric. As though butter wouldn't melt in my mouth. Come the revolution all RTE staffers will still be first up against the wall. But not Ursula Halligan. She will get off with exile.
12.05 News. Barack goooood. Goooo tooo sleeeeeep. Abortionnnnns niceeeee. Sleeepppp. Catholic churchhhhh baddddd. Sleeeeeppp. Weee will lookkkk afterrrr youuuu. Sleeppppp. No neeeeeeeeed for God. RTE is Godddddddd. Sleeppppppp. Sleeepppppp my prettieeeeeeess. Sleeeeeeep.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

chessnutz

(our weekly chess puzzle)
************************
Marissa Tomei versus Thomas Tucker
New York 1992
***********
White to play is down a pawn and feeling glum. Black is mustering up for a slow sure extermination. Can you see how white headed off the seemingly inevitable extinction of her pieces?
***********
Solution: Marissa tossed her hair adorably and blew her opponent a kiss. From that moment Black could no more formulate a chess strategy than I could. Afterwards Little Tommy Tucker did indeed have to sing for his supper as his chess career was at an end. Marissa Tomei went into films.

transition

by ANISSA LADJEMI
********************

Not happy in my own skin
From innocent child to wayward teen
I stand in the mirror not liking what I see
How I long to rid myself of insecurity
Somebody help me please?
I remove my clothes they drop to the floor
As the artist begins to draw
The arch of my back
The curve of my breast
I am shaking from nerves
Soon I start to relax
Sacrificing myself in the name of art

As time goes on I start thinking differently
Growing in spirit and mind
I ask myself this how can you love another
when you don't love yourself?
I used to be nervous of my body
The scars on my legs
A map of my past
Now when I see my reflection
I smile instead
A sign of inner strength
A wise man once said

What have I learnt on my journey of self discovery?
The difficulties life has thrown at me?
Not to worry it's wasteful and useless in times like these
Don't live in fear of the unknown
Know your worth there lies the key
And failure comes to us all
But we can rise from the ashes once more
To be reborn and see ourselves in a different light
I no longer care what others think
Ladies and gentlemen my transition is complete

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

tea, crumpets, and a cunning twist in the plot

Morning tea with theatre producer Paddy Melia in The Copper Kettle cafe on Kilcullen Main Street.
I congratulate him on the poster for his latest production.
"It was a piece of class Paddy," sez I. "A crucifix juxtaposed with a shotgun. Really sensitive. Elegiac. Life affirming. Most edifying. You are always very much in tune with the cultural and religious feelings of your audience. Restraint. That's what you've got. In an age of excess. You're the last of the poets. I'd say Quentin Tarantino was green with envy."
"Do you think so?" sez the Melia moghul mildly. "It was just something I came up with at the last minute."
Sarcasm has no effect on Paddy.
Due to a rare genetic disorder, he was born without any sense of shame.
My gentle attempts at a put down do not upset him in the slightest.
He is immune.
I try a different tack.
"The last time I talked to you," I muse, "I asked you what you thought about my plans to stage Charlie's Aunt as a teen sex comedy retitled Victorian Scandals. You said you didn't think it would work and that Charlie's Aunt was old hat. Totally irrelevant to a modern audience. Then barely a month later I drove past the Riverbank Theatre and there was this huge banner proclaiming: Paddy Melia presents Charlie's Aunt."
The Melia moghul chuckled.
"Ah James," sez he, "all that's in the past."
I nod bitterly.
"If I thought I could trust you," sez I, "I'd tell you about my new project."
Cecil B De Melia leans forward with signs of interest.
"What is it?" sez he seriously.
"It's a play about the effects of a UFO sighting on a small town," I tell him.
Yes folks, I positively blurt out this information without thinking of the possible consequences.
Plagiarism being the main one.
"What's it called?" raps the Melia meister.
"The Lights Of June," sez me, blurting again.
"What's the hook?" he barks.
"Effects of the extraordinary intruding into ordinary lives," answers me blurtier than ever.
He sat back.
"Not bad," he murmured.
"You're not thinking of stealing this one are you?" I charge severely.
A far away look comes into the old producer's eyes.
"No, no, no," sez he, "I can only do that when the play is already written. But let me see a script as soon as it's ready."
I'm telling you gentle readers of the internet.
No sense of shame.
Or subtlety.
"Yeah Paddy," sez me, "I'll be sure to send it on as soon as it's done."

what lies beyond

On this night three years ago, the mass UFO sighting known as The Kilcullen Incident, took place.
Shortly after midnight, at least several hundred people across South Kildare and County Carlow, witnessed bright lights hovering over the Wicklow mountains.
Many of the witnesses were in the town of Kilcullen where the best documentary footage of the lights was taken.
The incident is considered the most widespread and best documented UFO sighting in Irish history.
The title by which it has become known is taken from a video of the lights filmed by my father from our house in Kilcullen.
For a few weeks the Lights Of June were the most discussed topic of conversation in the region, supplanting concerns about international politics and terrorism.
In late July there was another major sighting.
Business woman Nessa Dunlea phoned me to say she had seen the phenomena a few minutes earlier as she drove home.
It was still daylight.
I grabbed my camera, ran outside into the field adjoining the house.
Four lights lit up the sky in front of me.
I got one photograph before the lights disappeared.
For me the second incident would be more spectacular.
But I never got a chance to calm down and check my memory of what I'd seen against video footage.
This time there was no video footage.
I would postulate that my memory of the second incident is more "imaginative" (and less dependable) than my memory of the first.
This is because my memory of the first incident as it happened, was later continually reinforced and anchored by repeated viewing of the video footage.
My imagination never got a chance to take over.
What is interesting is the fact that even a fairly dependable witness like myself should become so undependable without proper video or photographic verification to correlate with what I thought I'd seen.
Some time after witnessing The Lights Of July, I was contacted by the Irish army.
Army experts viewed the evidence I'd collected relating to both incidents.
They asserted most forcefully that the lights were in fact army parachute flares.
They added that the army had been on manoeuvres on the Wicklow mountains when the first sighting took place.
They stated that they were sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the UFO's were in fact army ordinance used by gun crews to illuminate their targets.

belladonna

dead relatives in a photograph
watch me from the wall
shell shocked at my decision
i sit and write alone
i might have loved you once
but i will never love you now

night is at the window
the years are at my door
what was wrought in darkness
shines brightly all the more
and what will never be
has its own brief allure

a spirit restless brooding
in a body growing old
sifts the drifting embers
through the ashes of my soul
they say love lights the universe
but the universe is cold

Monday, June 22, 2009

heeler the peeler's supernatural tales of horror and suspense

Costa Cafe on Nassau Street.
Mid afternoon.
Miss Hyunjin is recounting for me one of her personal experiences of the supernatural.
"I was in bed asleep," she said. "I woke up and couldn't move. I felt someone beside the bed. A feeling of terror swept over me. But I still couldn't move. Then I heard singing. It was a little girl singing."
"What age were you at the time?" asked the noble Heelers.
"I was seventeen. It was four years ago."
"Did it only happen once?"
"I had the experience three times. But only once was the little girl there singing."
"Where did it happen?"
"It happened at my family home."
"Could it have been a dream?" proffered I.
"No, I was awake," insisted she.
"Were you drunk? Had you been drinking? Wine maybe?"
"No!" she cried.
"So what do you think it was yourself?" I asked.
"I think it was a ghost," she replied.
Around us the cafe cacaphoned briefly.
A flurry of teenagers moving to the door.
The spell was broken.
The noble Heelers glanced at his watch.
The hour was up.
As English lessons go, this had been a strange one.
I stood up to go.
As I did so, I leaned forward to kiss her.
She recoiled.
I kid you not.
Positively recoiled.
It was like the sort of reaction Quasimodo got from girls that definitely didn't fancy him.
Hmmm.
Well maybe oriental women frown on public displays of affection.
It's gotta be that.
But shrinking away from me.
Like a frightened fawn.
Not good for the ego.
As I walked towards the door it seemed all eyes were on me.
I gotta tell you folks.
It'll be a cold day in Seoul before I try to kiss any more Korean babes in public or anywhere else.
This one won't get a kiss out of me again unless she pulls a gun.
Ah.
The horror, the horror, as we do say in the ghost hunting trade.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

eventide

Driving up the avenue to the old chateau after a day in Dublin.
Evening sunlight dappling the windscreen.
I pull up at the front door and get out of my car.
The lawn glimmers emerald.
I hear a flurry from above.
The jackdaws have emerged from the chimney. They are cawing a greeting.
"How ya Jack," I answer. "Howya Mrs Jack."
There comes a different shriller cawing from the top of the Dad's rampart hedge.
I see the old crow and her son looking down on me.
The son follows her around the garden.
He has tufts of brown in his feathers.
She's kind to him.
Occasionally she'll turn and put a morsel in his mouth.
"Hey there Mrs Crow," I call. "You've got a mighty fine son there. You must be very proud."
The housemartens swoop by and disappear around the gable.
"Long live Jesus Christ the king," I yell to them.
I'm not letting on to the Dad that the martens are building a nest on our gable.
Just as I'm not letting on to him about Jack living in the chimney.
He'll find out soon enough.
No rush.
But here I am enjoying the crows and jackdaws as though they were the most exotic birds of paradise.
Truly one the marks of God is the abundance of his generosity.
The abundance of his grace in the creation.
If you take even the smallest step towards him, you will see things as you have never seen them before.
Before I go into the house, the swallow alights on my car aeriel.
This now feels so assuredly like a personal blessing from God, that for a moment I am almost swept away by a feeling of profoundest peace.
I go into the house.
Paddy Pup meets me in the hall.
He is swilling a brandy and wearing a smoking jacket.
"Were you talking to the crows?" he demands.
"I was," sez I. "And to the jackdaws. And to the housemartens. And I would have talked to the swallow only I couldn't think of anything to say."
"Why don't you just shoot me?" said Paddy Pup.

apologia pro egotism mea

A few days ago the writer Mark Steyn referred to the Iranian government as a thugocracy on his website.
It seems the term first coined at The Heelers Diaries is starting to catch on.
Tonight a CNN reporter dropped it into her usual mish mash of hedging and inuendo live from Teheran.
The closest thing to a genuine insight I've ever heard on CNN.
It's good to know I'm making a difference.

vicissitudes

Afternoon at the Chateau.
I am in conference with the inimitable Uncle Scutch.
"I heard a former editor of the Leinster Leader on The Pat Kenny Show today giving out about the Johnston Press," sez he.
We had been setting the world to rights over coffees in the kitchen.
My eyebrows rose.
"Was it the baldy little bollix who fired me?" quoth I.
"Which one is he?" sez the Uncle.
"John Whelan," quoth me.
"I'm not sure what his name was," said Uncle Scutch.
Outside the window Mrs Chaffinch chirped.
"It could have been Whelan," I mused. "He was editor of the Leinster Leader for at least a full two weeks. Arf, arf. And he's popping up on RTE now a bit. They had cameras following him into the dole office a few months ago. He seems to be trying to reinvent himself as a victim. Maybe he's trying to get in on my Johnston Press schtick as well."
Our conversation drifted to other things.
The eternity of a June evening was stretching her mantle over the garden.
Ah yes bold readers.
It is time for me to move on.
For a start, if that odious little shite Whelan is now bad mouthing the Johnston Press, then it may well behove me to start saying good things about them.
And so John Fry Week comes to an end at The Heelers Diaries.
Would you ever have guessed it could end like this?

tilting at liberals

Evening.
An RTE hag called Miriam O'Callaghan is presenting a television chat show.
She is as well nigh unwatchable as any human being who ever lived.
RTE have struck the mother lode with this one.
Haggerdotal.
Hoo boy.
Miriam O'Callaghan receives 220,000 quid a year from RTE.
At least that is the amount RTE admits to paying her.
The figure relates to 2006, the last year for which RTE has released any information on its generous renumeration arrangements.
We might expect her pay to have risen since then.
Because that's the way RTE does things.
Pay unwatchable people limitless sums of money because that justifies management scruff paying themselves limitless amounts of money.
None of this money is generated by RTE's commercial activity by the way.
The channel doesn't have an audience.
The unimaginative atheistic shills have all but killed the most powerful medium on earth.
RTE revenues are generated by a compulsory tax on the citizens of Ireland.
A licence fee which everyone must pay to RTE to expiate the sin of daring to own a television.
A licence fee we all must pay whether we watch RTE or not.
Most of us don't watch it.
Ever.
So RTE pretends it's paying Miriam O'Callaghan 220 grand.
The real figure is substantially higher.
The figure that includes the bonuses and expenses she receives will in all probability be hugely higher.
And tonight Miriam O'Callaghan is interviewing supposed sex abuse victims.
Tonight Miriam O'Callaghan is continuing the RTE presentation of sex abuse as something that arises from a dysfunction within the Catholic church.
Personally I am not satisfied with Miriam O'Callaghan's investigation of the topic.
I really don't think I should be financing her world view.
Because I honestly think she's wrong about everything.
Let me this way put it.
It matters not to RTE that 999 sex abuse victims out of every 1000 were abused in the family home by non Christian non religious people.
The truth about these things matters not one whit to RTE, or to their anti Catholic allies in Independent Newspapers and The Irish Times.
The cravens of RTE ignore 999 sex abuse victims out of every thousand and focus on the same few rehashed cases. I believe RTE's motivation is solely to engineer the destruction of the Catholic religion.
I do not think RTE is even trying to get at the truth about the nature and extent of sex abuse.
This is an age of massive sexual dysfunction.
And it hasn't happened for no reason.
But I am telling you RTE, Independent Newspapers and The Irish Times do not have any sincere concern for sex abuse victims.
The irony is that you and me finance RTE.
We have no choice.
The licence fee is compulsory.
The Irish government does not allow ordinary people to set up their own television stations.
The wheel is rigged and it's the only game in town.
Here is the news.
I am getting tired of financing the anti Catholic agendas of RTE, Independent Newspapers, The Irish Times and shadowy groupings within our political, judicial and cultural pseudo elites.
I am getting tired of paying the wages of an unwatchable harridan snivelling faux sympathy at sex abuse victims who have been specially selected to promote a false perspective on sex abuse as a whole.
I am getting tired.
And I am getting angry.
Tonight I get up and leave RTE to its own devices.
Returning a few hours later, I find a film underway on the same channel.
The film features a naked woman in a bath masturbating.
I watch for a moment.
What a privilege it is to finance this.
What a privilege it is to finance RTE's attempts to debauch the nation while also financing Miriam O'Callaghan's splendidly manipulatively assinine attempts to discuss sex abuse.
What a privilege.
You all know what I think about these pornographies.
I think they stimulate the pleasure centres of the brain in a manner most likenable to the effects of hard drugs.
I think they are part of what's causing sex abuse in our country and around the world.
Yes, you all know my views on this.
I have long felt that those media entities posing as being most concerned about sex abuse are themselves key figures in the cultural processes which are causing it.
Remember when Independent Newspapers journalist Ian O'Doherty called the Catholic church a paedophile ring recently.
I remarked that I felt sure the culture of atheistic hedonism promoted by Independent Newspapers was contributing to a disruption in male and female sexualities, and that in my view this disruption was a significant factor in the socialisation of individuals towards committing sex abuse.
Remember when Ger Colleran, editor of the Daily Star (a paper which is tied up with Independent Newspapers), remember when the immortal Colleran falsely, mendaciously and malignly claimed on national television that children had been screaming for help in every Catholic church presbytery in Ireland.
At the time I noted that The Daily Star was a prime purveyor of phone sex lines, including phone sex lines that purport to be staffed by college girls.
I noted that if teenagers were staffing the phone sex lines published in The Daily Star, then the Daily Star, is itself complicit in child sex abuse.
I noted further my own profound belief that the dissemination of phone sex lines in The Daily Star and its ilk, like the advocacy of atheistic hedonism in Independent Newspapers generally, was contributing to an incontinence, a veritable derangement, in male and female sexualities, which I postulated was a significant factor in the explosion of sexual abuse currently taking place in our society.
Currently taking place.
Not sixty years ago.
Not during the period referred to by the former Fianna Fail Mayor of Clonmel when he shrieked on yet another RTE discussion programme that he had been raped by priests.
Not then.
Right here.
Right now.
Real victims.
Only this time the victims are dying before our very eyes.
We have a body count for children in Ireland these past few years which looks like something from a civil war zone.
Ritual abuse.
Satanic abuse.
Drug based abuse.
Sundry malign violations in every town and village in Ireland.
All happening now.
Two families murdered by their fathers. (That is to say a total of two women and four children.)
Another woman drowned in a canal near where I live while her children watched.
Seven children aged 12 and 13 killing themselves in North County Kildare over the past six months without any public outcry or proper hard target journalistic investigation.
The laicised non Catholic school where those seven dead children studied having the gall to suggest that the Catholic church must cease to play a role in education.
And no one in the media calling the school out on their own record.
On their own body count.
Babies turned into paraplegics by the hardmen boyfriends of their drug taking mothers who never went to mass because they can't believe all that Son of God stuff man.
Children forced to live with parents who maim and kill them. Forced to live with such parents by our incompetent social services whose guiding ethos is political correctness and the necessity of not being judgemental about alternative (meaning drug taking and psychotisised) life styles, because being judgemental is just so Catholic, man, you know, it's just not groovy.
Just because the mother's living with a psychotic tatooed drug addict who's already raped and murdered (manlaughtered Judge Liberal calls it in Ireland now whenever he bothers to call it anything) oh dozens of times, just because of this we're not going to take the children into custody because, loike, you know, loike, we're enlightened, we're not repressed, we're not judgemental, we're just so bloody cool, loike, and, loike, the sun shines out of us.
And the kids are dying.
They're dying in such numbers it can't be completely concealed any longer.
But it can be effectively ignored.
Eh, RTE, Independent Newspapers, Irish Times?
Eh?
Twenty dead kids in Health Board care in the last few years.
Twenty that the Health Board told us about.
So there's more.
No explanations given.
No proper public enquiries.
No firings of murderous child abusing staff.
But the Health Board has just told The Daily Mail that Ireland needs to have legalised abortion.
And in the meantime the Health Board has been shipping children to England for abortions.
Brendan Drumm get out.
Get out.
Brendan Drumm, as a citizen of Ireland I James Healy do not want you in charge of a Health Board in my country.
Brendan Drumm, I do not want to pay you hundreds of thousands every year for your malign atheisation of health care policy.
I do not want to pay you a million dollar pension.
Brendan Drumm I do not approve of your values.
Brendan Drumm I do not think you have any values.
Brendan Drumm I do not consent to finance you and your lack of values.
Get out.
Get lost.
You have hung around here far too long for any good you have been doing.
And so it goes on.
Children who get pregnant while in Health Board care.
Children who are raped by Health Board staff.
And I am financing this.
And you are financing it gentle reader.
While the media are hiding it.
And so it goes on.
Our kleptocratic Fianna Fail government has allowed abortionists to usurp powerful positions across our society.
Abortion activist Olive Braiden is appointed head of The Arts Council.
The Arts Council no less.
Bloody hell.
Then the Arts Council finances a book on Mamie Cadden an abortionist who murdered a girl in Dublin in the 1930's.
The Arts Council book presents the murderess Mamie Cadden as some sort of women's rights martyr way ahead of her time.
That's some work of art, that is.
And I finance this.
This perfidy.
They have required all of us to finance their agendas.
RTE.
The Irish Times.
Independent Newspapers.
They have called our church a paedophile ring.
They have laid every crime at our door.
They have spat upon priests and nuns in the streets.
And they've have used us as farm animals to finance their lying agendas.
You know I think.
I really think.
I think it's time we put a stop to this.

blast from the past

Found this in my files last night...

********

Channel Four Television, 60 Charlotte Street, London Wip 2aX
16th November 1988
Attention: James Healy.

Dear James
Thank you very much for letting me see BEFORE DAWN DAWNS.
I don't think that this would sit easily alongside the rest of our output. It's a very singular piece of writing, with fast, witty and entertaining dialogue. The jokes are funny and the running gags work well. On the down side, the idea is rather direction-less, and needs a centre of gravity.
There are some structural problems. - records are introduced, then disappear after twenty seconds; the poem will seriously hold up the pace of the play; and I think you need to decide if you're writing for stage or screen.
I'm not being terribly positive, I know, but there are a lot of good things i this script. I'd much rather be honest. Beyond that, I can't be of much help. Send us more writing and keep in touch.
Best wishes.
Seamus.
Seamus Cassidy, Commissioning Editor Entertainment

*********

Great Scott bold readers.
It is as I feared.
I'm Adrian Mole.