Back in the fun-stuffed, joy-filled, gloriously utopian days of the early 1980s, three things seemed sure and certain.

1) Nuclear Armageddon was imminent and inevitable. It was 2 minutes to midnight and jttery fingers hovered over red buttons. We were all fucked.

2) We'd soon be abandoning a borked earth and heading out into the cosmos on giant space arks. Possibly as a result of 1.

3) I'd wake, most days, to find myself caked and coated in drying urine.

All three were, I'm sure, related. Cold war politics, space opera, and my stinky wee. Key ingredients of a frazzled Zeitgeist.

It's my daughter's ongoing love affair with Bosco that has such thoughts fizzing about my brain-box. This afternoon we watched the episode where Frank Twomey returned from "the pictures" having viewed a Star Wars knock-off. He was jazzed. He was jizzed. He was excited. He wanted, he said, to build a spaceship and to head off, he said, into the depths of outer space. He, Marian and Bosco decided to sing a song that spoke of the thrills, spills and adventures that awaited them there. This is the result.

Bosco – Outer Space, Is the Place

Melancholia and poignancy absolutely drip from every flat, warbled note. Outer space suddenly doesn't sound anything like a jolly old…er…space where you'd whizz about in an X-Wing, chortling delightedly. It sounds deeply sad. And empty. A place of forced exile. A quality Marian captures upsettingly with the words…

"Past the moon,
And then soon,
We will wave the sun goodbye".

Yes, we will wave the sun goodbye as we squat in our tin-can ships gazing longingly back toward a long-disappeared earth. Tears streaming down faces half-lit by said sun's weakening rays. We're suddenly out here like Major Tom, spinning and floating and slowly asphyxiating. Mummy! I want to go home!

To make matters worse, Frank all but admits that space travel is, really, when you think about it, a metaphor for death.

"Outer Space,
Is the place,
Where we all intend to…fly".

There's a millisecond's pause between "to" and "fly" that inevitably invites the listener to jauntily sing "Where we all intend to…die!". You think subtleties like these were lost on young Bosco enthusiasts? Not a bit of it. There may have been a time, back in the giddy days of the 50s and 60s, when space seemed seductive. A place of boundless possibilities and off-world technological utopias. But by the time I was old enough to really consider such things, and worry about such things, and piss in the bed as an indirect result of such things, space just seemed horribly cold, weird and indifferent. A vast place where'd you'd lose your mind. Where you'd slowly suffocate or burn up on re-entry. Where you'd watch the tiny blue bauble of mother Earth vanish (forever) into the endlessly black distance. The place where we all intend to die.

Nobody (not even Kubrick, or Bowie, or Tarkovsky) articulated this space/death analogy as succinctly and movingly as Europe's beautiful Joey Tempest of course.

The mushroom clouds are rising. We're headed for Venus.¹ The undiscovered planet, from whose bourn no traveller returns. It's game over, man. I'm off for a little cry. *Sob*²

1. Snigger! [back]
2. Actually, I'm off to the Irish Blog Awards in Belfast. I may see some of you there. [back]

Once-zealous advocates of "Laser Therapy" before that self-same laser spun about and became a hellish death ray. A shit Irish cover band (that never really existed) aping a Manhattanite original that was itself a fiction.²

No longer gazing toward a shiny future of swaggering consumption. But staring (vacantly) into space. Empty space. Lots and lots and lots of it.

1. Currently haunting down-town Limerick. [back]
2. Though one nowhere near as shallow and unifaceted as the cultural artefacts that appropriated its "4 fabulous gals on the town" motif. [back]

Tumescently macho as all this was, it was still not ultra-violent and triumphant enough for the (throbbing) members of the "Fine Gael Digital Task Force". On the occasion of a certain jolly plumber’s 30th birthday they’ve channelled their pulsating and infantile power fantasies into the creation of "Go Ireland".

Its gurning hero is Nint-Enda. He runs. He jumps.¹

He mercilessly fucks FG shurikens into the face of Joan Burton until she dies and her corpse turns into a pile of ashes. Really. “Tax This!”, he (really) yells as he does so. Die you fucking commie bitch!!

Fine Gael fetishists the land over are gleefully playing this as I type. Drooling as they lay brutal waste to their enemies.

Speeding Nint-Enda ever closer to his coronation at Hyrule Castle. Finger of the right hand feverishly pushing the “Throw Star” button. Fingers of the left hand frantically bringing themselves to climactic release. Cum and death and ashes and murder. And George Hook’s raging boner.²

Yesterday. It was one of those days for sicking oneself in the mouth.

1. Honestly. Dynamism not done justice by action-less screen grab. [back]
2. Always stiffened by exposure to “powerful men”. [back]

1) Clad in black, austere, severe, surrounded by cats. Here is the Old Maid archetype. The terrifying spectre of moth-balled, odd-ball female singledom that haunts the dreams of women everywhere (or so patriarchal bastard card-mongers would have you believe). She stares vacantly into space. Impossibly empty space. Joyless and despair-filled space. Silent space punctuated only by the dull "plop" of cat shit hitting the floor.

2) Chirpy, unreasonably optimistic, and demented gargoyle. Tragically out of step with contemporary fads and fashions. Caked in cheap make-up in a late and desperate bid to hook a man. A pantomime dame, a drag queen, a disaster. A lesson to ladies everywhere. Dear God, don't leave it too late.

3) Clad in the mode of a terrifying maiden aunt, her meanings seem, at first glance, easy to unpick and unpack. But there's that roguish smile. And there's that…um…circus. Is she proud of that "Admit One" ticket she so brazenly displays? Is this an "Old Maid" content with her singular lot? Can society cope with such a creature?

4) Rich. Eccentric. Crazy cat lady. Rattling tipsily around a decaying mansion. Simple.

5) Mary Poppins with an inhuman taste for man-flesh. Crazed rictus grin revealing teeth sharpened into vampiric points. Not just sexually and socially dead, but undead. Yet still somehow predatorial. Flee, menfolk. Flee! She wants to chomp yer balls clean off.

6) Young girl thinks – "Whatever happens in my life, I must not become her".

7) Parrot shrieking the name of a lost love (drowned at sea). Animal menagerie stinking up the house with the odour of faecal matter and social maladjustment. Heart arrowed not by Cupid but by his malevolent bastard cousin. A motif that recurs in our next offering…

…which has the added non-bonus of spectacles (Ugh! Intellectual!), a bedraggled and suicidal feline, and knitting – the non-sexiest thing one can do with one's hands. You can't knit passion. You can't knit a child!

9) A greater sin than unwanted, unwonted and grossly inappropriate sexual aggression is…ice-cold, buttoned-down, purse-lipped frigidity. Who does she think she is?

10) Witch and her familiar. Drinker of infant blood. Pure evil.

And now? Get in. Grab your cheap shit. And get the fuck out! You wretched penny-pinching bastards! It's tough love. No longer are we the stars of our own glamorous and aspirational soap-operas. No longer are we investors in a dream. We have become, instead, ashen-faced queuers in a bread-line. The unforgiving strip lighting cruelly exposing every pimple, crow's foot and blood-shot eye. Sorry, lads – any chance of a biscuit that makes me feel like a smooth, polo-neck-wearing professional in a loft apartment? No! Get out you hideous freak! *sadface*

Shopping in Lidl is like that moment when the lights come on at the end of a disco (and you all realise how ghastly and drunk and pathetic you are) stretched out to infinity. There's no music, of course. Music being a charmingly old-hat affection of the consumerist era. Just silence. And the sound of institutionalised shuffling and despair.

Your eyes dart nervously about. Trying to locate something of the old days (and ways) to latch onto. A comforting anchor. Wait, is that Dairy Gold? Nope. It's Dairy Manor. Ah, Rice Krispies! Yum! Think again, loser, it's Goody Rice. When you're shovelling it into your down-turned gob, in your filth-encrusted hovel, you won't notice the difference.

It all goes down the one way. Welcome to the future.

Then talk turned again (though not by much) to Danger Mouse (another cornerstone of the burgeoning fake nostalgia industry). And from there to the villainous & amphibian Baron Greenback. Hugh Green chipped in with this:

Is it just me or was there an anti-Semitic undertone to the figure of Baron Greenback?

The answer, of course, is that it's not just me. I mean "you". Hugh. For the Baron is about as grotesque a caricature as ever slithered out of the rank propaganda mills of the Third Reich. As you (Hugh) succinctly explained.

I mean, a reptilian Baron seeking to dominate the world with a crypto-Jewish name connoting avarice. Problematic at best.

I tried convincing him (Hugh that is…this is getting confusing) that Greenback was originally supposed to be called "Grasping Jewfrog" but he (just about) maintained an incredulous raised eyebrow. It's still a true story though. Or it might as well be.

Does rock no longer concern itself with bothering "The Man"? With frying The Man's tiny little square brain? I mean, it used to be a war. A war we thought would rage for ever. Rawwwk VS The Man. Good VS Evil. Daddy VS Chips.

The Man would generally be personified (in rawwwk videos) by, well, a man. A small petty man. A man with a bow-tie and glasses. A man whose perpetually pursed lips signified square society's disapproval of rawwk's liberating craziness. A man whose glasses would be routinely shattered by the awesome power of shredded guitar.

Example? Check out the fogyish bank manager type at 0:52 in the awesome video for Judas Priest's awesome Breaking the Law (aka Breaking yer Specs):

Ho ho. Take that 4 eyes!

The Man, of course, is the eternal foe of wild, Bacchanalian joy. Singing, dancing, 10 minute guitar solos – The Man has no need for such things. His only loves (the wizened miserable old bastard) are money, order, piety and Werther's Originals.

45 years before Judas Priest broke laws (and blew minds) another impish rebel was pushing against the bonds of square Patriarchal oppression. I refer, of course, to Shirley Temple in Curly Top.

Singing? Raucous good cheer? Children's laughter? In the orphanage? Madame! This is an outrage! Shirley and pal hold firm though and tell him to get stuffed. Theirs is the spirit of rawwwk. It's Rob Halford's favourite movie.

So where are the 21st century heirs to the Halford/Temple legacy? Where are the glasses smashers?

They don't try to hide or disguise this cuntitude either. They flaunt it (like belching, ball-scratching peaCOCKS). Communicating one's cuntness has never been easier. Pop into a local Topman/River Island. Pick up a "You Look Like I Need Another Drink" T-shirt. Boom. Job done. Instant cunt.

That's not your only option of course. For the odious prick about town the choices are (these days) many and varied. There is, for example, this chucklesome classic.

Or this slice of retro-gaming misogyny…

Ha! Ha! Women! They're all obsessed with nagging and marriage and ruining our lives and spoiling our fun and stopping us riding all round us and stuff. Wot a load of bitches!

It wasn't always this bad. Somehow and somewhere, in the last 10 years or so, Irish Ladism went from being a multifarious, loose-knit, fairly harmless and amorphous thing (built around rugby and late night group pissing sessions at pub urinals) to a codified and singular entity. Its themes and tropes were made concrete – and they were terrible to behold.

How did this happen? I blame a 2-pronged attack. Prong 1? The baleful rise of ladz magz (a trend that continues to find new nadirs – with Zoo [et al] making granddaddy Loaded look like À la recherche du temps perdu). Prong 2? The UK High St store invasion – on which a vigorous and fully-formed lad culture piggy-backed.

The hilarious part is that said culture is impossible to satirise. You could fill Topman with "WANKER!!!" t-shirts and there'd be queues around the block. They know they're wankers. They're thrilled about it.

However, we can but try. I'll be down the Milk Market in Limerick on Saturday morning trying to flog my "I Hate Women and Myself and I'm Wearing this to Try and Fill a Gnawing Emptiness Inside. Help me! Help me, Please!" t-shirt. If I can cause even one young fella to break down crying (hugging his knees and begging the universe to forgive him) it'll be a morning well spent.

#manclub

Anyway, you know all that already – given that your consciousness is (undoubtedly) plugged straight into the scrolling-bar, 24/7, hyperbollix news shite-fest. It's already old. It was old before it happened. If it happened at all. Which it didn't…and did at the same time.

Reason I bring it up is that my immediate reaction, on hearing of it, was: "Viral ad Campaign". Given the apparently genuine panic caused – and the genuine rescue efforts of (hyper)real people – that reaction might seem deeply cynical and paranoid. But that's what living in a world of Total Spectrum Viral Advertising Dominance does to the human mind (or mine at least). The war in Iraq? Viral ad campaign that has yet to reveal its punchline. The mass extinction of the dinosaurs and the mammalian ascent that eventually produced mankind, civilization, and viral advertising itself? Ditto.

Things were rather different back in the damp, gullible, muck-covered, permanent twilight of 1980s Ireland. Back then 98% of all ads were for Triple "A" Golden Maverick. So when the teasing and mysterious words "Big Ed Loves Mona" (and nothing else) popped onto the screens of a pre-viral-ad, pre-internet, pre-most-things nation, the result was hysteria of War of the Worlds proportions. Except not really…though everyone was quite excited and reasonably curious about what it all meant.

I seem to recall it dragging on for some time, with cryptic clues carefully dropped here and there to whet appetites and keep us nattering about it over our nonexistent water-coolers. By the time all was due to be revealed tension had cranked the mystery up to Third Secret of Fatima levels. Whatever it meant, it meant something big. Something huge. Something earth-shattering and apocalyptic.

It was about yogurt. Yogurt. Yogurt called Mona. Disgusting and scarcely edible yogurt called Mona. And Big Ed was someone who liked it. Who liked this yogurt. Yogurt! Something snapped and broke that day. We were dragged from a just-about-modern slumber into the dizzying vortex of postmodernity. By yogurt.

And what of "balloon boy"? Ad for Häagen-Dazs. Or Ben & Jerry's. Truth to be revealed shortly. Keep watching the skies (and CNN).

The sun sets on a once proud democracy. Europhilic creatures of the night will soon crawl from their foul pits and stalk the land (cackling). God help us. God help her! Weep for Ireland, little one. Weep from your dazzling emerald green eyes. Weep those tears of radiant light. God willing, they might just hold back the dark.

For they mostly come at night. Mostly.

In a memorable exchange with his Jesus-lovin' father-in-law, Larry David (the "fictional" Curb Your Enthusiasm version) speculated on what it might take for him to get enthusiastic about the Christian God(s):

"Y'see, I could see worshipping Jesus if he were a girl. Like if God had a daughter. Jane. I'll worship a Jane. But. y'know, to worship a guy…it's like a little, kinda, gay, isn't it?"

In reality, of course, "Jane" (sort of) exists. In fact, she's probably one of the most popular sort-of-existing entities in Ireland. Except here she's better (and more formally) known as "Our Lady". Or (if you're feeling acronymous) the BVM.¹

The BVM may not be God's daughter exactly (well, simultaneously daughter, mother and…er…"partner"), but she otherwise fulfils a pretty "Jane"-like role. Whether haunting rural glades and copses, or materialising on slices of Battenberg cake – the BVM is the "Christian" face that even wretched heathens like myself can warm to. She's a nurturing mother, an archetypal link with a pre-Christian (goddess-dominated) past, a fairy queen, and (let's not forget) a radiant & natural looker to boot. It's easy to hail Jane.

The good people of Rathkeale and its surrounds obviously agree – for they've taken to hailing a tree stump manifestation of Jane with some gusto.

Responses have been predictable, and predictably tedious. Orthodox (by the book) priests frown darkly and mutter the words "graven image". Meeja "humourists" lick their lips and spew forth facile gack about credulous boggers. Sober (Dawkins-esque) atheists shake their wise heads sadly and despair of a world so stuffed with superstitious rot. A motley crew is united in condemnation. Tsk, tsk. Oh dear, oh dear. Ha, ha.

Meanwhile, the stump continues to pull the crowds. Hawkers of holy medals, rosary beads and plastic screw-top Mary bottles count the Euros. Cute tongue-in-cheek locals serve up tasty/folksy quotes for the benefit of big city media types. A pop/folk-Catholicism celebrates itself as the storms of blasphemous libel and institutional abuse rage about it.

Says (a presumably beleaguered) parish priest Fr Willie Russell:

"There's nothing there…it's just a tree…you can't worship a tree".

Sorry Willie, but you clearly can. Or if not a tree exactly, then some sort of potent Mary/Dryad/tree hybrid. What he really means, of course, is "you shouldn't worship a tree". Stupid, stupid people. They believe the wrong things. They vote the wrong way. They simply can't be trusted. I mean to say, they're worshipping Jane the tree for God's sake! What is to be done with them?

Never fear. Intelligent, rational people of influence will always (in such situations) step in to patronise the shit out of them and make them feel thick. We'll all have a good laugh, and they'll all learn a humbling (educational) lesson. Or so we must hope.

1. Blessed Virgin Mary. [back]

With the Ryan Report's revelations continuing to dynamite the (already shaky) moral foundations of pious ould Catholic Ireland, local hawkers & mongers of nostalgia would seem to be faced with a quandary. How do you sell & package a past that now looks (even to the mistiest eyes) more inky black than sun-dappled?

Well if the current proliferation of "Weren't the 70s/80s gas?!" radio ads are anything to go by, then you simply ignore the negative while accentuating the whimsical. Barefoot trips across the fields to Hazelbrook Farm? Delightful! The Holy Trinity of Kimberley, Mikado & Coconut Cream? Yummy! John putting the cat out? He will be soon.

Times of recession and uncertainty tend, of course, to have adpeople and product peddlers rushing to press reset/reinvent buttons, and 2009 is no exception. Out goes Celtic Tiger ostentation and swagger. In comes the homemade, the hand-me-down, and the humble. All a load of disingenuous bollocks naturally, but someone's getting paid relatively handsomely to push the narrative.

There are, however, those who by never changing saved themselves the bother of changing back. Near the top of this imagined list would, undoubtedly, be Oatfield – purveyors of old-timee sweets boiled¹ to within an inch of their…er…lives.

When I was a short-trousered (figroll-loving) youth, Oatfield products epitomised all that was bland, glamour-free, regressive and suffocating about Irish life. They were sucked furiously by pinch-faced nuns and given as gifts by well-meaning (but hopelessly uncool) aged relatives. In their boiled, shiny surfaces you could almost see your reflection. And the reflection you could almost see was struggling not to look disappointed and underwhelmed ("Thanks, Aunty Margaret…").

The worst thing that a sweet can ever be is "sensible" – and sensibleness was a quality that Oatfield sweets had in abundance. I say "had" but really "have" might be more accurate. For Oatfield are still soldiering on – eschewing all that's faddy & new-fangled. Embracing all that's sucky and ancient (their website is actually analogue, not digital – with offline web pages printed on wafer-thin, Ireland's Own style paper).

But enough. Time to get to the sugary goodness at the heart of this post. After a 25 year gap – a gap in which I've eaten little but foreign, "Fancy Dan" confectionery – I'm doing what the adpeople tell me and getting back to basics. Five packs of Oatfield's finest sit on the desk before me. I shall now (in the interests of, y'know, science or something) suck, lick and eat them, recording my vital findings below. Let us begin.

Sweet shape = Tiny hockey puck meets toy UFO. Sweet taste/texture = Fairy Liquid & crushed up dishwasher tablets. The sherbety "tickle" feels like someone dragging tinsel dipped in "oil of orange" (yes, that's one of the yummy ingredients) across your tonsils. Or to quote Jess's summing up of the experience – "Lemsip…and someone jizzing acid into my mouth". Delicious.

Same shape, but a stark white mediciney hue. For "soothes sore throats" (as the blurb promises) read "violent mentho-lyptus attack that makes every intake of breath an agonising ordeal".

A classic "dissolve and release" sweet. A hard outer casing gradually gives way to the corrosive effects of sucking and saliva before spurting brown goo onto your waiting tongue. The packet promises "Cocoa Solids" (*snigger*), and though the oozing centre is anything but solid the scatological qualities are hard to deny.

Hmmm. Initially appears a slight variation on a theme (with a choccy outer and an orangey inner) but testing proves otherwise. It's the same damn sweet! Same hydrogenated vegetable oil. Same ammonium phosphatides. Same poo-like core. It's an outrage. Heads will roll.

Ah…the Emerald. Oatfield's flagship. Individually wrapped and proudly unboiled. Back in the early 80s there wasn't a house in Ireland that didn't have a half-finished packet of Emeralds in the press. Nobody bought them. They just appeared there. Teleporting in from Oatfield HQ in Donegal.

If a cheapo chocolate casing containing an interior of sand was your idea of fun, then Emerald's would leave you laughing delightedly. Or at least that's how I remembered the experience. The contemporary reality is (I'm disappointed to report) somewhat less disgusting. Perhaps Oatfield heeded customer demands and eased off on the dessicated coconut (the "sand" of which I speak), or perhaps my palate has been radically altered by age. Whatever the case may be, I'm staggered to find 21st century Emerald's very moreish.

Still look like turd/mini soda bread hybrids though.

1. Pronounced: buy-ild. [back]

Their movements were simultaneously furtive and frantic – erratic rowing strokes coupled with hurried anchor-dumping (said movements not done justice by the below image).

As quickly as they arrived, they were gone – leaving this monument to clandestine effort in their wake.

Now while Toiréasa Ferris' head & SF's logo may look impressively large and striking in the above photo, it should be noted that a) this is a close crop of a shot taken at maximum zoom, and, b) the Shannon is a broad and majestic river. From the banks, or a bridge, the naked human eye would struggle to gather much more than a vague impression. Of a giant-headed young woman. Trapped on a small boat.

On to the debaffling. Toiréasa is, we're told, part of "A New Generation". A generation that eschews the corned-beef-faced fugliness of traditional Irish politicking and replaces it with relative-attractiveness. A generation that, let's face it, we're being subtly encouraged to want to ride. If Adams & McGuinness are an “Old Generation"(original series) Kirk & Spock, then Toiréasa is a new/next generation…er…Deanna Troi? Or maybe not. I mean Kirk was pretty hot, and then there's the whole slash fiction thing so…um…

Anyway, location is an important factor here. For if unobtainableness is a significant element of seductive allure then you'd have to consider the above a beguiling success. After all, you'd struggle to make yourself more unobtainable than parking yourself in the middle of a river. Sinn Féin? Masters & mistresses of pop-sexual psychology.

Though unlikely to perform as impressively in the Limerick Leader's (controversial) “Candidates I'd Like to Bang" poll – Maurice Quinlivan (like other local SF hopefuls) still has explosive imagery in his arsenal.

First there's the shiny, eye-catching gold “1″ – a traditional visual that manages to both rewrite the tricolour's (troublesome orange) symbolism and make the candidate seem that extra bit special. Plain ol' black and white “1s" are hardly likely to sway a bling-obsessed youth (or so the Irish Daily Mail would probably tell me).

Then there's the “cut out and keep" dotted line (Sinn Féin vouchers! Collect 100 for a Wolfe Tones lunch box!) and the slightly puzzling “fast forward" icon.

All at sea or, or rocketing (at a trillion miles an hour) toward a bright, golden future? You decide.

Sweet mother of incongruity and mishmashment. A veritable feast of signs, cues and elements. Where to start?

Is the integration of the tricolour and the EU flag supposed to reassure or alarm? Does it speak of harmony and unity, or the latter devouring the former? Might Ms. Simon's bisecting head indicate that she (and her party) can halt the blurring of boundaries and ensure the maintenance of heterogeneity? And what does the gold cláirseach (emblazoned on Ms. Simon's left breast) add to this heady potpourri? We might need to rope in Dan Brown to decrypt this one.

Then there's the slogan – “It's Your Future – Take it Back". Are we to infer from this that Libertas no longer wants our future? What's wrong with it? And how did they get their hands on it in the first place?

Of course the pairing of the words “Back" & “Future" could simply be evidence of a cheap attempt to appeal to the nostalgia/retro crowd. I mean, who doesn't love Michael J. Fox? Or DeLorean cars? Or time travel and incest?

Ms. Simon's unearthly glow certainly seems to indicate that she's either a) Dead (see Cormac Hurley for details), or, b) straddling a crack in the space-time continuum, and phasing in & out of our reality (see Star Trek TNG for details).

Libertas? Kings & Queens of discombobulating bafflement.

Of all the many wild 'n' wacky notions entertained and promoted by orgainsed religions, few can be as amusingly bonkos as the idea that (human) earthly adherents of a deity have a responsibility to protect their God from "offensive" criticism, satire, or name-calling. God may be infinitely wise, loving, and compassionate but He¹ gets a right hump when the ingrates he created in his image start taking the piss out of him. If I were omnipotent and omniscient I'd like to think I'd be a bit more thick-skinned.²

Luckily for him, many of his earthbound flunkies dedicate their wretched lives (in this vale of tears) to stopping any of this nasty criticism from floating into his ethereal earholes. Sometimes, alas, portions of the slagging do make it across the void separating the earthly and the divine and God goes totally mental. He gives us AIDS. He causes hurricanes. He makes our lives miserable – opening giant cans of whupass until we learn our lessons and re-meek & un-deprave ourselves.

Lesson to be learned? Here's a guy you don't want to offend. He's like a drunken Godzilla with nappy rash and a mouth full of bombs. He's mad, bad and dangerous to upset (and there's no escaping his gaze). He makes Galactus look like a total pussy.

Let's be grateful then that the previously dormant & slumbering prohibition on blasphemy in our constitution is currently being reignited and made "operable" by Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern. As it stands, blasphemy (as an offence) is impossible to define. This lack of definition has rendered it fuzzy and amorphous – extending an open invitation to demented God-haters to "blaspheme" with impunity. You think the recent May downpours are evidence of climate change and global warming? Think again, unbelievers! The showers are actually Our Lord simultaneously weeping wounded tears and slashing enraged jets of holy piss down on our constantly blaspheming heads.

Once the legal fuzziness has been removed (by the giant Fuzz-Buster of state) we'll see the shape and outline of blasphemy clearly once more. Even more impressively, we should soon (DPP willing) be able to fling cough-softening fines around and licence the Guards to boot in doors and seize inflammatory material – hopefully before God has a chance to flick through it and go ballistic.

The benefits of a less tetchy and irritable God are obvious. The weather would improve (we might finally get a summer). "Natural" disasters would all but disappear. Outbreaks of frog & locust plagues would be significantly reduced. Anti-social teens loitering on street corners would be replaced by caroling angels and chortling nekkid cherubs. It would be a fine world. A better world.

Why would anyone, other than creepy avant-gardey weirdo artists, want to scupper such a future?

1. Surely a "He" in this case. [back]
2. I speak throughout of Christian things, as that's what I know (and all I know well). [back]