(Curtain draws back to reveal…not a stage, but bare concrete walls atop a bare concrete floor. On this floor are two bins. In Bin A sits “The Man” – an emaciated figure sporting a sick-stained tailcoat, a battered top-hat, and a cracked monocle (also sick-stained). In Bin B sits Gorgothogohnx – bringer of despair. A bipedal, demonic reptoid from the the 14th Orbiton of Balthodox.)

The Man: Well, it's been a big year for death & suffering, hasn't it Gorgothogohnx?

Gorgothogohnx: Yes.

The Man: To reflect this, tonight's show will be dominated by themes of doom, pain and dejection.

Gorgothogohnx: And Transformers.

The Man: Yes, and Transformers. You like Transformers, don't you Gorgothogohnx?

Gorgothogohnx: Yes.

The Man: (Rolls eyes and exhales wearily. Becomes conscious of own breath) You wouldn't have a mint, would you Gorgothogohnx?

Gorgothogohnx: No. No mint.

The Man: (Gazes at stained tailcoat) Or a Dettol wipe?

Gorgothogohnx: No. No mint.

The Man: (mutters) …for fuck's sake…

Gorgothogohnx: Repeat?

The Man: Nothing…

Gorgothogohnx: Nothing. No mint.

The Man: (affecting a breezy air) Would you like to see some toys, Gorgothogohnx?

Gorgothogohnx: Transformers.

The Man: Yes…I know. We'll get to those in a while. Anything else?

Gorgothogohnx: Crayons.

The Man: …well strictly speaking they're not actually toys…

Gorgothogohnx: Transformers.

The Man: (gnawing on his own fist) OK! Let's just start, shall we?! Gaze into that puddle on the floor there, Gorgothogohnx. You'll see some mad shit.

(Gorgothogohnx does as instructed. Stares intently. Shapes begin to form and coalesce from the swirling fogs therein. A terraced house. A man. A woman. Two cats. A baby [sleeping, hopefully]. Some cheap alcohol. And, yes, many “Transformers”.)

9.00: Welcome, earthlings. Welcome, mortals & immortals. Welcome, Gorgothogohnx. Welcome, one and all – to the third annual Manky Toy Show. Assuming you have very limited experiences (and have lived, all your lives, in secret cellars – like Kaspar Hauser or Natascha Kampusch) then tonight's extrava-manka will be the greatest, thrillingest thing ever. Ok? Let's boogie.

9.03: I haven't paced myself. I'm half a bottle of plonk in already. And we haven't even really begun. I'll be on the floor by 10. Background tunes? The murderous loveliness of Phil Spector's Christmas Album.

9.05: Music. Yes. That's the thing to get our cockles warmed and imagination bones erect. Take it away The Hal Bradley Orchestra and Space Age Santa Claus.

9.10: Some of the fucked up shit Santa's up to in space?

He’ll loop tinsel around through the stars
Light up Christmas trees all over Mars
He’ll take the dark clouds out of the air
And hang up fluffs of angel hair

Surely the universe is a delicate and finely balanced thing. A gargantuan and sensitive "ecosystem". Going around hanging up " fluffs of angel hair" all over the place is highly irresponsible.

9.14: Also…

He’ll start a gift shop on the moon

The brazen capitalist bastard. Leave the moon alone you fat cunt!

9.16: OK, before the punters start getting restless we'd best whip some toys out of this Lidl bin-liner on the ground before us. First up? An item that flies gleefully in the face of the contemporary fad for fair trade/organic produce. Y'know, for evil kids.

9.19: Before I open it. What the fuck's going on with the font?! Is that a serpent's tongue licking the "A" in "Farm". This thing gets more diabolic by the second. Jess cracking into the box…

9.23: Box proved tricky to demolish. Favourite detail at first glance? Trailer that proclaims it to be "The Auto Speedy". Would never have associated speediness with tractor trailers, but there you go. Box assures us that it comes with "authentic working functions". This appears to mean "wheels that turn". And nothing else.

9.27: Conclusion? A solidly made and stolidly boring piece of mank. No Mexicans inside (sorry, Fiona). Not much of anything really…but an alarming amount of relative quality. You've got to hand it to these Farm Exploiters.

9.31: Right. Taking it sideways a notch, we'll go for…Champion Fastro! Yes, that's his name. CHAMPION FASTRO! Alright!

9.33: They're brimming with confidence, these Champion Fastro makers. They're so sure they're on to a winner (with Fastro and his pals) that they boldly declare "Every Styles Fully Wonderful". Not just "Partly Wonderful" – which is the best most mainstream toy makers could ever hope for.

9.37: Champion Fastro is one of those toys that you just feel like smelling. Both Jess and myself have done this…and the odour is almost indescribable. The closest we can get to it (with words) is "stale biscuit" meets "community hall".

9.41: Champion Fastro – despite being a toy whose name you can't say without imagining multiple exclamation points – is designed to disappoint. Why? Because you obviously expect him to be a bootlegged "Transformer". Look at him! "Yay", you think, "I wonder what he'll morph into?!". And then it turns out that he morphs from Champion Fastro into…Champion Fastro. Balls.

9.45: Hang on. He's just got 3.5% less boring. He has a red – Sacred Heart-tastic – light in the middle of his chest. We've seen this with manky toys before. It's the last desperate throw of the dice when you know you've got a doomed piece of shit on your hands. "Gentlemen, put a fucking light on that thing and get it the fuck out of my office".

9.49: Time to pause for breath and locate my bottle of bog-standard Cab Sauv (as shiny and detestable people in radio ads no doubt say). Lets go to the ads. This thing ain't gonna pay for itself.

9.55: Gaylord's emergence from the pipe – trailing in the wake of the most over-reacting cat of all time – is quite possibly the lamest entrance in toy history. I am underwhelmed. Damn you, GAYLORD!

9.58: Look, stop bitching you whingers. I told you this year was going to be about death and pain! Gaylord's life is one of constant humiliation and agony. "Climb, Gaylord!". There's no respite.

10.03: Girls in the audience. Prepare to squeal with girly glee. Boys in the audience. Prepare to get aroused by plastic.

22.08: Jordan meets Bratz meets The Mystical Lands of Faery. The genius of this yoke is the amount of time and effort put into creating a back-story. Building a fantasy universe for a toy that will never be the subject of fan-fiction, daytime cartoons, or…anything much at all. Except ridicule. Check this out.

10.12: I'm sure the above was scripted by whoever George "Fat-neck" Lucas got to do the scrolling text about trade federations at the start of Phantom Menace. If anything, his/her work has developed and matured since then. "People lived in a horrific life" – George would be floored by prose like that.

10.16: Oh sweet lords and ladies of Atlantis! I need to wash my eyeballs. With Atlantean brandy. She's…um. She's…er. She's got pubes! Or at least "pube texture". It's like "pube braille". Fuck!

10.21: It's a good night for fans of "Legend of Atlantis Empire". The box is a practical novelization.

10.24: Multiple elemental powers. The usual Captain Planet shit. It looks like we lucked out with our choice. Evasoul! She of the "Sprite Power"! "Sprite Power" is just another word for "Heart Power", or "Love Power". Neither of which are proper powers at all. Not like "Gun Power". Or "Jump High Power". Or "Fist of Rage Power". If Atlantis is attacked by even a remotely competent professional army then the continent is borked. Try stopping bullets and shells with "Sprite", Evasoul.

10.30: Frantically thumbing through my volume of Plato's collected works here. He mentions Atlantis, but (curiously) nothing of Jaybreeze and Ellafrost – and their scantily clad battles against the dark side that forced people to live in "a horrific life". A huge oversight and a massive stain (phnarr) on his reputation.

10.35: Time to rock an ad-break. Jesus, I'm fading fast here. Need some…brandy and Spar imitation Pringles! Slurp!

10.42: This is deeply sad…and possibly deeply racist. The Great Garloo was once a behemoth that stalked Titan-like through our cities. Smashing things to bits. Having the craic. Drinking with Godzilla. And now? He's a fucking servant to little WASP bastards! A little "oriental" servant.

10.48: At least King Kong went out in a blaze of ape-y glory. Shot down in flames. No such honour for Garloo.

WASP Dad: "Oh Garloo! Did you clean my jocks?"

10.52: Emergency forces toys. Civil servant toys. Kids love 'em! Yay! Bin collectors. Council workers. Traffic wardens. Who needs Han Solo? Eh, Kids? Kids? Er…

I give you – "Mission Force"!

10.56: Point 1 – "Mission Force" is one of those nonsense, but powerful-sounding, names. Like "Team Squad". Or "Group Punch". Or "Effort Men".

Point 2 – Though these lads may look pretty cool – all facial hair, shades and guns – they're actually called "Police Guy" and "Police Hugh". And they're but a part of the bigger "Mission Force" (w)hole.

11.02: Yes, the four arms of the forces that protect us are: a) Soldier guys. b) Er…other soldier guys. Or possibly armed-to-the-teeth police guys. c) Firemen (steady, ladies). And, d) Ninjas.

Ninjas with names like Felix, Adrian, Bill and Ted.

Has the budget affected Ninjas? I wouldn't fancy being the one to mention pay cuts.

11.11: I'm beginning to doubt the integrity of Hugh and Guy, and their devotion to civic/civil duty. They come packed with a can of petrol and a bloody Molotov cocktail! They're obviously servants of some Warlord Oligarch who rules the lands of "Mission Force" with an iron fist of ultraviolence. Message? Give them shit and they'll set you on fire. Twice!

11.17: Moving onward and downward (*hic!*). Kids love mobile phones? Check. Kids like Barbie? Check. Kids don't like malignant cancers? Check. Fuck all these elements into a manky toy blender and this is what dribbles out the other end.

11.23: If anyone asked me how I'd like to be remembered, what adjective I'd most like used to describe me after I'm gone, what one goddam word I'd want used (repeatedly) during my funeral oration….it'd be benign. No doubt about it.

11.29: The "Try Me! Press Button" arrow promise is misleading. By "misleading", of course, I mean "amounting to gross and outlandish fraud". There's no button. Only a vast-ish expanse of pink cardboard.

11.35: Quick mention of Benign Girl's sound FX before we move on (Gorgothogohnx is going mental. He likes not girls. Or girls' toys. Only Transformers. And crayons).

Old school readers who remember the ("Nighttime is a bankable actor") Spidey telephone will know the drill. A bit of unintelligible, interrogative Chinese ("Wah dah byu?") followed by some crazed Chinese techno pop.

This may be an accurate facsimile of a Chinese phone of course. I've never been, so don't know. Not sure what network I'm on either…

11.44: Time for a new Manky Toy Show segment (brought on by repetitive strain injury from plastic manipulation). I call it…um…"Toys You Can Get In China But Can't Sadly Get Here. Unless You've Got A Credit Card. And Want to Order 700 Units". Let me present: Roking Ride On Plush Dog Amusement Toy.

11.49: Selling point 1.

Attractive appearance. The ride on toy is a well-designed work of art, exquisite lovely shape to meet the needs of the children's favorite animals and pets, and close to the psychological.

11.54: Selling point 2.

Entertaining. It can let children have fun, meet the children's hope and desire: Riding like adults, or riding like roles in cartoon who ride animals around. Also we add more entertaining function in the product. It not only could walk around, also has music box and the function of ears swaying, water spraying or boxing.

11.56: All I ever wanted, as a child was an AT-AT (which I got, thanks mum) and to once (just once) ride like the "roles in cartoon who ride animals around".

11.59: Oops. Forgot to mention the items I treasured above all else. Cartoon Character Aubergine…

…and…Plush Vegetable Cauliflower (the coolest of all Brassica oleracea)…

12.05: Fuck! Look at the time. More wine.

Blurb advertising the aubergine reads as follows:

We offer all kinds of lovely and cute cartoon character toy for the Movie & TV company, from classical duck, bear, micky, to our design special series like series vegetable, fruit. Character Doll, animals etc.

If someone gets me a "classical duck" for Christmas I will immediately divorce Jess and marry them. Male, female, cauliflower – it matters not.

12.09: Commenter "Urchinette" says this:

Jaysus, that cauliflower is like something out of H. P. Lovecraft.

She doesn't know the half of it. From the same company (or…China at least) comes this!

Yes, horror fans. It's a beanie baby Cthulhu! Tragically undersold, in the company's literature, as "Eccentric Toy". I'm both filled with dread and deeply happy.

12.15: Cut to words from our sponsors. Then back with faux-Transformer action.

12.24: Just returned from a "Willow bonks her head on bars of cot and needs comforting" mission. I'm sure Chuck Connors would approve.

Tin-Can Alley was something I coveted, dearly, as a child. Guns always seemed very American, back then. Exotic. Wild western. Desirable. Little did we realise that Tin-Can Alley was actually a home-training tool for bloody high school massacres. Something Chuck singularly failed to mention.

And who's the "Nice shooting, Chuck!" fella. Has he been in anything else or was that his 0.05 seconds of fame? Off to IMDB with you, willing slaves!

12.31: Tiredness washing over me like a tsunami of Calgon-infected 7-Up. Must push on. Must satisfy the demands of the ever-staring, ever-watchful, ever-whispering Gorgothogohnx (and his biggest fan, Fergal Crehan).

Transformers! Or, rather, Interchange!

11.38: Now to follow the crystal clear and nothing-but-helpful instructions.

Not a problem. It dismantled itself as soon as I removed it from the box.

12.42:

I've just bent his knees. He's in a sitting position. Like Optimus Prime watching telly. Is this what the merger and upward accepting is about?

12.44:

For fuck's sake. I'm exhausted. And drunk. And the headlight area has just fallen off. We're getting further and further from our goal.

12.48: Wait! Hold! Commenter "Shoeymcshoe" has spotted something with eagle (i.e. "ordinary") eyes.

Your instructions do not resemble your product

No. They really don't. And that's because…they're the instructions for a completely different toy. China! What's the story?

12.54: Interchange presents children (and me) with an unsolvable puzzle. Instructions and toy are randomly shuffled. To spread confusion and (I guess) lateral thinking. Here's one of the final bits of the mind-fuck.

12.59: "Head to hereafter"? Is that some sort of coded command to crawl to bed? Or, as I suspect (given our theme of the night), an imperative demanding I press the Tin-Can Alley shotgun to my temple? Silver Shamrock, how are ya?

1.08: OK. We're into overtime. We're into the time beyond overtime. We're into tomorrow. We're into the day after tomorrow. Hardy hangers-on – can you take one more toy?

1.14: Cock! My rabble-rousing pleadings were based on flim-flam and hot air. And, more importantly, not having the right batteries. Wanted to finish with this…

…but all I've got is AA when it thirsts for AAA. Oh cursed fate! Oh wretched destiny! I was gagging to see what the four enclosed "cartridges" actually did. I love cartridges. Nintendo's never been the same since they embraced charmless discs. Boo!

Er…in the absence of a blow-out and go-out (and go to bed) toy, let's go to an ad before we fade into the warm darkness of a winter's night.

1.25: Right. So "The Game of Life" taught children all about craven ambition, consumerist longing, acceptance of prescribed gender roles, and the harsh brutalities of (safety-net-less) capitalism, but it always left a final act unsaid and unspoken.

You'd reach the end and there would be Millionaire's Mansion, or Lovely Acres Retirement Community, or whatever the fuck. And that would be it. Game over. The end. You win.

But even the most chipper and boundlessly optimistic of freckled children must have wondered what rolling the dice one more time would entail. What was beyond that finishing line?

Nothing but stinky, nasty, everlasting death. Yes, kids – DEATH! DEAAAAAATTTHHHHH!!!

Goodnight.

A curtain prepares to raise itself…

A hideous (fur-covered) twosome – atop a grimly lit stage – are revealed…

They gaze into each other's sad & boggled eyes – communicating a weary resignation and a deep, nameless pain…

They begin to chant arcane words. "She" – garishly made up and clumsily bewigged (a demonic Norma Desmond). "He" – A proto-Shrek (brain skewered with gaily coloured pins). Hellraiser pales in comparison.

Their necks begin to extend – grotesquely. The pace and fury of their delivery begins to increase. All this before an infernal backdrop where the muddy hues of Joseph Turner meet the terrible vision-scapes of William Blake.

On and on they go. Faster and faster. Disturbinger and Disturbinger. Elastic necks at maximum extension. Screeching wails at lunatic pitch…

And then – as the audience (if there even is one) begins to lose its fragile reason and scream for them to stop – they violently withdraw their ghastly heads. Letting loose (as they do so) a long and loud sigh. An almost orgasmic sigh. A sigh that mixes brief relief with the knowledge that they – like doomed Sisyphus – must soon repeat this manic ritual.

For all time.

P.S: Animation nerds might like to learn (if they don't know it already) that the creative hand behind this (and, indeed, Gregory Gráinneog) was one Jimmy Quin.

Severe budgetary constraints, coupled with a grim national mood, meant that over 65% of any individual episode's running-time was taken up with long, lingering shots of scenes like this:

The Mondrian¹-inspired set does its best to try and lift the spirits, but the desolation and emptiness is impossible to shake. An absent Bosco. An empty cardboard box (carelessly-discarded). A dangling piece of string. Sorrow and despair. Beckett without the laughs.

It wasn't, however, always this gloomy. It was often worse. Especially when the bleak clay(marla)mation adventures of Gregory Gráinneog² took centre stage. Here's the gang caught enjoying a rare moment of levity:

Garish pink skies; dark bare hills; lumpen, ruptured earth – clear indicators (recognisable to any jittery child of the 70s/80s) that here is a ruined and irradiated world. Those mad bastards have done it. They've dropped the bombs. They've blown us up.

In the midst of such terrible adversity, however, unlikely alliances are made and friendships formed. If, after all, you're the last hedgehog left on earth then hanging around a giant (fleshy) mutant boot with a motley, multi-species group of survivors mightn't seem wholly unattractive. You can, for example, share your many woes with the sad-eyed Síle Seilide…

…an even sadder-eyed and haunted-looking owl…

…and an utterly frazzled, traumatised and demonic-looking rabbit.

It's like Winnie the Pooh meets Planet of the Apes…directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (where no-one's Tigger and everyone's Eeyore).

And then there's Gregory himself – less a hedgehog and more a bipedal, scalded-horse-faced freak.

Eyes rimmed and caked with bloody tears. Body scored with countless scars and sores (like a plasticine Saint Sebastian). Simultaneously repulsive and heart-breaking.

But there are, for all that, some pleasures to be had. On a pink-skied summer evening, gathered round the twisted wreck of an old-timey car (relic of a dead civilization), the friends listen to Gregory tell bitter-sweet tales of the lost world that was (and will never be again).

1. Or, V05. [back]
2. Hedgehog. In Irish. [back]

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]

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.

ENYA STALKER DISAPPEARS

Now while the real story behind said headline may well be a tragic, violent, sad & lonely one (I didn't actually read it), the first thoughts that popped into my noggin were fantastical/whimsical in nature.

Enya, dark sorceress of the Celtic twilight that she is, had (with a single nano-thought) "vanished" her stalker from our world. Transporting him across the vast reaches of time and space to the "Dimension of Endless Weeping".

Hot stuff. Can't blame the Herald for leading with it on their front page.

For Enya is, of course, not a flesh and guts person like you and I. The kind of miserable simian wretch who shits, shops, scratches his/her hole, watches Home & Away etc. Far from it. She's an ethereal demi-goddess of the ancient world – lifted straight from the bloated appendices of The Lord of the Rings. Her beauty radiant. Her awesome wrath terrible to behold. Like Galadriel, crossed with Irish mist, blessed with a lucrative record deal.

The long-suffering villagers who cower at the base of her castle know only too well the price of her fury. On those dark days when her weekly delivery of mithril biscuits runs even a little late, she floats majestically out the castle gates and onward through the town. Eyes black as deepest obsidian. Lightning shooting wildly from her fingertips.

As she glides by on a cloud of pixie dust (an expression of impossible inscrutableness on her face) windows and doors are hurriedly shut and bolted. Inside their homes families shiver in the half-light, muttering desperate Hosannas. Those unlucky (or foolish) enough to be left standing without have but milliseconds to gaze upon her & ask themselves, "I wonder what she's thinking?", before they're magicked away to the nightmare hell-kingdom of Krotox. There to spend an eternity trapped in cages of living flame. With their faces melted off.

The moral of the story? Be careful who you stalk (or fuck with).

Yesterday afternoon the Christmas market in Clarenbridge (normally a haven of gentle family fun) found itself terrorised by the appearance of a violent, paralytic and terrifyingly intense Santa Claus. He smashed his "sleigh" into a stall selling fruit cake & pudding, urinated on the leg of an elderly man collecting for St. Vincent de Paul, and drunkenly told each & every distraught child who'd listen that all their hopes and dreams would go unfulfilled. All this before passing out in a hideous pool of his own sick.

That's how I imagine it went anyway. I wasn't actually there. But the Santa¹ in question was one of my oldest pals and that's his standard routine come Yuletide.

The bearded, present-giving one has (unsurprisingly) been on my mind of late. This time next year we will (touch wood) be spending our first Christmas with a new family member so decisions need to be made on if/when we should expose her to beings of the imagination like Santa, the tooth fairy, and…er…God.

Like most children I'm sure, my attitude to Mr. Claus was once a pretty ambivalent one – mixing fascination and terror in equal measure. On the plus side he gave you presents and magically transported himself across the entire globe in but 24 hours. On the minus side he forcibly entered your house at night, employed a shambolic international army of department store impersonators, and oversaw a sweatshop powered by midget labour. A confusing and contrary figure to be sure.

He also seemed, like any cult-leader or quasi-deity, to be capable of producing zealots. My cousin was one such hard-core believer – telling me (on more than one occasion) that disbelief in Santa was no less a mortal sin than disbelief in Jesus. This, in fairness, would probably be seen as something of an extreme view by mainstream Santa worshippers, but it's still enough to make me question the wisdom of inflicting such a belief system on a child.

An unrelated part of the Claus enigma that's been recently bouncing around my fore-brain concerns his voice. Now while I'm by no means an expert on the languages, dialects and accents of Lapland, I'd be reasonably happy to wager that most of its inhabitants sound nothing like Irish Radio Advertising Santa (or IRAS).

In the vast majority of cases IRAS sounds like a cross between "George from Glenroe" and the fella who used to do the Mr. Kipling's (exceedingly good) pies ad.² Think posh but chuckly, chumbly,³crumbly, doddery old darling. Like a jolly, ruddy-faced step-uncle whose jovially upturned mouth is stuffed so full of delicious Werther's Originals that he can hardly talk (but still manages to chuckle out charming sentences to delight one and all). It's not just Father X-Claus who sounds like this either. I heard Rudolph advertising mince pies the other day and it was the same deal. George from Glenroe. Mouth full of sucky sweets.

Why this has become the default (radio) Christmas voice is unclear. I suppose it's supposed to sound warm and cosy, with a whiff of nostalgia for a time you never experienced and jolly people you never knew (but still loved anyway). One might as well ask why faux-American accents are always used to advertise nightclubs in Ennis, or why breathy 'n' "seductive" female D4 tones draw our attentions to exclusive Spa Hotels.⁴

*Pops off to suck contemplatively on a Werther's Original while rubbing Jess's belly*

1. Or "Santy" as we say around these parts. [back]
2. In most cases, of course, this is due to the fact that it inevitably is George from Glenroe – a.k.a. Alan Stanford. [back]
3. If this isn't a word it should be [back]
4. There's a weighty thesis on Irish insecurities RE: a sense of self (and self worth) in there somewhere. [back]

My prize was a very lovely Halloween (Un)Lucky Bag and my enthusiasm was not dampened by the knowledge that I myself had bought it earlier the same day (for 1 Euro). I'd expected it to contain amusing and mega-cheap mank but the contents actually represent serious value for money. Behold (and click to enlarge).

The jewel in the…er…bag is obviously the delightful skeleton keyring. A fitting trinket for the Día (de los Muertos) that was in it.

The prize-winning rig-outfit I'd assembled was simple, effective and deadly. An old lady frock, an old lady wig, and a giant blood-stained old lady knife. The result – that lovable ol' rogue Norman Bates dressed as his mother.

The excellent (and unnerving) old lady wig was, somewhat unexpectedly, advertised as…well…something else entirely. While wig devotees will, of course, instantly recognise it as a Widmann "Karl" Party model the rest of us might benefit from some documentary evidence.

What in the name of Mrs. Bates' pickled & preserved corpse is the "Karl" look supposed to capture/represent? Part Steven Seagal; Part geisha; Part The Bold and the Beautiful; All bonkers.

Though there will (as is customary at such human functions) be generous amounts of music and dancing on the night, I'll be secretly pining and longing for the pure pleasures that only "60 min [sic] of terrifying sound effects" can produce. Behold the 2 Euro wonder that is "Sound of Horror CD".²

I expected it to be harmless and charming. Full of cartoony creaky doors, cuddly booing ghosts, and rattling (zoinks!) Scooby Doo chains. The kind of thing they might sell to beaming, rosy-cheeked chiddlers at Disneyland.

I was terribly, terribly wrong…

Panting, Shrieking, Grunting, Moaning, Thumping hearts fit to burst, Brutal industrial rhythms – all these things and more are present (on one gruelling hour-long track). It's a festering, Satanic potpourri where slices of David Lynch (or Angelo Badalamenti) mix with bloody chunks of Guantanamo Bay style sonic torture. Have a listen to the first 3 minutes…

Now imagine an hour of that. On your headphones. With the volume turned up to 11. You'd be straight out the front door with the hedge-trimmers in hand, ready to shred the neighbours' kids into a fine gooey paste.

Is it all part of a giant, Silver Shamrock-esque mind-fuck designed to highlight the vacuousness of consumerist Halloween by generating mass carnage? The answer is – almost certainly yes.

You've been warned.

1. I'm a traditionalist. [back]
2. Bought in William St's latest cheapomarket "Your More Store". [back]

Though this thing we call the internet generally caters effectively to the colourful needs of the planet's fetishists, paranoids, perverts and obsessives, there are areas of enthusiasm that remain curiously (and sadly) neglected. Take fans of live blogging, horror, and critical/performative crisp-eating for example. Who, out there, is really working to synthesise their diverse interests and put smiles on their jaded faces?

Answer: No-one…and so the job falls on my shoulders.

Saturday, 11th October – 6.18 pm.
Have just returned from an afternoon spent lunching & wandering with our Americo-Kerry friends Niall and Liz. They it was who recently alerted me to a small, dimly-lit, but significant corner of Irish salty snack culture – i.e., the horror-themed crisp. As they are soon (alas) leaving these shores I dedicate this live snack-munching extravaganza to them.

6.29 pm.
Today's crisps of choice were purchased during a "waiting for a bus" interlude in Tralee, Co. Kerry. While Limerick's newsagents seem content to limit themselves to boring mainstream snacks, the Kingdom is (it seems) home to more imaginative outlets. Who could resist the siren call of Perri's Banshee Bones? Not I.

6.36 pm.
Though most people with even a passing knowledge of Irish folklore (or Darby O'Gill) would readily recognise the Banshee as a traditional death messenger, few (I'd imagine) would be familiar with Perri's rather self-centred take on the legend.

A radical re-orientating and re-focusing of established lore. According to Perri's re-imagining, the function of Banshee wailing is not, as has always been thought, to herald imminent death, but rather just to give someone a "big fright". Not only that, but this anti-social behaviour seems motivated by a simple salt imbalance in her diet. One corrective packet of Banshee Bones later and she's laughin' it up and turning cartwheels through the fields and meadows.

6.58 pm.

Preparing to open the packet.

6.59 pm.

Packet open. A faintly Chipstick-y odour fills the air. I'd anticipated a more intense and pickled stench, a la Monster Munch. This is an unexpected development, and one that demonstrates Perri's dedication to the art of surprise.

7.03 pm.

I dip my hand inside and withdraw a solitary "bone". Amusingly, the word "bone" seems to operate on (at least) two levels. While the crisp does vaguely resemble a maize & potato piece of the human skeleton, it also doubles up as a risqué snack phallus. Hang on till I take a picture.

7.15 pm.

Sorry for the delay. I'm something of an amateur when it comes to photographing salt & vinegar flavoured cocks. Excuse the poor-quality.

7.18 pm.
Right. Time to put one of these babies in my mouth and see if they make me (as, sort of, promised) "forget [my] moans".

7.21 pm.
First taste is salt, though this lasts but a nano-second before it is overwhelmed by lashings of synthetic vinegar. The initial crunchiness is pleasing (and suggests lastability) but this almost instantly gives way to upsetting sogginess. It's like eating a penis-shaped Chipstick that falls apart before you've a chance to swallow. Hmm…

7.32 pm.
Popped downstairs to offer Jess a bone. She chewed meditatively before confirming the taste as "very Chipstick-y". She also claims the experience was a bit like eating "puffed vinegary air". It should be noted that she's pregnant, and thus not entirely reliable as a scientific test subject.

7.36 pm.
About half-way through the pack now and Banshee Bones are proving, despite low expectations, to be very "moreish". I notice the rear of the packet instructs interested consumers to "visit our website on www.perri.ie". I'm a particularly interested consumer this evening so visit it I shall (as I suck down another bone).

7.42 pm.

Error occurred: 404 – not found.

Gah! It appears that the current global financial meltdown has lowered its trousers and taken a big bankrupting dump all over Perri. Damn you, global financial meltdown. Damn you to hell.

7.52 pm.

The final bone has disappeared and I'm left feeling both unsatisfied and slightly giddy. Also, I notice that for the last 2 minutes I've been (like the pre-Banshee Bones Banshee) "wringing [my] hands". The combined effect is not a pleasant one.

7.59 p.m.
Time to bring proceedings to a close. We've a "posh" dinner lined up with some old friends and I need to a) spruce myself up, and, b) rid myself of this queasiness and anxiety.

Conclusion: Amusing shape. Poor-man's Chipstick. Dissolves too readily. Tenuous links to the Otherworld. Company appears to have collapsed. I feel strange.

By way of buildup to next Monday's (miss it and you'll die crying) John Polidori Vampyre-fest, I hereby present a post on a strangely neglected topic. Namely, "Mathematics and the Undead".

Like many parents of glamorous (i.e. brown & damp) 70s Ireland my folks were doorstepped by one of the then ubiquitous (and aggressively persuasive) roving World Book salesmen. The end result of this exchange was a shelf full of sober volumes that told us more than we ever wanted to know about American state capitals and the intricacies of the US political system. Thrilling. The modest spoonful of sugar that helped this medicine go down came in the form of "Childcraft" – World Book's attempt to edutain and entercate the youth of planet earth.

Volume 13 in the series was Mathemagic, a typically sneaky example of the lengths adult educators often go to in their quest to groovify the ungroovy. Though most of its pages left me searching for "magic" that palpably wasn't there, a section called "Multiplying Vampires" kept me gripped and appalled.

"To stay alive", Mathemagic told us "a vampire has to bite about one person a week". After this (it continued) "the person bitten becomes a vampire too!". Note the exclamation mark used to punctuate that sinister piece of lore. In the original text it's a big round jolly one. The kind Enid Blyton might have used to cap a sentence like "Noddy had never tasted such smashing jam!". I'm looking at it right now. It's fantastically inappropriate.

Perhaps realising the unsettling oddness of its tone, "Multiplying Vampires" then shifts toward reassurance:

Many people believe there really are such creatures as vampires. But there aren't, of course. And you can use multiplication to prove to your friends that there's no such thing as a vampire.

Good ol' multiplication. There then follows a tedious passage that describes how vamps would create other vamps who would, in turn, create yet more vamps (and so on), before we're abruptly asked:

Do you see what is happening?

My response to this question, back in 1979, was something along the lines of "Yes I do see what is happening. The world is becoming progressively more well stocked with vampires. I'm scared. Make it stop."

But it doesn't stop:

At the end of the fifth week there would be two times sixteen, or thirty-two vampires, and so on. And, as this keeps on, the number of bloodthirsty vampires grows by leaps and bounds.

Waaah! And on we go. Tenth week? 1,024 vampires. Fifteenth week? 32,768 vampires. Twentieth week?

…there would be 1,048,536 vampires. That's right – more than a million vampires!

The gleeful italics and exclamation mark once again rubbed the stinky turd of fear firmly in our small anxious faces. By week 32 we're up to 4,294,967,286 vampires and we've sobbed ourselves into a hysterical puddle.

But wait a minute!

Go on…

There are only about four billion people in the whole world!¹

So that means…

…if there ever had been just one vampire, every person in the world would have been turned into a vampire in just thirty-two weeks! And because you know very well that you and your friends aren't vampires, you know there never was such a thing as a vampire. See?

The inevitable result of reading the words "because you know very well that you and your friends aren't vampires" was, of course, to start me suspecting the complete opposite – that all my friends were vampires. Far from offering crumbs of rational comfort, "Multiplying Vampires" ends up reading like juvenile propaganda slipped into the education system by actual vampires keen to keep pesky kids from sticking their grubby noses into their various global plots and schemes.

As if to practically admit to this suspicion the final double-page spread shows hordes of the undead lining up to enter an extravagant Gothic manor. Their HQ, no doubt, for "Operation Suck Childrens' Faces Off".

Look at the evil bastards. Laughing and leering it up thanks to the "Mathemagic" that proved they couldn't exist.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

1. Betraying its age here. [back]

There's something vaguely touching and poignant about mysteries that have (due to the whims of fashion) passed out of mainstream popular consciousness. Where once they might have been given high billing on Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World, or been deemed worthy of sizeable entries in Usbourne's books of the unexplained (etc), they're now consigned to prowl around the internet's outer perimeters – scrabbling at the main gate and (feebly) demanding re-entry.

Such thoughts are on my mind thanks to the memory-jogging effects of my newly purchased TV Cream Toys. There, on page 31, I recently stumbled across words that once (when I was but a wide-eyed youth) caused thrilling ripples of delicious fear to zip up and down my spine -

Bermuda Triangle.

If ever there was a mystery that had (from a position of some significance) seen its stock rapidly plummet and crash then it was this same triangle. Popularised by Charles Berlitz, and rendered instantly kitschy by Barry Manilow, the triangle was (during the 1970s) one of the most potent phenomena on the Fortean radar.

It didn't (like more conventional mysteries) just frighten, bewilder and discombobulate people – it actually made them disappear. The thought of thus disappearing, instantly and eternally, struck my childish sensibilities as one of those "fates worse than death" you occasionally heard mentioned. One minute you were there – reading an in-flight magazine & contemplating a week in the Caribbean sun – and the next minute you were (horribly and inexplicably) gone. Doomed, as I supposed, to an eternity of useless shrieking and floating in some swirling, trans-dimensional no-space.

Realising that children would respond to this gnawing dread by consuming products based on the very thing they feared, Milton Bradley hopped on the zeitgeisty gravy train and gave us Bermuda Triangle: The Board Game.

Until I saw the pictures in TV Cream Toys I'd forgotten that any such object ever existed – and with good reason. Unlike those board games of yore that managed to adapt to changing times and remain relevant (cf. Cluedo), Bermuda Triangle's time in the pop-cultural sun was but a brief one. Like the triangle itself it remains firmly (and fittingly) rooted (and trapped) in the 1970s.

As far as actual game mechanics are concerned, I remember little, having probably played it but twice or thrice. The description on BoardGameGeek doesn't immediately set pulses racing…

"In this game, you try to run a successful ship-transport operation…"

Yikes. Words that would make any observant child suspect that a dreary and dreadful "educational" board game was being foisted upon them by joyless parents. Happily the sentence ends with a bang that boots such suspicions into touch:

In this game, you try to run a successful ship-transport operation in the mysterious Bermuda Triangle.

Hoorah! That's better.

On a side note, I'm disappointed to discover that Mr. Manilow's ditty is not the musical investigation of the paranormal I'd always imagined it to be. Instead of dealing with time vortexes, alien kidnapping etc., it turns out to be little more than a warning about the dangers of your woman "disappearing" into another fella's arms while on a sun holiday. As if the song's lame partner-swapping "humour" isn't tedious enough, the only version of it I could easily find online comes pre-packaged with a shit video based on shitty Lost. Apologies:

A final question then. Do chiddlers these days still have sleepless nights pondering the (contemporary) likes of the Bermuda Triangle, or have pedophilic/terrorist bogeymen moved in to dominate their nightmares instead? Answers to the usual address.

P.S: I'm getting so much fecking spam in my "moderated comments" queue that I can no longer be bothered sifting through it for the genuine articles. If anyone's comment gets accidentally nuked then please email me (fustar@fustar.info) and I'll sort it out.

Now much as I often find advertising (large or small) vaguely upsetting and oppressive, I still like to think of myself as someone who can “decode�? its meaning(s). Actually, this is probably why I find it upsetting and oppressive.

I usually know which buttons it's attempting to press, which inadequacies it's trying to prey upon, which longings and lusts it's pandering to etc. In the case of the above image, however, I'm at something of a loss. What exactly is the (esoteric) National Dairy Council trying to say?

Milk will protect you from (or make you more attractive to) sexy cyborgs from the future? Milk, while undoubtedly natural, may turn your hair pink and render you a drooling zombie? Milk – it'll rock your world…like a big scary floating head in a void?

Answers please.

"Oh that Aleister Crowley", my (fictional) grand-aunt usedn't to say, "He was an awful man entirely!"

"Wicked, he was", she usedn't go on, "Pure wicked. The baldy head on him and the bulging eyes. He'd give you a bad dose of the heebie-jeebies. Desperate!"

Have a squint at this if you don't believe her…

Thrill with the lissome lust of the light,
O man! My man!
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me!¹

Fortunately for us (and our discussion of, among other things, the great god Pan) this is to be the seventh meeting of our Dreadful Thoughts Story Club. Good old lucky/mystical number seven. It shall, surely, cast its magical net about us and keep us safe from the frolicking and trampling hooves without.

Within this charmed circle we shall be chewing over E. F. Benson's "The Man Who Went Too Far" (1912) – a story that seems (at first glance) to do exactly what it says on the tin.

Terror, joy, suffering, bliss – these meaty ingredients are all here (plus some freaky "bleating" laughter). Time to uncork the nearest bottle o' plonk, light a contemplative pipe, listen to the latest DT mixtape (courtesy of the lovely Niall), and revel in the oneness of all things.

Begin.

1. Aleister Crowley, 1929 – "Hymn to Pan" (excerpt). [back]

Session number seven of our spooky story club sees us bid adieu to devilish monkeys and whisper a panicked hello to the awesome spirits of nature.

Leading us on this (not so) merry dance will be E. F. Benson, and his pagan-tastic "The Man Who Went Too Far".

The coming (Irish) bank holiday rules Monday out as suitable for congregating and discussing, so shall we make it Tuesday, June 3rd, at 9 p.m. instead? Why not.

See you then fright fans.

Story: "The Man Who Went Too Far" (html), (pdf)

Meeting: Tuesday, 3rd June, 9 p.m.