We live, after all, in a time of uncertainty. I don't mean a "Will I be able to find a matching pair of socks in the morning?" uncertainty, though that exists too. And may yet have (in some ill-defined way) a quasi-mystical effect upon the outcome of the forthcoming election. It certainly can't be discounted. At this point in time.

I refer, instead, to quantum uncertainty. The uncertainty that pours out (in a steady head-fucking data stream) from the cool instrumentation of CERN. The uncertainty that makes Einstein look like a fucking eejit. Hyperactive neutrinos that flip two sub-atomic fingers in the direction of common-sense and conventional wisdom. We don't know whether we're coming or going anymore. For all I know you're reading this in the past – on a steam-punked, coal-fueled 19th Century iPad (and wondering who Gay Mitchell is…lucky you).

Speaking of Gay Mitchell…

Right. So he "understands our past". Fair enough. Just another way of saying he thinks our past is fucking awesome and tosses off to Cúchulainn poet-warrior porn like all the other Your-Country-Your-Call (bring back the Tailteann Games) reactionary fuckwads. That's what we need (in the present). More past. We have a clear past deficit. A healthy dose of the past would set us right.

But what's all this about believing in our future? I didn't know the future was dependent on (or receptive) to belief. I thought it was, well, just sort of there. Ready to unfurl itself like a magic carpet, or the yellow brick road. I never suspected it was contingent upon our belief (like Fianna Fáil). But this is a post-CERN world. A world where Gay Mitchell strokes Schrodinger's Cat (like a quantum-mechanical Blofeld) and keeps the future (our future) alive, through the sheer furious insistence of his belief.

Without him we're lost. We literally have no future. Not only must we elect him president (lest he gets depressed and stops believing, even for an instant), but we urgently need to discover a way to keep his brain alive post-mortem. Make him president for life, and beyond. Store his consciousness in a mega-computer in Áras an Uachtaráin and blast it endlessly with impossibly-accelerated neutrinos. Do whatever it takes to keep his essential belief in the future alive.

Otherwise we're left with the past and the endless present. And, let's face it, both suck (quantum) balls.

To celebrate these imminent and delicious horrors, I'm cranking up the old "Campaign Poster Debaffler" and taking a critical squint at the images that will soon surround and suffocate us. What are they saying? What are they…meaning? Who told that guy that a paisley tie was a good idea with a pinstripe suit? Answers will be found here. And nowhere else.

First up is this pre-emptive (and illegal?) beauty from a dynamic, Waterford-ian, FG tag-team.¹.

Bland and yawn-inducing at first glance, but look deeper. Look deeper. Firstly, we have a classical dark/fair, good/evil, fairytale dyad. Voters lap up archetypal shit like this. The fusion of opposites. The (badly-needed) lolz of a buddy movie.

Secondly, behold the romantic and evocative image of the open road. Or, upon closer inspection, the somewhat less romantic and less evocative image of the open bypass or dual-carriageway. Still, it runs off into the future: hinting at a pristine, Autobahnish, EU-topia perhaps. Or, more problematically, suggesting a bullish, M3-lovin', "Fuck you" attitude toward (Lia Fáil-humping) Hill of Tara whingers.

Fine Gael – they'll take a big, stinking shit on our ancient national heritage(s), but (on the totes plus side) we'll get to our work-stations 20 minutes earlier. While listening to a Kraftwerk/Planxty mash-up remix on our Bang & Olufsen car stereos (a poignant throwback to the ostentatious, big salad days of odious Celtic Tiger cuntitude).

More soon.

1. Courtesy of the bould Derek Troy [back]

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.

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.

First impressions suggest a zero-tolerance approach to nonsense. A plain white background free of fireworks, fluffy clouds, chortling babies, or massed ranks of smug "Pope's Children". "Take me for what I am", Cllr. Cronin seems to be saying, "and let's all get on with the work of rebuilding this ravaged land – through gumption, rolled-up sleeves, and plain white background-y common sense". Frivolity and manipulative eye-catching design have no place on Cllr. Cronin's posters.

Neither, apparently, does a party name or slogan. From a modest distance (or even up close) it's by no means an easy task to work out who Cllr. Cronin is representing. A fair amount of persistent squinting and staring is required to find the relevant info – buried away in the bottom right corner, in tiny (almost apologetic) letters.¹

If you ever needed evidence of a party battered, humbled and self-conscious then here it assuredly is. Writ small. Very small. Ridiculously small – like print at the end of a contract. A contract you sign without realising the terrible implications your agreement and endorsement implies.

Debaffling this one looks pretty straightforward. Our omnipresent overlords, Fianna Fáil – spat on, shat on & abused – are now so concerned about their brand's lack of potency & appeal that they've all but excised the brand name from their "product". The only tactic left them, it would seem, is to hope that myopic passers-by don't study the details of their promotional material too closely. Let them note the reassuring smiles and the subtle patriotic sweep of tricolour and let them move on – with favourable impressions of FF (sssh!) candidates impressed subliminally in their minds.

As a strategy it's either a stroke of diabolic genius or a tacit admission of inevitable defeat. New party slogan?

Fianna Fáil – Ye'll go mental when ye realise ye've accidentally voted for us!

In closing, I'm reluctant to hop on board the celebratory band-wagon that anticipates a long overdue slaughter (and cough-softening) of our eternal rulers. Great evil has a way of enduring. I mean, look at Sauron. The boys were all high-fiving each other on the plain of Dagorlad after Isildur lopped off his fingers. They thought him vanquished, but back he bounced. Or remember the smug and self-congratulatory handing out of medals at the end of Star Wars. Before they'd time to pat themselves on the backs Luke had lost a hand, Han had been encased in carbonite, and a new (bigger 'n' better) Death Star was under construction.

The Empire strikes back. Evil will out. Don't get your hopes up.

1. Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party. [back]

Fitting somewhere between a cheap-shot and a spot of po-faced analysis lies this blog's "Campaign Poster Debaffler" – a (very) half-baked, critical attempt to expose the layers of meaning buried in the propagandic images that currently surround us.

First up, Fine Gael – and the bould Cllr. Cormac Hurley.

Ok, so what this (and other identical FG posters) seems to be driving at is that the party will lead the country out of its present (penurious) muck, mire and misery and on into a brave prosperous dawn. Just look at that deep blue sky with its dash of white fluffy clouds if you don't believe me. Nothing could be lovelier.

Not only that, but the good people of Ireland stand square behind both Cllr. Hurley and the party he nobly represents. They're young(ish). They're confident. They're smug (albeit with smugness somewhat chastened by global financial collapse). They're ready to put their shoulders to the wheel. They shelter beneath Cllr. Hurley's giant ears waiting for a chance to turn this country around. They look like this (or at least the ones under his left ear do).

So much for the intended effect. An alternative reading was offered by Jess as we strolled past it at the weekend. The heavenly sky of optimism in the background might be just that: heavenly. Cllr. Hurley may, in fact, be dead. He's lived a rich, full life but his time (as it must with all men) has come. There to meet him at the pearly gates are an eclectic bunch of loved ones who've gone before him. Forms are mutable in the afterlife, so Cllr. Hurley may soon (if he so chooses) "look" like that confident successful guy with the blonde hair and blue shirt. Anything's possible. He could even have boobs.

Now there's a campaign slogan for ya. Forget "A Fairer Ireland" (snore, boring). This is the kind of radical alternative the gloomy, cynical public wants:

Fine Gael – You Could have Boobs.

They'd have my vote.