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]

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).