THE FISCAL THINGY: Q and A

(pictured above: a future services provider. He owes Anglo €833.8m)

Why should we vote Yes on Thursday?

Because we might need money from the ESM!

Where does the ESM get its money from?

Us.

So why don't we just give the money to ourselves then?

Because we haven't got it.

But where are we going to get the money to give to the ESM?

We'll borrow it from someone.

But won't we have to pay it back?

That is probably why we'll need the money from the ESM (insert 'LOL' here).

Um, . . .right. So, where will we get the money to run the country?

We'll cut spending deficit to 0.5% of GDP.

But will that leave us with enough?

Only if we sell off our assets and outsource our services.

Who will we sell off our assets and outsource our services to?

Rich people who owe lots of money to the banks we now own. They will use the money we give them for running the country to pay us back.

But why don't we just keep the money we'll give them for running the country and use it to run the country ourselves?

Because then our spending deficit will exceed 0.5% of GDP.

Well, why don't we just refuse to cut spending?

Because then we won't get the money we need from the ESM.

This makes no sense. We're going around in bloody circles here. Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

I have no idea what I am talking about, no one does, but it's too late to worry about all that now. Just go and vote Yes on Thursday. It's the responsible thing to do.

AAAAAAALLLLIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

I doubt you're wondering how I'm managing to leave blog posts from beyond the grave but I'll tell you anyway. . .

I was buried alive and died and then it went something like this:
My body blew like a gasket and my spirit split like steam and slipped between a crevice near the lid of the casket. I plumed up through tiny worm tunnels and came to the surface, scaring a gravedigger and causing his mange encrusted blind in one eye terrier to bark. 
'Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!' went the dog. 
'Hey, I'm floating away', went me.
I went upward past the clouds and joined a million soaring souls as they stretched throughout the cosmos like some moaning astral motorway passing by the space junk and the planets and the stars and headed toward the light. The light, the light, the cliched light. And then I saw a meadow and the smiling departed stood with their arms outstretched and greeted their relatives but there was no one there for me, not even my old dog Jake or my cat Rupert (the latter was a mercenary little bollix so what would you expect) and I was aggrieved but then someone called to me. Was that my Aunty Dolly? It was, it was, it was Aunty Dolly. Dear old Aunty Dolly! Darling Aunty Dolly! Only problem was I never had an Aunty Dolly. 'It's not your time', said whoever's Aunty Dolly it was and I found myself falling back to the Earth and seeping back down through its pours and plopping back into my body like a shite plops into a toilet bowl and then I came back to life and screamed and screamed and then I remember being unearthed by the gravedigger and his terrier savaged my arm and fucked my leg and that familiar sense of vague degradation informed me that I was alive . . .again. AAAAAAALLLLIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

A MESSAGE FROM EAMON GILMORE

'We need stability and certainty for growth. It's about certainty. I'm almost certain about that. For stability and growth we need certainty. We certainly need certainty for stability and growth. As for growth, that needs stability and in order to maintain stability we need certainty in order to have growth. Remember, there is no growth without stability and stability comes with certainty. It's quite simple. It's all you have to remember. People can throw figures all over the place but it really is about getting stability for growth via certainty. You can quote me on that. You can take that to the bank, no pun intended. Certainty! Stability! Growth! Just say that to the nay sayers. Roar it in their faces. Certainty! Stability! Growth! I've actually invented a little song to help you remember it. The only problem is I can't remember the little song I invented. It was something to do with stability and growth and I'm pretty sure certainty was also mentioned. It was to the tune of Baa Baa Black Sheep. It roughly went something like this:

Sta Sta Bility,

Have you any growth?

Certainly with certainty,

Three banks full.

Some for the bondholders

That's already paid,

And some from the water charges

For Phil Hogan's mates.

I think that was how my little song went but don't quote me on it because I'm not certain. These are uncertain times. I'm really not certain at all.'

(now right click the image below and select open in a new tab. Then click to enlarge and have a read from the good old days:)

SPECIAL GUEST BLOG

Seeing as I am buried under the ground (see previous post) a special guest will be filling in for me. Laddies and ladies, unbeknownst to the man himself, I give you a very special message from Mark McGowan:

STUPID WORMS

I'm in a coffin and the coffin is in the ground and it is dry and warm and I have wifi access and I really can't complain. I was issued with a compulsory demise order by the government and I didn't mind complying. These are difficult times and I wasn't bringing much to the fiscal table. Being the anomic type, I was merely a drain on exchequer funds. Put simply, I was surplus to requirements. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't mad on the demise idea initially but as Lucinda Creighton recently said on a current affairs programme, 'if the freeloaders amongst us don't agree to die today they'll wish they were dead tomorrow'. I know that sounds like a threat, so much does these days, but really it isn't. Lucinda's indisputably keen mind was just cutting through to the truth of the matter. The state can no longer give so it is time for those who take to go. So I went.

It's not a bad deal overall. The state pays for some of the casket and a third of the funeral so your nearest and dearest are spared much of the cost. I think that's fairly generous. All you have to do is show up in a nice suit, get into the box, get yourself loaded into the hearse and be put into the ground. I could hear the soil hitting the lid and a bit of sobbing above. Not too much sobbing mind you. I would've expected a bit more sobbing than that. No one lingered at the graveside for too long either. I heard my Uncle Mick say 'so that's him then, anyone for a pint?' and then I could make out the sound of everyone trudging away. I considered haunting the fuckers but then I remembered that I wasn't even dead. I'm not dead at all really, just decommissioned. I mightn't be around long though. I'm keeping my breathing shallow because of the lack of oxygen and I can hear my belly growling with hunger. I have the computer I was buried with to keep me company but the battery icon is flashing and it's not looking good. I'm not going to complain though. I mean, we all partied and this is what comes of it. I feel I'm doing my bit for the nation. It's like the new advertising campaign says: 'Don't be a numpty, die for your country'. It's a great ad they have on the telly with all these enthusiastic people giving the undertaker a thumbs up as they lay down in a coffin and have the lid slid over them. It's kind of a cool thing to do. It's like dying in a war.

As with dying in a war, no one is really that sure why they have to die on this occasion. All they know is that they must do the responsible thing. I mean, it may not seem fair but since when has life been fair? Life is not about fairness, it's about balance. It's about balancing the books. I'm doing my bit. I'm doing my bit for Ireland.

*******************************************

I can hear it raining above me now as I type. At least I think it's rain. It's like a dim patter on the surface of the mud above my coffin. It might not be rain though. It might be birds. They land on the earth and hammer away on it with their beaks. They don't just do this to upturn the soil, they do it to emulate the sound of raindrops landing. That way the worms get tricked into thinking it's raining and make their way to the surface. When the worms get to the top they are eaten by the birds. I hear it happening every morning. Every morning the birds play the same trick and every morning the stupid pathetic worms fall for it. I can't help but relish the misfortune of the worms slightly. Maybe I resent the wriggling shits because I know it's only a matter of time before they're feasting on my eyeballs. They will feast upon my skull as I lie here doing my patriotic duty. Bastards.

Anyway, I'll have to leave it there. The laptop is running out of juice and I better click the icon labelled 'post' and get this online. Not sure what I'll do then. I suppose I'll just lie here for Ireland and listen to the patter of the raindrops or bird beaks or whatever the fuck is going on up there.

. . .stupid worms, the lot of us.

DAMIEN HIRST TIME PORTALS

You should visit those new time portals Damien Hirst has installed in the Tate Modern (sponsored by Unilever). You just walk through and you end up in a different time in history. You can watch the events taking place around you and no one from the past even notices because of the perception filter. It's like you're invisible. He's clever that Hirst fella. I went to see the nazis because the queue for the dinosaurs was too long and I'd already seen JFK getting shot loads of times on telly. I have to tell you, the atrocities were terrible. Absolutely shocking. All I could do was stand there and watch. I would have twittered about it but the ushers made me turn off the iPhone. Anyway, I got the gist of all the horror after about fifteen minutes and returned to 2012 for a coffee and a slice of carrot cake (not bad, bit pricey). What I'd witnessed really made me think about human nature and death and that. I was thinking about it all during my coffee and carrot cake and I even got a poster in the shop. It had Hitler on it and all the jews and everything. I was going to put it up in the hall when I got home but it was a bit full on so I gave it to my brother as a present instead. 

'Look what I brought you back', I said.  

'Oh, right, . . .grand', he said. 

His place is a lot bigger than mine. I'm sure he'll find somewhere for it.

THE STORIES STORY

 

Once upon a time there were stories and these stories helped people make sense of things. These stories lived for a long time and got to be very very old. Some of the very first stories were from Arnhem Land and came in the form of songs. Those who sang these stories believed they were singing reality into existence. What is a rock before it is named a rock and given a story about how it came to be a rock? The answer: well, nothing at all really. Perception is everything.

Not all stories were to be taken as truth but all of them were there to help their audiences deal with reality. Stories were analogous and elastic. There were fables, cautionary tales, epic poems, and morality plays. Even when tragic, it was said these stories could purge the soul with pity and fear. These stories provided solace and guidance and held great power. This was noticed by certain people and the power of stories was harnessed and then everything changed.

New stories came to be. Rather than born of the communities to which they were applicable, these stories were constructed in laboratories by committees and sent out into the world. The new story teller was not the shaman or the seanachaí. The new story teller was the PR consultant and the behavioural psychologist. The new stories did not tell us how to live, instead they told us what to want and they told us who to hate. These stories did not sing, they scuttled. They scuttled all over the globe like cockroaches and the people of the world initially loved them but soon grew tired of them and then became disgusted by them. The people of the world went back to making up their own stories instead of listening to these new ones.

But there was a problem. The people of the world had been listening to the scuttling stories for a very very long time. The cockroaches had crawled in their ears and eaten away at the parts of their brains they used for making up stories and the cockroaches had laid eggs in there. The people of the world started making up their own stories of ‘truth’ but it was literal truth and it was absolute truth and it was not analogous or elastic or interpretable truth. And these new stories were full of confusion and loss and rage and they didn’t sing and they didn’t scuttle, they screamed. And these stories were screamed over and over and there were a great many of them and most of them were about how you could not trust the rest of them. And these stories went to war and none were on the same side and they donned armour and waved swords about the place, all over the place, and instead of singing reality into existence theses stories screamed reality into extinction. A rock was no longer a rock. A rock was a cover to an Illuminati passageway or a terrorist booby trap or an MI5 bugging device. A rock ceased to be a simple rock and became the source of great anxiety.

And then something awful happened. Something really awful happened. And no one knew why it happened or how it happened so they started to scream stories about why and how it happened and these stories clashed and clanged and clattered and the noise was unbearable and the noise went on and on and on and on until the human race lost its communal mind.

And that is the stories story and if you take my advice you’ll stop listening to stories for a while and if something happens, something really awful happens, cover your ears and listen to no stories and don’t even try to make up your own stories because you are fucking terrible at it because you have forgotten how. You are no story teller but a story will one day be told and you will be in it and we will all be in it and we better hope it has a happy ending.  

 

METEOROPHILIA

Alarms wail and people flee and scream. There's a tornado coming. Gigantic. Majestic. With an utter disregard for the concerns of the bourgeoisie.

I think tornados are beautiful things. I think about them all the time. I love them. I am 'in love' with them. I get crushes on them. I am often shy and clumsy in their presence. I asked one out for a drink once but, who was I kidding, the tornado didn't even know I existed and just kept moving.

If a tornado were to approach now my mouth would become dry and my eyes would be agog. 'Check out the stovepipe on that!' I would run toward the tornado, declaring my adoration. I would be swept up by the tornado. The tornado would turn me around and around. Rapidly. Over and over. My heart aflutter. I would rise up high through the tumult and be delivered into a calm spin cycle, gently revolving amongst the clouds. The noise and chaos beneath me. Trailers, discarded bikes, road signs, abandoned pets and livestock passing by me. Transcended. Ascended. Heavenly. I am hers. I am hers until she tires of carrying me and drops me back to earth. Hard. And my limbs will break and my neck will break and my back will break and my heart will break and I will probably die. But, it will have been worth it. What a ride!