A KIND OF SECRET

I don't know what all the fuss is about really. It's just being used as another stick to beat the church with. I mean, it was a different time. We were all stuffing dead babies into septic tanks back then. Don't you remember? We were. I was almost stuffed into a septic tank myself when I got a dose of whooping cough. 'Ah sure, your man's had it', said my own mother as she carried me off down the end of the garden toward the tank.

Here's how I see it, the average amount of dead babies stuffed into the septic tank in Saint Mary's Mother and Baby Home was one every two weeks. Sure, a lot more babies than that would have been dying in the nation at the time. So, compared to the national infant mortality rate, Saint Mary's was doing a pretty good job. I mean, I remember what it was like back then (or at least my imagination remembers what it was like back then – the rest of me wasn't born) and you'd be finding dead babies everywhere. They'd be on the side of the road and falling out of cupboards and all over the place. It was like the last bit in one of those serial killer films where the girl is running about the house finding the corpses of her dead friends. And it wasn't just Ireland. It was like that all over the world. You don't see it when you watch the old movies because all the baby corpses were swept off the film sets. The place was awash with dead babies. As well as that, I read that one of the babies found in the septic tank was nine. Well now, nine isn't even a baby. Nine is a child. An older child. In fact, back then, nine would have been a ripe old age. The average life expectancy back then would have been around eight. People didn't live as long you see, what with all the whooping cough and wild animals roaming about in people's gardens and jumping out of hedges and devouring them. We've zoos and all kinds of inoculations and medicines now but back then the planet was death trap.

Even my own parents, who were alive at the time, were dead and so were their friends and cousins and all that. Kids didn't mind being dead back then. It wasn't like now, with the sense of entitlement and Stephen Hawking and all that. Back then you'd be dead and in a septic tank but that would be expected. It was a right of passage. You won't hear that from the pro-bort crowd but it's historical fact. Or at least a sort of fact. We can't be sure because no one was actually alive back then. They were all dead and stuffed into septic tanks so there's no point talking about it. It's the past. Be quiet about it now. Shut up about it. I said Shut Up! The whole nation, every man, woman and child was deceased and squeezed into a septic tank back then but they didn't let that hold them back. Unlike the moaners these days, they just dusted themselves down and got on with it and so should you. Take a look at Bill Cullen. He died in 1957. You don't see him complaining. He just got on with it and look at what he made of himself. Get on with it yourself now. Off you go. Go on, there's nothing more to be said about all this. Just be glad that we're not all dead babies today. Dead and stuffed into a septic tank. Seven hundred and ninety odd of us. One on top of the other. After dying in mysterious circumstances. Behind closed doors. Behind high walls. And then hidden down a quiet lane. In the shadow of trees. Silent. A kind of secret. A horror.

2014 PREDICTIONS

The edition of Old Fugger’s Almanac for 2014 has been released. Here’s what it says is in store for the year ahead. How many of these predictions will actually come to pass? Remember, I got everything right enough…ish last year kind of. So, here are the Old Fugger’s Almanac predictions for 2014…

1. There’ll probably be another fucking earthquake.

2. The first ever world leader to be made with a 3D Printer will prove popular with the world's first ever 3D Printer made voters.

3. People will complain about ‘ghostfood’ and culinary psychics will be called upon to exorcise haunted plates.

4. During a controversial appearance at the 2014 Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards, Miley Cyrus will perform cunnilingus on herself.

5. The mystery of who the fuck actually buys Hot Press magazine will remain unsolved.

6. Saoirse Ronan will undergo gender reassignment and change her name to Ronan Saoirse.

7. Prediction 8 will be this prediction.

8. This prediction is prediction 7. (See, I told you. That’s one I’ve got right already)

9. Expect a mind-blowing introduction to 3D entertainment without glasses called Real Life.

11. Mass attendance quadruples when the Catholic Church replaces transubstantiation with a raffle.  Winning tickets will be drawn from the tabernacle and whoever wins will get all the cash that was collected in the baskets.

12. Amy Huberman will cut the ribbon at the launch of a new property bubble.

13. A fatal virus will exclusively target right wing internet posters with Family Guy avatars. The death is protracted and agonising and there is no cure. I repeat, THERE IS NO CURE!

14. RTE will set out in a brave new direction and commission more lifestyle programmes. (You can absolutely count on this one coming to pass.)

15. Clouds are given the vote but people fear tropospheric mists of condensed vapour mightn’t be all that bothered about participating in the democratic process. The €7.5 million spent on airship polling stations is considered by many to be a waste but the party contributor whose company won the profitable bid to make the airships expresses delight.

16. The FIFA World Cup final in Brazil will be ruined when the ball is kicked right out of the stadium into a nearby garden and a grouchy neighbour refuses to give it back.

17. Economics correspondent Sean Whelan will have a breakdown on the Six-One News tearfully admitting that he knows ‘fuck all about fucking fuck all’. He will be replaced by Jim Power.

18. During the summer, you’ll be drinking a can of fizzy orange and a bee will fly over and start hassling you. It won’t piss off and you’ll be forced to leave the can on a wall and forget about it.

19. Later in the summer of 2014, you will leave the sliding glass doors that lead to your garden open as well as the door to your fridge and a badger will sneak into your kitchen and get inside the fridge and then you’ll come into the room and see the fridge door open and close it and later that night your daughter will get up for a midnight snack and go into the kitchen and not bother turning on the light and open the fridge and loudly scream when a frosty badger leaps out at her and runs for the sliding glass doors and smashes against them because you closed them too and then, concussed and angry, the badger will skid around the linoleum making a really weird high-pitched sound and your daughter will never recover from the trauma and never fully trust you again. Remember, this is just a prediction and it is still within your power to ensure the events described in the preceding long sentence do not come to pass.

20. Bloggers will continue to blog, Facebookers will continue to facebook, Tweeters will continue to tweet and journalists will continue to do whatever the fuck it is they think they are doing and all of this content will continue to rise like steam and merge with the psychic ether forming a kind of layer of trivia over everyone’s heads that blocks out the sun and prevents us all from seeing anything worthwhile, going forward. LOL!

And that’s the end of today’s trivial little listy distraction. Happy New …yeeaaauuuugh

2012 PREDICTIONS: What’s To Come!!!

(pictured: supposed evidence thieved from Muddd.com)

Master of the Urban Arcane, Fugger has been looking at his crystal bollock and here is what’s to come in the year ahead:

Ratzinger will die this year. They’ll wrap his corpse in Liberace’s finest dressing gown and fuck it on the back of a camp looking chariot thing. Then they’ll ride it around Rome for a few hours.
* * * *
Enter a less austere and more TV friendly Pope who swears he’ll cut down on the opulence and pomposity, liberalise a few core things, and quit the international kiddie fiddling ring. ‘Baby, I can change’, he’ll swear . . .but it’ll all come too late. No one will care anymore. In late 2012 the Catholic Church will amalgamate with the beleaguered comic publication The Dandy (Hey Kidz, it’s The Dandy: now incorporating the Roman Catholic Church) and, come 2013, both will have gone under.
* * * *
Fidel Castro will also pass away. A ceremony in Havana will see his beard being removed and placed upon the chin of his brother Raul. Raul immediately announces that a chain of Footlockers is to open throughout the republic.
* * * *
You know that Duke of Edinburgh fella? Yeah, well he’s brown bread too. RTE presenters will wear black armbands for a week.
* * * *
In a late attempt to challenge him for the presidency, Donald Trump will accuse Barack Obama of being a sasquatch/human hybrid. However, Trump’s sources will turn out to be flawed. The truth being that Obama is not an actual sasquatch but did once wear a Swatch watch. ‘Well, Trump was kind of right’, Fox News will insist.
* * * *
Upon finally realising that the neoliberal beast is dead, financial technocrats will drop the fiscal defibrillator. ‘We’ve lost him’, they’ll say. Everyone will conclude that China is the new global economic leader but they’ll turn out to be as big a fuck up as the rest of them. Then everyone will panic and have a war or two or maybe three or maybe even a World War Three. The media and posters on politics.ie will be all for it but the rest of us will think it’s a shit idea.
* * * *
A Mayan calendar inspired death cult will pull a huge Jimmy Jones type stunt and everyone will be shocked for a bit, for about two days anyway. Then there’ll be jokes about it on the internet and a few conspiracy theories as to what really went down, the usual stuff blaming the Illuminati and Spar.
* * * *
Amongst all this something really unprecedented will unfold, ultimately eclipsing all else. It will be as if reality has shifted and we will, all of us, see humanity and the world we inhabit in a brand new way. It will be paradigmactic. It will be truly massive. It will put all other historical events into the shade. It will be the game changer. People will not laugh or weep but merely stand there with their mouths agog. It’ll be a bit like when your sweet old granny died and you were clearing out her house and found all that white power paraphernalia under the stairs. Remember that? Sure you do! It’ll be like that only multiplied by loads and fuckin loads. People won’t know how to react. There won’t be any jokes about it on the internet. There will be a long pause. A drawing of breath and then. . .

. . .RTE will commission a new series of Celebrity Bainisteoir and then. . .

. . .the world doesn’t end.