NOT BEING RACIST OR ANYTHING...

(pictured above: Get out of it y’cheeky little bollix!)

I was on the bus the other day enjoying myself, sat there chatting with the other passengers about how much we love Ireland and having a bit of a sing-song. It was lovely. Then things changed. The bus came to a halt and these immigrants got on. Eskimos no less, a whole family of them, carrying speared fish and dragging a load of huskies and massive blocks of ice with them. It took them a very long time to get everything on the bus and then they spent ages rummaging around in their massive furry pockets for the correct fare. I was going to be late for mass and decided I’d had quite enough, so, right in front of them, I made a point of sighing loudly and rolling my eyes. They didn’t care though. They didn’t give a damn so I went home and posted about them on politics.ie. ‘That’ll show them’, I thought.

I'm not being racist or anything but these polar types are everywhere these days; charging up and down the road in their sleighs, barking at each other in their mad sounding ice tongue. Most of them are on the welfare. For people on welfare, they don’t seem to be short of money for husky food do they? Those dogs look well fed. Better fed than a lot of Irish dogs in fact. It’s nice for some isn’t it? It’s nice for some.

(pictured above: You wouldn’t see an Irish dog nicking biscuits.)

Like I was saying, I'm not racist or anything but there’s heaps of igloos popping up everywhere too. Have you noticed? Ice slums. I’m sure you’ve seen them. They melt in the summer and the bleeding heart social workers get the Eskimos more ice so they can rebuild. The ice is imported from Eskimoania (where Eskimos are from) and guess who pays for all that ice to be shipped over, that’s right, us, the Irish tax payer, me and you, mister and missus muggins.

That’s not all. StraightTalkinIreland was saying on politics.ie that a lot of Eskimos have secret shares in the Eskomanian companies that sell us the ice. Yeah, they’re making a profit out of us buying ice off them to build them new houses. I'm not being racist or anything but how do you like that? HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT??? And here am I, having to cancel the Sky Plus. I mean, can we, as a people, even afford this with what we owe the EU/MFI and all that lot?

That’s not all either. An acquaintance of my cousin’s friend’s sister works in Argos and apparently she says that she's not a racist or anything but Eskimos are coming in to the shop with special vouchers from the welfare and buying hair dryers and then going off and using these hair dryers to melt their igloos so that we have to purchase more ice from them. Well, excuse my French but Jesus Lord of Christ MacFuck! The cheek of it! The utter cheek!

Not to be racist or anything but I’m driven to distraction here. Cleaning husky shite off the lawn and having to put up with the stink of fish on the bus is bad enough but seeing the nation fleeced by this lot, well, it’s enough to make you not be racist or anything.

Look, not to be racist or anything, but if you’re not going to act Irish then maybe you should get out of Ireland. I read on the history section of politics.ie that Napoleon once described Britain as a nation of shopkeepers and Ireland as a nation of British shopkeepers. That to me seems a fair description. It's our heritage and our culture and all that. So, what I want to say to all these Eskimos is this: If you are not prepared to act like a British shopkeeper then you can get the next boat back to Eskomania and don’t come back. Not being racist or anything.

Oh and have you ever heard the Eskomanian national anthem? No? Well here it is. . .

Not being racist or anything but for fuck's sake lads, go home would you?

WORTHLESS

Looking back over my life one day, I realised I’d made a muck of it. An unmerciful shit of it no less. All the retrospection left me with a profound feeling of worthlessness. ‘Worthless!’ I roared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I decided that there was nothing else to do but go outside and throw myself in the bin.

Being a worthless git, I went and jumped in the bin that had all the stinking food scraps in it. ‘Good enough for me’, I said to myself, ‘sure, if I’m any type of rubbish, I’m this type of rubbish’. The food scraps came in handy actually as I found myself feeding on old banana skins and sucking the marrow from cold chop bones in the days I had to wait until my collection.

Eventually the bin men came. I heard their lorry and then I felt myself being lifted up. ‘This one’s heavy, there must be some sack of crap in it’, I heard a bin man say. ‘You’re not wrong’, I replied and then suddenly I felt myself being dropped to the ground. I tumbled out of the bin and looked up. I saw two astonished bin men and then crawled back in the bin and called out to them to carry on but they wouldn’t. They refused to throw me in the back of the lorry with the rest of the rubbish. I even offered them money but they refused and drove off without me. So, there I was, not even good enough to be rubbish. Below rubbish. Sub-rubbish. What do you do with that? What’s more worthless than rubbish? Then it struck me. The only thing more worthless than rubbish is shite and you flush shite down the toilet. So, delighted with my realisation, I went indoors, stuck my head in the bowl and flushed. It didn’t work. I tried again. It didn’t work again. I tried loads more times but it was no use, the toilet wanted no part of me. I was too big. I wasn’t even good enough for the jax. Jesus, there was no end to the rejection. Seriously, what was I supposed to do with myself if I wasn’t even good enough for flushing down the jax? I mean, the jax takes shite. I was even more worthless than shite. What, on God’s earth, is more worthless than shite?

And then it struck me. There is something more worthless than shite and it is with this sub-shite that I realised I must dwell.

It wasn’t easy getting myself elected to the Dail but elected I eventually was and now I sit here in constituency surgeries telling people I can’t help them and that my hands are tied and asking them how their Aunty Mary is doing and if they saw the match and taking the odd back-hander and so on and so on until eventually I’ll draw a big fat pension. A big fat juicy pension. Oh yeah. Turns out being completely worthless isn’t that bad after all.

WHY BOTHER?

(pictured above: waiting for me to call)

I’m working on a new play. It concerns a naked woman in a wheelie bin. She pops out occasionally and shouts ‘feck the cosmos’ at the audience. Feck the Cosmos is the name of the play as well as the only three words spoken for the entire production. I think it’s going to be a hit. I think it’s going to put me in the limelight. That’s why I find myself contemplating the impression I’d like to make as an artist and a public personality.

I’d like to be seen as a gritty nihilistic sort, a misanthrope whose anti-social ways are tolerated because he is so highly regarded. I’d be known as a drinker too but not the type that has an Africa shaped piss stain on the crotch of his pants. I’d like to be the louche sort. Pissed in an elegantly witty way. Suavely inebriated. Like a non-bowsie Brendan Behan. Brendan Behan but dapper. A kind of Brendan Behan meets Bryan Ferry if that’s possible to imagine. I’d be debonair but also down at heel, earthy, genuine. I’d also like be known as a convention breaker. I’d be a source of both great worry and fascination at social functions. I’d know no airs and graces and wouldn’t suffer fools gladly. Oh, and I’d like to punch a critic at some stage. I’d punch a snivelling little critic on the jaw and roughly take his willing spouse on the same night, and in his bed.

It would be great to leave many lovers in my wake. I can imagine it, a trail of dishevelled and heartbroken debris wailing the words: ‘I can’t live without him!’ I would be the dirty secret of the rich and famous. Famous husbands would look at famous wives and know these wives are thinking of me, minds unmoored and blissfully adrift in the memory of the devastating things I did to them. Sassy female journalists would attempt to catch me out in interviews but instead they would meet my penetrating gaze and struggle for words. They would buckle and moisten and awaken in a hotel room the following day, too late to get their copy in for the next edition and unable to find their knickers.

I’d like to be seen as a philosopher also, a grim sort. A dispenser of uncomfortable yet irrefutable truths. I’d talk of ‘The Cosmic Jax', an existential bowl in which we all float about like pieces of shit. I’d describe Nietzsche as ‘a syphilitic gobshite’ and an ‘optimist’. ‘The Abyss my arse’, I’d say, ‘the Abyss is a holiday camp compared to The Cosmic Jax’. Pundits would gasp but know that I am correct. Leaders of religious faiths would step down upon hearing my words, declaring they simply can’t continue in their sham beliefs.

I’d also very much like it if I was still a point of discussion, study, and debate years after my death. I’d like my identity to become increasingly enigmatic as centuries pass. I’d like future generations to wonder if I ever even existed or if I was an aggregation of other people or maybe a woman or a child or a visitor from another dimension or maybe just a frequency, a sound, a hum, or a buzz with a faint crackling voice lost within it. An eerie broadcast that can only be heard on shortwave radio in the dead of night. I’d like people to theorise all these things before finally concluding that I must have been God and treating my works as holy texts. I can see it now, women kneeling and whispering praise as their fingers glide over the words I have written, transfixed by the pages before them, doe eyed and adoring.

This is the impression I would like to make. This is how I would like to be regarded and eventually remembered. It’s not too much to ask. I feel it is my due. I feel it merits my worth as an artist. My work is good. No, it is astonishing. I am without peer and should be venerated. Why else would I write? Why else would I make art? Why bother? What would be the point? It’s not like I have anything to say.

SAD PUPPIES

My sister was a strange one when she was little. She had these puppy dogs and she was always mean to them, pulling their tails, leaving them cowering up on high shelves, all that kind of thing. I told her to cut it out but she said they looked cute when they were sad. ‘The sorrowful little whines they make are just so moving’, she argued.

After being mean to the tiny dogs she’d be nice to them for a bit, giving them little treats and so on. She’d soon go back to being mean though. She was only being nice to the puppies to remind them that there was hope. A hopeful little puppy dog that has been badly let down is a cute little puppy dog, . . .apparently. On cold days she’d lock the creatures outside and watch them scratch at the French windows to be let in. ‘Awwww’ she’d say as she observed the confusion and hurt in their eyes.

I once asked her if she had given the dogs names. She said she had a collective name for all of them. She called them Africa.

She listens to a lot of U2 these days.

HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

The other day I woke up to discover that I wasn’t there. I had a good look around but couldn’t find myself in the house. I rang work and was told that I hadn’t shown up there either.

I placed posters in local shops, libraries and recreation centres asking for information on my whereabouts. There was a picture of me on the posters with my mobile phone number displayed under the words: ‘Have You Seen Me? If So Please Call Me At My Number Below’.

Happily, my mobile soon rang and a voice said ‘there you are’ and indeed I was there. I was found and no longer missing. To make sure I don’t lose myself again I’m going to hang my name and address around my neck so that when I’m found I’m immediately returned.

The strange thing is though, I enjoyed being gone.

BLAKE LIVELY: GOOD METABOLISM

Blake Lively feels ‘lucky to have a good metabolism’. The 24-year-old actress is in great shape. Blake works out when she needs to but the stunning star prefers eating to exercise.

‘I'm really lucky to have a good metabolism,’ said Blake at the Jason Wu for Target launch party in New York City. ‘When I have to get in shape for a movie then I can do it but I love to cook a lot. I use a lot of fresh produce. Maybe that helps?’

Blake is inspired to eat well so that she can wear her favourite clothes. The actress can’t wait to begin donning spring fashions. ‘I'll probably be in a lot of high waist mini skirts and shorts this spring’, Blake shared.

There now. Were you fascinated reading that? Were you though? Did you find that really really interesting? I thought you might. People love that sort of thing. It should get the blog a few more hits than usual anyway. I saw that story on another website. I’ve no fuckin’ idea who Blake Lively is to be honest. I only clicked the story because I saw a picture of her in a black coat looking a bit worried and I thought she was mon petit rabble-rouser Lizzie Phelan.

Ahh Lizzie. The heart will be scalded off me if you turn out to be a shill. Scalded! You’ve a grand metabolism yourself though. Look after it.

SIGNING ON

It’s funny but I hear the following music in my head every time I queue to sign on at Hatch 12.

I think it’s the same for everyone there. There’s a kind of golden glow about the place with sunbeams drifting through the skylight and old Morgan Freeman smiling at us from behind the plexiglass. ‘You better get busy livin or get busy dying’, he says and we leave the place, a little tearful but buoyed by the great man’s Hallmark wisdom. ‘Get busy livin or get busy dying’. Hmmm. He’s right you know. I’m going to drop into FAS, see what’s on offer. Hell, I’m going to pull my socks up going forward.

This post has been brought to you by the national internship JobBridge programme: ‘Help others help themselves to you with JobBridge’.

T SHIRT

I saw a nice t-shirt in Urban Outfitters yesterday. It had the words ‘Class War’ written on it. Sadly, it was way out of my price range.

LOL IN SPACE!

I’ll never forget the time I committed a crime against all humanity. As punishment, I was sealed into a metal pod and launched into outer space to orbit a dead star for all eternity. I was provided with a lifetime supply of food and water but nothing else. No books, no music, nothing. I couldn’t even look out the window because there were no windows. I’ll freely admit I spent a lot of time masturbating in that pod but even that pastime had to be abandoned eventually. I had forgotten what women looked like. The closest thing I had for reference was me and I’m a man. I couldn’t even get anything going at half mast because I don’t fancy myself very much. Women didn’t fancy me much either back on Earth. I laughed upon realising the irony of that. I laughed pretty hard. Manically actually. To be honest, I was a cackling like a mad man. It was something to do.

An alien race of voluptuous amazon women eventually found my pod and opened it up. They found me inside, wild eyed and cackling away. The voluptuous alien amazon women were nonplussed and a little fearful. They resealed my pod and put me back in orbit of the dead star like they found me. I didn’t even care. I was having a ball. LOL!