SWEAR NEVER TO DO IT AGAIN, AGAIN

We don't make history anymore. History just occurs. It kind of spills out all over the place and we have no say in it. History is like a pint that gets knocked over by some really drunk fella. It lands on his lap and makes it look as if he's pissed himself. Sometimes it leaves a stain in the shape of a country.

Nobody is in charge anymore, for good or ill. It's all just cause and effect, but we're not sure what the cause was and we don't know how to deal with the effect. A lot of people are talking but nothing is being said. Most people are arguing about things that may or may not have happened and the factors that may or may not have caused these things to happen or not. I doubt anyone really cares though. Just as long as their opining is heard. As long as they are seen to stand out from the herd ...for whatever reason. No one knows a thing. We are all just caught up in a domino effect and we don't know who pushed the first domino and we can't tell which one will be next to go.

Take the example of ISIS. I really don't know who ISIS are. I don't think anyone does. ISIS themselves don't even know. All they know is that they are history, occurring. They are just delighted to be 'trending'. This is humanity in entropy, where being click bait is the sought after currency. ISIS are like the rest of us but instead of doing the Ice Bucket Challenge, they chop off people's heads. The Islamic Wahhabi state matters about as much to them as whatever charity the Ice Bucket Challenge was in aid of mattered to us. By the way, did we #GetKony in the end? No, I didn't think so. That met a sorry conclusion. Naked on the road, wanking and roaring.

We are all Jason Russell. Remember him? You probably don't. History quickly fades these days.

Future historians will look back at our times and try to figure out what happened. They're going to have to pick their way through an abstract mess. The course of history by Jackson Pollock. A tangle of twine and you can't find where it starts or where it ends. And what an end. Might this be the end? Or is it just a stupid transition? Maybe we'll wake up, like the pissed fella that spilled his pint, and feel a bit disgraced and look out the window and see a brand new day and swear never to do it again.

And then we'll do it again.

And then we'll swear never to do it again, again.

THE MAN IN TATAOUINE

Schloop schlop, off to the shop. Sausages, eggs and milk. Flip flap, back to the flat. Put them in the fridge.

I was very far from anywhere once and he was even further. Standing in a long stretch of nowhere near the Tunisian Libyan border. What was he doing there? He was just standing. He certainly wasn't going to find any figs or anything. Maybe he was a North African Harry Dean Stanton, walking off the memory of a woman. Or maybe some Crowleite who got into a spot of occult bother or maybe a Saharan demon some Crowleite summoned. Maybe just some Berber up to something but what that something could've been must've been almost nothing. All you can find is scorpions and sand until the cold night falls and the snakes move around.

Maybe he was an off-roader whose vehicle took a tumble or a refugee escaping national turmoil. To my mind at least, from a distance, out there, he momentarily became Frankenstein's monster. An existential anomaly. A slip in cosmic continuity. I once heard a baby crying far out in the ocean. It might have been some gull but I didn't see one. Maybe sometimes the Universe puts things where it shouldn't and you see or hear something in a place where you couldn't.

I'm grilling my sausages and putting milk in my coffee and thinking of him and feeling glad that I'm me. At least I'm just bored whereas maybe he's scared. I'll never forget how he just stared and stared. Maybe he was wondering what I was doing out there. Maybe he thought of calling out but just didn't dare. Maybe he thought that he was looking at Set. Maybe what I saw was an angel of death.

JUST JENNY

Jenny was glad to have finally found a reason for being. She'd had trouble finding any reason but was actively searching. Her lack of interest in just about everything had isolated her. She was always on the periphery of conversations at her school, simulating interest and nodding and pretending to laugh or gasp at the right times but never truly engaging. She was no one's best friend or worst enemy. She was just Jenny. 'Oh, it's just Jenny', people said. Even her mother said it. Just Jenny, someone adults kept alive and healthy to see what might become of her. Well, she had decided what she was going to become and, my oh my, what she became.

Despite her persistence, Jenny's online forum contributions and Facebook posts always went unacknowledged. That is until Aarzam from Luton (a place in England) started responding to her because she responded to him. He kept going on about God and justice and all this stuff and Jenny asked him what he was talking about. What followed was a correspondence that lasted for months. Jenny didn't really care what they were talking about, the important thing was that they were talking. Jenny never had a point of view on anything so she consciously decided to adopt Aarzam's point of view on everything. Not everyone agreed with Aarzam, in fact some people thought he was crazy or evil, but he got people's attention and attention was something Jenny craved.

Anyhoo, as the girl in question would put it herself, this all led to Jenny being stopped at the airport and asked to step into a back room to answer some questions. She told them, flatly (everything she said came out flatly) that her destination was Syria and that she was joining her boyfriend. The airport security were nonplussed by this strange girl in a homemade burka fashioned from a bed sheet dyed black. Things became even more confusing when they asked Jenny where she was from. South County Dublin was the answer but her accent was clearly United States. She told them her 'mom' spoke like that too. She was asked if her 'mom' was American. 'I don't think so', Jenny said. They asked Jenny if she had ever been to the United States. Jenny said she hadn't. They asked Jenny why she had an American accent. Jenny wasn't aware that she had an American accent and said it might be because she 'watched a lot of shows'.

So, like, anyways, things turned into a really big deal. Aarzam had been seen in a viral where a non-unionised freelance journalist got beheaded. Jenny became the opposite of famous, infamous, for a while but then she just became famous when she renounced her newfound beliefs and ran a mini-marathon in aid of something, she wasn't quite sure what. This was all on the advice of an agent Jenny's mother employed. 'We're going to need someone to handle this Goddamn fucking shit storm', was Jenny's mother's reasoning.

The newspapers and the TV went crazy and spoke to the other kids in Jenny's school and they said that she always seemed like she was keeping secrets. Jenny didn't know they thought that about her. It was kind of cool. Better than boring. Jenny went from being 'Just Jenny' to 'Jihad Jenny' in the space of a few days. Some professor guy called Schlemp wanted to talk to her for a book he was writing called 'Online Anomie International: Islamic Extremism and the Search for Likes'. They were going to make a movie too with Saoirse Ronan acting as Jenny. 'She's OK I guess, she's kind of old though', Jenny told Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show. Ryan asked Jenny if she'd lift her burka and give the audience a peek at her pretty face. Jenny did. There was a big round of applause and then Ryan gave everyone a hamper of beauty products.

Jenny's mother was really happy with how the whole thing panned out but she was 'really pissed' at first. There was silence in the car when she picked Jenny up from the airport but then she suddenly exploded. She screamed and slapped her open palm against the steering wheel.

'How the fucking motherfuck did you wind up facebooking with a bunch of Wahhabi crazies?'

'Jeez Mom, take it easy. I don't even know what Wahbabbi or whatever is. I just made friends with a Muslim boy is all. What's the big deal?'

'Just made friends with a Muslim boy?' Jenny's mother repeated, emphasising her incredulity.

'Yeah', said Jenny, 'he kind of like listened to me'.

'And what the heck were you saying that made him listen to you honey?'

'I dunno', replied Jenny, her voice trailing off. 'Just stuff I guess, ...just, y'know, ...stuff.'

THAT'S HOW WARS ARE WON

I'm really looking forward to Fine Gael's John Redmond centenary in 2016. It'll put more distance between us and the Easter Rising thugs. Chances are that World War Three will have kicked off by then too and encouraging a load of youngsters to go off and take part in that should not only be character building but also act as a neat tribute to Mister Redmond. Redmond told the young men of his time to go to war and that 'the task is not difficult'. Redmond's advice was a bit more positive than the promises of martyrdom made by the other lot and, as long as you didn't die or go mad from shell shock, the task wasn't 'difficult' at all.

Although, back then war was simpler, not like now where one side is getting blown to bits by robots operated by people playing Nintendo Wii a continent away. Back then, one hundred years ago, all you had to do was shoot a fella in a vital organ or maybe step forward, thrust your bayonet into his belly, place your foot on his chest and then pull the bayonet back out again. Then you'd proceed to the next fella and do the same to him. Not difficult at all that. Even a child could follow those instructions and some children did. As long as the young men and kids steered clear of the phosgene and the bullets and bayonets of the other side, World War One was quite a nice war to be part of. It was fought in some very scenic places too.

Overall, the 2016 celebrations should be lovely. Enda's asked the Queen of Britain over and she'll probably say a few words about how war is a grand old thing when done properly. Then a few cannons will be fired and then we'll get down to the business of sending our young away to fight, just like some of their forefathers did.

Like I said though, the next world war will be fairly different to the last. It won't just be the technology, it'll be less straightforward in all sorts of ways. It'll be hard to tell who's on whose side for a start. You'll see a Russian fella and you kill him, that part should be grand but the fundamentalist shower, the Arabs and all that crowd, they could be on anyone's side. Isis might be on our side in one country and against us just over the border in another. That'll be hard to cope with. I suppose the youngsters will just shout out 'friend or foe' and the Arabs will answer honestly. Israel will no doubt be getting stuck in too. Religious death cults love a bit of carnage and Abraham's heirs are certainly no exception. Israel will be on our side I'd imagine but they'll probably try and kill us anyway. They're very keen on just letting anyone and everyone have it. That's their technique. It's asymmetric you see, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it asymmetrically. Israel will probably lay into the child troops the most. There's nothing like a dead nipper as far as the Holy Landers are concerned so the kiddie platoons will have to be on the look out for them.

Of course, we'll have to put up with some anti-war sentiment at home. Not much, you never hear a peep out of artists or the like these days, but a certain amount of cribbing is unavoidable. There'll be malcontents and weirdos saying that it's wrong to go fighting and to kill children and all that. They'll focus on the child fatalities the most I suppose but, the way I see it, we may as well send the kids into the field of operation, as it's called in the trade. The kids may as well get involved in the killing because they're going to die anyway. At least this way they might kill a few of the enemy too and killing is what it's all about. Killing. Killing Killing Killing KILLING!

Yeah. That's how wars are won so get the children armed up and get them out on the field. Their deaths will be for their own good and we can always commemorate them in another one hundred years when we're sending off the next lot.

Can't wait!

MAD BASTARDS

Mad bastards. 
Loads of mad bastards. 
Heaps of mad bastards. 
Swathes of mad bastards.  
Hoards of fanatical mad bastards. 
A horrendous cloud of mad bastards.
Mad bastards travelling the world.
Mad bastards flowing across borders. 
Mad bastards roaring their heads off. 
Mad bastards with a hatred of women. 
Mad bastards with a love of rifles. 
Mad bastards barbecuing people alive. 
Mad bastards playing soccer with human heads. 
Mad bastards with smartphones. 
Mad bastards uploading mad shit. 
Mad bastards looking for 'hits'. 
Mad bastards looking for 'likes'. 
Mad bastards with Twitter accounts. 
#MadBastards. 
Mad bastards with names like Abu Mahd B'Ahstard. 
Mad bastards coming in handy. 
Mad bastards doing the dirty work. 
Mad bastards of realpolitik. 
Mad bastards that are with us. 
Mad bastards that are against us. 
Mad bastards turning on us. 
Frankenstein created mad bastards. 
Mad bastards in search of their master. 
Mad bastards hating their creator. 
Mad bastards - what are they thinking? 
Mad bastards - what are they going to do next? 
What should we do about all the mad bastards? 
Where would we be without the mad bastards? 
You've got to love mad bastards. 
If we didn't have mad bastards, we'd end up looking like mad bastards ourselves.

Mad bastards - taking the heat off us for the last thirty five years.