The God delusion
I often ask myself what's in it for me. I mean, you arrive from oblivion, make a Hames of everything, die roaring, and return to oblivion. It's not ideal.
Nevertheless, I recommend it for this reason: it sets you up to be a great dog owner.
A day never passes that I don't regret there isn't, in fact, a God. I suspect many atheists feel the same. So, how to get one? Well, like those wokesters who want to bludgeon us into thinking that biology isn't a fact, and that men can still control and dominate women by declaring themselves 'trans', you and I can be trans God by getting and caring for a dog ... !
Imagine if there was a God who genuinely loved you. Well, He'd look after you exactly like you look after your belovèd dog ... ! You wouldn't let it go hungry, or be in pain, or be neglected, or lonely, or murdered, or exploited ... or any of the brutal stuff of this godless world.
So here comes God to feed Miss Lotte Lenya, and kiss her big fat head sometimes, and get up at 6am because she wants out, and refuse to put her in kennels, or have strangers groom her or cut her lovely hair, and so on ad nauseum ...
And the best thing? The wokester wankers are facing a necessary, justified and fierce reaction from courageous women's rights defenders like Rosie Duffield and J K Rowling, women who are actually women, i.e. women. Notwithstanding the fact that Angela Rayner doesn't know what a woman is.
But because there is no God, I can be God without fear of lightning strike type retribution from the real thing ... because there isn't one ... !!
Take my advice: be an atheist, get a dog, and become God.
Taking the biscuit
Though a lifetime admirer of Oscar Wilde, I'm an even greater fan of Brendan Behan. So much so that, as a protest against his somewhat faded reputation among today’s right on crowd, I posted this little verse on Facebook:
Unfortunately, it begat uproar at last night's meeting of the Tullylish Literary, Historical and Archaeological Society. A motion of censure was tabled against me for posting what I considered was merely a gentle reminder that nowadays moronic political correctness can lead ... er ... morons, I suppose ... to worship Oscar but dismiss, say, Behan.
When I rose to speak in my usual measured, senatorial tones, I pointed out that Brendan was, at the very least, bisexual, which might easily be viewed as a halfway house on the road to homosexuality, and he therefore deserves, for starters, a generous 50% of the kudos Oscar gets from the cosmopolitan herd for merely being gay, but which is entirely unrelated to whatever the quality of Oscar's literary output is.
Accusations of homophobia, biphobia, transphobia resounded through the hall. The upshot being that I stood my ground, and refused to accede to demands that I abandon my pen and surrender the little trowel and brush-type thing we use at digs.
I think many people saw how right I am, but were cowed into silence for fear that others present might stop 'liking' their facebook posts if they backed me. I also noticed that Mrs Treanor, who prepares the half-time refreshments, did not on this occasion set out any of my favourites, the bourbon creams.
Jolly Roget
Walking the lane with Miss Lotte Lenya early this morning, I noticed all the neighbours' bedroom window curtains were still closed.
Easter Monday, a holiday, I said to Jean later, all the parents shagging away like mad, I suppose ...
You think so ... ? said Jean.
Of course, I answered, whereas me, I'm an old man, past it, over the hill, in terminal decline, decaying, decomposing, disintegrating ...
I get the picture, she interrupted.
... corroding, crumbling, putrefying, I went on, festering, gangrenous ...
For goodness sake ... !! she said.
I was an English teacher for years.
Won’t you go home, Bile Bailey ...
Today I met the pound shop version of Opera Guy. He set up his giant boombox, with loud and full orchestral backing tapes. About 10 metres away. Straight into Nessun Dorma. None slept.
Didn't you see me ... ? I asked when he'd paused the histrionics.
I was here last week, he said.
A soupçon of applause from the café al fresco crowd followed each overwrought offering. This, after all, is real music, and who can resist an opportunity to show that we are discerning enough to appreciate classical crossover with a musical theatre twist ...?
A man passed me, making a great show of sticking his fingers in his ears, so as not to be traumatised by my version of Mr Tambourine Man.
A middle-aged woman brought a carton of coffee over to the real musician. Real class ... ! I heard her enthuse.
That long black cloud is coming down ...
Authentic or what ... ?
Just when we should still be feeling, on the one hand, suicidal because Our Lord has been nailed to a cross, and, on the other, ecstatic because we find out two days later that He was only pretending to be dead, Jean has again sickened my happiness.
Last night she made me watch an awful load of crap called Magpie Murders. Yet she did nothing but bellyache when later on we watched something decent: David Lynch's film, Mulholland Drive.
I mean that film had everything. It was arty. It was pseudy. It might have been about anything, or nothing even. It was a searing indictment of Hollywood's underbelly or an exercise in dream analysis or an exploration of alternative histories, maybe. Nobody knows.
Most importantly though, it had some naked girl on naked girl action. These scenes were absolutely vital, indivisible from the core narrative. In fact, if anything, the artistic integrity of the film would have been enhanced significantly had there been a whole more of them, particularly since the two girls involved were absolute crackers ...
Digging in
The Tullylish Literary, Historical and Archaeological Society was founded in 1963, the same year that sex began. My uncle was caretaker of the hall in which it first met. The very place, incidentally, where I made my stage debut at 12 years old, strumming guitar accompaniment to Parochial housekeeper Mrs Scullion's fearsomely lachrymose showstoppers, One Day At A Time (Sweet Jesus) and Kumbaya, m'Lordie, Kumbaya.
So I go back a long way there, and I won't be excluded easily. A man cannot be blackballed simply because he pointed out that if, with hindsight mind you, we bestow politically correct martyrdom on Wilde, we must do so for broth of a boy Behan. Chief reason being: if you got involved with Brendan you were at least as likely later to go to gaol, than if you swanned around with Oscar.
Furthermore, Behan's description of the great Patrick Kavanagh as that 'Monaghan wanker' is as witty as anything in Oscar's entire oeuvre.
Shark tactics
A knock on the front door yesterday afternoon. Young couple. They handed me a leaflet headed Paradise Poll.
Will you vote Jesus? asked the girl.
The lad said, The choice is between Heaven and Hell.
When I was young, and saved types called at our door, my mother had a foolproof way of scaring them off. We're Catholics, she'd say.
These days though, proselytisers have been trained in confronting the heinous and grotesque, and are ready for that. It won't suffice. You need to demonstrate to them that you're beyond just being Catholic, and have, in fact, reached a position where you are so mediocre, thick, blinkered, ignorant, intolerant, retarded, and illiberal that you'd be welcome in the Azov Brigade or Ku Klux Klan.
So I said, Actually, I'm in the GAA ...
Off they went.
Some people have all the luck
As I played in Belfast last weekend, an old flame and her sweetheart passed by. I happened to glance up, and there they were, looking at me. They looked away, kept walking.
Suddenly it swept over me. A reveletory, terrifying wave of despair and regret at the enormity of what had been missed out on. I was crushed by the sheer, dead weight of all the true love and happiness that had been lost.
But look at what was forsaken: he can't play guitar; even if he had a guitar, it wouldn't be a National Resolectric (since there are only two in N Ireland, and Billy Green has one and I have the other, and neither of us is for selling); he doesn't have my lovely blond hair; nor my slim, neat, size 8 feet; he lacks dimples; he isn't the renowned fortnightly columnist of The Pensive Quill; he's entirely responsible for being whatever kind of loser he is, whereas I wouldn't be a loser at all if it wasn't for the priests at St Colman's College; he isn't a lapsed Catholic; he isn't an Existential Nihilist; he's almost certainly unaware that nothing is revealed.
Jean is very lucky ...
Jeremy Vine's brother blues
You have a real feeling for blues.
Yes, that's what he said. The greatest compliment you could pay a workmanlike plodder like me. And he's a proper guitarist.
At last, confirmation that I am firmly in the tradition of my idol, Mr. Elmore James: i.e. I may not play well, but the little bit I do attempt, I maul with feeling ...
But has it come too late? Stand-up beckons. Even as I sat there plinking and plonking erratically, I was miles away, obsessively working on stuff like this:
My partner loves Quavers. But they're quite calorific so I've advised her to have the bare minim-yum ...
My builder's a pale faced Irish guy with protruding front gnashers ... wan toothy O'Leary
There’s been another split in Unionism ... the new party is called the U U U Catholic Bastards
I was a great fan of Kate Bush ‘til she did that paean to Jimmy Savile ... The Man with the Child in His Eyes ...
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
Poor Jean. What with Biden and so on, she struggles to preserve her Naomi Long frame of mind. And when she saw Michelle give the senile old codger a hug she muttered, We'll not be mastered by no Fenian bastards ...
It was ok, obviously, for Orange Order cretins and yahoos to trail their coats, intimidate and bully the rest of us for sixty years, but now, somehow, Jean has a problem with the fact that GAA cretins and yahoos will trail their coats, intimidate and bully the rest of us for the next six hundred.
Talk about double standards ...
The sins of the Mothers
Mrs Dorothy Parker; Simone de Beauvoir; Germaine Greer; J K Rowling ...
I, minus Miss Lotte Lenya, went off to Belfast to see and hear the next on that list: Kellie-Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker. At the Let Women Speak rally.
Woke queen Jacinda Adern rotten tomatoed and egged her out of New Zealand. Because Posie's a Nazi; a fascist. We can rely on Jacinda's appraisal here, since it takes one to know one.
Posie is alleged to have said that it is impossible to change sex. Even though she's merely stating a fact, it isn't the truth ... that's because it's transphobic, and fascist.
Furthermore, she is alleged to have claimed that what Jim Goad calls 'trannies' are simply 'a bunch of fucking men in dresses'. That may well be the case, especially if you remove the f-word there. But if it is the case, and so far the science suggests as much, it may indeed be a fact but, again, definitely not the truth ... because it is actually hate speech, and far right propaganda.
Notwithstanding all this, I was under the impression that Posie is a women's rights activist. But when I looked her up on Wikipedia I discovered she is actually an 'anti-transgender rights activist'.
While I was believing this, and two other impossible things before breakfast, a pop-up appeared and invited me to donate £2 so that Wikipedia can continue to provide such informed and disinterested content. I declined.
One of Parker's sternest critics, a stormtrooper for free speech with responsibility, and something called 'transgender rights', has pointed out that 'transgender people are not any harm, any risk to women's rights, trans rights do not lessen the rights of anyone else.'
Even though (just for starters) the case of convicted rapist Adam Graham (Isla Bryson) shows that statement to be, at best, wishful thinking and, at worst, a dangerous, wilful lie, it is neither actually - rather, it's a fact at variance with the facts, but nevertheless still a fact ... because to disagree is just more hate speech from reactionaries.
But I got my days mixed up. The big rally was the following day. I had my guitar, so I went busking instead. At least seven people asked me if Lotte was ok. And without her, naturally, donations were skimpy.
On the way home it occurred to me that the women I mentioned are (or were) not only very smart, but also attractive. Posie, actually, is a bit Marilyn Monroe-ish, and if it wasn't for the fact that I never forget that Jean is so lucky to have me, I'd be tempted to ask her (Posie) if she'd like to hear my version of Blind Boy Fuller's Get Your Yas Yas Out. But that sort of thinking is very typical of transphobic men.
Therefore, I said later to Jean, I've decided to pack in the busking.
What's that got to do with anything ... ?!? she asked.
The road to Heaven is paved with evil intentions.
I often ask myself what's in it for me. I mean, you arrive from oblivion, make a Hames of everything, die roaring, and return to oblivion. It's not ideal.
Nevertheless, I recommend it for this reason: it sets you up to be a great dog owner.
A day never passes that I don't regret there isn't, in fact, a God. I suspect many atheists feel the same. So, how to get one? Well, like those wokesters who want to bludgeon us into thinking that biology isn't a fact, and that men can still control and dominate women by declaring themselves 'trans', you and I can be trans God by getting and caring for a dog ... !
Imagine if there was a God who genuinely loved you. Well, He'd look after you exactly like you look after your belovèd dog ... ! You wouldn't let it go hungry, or be in pain, or be neglected, or lonely, or murdered, or exploited ... or any of the brutal stuff of this godless world.
So here comes God to feed Miss Lotte Lenya, and kiss her big fat head sometimes, and get up at 6am because she wants out, and refuse to put her in kennels, or have strangers groom her or cut her lovely hair, and so on ad nauseum ...
And the best thing? The wokester wankers are facing a necessary, justified and fierce reaction from courageous women's rights defenders like Rosie Duffield and J K Rowling, women who are actually women, i.e. women. Notwithstanding the fact that Angela Rayner doesn't know what a woman is.
But because there is no God, I can be God without fear of lightning strike type retribution from the real thing ... because there isn't one ... !!
Take my advice: be an atheist, get a dog, and become God.
Taking the biscuit
Though a lifetime admirer of Oscar Wilde, I'm an even greater fan of Brendan Behan. So much so that, as a protest against his somewhat faded reputation among today’s right on crowd, I posted this little verse on Facebook:
Oscar Wilde is fine, right on;
but Behan's time, alas, has gone.
Oscar's ticking all the right boxes
for today's politically correct boll-oxes.
Unfortunately, it begat uproar at last night's meeting of the Tullylish Literary, Historical and Archaeological Society. A motion of censure was tabled against me for posting what I considered was merely a gentle reminder that nowadays moronic political correctness can lead ... er ... morons, I suppose ... to worship Oscar but dismiss, say, Behan.
When I rose to speak in my usual measured, senatorial tones, I pointed out that Brendan was, at the very least, bisexual, which might easily be viewed as a halfway house on the road to homosexuality, and he therefore deserves, for starters, a generous 50% of the kudos Oscar gets from the cosmopolitan herd for merely being gay, but which is entirely unrelated to whatever the quality of Oscar's literary output is.
Accusations of homophobia, biphobia, transphobia resounded through the hall. The upshot being that I stood my ground, and refused to accede to demands that I abandon my pen and surrender the little trowel and brush-type thing we use at digs.
I think many people saw how right I am, but were cowed into silence for fear that others present might stop 'liking' their facebook posts if they backed me. I also noticed that Mrs Treanor, who prepares the half-time refreshments, did not on this occasion set out any of my favourites, the bourbon creams.
Jolly Roget
Walking the lane with Miss Lotte Lenya early this morning, I noticed all the neighbours' bedroom window curtains were still closed.
Easter Monday, a holiday, I said to Jean later, all the parents shagging away like mad, I suppose ...
You think so ... ? said Jean.
Of course, I answered, whereas me, I'm an old man, past it, over the hill, in terminal decline, decaying, decomposing, disintegrating ...
I get the picture, she interrupted.
... corroding, crumbling, putrefying, I went on, festering, gangrenous ...
For goodness sake ... !! she said.
I was an English teacher for years.
Won’t you go home, Bile Bailey ...
Today I met the pound shop version of Opera Guy. He set up his giant boombox, with loud and full orchestral backing tapes. About 10 metres away. Straight into Nessun Dorma. None slept.
Didn't you see me ... ? I asked when he'd paused the histrionics.
I was here last week, he said.
A soupçon of applause from the café al fresco crowd followed each overwrought offering. This, after all, is real music, and who can resist an opportunity to show that we are discerning enough to appreciate classical crossover with a musical theatre twist ...?
A man passed me, making a great show of sticking his fingers in his ears, so as not to be traumatised by my version of Mr Tambourine Man.
A middle-aged woman brought a carton of coffee over to the real musician. Real class ... ! I heard her enthuse.
That long black cloud is coming down ...
Authentic or what ... ?
Just when we should still be feeling, on the one hand, suicidal because Our Lord has been nailed to a cross, and, on the other, ecstatic because we find out two days later that He was only pretending to be dead, Jean has again sickened my happiness.
Last night she made me watch an awful load of crap called Magpie Murders. Yet she did nothing but bellyache when later on we watched something decent: David Lynch's film, Mulholland Drive.
I mean that film had everything. It was arty. It was pseudy. It might have been about anything, or nothing even. It was a searing indictment of Hollywood's underbelly or an exercise in dream analysis or an exploration of alternative histories, maybe. Nobody knows.
Most importantly though, it had some naked girl on naked girl action. These scenes were absolutely vital, indivisible from the core narrative. In fact, if anything, the artistic integrity of the film would have been enhanced significantly had there been a whole more of them, particularly since the two girls involved were absolute crackers ...
Digging in
The Tullylish Literary, Historical and Archaeological Society was founded in 1963, the same year that sex began. My uncle was caretaker of the hall in which it first met. The very place, incidentally, where I made my stage debut at 12 years old, strumming guitar accompaniment to Parochial housekeeper Mrs Scullion's fearsomely lachrymose showstoppers, One Day At A Time (Sweet Jesus) and Kumbaya, m'Lordie, Kumbaya.
So I go back a long way there, and I won't be excluded easily. A man cannot be blackballed simply because he pointed out that if, with hindsight mind you, we bestow politically correct martyrdom on Wilde, we must do so for broth of a boy Behan. Chief reason being: if you got involved with Brendan you were at least as likely later to go to gaol, than if you swanned around with Oscar.
Furthermore, Behan's description of the great Patrick Kavanagh as that 'Monaghan wanker' is as witty as anything in Oscar's entire oeuvre.
Shark tactics
A knock on the front door yesterday afternoon. Young couple. They handed me a leaflet headed Paradise Poll.
Will you vote Jesus? asked the girl.
The lad said, The choice is between Heaven and Hell.
When I was young, and saved types called at our door, my mother had a foolproof way of scaring them off. We're Catholics, she'd say.
These days though, proselytisers have been trained in confronting the heinous and grotesque, and are ready for that. It won't suffice. You need to demonstrate to them that you're beyond just being Catholic, and have, in fact, reached a position where you are so mediocre, thick, blinkered, ignorant, intolerant, retarded, and illiberal that you'd be welcome in the Azov Brigade or Ku Klux Klan.
So I said, Actually, I'm in the GAA ...
Off they went.
Some people have all the luck
As I played in Belfast last weekend, an old flame and her sweetheart passed by. I happened to glance up, and there they were, looking at me. They looked away, kept walking.
Suddenly it swept over me. A reveletory, terrifying wave of despair and regret at the enormity of what had been missed out on. I was crushed by the sheer, dead weight of all the true love and happiness that had been lost.
But look at what was forsaken: he can't play guitar; even if he had a guitar, it wouldn't be a National Resolectric (since there are only two in N Ireland, and Billy Green has one and I have the other, and neither of us is for selling); he doesn't have my lovely blond hair; nor my slim, neat, size 8 feet; he lacks dimples; he isn't the renowned fortnightly columnist of The Pensive Quill; he's entirely responsible for being whatever kind of loser he is, whereas I wouldn't be a loser at all if it wasn't for the priests at St Colman's College; he isn't a lapsed Catholic; he isn't an Existential Nihilist; he's almost certainly unaware that nothing is revealed.
Jean is very lucky ...
Jeremy Vine's brother blues
You have a real feeling for blues.
Yes, that's what he said. The greatest compliment you could pay a workmanlike plodder like me. And he's a proper guitarist.
At last, confirmation that I am firmly in the tradition of my idol, Mr. Elmore James: i.e. I may not play well, but the little bit I do attempt, I maul with feeling ...
But has it come too late? Stand-up beckons. Even as I sat there plinking and plonking erratically, I was miles away, obsessively working on stuff like this:
My partner loves Quavers. But they're quite calorific so I've advised her to have the bare minim-yum ...
My builder's a pale faced Irish guy with protruding front gnashers ... wan toothy O'Leary
There’s been another split in Unionism ... the new party is called the U U U Catholic Bastards
I was a great fan of Kate Bush ‘til she did that paean to Jimmy Savile ... The Man with the Child in His Eyes ...
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
Poor Jean. What with Biden and so on, she struggles to preserve her Naomi Long frame of mind. And when she saw Michelle give the senile old codger a hug she muttered, We'll not be mastered by no Fenian bastards ...
It was ok, obviously, for Orange Order cretins and yahoos to trail their coats, intimidate and bully the rest of us for sixty years, but now, somehow, Jean has a problem with the fact that GAA cretins and yahoos will trail their coats, intimidate and bully the rest of us for the next six hundred.
Talk about double standards ...
The sins of the Mothers
Mrs Dorothy Parker; Simone de Beauvoir; Germaine Greer; J K Rowling ...
I, minus Miss Lotte Lenya, went off to Belfast to see and hear the next on that list: Kellie-Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker. At the Let Women Speak rally.
Woke queen Jacinda Adern rotten tomatoed and egged her out of New Zealand. Because Posie's a Nazi; a fascist. We can rely on Jacinda's appraisal here, since it takes one to know one.
Posie is alleged to have said that it is impossible to change sex. Even though she's merely stating a fact, it isn't the truth ... that's because it's transphobic, and fascist.
Furthermore, she is alleged to have claimed that what Jim Goad calls 'trannies' are simply 'a bunch of fucking men in dresses'. That may well be the case, especially if you remove the f-word there. But if it is the case, and so far the science suggests as much, it may indeed be a fact but, again, definitely not the truth ... because it is actually hate speech, and far right propaganda.
Notwithstanding all this, I was under the impression that Posie is a women's rights activist. But when I looked her up on Wikipedia I discovered she is actually an 'anti-transgender rights activist'.
While I was believing this, and two other impossible things before breakfast, a pop-up appeared and invited me to donate £2 so that Wikipedia can continue to provide such informed and disinterested content. I declined.
One of Parker's sternest critics, a stormtrooper for free speech with responsibility, and something called 'transgender rights', has pointed out that 'transgender people are not any harm, any risk to women's rights, trans rights do not lessen the rights of anyone else.'
Even though (just for starters) the case of convicted rapist Adam Graham (Isla Bryson) shows that statement to be, at best, wishful thinking and, at worst, a dangerous, wilful lie, it is neither actually - rather, it's a fact at variance with the facts, but nevertheless still a fact ... because to disagree is just more hate speech from reactionaries.
But I got my days mixed up. The big rally was the following day. I had my guitar, so I went busking instead. At least seven people asked me if Lotte was ok. And without her, naturally, donations were skimpy.
On the way home it occurred to me that the women I mentioned are (or were) not only very smart, but also attractive. Posie, actually, is a bit Marilyn Monroe-ish, and if it wasn't for the fact that I never forget that Jean is so lucky to have me, I'd be tempted to ask her (Posie) if she'd like to hear my version of Blind Boy Fuller's Get Your Yas Yas Out. But that sort of thinking is very typical of transphobic men.
Therefore, I said later to Jean, I've decided to pack in the busking.
What's that got to do with anything ... ?!? she asked.
The road to Heaven is paved with evil intentions.
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