The Da Vinci Con
Some of you will be surprised to hear this - and do remember I'm only here 10 minutes - but many Portaferrians have already acclaimed my arrival.
Said one such deferential aborigine to me in Costcutter the other day, You know, Michael, you're just the kind of man we need here: citizen of the world, Renaissance Man, philosopher, bibliophile, adventurer, raconteur, farceur, wordsmith, ladykiller, and excellent darts player. Just what Portaferry needs. Usually we get paedos and dealers, parachuted in by the Council because there's nowhere else they won't be bumped off.
Holidays in the Sun
With only 7 weeks left until Christmas, Jean and I are, naturally, talking about one thing only ... holidays ... !
Where shall we go ... ? she asks excitedly.
I fancy either staying in Ireland, I reply, or going to some desert or other, but sure they'll be overrun by nuisance Palestinian tourists this year ...
Don't put that on Facebook, she says.
Ok, I reply.
Womansplaining
Tell me this, I asked a fellow old codger this morning at the inaugural gathering of Portaferry Real Men’s Shed, do you ever listen to Woman’s Hour ... ?
If you’ve ever been blackballed and expelled at the very first meeting of a group you were instrumental in creating, you’ll know how I felt as I trudged my woebegone way home.
They didn’t even let me explain.
St Colman’s College: all boys. Lots of homework. And school on Saturday, too. Sundays were for Mass, and finishing the homework. During holidays there were next term’s long, preparatory reading lists to plough through. And I was a reserved, reticent, dutiful scholar. Always at the books. From age 11 to age 18.
With the result that when I finally left school for university, I had seen girls from a distance, but never met, let alone talked to, any. I knew nothing about them. As you can imagine, I had a difficult few years ahead of me, because they’re half the population and you see them all over the place.
When I was about 25 I finally spoke directly to a woman; to ask her to ring for an ambulance after I’d totalled my Vespa against a brick wall and ended up prostrate on the deck and in some degree of pain. But she didn’t hear me, and I didn’t like to force myself upon her by repeating myself.
Years later, at my wit’s end to know what to do or say if ever I couldn’t get out of one’s way, I confided to a doctor that the whole woman business had me bound, gagged and whipped.
Aren’t you the lucky one ... ?!? he replied, laughing heartily.
Listen, he added, there’s this programme on Radio 4 ...
And from that day to this I never miss it. A veritable, educational cornucopia of all things womanly – not just shopping and relationships, either. And they’re still calling women ‘women’ on it, which is quite bold.
Black Friday Agreement
I was sitting on the sea wall at Portaferry last Friday. I fell into conversation with a couple of old salts. Not normally something I do; the sons of the sea here are much like the sons of the soil back in Armagh, in that they’ve never heard of Fernando Pessoa or E. M. Cioran, and don’t listen to Woman’s Hour and The Archers on Radio 4.
Anyway, maybe it was the sight of the ferry chugging cheerfully across the still Lough to remind me that I’ll soon be chugging into the waters of oblivion myself, but I determined to try something entirely new, and found myself ‘chatting’.
And sure enough, we weren’t five minutes in ‘til we had the Middle East business sorted. So here it is:
The Portaferry Seven-point Peace Plan:
Hamas calls a ceasefire;
Hamas stops throwing gays of very tall buildings;
Hamas allows women to have a life;
Hamas wises up about the beard thing;
Hamas shoves religion up its arse;
Er ...
That’s it.
Not an Angry Young Man
Like many working class lads who went off to university, I’ve completely lost the run of myself over the years, and am entirely out of touch with my roots and reality. My head is full of this, that, and the other, mostly elitist, crap.
Thank God, therefore, that I still bump into the odd NBS (No Bullshit Supremo). A raw integrity has kept them grounded, kept them right. They tell it like is, say exactly what they think, dish out the truth wherever and whenever it’s needed, and never lose their cool, except in the extreme case of some uppity Bullshitter pointing out that the plain speaking No Bullshitter is, in fact, an inverted snob and self deluded bollix.
Salt of the earth, put you in your box, fuck off you stuck up bollix, short on crap but big on authenticity. They read me straightaway.
You need a slap, they say ...
Attention all revolutionary Irish Socialists ... !
Miserere nobis ... please don’t give us any more expert lectures on Palestinian history. That’s just window dressing. Cut to the chase, straight to the heart of the matter. We have a Confession from the bastards ... ! From the horse’s mouth ... !!
This Jewish horse was called Lenny Bruce. And he said:
I am of Semitic background. I’m Jewish. Now, a Jew, dictionary-style, is one who is descended from one of the ancient tribes of Judea or one who is regarded to have descended from that tribe. But, you and l know what a Jew really is: one who killed our Lord! Now, l don’t know if it got much press coverage here [ ... ] because that all happened a couple a thousand years ago. And although there should be a statute of limitations for the crime, we’re still paying the dues. Why do you keep busting our balls for this crime? ‘’Why? Because you skirt the issue. You blame it on Roman soldiers.’’ All right, l’m gonna clear the air once and for all, and confess. We did it. My family, l did it. We found a note in the basement, it said: ‘’We killed him’’, signed Morty. [It’s] a good thing we nailed him when we did, because if we had done it within the 50 last years, we’d have to contend with generations of parochial schoolkids running around with little electric chairs hanging around their necks.
Jackboots all round for the men and full burqas for the fighting female Fenian feminists ... !
Reasons to cherish BBC NI (no. 94)
When the balanced, entirely neutral hacks in Ormeau Avenue refer to the appalling slaughter near Kingsmill in 1976, they call it the Kingsmill Massacre.
When the non-partisan, disinterested hacks in Ormeau Avenue refer to the appalling slaughter at Greysteel in 1993, they call it a loyalist gun attack on a bar in Greysteel in which seven people were shot dead.
So the Kingsmill victims were massacred; those at Greysteel were simply, or perhaps merely, shot dead.
And the BBC, via its handcrafted doublespeak, is there to help us understand the difference.
No more Breakfast On Pluto
People say to me, So, Michael, you’ve packed in the busking, guitar and all, the whole shooting match, eh ... ? Has the dark night of the soul overwhelmed you, or is it just because you’re bloody useless ... ?
The latter, I reply.
And what about the Sacred Gospel of Blind Blake, et. al ... ? they ask.
Don’t follow leaders, I say.
Last time I busked was at Strangford Festival, many moons ago. Mid way through I heard a disembodied voice intone from above, You’re fucking useless, Son ... !
Clearly, God was evaluating my tortuous, erratic progress through yet another piece far beyond the lumpen grasp of my leaden fingers ...
But It turned out to be some guy up a fireman’s ladder, at the bunting.
Had it been God, though, there would have been a definitive certainty about the statement. Nevertheless, I caught the wave, and agreed. To labour my way through this stuff, and know it is clunk-clunk every trip. Jesus, Mary and Josef K ...
So what was it all for ... ? they ask me now.
Nobody knows, I reply.
Boxes ticked? Lessons learned? Insights gained? Objectives attained? Creative contributions made? Bases touched? Meanings found? Successes achieved? Good deeds done?
None whatsoever, I reply.
Any way out?
Only the one, I reply.
Man dear, they say, so what’ll you do now ...?
Nothing, I reply.
Hats off to Hamas ... !!
Yes, the egalitarian Irish Republican’s favourite Freedom Fighters have done it again ... ! Their punchy, no nonsense, progressive manifesto for change and the liberation of Palestine, has struck a chord with revolutionary socialists all over Jihadist West Belfast
First they brought you, Kill All Jews ... !
Next it was, Women ... Cover Yourselves Up, Never Leave The House, Forget School, And Shut The Fuck Up ... !!
Yes, and we have the Guardian’s Owen Jones to confirm this. For, as he points out, it wasn’t actually Hamas who introduced the law banning homosexuality in Gaza. Guess who it was ... ? The British Empire ... Same-sex sexual activity is prohibited in Gaza under the British Mandate Criminal Code Ordinance 1936 ... ! The British Mandate for Palestine only ended in 1948, so the Mad Mullahs haven’t had time to reform things.
(Ironically, white saviourism is profoundly colonial and paternalistic. The wealthy, white, middle class left know what’s best for the natives.)
Owen is gay. I look forward to monitoring his progress in the forthcoming Muslim Caliphate.
Some more Heros
People say to me, Listen, Michael, we all know a total scumbag like you is perverse enough to have a favourite evil Soviet tyrant i.e. the fat bastard, Nikita Khrushchev.
That’s right, I reply, Nikita was a top ruthless dictator, if ever there was one. So ... ?
Well, they continue, it wouldn’t surprise us then, if you even have a favourite Nazi, you sewer rat ... !
Well, as a matter of fact, I do have a treasured National Socialist German Workers’ Party member: Kellie-Jay Keen.
When not volunteering to help out at her local concentration camp, she stands on street corners spewing out hateful slogans like:
Lesbians have never asked to be called straight, and black people don’t want to be white;
A woman is an adult human female;
Lesbians do not have penises.
Count me in, Kellie-Jay. Goose step my way anytime.
Heil Führerin ... !!
Don’t get a dog
You may end up, like me, out at 5 in the morning, because Miss Lotte Lenya is very old, but she’s awake, and, since her internal workings are unpredictable nowadays, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Coat hastily thrown over dressing gown, wellingtons on, the hunter’s moon as bright as any sun, I lurch down the loanen with her to stare at that moon and Jupiter and Venus hanging over Strangford Lough.
Birds are stirring, flapping; dogs barking in the distance. Beyond that the universe is void, abandoned. Nature is zoning in on me, myself and I. A chance perhaps, maybe even an invitation, to reconnect with my untenanted soul ...
But then I remember that I’m not special enough, my ego and self-absorption not quite great enough, for me to have a soul.
So I go back up home and give Lotte her breakfast.
Phew ... what a relief ... !
A senior Hamas leader has denied that his group killed civilians in Israel; only conscripts were targeted. Speaking to the BBC from his luxury pad in Qatar, Moussa Abu Marzouk confirmed that ‘women, children and civilians were exempt’ from Hamas’s attacks on 7 October.
Mr Marzouk was able to debunk, once and for all, the vile myths pedalled by Zionists and their fellow travellers. He assured the BBC that Mohamed el-Deif, the leader of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades military wing, had ordered his men to spare civilians.
In fact, Mr Marzouk was able to quote directly from the freedom fighters campaign instructions: El-Deif clearly told his fighters ‘don’t kill a woman, don’t kill a child and don’t kill an old man’.
Only Reservist soldiers were ‘targeted’, and therefore only ‘conscripts (...) or soldiers’ were killed. But women, children and civilians were ‘exempt’, he guaranteed. Videos showing the contrary are just rubbish.
The reality, he affirmed, is that heroic Hamas took out 1400 of the armed, rampaging, and vicious Jewish infidel military, while Israel, in reply, has slaughtered 1 million children in Gaza.
Now, if I’d known all this a week ago, I would have been outside the American Consulate with the other 6000 homophobic, misogynistic Palestinian supporters, chanting amicably to our Jewish neighbours, ‘From the river to the sea ... !’
Portaferry Liberation Army
It's official. The PSNI have confirmed that Jean’s the only Prod in Portaferry. And even if you include Kircubbin, she remains sole Jaffa round here. She’s also a woman. So, double whammy of not knowing her place, basically.
With the result that when out and about she is constantly pirouetting in the street, just to make sure some misogynistic liberator, inspired by Hamas's glorious odyssey to free only the men of Palestine, doesn't sneak up behind her with Muhammad's Silver Hammer to free only the men of Ireland.
Absolutely ex-cathedra
It’s always said that only two things in life are certain:
Death; and,
taxes.
With the advance of knowledge and civilisation, however, we can now add:
lesbians have a penis;
the Jews did it; and,
The Beatles are overrated.
⏩Michael Praetorius spent his working life in education and libraries. Now retired, he does a little busking in Belfast . . . when he can get a pitch. He is TPQ's fortnightly Wednesday columnist.
Postscript.
MP: Anthony, if you're running that piece of mine, is there any way we could get it cleared tonight? I'll be out tomorrow morning, and not be able to get at the phone much.
AM: I'll try Michael. Swamped here and working late.
MP: I understand, Anthony. If it can't be done, it can't be done.
AM: video link won't work.
MP: Is there any other I can send it?
AM: it takes us to the video but each time we copy and paste, it says video can't be found. I'll just put the link in as time is moving on and I am getting tired. On go from 6 this morning.
MP: Still on YouTube, titled Welcome to Columbia Untisemity.
AM: It is on Youtube - we can find it but when we try to put the url into the blog it will not take.
MP: OK.
AM: that worked - we have it.
MP: Great. It's very funny.
AM: I didn't like it in the midst of so much murder of children but that is hardly the point.
MP: They're targeting something else.
MP: I just see it as mockery of a horrific situation. It is like mocking the Jews standing at Babi Yar ravine, focusing on the Shylocks amongst them. But mockery is an essential part of secular culture so we have to allow for it.
MP: No. They're mocking the contradiction. They support Hamas. Hamas would slaughter them.
AM: To me it is an Israeli comedy designed to mock the Gaza situation and deflect from the war on children.
MP: The streets are full of Hamas supporters. Many of these 'supporters' are women, gay, trans and so on. Hamas, because they are religious maniacs, will kill every single one of them if given the chance. There is something gruesomely funny about that. These students have hit upon it. I'm an atheist. I have no time for any mad Mullahs, no religion. Children are murdered on both sides. Mad Mullahs suck.
AM: That doesn't cut it for me. We have a Nazi like war on children by a rogue state and that comedy is put out by the Israelis to deflect from it. Fuck Hamas and all the religious crazies but there is no equivalence between the sheer scale of child murder at play here. The religious right in Israel who Netanyahu is dependent on is as bad as Hamas.
Gonna send it now
Just return it with any amendments to the email but let me know on Messenger that you have done it as I am closing down the laptop. The arow indicates where the video is but it won't reproduce for a Word document.
MP: Anthony, that is a load of conspiracy bullshit, reeking of antisemitism. I told it would upset Irish revolutionary socialists like yourself, who are happy to call out the Catholic church, but embrace the fundamentalist savages of Hamas. Hamas took the people of Palestine into account here, did they? This was a blow for freedom then, was it? Forget it. I wouldn't want to compromise the Quill's fiercely hypocritical liberal stance. I thought you were an atheist, man. But Hamas are fine. Jesus, Mary and Josef K ... !!! I'm pulling my column. Thanks for the opportunity, but, as I say, I'm an atheist.
AM: Unfortunately you have a problem with a difference of opinion. It disappoints me that you resort to the Zionist smear of antisemitism when my opposition is to Nazi like atrocity. I despise Hamas and have relentlessly spoken out against Islamism and the murder of Jews, even losing my relationship with the Belfast IPSC over it. It is a figment of your imagination that I am a revolutionary. Can no more stand them than I can religious fundamentalists. The only inconsistency here is your own. TPQ has no stance other than Free Inquiry. Your piece was not criticised nor your decision to include an Israeli propaganda video. The video was criticised. Your freedom to like it does not trump my freedom to dislike it. Your hatred of Hamas, justified as it is, can not be a reason to overlook the barbarism of a terrorist state. It is unfortunate that you have opted to withdraw your column but you should at least spare us the cant that you are doing it on principle rather than petulance.
MP: Anthony, your sanctimonious bullshit may impress your 'comrades', but spare me the sermons. Free inquiry? And the editor tells me I'm a Zionist who is mocking the murder of children? Because I disagree with his party line? Now that's what I call schoolmarm petulance. An editor's job is to edit, not moralise. It's called Free Speech, and the Editor shuts up, and prints it. You are one of the most hypocritical, self-deluded men I've ever met. You should try being an atheist for a while. So, it's all over now, Baby Blue.
AM: Again, more self-pitying drivel. I don't have comrades. You were not told you were a Zionist mocking the murder of children. You were told the video was an Israeli propaganda piece that was designed to mock the situation in Gaza. You took a different view which you are entitled to. You also took a hissy fit because that view was not shared. The editor's job is to edit and not moralise. But when the precious tell the editor something is funny the editor can express a view about that. So what we shall do is publish your piece along with the above exchange. Then it will be over Baby Blue.
MP: It was NOT a piece of Israeli propaganda. Grow up.
AM: 1300 as usual. Shalom.
MP: Happy days to you in the Caliphate ... !
Och I was enjoying your pieces Michael, even as one of the token prods. I'd have a pint with Anthony (apologies for missing you in july due to the black dog) and even though we'd disagree I'm sure we'd get on grand. Hope the last wee bit on this piece was just an abstract run that went over my head as usual!!!
ReplyDeleteI think everybody but the sanctimonious enjoyed them.
DeleteThis one is not an exception to that.
Mockery and satire only works if the writer can lash everybody.
Perhaps he will resume.
If you make the journey again Steve we shall have that pint.
One of the joys of living down here is that religion defines no one. Colour might or nationality but not religion. Unless you happen to push religion to the forefront of your everyday life, Enoch Burke style.