Politicians and their little helpers!

All the blather going on reminds me of an encounter I had with a prominent NCD ex-politician and a retinue of canvassers during the second EU referendum on the treaty. Was that as far back as 2009?

I read all the information on the first attempt, including the thousands of words of drivel, it was proposed we would insert into our constitution. I considered it a bridge too far and voted NO.

Next time around the insertion was smaller more concise and one that if given a little relish I could just about swallow.

Anyway back to the canvassers. I asked one person what the question on the ballot paper would be. They replied that I would be asked to vote Yes or NO. I asked on what. They said THE TREATY.

I then asked the politician what the question would be and he racked his brain (singular) for a while and remembered what they had been told to say by their political masters, who were sh-one-ting themselves that we might vote No again.

He said that we were going to be asked to vote on replacing an article in our constitution with a new article relating to the treaty. It was the correct answer.

OH NO says his canvasser helper WE CAN'T DO THAT. IF WE WANT TO DO THAT WE HAVE TO HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL REFERENDUM.

I smiled and continued on my way.

More of me BUKE!

Pal lay on the bed in a haze of smoke. He thought this was unusual since he gave up the fags ten years ago. But he had the wrong end of the matchstick, since it was the Gunship, cuddling close beside him that was sending up that fog of desire he hadn't seen since before the honeymoon.

That was the problem with getting' married: it took all the urgency out of lovemakin'. Before: when he was being encouraged to “hurry up before Mefadder finds us in the hayfield”, he could perform at a speed that was natural for him.

Later when all those cosmopolitan ideas got into her head, about slowing down, having before play, and dressin' up to please, and she brought them into the bedroom: he was lost entirely.

His days of slap bang thank ya mam were gone forever. And his days of two in a bath had arrived. 

God almighty! He felt like a cork in a tight bottleneck beside her in the tub, waiting for the slippery soap being applied to his body to fire him up, up and away, towards the ceiling.

And later the massages: her pummelling him almost to death, him wondering would he buy a jack hammer to knead her muscles like she wanted, since she kept shouting – harder, harder put yer shoulders inta yer work.

So to disperse the fog, he revved up, put on his fog lights, took a very deep breath and dived once more into the fray that was her massive bosoms.

So Pal imagined he was with Polly His Squeeze, but he wasn't so he started, once again, on his unfinished novel as he tried to live up to expectations he didn't expect to have, when he inspected the lovely Martina nee Haveahooley, for the first time.

In the town, people went about their business: they looked cold or hot natured, individualistic,or communal, uncaring or caring, lonely or attached as they kept searching for life's meanings.

He could see them now: moving, skulking away from even the dim street light, back into the tavern glare; seeking solace, those creatures of the brown black midland bogs, dark prairies under the night sky, scurrying back into the bright illumination squeezed by turbines from its heart-turf.

There is no such thing as a free lunch!

I have been reminded lately that when you open up a Google, Facebook or Linkedin account you sign up to things happening you never intended to allow happen to you.

Like for example getting Blog Posts from people you never met, and perhaps who even seem to have an agenda you don't subscribe to, or even have, God forbid, a sense of ironic humour.

In my case I was told that someone received this blog who did not ask for it.

Even when I was explaining to this person, by return comment, that I had removed them from a Circle suggested by Google, I was offered another opportunity by Google to add this person to my circles.

It can even get worse: if you write a letter to a newspaper and mention or quote a famous worldwide author, you may as I did, find a reference to your letter in USA Today or the China Almanac, or some other periodical.

If you attend a meeting to discuss a project being foisted on your area and you join the committee and they collect names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers, and someone writes an article containing the committee details in the “Skerries Online News” or the “Muskatee Sentinel Online” you will find your personal details being given to the World.

So to avoid this I suggest: you remove your Google Profile, cancel your Twitter account, close down your Facebook page, don't sit on committees and don't write letters to newspapers and throw away your smart-phone or Pad and don't ever activate GPS.

THE BIG BROTHERS ARE WATCHING!!!

I'm writin' me next BUKE!!!

Pal remembered being hit on the forehead by a heavy frying pan. The Gunship had belted him one, again.

He opened his eyes slowly, in case she was revving up for a second swing, and immediately closed them again, the brightness was blinding.

He tried to focus and discovered he was in a tunnel of light:  that as far as he could make out stretched away to a place he could not see properly. Waves of shimmering air shimmered, (well they would) in front of him.

He tried to rise to his feet but found he was being held down prone by some force. He mover his right hand and encountered wood: he tried the other side with a similar result, then he reached down with his toes and found again that he was restricted by a barrier. It was then he tried to scream: to no avail, his mouth was silent. Ah! He though: one of them silent screams that the artist was painting about.

It was a dream: he was sure of that. He remembered being in a war with that Muteant Slug Harry, that slug who ate the new improved slugtox and tried to take over Brassicaville.

Pal and Slugger and Hedda and even the Gunship leading her Cats In Bags Army defeated Harry and his Army of Generals: General Electric, General Motors, General Surgeon and even General Nuisance. He remembered the commentary on air of Jimmy Take A Memo Magpie.

Folks, the band plays on; in the midst of the carnage. A three man band - it looks that way. A large Bagpussing Lady with a Bag-Pipe under her arm, and a lady with a Banjo playing a deliverance tune and a little scruffy fellow with a mouth organ, a Harmonica, stamping time. Either that or his foot's gone asleep.

The sound of the trio drifts up to me now on the hot-air uplift from the heaving mass of mayhem. What are they playing? Do they even know? Do we care any more? No! Because It's all over folks. The Cats in Bags Army have carried the tune and the day. The slugs and their allies are out for the count. It's round twelve and the fight is over.

Then if it was a dream?

Why am I lying here dead in my coffin, in a tunnel leading to the next life?

He heard a voice calling him. He could make it out, it was coming neared. It was The Gunship! Calling him back to life!

“Pal, Pal I'm sorry I killed you. Where are you?”

Here! Here! I'm here he tried to shout. Then realised he had shouted it, so it should read: “Here! Here! I'm Here!”

The face of The Gunship appeared . “Trust You! I thought I killed you when I hit you with the pan. Now I fin' you skulking in here in the Polytunnel. An' what are ya doing lying down in that cold frame among the cucumbers. (I know! A cold frame and cucumbers on the ground in a Pollytunnel? But that's gardening “Pal Style”.)

Jees thought Pal, I'm not dead after all, and then in Pal Logic he wondered if that was a good or bad thing.

“Come inside now 'till I make it up to you,” his wife said softly.

Then Pal asked himself the silent question again: a good or bad thing this bein' not dead?

Pat Kenny, it is alleged, may have cheated me out of a Late Late prize.

When Pat Kenny was hosting the Late Late I had a run in with the producers over the competition.

As usual the announcement for the prize at the end of the show, said Pat will ring the winner who must be there to answer the phone otherwise they will not be offered the prize and we will ring the next winner selected.

Ah! You know what happened, go on! You do.

Kenny spent so much time blathering to the guests that at the end of the show he had no time to make the phone call and he announced the winner.

SO after consulting “Authorities” I stated the email fight with Mr. Billy Producer Man.

I said Hey! Pat did not make the phone call and check if the winner was at home - just awarded the prize. This is against the rules announced for the competition. Basically you said “If you are not in! You can't win!”

You prevented me from further competing for the prize. How do you know I wasn't going to be next out of the hat for the prize. I was at home waiting for the call.

Ah! You know what happened, go on! You do.

I got a “PFO” email dressed up in all sorts of RTE speak, that culminated in Mr Billy writing that RTE had more resources than I had to go to court to fight me if I continued annoying them, and that I should shut up and “PFO”. He didn't say that he intimated that I should desist.

So you see RTE did not recently just discover the big stick to beat complainers with, they had it for a while just waiting for some other “Twit” to complain.

Well PK in my book you are now on strike two, and remember three strikes and you are out.

I know! I know! Since that traumatic experience I can't count.

I'm like the old time boxer who was knocked down so many times: that if you asked him to count to ten. He replied eight, nine, ten.

When someone explained to him it was one, two etc.. He replied again. I ain' nuver huerd dem udda numbas afore!

Epiphany as Revelation.

I've been reading the Irish Times Magazine again: even though I heard it said on The Telly that it was designed to be read by “Ladies” not “Gents”.

For those of you who have a curious mind perhaps you can discern the use of the “Lavatory Terms” above, and what they might mean in a “collective unconscious” sense.

This weekend soon after opening the cover I encounter the following:-

“This column comes to you from my boyfriend's childhood home..(where)..”my mother-in-law-in waiting...”

So I immediately get confused : because if the writer is referring to her boyfriend then his mother is not her mother in law in waiting.

If on the other hand her companion is her Fiancée then the lady may well be her prospective MIL. (See..sometime I can even use the new text speak in a sensible manner; LOL.)

But this old fashioned thinking sometimes gets me into trouble. 

So does hoping that editors and journalists can write sensible content in the so called English Language.

It's an Ecumenical Matter!

It is recorded that Constantine the Great: Constantine I or Saint Constantine, who was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337 was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity. Of course that is: if you ignore the possibility that Philip The Arab, Emperor from 244 until 249 is more likely to have been the first Roman “Emperor Convert”. But his participation is now shrouded in mystery since the records of this are sketchy. I'm not surprised: Philip “The Arab”?

Anyway my theory is that over time the people in power in Rome usurped Christianity and turned it into Roman Catholicism and today they teach that Catholicism is the “One, Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church .

Apostolic means they tell us that the church traces it's origins back to the Apostles: not to Christ.

It gets worse when you really examine the whole “Centre Piece” of Catholic belief: the Eucharist. The teaching that bread and wine are transformed by the words of a Priest into the Body and Blood of Christ.

The earliest known use of the term "transubstantiation" to describe the change from bread and wine to the body and blood of Christ was by the Archbishop of Tours who died in 1133.

Then The Fourth Council of the Lateran, which convened in November 1215, spoke of the bread and wine as "transubstantiated" into the body and blood of Christ: "His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been transubstantiated, by God's power, into his body and blood".

But then in 1625 or so Galileo's publication The Assayer, was brought to the attention of the Inquisition by a person unknown. The complaint charges that the atomistic theory embraced in this book cannot be reconciled with the official church doctrine regarding the Eucharist, in which bread and wine are ``transubstantiated'' into Christ's flesh and blood.

All Galileo really said was simply: “If it changes, than why does it taste the same?” In a nutshell that's the Atomistic Theory as it applied to transubstantiation.

In a World where the simple people knew the taste of good food and bad food, of good clean water and foul water: this was a devastating comment for the church.

So did Galileo get the bullet for this statement or some other trumped up charge against his and the Ptolemaic and Copernican model theories: that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe?