Panama Papers

Ireland Inc. remains under the stewardship of a caretaker.  Enda Kenny, the accidental taoiseach. As he tries to lure Independents with his stunning intellect and afford them the opportunity to support his continued stewardship - in a more official capacity - it's beginning to look like the only one that doesn't realise Enda's stewardship is up, is Enda himself.
Just five short years after having Fianna Fail at the edge of the Cliffs of Moher with a hurricane wind and the odd pitch fork threatening their being, Fianna Fail now find themselves in the unbelievable position of being that humorous cat, that idly plays with a mouse to pass the time, before moving in... You know the rest. They shouldn't play for much longer. Kids are going hungry, getting turfed out of their homes so vulture funds can maximize the theft of the taxpayers assets following the 'ineptitude' of Fianna Fail's own shock doctorates of recent pasts.
Even if they allow the Troika's poodle to continue, they know they'll control his government, waiting for the moment to pounce. Surely even Enda and his minders know that. Then again, being in his position from the one he was in in 2011, who can tell? Maybe they're of even lower wattage.
I'll be sorry to see him go. I like Enda - on another planet!

It rained a couple of good sized lakes on the Emerald Isle today and I am sure it was a show of defiance to the NATO murder machines currently docked in Dublin. 100 years ago, the UK contingent of their navy were blowing the shit out of the centre of Dublin,  targeting everyone including the proclamation signatories who dared to want to rule themselves, free of empire. Imagine, free born beings having to sacrifice themselves to free themselves from a tyranny than runs certain classes ragged for their own ill-gotten gains. How much has changed.............
I'm all for new beginnings, forgiveness, reflection, but we are a supposed neutral country and on one coast of it we're facilitating NATO warships and on the other, US aircraft doing shit knows what to lord knows who.

'There is no lord,' as Larry used to say. No hesitation, no panic in his voice, no melancholic philosophical hangover to lament over.
My point exactly, Larry, cause no-one seems to know what the fuck they're doing any more. Not here, not there, not anywhere. The lunatics have taken over the asylum.
'They did a long time ago.'
Feck off, Larry.

After days of scouting and the occasional drowning I managed to find a place to put Larry's few grains of dust alongside the only other possession i had of his that could be easily disposed of. His play. It's not a difficult decision to hoard it away underground for a future museum. Not like it was ever going to hit Broadway.
The place was off the beaten track, wild like Larry's spirit. Then, within a corner or two, a bog. It looked like a nuke had gone off, but somehow, it felt right. I'm sure it contained the remains of many a dead animal that could, but for a gust of wind or the speed of a car, have otherwise ended up being taxidermied by Larry's gifted hands. 

I found a tree among the desolation and dug a hole with a little garden hoe I'd brought along. I dug down a few feet around the roots and made a hole big enough for the little parcel to fit down. As water tight as a novice could make it. Air tight. Tight. Larry's dusting and his play.
I decided against putting in a metal object. You'd never know what strange being might be down here in the dead of night with a metal detector looking for Bogmen with swords. Was best to take no chances. I put in a little vial of my own. Just a couple of the remaining hairs on my head and a swab of gob on a couple of cotton bud. And an old tooth.
I put them in one of those containers the doc gave me a while back when he was looking for a stool. I can't be dealing with any of that. I only kept it 'cause i knew it would come in handy sometime.

I covered it all over and just as the heavens opened again, I slopped my way out of the bogland. Tears no-where to be seen. I wondered what had happened there. How the land had ended up like something from a dystopian future? Or past? Perhaps they were clearing it for something. Hardly seemed likely out here, in the middle of no-where. Five miles from town. As the feet walk. Then again, this is Ireland. They build in strange places. Could be a gym!

A day spent time capsuling surely beats a day showing impressionable minds the ships taxpayers fund so wars can be waged for the benefit of a few.  You know, the tax-dodging types. Fingers, claws, teeth in everything. Panama Papers type.

I think Larry would have appreciated it today. The oddness.  Nothing wrong with being different, is there? Wasn't a problem for Larry. In a perfect world, it might not be problem for anyone.

In a perfect world.

Ghostly Hours

Lost an hour somewhere during the night. An hour we will not exist, in order to facilitate a brighter day and longer evening for the coming months. All fine, if the weather plays ball. It rarely does. Fear not, for in October, we take it back to facilitate the profits of energy companies, who act more and more like an grubby monopoly with each passing year. A bit like the political establishment. It's funny how the bills always go up right before the long damp Irish winter sweeps in from differing directions. Anyway, at the end of the day, what's an hour between friends?

Four weeks shy of the actual event, Ireland is commemorating the events of The Rising of 1916 this weekend. Though there are many grassroots and local events to visit, Ireland's elite began their commemorations safety tucked behind steel fencing, access denied to the common man and woman. It's difficult to watch, history being airbrushed for the world's media to digest, the faces of the leaders of the rising, those who died as we struck out for freedom, replaced by images of folk with no involvement in the events of that week. Some put there for modern-political gain. Few buy into it, as recent election results testify too.
There's little to celebrate. We remain divided as a society, not much semblance of the equality, that beautiful ideal the executed leaders yearned for and died for. Teachers, poets, trade unionists. Woman. Man. Child. Catholic. Protestant. Each suffered and died. For a ruthless capitalist system that takes the lives of our citizens with a growing gusto right under the watchful eyes of those who have facilitated Ireland's economic and social decline. The ones pronounced as dignitaries - mostly by themselves.

Will we even have a government when the actual date of the events come around? The old-waring parties are the only ones that can form a stable government, but that is unlikely to happen. The dream of the Celtic Tiger that we would be ready by 2016 to really step up and take our independent place among the nations of the world washed away by greed and corruption by many of those who see themselves are Ireland's modern day saviours. Despite their collective Curriculum Vitae of shame, be it directly or by aiding and abetting others to do it. Maybe we suffer from a collective amnesia or maybe it is just that we do not care.

Larry was often an apologist for many of the wrongs, citing our infancy as a nation. Used to get up the wick of Leon. Fermented an anger inside him by times. He did not see Ireland as an infant, he saw us as a seasoned player in the shaping of our side of the planet despite the indignation we often suffered as we set out to make better lives for ourselves when driven out by oppressors, at times foreign, at times native. How we brought civilisation to our nearest neighbour and nemesis and gave the world notables such as Joyce, Beckett, Boyle, Hoban and Connelly.
Larry be winding Leon up. Citing more modern figures. Bono, Geldof, Charles J, before Leon would depart, flying fucks, into the perils of his bottle of choice.
'That drink ill kill him,' Larry would say, nostradamacally.

Strange days we live in. Everything every human being could ever need and we, drifting further away from anything that might be described as humane. Pomp and ceremony will not change that. Relegating our rising leaders to the back benches won't do it either. We'll remember on the proper date. With others who feel the same. At the time. At the place. On the hour. Hopefully, the daylight will be there too.

Saved - for all.

Morbid Worlds

There's an American who has been mentioned once or twice around here in times begone. He went by the name of Hugh Everett with an III to go with it. A brilliant mind, his many-worlds intrepration of quantum physics  remains a player in the pursuit of the ultimate in knowledge - a unified theory of everything.
Who gives a fuck i hear some ask, and you may be correct, but as a morbid byline to a future movie, Hugh left instructions that his ashes be pegged out with the trash - after his demise.  That demise came early in life - a victim to a lifestyle that required no thought into what one might do to their own body via the excesses of life.
A few years after his death, his wife, herself a somewhat tragic figure, duly obliged, and Hugh was pegged out, his final wish no longer obliged on her or anyone else.
As it should be.

You might imagine the surprise when a small little padded envelope arrived in the door about a year ago.  A Joe Lumley, Solicitor, business card and a small, clear, zip-locked plastic pouch with what looked like dust inside. On the back of the card a few words -
Your bit of Larry. Do as you will.
I like that.
Joe.

It took me a few days to get to the bottom of it. I couldn't make contact with Joe myself, but he had left word with his secretary to say that science had finished with Larry, what was left was to be distributed among named beneficiaries and I happened to be one of them.

'We get weirdos a lot,' she said over the phone.

Several months passed and what was left of Larry was itself gathering dust. I tried to think what he might have wanted done with his last remnants. He was a loner once politics rejected him, so throwing him to the wind seemed like a cop-out. He'd have appreciated a Big Lebowski moment, but living miles from the sea, counties from a cliff, and a continent away from such a soulful evening in that scene that gives a certain clarity too - perhaps - ones own odyssey on this blue, soon to be blazing sphere, fizzing through mostly empty space at a phenomenal rate of speed.
Perhaps many spheres, hey Hugh?

'Smoke him,' my foreign neighbour suggested, blowing leaves into my yard, not a care in the world. Not sure if he was serious or not. Humour gets lost in translation sometimes.
And no, we didn't!

I finally decided what to do with my ounce and a half of what's left of Larry. I'll tend to that soon. Maybe after the rain.
Things are kind of slow round here with secret dealings being done in the corridors of power so that vested interests can take the scalp of national ones for a little longer. Doesn't seem right somehow, it being 2016 and all. Not sure how anyone else feels about being Irish, but I sense we have lost our way.
Think i'll bury Larry's absurd play in a desolate place, along with what's left of his matter.  I wonder what the other beneficiaries did with their dustings?
The Ashes of Larry Mulligan. I can see it now. Up there in cobalt neon, somewhere in Dublin.
Who knows, if i vacuum pack it, then triple-wrap it in heavy-duty industrial plastic, encase it in a water-tight thingy and bury it deep enough, it might be found by another generation of wanderers who might be able to bring ol' Larry back to life. I should put a coin in too. While they're still tender. And a nail. For devilment. You know, for the metal detector enthusiasts of tomorrow. At the very least they might perform Larry's play in some far off cave in the future. Hovering around some cosmic energy source lost for centuries within the Vatican vaults.

For the last time, the typo-laden, predicatively naive, one act 'play' by Larry Mulligan.

Bailout - A Short Play