When – and not before time ! – the finest mind of the Free Southern Stateen was recently announced as European Commentator of the Year the reaction on Liffeyside ranged from Aw to Awe.
Naturally, those who reacted in the first way were in a negligible minority – their full reaction was:
– Aw, shucks, for flying out wide !
And was confined to those pathetic drankadees suffering from (gulp) Fintan O’Toole-envy and so, may be dismissed out of hand.
(In fact. their reaction was actually: Aw, shucks, for f. – the rest is silence).
The Perkin, naturally enough, was in the latter catergory, the overwhelming majority of rite-minded folk who are truly in awe of our solemn fellow-citizen Fintan whose very gravity continues to defy every known Law of Levity.
Mind you, it was a very close call in the end. One has but to lend an ear to those harbingers of anti-fake news, the narky corgies in the streets of Dublin who have been barking like billy-o that it came down in the end to one courageously good headline. So outrageously good, indeed, it was printed twice in The Unonist Times.
-Martin McGuinness………… Mass Killer.
This first appeared over the article which Fintan, the Pharoh of Fair-mindedness, true to type, tapped out when the Sinn Féin First Minister retired from politics. It was repeated, verbatim, ca va sans dire, the day after Martin McGuinness died.
-Martin McGuinness………….Mass Killer.
The same identical canine sources are already barking like Philly-o that Global Domination awaits the European Champ whenever another Commander-in-Chief, i.e., Hausfrau Coburg-Saxe-Goth shuffles off the mortal ruffles. When the opportunity will thus arise to headline the obtiuary:
-Madame Mass Killer…………… to the powder-puff power of 28.
On the doggone basis that Martin McGuinness was engaged in but one military campaign. Whereas the consort of the Hellenic from Hell who recently took early retirement although still only a lad of (gasp) 960 summers, has been C-in-C in the same number of campaigns as the atomic number of nickel. And the Nickel and Dame is still (gulp) counting.
This time there is a poignant edge to the narky orgy of barking which the corgis on the loyal streets of Liffeyside have of late been indulging. And they should know, even as they gnaw: they have an ‘in’ into the exclusive info emanting from Schloss Windsor, sir. Said press releases being exclusively issued in, erm, dog whistles.
The edge arises from the race to the bottom in which the Tooler and the Ruler are currently engaged. Both The Unionist Times and Dame War-Crimes are, sadly, in imminent danger of extinction, one on account of falling circulation, the other because of appalling circulation.
Will the Shoneen of the Swinging Surname be cruelly denied the golden chance of Global Domination In the prior event of TUT tottering in tatters into an unmarked pauper’s grave to the inevitable titters of the those midget-minded widgets who wallow in, erm, Fintan O’Toole-envy (see above) ?
Their envy indeed would be even more intense if they but realised what early tribulations the anti-tribalist O’Toole had to overcome.
Consider the unfortunate location of his birth, f’rinstance: as he never tires of giving us the low down on this location,, the hack with the highest IQ in the monominded media on Liffeyside was bred, borned and brought up in the parish of Crumlin, Dublin 12.
The ‘unfortunate’ prefix relates to the suffocating (gulp) nomenclature of the roads of Crumlin. Most of which were bombastically named after (gasp) MONASTIC settlements in primitive, Catholic Eireland: Clonmacnoise, Bangor, Kildare, Downpatrick, Ferns, Slane, Saul, Lismore, Cashel, Leghlin etc etc etc.
To rub salted peanuts into a wounded psyche the major arenas of relaxation were named for/after men of violence from the Risible Rising: Ceannt Stadium and Pearse Park, being Eamonn in the first instance, and Wllie in the second.
And if all that Roman catalogue of horrors wasn’t sufficient consider this further tonsured torture which Fintan Óg O Toole had to endure.
Every day in his blighted boyhood when he looked up north it was to be catch sight of the neighbouring parish of Drimnagh. This is also known as The Highest Parish in Hibernia. On account of its roads being named for/ after the mountains of Eireland: Galtymore, Errigal, Dromard, Sperrin, Comeragh, Kilworth, Donard, Ben Madigan, Keeper, Brandon etc etc etc
Spot the absent peak?
Of, course: CarraunToole. Not only no CarraunToole Road, or CarraunToole Drive but indeed, no CarraunToole Cul de Sac, sublimely apt though that might have been, itself.
In a focal, Fine-Minded Fintan was borned in the wrong parish ! Oh, cruel-i-ty, this name is the shameful naming Division of Dublin City Council.
In a word, Jumbo-brained Finto was borned in Crumbo instead of Drimbo.
And that’s not to call whoa! to the woes he had to endure in his earliest years. Indeed, the very year of his birth, 1958, the Dublin Bogball team defeated Londonderry to win the Sam Maguire Cup in Croke Park. This was the very antithesis of the thesis which he was later to make his very own: that to be truly Irish was to be urban, anti-rural and an anal-retentive anglo to boot.
In response to the up-Hill 16 battles the young CurraunToole had to fight and the odds he had to contend with on his long, arduous climb to becoming the (gulp) Matterhorn of the Media on Mainland Europe, one can only emit an awe-struck whisper:
-Re-spect.
Finicky-minded Fintan, on reaching the use of reason at the age of twenty six weeks, came to the reasonably early realisation that Nationalism is for the bad guys, Imperialism for the good guys. Even then, he had the moxy to recognise which political Phil-osophy was toxic and which was princely..
To fully comprehend how he arrived at this realisation one must note the interface of the two parishes, Crumbo and Drimbo.
For here is where the major public buildings of each parish stare across the road at each other, where Crumlin Road morphs into Drimnagh Road: the Star Cinema of Crumlin and the Children’s Hospital of Crumlin.
-Eh?
That is correct: although the hospital is actually located on the Drimnagh side of the divide, the inherent imperialism of Crumlin has seen to it that this geographical fake news has gained (permanent) currency in the wider world.
But it is the Star Cinema in Crumlin (which the gnationalists of Drimbo have never tried to annexe) which concerns us here. For it was in that emporium of cinematic chimera that an eerily prophetic showing once took place in the 1950s of a motion picutre which was destined to cause a commotion, but only in retropsect:
-Duck Soup.
It told the story of RTF who was suddenly trust into a role of Ruler of a bankrupt state beginning with F. This was F for Freedonia, of course, which was to be a macabre foreshadowing of (gulp) the Free Southern Stateen.
It will be recalled that some short years ago The Highest IQ in Hackland dithered with the Big Idea of Entering Politics. And dithered hither, tither and anon before finally deciding against it. Against it?
-Fake News !
For indeed, he did just that – Enter Politics, that is – by remaining in Hackland where the true power tools reside in the Freedonia of the Free Southern Stateen.
So Duck Soup, thereforre, was a cystal ball look back into the future of O’Toole, that sorta thingy.
This showing of Duck Soup in The Star Cinema was before the beginning of RTE which in due course became RTF or Radio Telefis Fintan on account of its print edition’s Star fifth columnist coming forth so often to repeat (ad nauseam, meaning both before and after the ads) in front of the microphones what he had already commintted to print in The Unionist Times.
In the movie, Duck Soup, RTF still stood for Rufus T. Firefly. And the central trope (that’s a fancy word designed to confuse, an adumbration for the dopes of the nation) of the movie is the declaration of war on Freedonia by its neigbhouring state, Sylvania.
Sound familiar? And so it ougher. For Sylvania of course is the codename for a Wooded Anglia, as distinct from a Wooden Allen, for that matter. The Fintan, now the head of the state of Freedonia, is only too happy to extend a Hundred Thousand W’s to a fault to the advance party of Sylvania ,i.e., the Sherwood Foresters.
For Freedonia had long been denuded of its own forests: see, under Kilcash aka the Celtic Tiger crash, not.
-Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad ? (see below).
In a memorable phrase, The Fintan, far from going through the motions of the motion picture, in the guise of R. T. Firefly, stated sincerely to the Sherwood Foresters:
-All I can do for you is to provide you with a, erm, Rufus over your heads.
The Fintan went on to repeat this in a different formula of words to the Sherwood Foresters and in an uncharacteristic (very) varicose vein of humour:
-You may leave now in a huff; or if that is too early, you may leave in a century and a huff.
A century later, in 2016, this 35 mm wisecrack was expanded to a full-length performance of the fierce anti-Patsy ‘Nazi’ Pearse post-dramatic shock schlock, chock a block full of duck-billed platitudes, on the boards of the Abbey Theatre/ erm, Amharclann Náisiúnta na hÉireann:
-Observe the Omodawns of Ulster arching towards the Somme.
(As befits the dithering Head of the Free Southern Stateen, the Duck Souper Star himself is freighthed with honorary degrees – in fact, Quack Doctorates -from the Unionistveristy of Hither, the Unionistvaristy of Thither and the Polytechnic of Yon).
The Perkin, incidentally, counsels caution in drawing too many parallels between the prescient Duck Soup (1935) and its contemporary remake. For while the original was a mildly amusing specimen of the fillumic art, raising scarecly more than a meagre grin now and again, it cannot in truthiness be compared with the tsunami of thigh-slapping which the gifted Shoneen of the Swining Surname conintues to give us in the pages of The Unionist Times, going (right-corner) forward.
Nowithstanding, it is salutory to consider the following, preferably in a seated posiiton:
The cigar-chomping protagonist in the original Duck Soup was a Marxist. And as even one of Finicky-minded Fintan’s tame translation-wallahs will have informed the (gulp) European Commentator of the Year, CorraunToole translates into Marxist temrs as (gasp):
– The Sinister Sickle.
Thereby conjuring up the indelible image of a Sticky with a Sickle in one hand and a Hammer Horror Move concept of Hibernia in the other. Which, curiously, happens to be the crest of the best O’Toole fambily escucheon, with the motto underneath, translated from the Latin, ethos:
-Ethics Boy.
The name of the anti-hero/ Uncle Tom-hero in the prototype Duck Soup was, ar ndóigh:
-O’ Grouch.
Which, of course, is a variant of O’ Gripe, and the Tooleramawns who flocked to Fine-minded Fintan’s fifth column in time, in The Unionist Times, became the local version of O’Gripe Think: recall, if you will, how sheepishly they accepted Section 31. That flocking marked them off as Snow Fakes before even the phrase had been genetically engineered.
Perhaps the most celebrated scene in ‘Duck Soup’ (Mark 1) is what has become known as low-tech comedy in a minor key:
-The Mirror Sequence.
This involvesd the breaking of a full-length mirror which the Marxist is fond, Fintan-like, of standing in front of, the better to admire himself, bigly. On this occasion one of the wannabe Fintan-fawners has stood inside the space where the mirror used to be, having first painstakingly dressed himself up in identical fake moustache, fake eyebrows, fake highbrow intellectuality and even fake nose, complete with fake cigar.
(Actually the fake nose is fake news as the olfactory nerve is sacrosanct to the Marxists).
When the original Fintan takes up his favourite position in front of what he still considers to be the mirror intacta (little wonder that the Daily Mirror is the spitting i. of The Unionist Times) the wannabe Fintan on the other side mimics his every move. Thus, when the original F. has a dig at the Romanists the wannabe F. does ditto; when the oringal F. takes a side swipe at the Gnationalists the would be F. does ditto; and so on and on, including nodding with admiration in the direction of A-list Atheists.
Hilarity confined !
But still, a mere smile stoker in comparison to the unconfined thigh-slapping thought processes of The Toole of the,erm, Times we live in.
Thus is explained the prolifearation of Fake Fintans who are known as Tooleramawns in the Free Southern Stateen.
Tooleremauns, from being a West British Badge Of Honour, is now primed (gulp) to become a continental B.O.H. from the Urinals of Dublin to the Urals.
To conclude:
The favoured mode of transport of the prototype Marxist in Freedonia is a Royal Enfield motorcycle. What is worrying here is that the current Matterhorn (né CurraunToole) favours what looks suspiciously like a Royal Enfield Himalayan, which rather hints at a certain longing for, erm, Global Domination.
Truly, a Nepalling vista. With the Fakir of Fake News being the Go-to Shoneen for all the Trans-World Tooleramawns to queue-up (he likes all his,erm, ducks in a row) for their quota of quotes from the Yackety Yak aka The Souper Southern Yune.
The only problem with this mode of transport is that it comes equipped with a sidecar which is designed to accomodate the President of Freedonia. The only slight problem is that every time the designated driver revs up and effs off the side car invariably is left behind with the Prez in situ, detached as only the Fine-minded Fintan can aspire to be, not having budged an inch in his devotion to Monoglotia. Not an inch !
Mischievous media watchers put this triumph of joculairty down to The Fintan’s flat refusal to allow his sidecar of shoneenism attach itself to-the four stroke leg-kicking Leprechaun. Born a monoglot, he is determined to dye his hair red, white and blue in the Unilingual Hair Saloon, whose clientelle is a veritable UHS’s who of celebrities in the modern day Freeedonia known as the Free Southern Stateeen.
(Did one mention that a suspension of belief is a sine qua non for the enjoyment of the contemproary Duck Soup?).
-Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad ? (see above).
Is the first line of Kilcash, not, and would be easily translated by a Biliingual Boyo who was long resident in rustic Crumlin, Dublin 12 ( having moved out from urban Russell Street, Dublin 1) for the benefit of the monoglot Fintan:
-What will we do without wood for wooden leaders ?
The BB in question was the bilingual BB known as Brendan Behan, whose mode of linguistic transport was a motorcyle whose sidecar stayed in situ. One of BB’s legendary gags has now entered the vexed national lexicon:
-There is no situation so dire that it cannot be made even more dire by the publication of an Archbishop Fintan O Toole homily.
(To compound matters, Brendan Behan’s cousin, pronounced cousinT, the great Séamus de Búrca /Jimmy Bourke, was a resident of Comeragh Road, Drimnagh. Séamus, who ran the Bourke theatrical costumiers on Dame Street hard bordered by the Olympia Theatre, once reprimanded The Perkin in no. uncertain. terms. This happened one rainy day of days when the latter greeted him with:
-Lá lofa salach, a Uasail De Búrca / A dirty rotten day, Mr. Bourke.
-Ná habair sin, a mhic ! Ní droch lá atá ann. Is lá den scoth gach lá a bhfuil tú beo !/ Desist, son! It is no such day. Every day you are alive is a good day !)
Towards the end of Duck Soup, this brief exchange is heard in the script:
-Good bye, Mount Blanc
-Good bye.
Close, but no cigar, O’ Gripe: for the, erm, critically acclaimed CorraunToole went on to become, not Mount Blank (apt though it might have been to wrap him up in) but rather:
Matterhorn, Matter Adams
Ó chrann an eolais phioc Eve an t-úll
Ag Ár Nathair riamh sa nimh bhí dúil;
Baineann Fintan
Rím as An Intinn
Sa dóigh chéanna le truaill agus fual.
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