Bowling With Bertie's Brain Pan

"It came to me like a ray of truth that there are only the rarest few born into this world who are truly good humans and, I realised, with a pang of sadness and envy, I could never be one of them."
- Oscar Nominee Christopher Plummer, remembering the great Boris Karloff.

"The children are tortured until they tell their first lie."
- "Last Tango in Paris."

By Charley Brady

So there I was, a happy little camper, playing ten-pin bowling. There was something strange, though. The bowl I was using was a heavy eighteen and it was Bertie Ahern's smirking head. That would explain the heavy bowl of course: to go with the smirking creep's insufferably huge ego.

The pins all carried a logo of the Euro symbol on them and every time that Bertie's head did a full strike there was a cry of agony from his twisted, crushed features.

Why I didn't dream of him going into the gutter where he belonged I guess I don't know. It would probably take a Jung or a Frasier to figure that one out (anybody but Dr. Phil).

I think I'll stick with Dr. Lecter.

I gotta tell you, as his miserable face screamed in pain, it wasn't the worst dream I ever had. In fact I woke up with a big smile on my face.

If you want to know the very worst dream I ever had it was when I woke up next to Skeletor Victoria Beckham,let out a yell that could have been heard on Mars, and turned over to see the ghastly Paris Hilton on the other side of me. Then, in an attempt to escape from being adopted by the creepy Angelina Jolie and Madonna ran smack into Saints Bono and Geldof who were rattling tins at me and telling me that I had damned well better hand over the few shekels that hadn't been gouged out of me by the invisible Brian Clown, to aid dictators in Africa.

Now that was a bad dream.

As I've said before, a psychiatrist would have a field day with me.

I've just got to stop speculating on Bertie, though. Every time I write something sarcastic doesn't the damned gouger have yet another run of good luck. It was only in last week's column that I was wondering if he gave away his fee, for lecturing us on his love of Jesus, to charity. It was only after we learned that he received €100,000 of a pension last year despite being years off retiring and also still working anyway! What a country.

There may not be a kind and loving God but I'm getting to be pretty certain that the Devil exists. At least the Devil who looks after his own, in any case.

No sooner had I sent last week's copy off than Bertie, the patron saint of chancers everywhere, goes and wins another ten grand on his local bloody lottery! Can you freaking believe it? Can you? Ireland surely has to be a completely justice-free zone.

Well, I thought, trying to take some consolation from a truly warped situation, at least even a greedy grasper like him will feel compelled to give it to charity.

After all, he's never stopped touring around, giving his words of wisdom to us on every subject under the sun since he left in disgrace after his wildly incoherent answers to the Tribunal on where all his loot came from. He got himself a tax-free allowance on his fictitious "memoirs". And to top it off, Trevor Sargent, who resigned a couple of weeks back after a far less dubious matter had the good grace to give his €47,000 kiss-off to the Saint Vincent de Paul organisation.

Not a bit of it. The bold Bertie announced that he would be hanging onto every penny of his windfall. As he so elegantly put it, sure it would help him to pay a few 'oul bills and buy a few 'oul pints.

That's his right, of course; but it sticks in the craw of those who are up to their necks in debt because of his incompetence in handling the economy. Yet as much as I find him to have a neck as hard as Sean FitzPatrick's travel agent, it was really the cheers of his fellow boozers in The Beaumont House that sickened me.

Of course, they were probably expecting a few 'oul pints out of it - and let's be honest, you will always get ass-kissers the length and breadth of the country who wouldn't turn that down, no matter what they thought of the guy who was buying - but I can only assume that this pub has a particularly high amount of them.

Personally, if Ahern was in residence in my local I would be out of the door faster than he grabbed his cheque.

Jeez, maybe he really did win all that money on the horses, as he claimed to such country-wide hilarity.

He truly is the spiritual son of the crook Charles J. Haughey.

It was hard to imagine anyone topping his utter shamelessness and lack of self- awareness this week, but wouldn't you know it? Holy Father Church managed it.

(Just as an aside, I'm sometimes asked why I refer to it in this manner. It's because a lady pointed out to me once that it was a little odd to refer to an organisation that has consistently shown itself to hold women in utter contempt as Mother Church. I think she had a point.)

Bishop Dr. Denis Brennan of the Ferns diocese in County Wexford, one of the most notorious areas in the paedophile scandals, has "invited" the hapless parishioners to contribute funds to helping pay for the compensation to abuse survivors.

Yes, I had to read him twice also. The stinking rich church is, on top of sending around their little collection plates, asking its own parishioners to help it out.

No talk of selling the fancy houses they live in; not a bloody hope of getting a cheque out of Herr Pope Bennie; no apology, of course. Just dig a little deeper into your pockets to help the corrupt, rotten to the top bunch of criminals who covered up for rapists and who moved them to other parishes when it became too obvious for even these things - I can't call anyone who covers for rapists human - to ignore.

The investigations of paedophile priests in Ferns led to more than 100 allegations against 21 priests over four decades. So to the apologists for the mass rape and torture of children, leading often to a life of alcoholism and drug abuse and yes - suicide - no: it wasn't just a few bad apples.

People knew it was going on and people colluded with their very silence. All because a bunch of depraved, degenerate animals were seen as better than the populace at large; were seen as untouchable.

So now for a strutting arrogant peacock with one of the worst comb-overs in the history of bad comb-overs like Bishop Brennan to ask his own parishioners to help out a church that failed them... well, even for a hardened cynic with a loathing for religion like myself, it is one hell of a jaw-dropper.

As for this nonsense argument of how much good the church does for people, well, what's wrong with us just doing it ourselves? There are two charities that I contribute to when I can and wish that I could do more. But they certainly aren't affiliated with any religion. I don't need some guy in a dress shaking his collection plate in front of my face to know what is right and what is wrong..

And no, unlike Mr. Karloff, whom I have never heard a bad word spoken of, I probably am not a very good person; but I've been privileged in this life to meet those that are. They may not know it and they usually do their good deeds without ever taking any credit for them

I'd like to be better than I am but with my temper and with people like Brennan to keep it boiling, I know that this isn't very likely.

We're all in this life for a short time and helping one another isn't such a bad way to get through it. I hope that the decent people of Ferns make it quite clear to the likes of Brennan that they've had enough of being spoken down to by an organisation that has failed them time and time again and which is guilty of criminal deeds that wouldn't have been out of place in the Dark Ages.

Or will history judge that this is what we are living through right now? End of sermon.

By the way, congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow on her Oscar success. I've been an admirer of Ms. Bigelow since her brilliant "Near Dark" years back; and how can you not side with someone who cites the legend Sam Peckinpah as one of her main influences. I think that "The Hurt Locker" can stand up to such anti-war films as his "Cross of Iron" and Klimov's "Come and See". And that is praise indeed.

Whatever God you carry in your heart, whatever your belief system, I hope to see you all again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net