Cheese Vouchers for Christmas; and Birthday Wishes for Glenn Lord

"Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization."
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism will always ultimately triumph."
- Robert E. Howard

By Charley Brady

Oh, come on. I made one tiny little mistake. After all, it was 1976 and I was only an eejit of seventeen years of age at the time. I dropped one little dab of acid. It was a long time ago and it was only the once and so surely I'm not going to be punished for the rest of my natural.

Yet there I was last Friday morning, waking screaming from a nightmare in which Gerry Adams and a re-animated Charles J. Haughey had been made co-Presidents of Ireland. Now that's not funny by any stretch of the imagination. I mean it's bad enough that we might have Bertie Ahern in the running. So when I fell out of bed and switched the radio on to Morning Ireland, only to find myself hearing Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith talking about giving cheese vouchers to poor people as a Christmas present, I naturally thought that I was experiencing an acid flashback.

I began screaming. And screaming. And screaming.

What seemed like days later, when I was released from the hospital restraints and had been hosed down I was told that it wasn't some sort of weird auditory hallucination at all but had in fact TAKEN PLACE.

At this I didn't know whether or not to be relieved or to start screaming again. So let me get this straight: Our Fianna Failure leaders - who are now officially so out of touch that they have long since left this galaxy on their own acid flashbacks - announce that we will be slaughtered before Christmas by €6 billion in assorted cutbacks and tax increases. One day later a pompous, well fed, insensitive and complete jackass like Brendan Smith sneers at the poor and tells them that they can have a nice cut of cheese for Christmas if they are really that hard up. After all, the European Union has lots left over.

What was going on in his head? Was he hearing voices (now THAT I can relate to)? Was he following in the footsteps of his leader and drunk at half eight in the a.m.? Was it a wind-up? What?

So if you are already suffering the humiliation of signing on for unemployment benefit when you have been used to working your entire life, then your self-esteem is about to be returned as now you may fill in a form and the Government will decide if you should be allocated a nice big 1kg block of cheese.

But: they want your utter and abject humiliation. Only that will do. This is just in case your spirit hasn't been broken thoroughly yet. You have to sign a form and the big boys will decide if you are poor enough. Since they put in so many hours a week in their chauffeur driven, taxpayer- bought €200,000 Mercedes they might even have time while checking your form to allow themselves to have a good laugh at Shamus and Morag Q. Sucker, who have allowed things to come to this.

I don't give an Edam how broke I will be this Christmas, I wouldn't give these Fianna Fail monkeys the satisfaction of letting them see me grovel for a block of feckin' cheese if my life depended on it. Such is their lack of decency - every one of them included - that I'm only surprised that they didn't use tax-payers' money in order to carve it into a nice turkey shape in order to cheer up the poor peasants who won't be able to afford the real thing.

What made the Smith creature's utterances so memorable last Friday morning is that he was so bloody PLEASED with himself. It was like he had solved world poverty, he was that full of his own importance.

Now when you see a press release that says SMITH ANNOUNCES SPECIAL SCHEME TO HELP PEOPLE IN NEED THIS CHRISTMAS I think that it's only fair to expect something groundbreaking, not a few slices of processed cheese; so initially we found ourselves laughing our heads off in utter disbelief that this clown was taking himself so seriously while giving himself a nice big pat on the back.

Up and down the country people were spluttering over their corn flakes, on their knees on the kitchen floor as they pounded the ground and laughed until they cried.

There were rumours that even Van Morrison was seen clutching his sides and laughing hysterically: a sight that so alarmed his wife Michelle that she phoned for an ambulance immediately, saying that she had never seen him crack as much as a smile before, let alone laugh.

As reality sank in, however, and we realised that once again we were the laughing stock of Europe that laughter turned to anger and puzzlement as to what brainless imbecile had thought that this was a wonderful Public Relation coup.

There were many theories. For myself I couldn't help wondering if the initial idea hadn't filtered down from Bertie Ahern as he had one of his customary seven or eight pints in his local, Fagan's of Drumcondra.

No legal threats, now: that is the intake by his own admission that he's well able to drive with if he needs to; which he doesn't, since he has the 'ould State- sponsored Merc at his disposal.

Still, I could just see him holding court there in front of his assorted cronies, flunkeys and hangers-on, speaking in that strange hybrid that even his best friends (the ones who like to give him a dig-out with nothing expected in return, of course) can't make head nor tail of:

"Now I'll tell ye lads what Cowen should be doin' and I'm speakin' as a man of de people. What do de ordinary fellas and dayr womin' aroun' de bleedin' country be hankerin' after at Christmas only a nice big hunk of left-over cheese to keep deyr spirits up in dese hard times?"

Cue laughter from the flunkies and calls of: "Another round of drinks, my good barman and one from the middle of the barrel for Mr. Ahern, the rightful Taoiseach of this country!"

Perhaps he had gotten the idea while sitting in his well- stocked cupboard, larder or whatever it was in that pathetic, tacky advert the gouger embarrassed us all with recently. Did he see a hunk of Camembert and think: "Hold on a minute..."

Did the grate (geddit?) man's thoughts then filter down to Mr. Cowen and his brilliant team of advisors: win back the hearts and minds of a disillusioned and brow beaten people by giving them free blocks of cheese - as long as they have the correct voucher and are prepared to doff their caps and tug their forelocks in the time honoured manner!

Or maybe they just came up with it all by themselves, which is really, really disheartening. Or - maybe they were told to do it by our European masters.

Can you imagine even one politician with the cojones to say that perhaps this wasn't a great idea?

"Listen, Brian, this is awful 'ould s***e we do be giving them altogether, so it is. It tastes like processed plastic, so it does".

"Ah would you get out a that, ye bliddy eejit! It's not like they're used to eating in the places we go to, is it, wha?! Another round there, barman and keep them coming!

We're havin' a bit of an 'ould Think Tank here."

Just a thought: if I said I was allergic to dairy products but was still poor could I get a couple of euros towards one bauble for my Christmas tree (it will be very small this year. One decoration will probably do it)?

Anyway, the European Union will be funding the charity scheme to the tune of €750,000. It works out at one slice of cheese for every adult in the country.

Men and women died for this. We are so proud.

In other news that comes under that heading so beloved of politicians - "Do as I say, not as I do" - comes Mr. Eamon Gilmore, leader of the Labour Party who said on May 16th: "The economy was taken over by speculators. It was they that stood at the apex of a toxic triangle of property developers, bankers and politicians that destroyed the Irish economy."

Bloody Hell! That's a bit strong language to use when you're talking about a group that includes your own wife!

Isn't she the same Carol Hanney who sold some land in Killimore, County Galway, back in 2006? It had been left to her by her mother and I guess it was her business if she wanted to make €525, 000 out of it by selling it on to the Office of Public Works. It must sting the people of Killimore though, which has been very badly hit by this recession, to see her now further selling an extension to that land for €10,000 - a piece of land that parents in the village had initially hoped would be used for a playground and hurling field.

The Labour leader has of course thrown his hands in the air and said that what his missus does is her own affair. Which of course it is. Just as long as he never again opens his trap about what other people should do with their land. Or expects us to believe a word he says when he starts banging on about how different his lot will be to the FF/Green Party crowd.

Since this was a school land deal and the village still does not have a proper one - 120 pupils are taught in cold prefabs and the principle's office is a renovated toilet - I hope that the people cast their votes in the upcoming elections appropriately.

Father Ciaran Kitching has suggested that Mrs. Gilmore (from the area) should donate the €10,000: "We are very anxious to get the new school built... it would be the Christian thing to give the [€10,000] back."

Father, you can forget about the Christian thing to do. This is Ireland. The only pseudo-Christians you will see here are those who have to let everybody know - very loudly - that they go to mass once a week. I remember from when I used to go myself many centuries back, that they were also the first to leg it out of the door - especially if a big land deal was in the offing. So don't hold your breath.A

(OK. I'm exaggerating here a bit. There are actually a lot of decent Christians. You just don't tend to hear them harping on about it.)

Now: Let's end on a positive note for a change. May I indulge myself through this column and wish a very happy birthday next Tuesday to Glenn Lord of Pasadena, Texas, who will be 79 years of age on the 16th November.

Born in 1931, Glenn Lord will always be admired by those who enjoy the works of the Texan Robert E. Howard (1906- 1936).

Lord, a Korean veteran, discovered Howard's writing in and around 1951 and became a lifelong admirer and promoter of him - going on to publish and edit a massive amount of Howard's prose, letters and poetry. In 1965 he took over as executor of the estate and discovered a wealth of previously unpublished material.

It was as a small boy all of forty years ago that I became aware of Glenn Lord and I think that it's fair to say that without his endless enthusiasm and hard work myself and many like me would never have heard of Robert E. Howard and would thus have been deprived of many hours of reading pleasure. Indeed, it is entirely possible that without Glenn, Howard would today be as out of print as contemporaries like E. Hoffman Price or Seabury Quinn

Lord's bio-bibliography "The Last Celt" (Donald M. Grant, 1976) remains a seminal work and as good a start for those wishing to know about Robert Howard's life as anywhere.*

Lord has seen Howard's reputation (as I've seen it myself in a more limited way) grow from the disparagement that it used to receive to the present, where he is rightly seen in the tradition of the great hard-boiled American authors.

Glenn Lord will be celebrating his birthday this Saturday at the Monument Inn, Baytown, Texas and I wish to hell I could be there. Still, I hope to make it for your 80th, Glenn. Have a good one!

Hope to see the rest of you next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

* Or there's a superb collection of essays on his life and work, "Two-Gun Bob", a centennial study from Hippocampus Press, New York.

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net