I heard there was a secret chord

I walk down by the side of the church, shivering in my new denim jacket. My granny wouldn't have let me wear it but she was still in the kitchen when I said goodbye and went out, closing the big, heavy door as quietly as I could. I really, really wanted to wear my new denim jacket because I think it looks really good. I brushed my teeth too, which I don't always do, and splashed some of my uncle's man perfume on my neck, like I see him do. He calls it aftershave but he doesn't really shave yet so I call it man perfume and he hates that and gives me a dead arm when I do. It's still really dark.

We always go this way to church anyway, even when we're just going to normal mass, my Granddad and my granny and me and my sister. Not my uncle, he always goes to a different mass. I think maybe he doesn't go to mass, but he always knows who said it because my granny always asks him and he always knows. I think he doesn't really go because once I asked him what the sermon was about and he just mumbled something and my granny said I hope you were listening and he said of course he was listening and they argued a bit and later he gave me a dead arm.

Today I'm going in the side door so even if I lived in Rathmines and I normally came in the front way I'd have to go down the side way. Because I'm serving. It's really, really cold, but I know that it'll be warmer in the vestry because it's always warmer in the vestry and Father Kavanagh will be there today. I take off my glasses before I go in. I'll have to put them on before the mass because I can't really see very well and once I tried to do the mass without them and I knocked over the water and wine thingy by accident and Father Tonge was doing the mass and he called me a clumsy cunt quietly so now I have to wear them in case and anyway Judge Durkin and Mrs Durkin are always at the half seven and if they see me without my glasses they'll tell my granny and she'll be annoyed and not talk to me and maybe even hit me with the spoon because I'm always losing my glasses. But I take them off before I go in anyway. My glasses make me look stupid, because they're all brown and yellow and big. I tried to make them look better by painting them with a gold marker that my Granddad has but my granny made me scrape it off and now they look even more stupid because there's little bits of gold still left.

Father Kavanagh is already there when I get in, even though I'm really early. The door's open but I knock anyway because you always have to knock. Father Kavanagh shouts come in. He looks like he's waiting but he doesn't look very glad to see me. I say good morning, Father, but he just grunts. He's still wearing his normal clothes, he even doesn't have a collar on, just a nice white shirt and black trousers and I think that maybe he's wearing man perfume too, but I'm not sure, maybe it's the incense or just him. He smells good. He's very tall and not fat and he makes me feel like I need to pee, but not exactly like I need to pee.

Mick comes in. He looks like he's just been crying. He always looks like he's been crying, with his leaky face. That's what I call him in my head. Leaky Face. But not in real life. In real life I just call him Mick, but I don't talk to him very much. He doesn't talk very much. Father Kavanagh looks glad to see him though. Father Kavanagh always looks glad to see Mick and he never looks glad to see me. It's still only five to seven, I can see the time on the clock on the wall, but Father Kavanagh tells me to go down and open the big front doors. I say it's only five to seven Father and he says don't argue with me and while you're there put out the leaflets and fill up the holy water, there, there's the bottle and be sure and knock now before you come back in here. I say yes Father.

I walk out onto the altar and genuflect in the middle of the altar before I walk down the big centre aisle. I always do this job, while Mick helps Father Kavanagh get dressed. I love being in the church when it's empty, it's so huge and peaceful and quiet, but really I'd like it more if I was the one helping Father Kavanagh get dressed. I asked Mick to swop one time and he said yes but Father Kavanagh decides and he always picks Mick. I go slowly, carrying the water, because it's a big bottle and it's heavy and I don't want to drop it and I'm carrying the leaflets too and I put the water down and do the leaflets first, put them in the four holder thingies and then I get the water and genuflect again. I like genuflecting. Then I go out and open the big doors and put water in the bowl thingies even though they don't really need any water so I just put in a bit, but really carefully because I can't really see without my glasses and the bottle is really heavy. And then I walk back up the centre aisle and I genuflect again before I go up on the altar and then I go to the vestry door and knock and I hear Father Kavanagh say wait so I wait. I wait for a while and I don't know whether I should knock again, I don't know what time it is because there's no clock but I see an old lady coming in, that old lady who's always at the half seven and always wears black so I knock again and I hear Father Kavanagh say I said wait, louder, so I wait.

And then Father Kavanagh says come in now. And Father Kavanagh and Mick are putting on Father Kavanagh's vestments and Father Kavanagh looks brilliant, tall and strong and smiling. Mick doesn't have his cassock on yet, so I go and take off my denim jacket and put my cassock on and look for my glasses. I can't find them. They're not in my denim jacket. I'm going to be in so much trouble. Mick looks like he's been crying again. He is crying a little bit really. I don't why, he hasn't lost his glasses. Stupid Leaky Face.

I tremble with the nervous thought

Scroll. Click. Vote again. Scroll. Click. Vote again. That's me. That's me and Darragh Doyle, That's me, Darragh Doyle and his army of illiterate minions. All day, every day. My weight is down, lower even than when I won that race, because I don't have time for eating, just clicking, scrolling, voting again. There's more of them, you see, so very many more. X-factor watchers. Late Late Show live bloggers. Happy-clappy, isn't life just great fucking zombies. Lurching, clicking, scrolling, voting. You can't kill them by crushing the skull because they're already brain undead, every last neuron melted by reality television and blissful ignorance.

I thought it was all over on Friday, I thought I could let it go. Mired they were in a single digit with four worthies, or at least less shitties, ahead of them. So I risked an evening out. But late last night I checked again, and there they were, way out in front, leading the charge with their idiotic, lowest common denominator banality. So I skipped work today, let the children starve in their own filth, and clicked and clicked again. And I cannot make a dent.

I've given up on the languishing Twenty, whose fan base appear much too concerned with fringe issues like the rape of our children and witty word play, and am focusing my voting on the second place minority reporting of Maman Poulet. I'm not a regular reader, being more of a majority man, but I am aware that the woman can construct a sentence and has more in her mind than the fucking Breffmeister, whatever the cunt that is.

I am a small and bitter man, yes. But I'd rather be small. I'd rather be bitter. I'd rather be angry and sad and nasty and yes, depressed, I'd rather be all these things than an 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here' watching moron. And rejoicing in its futility, I will make my meaningless stand.

Come gather round children, it's high time ye learns

Someone quipped chucklefully on the Major (vote Twenty, twenty times) site yesterday that the teachers had stopped picketing three hours before everyone else. Well, let it be known that life imitates quip. Imitates the fuck out if it. And then takes it to a higher imitation plane.

I spun past the Bridge Crew's Catholic Madras at 9.15 yesterday expecting to get the free tingle that a wave of support to any kind of strikers never fails to provide. I'm not sure from where this tingle comes. I have no strong feelings on the various issues at stake, having aggressively adopted the "head in the sand, Common Law's got a steady gig, I'm alright Jacqueline" attitude right from the start of this delightful downturn. But I like strikes. I think they're cool. I dig the placards, the camaraderie, the fight against The Man, even when logic suggests that it's merely one The Man fighting against another.

And so it was with grave disappointment that I found the school gates chained yet unmanned or womanned, with nary a banner nor brazier in sight. A bit off, I thought, but perhaps they're having a quick pre-strike meeting, throwing together a few Jesus and Irish language tinged protest songs at the last minute. But when I returned at 12.30 there was still no sign nor signs. Those lazy, lazy fuckers.

Parent teacher meeting tomorrow and I hereby vow to spend our allotted thirty seconds discussing not the always perfect Riker, but my tragic lack of trade union tingle.

But I never got to Kiev

All the injustice. All the man-made misery. The Man made misery. Fat cat bankers, property wankers. So much to inspire my ire and yet nothing in my admittedly sozzled short-term memory has aroused in me such revulsion, such rage, such bitterness as the following two sentences:

'Jedward: they inspire some with revulsion, shame and hate on the one hand but I think it’s fair to say that the majority in Ireland admire and love them. I’m in this later camp and am very sad that they’re gone.'

Yes, yes, we all know that Gimme is the most boring of grammar Nazis, the most pedantic of syntax stormtroopers. You know this, I know this. And thus with this knowing, I want to wrench these forty-one words from their weeping. hysterical parents, as they crouch as a family, self-shitting on an overcrowded cattle train. I wish to wrench so that I might gas. Gas the fuck out of them, until with much eyeball gouging by filthy, ragged fingernails, with hearty heart-stopping howls, they die a slow, agonising, richly deserved death, These words, these words come from a post entitled 'The genius of Jedward'. The. Genius. Of. Jedward.

Dude, if a dude you are, and not some demon sent to fill my life with meaningless meaning, know that they do not inspire with revulsion, shame and hate. They inspire these emotions in the righteous, the brain-celled, the true. They inspire with banality, with a lack of even the most basic vocal or kinetic talent, with a summation of all that is wrong with our popular culture.

And know that you cannot have just one hand. Or perhaps you can, but you should then hack it off with a mouth-grasped rusty axe, before hurling your neck upon said axe so that this class of language sin may be committed no longer, no, not even with one of those Christopher Nolan head stick thingamajigs.

And know that it is not "fair to say that". It is, in fact, idiotic to say that. Not merely because were the sentiment itself to be true it would indicate that Ireland as a nation is truly beyond redemption, but also because you don't want to say "the majority in Ireland'" you want to say "the majority of people in Ireland". Or "the majority of Irish people". Or "fluffy pink newborn Koala bears". I pray to the God in whom I do not trust that you do not want to say something so offensive to eye and ear. And speaking of the go-to-guy with the beard,

Know that good fucking Jesus on a hideously ugly, offensively slow Yike, it's fucking latter. Latter. LATTER. Can you hear me Berlin? IT'S FUCKING LATTER!

Before I began, I mused that this measured monologue might make me feel better.

Nope.

The sun is the same, in a relative way, but you're older

There is a temporal disturbance in the corner of my kitchen. In the little alcove above the dysfunctional dishwasher sits Microwave II. Microwave I, fatally wounded by my nine minute reheating of a plate of pasta for nine minutes, died one sad day six months later with a weak flash. I was not all that unhappy about this. Its digital clock had always been fast, inching ahead of real time by about 10 seconds a day. I got used to performing the necessary mental arithmetic and when I forgot, or the arithmetic was too hard, I was ahead of schedule. early. And I like to be early. But every six weeks or so, Common Law would correct it and I would become horribly confused. And late. And I don't like to be late. So I made Microwave I break. Enter Microwave II, a microwave too. And guess what? Microwave II has started running fast.

It's more subtle this time. 5 seconds a week? Something like that. But it's definitely happening. Coincidence? I think not. I believe in this digital age with all its wondrous rectangles, and digital clocks don't run fast. I am left with only one sketchable conclusion: temporal anomaly.

I'm going to remove Microwave II and climb in there, into the vortex. It shouldn't be more than a couple of months before I'm far enough ahead. The loss of income and necessity of hiring of a staff to both tend to me and do all the shit I do for the children, will be more than made up for when I call out the winning lotto numbers to Common Law.

I'm going to do some yoga now. It's a pretty small alcove.

Oh, come take my hand

This is, without doubt, the most lucid of dreams. Here I crouch typing, having done with many of the morning's banalities, folded, shopped, tidied and all with an almost unbelievable whiff of reality. Sure, a sky bluer than I've seen it for many a day and the vaguely off-putting beauty of everyone that I have encountered since half-past ten point to the illusionary nature of what appears before me, but in almost every other aspect the day seems just like any other. And yet it cannot be. Momentarily I will awake, drenched in pre-performance sweat, nauseated by the instant revelation that was has gone before is naught but the workings of my sleeping, shiny happy people addled brain.

Two years and five attempts later, my having passed my driving test can only be a dream.