Writing classics

by Twenty Major on February 24th, 2008

‘Gonna write a classic’, sang Adrian Gurvitz. ‘Gonna write it in an attic’.

Which is probably the only place in the house you could write it and make it rhyme. Writing a classic in the downstairs loo or the box room just doesn’t work at all.

Personally, if I was going to write a classic, I wouldn’t really be too worried about where I wrote it. I mean, if it’s a classic then that’s the important thing. Where the classic was written is irrelevant. Perhaps Gurvitz recently had his attic converted into a classic writing space and as such wanted to share his pride at the extra room his house possessed. I think we can all understand that.

I once wrote a short story about a man falling off a tall building who had many complex thoughts on the way down. One of them was the realisation that falling through the air at great speed was a very pleasant sensation but the thought of hitting the ground at that speed wasn’t particularly nice. I genuinely wonder does it hurt or are you splattered so quickly you don’t notice.

Anyway, the point is not the story but where I wrote it.

On a notepad.

I am going to drink some pints tonight

by Twenty Major on February 22nd, 2008

Was in town, didn’t see the book in the shops yet. Assume this is because it’s so awesome they can’t find anywhere to display it without making every other book look completely lame.

Still, I will have some pints of Guinness tonight.

Not that the two are in any way connected. I would have been having pints anyway. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. I did see somebody fall over having been blown by the wind on Westland Row. They did that thing where they got up really quickly and pretended not be hurt even though they were actually quite hurt.

That’s always funny.

National cunt day

by Twenty Major on February 22nd, 2008

I believe we need a National Cunt Day where we, the people of Ireland, simply give in and celebrate the fact we’re a country absolutely chock-full of the biggest cunts on earth.

What’s the point in giving out any more? You complain, you grumble, you make a fuss but the cunts keep cunting on all fucking day long, every day of every fucking week.

Some examples - Bertie, of course. The man who has consistently brought his family into the Mahon Tribunal yet has his lawyers release ’stinging attacks’ on the prosecution counsel for daring to mention them. The man whose explanations regarding his finance sound as believable as that bloke in England whose defence in his recent trial for murder was ‘I didn’t kill her, I just had sex with her corpse’.

Following up behind the Gardai investigating the Katy French death. It’s good to see they put as much time and effort into finding the dealers and suppliers of her drugs as they do every other drug death in this country. Who gives a fuck who sold her the coke that killed her? Not me. And if they really wanted to find out they should just haul in a few of the golden circle of socialites and beat the fuck out of them with truncheons until they talk. Problem fucking solved. You’re not so good looking without your teeth, are you, you despicable pack of wannabe cunts?

Did you see that tribute to Ronnie Drew? Fuck me, what did Ronnie Drew ever do to deserve that? A bigger collection of back-slapping, self-fisting pricks you’d be hard pressed to find in one place. See, even when they try and do something good they just look like a gaggle of rancid scorpion minge.

And you know the rest, we’ve gone through them a million times, so instead of objecting let’s embrace them. Let us be proud that this small nation can provide such a wide-range of cunts. Young and old, fat and thin, whatever flavour of cunt you want it’s here.

Céad Mile Cuntaí.

I’ll get some t-shirts made, maybe Mulley can do the badges, and then we could get a Jim Jones type to narrate and provide the refreshments. It’d be for the best.

Neil Diamond for Taoiseach

by Twenty Major on February 21st, 2008

Now we know that Bertie’s been not declaring money to the revenue - surely even he has to see that this is the kind of thing that would force a lowly council operative to resign, let alone the Taoiseach - we have to look to the future.

Enda Kenny? No. Eamonn Gilmore? No. The PDs, hahahaha.

We need a new party. With a new leader.

It should be called the Cracklin’ Rosie Forver in Blue Jeans Party and Neil Diamond should be its leader. His second in command should be Limahl and party secretary and Minister for Smooth, Sade.

What do you mean it sounds ludicrous? We have a Taoiseach who has admitted not declaring money to the tax authorities (’a politcal donation for personal use’ indeed) but who swans about the place like he’s untouchable.

Bertie out, Neil Diamond in. Pronto.

An odorous treatise

by Twenty Major on February 21st, 2008

“Oh there he is, the great I am, I am”, said Stinking Pete.

“What?”, I said, as I made my way to my stool in Ron’s.

“Mr Academia. The pedalogical inkhorn.”

“Eh?”

“Mr Pen and Paper. The promulgated bluestocking.”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

“You know fine well. Coming in here with your airs and graces nowadays. Thinking you’re so great because you’re a highbrow, bookish, tragedian, dramaturge.”

“Stinking Pete”, I said, “I really don’t know what you mean. I am the same person I always was. You think because I’ve written a book I’m somehow changed in some fundamental way? Do you think so little of me that being a ‘published author’ would make me forget where I came from and who I am? That the fact my domain has spread from Ron’s bar to Hodges & Figgis means that I consider myself even more better than you than I did in the first place? Shame on you, Stinking Pete.”

“Book? What book? I just noticed you got 4 clues in yesterday’s Crossaire and just happened to leave it lying on the bar for people to see you big fucking show-off.”

Air traffic controllers on strike

by Twenty Major on February 20th, 2008

Ryanair says the public are being ‘hijacked’ (ho, ho, good one, got the marketing executives to brainstorm that one no doubt!) by the Air Traffic Controllers. I say bollocks.

Pay the fuckers whatever they want. A disgruntled binman can’t do much but work more slowly or not at all. A backlog of rubbish won’t kill us. A disgruntled Air Traffic Controller could cause some serious damage.

“Aer Lingus 427 requesting permission to land”

“Just bank 35 degrees east Aer Lingus 427, descend as rapidly as you can.”

“Aer Lingus 427 about to land on the M50 southbound which is backed up as far as the eye can see.”

“Continue your course Aer Lingus 427.”

Fuck that. It would just take one lunatic - and you know that there’s at least one complete fucking mentalist in every office. Do you want to take the chance of having that bloke, pissed off because he’s not getting overtime, ensuring your flight doesn’t have a near-hit (I assume this is the opposite of ‘near-miss’ despite near-miss really meaning ’smash into’) with another plane?

Pay them double and Michael O’Leary can shut the fuck up this time.

An American tale

by Twenty Major on February 20th, 2008

A group of old aged pensioners set off one day on a three week trip to the USA. There was Seamus Doyle and his wife Winnie from Ballymun, Jarleth Ryan from Drumcondra, Mary Agnes O’Toole who was born in Palmerstown but now lived in Kimmage, Pat and Deirdre Hanlon from Rathfarnham, Anto and Ethel O’Leary from Castleknock and the Coleman twins, Raymond and Hubert who hailed from Rialto.

They were a mixed bunch but they figured that as they were all from the same city they’d have enough in common to keep them going throughout the holiday ahead. It was New York first and after they landed at JFK airport the first little disaster happened. Winnie Doyle was taken aside by customs officials and given a full body cavity search which turned up nothing useful but it put her in a very glum mood. Poor Seamus tried to cheer her up but it wasn’t until they got to the hotel bar and Anto O’Leary gave them a rendition of ‘Come back Paddy Reilly’ that her spirits lifted.

That night in the bar they drank beer from pitchers for the very first time, wandered around Times Square, ate cheese steak and soon they felt right at home. The second night they got talking to an American in another bar who gathered his friends around to listen to the authentic Irish stories his new friends were able to tell non-stop. They got on famously with this man, whose name was Clint Mayweather, and Hubert Coleman opined that the last time he’d seen a fellow as dark as that it had been Micky Cassidy who had been tarred by the Hughes brothers down in the Church Street tenements. As their trip was to start and finish in New York they made arrangements to meet with him again and he promised to bring them to the casinos of Atlantic City before they left.

The rest of their trip went without too much incident. They enjoyed the many splendours of the United States. They gasped at the maginificence of the Grand Canyon, although Pat Hanlon was dinstinctly unimpressed saying it looked a lot grander on the TV and suggested they change its name to the Adequate Canyon. Nobody agreed and Pat was a generally disagreeable man anyway. Jarleth Ryan found San Franciso much to his liking and would leave the group for hours at a time to follow his own path. Of course they all speculated as to his whereabouts and not a one of them would ever guess that he was standing at the top of Nob Hill throwing tennis balls down when nobody was looking.

Seattle rained a lot and reminded them of home and most of them enjoyed a fine meal in the space needle restaurant. Mary Agnes O’Toole was apparently very susceptible to gravity and while none of the others even noticed the rotation it made her most nauseous indeed and she barely made it to the bathroom to vomit copiously. Deirdre Hanlon went to help her as the pair had become fast friends.

Raymond Coleman enjoyed Chicago a great deal. Partial to smoking maraijuana, a habit he formed while serving with the French foreign legion, he found a local dealer who sold him bags of hydro which he would smoke while wandering the streets. He knew that if a policeman had stopped him he’d be in trouble but he figured he was too old for anyone to take too much notice of and so it was. He spent the happiest three days of his life in the summer sunshine strolling, smoking, stopping for a beer and a slice of pizza. His brother, being the straightlaced one, did not approve but kept his counsel.

All of them had a wonderful time in Florida. From shooting alligators in the Everglades to riding Space Mountain in Disneyworld (which made Mary Agnes O’Toole vomit so much when she got off she didn’t notice she had puked her false teeth into the rubbish bin) to cocktails and a bit of old time dancing on the Sunset Strip to getting caught up in a hispanic drug cartel shoot out in Miami they enjoyed everything the state had to offer. But soon the holiday was coming to a close and they made their way back to New York.

The night they returned they went back to the bar where they met Clint Mayweather again and the native New Yorker entertained his Irish guests, telling them stories of his childhood. Jarleth Ryan and Hubert Coleman got into a bit of an argument over the merits of Bohemians and St Patrick’s Athletic but soon they realised arguing about league of Ireland football was like getting worked up over who was going to be the next leader of the Progessive Democrats. Nobody really cared. Clint told them of his plans to bring them to Atlantic City. A good friend of his was going to drive them in a specially hired minibus which would cater for their every need. There would be a toilet, some bottles of Jameson and as many packets of Reeses Pieces peanut butter cups as they could possibly consume. He was to meet them there as he business to take care of beforehand so they continued their good night, drank beer and all looked forward to a good day’s gambling the next day.

And, as promised, after they’d finished breakfast there, outside the hotel, was Clint’s friend D’Lorean, who was to drive them all the way to the casinos. They all piled all the onto bus like happy children going to the beach and at first the journey was fine. But after a less than 25 miles, unknown to anyone, D’Lorean had a small stroke. Not enough to make him all dribbly and limp but it did funny things to his brain. He thought the other vehicles on the road were out to get him and as such he figured he’d better get them first. So he upped his speed and began to blast his horn and drivers who thought, quite rightly, that he had gone mad.

He swerved from lane to lane trying to ram cars off the road, he pulled in front of buses to make them brake suddenly, trucks and vans were in his sights too and all the while he cackled maniacally to himself. The poor old people in the back were terrified. Seamus Doyle staggered up to the top, grabbing the seats with all his strength to try and stay upright, but when he got to the top and bellowed at the driver to slow down D’Lorean merely turned his head, smiled like he was about to eat the heart of a small child, and sped up even more. Seamus made his way back to the seat beside his wife, held her hand and began to pray that they would make it out of this situation alive.

The other people on the bus did likewise, apart from Anto O’Leary who had long since given up on God. At this point the police had been alerted and soon they were following the minibus. There were squad cars and helicopters and TV crews following this crazy spectacle. All the while D’Lorean was driving like he was ridding the world of evil and, God bless him, he thought that’s what he was doing. He knew he had to get his passengers to Atlantic City and nothing was going to stop him. There were scrapes and smashes and at one stage the bus went on two wheels for a hundred yards, which made Mary Agnes vomit out of her arse, but eventually he got to his destination and stopped the bus, proudly beaming that he had accomplished his mission.

He couldn’t understand why the police dragged him off the bus at gunpoint. Clint Mayweather was there to greet them and clambered on board having been informed what had gone on. He found all the old people in hysterics. They were weeping and keening and making strange noises. No matter how much he tried to talk to them they just would not calm down. After an hour of this the police were most concerned and called in some pyschologists to see if they could help but they couldn’t make head nor tail of the bizarre shrieking and bawling that was going on. An hour later and they called in the FBI who couldn’t do a thing about it either.

All the while the pensioners lamented and whimpered and made odd grunts and snorts that nobody could understand. It did appear that some of them were trying to communicate but nobody could work out what it was they were trying to say. As they held an impromptu conference on the side of the road a passing gentleman who hailed from Clonsilla asked what was going on and if there were any way he could help. Figuring they had nothing to lose the officer in charge told them about the group of elderly people who had been on a trip from Ireland and were now in such a state of sorrow that they had been howling and making a worrying cacophony of sound. They were shocked when he told them he knew what it was.

“You have the answer?”, the CO asked.

“Yes”, said the man, “sure this is what it sounds like when Dubs cry.”

Eamon Keane

by Twenty Major on February 19th, 2008

Listening to him on Newstalk just now.

“Another caller has texted in…”

They’re not fucking callers if they’ve texted, are they?

The Order of the Phoenix Park - Prologue

by Twenty Major on February 19th, 2008

The book is out this week, you should start seeing it in shops by the end of the week, I’m told. As a little teaser here’s the prologue of ‘The Order of the Phoenix Park’.

I was going to post the epilogue but they said this would be better idea.

——-

Monday Night

Renowned record-shop-owner Tom O’Farrell staggered from the store room at the back of his shop. Terrified and unable to understand what was happening, he only knew that escape was impossible. He had already locked up the shop, the shutters were secured in place … he had nowhere to go. Nevertheless, he made for the door, frantically hoping that a passer-by might see what was happening and raise the alarm. With the lights off though, that was unlikely, and the darkness caused him to stumble over a display of Tears for Fears Greatest Hits DVDs. He lay on the ground, out of breath, looking desperately for somewhere to hide.
Then a voice spoke, alarmingly close, ‘Stay very still.’
Crouched on all fours, the record-shop-owner shuddered, turning his head very slowly, like some kind of retarded owl. Just 14 feet away, bathed in the light that pushed its luminous tentacles out from the store room, loomed the enormous silhouette of his assailant, who stared contemptuously down at him with shining, pink eyes. He was freakishly tall and built like the offspring of a farmer and a professional wrestler crossed with an old-school East German female Olympic athlete. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent, and from under his flat cap sprung a shock of bright orange hair.
‘No. It can’t be,’ gasped Tom, ‘the ginger albino! It was supposed to be just a legend.’
Christ, this was bad. If only people knew.
The ginger albino pulled a pistol from his duffel coat and pointed it at his victim.
‘You shouldn’t have tried to escape.’ His accent was a mix of nasal American and Wicklow council worker, with a strange northern twang that Tom thought might be Donegal. ‘Now, you know why I’m here. You know what you must do.’
‘I’ve told you already,’ Tom stammered, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You lie,’ said the hideous man, his gingerness seeming to ooze from his pores like stuff oozed from teenagers’ faces. ‘You and your brethren know of me. You know what I signify. And now you know that I am not a fabled monster. I am real.’
Tom felt a surge of adrenalin rush through him. Well, he hoped it was adrenalin.
‘I will give you a final chance,’ the towering figure said coldly. ‘Do as I ask, or I shall kill you.’
‘Never,’ said Tom. ‘What you ask is too despicable for any person to agree to. I have spent my life working in this business – apart from that time when I lived in London and I had to do things to get by, but that’s not important right now –  and I will not see it destroyed by the likes of you.’
‘Very well. I had hoped you would see sense. What is to come is inevitable. Your pathetic stand against it will make no difference whatsoever. The wheels are in motion. This Rolling Stone is gathering no moss. Que sera, sera, and such. Your death will serve as a warning to the others. They won’t be so foolish.’
In an instant, Tom knew what he had to do. ‘If I die,’ he thought, ‘then it’s all over. There’s no chance for anyone.’
Instinctively, he tried to get up and run for the door. The gun thundered, and he felt a burning heat as the bullet penetrated his stomach. He fell again … battling against the searing pain. He turned onto his back again and faced his attacker, who had the pistol pointed directly between his eyes. The ginger albino pulled the trigger, but there was only the click so reminiscent of the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter.
‘MAO!’ said the man, laughing. He reached for more bullets but then saw the blood spreading across the floor from Tom’s stomach. He pocketed the bullets and holstered his gun. ‘My work here is done.’
Tom looked down and saw the hole in his Che Guevara T-shirt. As a veteran of the turf wars between the punks, the mods and the Val Doonican fans during his time in London, he’d seen people gut shot before. It was a slow and painful way to die. Worse than being starved to death in a room filled with Phil Collins music while being rimmed by a cat.
His hateful assassin regarded him for a moment. ‘Your pain is as nothing compared to what the rest of humanity will suffer. Be thankful and die well.’
The ginger albino walked calmly over to one of the racks behind the counter, searched for a couple of moments, then took something. The next moment, he was gone, locking the back door behind him.
Alone and dying, Tom O’Farrell knew he had to act fast. Within minutes, the poison from his stomach would enter his chest cavity and render him immobile for the final, excruciating moments.
‘I must warn them. I must find some way.’
Staggering to his feet, he tried to move, but he was too weak. His legs were like jelly beneath him. Close to tears and knowing time was short, he lay down on the floor. An idea came to him. He pulled his T-shirt over his head, wincing in pain, and summoned the last of his strength to do what he had to do.
When he was finished, he grimaced as he found his mobile phone in his pocket and flicked through the address book until he came to the name of the person he wanted. Too weak to make the call, he left the screen displaying this entry as the blackness enveloped him … and Tom O’Farrell died, hoping against hope that he’d done enough.

——–

Monsieur Monstre - Myspace blog thief

by Twenty Major on February 18th, 2008

My thanks to ‘loyal fan’ J who pointed me in the direction of a Myspace page. They had noticed a similarity between one of my blog entries and one of his. Which wasn’t difficult because they were exactly the same.

Further investigation shows a number of my blog posts were posted by him, but with some subtle changes. For example, I wrote about doodling. My final line was:

My name is Twenty Major and I’m a doodleoholic.

Cleverly, to throw people off the scent, he wrote:

My name is Monsieur Monstre and I’m a doodleoholic. 

How devious. Change Twenty Major to Monsieur Monstre, just to make sure nobody would think somebody else wrote it. Other entries too have been slightly changed. Such as the one I wrote about watching that film ‘The man who was always there’. In my post I wrote:

I was sitting at home in my armchair with two or three delicious Major at a time to try and keep up with him.

Monsieur Monstre (35, Dublin), wrote:

I was sitting at home in my armchair with two or three delicious Cigarettes at a time to try and keep up with him.

Here he cunningly changes the Major brand to plain old generic cigarettes. Truly we are dealing with one of the world’s greatest intellectuals here. In the same entry I wrote about Dirty Dave having a dream about Spiderman. This guy wrote:

Ive been having a recurring dream where im [sic] Spiderman…  

So, not only is he stealing my posts he’s stealing Dirty Dave’s dreams. The fucking thieving cunt. Not so much as a link back, an attribution or a ‘Shamelessly ripped off from Twenty Major’ to be found.

Even more strange is the fact that a commenter in this post (Saviour Self) rips off another of my posts. Coincidence or someone trying to tell him he knew what Monsieur Monstre was up to.

So, here’s a picture of the stealing fucker himself (click for big) and here’s his Myspace page, the poxy internet highwayman.