1953 Soviet dictator since the 1920s, Joseph Stalin, 74, dies after stroke, Moscow
10:10
The shortest word with three ys is SYZYGY, a type of celestial alignment.
11:20
Things just this morning got unbelievably, amazingly worse with the Dubs next door. Danno, one of the fine young cannibals in there, had a complete meltdown. I mean, it was China Syndrome time. I heard lots of shouting, screaming and slamming doors. Freak attack. I heard slapping and slappers saying 'Calm down Danno' and all that. They tumbled out the door and slammed down the stairs.
The ruckus rolled out onto the street with his blokes pushing and shoving him, banging every solid object on the way. Danno was standing there at 9am on a busy commuter street with his shirt off, red neck red back, threatening blue bloody murder. Shouts, screams. Aggro. The builders pause from their digging and look on aghast.
12:05
Talking to the bloody eircom robot. What a fucking prick he is! Say help for more information. HELP! AGENT! HOME! AH JESUS!
I mean Danno is not a bad lad when he's not drinking. Neither is Fergal, really. Quiet lads, friendly enough, friends, I mean, the boys love each other. Fergal has practically said as much with tears in his eye and they're never apart. Emotional twits, honestly.
The trouble is only when they're drinking. Which is constantly. Not so sweet then. They become the enemy not only of society nor themselves, but me. Their overall numbers of party animals next door are whittling away due to appointments with the law and possibly the morgue. Yet when is the next eruction due? Any second now.
I heard Fergal say to the Peelers last night that he likes it down here because where he's from he'd be constantly looking over his shoulder, there's a family feud, you know. Say's it's quiet. Cop says, wittily, "I beg to differ." I'm hiding behind my door listening to this nonversation.
I'd love to get Fergals's ma and beat her head off her. For ruining her son's life and attempting to upend mine. Don't tell Fergal I said that, he loves his ma, as he constantly reminds me.
"I don't know how you haven't gone completely in sane up there, Mick?"
"I went insane years ago. Don't worry about me." Although I do get the nerves sometimes. Edge. Tingling like a jigsaw on cheap chipboard.
I rip up the prime directive and throw it out the window. Enough is enough. Time has come. Not to do nothing. To not do nothing. To do something.
I choose to battle the girls in school uniform who are frequenting the local speakeasy. I believe in going straight to the top and start my journey downwards from there, so I call the Department of Education and ask them to gather up their charges.
Wouldn't you know, it turns out the education department and the education welfare department are TOTALLY separate bodies. I'm prepared for this rigmarole, my noorocrat friend on the line is not.
"This is Captain Thunderpants speaking. Can you ask the 'post-primary' guy to ring the guys from 'welfare' to get them to sort something out?"
NOORO: I'm only telling you that they are a totally separate body to the department.
CPT: But they must be under the aegis of somebody.
NOORO: 'Eh...' (He either has no answer to that or he realises what the answer is and won't reveal it.) They are probably out and about. The welfare people, they're not desk bound, you know.
CPT: But everybody has mobiles.
NOOR: I'm only telling you. You can't even tell me what school they're from.
CPT: I thought we just discussed that. Let me put it like this. There is a 90% chance they are from Dope St. We'd just need to confirm the colour of the uniforms.
NOORO: (Unwisely because it proposes personal risk for me, he asks) 'Can you get up close to them to see what's on the crest?'
"They're indoors," I tell him. "Drinking. In their school uniforms. There's laws about truancy, right?" (I previously googled my portended memories from school.)
NOORO: Maybe you should call the Gaurds.
CPT: Maybe I will, but I didn't call the Vigilante Advice Line, I called the Department of Education. Can you call the education welfare people and ask them to call me. I'm just a concerned citizen." WAKE THE FUCK UP!
NOORO: "Of course you can ring the lo-call number on 1890 36 33 66."
CAPTAIN THUNDERPANTS: I already did and I got the voice of an answering machine saying. "We're sorry the number you have called is out of service." Sound of nothing at all. Images of screwdrivers flash on the line.
I call the school anyway to put the cat amongst the pigeons. No answer from the school number. Let's talk to education welfare. Nothing. Answer machine. So anyway these violent, loud, drunk little chip-eating hoe, asbos and schoolbags stuck to their backs, they're impervious to reason. They're impregnable to common sense.
The girlies however, are not themselves impregnable and if they start breeding in there we're all doomed. Doomed! I tell ya! Hardly past the age of consent now are they, what do their mammys think of them being out and about the whole time with DUBSOs? Should they stab someone? What is the age of consent nowadays anyway? Oh here's where our troubles begin!
It's all talk of urgent action in pronouncements broadcast by the authorities, the wringing of hands, yet nobody is on the phone. On hold, I notice how the walls fall down when they're hit with a bucket. There's not much holding them up really, just dried muck and lucky gravity.
I call the local schools to find out if they have a red uniform. They don't. Blue, green, brown. No red. They're from we don't know where. Back to you, in the Department with all the time and resources in the world to find out. I'm not really interested in the welfare of the girls. I'm more interested in my welfare. Personally, I'm only trying to increase the pressure on my neighbour to quieten down/get out. This is just a tactic.
I browse around while I'm on hold and see that the parliament has no less than 273 days off a year. They sit in session for 93. This is not news, but it's a pithy headline in today's paper. No wonder nothing gets better.
By the time anyone will get back to me, the day will be over. If some noorocrat rings me up and moans to me about not being able to do anything, I'll simply say that's internal politics as far as I'm concerned it's not an argument for doing nothing. Positive intervention me hole. They proactively hide behind their big words and switchboards.
13:06
I'm just after talking to Paddy, the criminal mastermind/property developer/drugs merchant from the pub next door. Hard little fucker. Nice, but a street billionaire driving a van. Wears expensive shades to cover his eyes. Anyway, the other night, he had his door attacked by Dubs with the wrong address looking for to kill my DUBSO pal Fergal.
Says he has it on CCTV. He also showed me a knife he found hidden in a drain outside his property. Steakknife from the kitchen. Guess what was written on the knife? The neighbour's gurrier name - "Fergal Tullty". Fucking written on it in black marker pen. Paddy wields it like a pro and demonstrates a jabbing motion. "It's not sharp but you could poonk-ture someone's lung wid' it."
Paddy is a genuine hard man. It's easy to see. I don't even need to ask questions about him. I respect him for it. It's a mistake to show weakness, I mistakenly remark that the goons on CCTV are intimidating.
"I'd kill them before I'd let one of them intimidate me", says Paddy contemptuously. I genuinely believe that little throwaway remark. It has an air of authenticity when he speaks it. More and more, I get the feeling that someone is going to get killed. It's inevitable and there's nothing I can do about it. I keep thinking about it and drawing up inventories of buckets, mops and bleach.
Paddy has seen much, even, I'd venture to say, men bound and hung upside-down in freezers, but Paddy was genuinely shocked when he saw the school girls leaving this building and he put it all together. Couldn't believe it, he says. Someone's going to get hurt.
"I've never seen anything so stupid." I say. "His wrote his name all over the knife." Another theory suggests the knife with the name written on it is gangster speak for "we're coming to get you Fergal Tullty". A kind of a postcard from the edge.
Turn on the radio and the politicos are screaming about the revolving door of drink and cops. Paid politicians are not the solution. There is no solution. All I can see is pain.
In the meanwhile, we're trawling over cash withdrawals at the tribunal. The Canary has finished his evidence about envelopes with bribes to our political maestros, after several years of providing detail. Will he find a steak knife with his name on it when he gets home?
14:33
Spoke to the guy from the education welfare board. Said he'd report it to his manager. Said I should report it to the health board social worker. I said, "Why am I ringing you?"
15:18
In 1976, as she was been dragged from the dock on March 4th to begin a sentence for explosives which was later proved WRONG, a 40 year old Irish mother speaks:
As Mrs Maguire was carried kicking and screaming from the dock she shouted: "I'm innocent you bastards. No, no, no!"17:00
Sat in a stinky net cafe with broken plumbing and the education welfare person rings. Long story short - there's nothing she can do as she doesn't know what school the girls are from. I suggest the heuristic approach of narrowing it down to three girls who are friends of about 15 who are missing from school a lot, wearing red uniforms in the Dublin 7 area. Find out who they are and ask them if everything is alright. I even tell her the schools I've eliminated from the list and suggest another one in the district. She makes a mealy-mouthed bureaucratic excuse. "Oh they have over 100 girls in that school."
Start at number one, I suggest, and in the time you spend telling me what you can't do, you'll have your suspects. Ask them kids if they needs help. I don't want to get stabbed with a screwdriver in my head, I tell her, and everyone is on telly talking about taking action. This is me taking action. What about you?
"I saw that program last night on telly too", she says. After much tut-tutting, she eventually fobs me off on to social workers. After another barrage of phone calls, a social worker calls me back. Nothing he can do, he says. Fobs me off, saying 'I'm not trying to fob you off.' Before I let him hang up I explain how it's not my problem, they're not my kids, I don't give a shit what happens to them, but he's the social worker guy, his job is to sort them out if they are at risk. Drinking is school uniforms is indicative of risky behaviour, I say.
He tells me to try to catch them red handed. He says the same thing as everyone always ends up saying, "Call the cops." I say I rang first thing this morning and it's close of business in civil service land (5pm), I have spoken to everybody in Irish state services and I still haven't got anybody to accept responsibility for anything and there is no obvious reason why not.
The civil servants go home in their to their widescreen TVs and yard decking at 5pm. I spent the whole day working freelance and trying to ring around the various state agencies, being passed me from billy to jack, about the schoolgirls drinking in next door which is causing major disruption for my whole street. In a week when everyone is wringing their hands and mooing about street violence. A week where two working men were murdered by a gang of sixteen year old youths. When everybody has expressed concern and how something needs to be done. The much vaunted "national conversation" daily takes place on radio, TV and the streets but nobody is listening.
Not my area or responsibility. There's nothing I can do. Naysayers and nabobs of negativity. Nuts. I get nothing. They all pass me on to someone else, close the call and get in their new cars and go home.
There's nothing you can do? Well, I'm not trying to fob you off, but tell it to someone who cares. I tell you what, just fuck off. Fuck off the lot of ye. Fuck FUCKING off, fuckers!
23:26
Provisional Revolutionary command have issued a populist provisional propaganda slogan: Peace, drink, land.
