The inventor of Krispy Kreme Donuts
When the Irish moved entirely to a Krispy Kreme diet, I said that it was short-sighted. As usual, the people of Ireland paid me no heed. They queued through the night for their sickeningly sweet, deep fried badness. Well, who's laughing now? Not you. Your mouth and gullet are clogged with Krispy Kreme donuts. It's me. I'm laughing. Because I can see the Brexit singularity on the horizon when the Irish people must make do with blighted donuts as all of the burritos are shipped from the country by laissez-faire multinationals. We've been here before, people. A nation cannot subsist on one food stuff (even if it is a superfood like Krispy Kreme donuts).
Visiting royals
You can’t throw a blighted Krispy Kreme donut these days without hitting a visiting royal. The best royals, of course, are reformed ginger bad boy Harry and modern woman Meghan and their joint project “royal baby”. But there are others and now they come here almost biweekly to gasp at things they used to own, and, if you watch them closely, measure the curtains of properties they hope to own again.
The Brexiteers
Look at them, those brave free-market adventurers drinking brandy in their pith helmets and rolling around in their wicker bath chairs. Outside everything is on fire but don’t worry, they have a plan. In fact, they have several.
"Let us trade with Hindustan and Rhodesia and Persia!" says John Redwood, unrolling a very old map of the world. "That will enrage the Prussians."
"Pshaw!" says David Davis. "I say we race our balloons across the orient thus teaching Johnny Foreigner not to mess with Nigel English. "
"No!" says Boris. "Let us find the Jade Monkey. I know a mysterious sailor with a map tattooed on his very person."
“Alternatively, we could all start hedge funds,” says Jacob Rees-Mogg, via speakerphone from his office in Dublin.
“Hmm,” you say, piping up from the corner. “These are all delightfully wacky escapades but do they amount to a coherent trade policy for a modern nation?”
Now you’ve done it. “Look!” they say. “An Irish peasant! How delightful!”
And now they’re gathering around you measuring the slope of your skull for criminality and feeding you soup. Before you know it you’re working as a parlour maid and finding the policies of the Irish Parliamentary Party a little too “woke” for your liking.
Young people and their fads
George Orwell once suggested that the choice for questing young Englishmen of his generation was between communism or Catholicism. This year young people had a choice between two similarly diverse ideologies, fascistic Facebook memes or "the floss", a dance from the children's murder game, Fortnite.
It’s hard to tell which of these things the infants in your life will gravitate towards. Signs of the latter can be seen instantaneously (I’m doing it now!). Signs of the former will manifest some years from now when a ham with interesting hair is rounding up all the scientists and banning eggs.
Peter Casey
A last-minute addition to the Irish presidential race, he plunged through a man-shaped hole in the roof looking and acting like American insult comedian Rodney Dangerfield.
Casey was basically your uncle’s angry Facebook posts made flesh, a spore emitted from the Trumpian heartlands only to blossom like a fungal infection in middle Ireland. He warbled on like a badly programmed Twitter bot before eventually hitting on a regionally bigoted theme that resonated.
Luckily 79 per cent of Irish people are not susceptible to the culture war shenanigans of our nearest neighbours and we re-elected the delightful, if not financially transparent, magical being Michael D.
What? Newstalk are giving Casey radio work. Of course they are.
Elon Musk
This year, aspiring astronaut Elon Musk called a heroic rescue worker a paedophile for mocking his mini-submarine. Hashtag lifegoals. The tech billionaire had offered the latter device to the rescue workers in an attempt to save some children trapped in a flooded cave. The rescue workers thought his intervention was stupid and saved the children without his help.
"I can't beat that!" said Mark Zuckerberg and he shut down Facebook and vowed never to interfere in human affairs again (I'm only joking. Facebook hired investigative reporters to slur their political enemies and they continued farming our personal data).
But, in a way, the Paypal founder's next level nonsense marked an end to an era of tech-utopianism. "Wait," said everyone. "Is it possible that being good at computers is compatible with being a complete buffoon? Is it possible that giving libertarian Ayn Rand-reading billionaires oversight of our children might be a mistake? And, now that we're on the subject, why don't they pay more tax?"
The Pope
The turnout wasn't great. There were more angry or disappointed people than happy ones. He said a few ineffectual things that offended abuse survivors and sheepishly left. It was like the last helicopter out of Saigon for Vatican clergyfolk. And that was it for Catholicism in this country. Oh . . . except they still run the hospitals and schools for some reason.
George Soros
“Oh no!” you say. “You don’t believe in the crazy rightwing Facebook-driven conspiracy that a billionaire hedge fund manager is trying to usher in a one world government, hide the Clintons’ crimes and meddle in the banal minutiae of local politics?”
Not quite. But hark at my sorry tale. On Monday, I was on the bus and some snub-nosed urchins were firing spitballs at the back of my head via drinking straws. "Stop it urchins! That's not what those straws are for!" I cried, only to be struck by another spitball. There was a slightly wheezing laugh. It was globalist provocateur George Soros.
On Wednesday, I was pouring delicious coffee when the cries of a seagull startled me, causing me to drop my favourite coffee cup and then fall to my knees weeping bitterly. It was no seagull. It was nimble George Soros, sitting in the branches of a tree across the road, staring in at me with a huge smile on his face.
Yesterday, I was giving a very important presentation at work when I suddenly felt my trousers whisked down by elderly, neo-liberal hands. As I wept, my trousers at my ankles, my co-workers pointing, guffawing and yelling that I was a “pantsless fool”, who did I see chuckling away to himself? That’s right, it was the SJW tycoon George Soros. Why must he torment me so? I wish he would let me be.
Conor McGregor
One day music-hall “Irish” stereotype Conor McGregor forgot to put his trousers on and someone mocked his tight, stretchy underpants. He beat that person up. Someone else mocked his underpants. He beat that person up. This went on for some time. Before long, he had invented Mixed Martial Arts and was famous for semi-nude violence and homophobic slurs.
Boxing champions, buses, reality – there is nothing Conor McGregor won’t fight. He travels the world fighting things. When Alexander the Great had no more worlds to conquer, he wept. When Conor McGregor heard about this he punched a hole through the fabric of space-time and beat up Alexander the Great. Then he went further back and beat up a Tyrannosaurus Rex for being, and I quote, “a growly p***k”. The hardest part, he says, was getting the Tyrannosaurus Rex to wear the tiny pants.
It is said that at the end of time, McGregor, with no more men or inanimate objects left to fight, will rip himself in two and fight himself. And then the universe will begin anew.
