No Calls From Ms. Hendricks; But Open the Pod Doors, RTE!

"Open the pod doors, HAL."
- Plaque on Gerry Ryan's coffin

"To quote from one of Dad's favourite films, Blade Runner: 'The light that burns twice as brightly burns twice as fast'. And how brightly he has shone."
- Ryan's daughter Lottie at his funeral

By Charley Brady

Obviously another science fiction fan... You know, you just have to laugh: I'm only out of bed and the first thing that greets me in the post is a final - final, mind you - reminder that my TV license was due for renewal ten days ago.

I haven't even had time to stick my head under the shower and I'm getting a final warning on a bill of €160 for RTE, our useless and inept national broadcaster who found in their wisdom that they should let Beverly Cooper Flynn, an equally useless, inept and arrogant politician off with a bill of €1.3 million because she just wasn't going to pay it anyway.

What a country. Go chasing after the ordinary citizen who always pays his bills if he's ten bloody days late, but if you are one of the corrupt and wealthy we will back down and promise not to hound you into the grave.

The poor devil who answered the phone when I rang frothing at the mouth to ask why they were wasting money on a bloody stamp when the damned thing was going to get paid anyway was naturally laughing at this lunatic being so frustrated and angry first thing on a Monday morning. But he could see my point.

Something tells me that I'm not the first one to make the connection between Paddy and Brigit Q. Sucker and our beloved Beverly. I mean, she had only been suing the company for defamation of character, after all.

She was found, as any sane person knew, to be in the wrong, and that yes, she had been advising her rich and powerful friends on how to avoid paying tax; so she was hit with a bill (to my delight) of €2.6 million.

But hey, she was Beverly of the political Flynn dynasty so we'll just half that and gouge the rest of the clowns for money!

After all, it was her father, the famous Pee Flynn who lectured us on how hard it was to run THREE houses on what he was getting paid. Yes, gentle readers, he's a politician too.

Bloody RTE! You wouldn't mind if they were able to produce a decent program that you could watch. No, they still would be content to trundle out rubbish like "Leave It To Mrs. O'Brien" about a priest's housekeeper who can handle all sorts of problems, God and begorrah and showing re-runs of "Darby O'Gill and the Little People.

They booted out Dermot Morgan's idea for the hilarious "Father Ted"; he had to go to an English channel to get it shown.

And of course there was his side-splitting "Scrap Saturday" radio show. Well, of course that had to be axed because it was actually telling the truth about this great little country and it's unique brand of political thinking.

OK, calm down, Brady. What the hell, if you go to jail at least you'll be getting three square meals a day. That's more than most law abiding citizens are getting under the reign of cronyism and uselessness that is Fianna Fail.

But sure, the blessings of the little people on us! Isn't it a grand day we do be having after all.

Meanwhile...

There is what seems to me a completely weird controversy going on here at the moment.

We have an advertising campaign - for crisps, of all things - that shows very curvy women suppaosedly playing rugby.

The billboards are huge and I have to say very eye-catching. They are quite arresting if you pass them but I don't think that anyone has driven off the road yet and died, unlike say, what just might have happened on the N7 motorway when a seriously drunk politician like Jim McDaid was driving up it the wrong way. But hey! He's a politician too, so naturally he's still in there preaching to us and talking about principles.

One poster has a very attractive lady in rugby gear showing quite an ample amount of cleavage, with the tag line: " Are you staring at my crisps?"

Personally I find them very funny, but of course The Usual Suspects are a bit on the upset side and want them removed. As it turns out they've been successful in this as a lot of the billboards have already been removed.

The argument is that they're demeaning to women and the standard bunch of feminazis are textbook outraged. It even reached a new level of lunacy this week when the Rape Crisis Network Ireland said that they were an incitement to rape.

Now this, I just don't get at all. So I did my own mini-survey yesterday, asking a few women if they were offended by the images and not a single one was. They either thought that they were funny or were just indifferent to them.

I was disappointed in the RCNI as they are one charity that I always give to. They even went as far as stating: "We have grave reservations about a call to 'tackle these' against the backdrop of a scantily clad woman who is already having her skimpy pants ripped off."

Now try as I might, I just couldn't see this nor could the women that I talked to. Is it possible that the feminazis are the ones with the dirty minds, whereas the rest of us just have a simple sense of humour?

As to demeaning women, I would suggest that the Rape Crisis Centre's suggestion that these images cause men to rape is actually demeaning to men.

To imagine that the ordinary guy is on the same level as an animal who will hurt and assault a woman simply isn't true.

I thought that at this stage it had been fairly well established that the kind of brutish thugs who would do such a thing are not so much interested in the act itself as in the terrorising, subjugating and degrading of women.

Like most men, I see these vermin as something that is not human - yes, I know, I'm not an understanding forward thinking person - but they can on no account be considered to be a part of society.

They are simply filth that I would give no more thought to eradicating from existence than I would to wiping a piece of dog s*** from my shoe.

Modern thinking tells us that we should try to understand what motivates them. Well, to that liberal rubbish I say: "You try to understand them because I'm not interested. They do not belong in society and they don't belong in jail because you can NEVER rehabilitate a man who would degrade a woman."

Men know instinctively that it's their job and their duty to protect the women in their lives, be that mothers, wives, daughters, friends, girlfriends. Hell, half the time they're protecting us as well.

So as much as I admire the work that the Rape Crisis Centre does, please don't equate us with men that I consider to be less than pond scum. They are not men and never can be.

And certainly don't get all upset over some innocuous adverts. That just belittles the realities of a horrible crime.

The day that I can't admit to admiring a beautiful woman is the day that I want to exit stage right. And anyway, I'm not in the least bit ashamed to say that I prefer looking at the curvy women in those adverts as opposed to staring aghast at the stick thin models who teeter up catwalks.

Still, I wonder: can they play rugby?

And just as if the week hasn't been humorous enough guess who pops up like the proverbial bad penny on Sky News? Well, I'll give you a clue: he used to be the Taoiseach here before he took the hint and the high road out of office because he wasn't able to explain to the tribunal that HE had set up how he came to be wondering around Manchester with shed loads of unexplained loot. (Won it on the horses, even though he doesn't gamble, har-de har).

Yeah, you got it in one: it was Bertie Ahern, the guy who claims that he is quite well able to function after putting seven pints of Bass down his gullet.

What was he doing, you ask? Well, the same thing as his good buddy John Gormless of the Green Party was doing.

He was giving advice to the poor befuddled British people on how they should handle the results of their election. Talk about the blind leading the blind drunk! I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or just put my head through a plate glass window.

He was introduced by Kay Burley as "the most successful leader" we ever had. Now there's a woman that should be firing researchers right, left and centre.

Tell you what, people of Britain if you want to end up face down in the toilet that we're in listen to advice from this chiseller.

Well, it's time for RTE to put the straight-jacket back on me and wheel me out.

Although how they expect me to pay their ten-day-old bill when I don't have the use of my arms is a bit of a puzzler.

Screw them - I'm looking forward to those three square meals a day.

Hope to see you all again next week. And Christina Hendricks! I'm still waiting for that call!

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net