Punishing budgets. Paedophile priests and church cover-ups. Well, woe is my green and fair land at the moment (not a euphemism).

With so many irks of national importance, or impotence, or whatever, it’s difficult to manage my anger, to spread it out in focused, constructive rants. What does one do when one is angry at things much, much bigger than oneself? What does one do when the issues run so deep and banjax so many, when the perpetrators cannot be touched because razing an ivory tower is even more difficult than it sounds? Where the fuck do I go with this rage? Who the fuck can I launch it at?

I don’t have the answers, but the amount of fwd: fwd: fwd: mail I’m getting in the last week is really helping distract me.

There are people out there with my email address that really shouldn’t be allowed next nor near the net. I’m not talking about spammers! Russian brides trying to sell me Rolex-branded Viagra through Facebook verification … no, nothing of the sort. I’m talking about people from this era, from this society … real fucking people! People who should know their arse from their elbow, friends and colleagues and aunties and buds who I’ve willingly surrounded myself with … so the whole thing might be my fault, really. I’ve opened the gates of madness and the gobshites have wandered in, dragging themselves on their arses and drooling into their nosebags. Brian Lenihan is obnoxious, callous and cushioned from reality, but at least he’s not a fucking numbskull who surprises me every time he remembers to put his knickers on one leg at a time.

Not like the imbeciles who send me emails telling me I’m going to “lose my family” if I don’t copy and forward within eight minutes. I’m sorry, guys, you’re my nearest and dearest and all, but what the fuck? Are people that moronic that they think not forwarding a nasty, badly written piece of cybertoss will kill their kittens and cripple their nans? WHO THE FUCK BELIEVES THIS? “Ooh, better safe than sorry!” is the sheepish dribble, leading me to believe that some of my email contacts spend their lives phoning psychic hotlines and asking the lunatic on the other end for financial advice while their fucking brains trickle out their noses. When they’re not forwarding me superstitious glurge written with the skill of a moose genuflecting on a keyboard, that is. Absolute cuntosity of the highest order. Even if you were that superstitious, and even if you had something nearing an excuse for it, like that you once rear-ended a witchdoctor on the Red Cow Roundabout (not a euphemism), do you care that little about me that you’ll gladly point your fucking demons in my direction? “See her, Lucifer? She boos when Leona Lewis comes on the telly, she deserves your wrath next!” Wither on up the daisy chain, is that it? YOU ARE FUCKING STUPID CUNTS! Go back to smearing shit in your hair in the corner, thank you.

People who try to feck their boogymen in my direction are bad, but by no means are they any worse than the spatulas who claim that if I don’t forward their twee, fluffy poem about friendship and/or Gawd, I am heartless or deficient or dead on the inside. May their teeth shrivel and their nostrils cave outwards! Since when is it a measure of heart or high regard to shunt purple prose up someone’s arse? If someone tells me that my failing to send back … send back! … a picture of a fucking calico cat with Me Wuv My Fwends written under it is symptom of my dismissal of their best intentions, they’re ABSOLUTELY FUCKING RIGHT. Never send me Hallmark rhymes, virtual kisses, or related pixelated fucktardery; I take to it about as well as an albatross does to a Trivial Pursuit tournament. Take your glitter text and fuck off. Have I said fuck off enough times in this post? I think it could take another. FUCK OFF.

Now, it’s not right that the spaz-dance of the fwd: fwd: mails should distract me when there is so much of real worth and consequence that I could be dissecting. Sometimes, real anger is far too big a deal for a comedy blog; you’ll never have the impact with satire that you will with a heartfelt expression, not when it comes to such issues as those casting shadows in Ireland at the moment. So I focus on throwaway stupidity, and something we can all share and roll our eyes at. It beats telling you lot that I’m no longer proud of being Irish, doesn’t it?

Small mercies, I suppose. Which is why I’m happy that we all giggle at this for the time being …

Good, innit?