Frankie's First Church of Obnoxious

originally published at Obnoxi.us, 10.06.2011

Dear Mr. Obnoxious,

You’re such a hot-shot computer software type, I thought I’d make you a proposal. You know, like in that Pet Shop Boys song, “I’ve got the brains, you’ve got the looks, let’s make lots of money.” Knowing that you’re a man who’s always trying to earn a living with his skills in the virtual world, I figure this is an offer you can’t refuse.

I want to start an on-line church. I thought we could call it Frankie’s First Church of Obnoxious (Digital), though I’m open to other suggestions if you think they might be SEO-friendlier. I mean, I don’t want to be dogmatic about all this; it’s strictly a business thing. But I have lots of ideas of what FFCOD could offer which I’m convinced would make us all so filthy rich, we’d all have to move our residencies to the Cayman Islands (though, if we could get our religious status confirmed, we might even be able to live in the USA; hell, if the Scientologists can get away with it, so can we!).

When I started thinking about all this, it quickly became clear to me that the best model to follow is definitely the Catholic one. I mean, let’s face it, they’ve been around for nearly two thousand years now, which means that their product and business model must have a lot going for them. And they’ve got a couple of features which are just begging for on-line development.

My suggestion is that we launch the whole thing around one of the most successful concepts the Catholics have been pushing since God was a boy – the idea of Absolution. You know, the whole Confession thing. In my model, we’d basically take over the whole Catholic idea here one for one. You confess your sins on-line, there’s a priest somewhere who issues an absolution and, bingo, all your sins are forgiven.

I see great possibilities for this as a mobile app. It’s not even a scam, you can really certify this as being the genuine Catholic article. All you have to do is find some Catholic ex-priest who needs the money. You see, the Catholic Church teaches once a priest, always a priest. Even if a priest quits, even if the Church formally defrocks him (that’s a lovely expression, isn’t it, something really kinky about it J?), he’s still formally a priest and the actual god-given power to do the old whammy can’t be taken away from him. Honest to God, that is the genuine Catholic teaching on the subject – it’s about the sacrament of ordination making an indelible mark of his soul, or something like that.

So, all you have to do is download the absolution app onto your iphone or android device and you’re basically ready to go. This is where we start to earn money. For the simple app, the user pays $ 4.99. For this you get the basic packet: A list of sins you just click on to confess (you can also enter the number of times you sinned and there’s a graded scale of severity you input), press the Send button and you’re done. The basic packet includes three free absolutions but you may have to wait a while for it and the individual penance necessary for it to become effective, because the server collects and collates the sins and sends them to the priest three or four times a day, who then formally gives the absolution. The severity of the penance can be automatically programmed into the software so that the priest doesn’t have to work this out individually – minor transgressions like little lies or shoplifting get one Hail Mary, for more major things like murder, marital infidelity, or sexual abuse of minors a couple of Rosaries would be imposed.

But this is only the beginning. We could offer all sorts of premium services (with extra costs, of course). Like the Instant Absolution extra – a secure contact is installed immediately to the priest, who gives the penance and absolution straight away. For those whose time is limited you can also buy the extra Indulgence option, which frees you of the obligation to do the penance before the absolution becomes effective. I see great possibilities for this option in airport departure lounges – we might need to think about doing some kind of advertising in such areas. Or we could also offer various comfort options; the worry-free monthly flat rate ($19.95) with unlimited absolutions or the comfort-option plus, which includes five (!) instant absolutions – world-wide, any time – for just $39.95 per month extra.

This is all only the first step, of course. When the thing is up and running and generating enough income, we move on to the next stage. Automatic Holy Communion. We get our pet priest to consecrate thousands of hosts and then do some kind of deal with Coca Cola or Pepsi so that they can be made available in soft-drinks dispensing machines. When you see a machine with the Holy Communion option, you just whip out your mobile phone, choose the Communion option on your app and you get a one-time code which you then enter into the machine. The costs (we can call them “Contributions”) are deducted directly from the user’s credit card. For an extra charge, you can also get a thimble-full of consecrated wine (one thimble per user per day, so that we can’t be accused of impiety by opening up possibilities of abuse).

The more I think about it, the more I’m sure it can’t fail. Given the shortage of Catholic priests, once the thing is up and running we might even be able to an official deal with the Church; after all, this concept would go a long way towards easing their manpower problems. I can also see possibilities for offering different apps for other religions. You could do diet checks for Jews and Muslims (hell, their dietary restrictions are so similar, you’d only have to write the software once). You use your smartphone to read the bar code on a product in a supermarket and the app tells you whether it’s kosher or halal or not. The Muslim Comfort option finds your location automatically per GPS, calculates sunrise and sunset for your position, reminds you when it’s time to pray and even shows you the precise direction of Mecca. For males who want to convert to Judaism or Islam, I also see possibilities for instant circumcision extensions – they’re based on potato peelers, you just plug them into your phone, stick your dick in, the software measures circumference, thickness of foreskin, etc. and zing, whirr, you’re done (package includes local anaesthetic, disinfection solution, compresses and bandages).

The Buddhist, Hindu and Jain apps would offer karma risk calculation tables, for the Hindus there could be all kinds of extras like God of the Day, the Buddhists can call up appropriate sayings of the Dalai Lama … the possibilities are endless!

Get in touch with me, Mr. Obnoxious, we’ve got to start working on this idea straight away. Otherwise Steve Jobs will pick up on it and Apple will tie the whole market up …

Yours sincerely,

Frankie

Frankie Writes to Barack Obama

originally posted at Obnoxi.us, 20.05.2011

The editor of obnoxi.us sent me a message on Facebook a few days ago, in which he expressed the hope that Frankie would soon produce another rant. I’m afraid it’s not quite that easy, Chris.

Let me try to explain something about Frankie. He lives in my head – or, as he prefers to put it, he is forced to share my head with me. He doesn’t like this situation but, over the years, I’ve learned to keep him quiet and well under control and my life has been a lot more peaceful and harmonious as a result. But if he gets the feeling that I want something from him then he becomes impossible, for one of his many nasty characteristics is the pleasure he takes in making things difficult for me.

Our deal was that I would let him out occasionally on obnoxi.us if he agreed to leave me in peace otherwise. However, the approval he has experienced for his cloacal regurgitations here has given him a feeling of some power, and that is always dangerous. Asked about a new rant, he suddenly started to play the prima donna – he didn’t really feel like it, he was too relaxed and at peace with the world after the recent holiday I had, he’d have to consult with his agent (!), etc., etc. It’s all rubbish, of course – all he’s doing is his usual number of being plain ornery. After much cajoling from me, he expressed a wish to write a letter to the US president, welcoming him to Ireland on the occasion of his visit there next week. After a lot of soul-searching, I reluctantly agreed because it’s the only way I’m going to get some peace; Frankie sensed I didn’t like the idea and so became progressively more enthusiastic about it.

So here you have it, such as it is. I’m afraid it shows another aspect of his character; an opportunistic obsequious self-serving sliminess, which is so obviously insincere that it is sickening – at least to me. But that’s Frankie; you only have to read him – I have to live with the bastard …

Barry K. O’Bama

1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Washington

USA

Dear Mr. President,

I’d really rather address you as Barry, for aren’t you one of our own after all? ‘Tis very glad indeed we will be to be meeting you next Monday, when you drop in for a day to visit us here in the Emerald Isle and check out your Mammy’s roots in the traditional American manner. Sure, isn’t that something that all American presidents (with the exception of the Bushes) in recent times have done as an example for their countrymen to come and leave a few welcome dollars in poor auld Ireland? And ‘tis sorely they’re needed, me boy, sorely they’re needed!

Well do I remember those days in 1984 when your great predecessor, Ronnie Reagan, visited the ‘aul sod. Yer man [that’s the awful gobshite whose head I’m cursed to have to share – locked in he keeps me and only lets me out at the computer from time to time!], of course, was out protesting against him, shouting about the rights of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and other such bullshit, but then he’s always been a bleeding heart leftie pinko liberal. Me, I felt it was highly disrespectful of him to be treating the president of the greatest country on earth in such a disrespectful manner but I’ve little control over his thoughts and actions, more’s the pity.

Mind you, Barry, I don’t know if I’d have told you that three years ago, as you seemed to be a bit of a pinko liberal yourself during your election campaign. You cute hoor, you! You fooled them all didn’t you, making everyone forget that, when you get right down to it, you’re really a good old Chicago Democrat? Talk big at the elections and then do the deals in the back rooms. Ah, but the blood will out!

And speaking of blood, I’ve me own theory about your Irish origins. I’ve a strong suspicion about Irish ancestry on your father’s side too. You might want to ask around in Kenya about whether there were any Irish missionary priests around when your granny was a young one. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that’s where you got your gift of the gab.

Well, anyway, ‘tis just grand that you’re coming over to visit us and all, and don’t bother listening to any of the begrudgers who say that you’re only courting the Irish-American vote in the next election. Sure and didn’t they say the same about the sainted Ronnie, bless his senile demented memory?

We’re a very welcoming people, you know. Didn’t we welcome Lizzy Windsor this week and her being the Queen of England and all? And haven’t we welcomed all those American companies like Citicorp and Microsoft and Google and given them a lovely place to make all their profits with our nice low corporation taxes? (Though I have to complain about ungrateful gits like Intel and Dell who moved on elsewhere when things got a bit rough here and they found they could get cheaper deals elsewhere.)

Ah, Barry, we’re in a bad way now, to tell the truth. Sure, didn’t our asinine politicians go and give blanket unlimited guarantees to the Irish banks when the crisis started? Which meant that the poor aul Irish taxpayers are now left with a bill of $ 100 billion. And where did the Irish banks get the money and who is it owed to? Why, the big international banks, that’s who. And where are most of them? In Germany, that’s where.

And that’s where you could do us a favour – as a patriotic honorary Irishman. You could tell that German bitch, Merkel, to go a bit easier on us; she’d listen to you. Otherwise, you could suggest that Ireland might leave the euro zone and join the dollar zone. All we’d be doing really would be swapping Frankfurt for Wall Street, after all.

Now how’s that for an idea – Ireland as the 51^st state of the Union? It would kind of balance off Hawaii on the other side. We have an airport in Shannon which we hardly use at all these days which would make a lovely base for US forces on this side of the Atlantic. Sure and don’t we even speak the same language? And all those young Irish people looking for jobs wouldn’t need Green Cards to go to America any more!

The more I think of it, the more I’m sure it would be of great benefit to you. Wouldn’t the Irish all vote Democrat – all you’d have to do would be remind them of the Kennedys. I’ll tell you this, Barry, the only kind of tea parties we have in this country are those where we drink the stuff – and if you’re partial to it, we could always put a sup of whiskey into it too. Your re-election would be assured!

And then, in your second term you could make Bono Secretary of State …

Yours sincerely,

Frankie          

Picture retrieved from: http://www.broadsheet.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/o_bama.jpg

Frankie: Digging up the Pope

originally posted at Obnoxi.us, 02.05.2011


As I mentioned over on Attempted Essays, I’m on holidays at the moment and I hadn’t really been planning to post anything during this time. But Frankie was watching the news yesterday evening – before the reports of Bin Laden’s death broke – and he started to rattle the bars of his cage. So I’ve decided to let him out again in the hope that he’ll give me a bit of peace for the next fortnight. I’ve got to warn you, this is in very bad taste. What can you say, it’s Frankie …

Frankie So Ratzo finally went and did it yesterday. He proclaimed formally to the whole world that John Paul II is in heaven. As such, Catholics are now allowed to pray to him; though because he’s only “Blessed” JP and not yet “Saint” JP they’re only allowed to do it in Rome and in Poland. He’s now playing in the Polish and Italian national leagues and if he does well in the qualification stakes, he’ll finally make it to the Intercession World Cup at some stage in the future. Being a blessed is a kind of apprentice sainthood; you get to practice and polish up your interceding techniques with God on a local audience, you get time to plan another miracle and then, if you’ve done your job well, the pope promotes you to saint and you get to intercede for everyone world-wide.

This is some bizarre fucking business. I’m very open-minded myself but there was stuff going on here that’s in the seriously kinky area. I mean, the first thing they did was to dig the body up. Shades of Dawn of the Living Dead. They do it to check the odour of sanctity or something. Apparently, blesseds and saints don’t stink. So the corpse was present for the whole ceremony and now they’re going to entomb him in a better place in St. Peter’s so that more pilgrims can drop by and say hello. Gives him more practice in interceding, maybe a better choice of candidates for healing miracles.

Come to think of it, maybe the Catholic Church could use this to move with the times, set up a reality TV show and get some good publicity. Vatican’s Next Top Miracle. You get a group of incurably ill people, they all get to pray at the tomb of Blessed JP and then a jury of priests examines their stories and illnesses before giving the candidates for the next round a holy picture of JP II. The candidate to be eliminated doesn’t get a picture and dies. The winner of the series gets cured.

One of the high points of the ceremony was where the nun he had allegedly cured of Parkinson’s got to carry a phial of his blood to the altar. This made me wonder if the whole thing hadn’t been planned for a long time, even before he died. April 1 2005, JP is busy dying. A phone-call from Ratzo to the doctor:

“Ja, you haff to make sure you get some of ze blood … Ja, ve are going to need it … Was? It is voll mit bacteria? … Ja, ja, I understand, he has sepsis … Ok, vell, sterilise it or something – it has to keep for a few years anyway …”

In Poland they’ve been cutting up his cassocks for a couple of years now and passing the bits around as relics. It’s probably only going to be a matter of time before we see his underwear being offered for sale on EBay. With certificates of authenticity, signed by his laundry lady.

The man responsible for running the whole beatification business – it’s an official job in the Catholic Church and he’s got the title of postulator – has confirmed that JP wasn’t averse to a bit of S&M; apparently he was into flagellation. Like I said, seriously kinky business – first necrophilia, then whipping.

But then, one of his best friends was Fr. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the extreme right-wing Legionaries of Christ, who has recently been outed as a serial child-abuser and father of six children, some of whom he also abused. JP thought Maciel was hot shit because he was conservative and good at raising money for the church. Of course, he also thought Opus Dei was the greatest thing to happen to Catholicism since the Spanish Inquisition.

Robert Mugabe attended the ceremony in Rome yesterday. Vatican diplomatic protocol ensured that he was allowed to come, even if the EU bans him from travelling into its member states. But then, the Vatican is welcoming and forgiving to everyone – unless you’re gay, or a remarried divorced Catholic, or a woman using the pill, or a liberation theologian. Mugabe is a big fan of JP II. That makes sense.

Blessed John Paul II? If Jesus was alive, he’d be turning in his grave …

Frankie's First Rant

originally posted at Obnoxi.us, 29.04.2011

Most of what I write I publish on my other, primary blog, a place where I share my thoughts on all sorts of issues, from music to philosophy to current affairs and personal stuff. Over the time I’ve been doing this, I’ve developed a certain kind of persona – which is certainly me – reflective, balanced, polite. It’s me all right, but not all of me. There are certain other, darker, wilder parts of my personality which don’t really suit the persona of the author of Attempted Essays. He’s a cultivated, educated, middle-aged type. If he occasionally farts in public, he tries to cover it up, or looks embarrassed if somebody notices.

My Mr. Hyde is quite different. I think I’ll call him Frankie. Frankie will happily fart in public while simultaneously picking his nose and examining the boogers and if you don’t like it, well, that’s your fucking problem, isn’t it?

I have to warn you, I have no idea what he’s going to do when I let him out. I fear he may disgrace me, the way the characters of my great compatriot Brian O’Nolan, a.k.a. Flann O’Brian, a.k.a. Myles na gCopaleen frequently rebelled against their author and creator …

Frankie Jaysus, Hunt, will you cut out the fucking bullshit, for chrissakes? Bollocking on about obscure metafictional Irish authors. This is an American website, you don’t think any of those ignorant Yanks are going to understand what you’re on about, other than a few frustrated professors of English lit, oogling their nubile co-eds and wanking into their bed sheets at night?

Americans! Jesus wept! It takes some kind of arrogance to appropriate the name of two continents and use it to designate themselves. What about the Mexicans? Or the Canadians? Or the fucking Costa Ricans or Brazilians? Aren’t they just as much Americans too? The correct name for them is U.S. Americans, but they’re so bloody arrogant, they can’t even realise that this might be an issue for others.

Sweet land of liberty. Founded on an act of genocide and ethnic cleansing so monumental that Slobodan Milošević looked like a choirboy in comparison. But if you call it “Manifest Destiny” then it’s all right. It doesn’t even register. Oh yes, you can do a Dances with Wolves Hollywood catharsis but when you come out of the cinema in most of the USA the only Indian remnant around is the name of the state or the river. Dances with Wolves is a great example of the American Dream, Kevin Costner earning millions out of a sanitised noble savage guilt trip, with the guilt only lasting as long as it takes to drive your pickup to the next McDonalds.

So what about the Indians? Those who’ve wised up and aren’t lying drunk in their own piss on some reservation have finally achieved the ultimate revenge, making money on the white man’s addiction to gambling. Bury my heart at Wounded Knee? Yeah, and bury my money in the Foxwoods Casino.

This is a country where they pride themselves on being the best in the world – where there is a collective belief that their history which has made them the richest and most powerful country in the world proves this. Well, big deal, I say – it’s not all that difficult when you have the entire resources of half a continent to exploit in a few hundred years; from the coal mines of Kentucky to the California gold, from the lobster banks of Maine to the oil fields of the Gulf. And all that rich farming land too, once you’ve dealt with a few minor annoyances like Indians, buffaloes and forests – from sea to shining fucking sea, even if some of that shining has been from the sun’s rays scintillating on spilled oil recently.

Ah well, no matter, it’s always been the American attitude that, if you break something, hell, you just move on and find something else. That’s what the frontier’s for. Go west, young man, and leave the ghost town and the Dust Bowl behind. Of course, even back in the thirties that didn’t really work any more as Okies like the Joads discovered. Brand new state, gonna treat you great! So what do you do when you run out of frontier? Why, you set up an empire and take over the world! And if you break things there, like in Vietnam or Iraq, you just move right on there too. And don’t you just love the smell of napalm in the morning?

Oh, it’s God’s country all right, where at the age of nineteen you can vote, and join the marines and see the world, meet interesting people and kill them, and get executed for committing murder but where you can’t go out and buy a drink. From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Semper fi, but this time let’s do Tripoli with drones, it’s neater. Oorah!

But what can you expect from a country where nearly half the citizens still believe that God created the world in six days? And that he then planted the fossil records which prove otherwise – as some kind of test. They haven’t learned anything since the Scopes Monkey Trial, for chrissakes! This is a country where millions apparently refuse to accept that their President was born in the country, despite incontrovertible documentary evidence to the contrary – but this has nothing to do with the fact that he happens to be a nigger with Hussein as his middle name. And these are the same people who claim the right to arm themselves to the teeth in case their neighbour tries to break into their house.

When I think about it, if I had fucking neighbours like that, I’d want a gun too.

I think I’ll give Charlie Sheen a call and ask him if he feels like a night on the town …