The Grype

When we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly into Ringsend. The day had grown sultry, and in the windows of the grocers’ shops musty biscuits lay bleaching. We bought some biscuits and chocolate which we ate sedulously as we wandered through the squalid streets where the families of the f...

ARGYLE SOCKS Dressing The Toddler

We came then near the river. We spent a long time walking about the noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of cranes and engines and often being shouted at for our immobility by the drivers of groaning carts. It was noon when we reached the quays and, as all the...

ARGYLE SOCKS Stress Eating

That night I slept badly. In the morning I was first-comer to the bridge as I lived nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near the ashpit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came and hurried along the canal bank. It was a mild sunny morning in the first week of June. I sat up on the...

“This page or this page? This page? Now, Dillon, up! ‘Hardly had the day’…. Go on! What day? ‘Hardly had the day dawned’…. Have you studied it? What have you there in your pocket?” Everyone’s heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and everyone assumed an innocent face....

It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel. Every evening after school we met in his back garden and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the idler, held the loft of...

She laid a finger against her nose and frowned: then she continued: “But still and all he kept on saying that before the summer was over he’d go out for a drive one fine day just to see the old house again where we were all born down in Irishtown and take me and Nannie with him. If we could...

We blessed ourselves and came away. In the little room downstairs we found Eliza seated in his arm-chair in state. I groped my way towards my usual chair in the corner while Nannie went to the sideboard and brought out a decanter of sherry and some wine-glasses. She set these on the table and...

As I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter’s words and tried to remember what had happened afterwards in the dream. I remembered that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique fashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some land where the customs were...

I crammed my mouth with stirabout for fear I might give utterance to my anger. Tiresome old red-nosed imbecile! It was late when I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as a child, I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his unfinished sentences. In the dark of my...

I knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news had not interested me. My uncle explained to old Cotter. “The youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a great deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.” “God have mercy on his soul,”...

For those who fondly remember the Grype's brief political career last year: You know that whole Trump strategy of "promise to do outrageous untrue things to simultaneously piss off AND suck up to BOTH sides of the political fence"? Yeah, we already did that one. http://thecrackedlookingglass.com/wp-content/gallery/grypes/S00245.jpg

The Gun Control argument continues, and as always it polarizes the political landscape as various pundits and party policymakers mine it for more juicy controversy to feed their PR machines. I have read the Federalist Papers and have studied James Madison’s writings on the topic, in the...

The Minimum Wage debate continues to attract attention, despite the fact that it’s technically already a done deal; it must ultimately be raised. Everyone knows that. Yet big business continues to fight it tooth and nail. Interestingly, for many decades the prevailing wisdom (backed by...

Religion versus Science, Part Two: Look: it’s pretty easy. Science is a means by which we attempt to classify, measure, and understand those things which we currently have the ability to measure, at any given point in time. Metaphysics— including religion— is a means by which we attempt to ...

With The Pope’s™ recent visit to the United States now over, I can’t help but notice the entire country embroiled in an angry spiritual tizzy over who’s “right” and “wrong” in accordance with the spiritual plane. Atheists and religious folks of all s...