THE SPACE SHILLELAGH

From the artisans of Country Wicklow, Ireland there arose a worldwide fame for their fine and especially sturdy oaks and blackthorns, and the walking sticks, clubs and other carved cellulostic weaponry fashioned therefrom. European importation of the potato by Spanish conquistadors (proxy Hibernian terrorists ripping livelihoods from poxy Peruvians' palsied hands) fueled the Catholic Irish to abundantly achieved fruition. The Irish Potato Famine bade them spread their numbers to all corners of the world that they might engender the undying enmity of all races, tribes, and indigenes. They found it meet to pack a shillelagh or three for use as appropriate, and were not disappointed. Little did they suspect that God fancied Himself/Herself/Itself the truest of Irishmen, and was not above giving the Earth an occasional thump upside the head as appropriate in the traditional manner - especially after a long session with His/Her/Its bottle.

God's collection of divine shillelaghs was impressive for the variety of implements in the celestial lockers, and for the craftsmanship expended in the generous application of exotic metal in their multidimensional ornamentation. The universe birthed containing a fireball of radiation and some helium-fouled hydrogen. Supernovae are the quantum mechanical cataclysms of senescent stars spewing their synthesized and accumulated heavy nuclides throughout space. Gold and platinum have gauche melting points of 1064 and 1772 degrees Celsius, and their corruption by aqua regia wholly disqualifies them from favor. When this planet was smote in a fit of holy cafard, iridium boiled beyond white hot at 4130 degrees as the Earth's crust was walloped and its iron core rang like a bell to the silly delight of a well-potted Hairy Thunderer.

The Earth was young when a gang of heterotrophic unicellular protists invaded the turf of a rival gang to put them into eternal bondage as mitochondria. CLANG! Other locals were coopted into chloroplasts, the better for autotrophs to spew poisonous oxygen at the anaerobic competition and realize the benefits of oxidative phosphorylation, CLANG! Collectives of heretofore rival archebacteria formed for purposes of differentiation and the common good. CLANG! Soft-bodied organisms learned to order hematite, silica, aragonite and calcite, and hydroxyapatite in proteinaceous molecular templates to form structural matrices and shells CLANG! and skeletons CLANG! Reptiles strode the globe conquering land, sea and air as their hot-blooded bulks relentlessly pounded the ground. God raised a flagon of Old Ambrosia and a newly iridium-chased shillelagh, took a long swig and a mighty backswing, and CLANG! Goddamn polluting byproducts of non-equilibrium thermodynamics don't give a deity an eon's rest!

The bad news is that a certain intemperately bibulous and timelessly belligerent carrot-topped Cosmic Crusader has been once again nipping at the hair of the dog to hallowed excess. All our mucking about with EMF emissions from radio, television, microwave relays, satellite up- and down-links, cellular phones, and radar has inflated a 60 light year radiused cacophonic bubble replete with trashy Hanna-Barbera animation and tooth-grating radiofrequency noise. God's grasp of eudaemonia slips even as we speak, 900,000 cubic light years of pandemonic brouhaha twisting the incorporeal consciousness and abrading its most sensitive innermost heart . Sacrosanct lips repeatedly seek succor in uisce beatadh only to find a whiskey sour. A locker was breached in 1987 when the Magellanic Cloud suddenly illuminated the Southern Hemisphere's sky. Iridium fresh and hot from a blue-white supernova nuclear forge floods into interstellar space, to be collected and cherished and wrought to a Great Purpose.

You may venture forth under a winter's sky to contemplate Betelgeuse's malevolent orange glare from Orion's right shoulder or Sirius' frantic photonic scream tailing deep into the ultraviolet from Canis Major. You may stroll into a midsummer's night to dreamily view Vega, Altair, and Deneb as they transform their nuclear substance into a radiative interstellar hell. All the while you goggle at the pretty sky lights a weapon of dread and majesty is accelerating upon its course. It blasts through curvatures of time and space reflecting the ominous hurt of its wielder. A magnificently etched and intaglioed blackthorn has past the top of its arc, gigatons of wrought iridium embellishing a shillelagh that would do the denizens of County Wicklow proud.

Who will remember that fifteen billion years into reality's tenure Wrists that were not wrists were poised to break, delivering yet another sullen notice to those goddamn noisy Terrans that God is not... CLANG!

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