Saints & Shitters IV: Citizens On Patrol

Every now and again, to avoid being pigeonholed as a callous, rant-happy, multi-purpose contrarian tosspot, I try to use my blog as a platform to give a little something back to society.

Regular readers are already quite aware that there are some sick people out there in the world; vagabond miscreants who never venture without their illicit tools, lest they be granted an opportunity to clandestinely destroy something beautiful in the world...

...Well, there’s at least one such person anyway, and admittedly to date the havoc he has wreaked has been limited to marker scrawls in public toilets, but nevertheless, I have made it my business to document the evils perpetrated in the name of this ‘God’ chap, and provide support to those terrorized by this twisted individual.

In the eight months since the last update, there have been two confirmed sightings.

I was having a pleasant lunch one afternoon some months ago in Bean-A-Tí (Little Catherine St., Limerick) with my friend Dermot (who has previously contributed to this noblest of endeavours), when he excused himself to go to the bathroom. Two minutes later, he was showing me a picture he had just taken on his mobile phone:


The picture made my stomach churn, and I felt like a detective chasing a serial killer who had just found the latest victim dumped in his sitting room. The uneasy feeling has yet to subside, and I haven't been in the place since.

The trail went cold for another few months, when all of a sudden, Vinnie commented on my last appeal for more information:

I'm after seeing this written in a bus shelter just outside the Shannon Industrial Estate, I'll try and get a picture to confirm

True to his word, the e-mail came a few days later:

To: Sully
From: Vinnie
Subject: A Priest Strikes Again

These pictures are taken in two bus stops outside Shannon Industrial Estate....the plot thickens!!

The plot thickens indeed! This is the first documented sighting of the infamous scrawl outside of a public toilet. Our perpetrator is getting bold, but now we can start trying to piece together some information about him. For instance:

• He spends a lot of time in public toilets (possibly a medical condition?)

• He uses public transportation (note he has been at that bus stop more than once – given the old faded scrawl in the fourth image)

• He goes through a lot of permanent markers (note the pattern on the third picture which suggests that the ink had to be coaxed out of the pen)

It’s also entirely possible that he’s affiliated with the church that was putting up the flyers at the bus stop – Vinnie (or anyone for that matter), if you’re there again, find out the name of the church, and see if the text includes the famous phrase! I might even call them up and see if I can get any information out of them (recording it for your amusement of course, dear readers).

If you work in a stationery shop that’s near a bus stop and one of your regular customers is an incontinent priest who seems to dine exclusively on permanent markers, let me know! Your days are numbered, A Priest!

Saints and Shitters III: Triple Trouble

If you're not familiar with the Saints and Shitters series, you should check out Part 1 and Part 2 before continuing.

It's hard to believe, but five months have passed since the last documented sighting of a rather specific type of of vandalism.

"The Bible is the word of God - A Priest". So far this message has been found scrawled in permanent marker inside of mensrooms in Limerick, Clare and Galway.

Today, I present the latest confirmed victim of this evangelical-epidemic; the Limerick City Library's male toilets. After receiving a tip from (one-time Sully's Blog contributor) Dermot, I called over to the library and jumped into the cubicle closest to the door. The dim light made for a crappy camera-phone picture, but serves to illustrate what was there. Just underneath the coat hanger was some misguided bastard's slogan; a specimen that matched the graphology of the previous ones exactly:


I moved onto the next cubicle, to see yet again, the meaningless collection of words underneath the coat hanger:


In the third and final cubicle, I found the most intriguing example of the toilet-dwelling priest's handiwork:


Note that "Priest" has been crossed off twice, and replaced with "pervert" and "liar". Obviously this means, that like most criminals, the author of this endeavour has returned to the crime scene - at least three times! His cubicle-debating skills are astonishing - note how he has cleverly drawn a line underneath his signature, effectively separating himself from the name-calling underneath... Well played sir.

Despite being crossed out twice and replaced with a slur against his character, this man has returned each time to insist that he is - in fact, a priest. That's one pathetic persistent vandalising clergyman!

Dear reader, do your part to report these happenings! Next year I will be launching the Committee for Secular Cubicles to tackle this issue with the fervour it deserves... Until then - let me know of any crapper-based religious shenanigans via the comments!

Saints and Shitters, Part II

Some three months ago or so, I posted about a person, possibly a priest, possibly a mere mortal masquerading as one, who took it upon themselves to scrawl Christian-propaganda in male public toilets throughout the country!

Two more sightings have since come in, one from my friend, (proprietor of Ireland's Eoghan), who told me that he found it in the (rather swanky) Café on the Row in Limerick. Apologies for the poor quality of the mobile-phone picture, but one can clearly see that the handwriting is unmistakably similar to the other documented incidents.

Regular readers should be acquainted with Dermot, who snapped this picture "in the men's bathroom in the Shopping Centre in Shannon that's on the outskirts of the town". I'm not familiar with it myself, but I am with the handwriting this fine specimen:

Dermot was amazed at the ballsiness of this scrawl, as it is not on the inside of a private cubicle, but on the door as one exits the bathroom. He speculated that to have such access, the perpetrator would have to be a cleaner - this flies in the face of the fact that our perp is extremely mobile, having left his mark in the counties of Galway, Limerick, and Clare, and I suspect that there are many more that we haven't stumbled across yet!

He proposed I appeal for female readers of this blog to write in (preferably with photo evidence) and let me know if they have encountered any such messages whilst powdering their nose (as we all know that a woman's bathroom consists of nothing more than a large mirror they all fix themselves in front of, as women have no excretory needs whatsoever).

This whole thing is bizarre. I have appointed myself as the authority on the subject, and will be determining which instances of Biblically-driven petty crime are genuine, based on the graphological evidence.

I'm currently of the belief that this is an exclusive fixture of male bathrooms, but why? Why are men privileged with having access to the information that the Bible is in fact, the word of God? Other than the fact that the Bible is a tome of blatant misogyny, of course...

One thing that cannot be disputed is that this person, whether slightly misguided or outright insane (my money is on the latter), is the bane of cleaning ladies throughout the many bathrooms of Ireland. I can picture a dedicated sub-culture of cleaning personnel, who live in fear every day that some incognito clergyman will strike with his enchanted permanent marker that is impervious to any man-made cleaning technology. I can vividly see the ashen faces and hear the tearful conversations between the cleaners at their conventions – “I’ve seen it happen to others, but you never expect it to happen to you!” they weep at one another in quiet corners.

That’s what I’m about dear readers. It’s time to give something back to the community.

Let’s get this bastard, before he gets someone you care about.

Saints and Shitters

Here’s another strange one for you, if you’re interested. Remember those Google-ads I told you about earlier? The ones in which filthy Christians were paying big bucks to Google to publicise their shockingly poor websites pushing their monotheistic agenda?

Well, there’s a more ‘grassroots’ approach that you’ll find in public bathroom cubicles up and down the country, and I’m incredibly curious as to where they come from. Here’s an example I found in a restaurant called ‘Mother Hubbard’s’ in Oranmore, facing the user as he sits upon the throne.



“The Bible is the Word of God - A Priest”

I’m sure you’ve seen these before, such is their diffusion throughout the country (I’ve yet to conduct a survey of bathrooms abroad, but I’ll bear it in mind during my next trip Stateside), but how is this getting around so much? Are the priests of Ireland issued with a permanent marker upon graduation from their seminary? Do they believe that man is at his most philosophical whilst exercising his sphincter? Does the thick olfactory fog of human fecal matter act as a catalyst for profound metaphysical thought?

I may be missing the point somewhat - it’s possible that such messages are the richly ironic fruit of graffiti-happy pranksters, and I have unwittingly exposed my ignorance on such matters.

Not sure if you’ll believe this part, so bear with me; I was in a Subway restaurant on O’Connell St., Limerick just yesterday, and I found the following in their bathroom.



I was just about to make a joke about ‘having the lab analyse the hand-writing samples against each other’, when I actually had a second look.



Come on now! You can’t tell me that these two look incredibly similar - ridiculously so, even! Look at the penmanship! Look at the way the sentence is formatted! I will be so bold as to say that these were definitely done by the same person.

I will admit that is is a staggering coincidence that I happened across two of these in the space of as many days, but I guarantee you that I am not responsible for either of them, in case you’re worried I’m planning some elaborate April Fool’s joke or something.

I want to hear you opinion on this in the comments section. (First person to say ‘God put them there’ gets a clout on the ear)