Just noticed that scfi.com have the full text of Thomas M. Disch’s classic short story, Descending, in their archive.
It is magnificent; a story which starts off as innocent and playful as a kitten with a ball of yarn but soon turns into a syphilitic eight-cocked demon with an utter absence of empathy in its eyes that wants nothing more than to make you pay for all the awful things that you’ve done. At least, that’s the mood I took away from it. Your experiences may be entirely different.
Sneak-peek of John Cahill’s pencils for Bad Static, our five page strip that’ll be appearing in Something Wicked.
Out in November, I think.
Impossible as it may be to beleive after seeing John’s brilliant rendering of a loveable old geezer, the story doesn’t contain even a single mention of Werther’s Originals.
It has everything the regular Ennis reader expects from a comic: murder, cannibalism, infanticide, nuclear explosions and, of course, copious amounts of buggery. And Burrows’ art is, as usual, brilliant.
Indispensable advice for the gent-about-town from Pearson’s Magazine, 11 (January 1901), 35-44.
E.W. Barton-Wright explains a variety of advanced techniques including:
No. 4. — How to Defend Yourself, without Running any Risk of being Hurt, if you are carrying only a Small Switch in your Hand, and are Threatened by a Man with a very Strong Stick.
No. 6. A very Safe Way to Disable a Boxer who Attempts to Rush You when You are Armed with a Stick.
and
No. 10. One of the Best Ways of Knocking Down a Man in a General Scrimmage, when there is not Room to Swing a Stick Freely.
Went along to the Artbots exhibition at Trinity’s Science Gallery yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. There were fifteen works in all. Took a couple of snaps on my phone’s crappy camera.
Pictured below is What It Is Without the Hand That Wields It by Riley Harmon. I really liked the idea behind this one.
When players shoot each other in a live on-line game of Counter-strike, the valves release a dribble of fake blood. You can just see the Counter-strike screen projected onto the wall at the left of the photo.
~
My favourite work of the show was this, Untitled by Chris Kaczmarek.
Four solar panels send power to capacitors which then dump the energy into small motors causing the eggs to pull apart, when the power is spent they spring back together producing an unexpectedly loud and intensely satisfying clicking noise.
“From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries. The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time. The diaries end in 1942, three years into the conflict.
What impression of Orwell will emerge? From his domestic diaries (which start on 9th August), it may be a largely unknown Orwell, whose great curiosity is focused on plants, animals, woodwork, and – above all – how many eggs his chickens have laid. From his political diaries (from 7th September), it may be the Orwell whose political observations and critical thinking have enthralled and inspired generations since his death in 1950. Whether writing about the Spanish Civil War or sloe gin, geraniums or Germany, Orwell’s perceptive eye and rebellion against the ‘gramophone mind’ he so despised are obvious.”
Went to see Tom Waits on Friday night in the Phoenix Park. Sweet-fucking-Jesus-having-a-wank-up-on-the-cross was it amazing. He came on at 8.25pm and played until after 11. Just brilliant with a nice mix of old numbers and his later brand of insane, grinding, fucked up noise.
Found this footage on youtube, sound quality is pretty awful.
When he played Tom Traubert’s Blues the audience creamed their jeans (even the women!).
I subscribe to a great site called pulp of the day. Every day they put up a new pulp magazine cover.
I love this stuff.
.
.
These next two aren’t from pulp of the day, just found somewhere on the net.
Tales To Astonish issue 27 – January 1962. The first appearance of Hank Pym/Ant Man – soon to star in his own movie from Marvel. Cover and interior pencils by the great Jack Kirby.
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Crime SuspenStories issue 22 – May 1954. Cover by Johnny Craig. This cover brought a lot of trouble to EC, there were claims that they were corrupting the youth of America which lead to calls for comics to be censored. The great thing about it was that this was a censored cover. Before publication they sliced the bottom inch off of the original which showed strands of bloody muscle and sinew hanging from the woman’s neck!
My brother Gerry sent me this great video of Seasick Steve calling out a guy in the audience for being a cunt.
We were at this gig. It was in Tripod, which must be the worst venue in the whole of fucking Dublin (actually, no, it ties with The Academy on Middle Abbey Street – they are both entirely shit, but in subtly different ways).
Tripod is basically a nightclub that sometimes has live music. This means that whenever a good band or act comes to play, you can be sure that at east 30% of the audience are there only because of the nightclub vibe.
It was Seasick Steve for fucks sake and every second person at the gig was dressed in their best clubbing gear – I saw dozens of feather haired pricks wearing fitted black shirts with white collar and cuffs (always the hallmark of a complete cunt) actually standing with their backs to the stage while they talked really loudly about whatever big-titted retard they happened to be polishing their wilted, poisoned cocks to that week.
We saw one ridiculously short twat actually standing on his tip-toes at the bar beside a much taller girl. What did he think, that if stood on his tip-toes for the rest of his life she might never notice.
I’ve no problem with people who want to get dressed up and jump about like a bunch of epileptic fuckwits and wave glowsticks around like a fifteen year old at his first Scooter concert . . . just don’t come to a fucking blues gig to do it.
So, that’s why Tripod is shit.
The Academy is shit because it used to be called HQ and back then it was the best venue in town – just a really fucking great place to watch a gig – great beer, cool crowd of people who really cared about seeing the gig and who knew to shut the fuck up when the band was on. I saw some great acts there: Buddy Guy, Peter Green, John Paul Jones playing old Led Zep tracks on his eight string bass, Robert Plant and The Priory Of Brion, Big Bill Morganfield.
But of course they had to fuck with it and rip out all the seats so they could fit more in and rearrange it and these days it’s just a complete clusterfuck with really bad acoustics.
Gigs these days seem to be full of people who don’t like music.
I was at an Australian Pink Floyd gig in the Olympia a few years back and when we got there we realised that they had sold most of the balcony seats to some corporate event, there were hundreds of middle-aged pricks in dinner jackets all standing around drinking wine from plastic glasses. They all sat down then (we were completely surrounded by them) and spent the next two hours taking the piss out of the music and rolling their eyes and having a chat.
Who are these people? Where do the come from? And why don’t they fuck off with themselves?
