I had an afternoon to kill in Dublin last week so went along to the WB Yeats exhibition at the National Library.

Some remarkable objects on display…

Samples of Yeats’s automatic writing.

Samples from his notebooks.

His elemental weapons, made while an “Adeptus Minor” in The Hermetic Order Of The Golden Dawn. Pentacle, Dagger, Wand and Cup.

Yeats was a member alongside Aleister Crowley (before Crowley was more or less chucked out following a great power struggle). Crowley fancied himself as a bit of a poet too and looking up my old copy of his Confessions has yielded some excellent quotes about Yeats…

“I remember one curious incident in connection with this volume. I had a set of paged proofs in my pocket one evening, when I went to call on W. B. Yeats. I had never thought much of his work; it seemed to me to lack virility. I have given an extended criticism of it in The Equinox (vol. I No. II, page 307). However, at that time I should have been glad to have a kindly word from an elder man. I showed him the proofs accordingly and he glanced through them. He forced himself to utter a few polite conventionalities, but I could see what the truth of the matter was.

I had by this time become fairly expert in clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairsentience. But it would have been a very dull person indeed who failed to recognize the black, billious rage that shook him to the soul. I instance this as a proof that Yeats was a genuine poet at heart, for a mere charlatan would have known that he had no cause to fear an authentic poet. What hurt him was the knowledge of his own incomparable inferiority.

I saw little of him and George Moore. I have always been nauseated by pretentiousness; and the Celtic revival, so-called, had all the mincing, posturing qualities of the literary Plymouth Brother.”

and…

“There was one literary light, W. B. Yeats, a lank dishevelled demonologist who might have taken more pains with his personal appearance without incurring the reproach of dandyism…”

I’m almost certain I remember reading that Yeats later described Crowley as a “poet of merit.” But I can’t find the quote.

You can read one of Crowley’s earliest collections of poetry, White Stains, published under the pseudonym George Archibald Bishop and is full of thinly veiled erection metaphors like “My Gigantic Charms” here.

Our story “Intergalactic Bank Robbing Teenage Space Aliens On The Run” appears in issue 12.

Story by me, art by Jim Boswell.

Lots of other good stuff in there too!

Got my comp copies of the Spring ’09 issue of The Stinging Fly today.

128 pages packed full of top quality fiction and poetry including my short story The Profligacy Show (in which someone pisses themselves, so, might be worth a punt for all the urine fetishists out there), plus poems by Knut Ødegård, and a short story by Booker Prize winner James Kelman.

Only seven euros . . . bargain!

Detective Comics #30 – August 1939.  Fred Guardineer cover.

MAN IN SUIT: HEY FELLA! YA WANNA BUY A KNIFE? I’M A KNIFE SALESMAN, SEE? ONLY IN TOWN FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW. THEN I FLY OUT TO THE WINDY CITY! THESE KNIVES ARE GREAT I TELL YA! I CAN DO YOU A DEAL FOR ONE DAY ONLY. TWO FOR THE PRICE OF – –

MAN IN SUIT: GAAHHHHH! MY FACE! MY PERFECT SALESMAN’S FAAAAACE!!!!!

Northern Haunts is a horror anthology containing 100 700-word short stories, including my contribution, Bad Place.

It’s available now on amazon.

Proceeds go to the American Cancer Society.

Fantastic Four #39 – June 1965.  Jack Kirby cover.

JOHNNY: FOR FUCK’S SAKE DD, WHERE ARE YOU GOING? DOCTOR DOOM IS RIGHT BEHIND US! ARE YOU FUCKING BLI–? OOOPS!

SUE: ->TCHT TCHT<- JOHNNY!

BEN: I’VE HAD UP TA HERE WITH THAT PUNK-ASS KID. HE AIN’T GOT NO RESPECT FOR HIS ELDERS, I TELLS YA! IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME!

DAREDEVIL: SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LOUD YOU’RE BEING???

Some kindly soul has put up several old clips of Jeff Lint’s seminal but often misunderstood cartoon Catty and the Major on youtube.

My first exposure to Lint was around fifteen years ago when a work colleague loaned me a tattered, weather beaten copy of Lint’s début novel One Less Bastard, along with a “like new” copy of 1966’s Prepare To Learn.

And learn I did.

My friend refused to take them back, and that was fine by me.

Unfortunately, both books were lost in a fire some years ago.

January, 1966.  Frank Frazetta art.

“GRRNNNT!!! FEEL MY BLADE YOU FILTHY NAZI PIG-DOG!! ”

“AAAIIIEEEEE!!!!!”

Shove over Iskanders, with your surly, disagreeable staff and your “if you’re not so pissed you haven’t already shat yourself, you can’t come in” door policy.  Last time I was in there it was about half past two in the morning and there was an English guy with his forehead split open, blood pissing down all over his face, who was insisting on having a kebab before his equally inebriated “mates” brought him to wherever it was they were going to bring him to.  Not the hospital, obviously. Probably to Tripod or some other equally disheartening back-alley whore house.  He got served, not an eyelid was batted.

I admit that I was drunk too, but in a reserved and charming kind of way.

Mezza on Parliament Street (right opposite The Turk’s Head) now officially have the best kebabs in Dublin.  Official because I say they’re the best kebabs I’ve ever had, and I’m a man who likes his kebabs.

Look at the size of this Lamb Shawarma.

The picture doesn’t do it justice.  That pile of exquisitely seasoned lamb is almost two and a half inches tall.  That works out at easily over half a pound of slaughtered and slowly-cooked infant sheep.

I had to abandon the salad a third of the way through and just concentrate on the lamb.  I still wasn’t able to finish it.  Then I got the meat sweats.

A friend of mine posits that the reason Iskanders is always crammed with belligerent drunks is due to simple muscle memory.  They’ve been there before and so they go there again.  On auto-pilot.  A bit like the zombies in Dawn Of The Dead, only not as fresh or bright-eyed or intelligent.  Or as well-dressed.  Also, zombies, as a rule, don’t tend to accuse you of skipping the queue before you’ve even had a chance to join it.

So, take my advice.  Try Mezza.  That’s Mezza, for kebabs.

Jim Boswell has started work on Project Luna: 1947.

Here’s a tiny peek at what he’s been up to . . .

I especially like the fact that the fellow on the right somehow ended up looking like HP Lovecraft.  This makes me strangely happy.

More images over on Jim’s blog.

Here’s John Cahill’s spiffing inked version of the panel I posted a couple of days ago – top cropped off so as not to give the game away with word balloons and what not.

I’ve been reading about WWII while I’m writing Project Luna: 1947, which is how I found this (yes, I am using the Pete Townsend “research” defence).

The Swastika Laundry, Dublin. Didn’t shut down until the late sixties.

Picture from carlbphotos.

Wikipedia.

“In Dublin, Ireland, a laundry company known as the Swastika Laundry existed for many years in Dartry and Ballsbridge (both on the river Dodder) on the south side of the city. It was founded in 1888 as the Dublin Laundry Company. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the company’s customers were concerned about the company’s name. Accordingly, it was changed to “Swastika Laundry (1912) Ltd”.

The Laundry’s tall chimneystack was emblazoned with a large white Swastika, which was clearly visible from the surrounding streets. The name and logo eventually disappeared when the laundry was absorbed into the Spring Grove company.”

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.

You can read it here.

Disch shot himself in his New York appartment on July 4th, 2008.

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.

Project Luna: 1947 will be an 88 page original graphic novel written by me with art by Jim Boswell, who I worked with a little while ago on a four page sci-fi strip for Futurequake.

Contracts with Markosia are signed and we’re good to go.  Above is Jim’s first mock-up cover, a try out as he gets to grips with the characters, sorts out their hair colours and builds, designs the ships and what not, and it looks rather splendid.

Jim’s a great artist and I’m really looking forward to seeing his pages as they come in.

So, some good news to end the year on.  Who knows . . . next year might not be complete shit after all.