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Environmentalism has become the dominant ideology of our age

It is an ideology of limits, restraint and caution. Humans are having an impact on our climate, that’s pretty clear. But environmentalism has turned into an extremely illiberal moral crusade. Read the rest of this article here.

Lotion Hitler

It’s the Final Solution to dry skin. (From Reddit)

And the 2010 Flat Lake Festival table quiz champions are…

Yeah, we’re Mayo’s answer to the Royal Tenenbaums. Except without the personality flaws. Table quiz glory aside, there were many, many highlights at this gloriously dog-eared festival: Barry McGuigan’s nifty Footloose. Livin Dred Theatre’s mightily impressive production of Pat McCabe’s Emerald Germs of Ireland. Jinx Lennon. Hell, even the programme notes were entertaining. (“The legendary Toblerones are back – fatter, balder and poorer than ever!”) Read the rest of this entry »

Published: Mongrel magazine, August 2006

Introduction to the ‘Revenge’ issue

“An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind”
Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth (1929)

“Somewhere… somehow… someone’s gonna pay!”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Commando (1985)

ON JULY 12, Hizbollah ambushed an Israeli army unit on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Three I.D.F. soldiers were killed and two captured. In retaliation, the Israelis launched a devastating month-long assault on southern Lebanon that killed hundreds and left much of the country’s infrastructure in ruins. As the region knuckled down for yet another bloody round of reprisal and counter-reprisal, the New York Times asked Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert to explain the psychology that fuels such protracted strife. (He Who Cast The First Stone Probably Didn’t, July 24.) Read the rest of this entry »

Miscellaneous Amusing Items I’ve Come Across #40

From the cover of this week’s Western People. Jesus Christ. What next? Drive-by shootings in the night!?

Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women…

…Which, you’d have to say, is a poor showing for a city of that size. But I jest. Tomorrow is the birthday of the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. I used to read Lorca all the time when I was a teenager. He remains, alongside Rimbaud, one of the few non-English language poets whose work has really meant a lot to me. After the jump, something you may or may not know that he wrote, brilliantly translated into English by a man who may or may not have been a bit of a dick at 29. Read the rest of this entry »

You know the way life isn’t fair, right?

It’s Aidan. I might have guessed. “You know the way life isn’t fair..?” he asks. As opening gambits go, this is one of his better efforts. (The last time he rang with bad news, he said “You were never too fond of that coffee table, were you?”)

Immediately, my mind races through all sorts of horrific possibilities. Aidan has run over my dog. Aidan has impregnated my sister. Aidan has murdered my pregnant sister and run over my dog while making his getaway… It’s almost a relief when he coughs up the truth. Read the rest of this article.

San Berdoo Sunburn (2004)

One of my friends admits he can’t listen to the Eagles of Death Metal any more since he found out they’re a bunch of rabid right-wing Republicans. Try as he might, he just couldn’t enjoy their music after that. Personally, I don’t give a shit if Jesse Hughes is in the Ku Klux Klan. This track kicks ass… Read the rest of this entry »

Never in the field of tabloid hackery has a reporter stooped so low for so little

Admittedly, I’ve seen sleazier tabloid stories in my time. (The Sunday Express’ Dunblane massacre survivors hit job is the absolute nadir.) But what’s really remarkable about this piece, by Irish Daily Mirror “showbiz” correspondent Paul Martin, is how low the reporter is willing to go for so very little. Read the rest of this entry »

This is Funny

Absolutely nothing to add here. But, aesthetically, I really hate posting consecutive images without text. So I’m going to waffle a bit until I’ve generated two short paragraphs of meaningless text to break them up. My grandmother and her friends used to do this thing at wakes where they would freestyle for hours on end, riffing about different people they knew, and how they were all related to each other.

Do you know Seamie Lyons? I do, from Kilmovee, he’d be a first cousin of the Snees would he? That’s right, is there one of the Snees, now that I think of it, married to a guard out in Glann? There is, yeah, and that fella has an uncle on his mother’s side would be on of the Neachtans from Culnacleha, a quantity surveyor. Do you know? I do. They have a son a priest in America, don’t they? What’s this his name is again? And so on, ad infinitum. Thank you.