What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?

A question worth asking on a regular basis.

Comradely kisses and manly handshakes (from all except one of us) for all our readers on May Day.

A Picnic in Phoenix Park. How Nice.

Celebrate May Day - Dublin anarchist picnic (Sunday)

The 5th annual anarchist picnic will be joining forces with the
monthly Anti-Authoritarian-Assembly for a day of outdoors food, fun, music
and political discussion. (with a back up plan in case of bad weather)

Meet at the front gates of Phoenix park (Parkgate Street.) on Sunday 30th
April at 2pm.

This event is brought to you by the Anarchist Youth Collective and the
May 1st branch of the Workers Solidarity Movement

just fabulous

pointless pete wylie quiz

i created this quiz for my mates on the music board i frequent.

i know you're all dying to have a go.

you don't have to give a real email address if you don't want to, by the way. just make one up.

Felix for Alex

Philip K. Dick's Head Is Missing

Well worth a read is this surreal story from Wired.

"That would be a really strange ending," Hanson says, "if the head of a Philip K. Dick robot wound up being exploded by another robot."

Be on the lookout.

Empire of the Sensible

Yesterday's Guardian on John Betjeman's recording career, including a list of other author-musician collaborations (my favourites being William Burroughs and Sonic Youth, the Mekons and Kathy Acker).

Must Have Been a Shiraz

The April 3 issue of People Weekly magazine carries a story on the side-effects of the sleeping pill Ambien, including people driving, painting, and shagging in their sleep.

"Last July 11, British painter Sean Joyce, then 38, boarded a US Airways flight in Charlotte, N.C., with a tablet of Ambien his mother had slipped him for the long trip back to London. After taking the pill and drinking some wine, Joyce, normally mild-mannered, ripped off his shirt, threatened to kill other passengers and head-butted a flight attendant. The flight had to be diverted to Boston, where Joyce was led off by police. "The last thing I remember was sitting on the aircraft," he says. "The next thing I was waking up in jail"

Simply a misunderstanding between two cultures, surely?

What Kind of Fool Would Sign Up for This?

Ahem! e-mail me offline and I'll explain you the joke.

Courtesy of Jimmny.

Because Rennie Says So . . .

That messy Handsome Family missive can now be found here.

Full (of shit)

The idea being to fill all available shelf space with any old crap.

A Work in Progress, You Understand

Crusties
Circle I Limbo

Celebrities, Buddhists, Cat Lovers
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

The Chaste
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

Daily Mail Readers
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Libertarians, Drug Dealers, Pimps
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

Academics, Wine Snobs
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Sales Reps, 4x4 Owners
Circle VII Burning Sands

Trotskyists
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Wife Beaters, The BNP
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

Spotted at the excellent cat lover.

Class

Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be Lost Samuel Beckett Play.

Hong Durie? Rubbish!

With Jane mentioning Skinner and Baddiel I thought I should share with everyone my World Cup 98 players-who-are-a-phrase entry which Skinner introduced on Fantasy Football with "and this is my favourite from Martin Green in Cheshire" and then read out "Hong Durie".

If I can remember correctly it went:

El-Ouaer (Saudi Arabia)
Cerny (Switzerland)
Issa (South Africa)
Guivarc'h (France)
Hogh (Denmark)
Earle (Jamaica)

Slight Geordie accent required

A Quick Study

Ah, a bit of diversity here: Roget's Thesaurus (x2), the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom (both obviously for reference purposes), Jonathan Rose's Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, various bits of Brecht, Chuck Palahniuk, Pat McCabe, Edmund Husserl, and assorted tapes, CDs, and vinyl. Note also the two boxes of Cuban cigars, the talking Kenny Doll, and, just in picture at the very top, a photo of yours truly with Cuban boxer Felix Savon, whom I met on the May Day parade in Havana in 1997.

It's Touch and Go at the Hideout

News of the Hideout's tenth-anniversary block party in September can be found here.

The 'S' word

Ronald Aronson in the April 17 Nation argues that, if anything, what the Left needs now is more socialism.

It's Arse v. Barce!!

With Larsse!

On Grass

In Parse

Ok, I'll stop now.

Harp: It's Our Thing

There's an interview with Kelvin Knight and Alan Riggs of Delta 5 in the March-April issue of Harp magazine.

That Kelvin, he used to kip on our floor, you know. When he couldn't be arsed getting back to the band's pad in St. John's Wood.

The May issue of Harp also features an interview with Jon Langford of Mekons, Waco Brothers, Pine Valley Cosmonauts etc.

Full Langford archive here. Mekons archive here. Three Johns archive here.

The Outré #2

For your perusal, including an entire shelf given over to Sartre and de Beauvoir, just so you understand that I know better than to genuinely believe man is a bad animal.

And you see those yellow books down the bottom? I edited them. And have barely looked at 'em since. Kept out of vanity.