BIG COMIC LAUNCH

 (click to enlarge)

Courageous Mayhem, the new comic anthology by National Tragedy!  

Launching at The Little Green, 13 High Street, Dublin 8. 

Saturday, May 4^th, 4pm until evening or maybe even later.

Art. Everyone loves a bit of art. Even Hitler enjoyed a bit of art. He did some drawings himself but they weren't very good so he decided to kill millions of people instead. Anyway, there's a little book of drawings and stories and art and all that being launched at the above venue at the above time and you should really go along. If you don't the artists might give up the drawing and take it out on various minorities. So come along and save the world from a load of future Hitlers. If you say, 'I'm here to save the world from a load of future Hitlers' you'll get a euro off when you buy the book but you have to say those exact words.

There will be a bar and a cafe. Modest drinking and civilised chat are encouraged. No shite talk and vomiting. Here is some footage of people drinking so you can get the gist of what is expected:

...just like that except less musical. See you there and remember, if you don't go you're a Nazi causer coz you cause Nazis.

DAMIEN HIRST TIME PORTALS

You should visit those new time portals Damien Hirst has installed in the Tate Modern (sponsored by Unilever). You just walk through and you end up in a different time in history. You can watch the events taking place around you and no one from the past even notices because of the perception filter. It's like you're invisible. He's clever that Hirst fella. I went to see the nazis because the queue for the dinosaurs was too long and I'd already seen JFK getting shot loads of times on telly. I have to tell you, the atrocities were terrible. Absolutely shocking. All I could do was stand there and watch. I would have twittered about it but the ushers made me turn off the iPhone. Anyway, I got the gist of all the horror after about fifteen minutes and returned to 2012 for a coffee and a slice of carrot cake (not bad, bit pricey). What I'd witnessed really made me think about human nature and death and that. I was thinking about it all during my coffee and carrot cake and I even got a poster in the shop. It had Hitler on it and all the jews and everything. I was going to put it up in the hall when I got home but it was a bit full on so I gave it to my brother as a present instead. 

'Look what I brought you back', I said.  

'Oh, right, . . .grand', he said. 

His place is a lot bigger than mine. I'm sure he'll find somewhere for it.

LOVE!

Do you remember that Star Trek episode where the beautiful alien woman asked Captain Kirk, ‘What . . .is . . .love?’ Instead of answering, Kirk demonstrated with a passionate kiss. Today Fugger (the blog of truth, the people’s blog) is going to try and answer that alien lady’s question properly.

‘What Is Love?’ I’ll tell you what love is...

Love is a virus that downloads onto your cranial hard drive via Trojan malware. The Trojan malware in question is the object of your devotion, be it another human being or some notion of a God or a sense of nationality or whatever. Love is an emotion that endows you with positive feelings but these positive feelings have negative outcomes.

Love might probably inspire you to write poems but these poems will probably be awful. Love might inspire you to observe abstract and pointless rituals or to march about the place firing guns like a dangerous idiot. You’ll feel elated at the time but remember, a similar elation was felt by Chris de Burgh when he composed The Lady in Red. Yes, de Burgh may have been feeling over the moon but his inspiration caused abject misery for discerning listeners all over the globe. Ultimately, love causes suffering.

All love (especially the sexual kind) is doomed. Be it eventual betrayal or bereavement or a gradual lowering of rose tinted glasses, love will always end in tears. The joy of love is akin to the joy of a child digging in to a fifth bowl of jelly and ice cream. Now it’s yummy but later it’s ‘Mummy, my tummy feels funny’.

Some might argue that, beyond its temporary sensual, spiritual, and aesthetic pleasures, love serves pragmatic functions, the practical benefits of love being the propagation of the species and societal order. Well, let’s deal with the propagation of the species first shall we? The propagation of the species is initially down to lust. Lust is not love. It’s just related to it, like a sleazy uncle that always wants you to sit on his lap. Sure, once born, the survival of offspring is due to the protective love of mothers but mothers only love their children because they are an extension of their genetic information. That’s a kind of racism when you think about it. Racism is something that could cause the destruction of the species, not its propagation. I mean, it might seem all lovey dovey and oochie coochie coo but when you see a mother snuggling with her child it’s nothing more than a two person Nazi rally. I’m sorry if that sounds bleak or cynical but it is true. Familial love is clan love and the Ku Klux Klan is a clan. I rest my case.

Now to deal with the supposed societal cohesion brought about by love. Social Anarchists and some religious types might say that love is an innate currency that makes the world go around. ‘Give love and you will receive it’ they say but we all know that is rubbish. Give love and it will certainly be taken but there is no contract that guarantees its return. When love is not returned it turns into resentment and this becomes hate and hate leads to war. Yep, love is the cause of war. We build bombs out of love and fire guns for it. How oochie coochie coo is that?

Some of you will say that hate and war are caused by intolerance and greed but intolerance is motivated by a dislike of those different to you because you love those that are like you (see the ‘love is racism’ argument above). When it comes to greed, well, what is greed but an inevitable result of love? You love something so much you want more of it, even if it means taking it from someone else by force.

So that’s it, the truth about love in a single blog post. I’m sorry to shatter any illusions. Love might feel all nicey nice and elevating but that’s just mad chemicals going off in the brain. In truth, love is the insidious instigator of all human tragedy or, at the very least, a major and necessary ingredient of those tragedies. That’s why I’ve invented a new emotion. An emotion to replace love. Yes readers, the means of our liberation bubbling in a beaker at my laboratory right now. But this post has gone on long enough so you will have to come back to find out about my new emotion next time. Seriously, do come back, you’re going to love it.

GLYNDWR MICHAEL PULLED HIS SOCKS UP!

People are always moaning about their lot. ‘Oh, my arm’s been sore all week’, they whinge to their boss. ‘Oh, my mummy never hugged me’, they sob to their analyst. These people make me sick. I don’t care how tough you have it; there is always someone worse off than you out there. Someone worse off with their sleeves rolled up trying to do something about their situation. Take Glyndwr Michael.

Glyndwr’s dad cut his own throat after becoming unemployed and the barely literate 15 year old Glyndwr had to sign the death cert. This formative experience cast a terrible shadow over Glyndwr causing him to become depressed and eventually homeless. In January 1943, deciding his dad was right and that life was indeed a load of bollocks, Glyndwr drank a bottle of rat poison and died in an old warehouse in London’s King’s Cross.

So there we have Glyndwr, after a life of misery, lying dead in an empty building. It doesn’t get much worse does it? But did Glyndwr let that hold him back? Hell no! Glyndwr got up off his rear end and did his bit for Queen and country. Posing as a drowned British intelligence operative, Glyndwr had his body dumped off the coast of Spain. Knowing he’d end up in the hands of the Nazis, Glyndwr cunningly had forged documents placed upon his person. These documents gave Mr. Hitler and his chums the impression that the Allies were planning to attack via Greece so off they went, leaving Sicily unprotected. The Allies took Sicily without much bother in August 1943 and the knock on effect was a disorganised Nazi push that eventually led to defeat for Germany. PWNED! And all thanks to Glyndwr’s can do attitude!

Glyndwr Michael took a look at his life, saw a dead misery-guts of a fella and decided to pull his socks up and regain some bloody dignity! So, think about Glyndwr Michael next time you’re considering staying in bed all day just because you overheard someone you fancy at work say that you look like a Cro-Magnon savage.