Research on Crowley: Wandering The Waste had me scrolling through a copy of Fred Gettings’ Dictionary of Occult, Hermetic and Alchemical Sigils for interesting squiggles which Roy Huteson Stewart might be able to incorporate into the backgrounds and page layouts of the comic. And would you look at what I found on page 201, given as Jerome Cardan’s 1557 sigil for the planet Saturn.

Looks familiar.

Further net-based mooching about led me to this excellent article about the symbol, and Jimmy’s use of it.

from: somethinkfun

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.

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!!!!!

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???

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.

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.”

Most people would probably have announced their new comic column just as the first one was hitting the net, but we do things differently around here.

So, I am announcing my new-ish comic column, It Came From Beneath The Bed, which I write for GeekPlanet.  Issue six, in which I talk about the Sub-Mariner and insult a major Hollywood celebrity, went up last week.  You can read them all here.

It’s weekly but irregular (like the bowel movements of an elderly man or a woman of any age) and is full of pictures and about 1000 words of waffle about comics.

It is probably the most best written comic column on the internet.  And no mistake.

Spot the difference . . .

I’m not sure which one is scariest.  At least Lon Chaney could take the make up off at the end of the day.

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.

Great cartoon from Steve Greenberg.

I’ll be writing a few bits and pieces for sci-fi website GeekPlanet.

First piece of mine is about the old BBC Quatermass serials for their Why We Love…  column.

You can read it here.

“From 9^th 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 70^th 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 9^th 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 7^th 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.”

First entry is up, here.