"Yeah, that was going to be a masterpiece, a magnum opus. I still think those first two issues are among some of the best comic work of that period" - Alan Moore, in the blather interview.
Only two issues came out, back in the 80s. Buy issue one of Alan Moore's legendarily unfinished Big Numbers. At 13 euro plus postage, it's pretty much the going rate for this rare comic. Pay with paypal.
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This 1995 catalogue for Allen Spiegel Fine Arts was designed by Dave McKean. A collector's item for the McKean-inclined. 10 euro plus postage. Pay with paypal.
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This is a rare book about Shinto religion by Sir Ernest Satow (1843-1929), published in New York in October 2002 by Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-7103-0750-0. This is not one of the cloth-bound volumes (currently valued at 135 euro) but the hardback. At 98 euro plus postage, we are not selling this for a higher price than other book dealers. Pay with paypal.
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Only € 9.99 + P&P!
By Dave Walsh, Barry Kavanagh, Damien DeBarra, Sue Walsh and others
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Nonsuch Publishing (May 2008)
Launch Party June 12th, Dice Bar, 78 Queen Street, Dublin @1800 hrs (that's 6pm you landlubbers)
Published May 12 2008 - Preorder now!
Eleven years, three convictions, two deportations, ten thousand pints, six barring orders and a legion of leather-clad groupies later, Dave Walsh, Barry Kavanagh and Damien DeBarra (the cheap tarts that brought you Blather.net) bring you their latest labour of love: A Load of Blather: Unreal Reports from Ireland and Beyond, the first book that anyone has been nuts enough to let them publish. Shamelessly re-working articles which have been online for years anyway, this magnificent tome is a veritable smorgasboard of smut; bursting out of its trousers with a great heaving cavalcade of paranormal events, superstitions, mysterious happenings, conspiracy theories, hordes of rampaging kangaroos in the Dublin hills, and the previously untold story of General Michael Collins' forays into outer space. There's even a bit about talking cows in there. If the lawyers haven't cut it out. There's guest articles too, from the likes of Sue Walsh, Oliver Bayliss and Dr. Stewart Roberts.
]]> This scandalous pile of slanderous filth can be yours for a mere €9.99, a pint of blood and your firstborn child. Ok, we'll settle for the money. Seriously, we need the money. Those drugs don't buy themselves, no more than than the villa in Sardinia is going to build itself or the Blather private jet is going to refuel itself.€9.99 - sure you'd barely buy two pints for that! And here's the deal. We make more money if you buy the book from us. Yes dear, it will be on Amazon and in the shops, but we get less money into our grubby little hands if you buy it that way. Buy it straight from us and Blather.net makes some cash!
"When blather.net was spawned back in 1997, Dave Walsh, Damien DeBarra and Barry Kavanagh exhumed the lofty manifesto of the original Blather, founded in 1934 by Flann O'Brien. It would also be a "publication of the gutter" achieving "entirely new levels in everything which is contemptible, despicable and unspeakable in contemporary journalism". Blather.net would have no principles, no honour, no shame. It would support the "fostering of graft and corruption in public life", the "encouragement of humbug and hysteria", and the "glorification of greed and gombeenism". "
"Over ten years later comes A Load of Blather, gathering together the best of the best reports on paranormal events, superstitions, mysterious happenings, conspiracy theories, the hordes of rampaging kangaroos in the Dublin hills, and the previously untold story of General Michael Collins' forays into outer space. Look no further - this is Blather."
Chapter List:
Introduction: Blather Doesn't Care
Unidentified Feckin' Objects
Slow Walking Banned in Dublin
Lepreporn
Angry Dreams
There are No Kangaroos in Austria
Fear and Loathing in Telemark
The Tomb of God
Lucy Dell
F*cking Magic
Wyrd!
The Blather Guide to Easter
The Dalkey Baby and the House of Horrors
Cannonballs from the Sky
Mayday!
Norway's Psychic Princess
The 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
Superstitions of Christmas
The Anthropology of Roads
Clontarf-Based Science Team Find 'the Clitoris'
Ancient Irish Astronauts
Most of the Internet is about Bobby Darin
IRA Announces Massive Redundancies
That Whole Father Pat Noise Phenomenon on Dublin's O'Connell Bridge
The Taoist Problem Page
Entire Irish Nation Gathers on Beach to Futilely Shake Fists at Sellafield
Irishwoman Deafened by Ticking of her own Biological Clock
How to Fly a Building
Ireland's Greatest Wits
Epilogue: Thundering Myeloma
Note: Postage may need to be re-negotiated for any orders over three books
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Pay with paypal. 7 euro plus postage.
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Pay with paypal. 7 euro plus postage.
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Pay with paypal. 10 euro plus postage.
]]>For a limited period only you can buy the full novel as a PDF using Paypal. The PDF is emailed to you when payment is received. Any queries, contact us.
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Were you dreaming
you were a butterfly, or is a butterfly dreaming it is you?
This novel takes three
ancient Chinese Taoist stories from the Book of Zhuangzi (or Chuang Tzu)
and re-tells them, setting them in the present-day West. They are all
interconnected in an innovative way that is itself inspired by Zhuangzi,
and framed by a fourth story based on concepts from the equally ancient
Tao Te Ching.
The stories' styles vary from something like the stillness of Amos Oz
to a kind of Saki-esque dinner party to near-fairytale to melancholy surrealism,
and is an exploration of what Taoism is all about and how it might or
might not apply to the modern world.
Read an excerpt.
Buy the full novel as a PDF using Paypal. The PDF is emailed to you when
payment is received. Any queries, contact
us.
10 euro
An affluent
couple decide to drop everything, withdraw from life and make a model
village in their living room. The story features many amusing characters,
including the couple's son, who is conducting an "experiment" in their attic,
and an old man who lives in a caravan writing "tracts". 
Worried about invading Martians? We have two individual issues of Alan Moore's exquisite and hilarious comic, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for sale. A must for collectors. 5 euro plus postage. Pay with paypal.
Why are we selling this? Check out Blather's lengthy Alan Moore inteview.
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William F. Pepper
Orders To Kill - the Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr (Amazon.com)
Orders To Kill - the Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Amazon.co.uk)
Orders To Kill - the Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Powell's Books - new or secondhand)
This is the 1998 Warner Brothers edition, updating the first edition with new material. Reviewed for Blather by Angelique Stevenson:
Author William F. Pepper was the man who influenced MLK to oppose the Vietnam War. Quite some time later, convinced that his friend's supposed assassin was innocent, he became James Earl Ray's attorney. This book tells the story of Pepper's investigations into the assassination.
]]> *History*, up until now, had it that Ray was the assassin because he pleaded guilty. It is also *officially* assumed Ray was a *lone gunman* but in fact, when Ray pleaded guilty he made a point of stressing that that didn't mean there wasn't a conspiracy.Ray pleaded guilty because he was coerced and threatened by his then-lawyer Percy Foreman. Three days after his plea, he fired Foreman and requested a trial, which was denied to him. Under the US constitution, he should have been granted this trial: his sixth amendment rights had been infringed because Foreman had previously represented the chief witness for the prosecution.
Unable to get Ray a trial, Pepper came up with the idea of a TV trial. In this 1993 programme, Ray was aquitted. The evidence pointed towards innocence. However, the US establishment would not grant him a real trial.
Who really killed MLK? It was well known and publicized by the 1970s that there was an official campaign of harrassment and surveillance against the Nobel Prize winner by the FBI and the US Army. Did they have any reason to stop at murder? MLK was killed for what was regarded as revolutionary activity. This book explains the why and how of the assassination - and names the man that probably pulled the trigger.
After this book was originally published, Ray received the support of the King family. MLK's son, Dexter Scott King, provides a foreword to this edition. Unfortunately, the publication of this edition coincided with Ray's death on April 23rd, 1998.
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Stunned silence. Someone ventures "well, some of them must be real, musn't they?".
"Well", I reply. "I can't prove to you that none of them are create by paranormal means. I can assure you that a great many of them are definitely made by a bunch of lads with some boards and rope.
The silence is now stony. Feet are shuffled. I feel like a complete wanker for bursting someone's bubble. I might as well have run around a primary school shouting "there's no fucking Santa Claus!".
The funny thing, the modern phenomenon of human-made crop circles came about in a pub too. Or after the pub, at least. It was one night in 1976 when two middle-aged men Doug Bower and Dave Chorley went for a stroll around rural England after their weekly beer session. They decided to make a crop circle so that "people would think a flying saucer had landed". Yes folks, it was that straightforward.
A later generation of crop circles - inspired by Doug and Dave - are at work today. The Circlemakers.org group that includes Rob Irving, John Lundberg and Mark Pilkington are of this generation, and have just released possibly the best book I've ever seen about crop circles, The Field Guide: The Art, History and Philosophy of Crop Circle Making .
For me, crop circles are about art - public, outdoor, transient art. Art for its own sake. The UK - despite the drivel spewed up by some of its more annoying celebrity 'conceptual' artists does bring forth some truly fine public artists - Banksy would be another of my favourites. Andy Goldsworthy is another.
The Circlemakers could have easily written up a book slagging off the hordes of crop circle believers that have spent decades running around the fields of England claiming "vortexes" or extraterrestrials were behind the circle makers. That would have been the approach of any group taking pride in their pranks. But no, this book is different. Despite the fact that crops circles have usually been the work of a bunch of people with basic surveying gear, some rope and a few planks, the Circlemakers are actually sympathetic to the two sided phenomena.
Back in the days of Doug and Dave, they started out simply enough. Crop circles were, of course, circular. It was kept simple, until the likes of meteorologist tried to squeeze the circles into explanations of bizarre weather phenomena. This annoyed the hell out of Doug and Dave, so they tried to come up with more Byzantine circles to confound Meaden. Soon, the circles evolved into much more complex designs. Without the fandom, the circles would have just stayed as circles.
Irving and co. recognise this - they realise that the circle makers create for the fans, and that without the fans, there would be no impetus to create. The Field Guide recognises this symbiotic relationship and celebrates it. This isn't to say it's warm, fuzzy and entirely tolerant of the "croppies". Several chapters recount evidence of how some of the more fervent "investigators" hid, altered, or ignored evidence that might their only personal doctrines of extraterrestrial involvement.
Beautifully produced by the Strange Attractor Press, The Field Guide has quickly become one of my "recommended" books on the nature of human belief - up there with the likes of The Mothman Prophecies or Patrick Harpur's Daemonic Reality. It's even got a beginners guide to to making crop circles!
Visit the website: The Field Guide: The Art, History and Philosophy of Crop Circle Making » (and see sample pages!
Buy the book: The Field Guide: The Art, History and Philosophy of Crop Circle Making »
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Liam Fay
Beyond Belief (Amazon.com)
Beyond Belief (Amazon.co.uk)
'Beyond Belief' is a concatenation of Liam Fay's religious writings in the Irish music and current affairs magazine Hot Press, a publication not particularly renowned for pulling its punches. Fay himself is infuriatingly graced with a seldom witnessed talent; the ability to heave his readership rolling into the aisles with life-threatening paroxysms of laughter, by passing corny remarks which made by anyone else would be intolerably dull.
]]> Apart from the humour, there's a plethora of useful material in here to occupy the Fortean reader, which serves to present rather more diversity in Irish contemporary belief than people outside of Ireland would probably be aware of. Fay uncovers countless forms of religious oddity, 'Jesus of Coolock' - the Messiah's appearance on a bedroom door, The Tridentine priest who performs Christian versions of Ozzy Osbourne hits, a lonely Tridentine bishop providing premium rate confession phonelines, exorcisms on the grounds of RTE (national TV & radio broadcasting company), trips to Knock (site of an alleged miracle), Croagh Patrick (a mountain climbed yearly by the faithful), Lough Derg (an infamous site of religious penance), Born-again Christian 'cultbusters', Hari Krisnas, and a dancing Catholic priest (remember the dancing priest in 'Fr. Ted'?), Fr. Neil Horan, featured on the cover of the book clothed in his dancing costume, including a kilt embroidered with the Star of David. Horan spends much of his time promoting his interpretations of the Book of Revelation, convinced that Armageddon is upon us in the form of World War III - and if it doesn't happen in the next five years, that the entire Bible is a fraud.
A particular highlight is the obligatory trip to Knock, and Fay's
purchase of sundry souvenirs; 'My copy of Roget's Thesaurus lists
merely 47 synonyms for the word 'rubbish'. Dr. Roget obviously never
visited Knock.'
On clerical onanism: 'Masturbation is an integral part of every
celibate's life,' says Father Pat Buckley. 'Most priests would masturbate
regularly, as would most bishops, and I'm sure, even the pope.'
Two hilarious chapters are taken up with Fay's incognito forays into the heart of Dublin; first as a gin swilling, condom buying, swearing Catholic priest (and a photo call with Ireland's most rabid anti-abortion campaigner). Later on, he takes to the streets as a evangelical preacher, attempting to convert the masses with his inflammatory handouts - photocopies from ancient manuscript on good housekeeping.
Although some of Fay's wry comments may mean little to readers not intimately briefed on Irish current and historical affairs, 'Beyond belief' is an essential addition to the untidy book stacks of anyone interested in contemporary religious belief. Oh, and did I mention that there's a entire chapter devoted to country singer Daniel O'Donnell?
- daev
Barnaby Conrad
Absinthe: History in a Bottle (Amazon.com)
Absinthe: History in a Bottle (Amazon.co.uk)
Absinthe: History in a Bottle
(Powell's Books - new or secondhand)
Why are we selling this? Read the related Blather article, How to Drink Absinthe
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