Month: January 2004
The Plan for an Irish Spaceship
Secret documents suppressed for 30 years have revealed that America planned to launch their space project from the Blasket Islands... I knew it! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! Back in 1999, I wrote Ancient Irish Astronauts, a pisstake 'potted history' of phallic Irish architecture, the two Michael Collins, and 19th century space travel. Now, it seems, that there were a few whacky ideas floating around concering the establishment of a space base in Ireland. Now, after 30 years, documents have emerged on this issue... you can't make this stuff up. And it's all sort of vague: American scientist Dr Gary Hudson, who claimed to have worked for Nasa, submitted his plans for the space flight project on behalf of an alleged team including British astronomer Sir Frederick Hoyle. He had chosen Ireland because it was a neutral country and was not affiliated to any other space...
Mucky the Lake Monster in Muckross Lake, Killarney, Co. Kerry
The Irish Charr Conservation group reckon that they've found a strange creature in a Co. Kerry lake... Update 9th January 2004 From the Irish Charr Conservation Group: Lough Ree may have been the first lake in Ireland to claim it's own prehistoric monster like that of Loch Ness in Scotland. However Muckross lake in Killarney, Co. Kerry is turning up a mystery of its own and it is no swimming leprechaun. Recent scientific evidence indicates that very large and mysterious 'thing' lurks beneath the tranquil surface of Muckross lake. Although the jury is out on what exactly this strange USO or unidentified swimming object might be, parallels are already being drawn with the famous Loch Ness Monster. More, including the echo sounder readouts » On the contrary, there's been strange beats recorded in Irish inland waters for as long as there's been someone writing stuff down. There's hardly a lake...
‘A Pound of Paper’ by John Baxter
An uproarious, delightful series of confession by a book addict Brimming with Nick Hornby nerdness, John Baxter's book concerns his rampant addiction to buying, collecting and hoarding rare books. Tracing his nascent interests in bibliophilia as a teenager, to orgies with porn produers and learning the trade of rare book collecting from drug-addicted, booze-swilling, international criminal runners and failed rock stars, Baxter provides the reader with a superb insight into the bizzare, fetishistic world of book mania. In turn funny, touching and bizzare, this book is a must for anyone who suffers from the addiction of collecting. A must. Click here to buy the book on Amazon.co.uk Click here to buy the book on Amazon.com
A Megalith in the Dublin Mountains: Kilmashogue Wedge Tomb
A ruined megalith sitting a bare 100m from a popular car park in the Dublin mountains... this spectacular national monument is only known to a fraction of passers-by. I'm almost loathe to tell anyone about this place... it's such a wonderful little secret, tucked away beside the car park at Kilmashogue. To reach it, head up the steps from the car park. At the top step, veer right slightly across the road, and up a steep leaf-strewn path. At the top, you'll find the remains of 4,000 year old tomb. Not so long ago, this would have been sitting on a bare mountain, with its boulders gradually taken away for stone walls and the like. These days it sits in a perfect circle of of birch and conifers, with a perfect ceiling to the sky above. The place has presence. I've brought many people there to visit, at day and...
Deep in the Woods: Elimare Reports From The Blather Trip to the Dublin Mountains
Elimare tells us about mudslides and sore thighs... By Elimare It's a cold crisp winter afternoon, the kind of cold best described as 'brass monkeys'. I'm sitting in a pile of mud in fits of laughter. Above me Mr. Birdbath is snickering and Mr. Blather is sitting comfortably on a log or a tree stump or something. Whatever it is, he looks entirely too comfortable and the ease with which he clambers up mountains of muck is beginning to piss me off. Granted, this is the first and only muck hill we will encounter today, things could be worse. I eventually manage to crawl under the log and up the hill onto solid ground. There are another two behind me who have to try and navigate the mud, and avoid the snapping branches so I know I've got a couple of minutes to take a breather. This was supposed to...
The adventures of Jasper the dimension-hopping archaeological cat (Volume 3, Episode 1)
Jasper, it would appear, has found his way back to Earth. And has been up to no good... When we last heard from Jasper the Intrepid space-time travelling cat, he was floating somewhere in deepest, darkest space. We had pretty much written off any hope of ever seeing him again. Daev had even switched off the time machine and I had resigned myself to putting his cat-chow bowl up for sale on e-bay. Such is the breaks when meddling with the fabric of the space-time continum and chasing intergalactic mice. However, as so often happens at Blather Paranormal Investigations, we recived a cryptic e-mail from an un-named source indicating to us that Jasper had not in fact been sucked into a black hole and spat out in the arse-end of the universe as we had suspected, but rather, he had ended up in an entirely different place altogether. And time....
Blather on TV Again: The Search for the Serpent (Seljord, Norway)
Me? The 23th Duke of Blather? Here? On RTE Network 2? At 8pm on a Monday Evening? What were they thinking of? Just when I thought it was safe to re-introduce myself to polite society, Ireland's national broadcaster, RTE, last night saw fit to show The Search for the Serpent, a Discovery Channel documentary that I appeared in back in. Filmed in 1998, it details the search for an alleged lake monster in Lake Seljord, Norway, and shows the tension and subsequent fallout from the doomed expedition. It's a hoot. Around 8ish, I got a txt msg from my brother... RTE Network 2 were showing the The Search for the Serpent. Within minutes, I was getting further SMS messages saying things like 'Oi! I pay my TV Licence! So why are you on TV?' from mild-mannered folk who had no idea of my dark past... Based on the footage, I...
Deep In the Woods: Mr. Slaphead reports from the Blather trip to Massys Woods, Dublin
One of the few survivors of the Ghost Hunt 2003 speaks out! By Mr. Slaphead It wasn't the desolate car park of Rathfarnham Shopping Centre that worried me, it wasn't even Mr. Blather's news that more than half of the expected participants had cried off.It was only when Blather led us down several muddy cul-de-sacs that I began to wonder about what I'd let myself in for. It was quite a few years since I did a tour of Massys Estate and the woods around the Hell Fire Club and I always had the good sense to park in civilised car park. This time, as if to emphasise how much we were roughing it (my phrase), we were to park on a steep gradient with one half of the car in a ditch. We set off though antediluvian roadways towards the Walled Garden of the old Massy Estate. This was...
Fucking Magic: Sex Magic and Ritual Lovemaking
daev waves his wand and comes clean about ritual sex... (First published as 'Could it be Magic?' in The Yoke #5) "Every man and woman is a star" - Aleister Crowley Sex magic? Sex Magick? I got caught bandying about the phrase, like I knew what it meant. That got me landed with writing and researching this article. Disclaimer - I may not know what I'm talking about... but lets start with defining magic as a way of perceiving experiences in a way that goes beyond the mundane. And assume that we are all, or can be, magicians. Long before the 1960s or the rise of popular new age culture, the occultist Aleister Crowley published plenty of literature on ritual sex, but disguised his thoughts in obtuse prose and verse. At the same time, artist and magician Austin Osman Spare also engaged the same subject, somewhat more lucidly than Crowley....