John McGahern

Is was sad yesterday, to lose our greatest living writer John McGahern. There is no Irish writer that even comes close in stature and his death seems like a uniquely unwelcome break from our more rural past. Reading his books over the last few years was like an opportunity to peer into a rural family heritage that was closed off. I loved the completely unsentimental picture of Irish family life that came through in his books and there was great mileage in the particulary brutal father-son relationships he depicted. Its a pity that the mixed sentiments of a book like The Dark weren't taught to us in school, instead of the Everyone in Ireland's a Victim rubbish that was peddled on the curicullum. A book like that must have been like a revolting memory that Irish society didn't want to recognise when it was released. I certainly doubt they banned it simply for it's seedy content. It must have been horribly close to the bone.

The one good thing you could say about his passing is that he had the opportunity take his work as far as it would go. You would never have expected John McGahern to come out with a coke fueled Science Fiction novel about lesbian bounty hunters for instance. But at least with That They May Face the Rising Sun, he managed to distance himself from the tortuous childhood material that his early books focused on. Its pity because you felt that there was one more serenely beautiful book left to deliver. There is an interview with Seamus Heaney on the life of John McGahern available here.

Tormented Night and Day

I was browsing in Waterstones the other day and came across a strange book called Amaryllis Night and Day in the recommended reading section. The book had a beautiful cover and boasted that the author, Russell Hoban, is the most original novelist alive today. Intrigued, I bought the book for myself and settled down to read it that night. I can only say now, that I deeply deeply regret the moment I laid eyes on the thing.

The first strange thing I noticed about Amaryllis Night and Day was that the opening sequences bore a stunning similarity to a few dreams I've had recently. I've been thinking a lot about what life might be like in London and have even dreamt about the possibility of a little romance developing in the first couple of weeks. In the dreams, I picture her as Lily Taylor and we meet while visiting various tourist attractions around London.

The narrator dreams of meeting Amaryllis while waiting at a bus stop named Balsamic and describes her as an exotically beautiful but slightly haggard blonde (a stunningly accurate description of someone I had a thing for last year). When an impossibly tall bamboo-Bus lit from within with Japanese lanterns arrives, Amaryllis steps on and beckons for him to join her. He ignores her pleas and wakes himself up.

When he sees her next, she appears behind him in the Science Museum and she is described as having delicately chiselled features, big innocent eyes, a warm complexion, a small figure and brown hair. Lily Taylor. In the exact way I had pictured meeting her.

Less than two chapters later, Amaryllis and Peter (the narrator), take a trip along a back road that was my absolute exact school journey between our home in Purley to my shcool in Caterham, when we lived in London. This was quite a long journey and they are nowhere near along the same route. That chapter was like a little evil cackle in my ear.

In an even more bizarre coincedence, Amaryllis and Peter meet at a display of Klein bottles (pictured above) in the Science Museum and the author labours a great deal to point out that Klein bottles, as a methaphor for "something turning itself inside out", are the basis for the theme of the book. Everything that happens seems based that idea. This is a bizarre coincedence because I was listening to And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out by Yo La Tengo when I picked up the book and I haven't listened to that album in years. I have been selling all of my CD's recently because I'm poor, but for some reason, I decided not to sell this album last week and I have been listening to it non-stop since. The album's story bares an uncanny resemblance to the that of the book by the way (more evil cackles).

And to double fucking freak me out, I've been woken two nights in a row by fucking crows screeching outside my window. I don't need to tell you that they figure prominantly in the book. I feel fucking tormented. My first instinct is to wonder if Russell Hoban is a Mind Gangster, but despite extensive research, I can't find any evidence that he has collaborated with Stevie Wonder; so that immediately disqualifies him. Someone is playing a huge fucking metaphysical joke on me (evil cackle and flapping of wings).

To cap it all off, the book is absolutely awful. I have no hesitation in saying that its the worst book I've read in years. Complete Cock. It's the first book I've ever read that I can say, wholeheartedly, I Hate. Maybe if someone else could read it then I'd know that the book is not truely evil. Would anyone do that for me?

Album Reviews

My ipod got completely wiped recently, self destructing after it was asked to recognise one too many computers. It seems ipod’s are shy creatures and don’t like to sleep around too much. A period of relaxation and stability was needed, so I left McIpod alone with my laptop for a couple of days and vowed that they would remain in a monogamous relationship from now on.

I also resolved to refill McIpod with completely new music. I trawled through a number of Electronic album review sites and picked up as many great Electronic albums from the last few years as I could get my hands on. I've recommended a couple of recent Electronic albums in the random reviews section and I've discovered a host of new favourites which I will review in the near future.

The Singularity is Near

I’m reading an interesting book with the ominous title of The Singularity is Near at the moment. The book’s author, Ray Kurzweil, was described by Bill Gates as "the world’s best at predicting the future of Artificial Intelligence". What Bill Gates doesn’t know is that Ray Kurzweil is a Mind Gangster.

After earning the nickname of The Phantom at MIT, Kurzweil placed himself (Howard Hughes style) at the very forefront of the IT revolution; founding several companies and developing a host of ingenious technologies. More recently, Kurzweil has focused on tracing the arc of technological progress in books such as The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Fantastic Voyage. It is, however, his efforts to plant terrifying ideas about the future in our heads and his apparent determination to single handedly defeat Death that have earned him the distinction of Mind Gangster.

Kurzweil helped invent the first optical character reading technology, the first text-to-voice synthesizer and the first large-vocabulary speech-recognition system. Some of these elements are realised in the form of a cyber-woman named Ramona on his site. My first impressions of Ramona are not good. She has a nasty habit of pulling a snide face after answering questions and she had absolutely nothing positive to say about what I was wearing. Maybe Mr Kurzweil’s idea of an ideal woman is a Mastermind contestant but, personally speaking, I would have preferred if Ramona had been a little less obsessed with her job. I should also point out that Ramona is the 25 year old rock star alter ego of Kurzweil and that he performs as her regularly in virtual reality concerts.

Here are a few of his predictions about the near future. The titles are my own and they probably don’t reflect what Kurzweil is trying to say, but my brain has a limited information filter and I can only be expected to process so much.

1. The film Inner Space will be based on True Events

“By the 2020s we will be placing millions or billions of nanobots—blood cell-size devices—inside our bloodstream to travel into our brains and interact with our neurons. We will be extending our cognitive capability directly through this intimate merger of biology with machines.”

2. We will have Google-Search Engines in our Heads

“Right now, there's a restricted architecture to the way our brains work. The brain uses electrochemical signaling for information processing, and that's a million times slower than electronic circuits. You can make only about 100 trillion connections in there. That may seem like a big number, but the way in which we store information is inefficient, so that a master of an area of knowledge can really remember only about 100,000 chunks of knowledge. If you use Google, you can already see the power of what machines can do. In the future, we will be able to expand the 100 trillion connections we have with new, virtual ones. Once nonbiological intelligence gets a foothold in our brains, it will grow exponentially. As we get to the 2030s, human beings will have biological brains enhanced with more powerful nonbiological thought processes.”

3. Mice will be Immortal

“I'm very confident that over the next decade we'll largely eliminate the diseases that kill 95 percent of people today. We've identified a dozen or so aging processes, and we have strategies for reversing them all. I believe that within 10 years we'll produce a mouse that doesn't age, and we'll translate that into human therapies within another five to 10 years after that.”

Kurzweil believes that he will never grow old and has collaborated with Stevie Wonder; fulfilling both of the crucial qualifications for Mind Gangsterism. He joins Aphex Twin, Uri Geller and Joe Meek as those who have been officially recognised as Mind Gangsters so far. Each distinguished himself in his field for his Neo-Conservative approach to personal-brain-space.

The Proposition

Nick Cave is at it again. He’s reaching back into the Old Testament, wringing his hands above his head and stirring up a diabolic brew of brutality, redemption and betrayal. We’re back in that grey area between Civilisation and Barbarism, and Innocence doesn’t stand a chance. The only absolute certainty is that there will be a Hell of a lot of words in the script that demand capital letters.

Sometimes it’s easy to understand how people get so turned off by Nick Cave. He can go so far over the top that he ends up a cartoon gothic and his Caps-Lock Crazy tendencies often lead him into very hammy territory. Some of the songs on his last album in particular, seemed to sink under the weight of his eulogy.

Cave’s literary approach, however, has always been well suited to films. The last time that Cave collaborated with Director John Hillcoat, they served up the gloriously brutal maximum-security prison drama Ghosts…of the Civil Dead. It was a brilliant film, full of memorable characters and grizzly tension. Certainly one of the most shocking and memorable movies I’ve seen. Cave must have been in his element.

The Proposition is another successful collaboration for the pair. They’ve managed, between a cast of vicious characters and lingering shots of the horribly inhospitable environment, to make the Outback the very picture of Hell. In typical Cave tradition, the only innocent is an imbecile and the plot centres on the prospect of his hanging for the murderous adventures of his older brothers. You don’t need me to tell you that betrayal, violence and moral conflict ensues.

For all the beautiful shots and Biblical turmoil, the highlight of the film is the performance by Danny Huston (son of John and brother of Angelica). He’s just menacing. There is one shot where he is staring straight into the camera for a few seconds and it’s the craziest fucking expression imaginable. I can think of very few actors who could have pulled it off.

So, great plot, great acting, great score, wonderful shots and plenty of half-poetic violence/general mayhem. Not the plodding Western you might have expected from Cave. It’s certainly a lot less long-winded than this review, but I’ve been looking forward to this film for a long time so I was only ever going to be wanky about it. Oh and you actually see a person’s head exploding as well. Nick must have been having tremendous fun.

Ireland vs England

Excitement is building about the prospect of beating England in Twickenham and clinching a Triple Crown on Saturday. It has been a strangely stilted tournament so far and it seems like the competition has sunk in the average fan's affection since the advent of the Heinekin Cup, but a traditional partisanship comes to the surface before games like this and I'm prepared do a lot of screaming at the TV tomorrow. There is also a mounting feeling that Ireland have played well within themselves so far in the tournament and that there could be a break out against a demoralised English team.

England of course of a horrible habit of completely trouncing Irish expectation whenever it seems like we have the upperhand. It will be a huge ask of the team to beat them three years in a row and especially after they have been so completely humiliated against the French last week. Everything is set up for an English backlash.

There a number of areas where the English have a significant advantage. Hayes and Horan are likely to get destroyed in the front row and we would be well advised not to rely too much on our back row for go-forward ball. In the backs, there is always the horror inducing ungainliness of puck-headed donkey, Shane Horgan, but the centre partnership of D'Arcy and O'Driscoll seems completey at sea at this level. There seems to be a crisis of identity between Munster and Leinster in the Irish team and it's difficult to understand how a good coaching staff can't make the best elements of the two gel.

I think a good solution to D'Arcy's complete disolution as an International player would be to leave Trimble take the ball up the middle on first phase more, so that D'Arcy has the space he thrives in off second phase. I think we may see a lot of Trimble, O'Connell and Leamy taking the ball up the middle and the centres dictating the game off the following phases. I certainly hope they don't fling rediculously ambitious skip passes all over the pitch like they did against France.

A lot of people need a great game if Ireland are going to perform. It took the best performance by an Irish team in living memory to beat them in Twickenham last time. I don't see us rescaling those heights but hopefully, we may not have to.

Ask a Republican

Hello! I often get asked questions about Republican policy by greasy-haired liberal hippies. Watch videos of me interacting with them in Los Angeles and Seattle. May God bless you and America.

View videos of questions posed to former Republican Congressman Richard Martin here.

You've Your Father's Sense of Injustice

Your votes have been counted and I'm delighted to announce that you have decided to christen Elke and Steve's firstborn (offkey trumpets): Tinsel Kinsella! I can only express my admiration for the excellence of your choice. I'm sure that the poll stoked fierce debate, with evenings of highlighting names in baby books and passionate consideration of the implications for the child's employment prospects.

There was a staggering 19% margin of victory in the end, with Deceptacon and the very topical Jihad tying for second place. I'm sure the voting accurately reflects the degree of conviction you felt in your choice.

Looking up Tinsel in the baby book, I found that the name means: "Something sparkling or showy but basically valueless". It is the childs great fortune that it is redeemed by the good name of Kinsella-Hayes. I'm sure Steve and Elke appreciate your verdict and that they will make the best of the situation you have landed them in.

A couple of reviews are being posted of recent albums in the Random Review section, so you have something to smile and whistle to while you picture the face of the proud parents-to-be as they recieve your wonderful news.

Morrissey Video

Morrissey has scaled new heights/lows of self indulgence with the video for his new song You Have Killed Me. Its just too camp to be anything other than self parody but having seen some of the same moves on TV appearances over the last few years, there's the nagging feeling that its not in jest. Apparently the video, set on the stage of the 1970 Eurovision, celebrates Ireland's first Euro-winner Dana. Does this mean that we can claim him as one of our own now? Would we want to?

I've reviewed some albums in the Random Reviews section. I intend to start reviewing stuff on a more regular basis now, since that was my initial intention for the blog anyway.