DOG-EARED LITERATURE

DOG-EARED   LITERATURE

Lurve & Hayshe

Lurve & Hayshe

Tony and Sheila

Tony and Sheila

Here's another reject submission to Bob Byrne's Shiznit, the excellent issue 4 of which is free to download now:

UFOs

UFOs

Recently, I've been reading UFO books again. To offset the waste of time involved I thought I might try and extract some sort of comic strip stories out of the material towards which the following tentative effort was knocked up. The summary text after the page was supposed to be typeset into it though it was too long to fit in legibly:



Subsequent chapters relate how Corso again encountered the recovered saucer in 1961 while heading the army's foreign technology desk. Corso claims he managed the covert seeding of the alien technology into corporate industry to foster breakthroughs like kevlar armour, fibre optics and integrated circuitry.

The story is largely unverifiable and thus stands or falls on its internal strengths. It is an intriguing tale, certainly until the dryness of the technology transfer details become boring - Corso's flat delivery tends to render even the more fantastical elements of the story mundane.

True or not, the most intriguing thing about this story ends up being the question as to why the author bothered? The 80yr old Corso died soon after the books release and almost certainly didn't earn much from it or associated UFO convention appearances. Doggedly loyal, he claims he was waiting until his commanding officer passed away before coming out with the revelations, adding some half hearted hokum about how it was time to 'let the next generation know the truth'.

But something doesn't quite ring true. Is the whole thing some sort of bizarre gullibility test tied to his army intelligence background? A complicated red herring? Or just the delusions of a senile old man? More likely, I think a tanglement of all three. Wish I could recommend it - unfortunately, as with alot of this UFO material, it was much more interesting reading about the book on the Internet than the book itself.

Demento Memento - part 2

Demento Memento - part 1

after Kees Van Dongen Woman with Hat

after Alexej von Jawlensky Spanish Girl


after Amadeo Modigliani A Student


after Otto Mueller Self Portrait with Nude

I had been thinking of putting together a small zine of the ink wash type sketches I'd been doing in my sketchbooks. A selection of the sketches were scanned and a rough layout version of the book assembled. The collection didn't seem to gel though. The toned wash effect was difficult to reproduce in photo-copiable form and there was no overall common theme. Looking at the project again I can see there were some different sets of connecting threads - though not enough of each to justify a zine of their own. This set were copied from tiny black and white thumbnails of the pictures in question from an old 'Introduction to Painting' type art history book.

Bomb you back to the stone age

Annual Covers

A few posts ago I was writing how those new yorker cartoonists are a big influence on the gag style cartoons I sometimes use in birthday card efforts. The bawdy primary colours of the old british humour comic annual covers are an even greater influence than the new yorkers distinguished grey tones. Not to mention the brit comics lewder cousin- the seaside postcard.

Here is a version of another card, originally black and white, that probably makes more immediate sense in coloured form.

Progress

Progress

Here is something not from me. It's a scan of a letter I found outside Clontarf road dart station back during the summer. It appears to have been sent to a pal in the gaeltacht and didn't reach them in time. The teach address has been crossed off the envelope (not shown here) and the sendees home address scrawled in. I've been using it as a bookmark for ages and every so often take the letter for a read and give myself a laugh. I suppose I should freak them out and send it back with a Canadian postmark.







It seems to be written on some pre-used foolscap as if torn from a business studies jotter. I like the way the author has improvised around the content somewhat:



And who's in this newspaper clipping? Ray Parlour and son?


The letter encapsulates the similar sort of demented babbling you come out with to co-workers at a mind numbing job to keep yourself sane. The daft voices and catchphrase repetition that seem indescribably hilarious at the time. The sort of thing you enjoy on a clock-watching Friday afternoon and never speak of again.

Once I wrote this thank you letter to an auntie for some birthday cash she'd sent me but the letter fell out of my pocket on the way to the post office. I duly rewrote the letter as I remembered it and managed to send it off the second time without losing it. Later I learned that someone had found, stamped and posted the original letter and my aunt received two almost but not quite the same thank yous containing slightly different wording, slightly different takes on the same bits of news. It was the subtle differences between the two that freaked her out the most.