Had a blast and a half, with the Outbreak Festival crew, in the old Daghda space (St. John's Sq, Limerick) last night. A healthy (or suitably unhealthy) crowd shuffled horrifically down to enjoy local film-maker Dermott Petty's Gothic Country 'n' Irish short Zombie Waltzing, and the "splatstick" classic I'd chosen as our main attraction, Return of the Living Dead.

On the off chance any gorehound wishes to check out the folk and films mentioned in my introduction to the screening, here it be.

The film you're about to see, Dan O'Bannon's 1985 Return of the Living Dead, was released almost simultaneously with Day of the Dead, the third film in George Romero's seminal zombie series. Though the two films share a common birthday, tonally they could hardly be more different. While Day was bleak and grim, Return was (and is) in the words of zombie-scholar Jamie Russell “a breathless horror cartoon that aspires to make jaws drop to the floor through its sheer exuberant excess”.

It had originally been conceived by John Russo – Romero's co-screenwriter on 1968′s Night of the Living Dead – as a straightforward horror film in the Romero mould, with Tobe Hooper (of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame) directing. When Hooper departed to direct the schlocky alien vampire-fest Lifeforce, Dan O'Bannon (who had written the screenplay for the original Alien and worked with John Carpenter on Dark Star) was brought on board.

In O'Bannon's hands the tone quickly shifted from earnest to overtly and outrageously comedic. Though horror and comedy might, on a superficial level, seem odd bedfellows, they've been combining happily and hilariously on-screen for many decades, dating back at least as far as James Whale's Old Dark House in 1932. In terms of breaking taboos, saying the unsayable, graphically depicting things that society normally hides away, the comedic and the horrific are, in reality, close cousins. Allowing audiences to laugh and scream in the face of their fears.

What films like Return of the Living Dead specifically helped popularise was the horror sub-genre/form generally referred to as “splatstick”. A key influence on O'Bannon's film – and other “splatstick” classics like Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, Peter Jackson's Braindead and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2 – were the outrageous horror comics of the 1950s, particularly those produced by the legendary EC. In those publications – which were victims of a sustained campaign of moral outrage – death, dismemberment and evisceration became gleefully delivered punchlines. The tension-releasing laughter they inevitably invited being one of the things that infuriated the guardians of public morality the most.

So what exactly makes Return of the Living Dead one of the finest examples of “splatstick”? Well first (and possibly foremost) are the three pitch perfect performances from the senior male leads: the wonderful James Karen (as the folksy and avuncular 'Frank'), Clu Gulager (as his put-upon, pragmatic boss 'Burt'), and Don Calfa (as the Nazi-loving embalmer 'Ernie Kaltenbrunner' – named, incidentally , after a real-life Nazi war-criminal). The gusto and glee with they embrace their roles, not only offered a refreshing counterpoint to the often irritating woodenness of the film's teen stars, but showed how instinctively they understood the kind of acting “splatstick” demands: full-on, no-holds-barred commitment, no matter how ludicrous the situations might be. [Bruce Campbell, of the Evil Dead fame, is probably one of the finest practitioners of this kind of OTT style]

Then, of course, there are the zombies themselves. In keeping with a film that cracks along at a frenetic pace, and bounces along to an ass-kicking punk soundtrack (featuring the likes of The Cramps, 45 Grave and The Damned) – the film's zombies don't shuffle and stagger about a la Romero. They sprint full tilt toward their prey – anticipating the hyperactive undead of 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake.

Most memorable of all was the film's so-called “Tarman” zombie – a dripping oozing mass of putrid flesh whose obsession with devouring big juicy “braaaainnns!” almost single-handedly popularised the notion that the undead are fixated with the contents of our skulls.

Oh…and then there's Linnea Quigley's…em….naked gyrations on a crypt. Which proved catnip to teen fanboys, and helped turn her, overnight, into a successful and prolific “scream queen”.

As gloriously goofy as the film undoubtedly is, there are moments where unsettling horror, unexpectedly and delightfully, creeps to the surface. While previous zombie movies had portrayed the undead as abjectly wretched – denied the dignity of eternal rest – Return of the Dead was one of the first films to suggest that being dead was actually painful. They're not just eating our brains because they're hungry, they're eating them because doing so offers temporary respite from the agony of being dead! Death, then, is not a release from bodily pain, but a descent into even more terrible suffering!

Another of the film's innovations was to actually show you the process of someone slowly turning into a fully-fledged zombie. As they lose control of their will, develop rigor mortis, and feel the urge to eat brains grow, Frank and Freddy describe what all this feels like. And force us to imagine and feel it too.

But, enough of all that. It's the laughs that brings people to the film, and it's the laughs we remember. There may be one or two more important zombie films, and certainly one or two more sophisticated zombie films, but none are anything like this much fun. Enjoy.

But advertising – that great omnipresent, satanic force – hardly helps. It knows we're down. It counts on and thrives on it. While we lie groaning in the gutter trying (desperately) to have a peak at distant stars, advertising's gaping, squatting, spangled arse obscures our vision.

It obscures it with images of shiny demigods, aglow with their own self-love. Livin' & lovin' life in sun-drenched IKEA apartments. Always up to kooky antics. Roller-blading indoors! Bouncing impishly on their beds! Pillow fights! DJs in the corner!! They're making the most of now. 24/7.

While the below couple are not quite as achingly hip, they're certainly no less odious (or shiny).

She? Default, middle-of-the-road dazzler. He? Wearing the open-necked blue shirt uniform of (conservative) youthful-ish affluence. Slacks and deck shoes unseen but implied.

A hard copy of the image was "liberated" (by me) from a coffee shop in the University of Limerick. Every table had (and continues to have) one – staring the assembled punters in the face and helpfully decoding the true meaning of the coffee-drinking experience for them. It's about friends,,,and life…and love…and coffee…or something.

Yet, on the face of it, nothing concrete or specific is being advertised here. It's not pushing a particular brand. It's not promoting a particular restaurant. It's selling some sort of abstract aspirational dream. A vision of a world chock full of smug, self-satisfied, "successful" cunts.

Has the global financial apocalypse softened their coughs or dampened their self-regard? Not a bit of it. They've simply popped on pairs of wellies, started growing their own organic veg, and lent their shiny faces to ads (disingenuously) pushing nouveau-frugal consumerism. If anything, they're more in love with themselves than before. And now they've seized the moral high ground, we – who sit scratching out holes, scarfing down Taytos, and wanking furiously in a bid to temporarily escape the dull awfulness of life – are made to feel shitter than ever.

Their movements were simultaneously furtive and frantic – erratic rowing strokes coupled with hurried anchor-dumping (said movements not done justice by the below image).

As quickly as they arrived, they were gone – leaving this monument to clandestine effort in their wake.

Now while Toiréasa Ferris' head & SF's logo may look impressively large and striking in the above photo, it should be noted that a) this is a close crop of a shot taken at maximum zoom, and, b) the Shannon is a broad and majestic river. From the banks, or a bridge, the naked human eye would struggle to gather much more than a vague impression. Of a giant-headed young woman. Trapped on a small boat.

On to the debaffling. Toiréasa is, we're told, part of "A New Generation". A generation that eschews the corned-beef-faced fugliness of traditional Irish politicking and replaces it with relative-attractiveness. A generation that, let's face it, we're being subtly encouraged to want to ride. If Adams & McGuinness are an “Old Generation"(original series) Kirk & Spock, then Toiréasa is a new/next generation…er…Deanna Troi? Or maybe not. I mean Kirk was pretty hot, and then there's the whole slash fiction thing so…um…

Anyway, location is an important factor here. For if unobtainableness is a significant element of seductive allure then you'd have to consider the above a beguiling success. After all, you'd struggle to make yourself more unobtainable than parking yourself in the middle of a river. Sinn Féin? Masters & mistresses of pop-sexual psychology.

Though unlikely to perform as impressively in the Limerick Leader's (controversial) “Candidates I'd Like to Bang" poll – Maurice Quinlivan (like other local SF hopefuls) still has explosive imagery in his arsenal.

First there's the shiny, eye-catching gold “1″ – a traditional visual that manages to both rewrite the tricolour's (troublesome orange) symbolism and make the candidate seem that extra bit special. Plain ol' black and white “1s" are hardly likely to sway a bling-obsessed youth (or so the Irish Daily Mail would probably tell me).

Then there's the “cut out and keep" dotted line (Sinn Féin vouchers! Collect 100 for a Wolfe Tones lunch box!) and the slightly puzzling “fast forward" icon.

All at sea or, or rocketing (at a trillion miles an hour) toward a bright, golden future? You decide.

Given this 25 year gap between prizes I'd resigned myself to not seeing anything free coming my way until (at least) 2033 – when I'd be too middle-aged, conservative & miserable to appreciate anything but a year's subscription to Ireland's Own or a case of Imperial Leather.

Happily for me (and my grumpy future self) fate seems to now have adopted a more generous approach. Less than 12 months after my last stroke of fortune came news that the fabulous Ruth Crean, of the equally fabulous Nice Day Designs, had pulled my name from a custom-made hat and would bestow on me a garment of my choosing.

Here's what I chose (that's not me modeling by the way, it's Ruth's fella, the lovely John Elliot):

I will never, ever, ever take it off. Never. I plan to be buried in it.

Anyway, pop over (this instant) to Ruth's web-home and buy some customised beautifulness. Or, if you're in the 'hood, stroll down Bedford Row of a Sunday and see her, and her gorgeous clothes, in 3-D.

If so, then consider me hipped up to the nines, as I spent the better part of last Friday afternoon scrolling through reams of eye-destroying microfilm at Limerick City Library (all in the name of “researching" a potential article). Sharing the microfilmy room with me were an elderly lady who offered me a mint (and seemed incredulous and furious when I politely refused) and the ubiquitous smelly, obsessive, local history buff (male, of course) in a Christmas geansai. A less hip environment you'd search forlornly to find.

He (Mr. Local History Fella) also produced a supply of mints, which he duly offered to share. I (defensively and warily) declined again, though by this time my mint-refusing resolve was beginning to waver. Such is the coercive power of peer pressure.

The upshot of this mint-offering/refusing to and fro was that I spent more time on matters of confectionery etiquette than I'd have anticipated and ended up coming away empty-handed. Well, not quite. I did find the below gem. One of 1974′s stand-out moments…if you lived in Limerick.

The man who would, many years later, become a treasured, knighted, national UK institution (and monument to cuddly, ever so slightly naughty, twee wit) was, even 35 years ago, somewhat defensive about his Irish bona fides.

“I WAS born in Limerick. I WAS!!¹

In fairness to Sir. Terrence, I think it's unlikely (unless he imposed paranoid levels of control over his own career) that he dictated the content of his speech bubble to HyperSales' ad-men. Has anyone, I wonder, ever sued creators of a speech bubbled photo for grossly misrepresenting their thoughts and feelings? Private Eye and Phoenix do it all the time in the name of cheap satire. And the front cover of Match! routinely heaves with excited (mildly inflammatory and “dissing") bubbles issuing from footballer's mouth's.

Ronaldo: “I'm better than you, Torres!!"
Torres: “Tu madre! I am totally the best, no?"
Fat Frank Lampard: “You're both wrong, lads, I'm more very good at football than you two!!"²

Not that Wogan would, I don't think, have necessarily been that upset about his Limerickian origins being restated in bubble form. His issue might, instead, have been with the implication that his place of birth was the only reason why anyone would turn out to see him cut the ribbon on (the now long gone) HyperSales. Speaking of which, a bit more microfilmic scrolling revealed the following.

Girls' pipe bands. Miss Limerick. Gold scissors. A throng turning out to bask both in Wogan's celebrity glow and HyperSales' exotic “American" consumer promise. Ah, Limerick of the 70s! How I miss you – kinda.

1. Alright Terry, Chill the fuck out. [back]
2. Seriously, this is only a mild exaggeration of the reality. Check it out. It's hilarious. [back]

First port of call was the National Portrait Collection of Ireland, Bourn Vincent Gallery (UL). On its stark white walls I stuck my Cowen/Gravely-ill Badger postcard. Like Martin Luther's 95 theses – only with more dotted lines of piss.

And a close up:

The total absence of FF-sponsored, brutally repressive, security guard goons was a disappointment – but the CCTV cameras that watched my every move no doubt wired their signal straight back to party headquarters. I'll be found face down in a dumpster with a plastic bag over my head before the week's out.

With this job done I flung open the doors and headed out into the wilds (i.e a grassy courtyard): there to share my love of freedom with the myriad spirits of nature. There can be no greater act of communion with Mother Earth than Blu-Tacking a rude postcard to a tree. Behold:

And behold again:

This is a softer, almost (dare I say) touching, Cowen nude. There he is for all the world to see. Stripped of his bullish facade. Stripped of his aura of power. Stripped of his jocks. I could just pick him up, kiss him on his tiny little head, and pop him in my breast pocket. If I didn't hate him for pissing on that poor sick badger. Boo!

Update, 25/03/09, 23.48:
Ok. I hereby want to encourage every single person reading this to send me (via post) a nude Brian Cowen postcard (ask for my address and it will be given). If we gather enough together I'll find a way to exhibit them publicly. If some fail to arrive then we'll also have "postalgate" to concern ourselves with. This is not a joke. I genuinely want to do it.

Might I just add. Cock. Balls. Fanny. And R.I.P. Irish satirical play & mischief-making.

Update: Fergal is asking (via Twitter) that the nation be "wallpapered with naked Cowens". So tomorrow, before breakfast, hell…before anything, get the pens and paper out and create your own hideous nudey portrait of our immortal leader. Then saunter out (whistling a merry tune as you go) and stick it to the nearest public wall, lamp-post, passer-by etc. Do it. For the sake of the nation's children.

Further Update: Damien is demanding much the same thing. Viene una tormenta.

The handout was, one presumes, intended to be educational, helpful and instructive. My reaction? Stifled laughter and bawdy, Carry On style snorting…

I know, I know…it's embarrassingly immature and all that, but there's something about attending a class – any class – that makes me revert to the sniggering, elbow-nudging days of secondary school. In my defence, could any man Jack (or woman Jill) among you gaze upon the below (in such circumstances) and not laugh?

I mean, look at yer man's face! There's something about his delighted grin (and his disturbing hair) that makes him seem less like a loving partner and more like a perverted opportunist.

Then there's the revelation that one's loved one will, during those trying early stages of labour, look upon her piles of ironing and despair.

I can't say I blame her. I've often felt like this at eight in the morning when I realise that all of my shirts are unwearably creased. It's at such times that life reveals itself to be little more than a vile and scarcely endurable vale of tears.

Faced with the reality of this cold and cruel universe (and the onset of crippling pain) it's little wonder that so many expectant mothers fling themselves at the ethereal feet of the labour goddesses.

Such supplication may not yield any miraculous results, but your pelvic floor will (I believe) thank you.

And finally, there's this (my favourite) – an image simultaneously moving, hilarious and tragic.

Sitting astride a plastic chair and weeping while trickles of (what I imagine to be) luke warm water dribble down on you. A more perfect (and Beckettian) picture of life's quotidian miserableness you couldn't hope to find.

Like I said – funny stuff.

My prize was a very lovely Halloween (Un)Lucky Bag and my enthusiasm was not dampened by the knowledge that I myself had bought it earlier the same day (for 1 Euro). I'd expected it to contain amusing and mega-cheap mank but the contents actually represent serious value for money. Behold (and click to enlarge).

The jewel in the…er…bag is obviously the delightful skeleton keyring. A fitting trinket for the Día (de los Muertos) that was in it.

The prize-winning rig-outfit I'd assembled was simple, effective and deadly. An old lady frock, an old lady wig, and a giant blood-stained old lady knife. The result – that lovable ol' rogue Norman Bates dressed as his mother.

The excellent (and unnerving) old lady wig was, somewhat unexpectedly, advertised as…well…something else entirely. While wig devotees will, of course, instantly recognise it as a Widmann "Karl" Party model the rest of us might benefit from some documentary evidence.

What in the name of Mrs. Bates' pickled & preserved corpse is the "Karl" look supposed to capture/represent? Part Steven Seagal; Part geisha; Part The Bold and the Beautiful; All bonkers.

Though there will (as is customary at such human functions) be generous amounts of music and dancing on the night, I'll be secretly pining and longing for the pure pleasures that only "60 min [sic] of terrifying sound effects" can produce. Behold the 2 Euro wonder that is "Sound of Horror CD".²

I expected it to be harmless and charming. Full of cartoony creaky doors, cuddly booing ghosts, and rattling (zoinks!) Scooby Doo chains. The kind of thing they might sell to beaming, rosy-cheeked chiddlers at Disneyland.

I was terribly, terribly wrong…

Panting, Shrieking, Grunting, Moaning, Thumping hearts fit to burst, Brutal industrial rhythms – all these things and more are present (on one gruelling hour-long track). It's a festering, Satanic potpourri where slices of David Lynch (or Angelo Badalamenti) mix with bloody chunks of Guantanamo Bay style sonic torture. Have a listen to the first 3 minutes…

Now imagine an hour of that. On your headphones. With the volume turned up to 11. You'd be straight out the front door with the hedge-trimmers in hand, ready to shred the neighbours' kids into a fine gooey paste.

Is it all part of a giant, Silver Shamrock-esque mind-fuck designed to highlight the vacuousness of consumerist Halloween by generating mass carnage? The answer is – almost certainly yes.

You've been warned.

1. I'm a traditionalist. [back]
2. Bought in William St's latest cheapomarket "Your More Store". [back]

1) "What Was it?" (pdf) (html) (Google Books)

Despite being described variously as "a lion of literary New York", "a Poe in the minor mode", and "the writer who to the weird and supernatural gave a setting definitely localized in time and place",¹ Fitz-James O'Brien's name seems scarcely recognised in the province of his birth. I know because I have (over the last few days) asked around and been met with nothing but blank looks. Not the most rigorous approach to research I'll grant you, but it does hint at a certain obscurity.

The facts of his short life are rather hard to discern (he himself was, apparently, a great embellisher of his own legend) but here's a brief chronology that I managed to glean from online sources.

Born in Cork (1828); moved to Castleconnell (Co. Limerick) in his teens (after the death of his father and his mother's subsequent remarriage); splashed about in the waters of the Shannon for a bit; took off up to TCD to study something or other; headed to London and blew an inheritance of £8,000 (no mean feat in the mid 19th century); was either embroiled in a scandal or suffered a broken heart; set sail for America; started writing more earnestly and became a member of the New York literati; fought in the American civil war; was wounded in a skirmish; lingered on for a while; died – aged 34. The end.

Three years prior to his untimely death he was kind enough to pen "What Was it?"² – the tale that is to be the focus of the Dreadful Thoughts Story Club's inaugural discussion:

Though I won't say much more about it here (as this is, after all, a place for conversation, not oration), a few brief observations might help to get our juices (or fluids) flowing (*spoilers follow*).

1) According to several sources the story was pioneering in its use of invisibility. Alan Gullette has this to say:

"What Was It? A Mystery" (March, 1859) caused a minor sensation, being one of the first to deal with an invisible creature. (It predated Maupassant's "The Horla," and while it is not known to have been translated, it is still possible the French short story master heard about the earlier tale. On the other hand, it is fairly certain that Ambrose Bierce was familiar with the story when he wrote "The Damned Thing.").

While the grand-daddy of the modern invisibility narrative seems to be James Dalton's (cautionary) The Invisible Gentleman (1833), the (supposed) originality of FJoB's story appears to lie in its use of a non-human entity.

2) The grounding of the "supernatural" (if you can call it that) in the physical – the creature sleeps, wants for food, is clearly mortal etc. – makes the story feel (to me at least) far more contemporary than it actually is.

3) While the creature is clearly aggressive and hostile, its motivations are never discussed or contextualised. It simply appears, horrifies all present, and then departs (in this case, by slowly dying). In this I'm reminded somewhat of M.R. James (of whom we'll be hearing much more I'm sure). He was a great man for "demonic" entities who, far from revelling in their malevolence, seem wretched and tormented by their diabolical natures. A slightly similar feel is present in "What Was it?" – although the tragic aspects of the unseen monster are much more to the fore.

Anyway, enough of my yappin'. Over to you folks.

"What was it?" – discuss.

1. Wolfe, Francis, "Fitz-James O'Brien in Ireland and England, 1828-1851″, in American Literature, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Nov., 1942), pg. 234. [back]
2. Harper's. March, 1859. [back]

Of course if you're a James Last enthusiast, a collector of ornamental Flamenco dancers, or a devotee of the work of Jeffrey Archer, then this consistency is no bad thing. You'll be spoiled for choice and skipping merrily out the door with three bags full. However if, like me, you live in hope of finding an inexpensive monkey's paw (or a mint-condition Necronomicon) then you're probably better off with eBay.

What keeps me doing the rounds is that every not-so-very-often I stumble across an object that makes me stop, stare and push prospective old lady buyers out of the way. Today's donation to The Museum of Cultural Waste (snapped up in The Irish Cancer Society Shop, William St.) may not quite be worth abusing the elderly, but it does exude an undeniable strangeness. More importantly, it cost 50 cent.

Yes, it's a manky Native American "Action Man" – standing proudly before an atmospheric backdrop of pasta, lentils and couscous. The woman who sold him to me confidently declared him an "Apache", before pointing out (quite despondently) that his leg was hanging off. She was spot on about the damage to the leg (it got me a discount), but I'm not so sure about her swift assessment of his tribal affiliations. More research is required.

After getting him home and getting him nekkid I discovered the mark of "Kid Kore 1994″ stamped indistinctly on his arse. Though the name was new to me I hazarded an educated guess that "Kid Kore" was a) Chinese & b) unlikely to be one of Mattel and Hasbro's main global competitors. As with almost all Manky Toy makers, "Kid Kore" don't appear to have invested any of their profits in a company web site – leaving precise details hard to come by.

I can, however, confirm that they don't just limit themselves to plastic "Apaches". They also produce the "Little Ones" range of dolls – notable for being cute, colourful and (according to EU consumer affairs) stuffed to the gills with phenol.

The product poses a chemical risk because the shoes of the doll contain phenol at level of 980 mg/kg whereas the limit is 150 mg/kg. Phenol can cause various poisoning symptoms.

Yikes! From the look of the "Apache's" head our cats may have spent most of this afternoon happily gnawing his hair…little realising it may have been dripping in life-threatening toxins. The EU rather vaguely refers to "various poisoning symptoms". What are these exactly?

Listlessness? Ennui? Gassiness? Death?¹

For anyone who wants to try out their own chemical experiments the below "Kid Kore" doll is on sale at ioffer.com for a mere 50 cents (US).

The seller's sales pitch seems aimed at a rather disturbed niche market:

This cute little red head measures approximately 5 inches tall.

She has no clothes and is looking for a good home.

One presumes that her (phenol-soaked) clothes were seized by EU agents and destroyed.

Before we finish, let's briefly return to our Native American friend. There's something both unsettling and enigmatic about his face.

A touch of the "John Cusack wearing a Michael Myers mask" perhaps? Certainly an intense melancholia. Could the (surprisingly sensitive) "Kid Kore" designers have deliberately set out to capture the ineffable sadness of a people's loss and displacement?

P. S: By the time you read this I may have succumbed to phenol vapours and slipped into a coma.

1. The ultimate "poisoning symptom". [back]

Abbeyfeale (for those who don't know) is a small market town that straddles the border of Counties Limerick and Kerry. Only a couple of thousand souls call it home.

Why it requires a staggering 97 Tesco outlets is anybody's guess. Perhaps a long-term experiment is being carried out by Tesco (or parties unknown) to measure the psychological, civic and sociological effects on a small populace of a gross over-exposure to consumer choices. Actually, there is but one choice – Tesco (all 97 of it/them).

Resistance is futile.

On one of my very rare trips from the bed to the computer I stumbled across the below photo and was reminded of a question asked (by Copernicus) on this very blog way back in December of 2005:¹

The question concerned a "giant warrior figure in the People's Park [Limerick]" who (as Copernicus put it) "kept getting its knob chopped off, supposedly by outraged citizens". I hadn't thought about this emasculated artwork in years, and, since my memories of the specifics were fairly vague, I vowed to do a bit of digging to see if "before" and "after" images of the warrior could be found.

As is often the case, this resolution faded within hours (or possibly minutes) and I thought no more about till yesterday when – while idly flicking through Flickr – I happened upon the above, showing none other than the bould warrior himself. Though it is, as far as I know, the only online image of a once semi-notorious piece of public art (I think it appeared and disappeared within the space of a few years in the early 90s), it does not, alas, show whether the figure is sans knob or avec knob.

While my murky memory correctly visualised it covered in war paint, holding a spear, and riding an ancient Celtic skateboard – I'd failed to recall that it was Janus-faced (isn't Janus of Roman origin?) and possessed of a rather feminine (or, at least, ambiguous) body. Perhaps those readers well-versed in Celtic mythology and iconography could offer a reading of its many curious features?

While I'm in the mood to pester for information, can any Limerickians answer the following?

a) Who was the artist?
b) When did it first appear? Who commissioned it? [I have a feeling that it was created to mark a special occasion/anniversary...but I could be wrong]
c) How many times did it have penile-removal surgery performed on it (I know it was more than once)?
d) Where is it now?

I'd also be keen to find out what happened to the stolen penises, which were, as I recall, of fairly realistic (if not generous) proportions (a far cry from the classic "periwinkle" of Michelangelo's David et al). It's possible that this conspicuousness was what most offended the easily offended (although, as I said before, I have a sneaking suspicion that "common or garden vandals hiding behind a cloak of supposed 'moral outrage'" were really to blame).

I do remember a horrified letter sent to the Limerick Leader by some chap who'd been strolling in the park with his young daughter. Apparently their happy family occasion was destroyed by rounding a corner and coming face-to-phallus with the offending appendage (which, I recall, he described as "pointing straight at me"). Lord save us.

I'm off back to bed. Anyone with any information on the above can send a postcard to the usual address (i.e. leave a comment), or contact An Garda Síochána.

1. Many thanks to Flickr user "MacClure" for permission to reproduce it here. [back]

Apologies if you've just spurted your precious morning coffee all over your keyboard, but the above graffito does indeed say what you think it says. Take another look. Yup, it's still there.

To add an extra layer of intrigue (or, simply, seediness) I should point out that the piece was discovered beside a public toilet. Not only that, but it appears to have been written in nail varnish (a sample has been sent to the lab. Results not yet known).¹

Though the message may seem garishly clear, the inclusion of the (author's?) name "Cathal" gives us some pause for thought and reflection.²

The stray "V" in the middle of the photo could be interpreted as "Versus". If that's the case then we're left with "Cathal Vs. Vaginas are Cool" – a Dadaist spin on the likes of Godzilla Vs. King Kong.³ Whatever the case may be, it's hard to argue with the core argument/sentiment.

Following on from last Thursday's discussion of "pen-testing paper" graffiti, I also present the following (obtained from the same source):

Alvaro, it seems, has both a passionate admirer and a (possibly psychotic) nemesis. While the handwriting (and choice of implement) suggests two separate individuals, one can't rule out a multiple personality, love/hate scenario.

Alvaro I love you! Alvaro u Must Die! – It's an Almodóvar film waiting to happen.

1. I was not the discover. Credit goes to Mairéad Conneely and John O'Callaghan. [back]
2. Like a Graffitti version of the Angelus. [back]
3. It could also, I suppose, have hip-hop connotations. [back]