Ah it's all good in the hood. Most people didn't have a clue what I was on about when I excitedly told them that Rattlebag was cancelled or knew and just shrugged indiffrently. For me this it was a moment worthy of shouting out a big gay 'YESSS!'
Rattlebag is/was an arts & culture programme on RTE radio 1 on after Joe Duffy at around 2.30pm every week day. I haven't heard it in over a year but in my last job we listened to RTE all day for 3 years straight. Why couldn't we turn it off? Partly because we enjoyed annoying ourselves and mostly because Irish commercial radio is complete shit and mainly because we all had an interest in arts and culture. Although they covered films,books and the occaisonal good interview the overall scope of the programme was geared towards the 'awts'; pointless wanky exhibitions and plays, readings from crap books, opera etc. But this would all be tolerable if not for the presenter, Myles Dungan.

I've never had to interview someone and I'm sure I would try to ingratiate myself with them in order to get the most for the interview, it would be hard not to but this dope would have his tongue so far up their arse he'd be licking their eyeballs. Really, just sucking their dick while we had to listen, never any serious questions about the validity of their work, never made them squirm or for the listener's sake take an agressive stance and stir some shit; make it an interview and not just an big gay massage. And his phoney laugh! Jesus what a twit.

But that can't be enough to diss him you say, but lissen dis: In the 2-3 years of regular listening I never heard him disagree or object to anybody on Rattlebag until these lads from some circus, Fossets or Duffy's were on. They were highligting the plight of the national circus, attendances were dropping off and they had trouble getting government cash. They wanted recognition from the Arts Council that circuses are a 'performing art' as in most other countries. Mr Dungan throws a spaz and gets all 'How dare you' with them. The only time he ever showed an opinion and actually seemed to go on the attack,defending the AC's right to spend. This was before my grief with the AC and didn't really care about the funding issue but from that day I pegged him as a wanker. The circus have since gotten their recognition.

Another beef I have is with the programme itself. From day one of my self publishing antics I sent letters to Rattlebag trying to get some air time, originally selfishly just for me and then for the larger Irish Comics industry. 5 letters and 2 phonecalls. Apparently comics don't count. Not recognised in their remit. Yeah, they had Neill Gaiman on a while back but who cares? They probably thought it was Gay-Man, sorry, that gag was shit. In my original appeal to the Arts Council about their fucktacular funding decisions I demanded that they recognise the medium of comics/graphic storytelling which of course was brushed off. I argued that if a largescale poll was to be conducted about what kind of 'art and culture' the average Irish person was into, with the view to allocating new funding, theatre, opera and dancing would be dwarfed by levels of interest in video games, films and comics. Video games are art so don't even go there girlfriend.Rattlebag and the Arts Council suffer from the same snobbish leanings. By the way,The AC are giving the Abbey 25million of our cash while everyone else fucking starves.

So to recap, It's rare that I wish harm or bad fortune on people but it this case I'm glad to see somebody lose their job. With continued pressure on RTE from commercial ventures, the cobwebs and stuffyness are being slowly eroded as they are forced to accept that the average license payer thinks RTE radio is shit and out of touch. The axing or harsh rescheduling of Rattlebag is a step in the right direction.

Go on Myles you dick, google yourself. I'm sure they'll let you rock a go online down in FAS.But mark these words, he'll be a ranking member in the AC over the next few years. I'm sure he could think of a few ways to waste your cash.

Sour grapes? Begrudgery? Fucking smart it is. Eat a dick. Peace out.

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Yes, here it is, the greatest comic ever. Big thanks to Brianer for the scan.



Isn't it deadly? Great draughtsmanship and composition but it's the innocence of the whole thing that gets me. I feel a clamnut version coming on, starting with the predictable 'Teenie Weenies roll Bob a number' then 'The Tennie Weenies scrub Bob's willy'.

Thanks for all the comments and the mails about the last post, great to have a sounding board for tricky decisions, next time we'll be voting on my breakfast, Aldi Sugarpuffs or stealing someone's crackers in the canteen.

I missed out on the whole Napster thing a few years ago. Had no pc or net connection and enviously listened to friends boasting about how their minidisc (remember those things?) is full of downloaded music. It's only a year since I've had access to the internerd at home and at work after years of sponging a few minutes on dial up here and there and going to that shitty 'web cafe' over in Springfield. Heh, that place used to be a laundrette and web cafe and was ran by a Pakistani gentleman with poor English and he was constantly bombarded with angry customers unhappy with their washing, mostly Travellers complaining about how Josie's communion dress was ruined and the like it, it was funny shit.



I've been a big collector of audio and video nonsense for years and when I finally got into the peer to peer file sharing it was like being in nerd's heaven, films, albums, flarn and the occaisional comic saved as a pdf. At the tremendous rate that all this shit is advancing I was still shocked to find about the wholesale piracy of mainstream comics, scanned by volunteers and made freely available by the dozen.

All you need is the CDisplay Sequential image viewer installed and then just search for 'dcp' on your prefered p2p network thing. DCP stands for Digital Comic Preservation. Usually the weeks releases will be saved 'DCP ww-mm-yy' and contain 20-60 issues. It's great just to see what's being published and some of the utter shit that the kids are buying. Is it harming the comics industry? Not in my experience, as a snob who poo poo's most comics because of the bad production (when you're a hack like me, seeing other hacks make shortcuts is annoying) or high cover price, it has been a habit changing experience to get my jaded paws on 50 new comics a week. As a result of skimming through comics I've found some gems and now buy comics again.

I used to love all the crappy superhero stuff churned out by Image, Marvel and DC but something went sour and I stopped buying them. My opinion of comics remained unchanged for about 6 years even though I was spending most of my spare time making then. In 2002 I bought no comics at all and didn't even bother visiting any comic shops that year.

You can also get some rarities and shit that you'd never could afford too plus you can be brutally honest with what you're reading since you didn't pay for it. So give it a go, stick with it and you'll find something you'll love. And if you love it, go out and buy the comic.

yeah, it's illegal but what isn't these days? Smoking in pubs, setting a spy cam up in the girl's toilet in work etc.

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yeah so the last post was shit, just skimmed through it there and I apologise. To make up to the loyal 30-odd visitors who seem to check this site fairly constantly for new stuff, I'm putting up a work in progress and you can vote on the ending.

It's a two page comic called Count Curly Wee which will be in issue 3 of The Shiznit. It's based on a comic called Count Curly Wee (I'm not changing the name, who's going to sue?Nobody, that's who). Count Curly Wee has been in the Irish Independent for decades and it's weird. Truely cryptic. I bought the Indo 3 days in a row to try get a handle on the characters but it just confused me, still don't know which one is Curly Wee or what's going on. There's no way they're printed in order.The one common thread was a goat in a night gown and the mention of somebody called Gussie Gander, other than that each installment is off on a tangent. I have alot of memories of Count Curly Wee from my childhood, all of them ending in dissapointment.

Up in Brian's house a few months ago and we were discussing plans for issue 3. He has this massive book of the history of comics which he stroked from Blanchardstown Library and there's some gold in it. The old timey comics were so nutty. There was one called 'The Teenie
Weenies boil an egg' where it's just one illustration of all these little dudes boiling an egg. That's it. I found this hilarious and we decided to do an old timey for issue 3. Soon after I found this on Fustar (loads of background info in the comments) and it was decided.

Below is the comic, written by Brian and drawn by me. We are torn on the ending, I'll include his idea and mine, but if YOU (all caps and bold there, so I mean it) can top it please drop me a line.

Fire crackers, fried rice and gambling games,

They arrive over here and take Irish names.

With the amount of refreshment this one yields,

I think I shall call him Paddy Fields.

Here come those chaps; Ahmed and Pedro,

Flogging the Herald AM and The Metro.

Circulation is 55,006,

But is that the papers or the Darkies and Spicks?

Look in that call shop, you see those Blacks?

Dispensers of perfume and towels in the Jacks

I'm sorry ol bean, but you're too late,

That one was already done by The Slate

Look over yonder to that building site,

And feast your eyes on the Turkish “delight”

80 hours of hod and hammer,

2.20 an hour, 300 million for GAMA

Lets rent out a row boat from Row-Land,

That’s sailed by that fellow from Poland.

Rothwell the Pirate skips down to the bank,

Whilst Paddies and Poles alike walked the plank.

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There'll be two more panels, the resolution/punchline. I've done one and Brians done one. This is mine:

But someday this dear celtic tiger wont roar

And hoards of us spongers will again flee the shores

Who’ll then be Our bosses?Yes. You guessed right

We’ll build Polish houses and shovel THEIR shite

And Brian's:

"With jokes about wife beating, voilence and liquor
The count's new work chums tease and snigger,
It took all this time for him to figure,
That he's a green, white and orange nigger!"

If I wasn't responsible for publishing and answering emails/ letterbombs I'd go with the nigger one. But the rest of the story is so racist that I honestly think alot of twits would freak. What to do? The ending should teach the characters a lesson, teach the reader a lesson, make them laugh and absolve us from chrages of inciting racial hatred. You know the drill.

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