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Garden-crisp human organs: get 'em while they've still got some shelf-life. When it comes to a freshly flayed skeleton or a nice plump duodenum, it's as much of a seller's market as it was in the late eighteenth century, when bloodhounds, perimeter wall watchtowers and armed guards policed the dead of Glasnevin Cemetery. As with hokey Irish bars, so too with our miscreants and villainy: we love exporting them here and there so that others may enjoy the fruits of our gene pool. With a little help from "those humble friends of science and humanity" (as Saunders' Newsletter snarkily titled the resurrection men) many Irish cadavers found their way to British medical schools, often in casks labelled "Irish Cheese". William Burke and William Hare, Edinburgh's most notorious medical suppliers – and their final victim Mary Docherty – all hailed from Ireland. Burke would have been pleased to know that following his 1829 execution by hanging, his body got divvied up by anatomy students who then set to making appropriately grisly tchotchkes like a wallet and a snuff box from his tanned skin – some of which are still on display at Edinburgh Medical College.

Mind you, it's hotly debated whether the duo ever did any actual tomb raiding, some historians speculating that they skipped the digging and moved straight to their favoured modus operandi of suffocating the living, affectionately termed 'burking'. Hare's wife (and probable accomplice to several of the murders) Margaret fled back to Ireland and managed to maintain a low profile until her eventual reincarnation as our current Minister For Health and Children, Mary Harney. 

Back at home, the considerable money to be made by selling off corpses to the more unscrupulous elements of the medical profession was matched by the Irish public's overwhelming dread of being dug up and dismembered by students, so the firefight pitting grieving relatives of Edward Barrett Esq., several local citizens in their night attire, a handful of constables and some Glasnevin watchmen against the 'Sack-'em-Up gentlemen'  that erupted just after New Year in 1830 may not have been as unusual as it seems today. When standard security measures like mortsafes (iron cages placed around a coffin) and the Cuban bloodhounds that patrolled Prospect Cemetery until 1853 just weren't enough to deter the cadaver thieves, mourners sometimes had to come out shooting. Barrett's family, firing from behind cover of gravestones, managed to pop a cap in the ass of at least one of the grave robbers and eventually managed to see them off. Until the next time.

The paradigm-shifting War on Terror has led to a security drain from graveyards to airports in recent years (who will mourn the rusting metal detectors at the cemetery gates?) but we're not about to suggest that disinterring cadavers is any sort of walk in the park – at least not if you're using some bullshit pretext like "the advancement of medical science". You're going to need a much better reason than that – like, say, you want to magically turn someone into a saint. 

As it turns out, if you want a slice of those juicy remains and don't need the cops breathing down your neck with their no-can-do attitude, you'll have to enlist the heavy hitters at the Vatican and get beatifyin'. It just takes one quick fax from the Pope (the amateur grave robber's fairy godmother) and you can dig up anyone you want. Top tip: suggest there won't be any signs of decay in your chosen corpse. When it comes to doling out sainthoods, the church is mad for incorruptibility and a rosy-cheeked pallor. There are a few practical considerations to bear in mind when planning for The Big Dig: thanks to "the law", you'll have to rebury or cremate your resurrected chum within 48 hours, so make sure to clear your diary and make the most of your short time together. For those on a strict budget, it's worth remembering that fees for exhumation licenses vary from one local authority to another – Fingal County Council's €675 charge is a total bargain compared to Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown's €1,500+ gouging – so do shop around. 

If you don't want to get your hands dirty with the digging side of the business, sub-contract that out and concentrate on the booming touring relic market instead. The 2001 St. Therese Tour of Ireland, which saw various bits of the long-deceased Carmelite "Little Flower" transported around the country in a custom built Theresemobile, drew millions of paying devotees and boasted a lucrative sideline in Therese pens, rulers and keyrings. Which is fine as far as it goes, but Therese was a foreign import and it should be pretty clear by now that we need to stimulate our indigenous saint industry. Take Matt Talbot, a popular poster boy for the temperance movement who's been in and out of the ground more times than an April earthworm. Pious auto-bondage enthusiast Matt was declared 'Venerable' by the Vatican authorities in 1975, but we reckon a few more airings for his strangely attractive corpse might well bump him up to Saint Matt. You'll find him in Our Lady of Lourdes Church on Seán McDermott Street: bring a crowbar and a shovel, a spot of rouge and a Vatican letterhead. What are you waiting for? The country is on its knees, crying out for dead meat. It's practically free money. And it's not like the dead are especially motivated to claim royalties. 

Illustration by leading gentleman Brian Coldrick.

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Pic courtesy guiltyx

“I wanted to write something that was about power. About the powerlessness of childhood. It’s the fact that, as a child, you are living in somebody else’s country. You are a guerrilla force: there’s an army of occupation, they’re all giants and they’ve got some kind of baffling agenda.” Neil Gaiman’s account of the gulf between adult life and childhood – the one that would be perfectly bridged in adolescence if life, hormones and “icky things like kissing” didn’t get in the way first – is droll and sad in equal measures, particularly in the context of recent events in Soham. 

The bitter irony – that Gaiman’s new novel Coraline, his first venture into children’s fiction, is about child abduction, parents stripped of their protective role and the fear of the familiar – is not lost on the author. Sipping the first of many cups of tea in the lobby of the Clarence, he’s just been on the Gerry Ryan Show to talk about the book, following a 90-minute segment on the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. When he was doing interviews in America, there was always a point where some nervous journalist would ask “but don’t you think this book is too dark for children?” But the focus has shifted: now, he says, “it’s like there’s a sudden collective understanding of what fairytales are for. There are some really important lessons in something like Hansel And Gretel, including the fact that you may one day have to make it on your own; that if you were ever put in a really dangerous situation that you should never give up hope, and that you should be prepared to do something quite horrible if you have to. Child psychologists have been saying for years that we shouldn’t tell children these things, that we should tell them the world is pink and everybody should hug like Barney at the end. But you know what? There are fucking monsters out there, and they kill people. And it’s not a bad thing for kids to understand that.”

Gaiman leads by example: there are plenty of monsters in Coraline, the tale of the eponymous heroine’s journey into a frightening inverse Narnia through a bricked up doorframe, replete with sinister doppelgänger parents with shiny black buttons for eyes. Coraline’s name came about quite by accident – a brief stumble on the keyboard (“I have a terrible feeling I was writing to someone called Caroline”) and Gaiman’s heroine was born. “Serendipity takes care of you, especially as a writer. The only thing you can almost guarantee is that when you desperately need a piece of information, and you’ve reached the point where you’ve given up looking, the book that falls off the stack onto your head will fall open at the page that contains exactly what you need. Although it’s never what you thought you needed – it’s always something slightly at right-angles.”

Now in his mid-forties and the author of numerous novels (most recently American Gods), graphic novels, screen and stage plays, Gaiman will be forever known for the dark, literate and mythically sophisticated opus that was Sandman. The Vertigo comic book series had the traditional lit-crits eating their hats and arriving at the rather tardy conclusion that some comics could indeed be elevated to high art. After writing with adults in mind for so long, I ask him if had to approach Coraline from a whole new direction. “I tried not to waste any words. Somebody once said to me that the best way to write a short story was to write as if you were paying them by the word, and that’s very much the approach I took with this book. If there’s a word there, it does something; if there’s a sentence there, it does something. Especially when something is going to be read out loud, you don’t need that extra fatty adjectival froth on the top.”

Gaiman’s deliberate economy with words doesn’t mean his lost his enthusiasm for well-turned descriptive prose, mind you: the quiet menace of Coraline’s button-eyed “other mother” is hinted at early on with eerie imagery like “the hair on her head drifted like plants under the sea,” and these encounters grow ever more frightening and unsettling as the book progresses.

Coraline has been frequently likened to both Alice In Wonderland and to Roald Dahl’s writing – certainly there are superficial likenesses to Carroll’s dark fantasy (the little girl in trouble, the hidden world just beyond our vision) and Coraline’s determination to prevail in the face of horror (and grown-up folly) recalls some of Dahl’s singleminded child heroes – but that’s where the similarities end. “It’s journalistic shorthand; it’s laziness. I don’t see much resemblance, except that they were all written in the classic English storytelling voice. The other thing is, it was always important to me that Coraline would win whatever battles she fought in a way that any smart eight year old could win those battles.”

The best children’s fiction, of course, never condescends to its natural audience, never assumes that kids are imbeciles, and it’s to Gaiman’s credit that he refused to forget the lessons of his own childhood. “I have very very vivid memories of being a kid, and reading books, and I remember feeling deep loathing and irritation whenever I encountered a children’s book which patronised. The Just William books, for example, were spiritually correct in every way – they may not have been exactly mapped onto my world, but I knew who these people were, and I knew why they did what they did. The fact that William put a frog in his pocket because he didn’t have anywhere else to put it – that just felt right, it made sense to me. Whereas you’d read these other books… usually European for some reason, about these ‘dear children’ who will now be detectives and, oh how nice for them. And you’re just thinking: this is wank.”

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Taoiseach Brian Cowen turned up for an interview at RTE studios on Tuesday in a frilly bra and knickers, with an ill-fitting pair of suspenders halfway down his thighs, to tell the Irish public that he was confident of Ireland’s economic recovery.

When challenged about the three billion in cuts that Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said could be even higher in this year’s budget, the Taoiseach began to apply lipstick to his face.

“I think it’s important to recognise the strengths of the Irish economy as well as we try to ensure that we deal with the fiscal problem,” he explained, silently closing his large, unwieldy lips over a napkin to remove excess makeup.

“There’s no question but that any government in Ireland has to close the gap between what’s being spent and what’s coming in from taxpayers,” he explained, as he opened a mascara brush and delicately began to run it over his eyelashes. “But what I’ve been emphasising is the strengths of the Irish economy, what’s the basis on which we can grow and recover.”

While fiddling with an eyeliner pencil, the Taoiseach claimed that he realised that the Irish public were fully appreciative of the deficit. He put the eyeliner away before acknowledging that there was a need to balance the books, but he felt that economic growth had to be encouraged too. As he made these points, he rubbed first a foundation base, and then some blusher, into his cheeks to enhance what little definition he could in his bone structure.

Unlike other political leaders, who make themselves up before their interviews, Taoiseach Cowen isn’t interested in vanity and was more than happy to perform his ablutions in the studio.

When challenged about a possible increase in cuts, he claimed:

“The media are getting into word games.” There was, he explained, a “minimum of three billion euros” in cuts. He then produced a camping stove, and within a matter of seconds, he had begun to melt some wax in a pot atop the small cooker. Defending Brian Lenihan, Mr Cowen slathered some of the wax on his legs while he said:

“He’s setting out very clearly the seriousness of our intent and should there be any doubt – either at home or abroad – that this government is not committed to dealing with the plans it has agreed, he’s making it very clear that we will be dealing with them.”

By the end of the early morning ten minute interview, Mr Cowen was walking out the studio door in a navy blue business suit, his fat, now hairless legs covered in trousers.

Thankfully, people will never realise that this sterling multitasker with a great intellect, charged with leading our country out of recession, was – only a few hours earlier – three sheets to the wind at a Galway hotel, singing to the rafters and regaling party colleagues with interesting stories.

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The new issue of Wallpaper with custom cover arrived today. The cover creation app - now open to all at http://www.wallpaper.com/custom-covers/app - was pretty handy, if a little limited. Disappointed in myself that I didn't manage to extract more profanity from the tools at hand.

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15 – 26 June, 8 pm

The Rocky Horror Show meets Brechtian alienation in Rainer Fassbinder’s Garbage, the City and Death at Smock Alley. Director Jane Mulcahy injects some of today’s popular music, Depression era style songs and a little opera into a play that addresses German post-war anti-Semitism, the extremes of liberal guilt and political corruption during a building boom. Alongside this there are issues of sexual identity found here: Leather and whips, transvestism, latent homosexuality, masochism, prostitution, the nature of power in relationships and unconventional marriages all feature.

Mary Cate Smith plays Roma, grounding all the madness around her as a consumptive prostitute married to a violent Franz (Clive Brassington). She catches the eye of a successful Jewish businessman and takes a step up socially. Husband Franz isn’t pleased. Neither is Roma, who has trouble dealing with her newfound affluence. The Jewish businessman appears to be the only character thriving in the post war society, singing that he finds Hitler in his heart because “from the corpses, flowers grow.” Is he exploiting his Jewishness in this hypersensitive society? Ironically, wife-beater Franz discovers homosexuality, doing little to assuage Roma’s guilt as he no longer loves her (for “loves” read “punches”) given the attentions of the successful businessman. Where Franz’s fists kept Roma “awake”, her improvement in quality of life now makes her want to “renounce her role”. This is just part of one plotline in a play where a lot goes on.

The play could have done with a little less general social commentary – the audience could draw its own conclusions without much of the aphoristic dialogue and soliloquising, well written as it is. However, it’s a thought provoking and rich musical piece that features prochronistic Eighties costumes, nudity, cross-dressing, an eclectic range of songs and an impressive cast, all in fine voice (particularly Brendan Hickey as the Jewish businessman).

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- literally 'the un-homely'; more often understood in English as the uncanny, this refers to any instance which seems familiar and strange simultaneously, and the unsettling effect that creates in the reader/viewer.

First coined by Ernst Jentsch in 1906:

In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately.

It was popularised by - and is probably connected for all time in the popular consciousness with - Sigmund Freud, who expanded on Jentsch's idea to (typically, one supposes) bring in the maelstrom of emotions that arise from social taboo, such as disgust, prurience, envy, lust, fear, et al. For Freud, the uncanny is a representation/reminder of our id, of the baser feelings that drive us and hence our experience of it necessarily is both familiar & strange.

The uncanny in literature:

The uncanny in life:

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Recently Dave Eggers & McSweeney's took their signature style to the newspaper world:

But be that as it may. Here is an interesting talk/interview Eggers recently gave 'on the future of print'. Worth a read.

He may not have seen the tabloids (or many of the broadsheets) lately, though:

I like…the calmness, the authority, the curation of a daily paper, where I know I’m not going to be sent into something totally trivial and non-germane

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LIFE magazine has unearthed some 'previously unseen' (by THE INTERNET) photos of the hours immediately following Einstein's death. Here's his desk, as he left it:

Photographed by the now 92-year-old Ralph Morse, who worked for the magazine for decades, the photographs are interesting as an early ancestor of the graveyard paparazzi beat so familiar to TMZ readers these days. Morse followed the family all around Princeton, documenting the mechanics of his burial, snapping the coffin, the family arriving at the crematorium and returning to the family home. 

The reason the photos haven't been seen until now is interesting. Einstein's son asked Morse's editor not to publish them and he didn't, which goes to show (a) how what is considered newsworthy has changed in 65 years and (b) the autonomy today's editors have long since lost.

One other thing that perhaps highlights a certain ethical grey area is slide 10, in which we see Dr. Thomas Harvey, who performed Einstein's autopsy, posing with partially carved brain tissue. Is it the great physicist's cranial matter? Who can say? Well, says Morse, it's impossible to be certain, but maybe, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say-no-more:

"You know, it was fifty-five years ago. Honestly, I don't remember every single detail of the day. So whatever he's cutting there ..." Morse's words hang in the air. Then, mischievously, he laughs.

Sigh.

The road from The Atlantic to The Smoking Gun is shorter than you think.

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In 1769, the Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet noticed his grandfather, who was almost completely blind, was seeing things. He saw people, patterns, carriages and birds "amusing and magical visions" - but these were not apparent to everyone else. Normally, when an elderly person starts talking about hallucinations, we reach for the shelf marked 'dementia'. Charles Lullin, the man in question, was not senile. In fact, he was markedly lucid, especially given this was 1769 and he was not far from his ninetieth year.

BIOGRAPHICAL/CONTEXT DISCLAIMER: Bonnet himself was by profession a naturalist & philosopher, a Natural Philosopher being the precursor of what we now call the natural sciences. He took the threads of his system from the work of Leibniz - specifically, there was only one original act of creation (a divine Big Bang) and that the continuity of existence is unbroken. The essential theory is of God as a sort of architect of perpetual clockwork motion or cosmic gardener, winding the cogs or creating the seeds, then letting the universe go, to develop as it will. In this way, the germs of evolutionary theory can be seen.

Back to Mr. Lullin. The old man was very aware that his visions were not real - that is, he understood they were hallucinations without basis in material reality as everyone else experienced it. Charles Bonnet catalogued his grandfather's experience and in time, the condition came to be known as Charles Bonnet Syndrome, or CBS. If you are visually impaired and suffer from CBS, you will be subject to occasional abrupt hallucinations, often of a geometric nature (but surreal Gilliamesque apparitions are not uncommon either), which can last for seconds or linger for hours. You are not otherwise mentally impaired - it in no way affects your other cognitive processes. Swiftian fans will be delighted to hear that many of the visions are what is described as 'lilliput hallucinations' - everything is smaller than normal.

Both the neurologists Oliver Sacks and VS Ramachandran, familiar to Radiolab listeners, have written and discussed the syndrome, the latter having done so in the book Phantoms In The Brain. Here's Sacks at TED.com, explaining his own experience of the condition, both as a doctor and a patient.

'As you lose vision -  as the visual part of the brain are no longer getting any input, they become hyperactive and excitable, firing off spontaneously in all directions', according to Sacks. This is true of all aspects of the brain. People suffering from hearing loss often describe 'sound hallucinations'. VS Ramachandran is famous for popularising and studying the idea of the 'phantom limb' - when amputees feel the ghost of a limb long since removed. So one thing you can be reasonably sure of, if you live long enough to lose some essential part of 'you', those parts of your brain that controlled it will find some way of filling the space.

The idea that the brain works without necessarily consulting the mind is one of my favourite Big Ideas and expect many more posts on this themes. In the meantime, go for a walk and listen to this episode of Radiolab, in which Oliver Sacks explains why your body is in shock before you are and VS Ramachandran discusses  how mirrors can help remove phantom limbs.

[UPDATE: Massively irritating embedded autoplayer removed & replaced with polite, unassuming link.]

Radiolab: Where Am I? 

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“I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll be a writer who doesn’t publish,’ ’’

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Illustrations by Brian Coldrick

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