Ragtag Giggagon

INTERVIEW: KATYA MILLS ON DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS US AUTHOR KATYA MILLS' NEW BOOK HAS BEEN RELEASED. DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS IS A FIRST-PERSON URBAN CONTEMPORARY FANTASY FEATURING AME, A YOUNG WOMAN PLUCKED FROM HER RURAL CHILDHOOD HOME BY FREDDY, TO LIVE AMONG PEOPLE OF HER KIND IN OAKLAND. RAGTAG GIGGAGON: What is the book about, and what inspired it? KATYA MILLS: The book is the first in a series and a literary fiction. It is a coming-of-age story about a young woman who was given up for adoption at a very early age. She becomes alienated in her community, because she is different. She is androgynous and has preternatural abilities. She is abducted as a teenager and a taken to a city in the States, present day, to be with her kin. She soon realizes her place there. She will learn the Dark Art of her people. I was definitely inspired by human psychology and the culture of fear here in the States, having lived here all my life. I am inspired every day by the courage and heroics of t

I haven't encountered much of Ross with the exception of the odd column or excerpt over the years. Whenever I catch it, Paul Howard's work surprises in its depth and plotting for something that is often regarded as "hilarious" - which it is too. The play is wrapping at the Gaiety on Saturday night, so this review is neither timely nor necessary. What surprised me about the show was its conventionality; the set-up is a D4 kitchen sink drama for the most part. And it's a very well-made play. Set in 2022, there are numerous funny references to this future, imagined Oirland. The jokes are not outlandishly speculative, but they do raise a chuckle. The satire is surprisingly subtle. Ross's daughter Honor orders a Chinese meal in Mandarin, via a touchscreen. His father Charles is director of elections for Fianna Fail, a septuagenarian Bertie Ahern about to become Taoiseach again. Given local tendencies to forgive politicians who feather their own nests, even this is

Middlemen, and especially roasters, capture nearly all of the profit after the crop leaves the farm. It’s a stunningly disproportionate reward compared to the amount of time, labor, and know-how farmers put into their product. A quote from Forbes about coffee farmers . But doesn't it apply equally to most writers and artists? Sure, we all sit on our arses all day, having never worked the fields a day in our lives, unless we enjoy pursuits such as gardening, our increasingly sendentary lives undermining any political stance we might have that could be regarded as seditious. Actually, I can't be bothered articulating this point any further. It all amounts to a hill of beans.

The now-retired Pope Benedict made a claim about Islam being too bellicose ten years back. Is the Qu'ran worse than the Bible? Does he read his Bible, in the Aramaic or the Ancient Greek or the Latin or the Hebrew or whatever languages he knows? In German? This former Hitler Youth punk hung up his mitre and his fancy old-skool Santy cloak and the woolly collars (to go with his fin-de-siecle sensibilities) because he suffered a persecution complex while maintaining a stubbornness borne of a closed mind and closed shop. Among other nightmares he faced pre-retirement, when he spoke out about Islam, a nun was killed in Somalia. Every time the pope disses another religion, a nun dies in Africa. [FINGER CLICK!] The terrorists who killed the nun identified as Muslim. The same goes for the people who killed some seventy Christians in the Middle East at the time of the Danish cartoonists causing the hooplah in 2005/6. The Charlie Hebdo satirists see what's going on, and they get a huge

Continued from here . Lots of people say "I don't like Muslims!" I take issue with plenty to be found in so-called Islamic culture. There's far too much misogyny, too much weight given over to conspiracy theories about Israel and 9-11, too much exploitation, too much racism on the Saudi peninsula, too much genocide in Africa. And the world is getting too long-in-the-tooth now for cultural relativism that allows for any kind of that shit. Islam gets the same respect and disrespect as any other religion. But this point has been made:  sharing racist political cartoons from increasingly-fascist-xenophobic europe in "solidarity" is like posting rape jokes for free speech — Naan Partisan (@ElSangito) January 8, 2015 Hat tip to the inestimable Ming Holden for retweeting it. Would world leaders turn up in Paris if radical feminists had killed satirists over rape cartoons? Although they threw themselves under horses back in the day, feminists don't behav

In Russia, gay men believe that the streets of America are slicked with lubricant. They believe that there are rows and rows of terraced housing in the United Kingdom, and each letterbox is padded, with a handsome man's bum waiting on the door's far side. They believe that the vast majority of the heterosexual men of France will eagerly have gay affairs with any man who wants him. Sure, only one of these "facts" is a reality, and it might exclude a more conservative Northern Ireland, and a far more liberal Wales. But do you want gay Russian men to get the wrong idea? Go smoke a blunt, Buster! One man could choose to change things: Busty Putin. During the Sochi Olympics, Busty told the world press that the parliaments of the West were debating whether to decriminalise paedophilia. He used this as a pretext for anti-gay legislation in Russia. That's not true though, is it? About decriminalising paedophilia? Next he'll be telling us that Jews look like rats. Anyw