Happy 40th birthday to one of my favorite albums of all-time, Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love 💜

Now that it’s in print, if you’re feeling like reading about two of my favorites (O’Brien & Ó Cadhain) and their wild wild stories, check out my little article in Irish Studies Review 🚲🪦

Fantastic to see Mikelyn Rochford @mikelyn.bsky.social win the British Association for Irish Studies @bairishstudies.bsky.social essay prize for her challenge to the ways 'narrative theory has conceived of afterlife stories as unnatural, oppositional, or dependent on a privileged realist norm'

Belated, but what a good time the @flannobriensoc.bsky.social conference in Strabane was 🚲

💥New publication alert!💥 "‘Our own good Editor’: Brian O’Nolan, Niall Montgomery and the Drafts of the Cruiskeen Lawn" by @maebhlong.bsky.social, @jessiepb.bsky.social & Marie Theunisz out now! Check their article out for new insights into the co-authorship of Cruiskeen Lawn.

It makes me feel better about the state of the world to know that at this moment people are gathering to talk about Flann O’Brien. (No doubt as truly true Gaelic Gaels who speak in true Gaelic Gaelic about the truly Gaelic language.)

Strabane has been putting up with an influx of Flanneurs with exceptional patience and hospitality

Read the superb programme for the 8th International Flann O’Brien Conference, this week in Strabane! With talks on diverse aspects of "Home, Heritage & Origins" in O'Brien's writing; screenings; exhibitions & tours of O'Brien's home town Registration & schedule👉 www.alley-theatre.com/whats-on/25-...

Hello to Strabane and hello to the one and only Brian O’Nolan 👋

Dolly Parton

Fiancé decided to join me on my upcoming Ryanair flight to Belfast and got dropkicked from the seat next to me at the very last minute due to a tech glitch. Got on social media and this is the first thing I saw 🤣

Footage of Bloomsday - June 16, 1954 (50 years after the events of Ulysses). Celebrated by Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien), Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, John Ryan, Tom Joyce, & Con Leventhal. Started at the Martello tower and didn’t get far. Happy Bloomsday!!

Love when the pals win together 🤝

big fan of BAIS ✨✨✨

Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited my home (red) state of Montana on their Fighting Oligarchy tour today. They filled the stadium with a crowd of 7,500 and an overflow of 1,500. Nearing 1% of Montana’s population.

And by this I mean a UFO, not rural Montana.

Cosmic Mind at Play by The Paisleys (1970). Psychedelic garage rock from the Midwest.

PJ Harvey’s White Chalk (2007). I love all the PJ eras (she never misses for me) but this one had a sound I particularly really love.

Happy 60th birthday to Begin Here by The Zombies (1965)!! One of my comfort bands.

Jackpot reissue of Silver Apples - Contact (1969). I need so much more music from Silver Apples, absolutely obsessed with these beats.

Can we get more of this? “The Japanese American National Museum will ‘scrub nothing,’ Fujioka said, and instead will highlight the importance of DEI. “Our community is based on diversity, equity is guaranteed to us in the Constitution, and inclusion is what we believe in,” Fujioka said.

This morning listening to Roy Harper’s Stormcock (1971). I came to start listening to him in a favorite artist’s favorite artist kind of way.

It's April 1st! #OBrien25 #TheThirdPoliceman starts today! readinganactofsharedsolitude.wordpress.com/2025/04/01/i...

Snockman, Doc Snock, Elwood Snock, Michael Hurley. Musician, storyteller, cartoonist, and an artist in every way. Rest in peace. Thanks for the imaginative, funny, beautiful music. You’ll always be one of my favorites.

A day late: Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien/Myles na Gopaleen/etc.) died April 1, 1966 and I guess it’s a nice thing he wrote some good books because I don’t know what else I’d be doing right now if he hadn’t. Probably nothing much. [photos at the end from Anthony Cronin’s O’Brien biography]

I missed it by a bit, but happy ten year anniversary of the release of Sufjan Steven’s Carrie & Lowell. I remember not paying any attention in any of my courses all day and then quietly retreating to the privacy of my dorm room to listen to it all the way through 🥲

FOUND ALIVE and running a chain of laundromats in Miami. Death was all a hoax.

On the Shore (1971) by Trees. A group I wish recorded so much more than the two (stellar) albums that we’ve got.

Tonight: The Astrud Gilberto Album (1965). Gorgeous, gorgeous voice from Brazil.

A US questionnaire seeks to establish whether funded Irish research aligns with the Trump administration’s interests. Trinity College Dublin warns staff >not< to answer US government request for diversity and equality information. More:

... An account of the alarming and destructive fire in York Minster on February 2, 1829: containing the particulars ... of the conflagration: with, a sketch of the life of Jonathan Martin; likewise, his letters; his apprehension, examination, confession, and committal to the city jail, &c. &c.

Current read: Room to Dream by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna. Have audibly laughed more than a few times.

Björk’s Biophilia (2011). One of my absolute favorite of her albums (after Vespertine ofc). Mega concept album about environmental issues that sticks to its ideas down to the composition. Also uses a Tesla coil, gravity harp, pendulums, and a “gameleste” in its instrumentation. Genius. Underrated.

Sitting in the Montana state legislature today watching them debate anti-trans sports bans again. They have had more anti-trans sports bans bills here than there are trans athletes in the state of Montana.

The first record I ever bought! Strawberry Alarm Clock’s Incense and Peppermints (1967). I got a record player for my 14th birthday when I was deeply obsessed with The Beatles and my mom took me to my first record shop - which was Cactus Records in Bozeman, MT 🥰 picked up this one.

I’d take the substance if I could alternate weeks on and off of being Willem Dafoe (a better version of me)

working

For #modwrite I'm finishing a note for @theparishreview.bsky.social on a "new" Myles na Gopaleen article I discovered Myles wrote "Cultural Affairs" for a 1953 issue of The Statist (a financial mag à la The Economist) on "The Economy of Ireland" Interesting for his views on Irish culture & economy

How Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” makes me feel

Reading stack for spring

Current read. Big fan of the film (the 1947 one)!

Anna May Wong — Edward Steichen

We Intend to Cause Havoc aka WITCH and their 1973 zamrock classic Introduction (archival reissue by Now Again Records). Once upon a time I heard “Like a Chicken” at a party and I vowed to find the band responsible for such a jam.

This sequence in The Conversation was one of the most memorable sequences in the history of cinema. Thank you. Gene Hackman (1930-2025)

What I’ve been up to!!! Grateful for this.

House, 1977

I want you all to meditate on this next time you laugh when you see Jerry drop a piano from a great height, steamroll his person, or light a stick of dynamite under Tom’s ass.

Current read: