"Come Out, Ye Black & Tans" is one of the more popular Irish Rebel songs. But the third verse often gets overlooked in discussions of its legacy:

Come tell us how you slew
Them poor Arabs two by two
Like the Zulu, they had spears
And bows and arrows

How bravely you fought one
With your sixteen-pounder gun
And you frightened them poor Natives
To their marrow

The Black and Tans, as they were called, were a special unit of Britain's Royal Irish Constabulary, and known for committing some particularly heinous acts of wartime horror, including an incendiary bombing of some 300 homes in Cork. — Read the rest

The Blindboy Podcast is always a great listen for ridiculously entertaining counter-cultural explorations. Take the June 28, 2022 episode "Teenage Margaret Thatcher Turtles," in which host Blindboy Boatclub examines how the two-headed monster of Reaganism and Thatcherism transformed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from a subversive post-modern indie comic into a cheesy tool of capitalist propaganda. — Read the rest

If you ask someone to play word association with Ireland, one of the first things you're likely to hear is "Guinness." But the black stuff, as it's affectionately known (even though it's technically red, if you look at it in the light), was curiously created by a Protestant family. — Read the rest

I've written here before about my love for the Blindboy Podcast, the delightfully irreverent weekly rant by the infinitely empathetic, vulgar, and curious Irish hip-hop-artist-slash-short-story-writer known as Blindboy Boatclub. Blindboy's podcast is incredibly popular across the Atlantic and elsewhere, and to celebrate his 2 millionth download, he had fellow Irishman and pop star Hozier ("Take Me To Church") as a guest on the show this past December. — Read the rest

I'm a big fan of Irish podcaster/rapper/author/overall avant garde performance artist Blindboy Boatclub. After having to cancel some live podcasting events, included some promotional events for his new short story collection, Blindboy has turned to Twitch to experiment with what he calls "an act of participatory art" — he improvises musicals on multiple instruments while playing Red Dead Redemption 2. — Read the rest

I've been a fan of Blindboy Boatclub since I first discovered "Horse Outside," his hit(?) song with the Rubberbandits (and later, by complete happenstance, ended up staying at the same hotel that's featured in the video). His podcast consistently delivers a random, rambling ménage à trois of weird knowledge, cultural connections, empathy, and utter hilarity, and his delightful short story collections take the traditions of Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien and thrust them erotically into the social media sphere. — Read the rest