Hiroshima Yeah! #146 [April 2017]

  

Mark Ritchie, donbirnam [at] hotmail [dot] com - for a sample issue just send a nice friendly email! [Yes I know in this age of vicious Twittering it seems 'nice friendliness' has gone down the fuckin' toilet, but I know that you, my dear readers, are not like those awful garbage people!]; Trades? Yes! Again, simply send a nice, friendly email and propose your trade! Size: 11.75" x 8.25" Page count: 6 [including one blank page for your Notes].

Another month, another issue of the wonderful Hiroshima Yeah! This issue's cover star is a dog with something in its mouth. I can't tell what it is and I'm not sure I want to know.

Also on the front page are the usual collection of poems. Here's my favourite:

WHY THE HUMAN RACE IS DOOMED

When the young, rich,

thick sports star cunts

and the young, rich,

thick pop star cunts

are all covered in

dusgusting tattoos,

it's no wonder

that the young, poor,

thick infamous cunts

want to cover themselves

in disgusting tattoos also.

And that's why

the human race is doomed.

Page two features Gary Simmons's regular column, '13.2 BILLION YEARS OF HELL', This instalment subtitled: "Further self-pitying existential crises, short-tempered sexual dysfunction, social isolation and the environmental catastrophe of domesticated chicken in the early Anthropogenic epoch. Ya CUNTS" It could be the title of a Gerard Ashworth comic. [Except for that last bit.] Anyway, this time Gary includes an anecdote about a fellow prisoner [from back when he was 'inside'] - "a little old man." "None of the other lags would fuckin' TALK to him, something about dead children in the back of a car..."

Pages three and four contain my favourite part of HY! - Mark's reviews of CDs, gigs, DVDs, and books. The one CD he reviewed this issue that I have made note of to track down is 'Josephine' by Magnolia Electric Co [Secretly Canadian, 2009]. As Mark describes it: a "...stunning array of consoling hymns and heartbreakers which seem to whisper the secret truths of the universe in your ear before disappearing in puffs of smoke."

Page five contains two poems by Jason [Media Junky] Rodgers, and Mark's micro-fiction.

I think I've said this before, but if I had one zine subscription for the rest of my life on that desert island, it would be Hiroshima Yeah!

It's All Downhill From Fear by Gerard Ashworth [September 2016]

 

20 pages, $3.00, by Gerard Ashworth [Contact [???] Gerard is hard to contact, being as he is out of the loop, technologically. If you want a copy, contact sstratu [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll make sure he gets your message.]

It took a while to get around to reading this [could be my quote of 2016] - Gerard gave this to me when we shared a table at the Manly Zine Fair back in September. Historically, I go into a new Ashworth production with a sick sense of dread. They can be so dense and inscrutable! Really hard to understand! And to add insult to psychological trauma/injury, he makes fun of the reader constantly for his or her limited intelligence! *Blub!* But this one is easy to read! ...Or maybe I've gotten smarter? No, impossible! In short, I could say not only do I not remember the last time I enjoyed an Ashworth comic so much, but I do not remember the last time I enjoyed an Ashworth comic. ... Amongst the really great autobiographical stuff where he exposes his 'quirks and idiosyncrasies', there are also terrific comic stripped versions of a Godley & Creme song, 'I Pity Inanimate Objects'; and Gerard's 'girlfriend' Sabrina reciting "the greatest Beat poem of them all", 'Tomorrow Is A Drag', from the 1958 movie 'High School Confidential'.