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Hateland
Bernard O’Mahoney
Future Books

Some of the worst books ever written are those by “former” gangsters or football hooligans about their shitty, pointless lives. Ghostwritten by alcoholic staff reporters from The Daily Star, they always get their author features in those soft-porn magazines for 13-year-old boys like Loaded, FHM, GQ and now Nuts and Zoo. Typically, the books are short on detail and insight and long on bragging and toe-curling cliché (see Soul Crew by Tony Rivers or anything by Dave Courtenay). What I’m saying is, don’t let all that sensationalist, exploitative shit put you off this great book.

Written by the bouncer who worked in the club that was linked to the death of Leah Betts (remember her?), the girl who died in 1995 after taking ecstasy, this tells the story of his amazingly violent, ex-Nazi skinhead / football hooligan life and how he turned it around to become this strange vigilante character who now dedicates his life to exposing the idiocy of the groups of total fucking psychos whom he used to call his “brothers”, including the NF, BNP, Millwall fans, and racist South African bouncers.

As well as snooping on the Birmingham, UK branch of the KKK (who hold their treasury meetings in Burger King in New Street station) he also starts a correspondence with London nail bomber David Copeland by pretending to be a blonde girl called Patsy. Copeland’s pathetic, illiterate responses tell you all you need to know about the level of sophistication and intelligence behind the frontline of modern British neo-Nazi terrorists who want to blow us up. By comparison, the Muslims who want to blow us up are so far ahead of the whiteys, it’s funny—or it would be if it wasn’t so fucking frightening.

JACK STEEL



Women Who Deserve To Go To Hell
Mansoor Abul Hakim
Darul-Ishaat

Speaking of frightening Muslims, we bought this little corker at the same time we bought the samosas we used in the Lies Issue where we said that the Indian restaurants on Brick Lane in East London were selling crack and heroin stuffed in Indian delicacies. When all the stuff about the Danish cartoon depicting a bomb in the shape of Allah caused mass riots around the world leading to dozens of people being killed, we were a little nervous about the story. Luckily, none of us have been killed yet, but it caused me to think: if a little old lady baked a muffin and when she cut it open, it looked like Allah getting a blowjob from George W. Bush, would she deserve to go to hell? Even if she didn’t mean it? This book says yes. Other women who deserve to go to hell include those with short hair, women who pluck their eyebrows or wear make-up, women who argue with men and women who grumble. If any of these apply, then you’re going to have to burn in sulphur for the rest of eternity. Sorry girls. I didn’t make the rules.

ANITA CRAPPER



Slip N Slide Records
Memorial Day Weekend
Slip N Slide Records DVD

Hooo-leee shit! For the sake of everybody on this DVD, I hope nobody from Allah’s office see this. Y’all niggas are gonna get served with a one-way ticket to Eternal Flamesville. Is there a heavy Muslim presence in Miami? It doesn’t seem like it but I don’t know why. I haven’t seen ANYTHING in London that gets even near the Koran-flouting laws that this DVD seems to openly celebrate in the face of extremist Muslims everywhere. So why the hell are the brothers ignoring this place in favour of London where Muslims get to live in a tolerant society with their own cultures and parts of town where nobody bothers them? Try being a Muslim on Miami beach when the Slip N Slide boys are in town, that’s what I say to the suicide bombers. Get back to me when you’ve had to live through the shit that goes down in this DVD. Pretty much every single rule about women that the book to the left sets out is broken a thousand times over. During performances by Three Six Mafia, Jay-Z, Trick Daddy and Trina, the sin runs wild and the glorification of the one God Allah is totally ignored. If you look closely there’s even a scene where an arch of water that’s cascading from a sinful woman’s buttocks almost resembles the Prophet Mohammed cheating at a game of cards and snorting cocaine with a transsexual. At least that’s what it looked like to me at the time. All sinners must be punished. Let’s start the protests right now. Let’s end this evil and blow everybody involved in this DVD to pieces.

PRINCE NAZ



Factotum
Warner Home Entertainment DVD

This is the one where Matt Dillon bumbles around boozing and schmoozing like that barfly bore Bukowski, so if it feels pretty inconsequential, that’s because it’s meant to. If you saw the Grammys on TV, you’ll know that Dillon currently seems to be playing the role of his life as a cokey Buzz Lightyear sleazeball suffering a midlife crisis. He’s brutally convincing—just as he is in this enigmatic little movie.

BARRY NORMAL



Derailroaded
Plexi DVD

Cool doc about the seriously freestyle life of Larry “Wild Man” Fischer who was institutionalised at 16 for knifing his mum and was later discovered singing on the streets of L.A. in the mid-60s by Frank Zappa. They cut an album together but Fischer’s severe schizophrenia freaked Zappa out. He was known for the rest of his life as the “godfather of outsider music”. Some consolation when you’re nutty as a fucking fruitcake.

KELLY FLOWER




Freakonomics
Steven D Levvit and Stephen J Dubner
Allen Lane

After going through the hottest business literature of the past year there are two titles that caught our eye, Freakonomics and The Corporation. The first one has a load of interesting observations. We learn about the similarities between sumo wrestlers and teachers, that it isn’t clamping down on criminality that has lowered the criminality in the States, but the fact that abortions are easier to come by, and why dealers so often tend to live with their mums. The last conclusion is probably more telling on where the authors get their weed from, rather than on the general housing situation of narcotics merchants.

So far, so good. But then something strange happens. The authors discover that dealers run their business like any other corporation functioning in any other branch. No shit Shylock. How do you guys figure they’d be doing it otherwise? Business is always business, the same rules apply. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling ecological shoes, cranes or methamphetamine. Money don’t care. Economists, if anyone, should know that.

IKEA BOY



The Corporation
Joel Bakan
Constable

This is an entirely nice and well written history about how a corporation has evolved and how it works. And it’s another book that presents pretty obvious facts as extraordinary discoveries.

Bakan’s thesis is that companies act just like psychos. They might seem nice and friendly on the surface, but really, they’re nothing but ruthless punters who would do anything for personal gain. I’m sorry Mr. Bakan, but this isn’t news to anyone who’s ever had a real job outside of business school. How can things that are so god darn obvious and self-evident seem so sensational and exciting to economists? It really makes you wonder what they’re smoking at Harvard Business School.

HILTON FRIEDMAN