The media have every reason to ask why TISM are releasing a new mini-LP, "The Beasts of Suburban"? Well, one quick glance through their mailbag reveals it is for the same reason Alan Bond is in jail: intense public support for the concept. Let's delve, then, into the mailbag that, as far as literary merit goes, makes those verses footy cheer squads put on their banners look like Blake's "The Tiger"; let's open... TISM'S MAILBAG
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TISM,
youse guys are shit. Me and me mates - Wocka, Nocka, Sorry, Okka, The, Fokka's, Chokka - saw youse last year when we was all out celebrating the parole decision and we all said "Shit, this is the biggest dick pull we've seen since we saw Gary David lose another 3 inches at a self mutilation party in Jika Jika."
Seriously, youse are bent. Is it true youse are all lawyers and teachers and shit? When me and Wocka and the boys go around head butting people and wrecking public property and parting a bit of reluctant beef curtain at least we can say society is to blame. It's not true, but we can say it. But youse guys are a bit like the rock spider sprawled in the shower block in J. Division when the boys have had a bit much ethyl nitrate in 'em and the boots are going in - nothing to say. I can see why youse wear them bags on your heads. Youse must be ashamed of you do, whereas, me - well, as I said to Chopper Harris as I broke open the plastic packaging on the pack of Gillette twin blades and fed them into the blood engorged mouth of a screw Chopper was a bit down on - "Chopper," I said, "Chopper, this gives me a tremendous sense of well being". Dunno what it ment, but the social worker told me it was important if I was to feel good about myself - and I was feeling good then, too.
Anyway, Wocka and me and the boys figure if shitheads like youse can do it, so can we. So we went and bought some equipment - we didn't actually buy it, but we promised the bloke in the shop that if he didn't kick up a fuss we'd let him have one of his testicles back - sort of a sentimental gesture to remind him of the other one - and now I reckon we are pretty good. We're thinking of a sort of poofy, up market name - like "The Church" or something.
So when are youse guys going to release another record? Me and Wocka and the boys have records stretching back to 1968, and we only just started. But it doesn't matter, 'cos our band will make yours eat the peanuts out of our shit. Hey, I think I'm getting the hang of this rhyming lyric business: youse guys lack class,
Lick the turds out my dog's arse.
Steve Kilbey.
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To: TISM
From: Phonogram
Re: Hot Dogma
Please find below current balance sheets regarding 'Hot Dogma', up to the end of financial year 91-92:
Advance: $80,000.00
Recouped monies through sales: $127.68
Owing: $79, 873.82
Despite these figures, we eagerly await your next record. Then whoever puts it out can join us in being the biggest shitheads in the business.
Yours in anticipation,
J. Goebbels
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O Evil Ones,
You are the instruments of Darkness. You are the evil messenger of the Cloven Houf'ed One. You hypnotize the youth of today, and make them mindlessly repeat your evil teachings. It is not just I who believe this. Listen to the voices of the faithful:
"You hypnotize the youth of today, and make them mindlessly repeat your evil teachings."
- Hope, aged 11
"You hypnotize the youth of today, and make them mindlessly repeat your evil teachings."
- Charity, aged 13
"You hypnotize the youth of today, and make them mindlessly repeat your evil teachings."
- Goodness, aged 10
"You hypnotize the youth of today, can I have your new record please?"
- Beelzebub, aged 3
See! You have even corrupted one of us! (though Beelzebub was always a bit suspect since he was left on our doorstep with a note printed backwards saying: "The pig-god devours the anus of Christ")
Hell awaits all manipulators of the young,
The Children of God
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TISM,
I really like your song "Kill Yourself Now And Avoid The Rush". Have you got any other songs about suicide on your new album?
Princess Diana.
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Dear TISM (if indeed that appellation is not oxymoronic),
You are shit. Excuse the scatological directness, but, like Antigone, I feel a higher imperative - viz, honesty - excuses my actions. I have oft noticed that implicit in ignorance is a pervasive arrogance, a sort of miasmic stupidity bereft of all self-referential perception or coherent ordering of external constructs. So it is with you. Your ideas graduate - and my irony is intended - from the nebulous gropings of the epistemologically enfeebled to the atavistic primitivism of a refractory school child.
I feel I have made myself clear. None-the-less, I'd like your new record, becuase if I give it to my girlfriend she's promised me a headee.
Yours,
Tony Lockett
