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October 31, 2000 [comics] Warren Ellis reports that Australian Customs haved banned the import of From Hell. 'Where does this leave Eddie? Attempting to use due process to convince Australian Customs - and, presumably, the OFLC -- to unban one of the most acclaimed works in the medium, translated into six languages (Eddie mentioned this, and got the response "I don't care what goes on in the rest of the world, this is Australia."). Will they be reasonable? Evidently one Michael Dean, writer for The Comics Journal, has already been on the phone to Australian Customs. I'll give Eddie Campbell the last word. "The Customs Chappie said that if Mr Dean quoted him in print that I would find no good will there from here on."' [Related Links: TCJ on the story, Eddie Campbell Comics, Alan Moore Fan Site] [film] Another interview with Darren Aronofsky... 'Heroin, to Aronofsky, is the least of it. "When you're chasing after a future you're never going to get, you create a hole in the present. You use anything to fill that hole, whether that's drugs, or the dream of a better life. And what happens is, the hole keeps growing until it engulfs you." Presumably that also goes for a film-maker as obsessive as Aronofsky? "Oh, definitely. Completely. Work fills the hole. Sure."' [Related Links: Aronofsky at IMDB] October 30, 2000 [LMG] Just decided to reorder things so the latest postings are at the top. I think I prefer it that way... What do you think silent readers? [eliza] It's a crazy idea but it might just work... somebody mixes AOL Instant Messaging and Joseph Weizenbaum's Eliza. The resulting conversations are hilarious.... 'Using a publicly available Perl version of ELIZA, a Mac with nothing better to do than play psychoanalyst, a few applescripts, and an AOL Instant Messenger account that has a high rate of 'random' people trying to start conversations, I put ELIZA in touch with the real world. Every few days I'll put up the latest 'patients.' Names have been changed to protect the... well, everyone.' [Related Links: Try Eliza, via Beesley] [arcade] Atari Classics -- Shockwave coversions of Centipede, Missile Command, Super Breakout and Frogger.... [news] Guardian Unlimited has an interesting overview of the whole Jamie Bulger case. From An ugly tabloid threat: '"The idea that the two boys - now almost men - could soon be free will horrify every parent," says the Sun, before asking: "Where is the justice for James's parents?" Then, in a scandalous aside after noting that the lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, had remarked that the boys were "making progress", the Sun said: "Who cares? After what they did, the idea that they will be corrupted if they aren't freed is laughable." In other words, the paper believes that the boys who committed a foul murder aged 10, and who eight years later have shown extreme remorse for their crime and no propensity to violence ever since, should go to an adult jail. It doesn't matter what happens to them there. The Sun doesn't care. Let them suffer.' October 29, 2000 [steve bell] Missed this on Friday -- Mad Cows take a bite out of Gummer and Major... [news] The Sunday Times profiles "The Bulger Killers" -- Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. 'The cost of keeping a young offender in such a unit has been estimated at £100,000 a year, and both youths have improved educationally. Thompson passed five GCSEs and has developed talents for design, painting, textiles, computer studies and catering. As a project to create an "object of beauty", he once designed and cut a wedding dress, sewing and beading it himself.' [film] Salon covers two books looking at Hollywood moviemakers durning the 70s and 80s... 'Both books deliver memorable quotations, the best of them apparently generated at extreme moments of showbiz humiliation and exasperation. One source, describing the Simpson/Bruckheimer negotiating style, says, "It's not 'good cop, bad cop.' It's 'bad cop, worse cop.'" Remembering the night his two-timing wife, Ali MacGraw, accompanied him to a party for his greatest triumph, "The Godfather," the ineffably embarrassing Robert Evans recalls sadly: "She was looking at me and thinking of Steve McQueen's cock."' October 28, 2000 [tv] More on Blue Peter... 'What became of the Blue Peter elephant? She went on to present the national lottery and marry Grant Bovey' [from Guardian Unlimited's Notes and Queries] [comics] BBC News covers 30 years of Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury. 'The Bush family has been among Trudeau's hardest critics. George Bush senior said he was "a little elitist who is spoiled, derisive, ugly and nasty". George W Bush has not been any more complimentary. But to Trudeau, abuse just adds to the fun. "This is what I live for," he said. "The Bushes think it's personal, when in fact, for me, it's never personal. At the risk of sounding like Sonny Corleone, whacking people like them is my job."' [Related Links: Duke 2000] [tv] Blue Peter and Hunter S. Thompson. Stand back. Do not not mix. '...who is this, for Christ sakes? Fucker calls himself Groom. Looks like I'm minding the fucking baby today, I figure, well, may as well keep any possible conflict down to a minimum, after all I'm desperate enough to take this faggot job in the first place, I can't afford another fuck up. Straight away, while the Freak's talking some crap at me, I notice this damn idiot child badge on his fucking nylon shirt. I don't like to ask what kind of freakin' remedial school talisman that is. Probably just some warning badge for the good honest middle class folks to know to KEEP THE FUCK AWAY, MENTALLY DEFICIENT GIANT FREAK APPROACHING. One look back up to his dead-ass eyes. I shiver, and it ain't the half dozen 'Ludes I'd picked up in St. Paul's the moment I came to this damn limey wasteland to steady my nerves. There's evil in this bitch, I would swear on my fucking mother's life.' October 27, 2000 [uk weblogs] Excellent, new, [at least to me] UK weblog: Cabin Pressure. 'you should be thinking about how lucky you are. you work in a warm womblike office for a boss that does not get too heavy with you and you have a work load that is easily manageable. you get a computer on your desk that is yours alone and you get access to the internet. you get to download what you want when you want, you get to mess about with new packages for days on end without producing results, you get to wear what you want. your father and your father's father would have killed for your job. you should be thinking about how lucky you are but you're probably not.' [movies] Film Unlimited profiles Jerry Bruckheimer, Perl Harbor and Bruckheimer's dead partner-in-crime Don Simpson. 'They appeared on the cover of Newsweek in matching black suits. They bought matching black Ferraris and matching black Mustang convertibles. They dressed in black Levis that they wore only once - Simpson said they quickly lost "their essential blackness". In a final act of power-drunk solipsism, they even hired identical (white) twins as their respective secretaries. "It was so sick!" remembered one of their employees.' [Related Links: Pearl Harbor Trailer, Upcomingmovies.com on Pearl Harbor] October 26, 2000 [politics] Picking on ugly people is not funny... unless they are British MP's. [Related Links: The Ann Widdecombe Shrine] [eastenders] Good Grief! Sonia's having a baby... 'Sonia Jackson is one of a new breed of young soap mothers. She's intelligent, hard-working, conscientious, and most emphatically not the Town Bike. She allowed Martin Fowler to get a bit carried away earlier in the year, but that's no reflection on her - Martin would probably get carried away with Mo Harris if the lighting was low.' [Related Links: Eastenders] [radio] Guardian Unlimited covers the Today Programme's new website and webcam.... 'The presenters will slouch and sometimes slurp; they will gesticulate angrily towards the unseen producers on occasion. They will browse the newspapers. If you want a slick, professional television operation, then watch Jeremy and Sophie on the new BBC1 Breakfast show. Today may be live online - four days and counting; no catastrophes as yet - but it's still a radio programme, and so it will remain.' [Related Links: Today's Website] October 25, 2000 [attachments] It's not everyday that you get insulted by a fictional character... 'At a guess, bored American teenagers from Buttpoke, Ohio, with nothing better to do than chart their moribund lives through a so-called weblog. Inevitably this consists of some misguided discourse, punctuated with pictures of genital torture, many of them culled from their web community, ie a bunch of equally bored teenagers with a digital camera and too much time on their hands.' [Related Links: Everyone Hates Attachments] [file under WTF?] Came here searching for Scooby Porn? Check it out... LMG has high quality Buffy / Scooby-Doo fan-fiction porn links just for you! 'Velma grinned at Daphne as she pulled her close for a kiss. Daphne wrapped her arms around Velma's neck and moaned. Velma moved her kisses down to Daphne's breasts as Daphne's right hand moved between her legs to caress her clit. Velma moaned and opened her mouth to enclose Daphne's breast. With her left hand, Daphne reached for the jar of peaches on the nightstand. She removed her hand long enough to open the jar, and Velma whimpered at her loss. Buffy turned to see Xander completely engrossed in the video. Funny, but watching naked cartoons roll around in bed together had given him an erection.' [Related Links: Disturbing Search Requests] [royalty] Princess Diana and the Vibrator... not porn -- actually a very amusing review of Shadows of a Princess by PD Jephson... 'Diana, Jephson breathlessly confides, returned from Paris in 1992 sporting a souvenir - 'a large, pink, battery-powered vibrator'. By now she knew she'd never get her hands on an orb or sceptre: this plastic knob would have to do. It had 'the aim', Jephson notes with courtly tact, 'of raising royal morale at critical moments'. But he denies that it was actually aimed at the critical royal part, and insists it was 'never used for its designed purpose'. Eventually Dodi assumed the role of royal morale-booster, which made the cheeky pink chap redundant.' [via Beesley] [quelle surprise!] This internet thing might just have a future... Grant Morrison has launched his own website. 'Whatever you do, make sure you go right to the top, because you sure as hell can't piss upwards on people.' [via Barbelith Underground] October 24, 2000 [rubber bands] This is Bill -- he has a magnificent obssession about rubber band balls.... 'The guy who owns my corner market is building the world's largest rubber band ball. You may think this is stupid, but he doesn't think it is. He takes his work very seriously. I bring my friends by to look at it. It grows daily. He will tell you about how he is buying hundreds of dollars of rubber bands every week, how he is shooting for more than a thousand pounds, some sort of world record. The thing has got to be three feet across already, and four hundred pounds. You should see the guy sweat when he works on it.' [via Yungee] October 23, 2000 [movies] Brief interesting interview with Darren Aronofsky [director of Pi and Requiem For A Dream] on ign.com... talks about his work on the latest Batman movie with Frank Miller and his interest in comics... 'I was not a comic book fan at all until...I really never was a comic book fan. I got into the artwork in high school, like late high school and then in college. But before that I never really read 'em.' [via CiPHER] [overheard] "I've seen bigger breasts on a pizza." WTF? October 22, 2000 [comics] Mars Import provides a list of Eddie Campbell's view of the best graphic novels. [Out of the list there's one I would highly recommend -- Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds -- to just about anybody. If you like intelligent, well written, adult fiction -- it's for you. It has pictures as well! What more could you want?] [ADSL] Danny O'Brien compares and contrasts ADSL in America and the UK. 'BT, on the other hand, never treated us as intelligent customers. When ADSL was endlessly delayed, it was obvious that wiring up BT's exchanges would be a herculean task and retraining its staff must be a nightmare. The board was terrified it would lose the artificially high revenues of existing business offers. But BT won't admit that it's just a struggling bunch of techies, or that it is having difficulties balancing the books of its new economy. Instead, it wants to maintain the illusion of an omniscient, grandmotherly public utility.' October 21, 2000 [religion] Wonderful feature by Jon Ronson reporting on attending a course designed to convert Agnostics into Christians with emphasis on the holy spirit and speaking in tongues.... 'James rests his hand on my shoulder. "Oh Jesus, I pray that Jon will receive Your wonderful spirit. God. Please come and fill Jon with ... " It is not working. The spell has broken. I tell James again that I'm sorry, but I'm a journalist. (This is no excuse - the picture editor of a Sunday newspaper is speaking in tongues to my left, as is a producer of Channel 4 documentaries in front of me, for the first time in his life.) So James changes tack. "Oh thank you, Jesus, for Jon's wonderfully enquiring journalistic mind ... please help Jon's career ... no, not his career ... his wonderful journalism ... and may his journalism become even more wonderful now he is working in Your name, Jesus Christ ..."' [Related Links: Alpha] [dead mad tory bastard] Alan Clark's Early Years digested into 400 words... 'Met Uncle Harold on my way out of the commons. "Off to my club," the old PM said. "Whites or Brooks?" I asked. "The Carlton, you fool," he snapped. Is this a good sign? Went to Brooks where I lost £742 at backgammon. I'm not at all well. My back is playing up and the tip of my penis is quite numb.' [comics] Salon interviews Alan Moore and takes a look at his ABC line of comics. Moore: '"What I could do is what everyone wants me to do," Moore says over coffee, having come back with me to the lounge of the hotel where he once scrubbed toilets, "and to ignore the fact the popular market is going down the toilet. I could do something really obscure. I'd get critical appeal and sell 1,500 copies and incidentally go broke and earn the respect of Gary Groth, and the comics industry would completely fall to pieces. Even if it all happens, and comics does fall to pieces, at least I did my best."' October 20, 2000 [alan moore knows the score] Can U Dig It? is a shopping list of Pop Will Eat Itself's favourite things. Here's their explanation of what it all means... '"DC said `You can't use the name Bruce Wayne`, but it isn't! It's "Bruce (comma) Wayne" - it's two people!"' [tech] Excellent technical document on what to expect when you get ADSL in the UK. 'It is highly recommended that you check that the ADSL service works, before the engineer leaves your premises. Otherwise you may be faced with many frustrating phone calls to BT. These are seldom answered in less than 30 minutes and you may only be able to talk to an operator who will relay your messages. Users are reporting that non-functioning connection can take days or weeks to fix. BT do not guarantee that the line will function from any specific date. ' [coffee] Guardian Unlimited covers Starbucks and interviews their chairman -- Howard Schultz. '"I toured a few Starbucks stores yesterday afternoon... here we are, very, very far away from my home town of Seattle, and what's going on in the UK stores is a mirror image of our stores in the US, or Asia, for that matter," he says, as if this could only be a good thing. "Two months ago I was in China when we opened in Shanghai - and you would have thought you were in New York. Or in London. Despite the cultural differences, the language differences, the Third Place - what happens when coffee and people come to life - is exactly the same."' [Related Links: Starbucks, I Hate Starbucks] [comics] Fandom.com covers the stunning news that Grant Morrison is to write the X-Men. Morrison: 'Acknowledging only one type of comic and trying to pretend the others don`t or shouldn`t exist is insane in these difficult times. How will people ever know how literate and adult our medium can be if we only promote corporate super-titles? How will people ever know how mindlessly enjoyable and poppy our medium can be if we keep saying the mainstream is nothing but crap?' October 19, 2000 [comics] First panel from Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell's new Zenith -- done as Ali G... [via Barbelith Underground] [history] Vaguely disturbing... Pictures of historical events done in the style of the Sims Computer game. [via Memepool] [pop] Guardian Unlimited has an amusing interview with Jason Donovan... 'Then, around 1994 when he was 26, he began to go bald. For most men it's a blow. For Donovan it was a disaster, and his reaction was extreme. But let him tell it: "I'd just finished starring in Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and I suddenly noticed I was losing my hair. If you're blond-haired and blue-eyed, you think it's the death of your desirability. You don't see the big picture and think you might be Sean Connery in 40 years. All I had was the Jason Donovan look, and I thought, fuck. That was a major thing for me, and it started me on drugs."' October 18, 2000 [tv] Brief profile of Phil Davis who appears in Channel 4's new series North Square. 'On these pages, Mark Lawson has suggested that North Square is unduly concerned with class. Davis, unsurprisingly, doesn't agree. "It's only a shock to middle-class people that there is this working-class guy running things for all these middle- class, intelligent barristers. You could say that all English drama is about class to some degree, but I don't think North Square is about class predominantly: it's about law, and how it is applied. That's what is really interesting: in one scenario a woman loses her children and it's tragic, in another some nutter is stealing underpants and it's comic; that's much more like real life, with a tragedy tumbling over a comedy. Plus the career side of it: you're hoping for a plea on Monday so you can do the big fraud on Tuesday. Of course it goes on."' [Related Links: Davis at IMDB] [big brother] Ask Nasty Nick from the Independent. 'If you could make one apology, what would it be, and to whom? I've never had to make an apology, so I would apologise to no one.' [via extenuating circumstances] [uk weblogs] Oh God.... pictures from last night's UK Blogmeet... Too early in morning... mouth dry... need breakfast... 13% of sewage is blood... WTF? October 17, 2000 [movies] Guardian Unlimited profiles Peter Bogdanovich. '[...]only time seemed to separate him from legendary status in Hollywood. But then he fell. "I felt that by the mid-70s I'd blown it," says Bogdanovich, now 61, sitting in a deserted Thai restaurant on Manhattan's Upper West Side. "William Friedkin had blown it, Robert Altman went into eclipse, one flop after another, Coppola went crazy, even Raging Bull didn't do any business. Everybody kind of blew it in varying shapes and sizes." ' [Related Links: Bogdanovitch at IMDB, Sopranos Web Site] [text messaging] Text Message Theatre? Weblogtastic... Tom's Inbox / Outbox I, Tom's Inbox II, Meg's Inbox / Outbox. 'Yes. Be good. Or bad. Or something.' [film] An HTMLized 2001: A Space Odyssey Program. Amazing photo's... 'I was inspired to create this site partly because of the program's curiosity value for fans of 2001, and partly because it is a stunning piece of late-1960s graphic design. The cover is metallic silver (an actual metallic ink was used) and sections of the text are printed on translucent paper - these novel techniques combine to create a non-verbal experience analogous to the film itself. Certainly, the program's authors utilised the print medium to communicate as much information about the film's intentions as the text does.' October 16, 2000 [comics] Warren Ellis predicts the imminent death of Marvel Comics... 'Marvel Enterprises doesn't exist on the money it makes out of comics. It exists on a raft of junk bonds valued at $250 million, lashed together by Morgan Stanley. Oh, and by the way: Morgan Stanley stocks just fell around twenty percent.' [lmg sells out] What has Fish in a Groove got to do with Attachments? 'Like a sperm whale in a goldfish bowl, fish in a groove is making a splash.' [Related Link: Guardian on Beeb.com] October 15, 2000 [columns] New Kevin Smith column regarding the development on his new movie... 'Last week, my life became a thrill-a-minute joy ride through the glamorous and exciting world of making motion pictures, and I figure that'd probably be more interesting to share with you guys and gals than a weekly dissertation on what comics I like and why, or who I think is fucking up the comics industry, or whether Hal or Kyle is the one, true Green Lantern. We pretty much all know the answers to those questions (Green Arrow because I'm writing it, anyone who's thinks the kids will ever come back to this medium, and Hal Jordan), so there's little point in talking about it.' [via Sourground] [this morning deux] Two moments of TV Hell: Richard Madeley as Ali G and an animated photo of Judy Finnigan exposing herself in front of 12 million people. [Judy photo via My 2p] October 12, 2000 [wierd science] Human cloning. It's going to happen -- sooner than you think: Cult in first bid to clone human 'The Raelians offered no proof that they had any of the medical skills required to clone, but they last year stated their ambition to make it happen and, according to impartial scientists, there is no longer any technical reason why they should not succeed.' [via Robot Wisdom] [this morning] Guardian Unlimited profiles Richard and Judy. I work shifts, so often watch This Morning... totally facinated / scared by R&J... they really are the strangest couple on TV [apart from Cybil and Basil Faulty]. 'Despite his idiosyncrasies, Judy loves Richard and, like many long-suffering wives, humours his more outlandish behaviour and ideas. She nods and enthuses appropriately and only very occasionally will shoot him a death stare when he is veering dangerously close to Saying Too Much. His response is to throw his arms in the air and adopt a "I'm just an open kinda guy" expression and carry on regardless. Like an embarrassing uncle who cannot see himself as others see him - perhaps because he took too much LSD in the 60s - his behaviour makes hers all the more admirable.' [Related Link: BBC News report] [politics] Reuters profiles Margaret Thatcher on her 75th birthday. Still mad as ever: 'Last month she won a standing ovation in Washington, D.C. for her reply to a question about what she thought of U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton "I don't.'' Last week she told the BBC that Britain's war record showed it should not become "entangled'' with its European neighbors."We're quite the best country. We rescued them,'' she said. "We've got to keep our own independence. Is that clear?''' [via Robert Brook] October 11, 2000 [music] I Hate Music on Radiohead's Kid A: 'Some of you readers may have noticed that Radiohead have got a new record coming out. Goodness knows how, there's barely been a mention of it on the web or in the music press after all. Oh, wait, excuse me while I utter a weak consumptive laugh and spit bloody bile into a handkerchief. Judging by the ever-growing shitstorm of expectations and expectorations around Kid Arse, you'd have thought a second moon had been seen in the sky and Thom Yorke, pinch-faced poster boy for self-pitying prigs the world over, had been the first man to walk on it.' [bbc] Nice BBC Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends weekly preview... 'Louis goes to stay and play with gangsta rappers, body-builders, gurus and the South African far-right. Weird people? Maybe. Great TV? Definitely.' [eminem] Netnotes asks: Who is Eminem? '6. He still faces legal action from his grandmother (for sampling his dead uncle's voice) and has only just settled with his wife, Kim, who demanded custody of their child and $10m for a song in which he fantasises about killing her.' October 10, 2000 [cartoon] Yet Another fantastic Steve Bell cartoon on Hague, drugs and Widdecombe... [yugoslavia] Guardian Unlimited looks at the corruption surrounding Slobodan Milosevic's family... 'Three days ago Marko and his family left Pozarevac, the Milosevics' home town, in three black jeeps. As he did, rioters looted his internet cafe and destroyed advertising for his disco Madonna. His nearby lurid Disney-esque theme park, Bambiland, has been closed since the summer, thanks to a popular boycott.' [weblogs] weblogs.com redesigns. Not sure if I like it... weblogs is part of my daily surfing routine so any changes looks weird... however, Webloging in the UK remains the same. October 09, 2000 [drudge report] Guardian Unlimited interviews and profiles Matt Drudge -- The Earl Of URL? '"This wasn't supposed to happen," he says, taking time between the non-stop ringing of his telephone to talk about himself and his book. "I was never supposed to be this successful. I just got lucky. I had a window of opportunity and I flung my entire body through it. All my dreams have been fulfilled and now I'm waiting for the nightmares."' [Related Link: Drudge Report] [letter from america] Alistair Campbell has been covering America for the BBC since 1946... Here's a classic letter from 1968 -- an eyewitness account of the assasination of Bobby Kennedy... 'Last Tuesday night, for the first time in thirty years, I found myself by one casual chance in a thousand, on hand in a small, narrow serving pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, a place that I suppose will never be wiped out of my memory: a sinister alley, a Roman circus run amok, and a charnel house. It would be quite false to say, as I should truly like to say, that I'm sorry I was there. It's more complicated than that.' October 06, 2000 [LMG] I'm changing the oil in LinkMachineGo and giving it a bit of a rest... back next week. [mallrats] Long, interesting interview with Jason Lee [Mallrats and Chasing Amy]. Lee On Mallrats: 'I had no idea. Again, being as far out of the loop as I was ? the wide-eyed new kid on the block ? I was thinking this was going to be the greatest, most successful film of all time. I had these hopes and dreams, so I was a bit disappointed once I found over the weekend that it didn't do well ? which meant to me, not dollars, but that people didn't see it. That was a letdown for me. But now it's gone on to be a classic, in a lot of ways for a lot of Kevin?s fans ? and he has many ? that's their favorite movie.' [Related Links: The View Askewniverse]  [comics] cnn.com covers Chris Ware and his new book -- Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth... 'Ware was 29 years old, and more than halfway through the writing of the book, when he first met his own father. Their meeting, too, was tentative and awkward -- and tinged with anger. "I was probably a little hostile," said Ware. "There were so many regrets ..." His father died a short time later. "I added it all up once -- the few meetings we had, the few times we talked on the phone," said Ware. "In total, I knew my father for just about five hours."' [drugs] In the wake of Ann Widdecombe's proposals Guardian Unlimited asks a number of "the establishment" if they use cannabis and do they inhale? 'The proposal is miserably retrograde. Cannabis should be legalised. I've experimented with it myself, but I'm not telling you if I take it now; if I say that she'll be round here, won't she?' -- Martin Amis [manics] Manic Street Preachers - In Their Own Words 'To be universal, you've got to stain the consciousness of the people. You've got to dig out a truth that everybody knows, but they don't want to hear, then tell it in a manner that's so articulate and so aesthetically indignant, so beautiful, that they've got to accept it back in their lives again. ' October 05, 2000 [Lord Melchard] Great interview with Stephen Fry in Guardian Unlimited. Fry on the Daily Mail: 'There's a name for my pain - the Daily Mail. It symbolises bourgeois fear: fear of outsiders, fear of anything different. Someone should write a book about how uniquely wrong about everything the Daily Mail has always been. It typifies everything that is most shaming about this country in terms of its lurches towards xenophobia and fear: everything in the name of the family, that horrible capital F for family. It's become what the state was for a Stalinist: everything that is done in the name of the family is acceptable.' [shoes] Two Pairs. No excuses... I'm a simple unsophisticated lad from Norfolk. Untouched by London ways... [saville] Jimmy Saville is Dead -- according to Chris Morris. [Requires Sound] 'The majority if not all of them are extremely relieved that he is now dead although I suspect that some of them will be sorry that he didn?t suffer a great deal more.' [Related Links: rethink's Chris Morris Guff] [weblogs] It's as easy as falling off a weblog -- Guardian Unlimited takes a look at weblogs... 'Only in the past year has software been developed which allows people to get blogging with the minimum of know-how: Blogger, the most celebrated of these, has just celebrated its first birthday and its 40,000th user. But although Pyra, the company that created it, is rightly praised for increasing the number of webloggers, Blogger has also spawned "link-sluts" - cliquey, second-generation webloggers who link to better blogs in the hope of a link in return. Despite Blogger's impressive figures, the number of quality weblogs hasn't quite reached critical mass.' [pizza!] I've recently been introduced [thanks, Teresa!] to the the wonderful Eco Pizzeria in Clapham, South London. Highly recommended... 'The pizzas themselves are formidable. Twelve inchers can look a bit daunting to the faint hearted, but fear not, the dough is wonderfully crisp and light, and the toppings are generous and moist. [..] If you want to eat well without spending a fortune and drink well into the bargain, in a buzzy place that's - well funky's what we said, we still recommend ECO for best pizzeria South of the River.' [Contact: Eco Pizzeria, 162 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UG Tel: 0207 978 1108] October 04, 2000 [countryside] Guardian Unlimited on the Countryside Alliance. 'It would be easy for the Labour leadership to dismiss the Alliance. This is an organisation with a predominantly Tory membership whose central aim has been to preserve the right to kill foxes and which readily compares Tony Blair to Adolf Hitler. One poster which bore its logo depicted the gay agriculture minister, Nick Brown, as a man "who loves gays and buggers the countryside". The logo also appeared in the magazine Earth Dog, Running Dog - from which the Alliance distanced itself. The publication described the black MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, Oona King, as "typical of her species", and told her to "direct her talents to advising her scrounging supporters on how to claim more handouts".' [useful maps] UK Based Multimap have redesigned -- looks good, faster -- and have a great London Tube Map. [degrees of seperation] Margaret Thatcher has a Bacon Number of three... 'Margaret Thatcher was in Some Mother's Son (1996) with David (I) O'Hara David (I) O'Hara was in Link (1986) with Elisabeth Shue Elisabeth Shue was in Hollow Man (2000) with Kevin Bacon ' [Related Links: Thatcher at IMDB, Bacon at IMDB] [king] Stephen King -- the early years of bitter struggle... 'Harry had hooks instead of hands as a result of a tumble into the sheet-mangler during the Second World War (he was dusting the beams above the machine and fell off). A comedian at heart, he would sometimes duck into the bathroom and run water from the cold tap over one hook and water from the hot tap over the other. Then he'd sneak up behind you while you were loading laundry and lay the steel hooks on the back of your neck. Rocky and I spent a fair amount of time speculating on how Harry accomplished certain bathroom clean-up activities. 'Well,' Rocky said one day while we were drinking our lunch in his car, 'at least he doesn't need to wash his hands.'' [rate my blog!!] I've tried to resist the temptation, honest -- go rate LinkMachineGo... October 03, 2000 [fungus in space!!] Space Fungus attacks the Mir Space Station. Life will always find a way... 'Linenger, author of ''Off the Planet,'' a book about his experiences on Mir, said that he did not see any evidence that fungi or bacteria on the craft caused health problems. But he added that the station had ''a strong smell of fungal contamination'' - a smell he called ''mushroomy'' in his book - and that ''there were areas you wouldn't want to stick your hand in.''' [via Slashdot] [mugshots] The G-Files present a Celebrity Mug Shot Gallery... 'Like anyone else charged with a crime, celebrities must be photographed by police after being arrested, and those images then become a matter of public record.' [paula yates] nishlord.com pays tribute to the "original pop tart" -- Paula Yates. 'Some of us are born great. Some of us achieve greatness. And others have a pop star?s cock thrust upon them.' [original link to Nishlord via Notsoft] October 02, 2000 [stringfellow] The Guardian interviews Peter Stringfellow. 'Stringfellow says 60 is a suitable age to take life more seriously, share his wisdom, help William [Hague] become prime minister. "I have all the toys, man. It's all here. I have a club full of beautiful girls, eat and drink what the hell I want, go where the hell I want, when the hell I want. If there's a party I just ring up and say I'll accept. At the Conservative ball two days ago, it was brilliant, chatting to William. Ffion and Lucy get on like a house on fire. It's a wonderful life I've got."' [london] Thora Birch describes "My London" in This is London. 'What was the last conversation you had with a London cabbie? This guy offered me and my mom some pot (which we politely declined) and then told us what every member of his extended family did for a living.' [Related Link: Ghost World Movie] October 01, 2000 [music] Radiohead are interviewed in The Observer... ''The middle-class thing has never been relevant,' he spits. 'We live in Oxford, and in Oxford we're fucking lower class. The place is full of the most obnoxious, self-indulgent, self-righteous oiks on the fucking planet, and for us to be called middle class... well, no, actually. Be around on May Day when they all reel out of the pubs at five in the morning puking up and going "haw haw haw" and trying to hassle your girlfriend...'' [tv] Danny O'Brien thinks PCs are the new TVs... 'I haven't had a television for almost two years now. Believe me, I like television. People who don't have televisions, I continue to believe, mostly wear bow ties and have children who are home-schooled, go to university at the age of 12 and then run away to live off chestnuts in the forest. I know this. Once I'd stopped slumping in front of the telly when I came home from work and moved into the far more sophisticated habit of slumping in front of a monitor, my viewing hours plummeted.' [movies] The Observer on "special editions / director's cuts" of films -- includes mentions of The Exorcist and Apocalypse Now... 'The Apocalypse Now Book, published by Faber this month, contains a detailed description of the five-hour film. The French plantation sequence is the most fully formed and vital omission. For those who have even a casual acquaintance with Apocalypse Now, it comes after the death of Larry Fishburne's teenage conscript Clean, when the boat commandeered by Willard (Martin Sheen) pulls up to a fog-bound quay which leads to the genteel quarters of a group of colonial French. The US soldiers eat dinner with the French, and Willard shares an opium pipe and bed with a young woman.' [degrees of seperation] What is Adolf Hitler's Kevin Bacon Number? 2! 'Adolf Hitler was in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) with Maximilian Schell. Maximilian Schell was in Telling Lies in America (1997) with Kevin Bacon' [idea via NTK's Hitler Filmography... ]
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