23 August 2000
[comics] Nice on-line comic — Bobbins. [Links: Start of the Strip, Amusing – A Tribute to Stanley Kubrick :) ]
24 August 2000
[jesus wants me for a sunbeam] Which of your favourite celebrities is an atheist or agnostic? Find out at the The Celebrity Atheist List. Garth Ennis: ‘I’m an atheist, really. But everyone seems to think I’m some terrible lapsed Catholic who suffered the worst of a Catholic upbringing and had the crap kicked out of him by nuns and monks. In actual fact, I’m not Catholic, and I never had any kind of direct religious upbringing at all, although I was exposed to the inevitable religious influence that growing up in Ireland will give you.’
[madonna] Enough! Julie Burchill has a right dig at Madonna in todays Guardian Unlimited. ‘In the annals of bad records, this one has legs – it is very conceivably worse than the Birdie Song, Aga Doo and the last Phil Collins combined. Some books, songs and films really do make you believe that the chief ape in “Planet of” was right when he maintained that human beings were lower than chimps: Music is one of them. Give 1,000 chimps access to recording equipment for 100 years and they would not, could not, produce anything as boring as this castrated, truncated funk. Who in the name of God could summon up the motivation to walk into a record shop, enunciate the words, “Please can I have Music by Madonna?” and put their hand into their pocket? Beats me.’
25 August 2000
[grant morrison] A scan of an early Grant Morrison comic strip — Gideon Stargrave. Originally published in 1978 in a comic called Near Myths. “Are you Gideon Stargrave?” “As often as possible, but you know how it is these days.” [Related Link: TimeMachineGo]
[america] Oh dear… Polly Toynbee gets a shower of Hate mail from the US… ‘You are nothing but an intolerant American-hating bigot. You can’t stand the fact that America is so rich and powerful while you live in a pathetic third-rate country that is of no significance at all. I see no reason why America should pay any attention to the whining, pissing, shitting, moaning and groaning of a bunch of idiots like you. The rest of the world has no right to expect us to share our wealth with it. It is our money, not the world’s. Bush will win in November. I hope when he wins you have a stroke and it kills you and all your fellow Eurotrash die from shock as well. America Uber Alles! Fuck the world!!’
[simpsons] The Evening Standard meets Matt Groening. “I haven’t figured out whether comedy is truly healing or whether it’s merely a bandage on the wound. It is momentarily cathartic but then you see comedians who are great on stage and depressed afterwards. Basically, we all want to be loved. Maybe my secret is that I can’t ask for it directly so I ask for it through a cartoon. ‘Hey, please love my cartoon, while I’ll just sit over here.’ If they go ‘heh, heh’ maybe that means they like me a little, too.”
26 August 2000
[burchill] Julie Burchill takes a vast mental leap in Guardian Unlimited and draws parallels between self-pitying Radiohead listening males, the poor performance of boys compared girls at A-Levels and GCSE’s and “certain self-pitying” paedophiles. ‘But male self-pity is not always funny; sometimes, it serves as an excuse for the most loathsome sorts of behaviour. A handy catch-all cliché that the ivory-tower-dwellers among us have been dishing up in an attempt to turn popular feeling against those appalling oiks in Paulsgrove (my God, I bet none of them has even read one Julian Barnes novel!) is, “The abused, in turn, abuse”. This is, rather, one of the silliest and most easily disproved of modern myths. Some 90% of abused children are women; some 90% of child abusers are men. If it was really true that “the abused abuse”, then 90% of all child abusers would be women, wouldn’t they?’
[adrian mole] Adrian Mole on Nick Bateman: ‘I have been brutally betrayed! I feel humiliated and sick! How could he have told such terrible lies to me over the past five weeks? I admired him so much. He was the type of man I would have liked to have been myself. He was a man who could cope with adversity (the death of his young wife in a car crash). A man who led other men (an officer in the Territorial Army). He was also a healer (like Jesus), and a reiki master to boot.’
[comics] Dylan Horrocks Sketchbook — a couple of intriguing pages covering his latest work — the 1000 page Atlas.
27 August 2000
[savile meme hoax] Excellent, compelling reading — a HOAX transcript of out-takes from Have I Got News For You between Ian Hislop, Jimmy Savile and Paul Merton. If only it were true… [Related Links: Hoax Confirmation, Tsluts, the Savile meme spreads]
[books] Guardian Unlimited interviews Luke Rhinehart aka George Cockcroft author of The Dice Man ‘Originally he had seen the dice as a way of breaking down some of the habitual stiffness he disliked in his own character: ‘I was a shy, uptight sort of guy in my teens and early twenties, and tremendously driven to succeed, get A grades and so on, and I did not like either of those characteristics one bit…’ He had the notion that by rolling a dice to make decisions, about what to read, where to go, how to react to people, he could bring risk into his life, which he otherwise seemed naturally indisposed toward. In this way, he hoped, he could turn himself into someone else.’
28 August 2000
[not this life] Preview of the new dot.com drama on BBC2 called Attachments which has a website which is part of the story. ‘Attachments centres on the efforts of Mike and his wife Luce to transform his new music website, seethru.co.uk, from a bedroom hobby into a viable internet content business offering news, reviews and gossip. Frazzled dot.com executives will recognise the couple’s struggle to secure venture capital funding without having to give away too much control of their fledgling company. Those lower down the new economy food chain will be able to identify with an internet start-up office divided along content writer versus techie versus programmer versus designer social faultlines. They will also recognise the long periods idled away playing computer games and emailing mates, punctuated by short bursts of frenzied, work-through-the-night activity as deadlines loom.’ [Related Link: seethru.co.uk]
[books] News Unlimited wonders if Nick Hornby can write a sucessful new novel from a female point-of-view. ‘At his best, Hornby mines a seam that unites far more than it divides: the scary business of growing up, of putting away childish things, and of the struggle to become a fully-formed human being who can have relationships with parents, children, lovers, friends. So why is it any surprise when he decides to explore matters from a different angle in a work of fiction?’
29 August 2000
[comics] BBC News takes a look at Ralph Steadman and his most recent work for children. ‘Steadman says his latest work has the same “wayward spirit” as Fear and Loathing – despite being aimed at a very different audience. “Little.com is different because I’m not so malevolent in it,” he adds. “A children’s book is small world that is large enough for a child’s mind at bed-time.”‘ [Related Link: ralphsteadman.com]
[eastenders] An Eastenders scriptwriter discusses the problems of introducing a new family in a long running TV soap. ‘To make this predictable universe work on the screen, you need characters who are relatively stable (even if they are unstable). The writers and the viewers buy into a myth that people aren’t particularly complex, that the full range of their feelings and actions can be revealed in a few hours on the TV. And a quick, visible way of revealing characters is to mirror them in their occupation. Thus we have Pauline Fowler, long-suffering drudge and matriarch. What better job than folding pants all day in the launderette? Or Peggy Butcher – tough but fun-loving and gregarious. So she runs the pub. But what attributes spring to mind when we think of Italian restaurants? Fond of pasta, perhaps? Permanently overworked? The job never provided an easy route into understanding the di Marcos’ characters.’ [Related Link: Eastenders]
[mp3 tech] Frequently asked question on the Winamp forum… How do I burn an audio CD from my MP3’s?
30 August 2000
[mp3 people] Inside has a facinating profile of Justin Frankel — the man behind Winamp and Gnutella. ‘Frankel hasn’t been able to resist all contact with the dozens of hackers who are working on new versions of Gnutella, according to one programmer who works on file-sharing software. But Gene Kan, who is creating a version for a startup now called GoneSilent, points out that the new software ”can’t have a single line from the original AOL-controlled code — his fingerprints can’t be on it anywhere.” ”He’s peering over the fence,” says the person who sees him frequently. ”They’re doing the revolution and he’s supposed to work on stuff like the transition from Winamp 2.64 to Winamp 2.65 or some dumb thing.”’
[saville] plasticbag.org covers the the whole Saville hoax transcript meme… [#1] [#2] ‘Anyway. Such a document is clearly legally dubious at best, and since there is no evidence attached to the e-mail, it would seem logical to try to assume that it is entirely spurious as well. (In which case, of course, you would be talking vast potential libel damages.) But the strange thing about this particular meme is that most people who received the letter in question (including me – and I consider to be extremely cynical about chain e-mail) thought it to be at least plausible.’ [Interesting fact: If you type “Saville Hoax” into Google the first item you get up is a directory entry on Chris Morris. Hmmm….]
31 August 2000
[chris morris] Second Class Male and Time To Go. Hoax columns published in The Observer about a year ago from Chris Morris. ‘Not for publication: You have made me too depressed to write. Unlike the great melancholics – Baudelaire, Beethoven – I have no genius from which to draw consolation. I am at best a Brian Wilson, but a Brian Wilson who went to bed before making Pet Sounds. Fuck you all.’
[comics] What has Evan Dorkin been up to recently? ‘The main project I’m working on is an Eltingville Club animated pilot for the Cartoon Network. The series bible (written by myself and Sarah Dyer) and pilot script (written by myself, story-edited by Sarah) have both been approved, and right now Stephen DeStefano is working on the storyboards. I’ve designed all the characters and as a producer on the pilot I have say on all aspects of production.’
[weblogs] Linking 1-2-3 — some ideas on how to find interesting and useful links. [Discusses tech links, but the the same principles apply — especially if you do a “link heavy” weblog like LMG]
1 September 2000
[simpsons] Eat my censors — Matt Groening discusses censorship with Jonathan Ross. ‘Can I read another censor note? “Bart does a yo-yo trick; please substitute the name of the yo-yo trick, spanking the monkey, which has a sexual meaning.” Then get this: they also didn’t like the yo-yo trick called whacking the weasel. However it says: “as discussed with Al Jean, Bart’s clearly enunciated ‘plucking the pickle’ will be an acceptable substitution.”‘ [Related Link: The Patron Saint of LinkMachineGo — Comic Book Guy]
[ukblogs] Blog On For an Ego Trip — The Evening Standard covers weblogs in the UK. [via plasticbag.org]
2 September 2000
[more adrian mole] I’m repeating myself but I cannot live without a weekly dose of Adrian Mole. ‘Glenn’s romance is over before it began. Courtney has been “long promised” to her second cousin, a lad called Eli, who works on the whelks and cockle store on the quay. Things are certainly feudal down here. They are but simple folk – untouched by the sophisticated outside world. It is impossible to get a Leicester Mercury.’
[funny] Things that made me laugh recently: Unnovations Baker’s Hat, Scooter Health Warning, O’Really Userguides [all three via NTK], and A Moving Tribute to Joey Deacon [via notsosoft]
3 September 2000
[grant morrison] Interesting transcript of Grant Morrison’s chat on the BBC’s Edfest website. ‘Jinx: Will Zenith be returning to 2000AD? Grant Morrison: Yes shortly and in a fairly bizarre story It starts off with Britney Spears being raped by a robot’ [Related links: plasticbag.org covers the Flex Mentallo / Charles Atlas WWF Smackdown]
[movie trailers] I’ve not done any movie trailers for a while…. here’s Sylvester Stallone in Get Carter and the teaser trailer to Pearl Harbor. [Related Links: Upcomingmovies.com on Pearl Harbor and Get Carter ‘Okay, so you’re going to remake the Michael Caine crime thriller Get Carter for the 21st century, right? Who would you cast in the Caine role? Maybe Jude Law? Aidan Quinn? Ewan MacGregor? Robert Carlyle? Ah, the list goes on… but the answer is of course, Sylvester Stallone. Right. Ha. Haha. Hahahaha…’]
4 September 2000
[weblogs] Webloging in the UK! A hourly updated list of recently changed UK based websites from yours truly. [Note: If you want to be added to the list — email me]
[simpsons] Adrian Hon sends me a link to a talk Matt Groening gave on Futurama. ‘Matt: “Please change line where Bender says “Bite my red hot glowing ass” to “Bite my red hot glowing butt.” [audience hysterical laughter] Dave C.: “Please lose Bender’s line suggesting that 20th century TV sets caused “Eye cancer.” [biggest laugh of the show yet, standing ovation]”‘
[films] Apocalypse Now Film Transcript — it’s on TV right now. ‘Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another.’ [Related Links: Apocalypse Now at IMDB, Apocalypse Now Tribute Page]
5 September 2000
[internet] How fast is your internet connection? ’56K modems also require a clean, straight through telephone connection to the telephone company’s central office switching center. Phone company line amplifiers that boost a telephone signal over a long distance, PBX switchboard systems, and other phone equipment alter the phone signal and force 56K modems to fall back to speeds of 33.6Kbps and lower.’ [via Sounding Off Column in Sunday Times]
[lennon] Guardian Unlimited reports that John Lennon’s murderer is about to apply for parole. ‘Chapman has said that he killed Lennon to be famous. “I had to usurp someone else’s importance, someone else’s success,” he said. “I was Mr Nobody until I killed the biggest somebody on earth.”‘ [Related Link: Lennon/Chapman website covering ‘the parallels, coincidences and strange synchronicities that brought together John Lennon and Mark Chapman on December 8th 1980.’]
[my inner voices use URL’s] Must… keep… hands… away… from… keyboard! Must. Not. Buy. BUDDY CHRIST!! [via lukelog]
[murder] GuardianUnlimited profiles Tony Martin. ‘He described his thrombosis (responsible for the limp), his run-down farm, his closest companions (three rottweilers), his love of travel, farming at night, his love of solitude. This disconnected rambling ranging across his life often returned to the first thing he had said that day; what was happening to him was surreal, beyond his control, not his responsibility.’
6 September 2000
[i have a cunning plan…] BBC News reports on a film about a sneaky Argentine filmaker who visits the Falklands Islands whilst trying to impregnate as many locals as possible in a inspired mission to retake the islands by love not war… the film is course called Fuckland. ‘So how hard would it be for another Argentine to find a date on the island? Las chicas en la isla no abundan, he says on the Web site, meaning that there’s not exactly a cornucopia of willing girls to begin with, and that the British military base there holds about 1,000 troops. ‘It’s terrible when you consider your competition,” Stratas says. Now you’re warned.’ [Related Link: Covert Operations in the Falklands: No Guns, Just Three Digital Cameras ]
[ukweblogs] New UK weblogs continue to be added to webloging in the UK!. Some recent additions… Bifurcated Rivets, The Great Sweet Mystery of Life, I Hate Music, chris raettig’s online journal, and digitaltwiddlers.
[corrections] From the Guardian’s Corrections and clarifications page: ‘Lady Birdwood whose death was reported in a brief item on page 6, June 29, appeared repeatedly before the courts for anti-semitic pamphleteering, not anti-semitic profiteering.’ Who was The Dowager Lady Birdwood? ‘In a memorably fatuous observation in 1994, Judge Henry Pownall told Birdwood he accepted that she did not intend to stir up racial hatred. “You are not a wicked old woman in that sense,” he added. Birdwood had been convicted of distributing a pamphlet, which denied the holocaust, and proclaimed a Jewish conspiracy to subvert society. She had also suggested Jews drank the blood of gentile children. Judge Pownall sentenced her to a three-month suspended sentence.’ [via Beesley]
7 September 2000
[lone nut] Following on from an earlier post… Guardian Unlimited’s Netnotes covers Mark Chapman. More from the John Lennon’s Murder Site: ‘Two days later, he is watching television, when the picture goes blank and “Thou Shalt Not Kill” appears across the screen. It is the sixth Commandment, as written in The Gospel of St. Mark – his Gospel, and Mark Chapman is shocked at the intensity of the experience, and sees it as an example of synchronicity, giving him a message to go back to reading the Bible.’
[oasis] Guardian Unlimited covers Noel Gallagher and Meg Matthews marriage breakup. ‘Male stars are so used to having the most adolescent behaviour indulged that they need partners who are prepared to knock sense into them. What they crave, what Gallagher probably craved even as he and Mathews groped through a drug haze (“We got to know each other through drugs; when I came off them I didn’t know if I’d still like her,” he said), is a steadying influence.’
[falklands] Twenty-Two Royal Marines Vs Argentine Naval Frigate Guerrico. No Contest: ‘Marine David Combes, who was normally the ships steward on Endurance now placed his name in naval history books by firing his Carl Gustav 84 mm anti tank weapon at the Guerrico. The Royal Marines watched as the 10lb projectile staggered across the waves and then, on it’s last legs, smashed into Guerrico’s hull just above the waterline, sending up a column of white water. They then heard a loud rumble come from inside the ship. Below decks Argentine damage control parties struggled to stop the flow of water that was now coming though the hole.’ [Note: This entry was blogged by the part of Darren’s brain which is still a 12 year-old right wing war film and comic loving little boy. It’s a small part — honest. :) ]
[LMG] Slight redesign… nothing serious. Less whitespace, smaller fonts, more room. Let me know if you have any problems.
8 September 2000
[comics] Steve Bell on William Hague and The Millennium Dome — ‘…a pointless tent in the middle of nowhere…’
[allergic to microchips] Guardian Unlimited reports on a woman living in a timewarp — she’s unable to go near microchips which are omnipresent in modern society…. ‘Mrs Stock says that if she goes near a computer or sits in a modern motor car she quickly begins to suffer with a pain that she likens to a pencil boring through the back of her head. “I have earache and toothache and my vision goes distorted. It is just as though you are drunk and you don’t know what you are doing,” she said yesterday. “I find it very scary, especially when the eyes go. They can be like that for hours and I worry that they may not become all right again. The pains in my head can last for days.”‘
[comics] Eddie’s Campbell’s new website looks good… The Eddie’s Shout section asks: Who Drew Batman? ‘I recently pulled out those 1966, thirty-year-old yellowed paperbacks. There are two panels approximately to a page, some enlarged, some reduced, some chopped up like the cat’s dinner. I’ve been photocopying them and reassembling them back into their original comic book page format so that I may examine the layout styles more thoroughly. Some of the photocopying is made difficult by the fact that many pages have been coloured in with wax crayons. Who coloured Batman? I confess; it was me.’
[words fail me] A profile of Nicholas van Hoogstraten. ‘There is a mausoleum in the basement, the only bit we don’t get a tour of because Van Hoogstraten thinks we will poke fun at it. At each stage, he stops to point out a) the quality of the fittings, b) the uselessness of the people who installed them. I ask if he enjoys being aggravated. “I used to,” he says. “Twenty years ago I would go out looking for it, but now I’d rather stay in and watch EastEnders – for God’s sake don’t put that in the Guardian.” Why not, I ask. Would it damage his image? He says: “I only watch it because Leslie Grantham is a friend of mine.”‘ [Sorry for overusing the Guardian — but I cannot resist a profile of Hoogstraten]
9 September 2000
[weblogs] Getting blogged everywhere — Rebbeca Blood talks about the rise of weblogs. ‘Dell manages more webpages than all of the weblogs put together. Sprite’s PR machine can point more man-hours to the promotion of one message–“Obey Your Thirst”–than the combined man-hours of every weblogger alive. Our strength–that each of us speaks in an individual voice of an individual vision–is, in the high-stakes world of carefully orchestrated messages designed to distract and manipulate, a liability. We are, very simply, outnumbered.’ [One Word: Linux]
[life] 101 ways to slow down… ‘102. Don’t worry about finding interesting/useful/life-changing links for your weblog.’
[bad craziness] Some deeply weird headfucks on the Barbelith Underground… ‘“The simplest explanation is most probably the truth.” — Occam’s Razor.
[adrian mole redux] Must…. not…. blog… Adrian Mole… ‘It’s time I found a sexual partner: a non-neurotic, childless, non-smoking, beautiful woman who enjoys literature, spotting Eddie Stobart lorries and housework would be ideal. Is it too much to ask that I should be allowed a little happiness?’
10 September 2000
[ARTICLE NUMBER REMOVED] Need To Know seem to have removed article numbers pointing at usenet news postings on deja.com containing the hoax transcript of Jimmy Saville on Have I Got News For You which they published on Friday. Why? [Related Links: Some of the Corpses are Amusing, LMG Posting #1, LMG Posting #2]
[80’s authors] Bright Lights, Big City — the Observer profiles Jay McInerney. “‘I think I’ve been trying to prove I’m a really bad guy for 20 years, that I’m not a mother’s boy. But part of me is stuck with being a Catholic boy who is slightly shocked by things.’ Part of him – but perhaps a decreasing part. He once admitted that, as a teenager, he was deeply influenced by the Playboy ‘Adviser’ section and he still retains that slightly tacky notion of sophistication – he really has to have a beautiful woman on his arm. And the emotional detritus is piling up.”
11 September 2000
[teletext] Ceefax in amber — here’s the news headlines from Monday 3rd October 1983. [via Playing with Cobras]
[McCartney] Guardian Unlimited interviews Paul McCartney. “It was summed up one morning when we were doing the White Album. I was working all day and till three in the morning and we’d worked late right through the weekend. I was coming into work and there was a guy watering his garden. It was a sunny morning and he just looked at me and smiled, ‘Good morning !’ and I said, ‘Good morning,’ and I just stopped and said, ‘Shit, who’s got it right here?'”
[tv] seethru.co.uk goes live… reads a bit like a weblog “music – wit – no shit my personal Internet filter” But it’s not. It’s a manufactured website for the new TV series Attachments.
12 September 2000
[weblogs] blogger.com covers How to publicize your blog.
[big brother] Is Bernie Winters dead? Yes he is… and here’s his gravestone. He’s buried in Golders Green cemetary along with Peter Sellers.
[weblogger on the verge of a…] …Nervous Breakdown. Sunday’s Observer actually covers what a nervous breakdown means… ‘The most common kind of breakdown, according to Dr Philip Timms, a consultant psychiatrist with the South London and Maudsley Trust, is someone developing moderately severe depression, normally over a period of weeks. ‘A person would begin to feel more on edge, find it more difficult to sleep, find themselves thinking more negatively about themselves, feel increasingly hopeless and incompetent about what they’re doing, and then there comes a day when they just can’t face going to work, or getting out of bed, perhaps. Breakdown occurs if a depressive episode is not dealt with – it builds up and it’s part of a process.’ ‘
[comics] Bad weblogger…. did not spot this great Steve Bell cartoon on the Petrol Crisis earlier.
13 September 2000
[aids] Heretic! Scientists argue over whether AIDS was caused by western virologists developing polio vacines in the 1950s… ‘Since The River was published Hooper has had his integrity questioned throughout. His powerful critics have accused him of being a “madman”, “a tenth-rate journalist”, a “conspiracy theorist”, of having “more time than sense”, and of being “speculative”. His accuracy has been questioned as well as his journalistic methods and motives. John Moore, professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell University, has accused him of “twisting and manipulating” facts, of being paid by his “crony Hamilton to write about his pet theory”.’ [BBC Report: Scientists rule out polio link to Aids]
[censored] Guardian Unlimited covers the handling of Lady Chatterley’s Lover censorship case back in the 1960s. ‘Under the heading “Gratuitous filth”, the DPP’s office had tried to keep a running count of the offending words. It notes on page 204 a “bitch goddess of Success (coined by Henry James)”, a “fucking”, a “shit”, a “best bit of cunt left on earth” and “balls” (three times). On page 232 is found “arse” (twice), “arsed” and “slits” (twice), and so the file goes on. At the trial Griffith-Jones told the jury that the word “fuck” or “fucking” appeared no fewer than 30 times.’
[comics] Comic Book Geek Purity Test. I got: “You answered “yes” to 103 of 300 questions, making you 65.7% comic pure (34.3% comic corrupt).” [via Threadnaught]
[referer log] Looking for Charlie Dimmock naked? I can’t help you… but the BBC does has some naked Gardeners’ Question Time action right here…
14 September 2000
[cartoon] Yet another great Steve Bell cartoon on the petrol crisis… ‘Fat Blokes United in Disgruntlement’
[ellroy] Old Salon interview with James Ellroy… On his mother: ‘She gave me gifts — her death did. Those gifts have stood me in very good stead. I cannot go back and undo the past. I never even think of what might have happened had she lived. Would I be a writer? I had gone to great lengths in my life, in my career, to seek consciousness and get better and better. That eclipsed everything with me, everything in my subconscious.’
15 September 2000
[big brother] Desmond Morris on the Human Zoo that is Big Brother. ‘The housemates were nextdoor neighbours to millions of us, and gave us a great deal of innocent fun. If ever you find yourself in the midst of a remote tribe, living in primeval conditions and you investigate what they are chatting about around the fire, you can be certain that they will not be reminiscing about their tribal myths or ancestor figures, but gossiping incessantly about village trivia. Gossip is the oil that lubricates social conversation and that helps us to understand our tribal relationships and our shared feelings and attitudes. In an urban world, this village smalltalk finds it hard to survive. Many people hardly know their neighbours. Big Brother has given us, briefly, a small group of national neighbours and we have all enjoyed comparing notes about them the following day. That’s all it is, a bit of gossipy fun, and good luck to it.’
[more big brother] The Daily Express interviews the Big Mother behind BB… On Nasty Nick: “It was obvious we had to get him out. People asked why we didn’t get rid of him earlier but this was the first time we had concrete proof he’d been trying to sway nominations and he was told he had to go. He came straight out of the house and into the back of a car. I was with him. We drove out to Welwyn Garden City to a hotel. He was very shaken and upset and had absolutely no concept of the scale of the big debate, so for the first four hours it was my job to gently tell him that he was probably the most talked about man in Britain…and that it wasn’t all good.”
16 September 2000
[weblogs] Linus, Bill and Steve have an amusing Newbie Blog Chat… ‘BillGates34: My blog is named Blog O’ Bill, in case you guys wanna link me. It’s an acronym…..B.O.B. ….it spells Bob. A guy’s name. Cool, eh? SteveJobsMac: Um….yeah, Einstein. Real cool. Except that your name isn’t Bob. Correct me if I’m wrong. BillGates34: Sheeesh…it’s just a joke. Lighten up, dude. Hey…what browsers do you guys use? I use IE :) LinusTorvalds69: DUH!! SteveJobsMac: DUH!!’
[ch-ch-ch-changes] Guardian Unlimited explores how to change your life. ‘…many of us are creatures of habit: we know exactly what we like and we make sure we stay well inside our comfort zone. Just remember that there’s always somewhere more comfortable than your comfort zone, and eventually that thought will make you so uncomfortable that you’ll venture out.’
17 September 2000
[horror] The Observer interviews Stephen King. ‘Stephen King paused, took a breath, he got stiffly to his feet, and smiled. ‘That’s not to say that there won’t always be a market for crap… Just look at Jeffrey Archer! He writes like old people fuck, doesn’t he?” [part of the Observer’s Stephen King Season]
[uk weblogs] Blue Lines returns. Better than ever. ‘The current affairs content of this page has been low recently, because while incidents such as doctors getting attacked by illiterate mobs who couldn’t tell the difference between a paediatrician and a paedophile hold a certain black humour value, they’re also symptomatic of what a fucking depressing Summer it’s been for anyone of vaguely liberal leanings.’
[gummo] The Loafer’s Guide to Harmony Korine… ‘What next? Korine has been making Fight Harm, a film in which he provokes fights with strangers, a camera recording the violence. ‘I wanted it to be the funniest movie ever made, a cross between Buster Keaton and a snuff movie,’ he says. Work was stopped after he ended up in hospital or jail too often. After breaking his ankles in one fight, he’s had to abandon his plan ‘to invent a new form of tap-dancing’.’
[books] The Guardian’s original book review of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. ‘The utter banality of the Clutter murder, the fact that it was resolved not through some acute feat of detection but by a facile indiscretion – one of the assassins had discussed the family with a cell-mate before leaving prison – make Truman Capote’s radical point. Looked at minutely enough, filtered through the lens of a highly professional recorder, caught by the tape recording ear in its every inflection and background noise, the most sordid, shapeless of incidents, take on a compelling truth. Exhaustively rendered, the fact is richer than any fiction.’ [Buy this Book: UK / US]
18 September 2000
[books] Crime Magazine asks if In Cold Blood is a dishonest book. Interesting look at the story behind the creation of the book — but be warned… the page contains some disturbing images. ‘However, early on I’d like to raise the question of Capote’s basic honesty in writing this book. He set out to write a masterpiece, yet he took no notes. He recounts lengthy, complex conversations – sans notes. Capote told Plimpton that he had trained himself to do this – that, for a year and a half prior to embarking on the book, he had a friend read passages from a book to him, for an hour or two a day, then he would write down what he had heard – and in his estimation he had a unique facility for accurately remembering interviews, with an accuracy quotient of 95 percent. Which any newspaper reporter can tell you is horse feathers.’
[big numbers] According to this calendarhome.com I am 11,129 days old. Which is interesting.
[yates] Paula Yates’ Obituary from todays Guardian Unlimited. ‘Renowned for her dizzy, flirtatious television persona, Yates seldom received credit for the qualities that made her a more substantial person. Widely read, with a quick wit and sharp intelligence, she was also a devoted partner and mother to her and Geldof’s extravagantly-named daughters, Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches and Pixie.’
[beeb.com] According to my flatmate [who wants me to link to this and this for some reason] the BBC has released it’s first commercial television advertisement… it’s advertising beeb.com a internet shopping site.
19 September 2000
[comics] Warren Ellis interviews Mark Waid. “Look, I’ve said this before: you can make fun of my less-than-lofty goals all you like, but from the time I was 17, writing Superman – or, more accurately, being able to give back to someone who, fictional or not, quite literally saved my suicidal young life – was all I ever really wanted to do. I had no grand aspirations to transform the medium. I was perfectly happy being a journeyman. But the day I was told that I would never, ever, ever be allowed to fulfill that dream – well, that’s when I finally came to my senses and stopped trying to do what a 17 year old wanted to do. Now at least I’m on a road.”
[net] Guardian Unlimited covers the paratrooper who was sacked for looking at too many dull websites. ‘Jim was dismissed by his employers for excessive use of the internet when he was supposed to be working. Our best point is that Jim, unlike I suspect most bored surfers, was not looking at hotchicks.com or pussytown.com or any other sort of porn. Jim was looking at some very dull stuff. I’ve seen the logs. Jim spent over an hour looking at avocado recipes on one occasion. At other times he conducted searches on: his mother’s maiden name, various cricket players [and] verrucas.’
20 September 2000
[film] Guardian Unlimited talks to Quentin Tarantino about his current obssesion with Roy Rogers and Trigger. ‘Nowadays, Roy Rogers seems almost too good. I find myself being moved by his common decency. Life’s events and other people’s actions have no effect on him and his heart. He didn’t save Trigger to become a bitter man; he did it because it was what he had to do. His code is his code. The whole world can change, and it doesn’t change his code.’
[cringely] Robert X. Cringely answers questions on Slashdot. Cringely on the origin of Cringely: ‘Cringely came to be as a guy on the masthead who could be blamed for fuck-ups. The idea was he’d be fired from time to time then reinstated when the advertiser (it was always an advertiser) had cooled down. He could never come to the phone because he was the Field Editor — always out in the field.’ [Related Links: I, Cringely, Accidental Empires at Amazon]
[big brother] BBC News looks at whats next for the Big Brother competitors. On Darren: ‘He spent a good deal of his time in the Big Brother house looking after the often poorly chickens, including Marjorie – his favourite. Speculation that he will soon be back on TV screens as frontman to an advertising campaign for instant chicken sauce Chicken Tonight – for a six-figure sum – should come as no surprise.’
[comics] Fantagraphics presents a Ghost World Gallery. ‘Fuck you bitch… THIS IS MY HAPPENING AND IT FREAKS ME OUT!!’ [Related Links: Dan Clowes]
21 September 2000
[comics] Alan Moore and Dave Sim discuss Life, Magic, Religion, Comics and pretty much everything in between… [Click the four links for different parts of the conversation] ‘As so, too, From Hell: the Whitechapel murders took place over a finite period of time and claimed a finite number of victims. Looked at in terms of the area of information covered, this appears at first glance to be a containable task with clearly defined limits. The problem is all in the surface detail. As more detail becomes apparent with closer and closer examination, so too does the “surface” of the narrative become more crinkly, prickly, and fractal. The perimeter of the story starts to extend towards infinity.’ [Related Link: The Alan Moore Magic Site]
[tech] Was the real winner of Big Brother Real Media? ‘The extent of the Big Brother achievement should not be under-rated. Not only did it prove video streaming could reach a massive market, it was also a technologically smooth ride. Most of the people who signed up for the Big Brother RealPlayers were novices to the Net, yet the first job they had to do was download and install an intricate piece of software, something that even baffles experts from time to time.’ [via Yungee]
[surrogate blogging] I could not bring myself to blog dogs dresses as superheroes… but Meg could.
22 September 2000
[are cornflakes anti-viagra?] Kellogs Cornflakes were invented to decrease sex drive… ‘In 1884, this curious connection between food and sex appeared in another guise the humble cornflake, which was invented, along with granola and other breakfast cereals as a mild food that would serve to decrease the sexual appetite. Dr Kellog’s brother William saw the commercial potential, and the rest (apart from a long legal battle between the brothers) – is history. John Harvey Kellogg opposed all sexual activity from masturbation to marital intercourse. A doctor, he never made love to his wife! ‘
[whassup in the UK] Budweiser have started showing the Whassup! TV ads in the UK…
[comics] Maggots, Scum, Filth and Turds. Warren Ellis takes a few well aimed pot-shots at the sad and pathetic world of comic price speculation… ‘Speculation on comics prices is shit. Let me say that again for the hard of thinking. Speculation on comics prices is shit. It is for the emotionally and ethically retarded. It is a game for human filth. Rabid speculation led directly to the state of the comics market today. I’m amazed that anyone needs reminding of this. Specifically WIZARD Magazine, which was around to report on it all. And now WIZARD Magazine is promoting speculation once again, jabbering about “portfolios” of collectible comics, its founder Gareb Shamus frothing at the mouth on live TV in his comparisons of comics to stocks and outrageously unsupportable claims of the probable financial returns of comics speculation.’
23 September 2000
[more kellogs] A great quote from the good Dr Kellogg: ‘A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision…The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind…In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement.’
[this means war!] Overnight I recieved 8 spam messages about wild & hot teens, home loans and herbal viagra. I have little doubt that me and SpamCop are about to renew our acquaintance….
[eugenics] Guardian Unlimited reports on a new book alleging that an American scientist infected thousands of South American Indians with a measles-like virus [in the process killing hundreds] to test a theory on the effects of natural selection on a primitive society. ‘Prof Turner says that Neel held the view that “natural” human society, as seen before the advent of large-scale agriculture, consists of small, genetically isolated groups in which dominant genes – specifically a gene he believed existed for “leadership” or “innate ability” – have a selective advantage. In such an environment, male carriers of this gene would gain access to a disproportionate number of females, reproducing their genes more frequently than less “innately able” males. The result would supposedly be a continual upgrading of the human genetic stock. He says Neel believed that in modern societies “superior leadership genes would be swamped by mass genetic mediocrity”.’
24 September 2000
[big brother aftermath] The Observer does an interview with Anna… “Then there was Nick. ‘He fooled us all,’ sighs Anna, without a trace of indulgence, ‘and he fooled the nation so much more because everyone’s intrigued and adores him. I’m just like, “Nick, you just need help.” I was so dim, I just didn’t see it.’ Maybe she didn’t see it because he never showed her his little pieces of paper.”
[the horror!] What is Mr Winkle? ‘The project was inspired by the incredibly funny reactions to Mr. Winkle every time Regan took him in public. “It’s an alien!” screamed the cable repair man. “It’s a cat in a dog suit,” surmised an out-of-work actor. “It’s the reincarnation of the divinity!” enthused a woodworking poet. Kids of all ages are especially mesmerized by Mr. Winkle, most believing he is a stuffed animal come to life or an embodiment of their favorite pop culture character – Pokeman, Ewok, Japanese cartoon character – Mr.Winkle resembles them all.’ [via Barbelith Underground]
25 September 2000
[hey kids! comics!] A while ago Luke from LukeLog asked me to suggest some comics he might like…. Here’s my suggestions and I would imagine they are suitable for any “comics newbie”: From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, Ghost World by Daniel Clowes, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. General suggestions: anything by Peter Bagge, anything by Alan Moore, anything by Frank Miller, anything by Grant Morrison.
[books] Stephen King writes about the car accident that almost killed him…. ‘He and Bullet left the campground where they were staying, he later tells an investigator, because he wanted ‘some of those Marzes-bars they have up to the store’. When I hear this little detail some weeks later, it occurs to me that I have nearly been killed by a character right out of one of my own novels. It’s almost funny.’
[frank Butcher mp3] This made my day: My Name is… Frank Butcher! [via Bloglet, Related Link: Frank Butcher’s Philosophical Car Lot]
26 September 2000
[walken] Guardian Unlimited accuses Christopher Walken of being mild. Apparently his real name is Ronnie and he wants to do a cookery programme on TV… ‘Measured by his screen persona, the 57-year-old actor is anything but normal. Take the wheelchair-ridden Man With The Plan in Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, or the psychotic mob boss Vincenzo Coccotti in True Romance. Indeed, many thought his performance as the demented Frank White in the super-violent gangster flick King Of New York was his most extreme – until last year’s Wildside showed him whipping his chauffeur with his underpants while attempting to sodomise him at gunpoint.’
[attachments] BBC News covers the new TV Series Attachments… ‘Seethru’s coder Reece is an offensive, drug-taking womaniser. Designer Jake is a self-obsessed drama queen with ambiguous sexuality and a domineering dad. Lesbian content manager Sophie is outspoken in the extreme – and writes a particularly offensive column. Then there’s socially inept programmer Brandon. He is so shy that his only release is to skateboard naked around the office when everyone else has gone home.’
[british weblogs] Just noticed this BritBlogs webring… ‘BritBlogs was created on 16 September 2000 because I didn’t find any webrings which were for British blogs, there were webrings for Austrailian blogs, and Candian Blogs, not for British blogs… So here it is…!’
[dotcom drama] From NTK, Everybody Hates Attachments: “On screen: the naked skater frantically types some CSS… only minutes later, he’s moved onto: some more CSS… Comments: …does his entire job consist of writing stylesheets? he’s so overqualified; he can.. traceroute the.. ip.. header from the, uh, the mail! can’t remember cock size; must watch bbc choice rerun.”
27 September 2000
[seethru.co.uk] Attachments — The weblog verdict is in. Notsosoft: “It was quite simply the fact that is was just shite.”. One Day Soon: “Let me just come straight out with it: I actually quite liked it.”. LukeLog: “There’s nothing here a bunch of Prozac and TV for Dummies books won’t fix.” Cuckoo Kid: “I just finished watching Attachments and I have to say it was like a foil wrapped turd: flashy but still a turd.” Prolific 2000: “Who wants to watch a series about an internet company (Attachments, BBC2) when you work in one yourself?”
[blair] Fantastic “sketch” of Tony Blair’s conference speech yesterday by Simon Hoggart: ‘He began with a ringing battlecry. “We’re crap!” he told the adoring delegates. “Yes, we’re crap, but we’re not as crappy as the other lot!” He didn’t put it quite like that, of course, but that was what he meant. It was that rarest moment, an apology from a politician. The dome, the fuel crisis, pensions, even prime minister’s question time. But he was sorry, God he was sorry. He’d never do it again. Would a bunch of flowers help?’
[art] Disinformation wonders if Jackson Pollock was a stooge of the CIA… ‘Since there was no political content, no theme to the work, in fact, there was often nothing at all but the most self-obsessed swirls in Pollock’s huge canvases, his art was easily commandeered and made a weapon. Stalin could hug as many children and lead as many peasants to the wheat fields in an evil Norman Rockwell universe as he liked, Pollock’s empty confusion spoke to the people of a shattered Europe, the wizards of America’s corporate towers and their brainwashed suburban peasants. Behind the mess and splashes of paint, there was something scary and profound enough to be real.’
[cartoon] Yet another Steve Bell cartoon — the time regarding yesterday’s Tony Blair sweat meltdown … ‘Boiling down to our irreducible core.’
28 September 2000
[random link dump] These links have been sitting around waiting for something to tag them to which never came along: Old Salon interview with Jay McInerney, Slashdot review of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Comics worth Reading and finally, Alan Moore — famous vegetarian!
[sci-fi] Guardian Unlimited interviews Arthur C. Clarke as he promotes his new book… ‘The book, with its vision of a relentlessly voyeuristic society, includes a memorable sex scene on a bench in 2041AD Rome. Who wrote the sex bits, I wonder? “I had an operation for prostate cancer 10 years ago,” Clarke says. “I haven’t the slightest interest in sex. But you have to keep up with reality.”‘
[jack chick] This Was Your Life! Vs. This Is Your Death. [Related Links: Chick Publications, Jack T. Chick Parody Archive]
[music] Ever wondered what was the No. 1 in the UK on the day you were born? Mine was: “The number 1 on the 31st March 1970 was Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon And Garfunkel.” [via Bloglet]
[the originals] In the beginning… there were only three Brit weblogs that I was aware of… Bifurcated Rivets, Barbelith and Daily Doozer… Doozer vanished earlier this year and there was much wailing, gnashing of teeth and pointless hitting of the RELOAD button… until today… Doozer is back… with a new design and name: extenuating circumstances. ‘There’s a few other reasons as well: how could I honestly stand back while the rest of the UK blogger community got their fame on Radio 4 and the Evening Standard? Or when my brother got interviewed by .net magazine? Exactly. Piece of the pie for me now, please. Oooh, and this whole weblogging lark is wonderful.’ Excellent news. Somebody give that man his pie right now….
29 September 2000
[manics] Steve Lamacq reports on “the most disturbing” moment in 90’s pop — when Richey Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers cut ‘4 REAL’ into his arm with a razor…. ‘Nottingham Forest were playing and bassist Nicky Wire and singer James Dean Bradfield spent their pre-gig downtime in the hotel bar watching the match on TV. James was wearing a ludicrously long shiny mac. During the 15-minute drive to the venue, he sat at the back of the bus and refused to be drawn into conversation. I remember thinking: “Well, this is a good start. He hates me and I don’t like his coat.”‘
[comics] The Onion AV Club interviews Will Eisner. Eisner on the origin of the term “graphic novel”: ‘Yes, that’s a true story. I was sitting there on the telephone talking to this guy, and I said, “I have this new thing for you, something very new.” And he said, “What is it?” And I looked at it and realized that if I said, “A comic book,” he would hang up. He was a very busy guy, and this was a top-level publishing house. So I called it a graphic novel, and he said, “Oh, that’s interesting. Bring it up!” I brought it to him. He looked at it, looked at me over his granny glasses, and said, “You know, it’s still a comic. We can’t publish that kind of stuff.”‘
[metafilter] Great posting on Metafilter: ‘130 Years old! See! God may not exist, but technology will outpace religion and THEN I will live FOREVER!’
30 September 2000
[mp3 gnutella] From the Nullsoft Website: ‘”we didn’t get into this ‘space’ cuz we’re internet gold seeking cockos. we’re legitimate nihilistic media terrorists as history will no doubt canonize us.” -Rob Lord, June 9, 2000′ [via Salon Article On Gnutella]
[comics] The Twilight Gallery — Alan Moore’s epic Twilight of the Superheroes is brought to life as various comics artists take a passage from the proposal and sketch it out… John Totleben: ‘Y’know, when I started doing [the Doll Man sketch] I realized that what Alan was probably after was something like The Fly (the one with Jeff Goldblum). Around the time the Twilight proposal was being conceived, I had a conversation with Alan about that movie. He liked it quite a bit, but was especially amused by the part where Brundlefly was interviewing himself and talking about how he’d like to become an insect-politician. Somehow, I think that must have worked its way into his design for the Doll Man character, either intentionally or subconciously. I just played off of that’ [Related Link: Earlier Post On LMG]
[burchill] Julie Burchill — Conspiracy theories and Paula Yates: ‘Come on down, Muriel, Justine, Jane, Deborah, Yvonne. The byline was different, but the sob remained the same: Paula Yates Died For Our Sins; Paula Yates, Innocent Victim Of A Feeding-Frenzied Media; Tragic Paula, Broken Butterfly On The Wheel Of Misogyny. Paula, We Hardly Knew You! What Are We Doing? What Does It Mean? Where Are We Going? Where Have We Been? What’s It All About, Alfie!’
1 October 2000
[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… ]
[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.’
[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…”