1 October 2009
[comics] Abhay Khosla’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula [Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five]
2 October 2009
[comics] Name Five Great Things About Steve Ditko … One of Evan Dorkin’s: ‘I have it on good authority that at a Valiant Comics shindig Ditko got up and went after someone who had taken his photograph, brandishing a chicken leg. No fracas or altercation took place, I just like the image of him shaking a chicken leg at the guy while explaining his reasons for not wishing to be photographed. If I remember correctly, the photograph was “taken care of”. I guess that’s not a reason why Ditko is great, but it is a reason why Ditko is Ditko. And Ditko is great.’
5 October 2009
6 October 2009
[comics] Super-Social Networking: Superhero Facebook Status Updates … ‘Bruce Wayne is glad to see the new law requiring skylights in all buildings was passed.’ [via Sore Eyes]
11 October 2009
[bdj] Archbishop of York attacks Belle de Jour for glamourising prostitution … ‘Dr John Sentamu attacked the books and television programme based on the character Belle de Jour, a high-end London call girl, for misleading the public over the reality of prostitution. He said that the lifestyle portrayed in the works was in stark contrast to the suffering endured by the majority of women involved in the sex trade.’
14 October 2009
[comics] Smilin’ Stan Lee is on Twitter: ‘Uh oh! My appointment just arrived. Gotta get to work. To be continued tomorrow– or tonite if there’s time. Excelsi– whatever!’ [link]
15 October 2009
[comics] Comic Tools … fascinating blog looking at the craft, tools and skills behind the art on a comic book page.
16 October 2009
[twitter] 10 Things You Need To Stop Tweeting About … ‘#9 Emotional Breakthroughs’
[piracy] Worth a look: Everytime You Torrent God Kills A…
19 October 2009
[movies] Roger Ebert Reviews Alien …
As the sequels (“Aliens,” “Alien 3,” “Alien Resurrection”) will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn’t play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a “perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility,” and admits: “I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.”
[weird] Left Brain / Right Brain Conflict … Look at the chart and say the COLOUR not the WORD and then get very tongue tied.
20 October 2009
[media] Michael Wolff on Rupert Murdoch … ‘Murdoch’s abiding love of newspapers has turned into a personal antipathy to the Internet: for him it’s a place for porn, thievery, and hackers. In 2005, not long after News Corp. bought MySpace, when it still seemed like a brilliant purchase-before its fortunes sank under News Corp.’s inability to keep pace with advances in social-network technology-I congratulated him on the acquisition. “Now,” he said, “we’re in the stalking business”.’
21 October 2009
[tv] Adam Curtis Uncovers The Secrets Of Helmand … Adam Curtis interviewed by Andrew Orlowski … ‘Documentaries, and a lot of television now, is possessed by the mantra that people will only watch your film, or listen to your program, if it “touches something in them”. So the reporting has to find something in Afghanistan that’s some terrible thing that has happened “to somebody like you, or just like your child”. It’s done with the best intentions, and a certain kind of desperation to keep an audience. But it makes it more and more incomprehensible. Because it becomes a land full of victims and out there in the darkness, dark forces we don’t understand.’
22 October 2009
[weird] Take A Weird Break Blog … a blog collecting weird headlines from Take A Break style magazines. [via qwghlm.co.uk]
[funny] Watching: Jenga World Record Disaster … ‘Jeez, Brian… I don’t know what to say.’ (more…)
23 October 2009
[music] The £10,000 playlist … Phil Gyford on iTunes Vs. Spotify… ‘…what I like about my music library is that it’s small. Relatively. I know my way around it. I feel daunted by having to choose between six million tracks on Spotify. Where to start? Option paralysis. My music library is a reflection of me, a reflection of my life since I bought my first CD. As I’ve grown up, the city has also grown, from hamlet to metropolis. It will keep growing, but it still carries my history within.’
[history] Nick Griffin’s Bad Science … ‘Furthermore, Britain has never had an indigenous population, in the sense of people who evolved here. Every member of Homo sapiens who has ever lived in Britain has been either an immigrant, or the descendent of immigrants. The very first ones, the genetic evidence suggests, came here from an ancestral home in northern Spain or the Basque country.’
24 October 2009
[funny] Watching: YouTube – Cassetteboy vs Nick Griffin vs Question Time … ‘I am thoroughly unpleasant and really creepy…’ (more…)
25 October 2009
[life] Things To Remember … ‘Absolutely nothing good can come out of overthinking things.’ (more…)
26 October 2009
[media] Hmm… remember this? … great blog post highlighting the hypocrisy of the tabloid press over Griffin, the BNP and the BBC.
[weird] Meet the Georgetown University Sophomore Who’s Hiring a Personal Assistant … ‘Tasks such as doing laundry that involve a lot of waiting around (time when you could be doing other tasks or doing your own stuff) will be counted for the approximate amount of time it would take to do the labor involved. For instance, laundry will be counted for half an hour even though a laundry cycle takes 1.5 hrs to complete.’
27 October 2009
[space] How Many People Are In Space Right Now? … ‘6 – all on ISS’
[funny] Glanced At: Information Vs. Confusion
[funny] Employment Wanted – Former Marijuana Smuggler … ‘During this time I also co-owned and participated in the executive level management of 120 people worldwide in a successful pot smuggling venture with revenues in excess of US$100 million annually.’ (more…)
29 October 2009
[comics] The Haiku of the Ancient Sub-Mariner … great gag strip from Evan Dorkin … ‘Angry, So Angry…’
30 October 2009
[funny] Church Sign FAIL … ‘The class on Prophecy has been canceled…’
[books] Meet Stephen King’s Gore Specialist … ‘Dorr has consulted on classics like The Shining, Pet Sematary, Misery, and Cell. (For Misery, Dorr told King how to cauterize a wound with a blowtorch and which body parts can be surgically removed without killing the victim.)’
31 October 2009
[war] Secrets Hope As Hitler Aide Dies … [via Warren Ellis]
He also told the German newspaper how he was dismissed by Hitler over a bizarre incident involving a fly.
The fly had been buzzing around the room during a strategy conference in July 1944, irritating the Nazi leader.
Hitler ordered Mr Darges to get rid of it, but the SS adjutant suggested that as it was an “airborne pest” the job should go to Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below.
He said Hitler then flew into a rage and dismissed him, saying: “You’re for the eastern front.”