[comics] The Comics Reporter’s Holiday Shopping Guide ’09 … great selection of comic gifts to buy this year … On A Drifting Life: ‘Very few if any reviews of this massive autobiographical work from the great Yoshihiro Tatsumi note how completely mad it is on a certain level to follow a young man around as he reads and draws comics over the space of several decades. This book more than has the courage of that particular conviction, and I’ve never seen any artist invoke the relationship-warping monomania of creativity as well as Tatsumi does here.’

[funny] New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths …

“The most disturbing facet of this ubiquitous childhood disorder is an utter lack of empathy,” Mateo said. “These people-if you can even call them that-deliberately violate every social norm without ever pausing to consider how their selfish behavior might affect others. It’s as if they have no concept of anyone but themselves.”

“The depths of depravity that these tiny psychopaths are capable of reaching are really quite chilling,” Mateo added.

[batman] ‘Hey Batman, What Are Your Parents Getting You For Christ-‘ …

[morrison] Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods Trailer … a bunch of comic-types try to sum up Grant Morrison … [more…]

[comics] The Best Comics Of The ’00s … from The A.V. Club. On Morrison and Quitely’s All Star Superman: ‘…Morrison puts a fresh spin on old Superman ideas-Bizarro, Jimmy Olsen’s monstrous transformations-and introduces some of his own, including a story in which Superman is secretly responsible for the world you’re living in right now. It’s enough to send even the most jaded comics fan outside to look up in the sky.’

[interesting] The 50 Most Interesting Articles On Wikipedia … including… ETAOIN SHRDLU: ‘The letters on Linotype keyboards were arranged by letter frequency, so ETAOIN SHRDLU were the first two vertical columns on the left side of the keyboard.’

[comics] Counterculture Comics Hero Grant Morrison Gets a Biopic … Wired cover a new documantary about Grant Morrison … ‘Morrison has lived a very full life, from playing in rock bands to experimenting as a transvestite to becoming, like Alan Moore, a chaos magician. There’s a lot of fertile ground in his personality alone, to say nothing of his sometimes autobiographical comics. In the process, Morrison has become a counterculture icon primed for mainstream crossover.’

[google] Autocomplete Me … a blog revealing oddball search requests via Google’s autocomplete feature … ‘monsters are… real and ghosts are real too. they live inside us and sometimes they win.’

[bdj] Meanwhile… Belle de Jour on Celebrity Big Brother? ZOMG!!

[bdj] Yes, the bozos who claimed I was Belle de Jour were completely deluded! … Stewart Home’s reaction to Belle de Jour revealing her identity … ‘One thing I am absolutely certain of is that I didn’t write the Belle de Jour blog and books despite the claims to the contrary made by various conspiracy nuts.’

[comics] Go Look: Bill Sienkiewicz art for the 1980’s Dungeons and Dragons cartoon … [more…]

[books] In Cold Blood, Half A Century On … revisiting the senseless murder of four people, Kansas and Truman Capote …

For Truman Capote the outcome of his sojourn in west Kansas was decidedly mixed. In Cold Blood, which he immodestly heralded as a new form of non-fiction novel, was received with delirious approval; Norman Mailer dubbed Perry as one of the great characters in American literature. The book earned its author more than $2m, which he used to buy homes in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Palm Springs and Switzerland. But by all accounts such heavenly success also went to his head, and contributed to his downward spiral in a haze of lavish parties, drink and drugs. He failed to write another substantial work, and died in 1984.

[comics] Skin … The Forbidden Planet blog remembers Skin the long out-of-print comic from Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy … ‘McCarthy’s art is astonishing, from the brutal leer on Martin’s face in one scene to the psychedelic, drug-fuelled sex scene with the young skinhead and some hippies (aided in no small part by Carol Swain’s brilliant colouring) which is a great example of how bloody amazing McCarthy’s art often is. Both art and story combine perfectly to tell a powerful tale of a disturbing subject and do so while denying the reader the normal emotional crutch of having a loveable but put-down hero to root for…’

[comics] Go Look: Jack Kirby’s Inglourious Basterds Comic Book Adaptation!

[books] Is James Ellroy The Best Judge Of His Own Novels? … James Ellroy on The Cold Six Thousand … ‘Ellroy was already there, sitting on a dais, dressed casually – khaki jumper with suede elbow pads, chinos and surprisingly fashionable shoes – more geography teacher on a field trip than “the demon dog, the foul owl with the death growl”. But there was nothing ordinary about Ellroy’s voice. Deep, rhythmic and gruff, his voice imbued the opening passage from American Tabloid with such ferocity and menace it was pure visceral theatre.’

[simpsons] The 14 Most Awesome Fake Products From The Simpsons … ‘Krusty’s low standards for product endorsement have resulted in a slew of hilarious products. One of the best is the Krusty Home Pregnancy Test (warning: may cause birth defects).’

[funny] Internet Vices … ‘YouTube is shots of tequila. “Just ONE” to humor your friend quickly turns into 4 or 5…’

[bbc] Melvyn Bragg history show In Our Time to go online in BBC Archive … ‘The show, which chronicles the history of ideas, is among the first BBC programmes to have its complete archive made accessible online…’

[goog] Mystery Google … the results are what the person before you searched for. I got MLIA.

[quote] ‘I worry. I mean, little things bother me. I’m a worrier. I mean, little insignificant details – I lose my appetite. I can’t eat. My wife, she says to me, “you know, you can really be a pain.” ’ — Columbo.

[bdj] Circumstantial Evidence – Belle de Jour “Signed” Her First Post … as also noted by Troubled Diva …

[bdj] For Whom The Belle Tells … another old-time UK blogger breaks cover and admits he guessed who Belle de Jour was … ‘The first blog to link to BDJ was in fact this humble blog, Parallax View. And the lead? An email from a fellow blogger casually asking whether I’d noticed on the UK Blogs aggregator a blog by a prostitute. The blogger? Oh, you’re ahead of me… Dr Brooke Magnanti.’

[bdj] How Belle de Jour’s Secret Ally Googlewhacked The Press … First personal post I ever do makes the front page of the Guardian. Never again … ‘The sympathetic online diarist, who gives his name only as Darren…’

[bdj] The Belle de Jour Googlewack … this screengrab was taken in 2005.

[bdj] Reg hack beats ‘Belle de Jour’ sex rap … ‘The stigma of suspected blogging followed [Andrew] Orlowski until yesterday, when Dr Brooke Magnanti, a Bristol research scientist, outed herself in The Sunday Times. Today our man, who is rarely mistaken for Billie Piper, declined to comment from his North London brothel.’

[bdj] Add a blog to the updated list? … The original email Belle de Jour sent asking to be added to the Updated UK Blogs List.

Me and Belle de Jour – “Could it be Brooke?”

Let’s break out of this self-imposed link blogging format for just one post… it’s not every day the biggest secret you’ve ever kept gets revealed on the front pages of the national press.

I have an admission to make about Belle de Jour.

It’s time for me to admit that I solved the puzzle of her identity almost at the very start after she (as Belle) sent me the link to her new blog to add to the list of Updated UK Blogs. Sending the link to me implied somebody who knew quite a lot about how UK blogging worked at the time and I found it hard to believe that an escort that had starting blogging would use me to announce the blog to the world. Then, after BdJ proceeded to knock the ball out of the park in the blog writing department, I started to seriously consider if it was somebody I knew.

In late 2003 I was well placed to guess Belle’s identity. I’d been blogging myself for three years at that point, I had met many London bloggers and briefly read most of the UK-written blogs during 2000 and 2001. UK blogging was (and still is) full of young, smart people and anyone of them might have written Belle’s blog. I never believed that a professional writer could be BdJ – apparently effortless blog writing takes practice, and required an understanding of a new medium which not many people had at the time. So I asked myself: which blogger is it?

A couple of months went past, and after Belle de Jour won the award for Best Written Blog from the Guardian and the whole BdJ phenomenon kicked off, I had my eureka moment – I was sitting on the tube one morning and suddenly thought: ’Could it be Brooke?’

Brooke at the time ran a couple of blogs – A link blog called Methylsalicylate and another science blog called Cosmas. She also had done a few short, smart pieces of writing online – The Autopsy, What The Dead Remember and one called Malted. Malted was about whiskey and was the bit of writing that gave it all away. I remembered reading Malted a few months previously and realised the style and content was reminiscent of Belle’s and was suddenly convinced I had the answer.

I then spent the first three months of 2004 “internet stalking” Brooke Magnanti, collecting together a whole bunch of circumstantial evidence that Brooke was indeed Belle. I also slowly became aware of the heightened stakes, as Belle became increasingly famous and obviously wanted to maintain her pseudonymity.

For a while I believed that Brooke would get outed immediately – but it turns out the British press could not investigate anything not handed to them on a plate, and were never looking in the right place – the small clique of people who starting blogging in the UK in 2000/2001. Belle de Jour remained pseudonymous and the mystery remained intact even after two TV series based on her books.

During this time I published a googlewack hidden in my blog – the words “Belle de Jour”, “Brooke Magnanti” and “Methylsalicylate” were published and available in Google’s index on a single page on the internet – my weblog. This “coincidental” collection of links could in no way reveal Belle’s identity. But I wondered if anybody else knew the secret and felt that analysing my web traffic might confirm my strongly-held belief. If someone googled “Belle de Jour” “Brooke Magnanti”, I would see it in the search referrers for LinkMachineGo.

I waited five years for somebody to hit that page (I’m patient). Two weeks ago I started getting a couple of search requests a day from an IP address at Associated Newspapers (who publish the Daily Mail) searching for “brooke magnanti” and realised that Belle’s pseudonymity might be coming to an end. I contacted Belle via Twitter and let her know what was happening. I didn’t expect to hear anything back.

And then early last weekend I received an email signed by Brooke that confirmed that she was outing herself in the Sunday Times because the Daily Mail had discovered her identity.

It was finally over, the secret was out. I no longer have to worry about inadvertently revealing her identity. If I’m honest, solving the puzzle of the biggest literary and blogging mystery of the last six years has been fun and exciting. I’m just really disappointed I don’t get to dig up a gold hare as a prize!

One last thing: Good Luck Brooke, I’m very glad you’ve managed to maintain some control over how and when your real identity was revealed to the public. I think I probably owe you a bottle of your favourite whiskey. Let me know what you like and I’ll see what I can do. – Darren/LMG.

Update #1: Belle has confirmed the story in the comments to this post.

Update #2: Googlewack Screengrab Published

Update #3: How Belle de Jour’s Secret Ally Googlewacked The Press – the Guardian cover the story.

Update #4: The End

[bdj] Now that I’m Not Anonymous — Belle de Jour outed herself yesterday in the Sunday Times. Old time UK bloggers may remember her other blog Methylsalicylate from 2000/2001. The Times described it as a “science blog” but as I remember it was a link blog in the style inspired by Jorn Barger. That’s right… I’ll say it again: Belle de Jour was a LINK BLOGGER.

[fun] Go play: Drench … a fun, simple flash game.

Facebook Status Bolsters Alibi In Armed Robbery Case … ‘His defence lawyer, Robert Reuland, admitted that it might be possible for anyone who knew Bradford Junior’s username and password to have made the update, while dismissing the scenario as highly unlikely. “This implies a level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this. He is not Dr. Evil,” Reuland told The New York Times…’