[batman] What Batman Needs…

[comics] Alan Moore’s Youngblood Proposal … more notes from Moore on how to revamp some of Rob Liefeld’s Awesome characters … ‘Before I get onto the details of the first issue, however, I’d better run through some of my thinking on the restructuring of both the book and the Youngblood team into something at once new and at the same time “classic,” whatever that means in a field that produced Brother Power, the Geek…’

[apollo] Haynes Owners’ Workshop Manual To Apollo 11 … fun idea – a Apollo 11 manual done as a DIY Car Maintenance Guide … More on the manual from the Register: ‘Of course, the book doesn’t actually invite you to wander down to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC and pop the spark plugs out of the original command module, but it does offer “an insight into the hardware from the first manned mission to land on the moon”.’

[doom] Doomwatch … calculating what we should be scared of today .. ‘Right now, the Daily Mail thinks you should be quaking in your boots about: murder, swine flu, iran, north korea, thatcher.’

[swineflu] Pig Death Flu Apocalypse Virus … Tom Reynolds — a London Ambulance Man — on Swine Flu … ‘Our call rate has gone from the normal 4,200-4,500 calls per day to around 5,200-5,700 in the last few days. This is an increase of around 26% Rather obviously this is having us run ragged.’

[apollo] Apollo 11 Moon Landing … another collection of material on the Moon Landing – this time from the Guardian … Tim Radford: ‘Above all, it was a moment of human drama, played out with fragile, gleaming technology against a backcloth of infinity.’

[comics] Grant Morrison Tells All About Batman and Robin …

One of my all-time favourite Batman panels was written by Haney and drawn by Jim Aparo and shows Batman strolling down the sunlit streets of Gotham, checking out the mini-skirted girls and accompanied by the line to end all lines: ‘Yes, Batman digs this day!”

[conspiracy] Unmasking the Mysterious 7/7 Conspiracy Theorist … BBC News on a supposedly pursuasive conspiracy theory about London’s 7/7 bombings … ‘In the absence of a public inquiry into the 7 July bombings, conspiracy theories have filled the vacuum. One of the more inflammatory involves a man hiding behind an Arabic-sounding pseudonym taken from a sci-fi film starring Sting. […] The 56-minute homemade documentary opens with a view from space and the words: “A message from Muad Dib”.’

[twitter] OMG: Tweeting parliament … Simon Hoggart Twitters From Parliament … ‘15.00 Go to toilet myself. Ignore sign reading “peers only”.’

[books] Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair … notes from a talk the three writers gave in London last night … ‘Alan Moore discusses deadlines, and the frenetic life-style involved in popular writing. To be a periodical writer becomes your life. [..] Alan Moore says “Stuff leaks in from the future.” Alan Moore talks about sleep deprivation. Alan Moore says that craft becomes less conscious.’ [via Moleitau]

[pop] Jonathan King remembers the late Michael Jackson … [thanks Phil]

I shall always cherish his first words to me 35 years ago – “Jonathan King – I’ve always wanted to meet you”.

[tweets] Jon Ronson (posted on Twitter): ‘dennis neilson did the Braille translation of my book, Them.’

[movies] Michael Mann Interview … the director of Public Enemies interviewed in the Guardian … ‘Public Enemies is the first movie to attempt to disentangle the Dillinger myth from the facts – until now every other filmmaker has, so to speak, printed the legend – and one wonders, in retrospect, why it took Mann this long to get around to it, so well matched are the gangster’s story and the themes and concerns that have animated Mann throughout his career.’

London Blamed For Jackson Death … #michaeljackson

[1984] Caught On Cam: Here Lies Eric Arthur Blair … ‘There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live-did live, from habit that became instinct-in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.’ [via a Smursh of Pete]

[moon] The Moon Landings … The BBC Archive looks back at the Apollo Moon Landings … ‘This BBC Archive collection tells the story of the Apollo moon missions, how they got off the ground and why the missions came to an abrupt end. Through over 40 years of radio and TV broadcasts, we meet some of the men who made that incredible journey and the reporters who brought their stories into our homes.’

[comics] Swamp Thing #21 – The Anatomy Lesson … The classic second issue of Alan Moore’s groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing available as a PDF. (But what a shame about the weak digital recolouring in this reprint) … ‘He should have let me finish. He should have listened. Then I’d have been able to explain the most important thing of all to him. I’d have been able to explain that you can’t kill a vegetable by shooting it through the head.’

[comics] Steve Bissette on the Creation of Swamp Thing #20 … Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 … a long multipart post (including many pages from the script!) on the first issue of Alan Moore’s run Swamp Thing. It’s an interesting issue – it was produced under considerable deadline pressure and has never been reprinted much because it’s a transitional issue as Moore deals with the plot the previous writer had left him with and sets up stage for the next issue – The Anatomy Lesson. [via Metafilter]

Random YouTube Insult Generator … ‘I found the journey of the protagonist both humorous and enlightening. Just kidding. This video is nut sack sweat.’ [via Metafilter]

[curtis] Charlie Brooker on Adam Curtis’ latest projects …

TV industry! Here’s a little bombshell for you. From now on, all of Curtis’s work will be produced first and foremost for the internet. It will be hosted at bbc.co.uk/adamcurtis (coming soon). Go there to find a trailer for It Felt Like A Kiss. An hour-long cut of the whole thing will be placed on the site on the last day of the Manchester International Festival (MIF). It will also host his next two projects: “A long thing about our complicated relationship to the Congo over the last 100 years and how our idea of nature as a sacred yet terrifying realm has risen up during that same time.” That will be followed by a piece about “the political and cultural ideas that underlie the internet – and the idea that we are all linked in an interconnected web – out of which can come a new form of democracy.”

[tv] Adam Curtis’ Blog … the BBC documentary maker behind The Power of Nightmares and The Way of All Flesh starts blogging … ‘This is a website expressing my personal views – through a selection of opinionated observations and arguments. I’ll be including stories I like, ideas I find fascinating, work in progress and a selection of material from the BBC archives.’

Useful Flickr Tip: How to find the original Flickr Photo URL and User from a Static Flickr Image URL/Permalink [via more(ish) : meg’s scrapbook]

[tv] Grace Dent is on Twitter … if you’re into Big Brother you really should be following her … ‘god my heart was a bit broken by that fake hide and seek game. #bb10’ [link]

[people] Frank Sinatra Has a Cold … a classic 1965 profile of Frank Sinatra by Gay Talese …

‘It was obvious from the way Sinatra looked at these people in the poolroom that they were not his style, but he leaned back against a high stool that was against the wall, holding his drink in his right hand, and said nothing, just watched Durocher slam the billiard balls back and forth. The younger men in the room, accustomed to seeing Sinatra at this club, treated him without deference, although they said nothing offensive. They were a cool young group, very California-cool and casual, and one of the coolest seemed to be a little guy, very quick of movement, who had a sharp profile, pale blue eyes, blondish hair, and squared eyeglasses. He wore a pair of brown corduroy slacks, a green shaggy-dog Shetland sweater, a tan suede jacket, and Game Warden boots, for which he had recently paid $60.

Frank Sinatra, leaning against the stool, sniffling a bit from his cold, could not take his eyes off the Game Warden boots. Once, after gazing at them for a few moments, he turned away; but now he was focused on them again. The owner of the boots, who was just standing in them watching the pool game, was named Harlan Ellison, a writer who had just completed work on a screenplay, The Oscar…’

[funny] Dr Manhattan is… Awesome.

[twitter] A reminder: LinkMachineGo is available on Twitter [also: Friendfeed, Livejournal and old-school RSS]

[blogs] Scott Rosenberg asks: Who Was The First Blogger? (and surprisingly comes up with a satisfying answer).

[books] Ask MeFi: What books do people proselytize about? … ‘I think these books are types that suggest a single, clear lens through which the world and all life experience can be viewed. When certain, perhaps impressionable or at least eager people read these books and take the theses as gospel,’getting religion,’ as it were, that this author has hit on the EXACT TRUTH about things, they can’t stop talking about them to others.’

[people] The Learjet Repo Man … an amazing article about a man who recovers jets and other big ticket items … ‘A good super repo man has a skill set that’s some mad hybrid of cat burglar, F.B.I. agent and con artist. And there’s real danger that comes with the job, not just ticked-off homeowners wielding baseball bats. According to the American Recovery Association, there are, on average, one or two repo-related deaths a year…’

[bdj] Belle de Jour is on Twitter … ‘Off to discover whether the local Somerfield is as crap as it looks from the outside. And maybe source a takeaway instead.’ [link]