linkmachinego.com
1 September 2006
[books] Cool Tools on the book ‘Moving Heavy Things’‘Applied Sloth – As stated in the stagehand’s axiom: “Never lift what you can drag, never drag what you can roll, never roll what you can leave.” Creativity germinates in indolence, and the cleverest people are often the laziest: they are always looking for an easier way. The easiest way is often the simplest, most direct, and the best way.’ [via Limbic Nutrition]
[tv] E4 Sopranos Ad on YouTube — a nicely done parody of the opening credits of the Sopranos. [via Tom]
31 August 2006
[tv] Till Death Do Us Part — the Guardian takes a look at the Sopranos as Season 6 begins in the UK … ‘Many fan pages in cyberspace claim Chase has planted within the drama a systematic symbolism involving food. These web-heads note that when a character eats or breaks eggs, death almost always follows: Tony, for instance, accidentally steps on a carton just before ordering the murder of his cousin. Chase, when I interviewed him recently, insisted that these people were talking out of a hen’s behind: there is no intentional omelette sub-plot. Dr Melfi, however, would perhaps conclude that all this egg stuff is welling up for some reason from Chase’s subconscious.’
[comics] The Comics Journal Relaunches Journalista — one of the best comic blogs returns reading as good as ever after a long break.
30 August 2006
[books] AN Wilson is a Shit‘It is, at first glance, a tantalising insight into the love life of one of the nation’s most celebrated poets. The letter from Sir John Betjeman to his mistress must have seemed almost too good to be true when it fell into the lap of AN Wilson, the late poet laureate’s biographer. It was so convincing that Wilson included it in his new book about Betjeman as evidence of a hitherto unknown “fling”. But it was indeed too good to be true. It now seems Wilson was the victim of an elaborate hoax. The poet, who was born 100 years ago today, never penned the note. The telltale sign that the letter is a joke is that the capital letters at the start of each sentence spell out “AN Wilson is a shit”…’
[blogs] Radio 4’s Meet the Bloggers — the BBC does a radio show about blogs. The first programme had interviews with Anna and Annie of Little Read Boat and London Underground Tube Diary.
29 August 2006
[tv] Jim Rockford’s Answering Machine — a list of the messages left for Jim Rockford on the opening credits of The Rockford Files‘Jim, this is Cal of the Leave The Whales Alone Club. Our protest cruise leaves from the pier Saturday at 3 AM. The whales need you, Jim.’ [via Metafilter]
27 August 2006
[comics] A Short Interview With Ed Brubaker — on Criminal – his new comic with Sean Phillips. ‘…in the first arc, while pulling the heist, our gang uses the war on terror to help create a diversion. And I think that little part, reminding readers of the reality around them, adds something. But I also think that this world we’re living in right now, with the war in Iraq feeling a lot like Vietnam, the government wire-tapping us and looking at our library records, the internet being used for identity theft, and this sort of creeping fear and paranoia that more and more people have, this “Big Brother is watching and manipulating” feeling that’s so much in the air, helps create an atmosphere that’s very conductive for crime fiction.I mean, when the system is this screwed up, on all ends, who doesn’t want to read about people who live outside of it, or who fight it, or who just hate it as much as them? It kind of feels like the 70s and 80s again, really, but just with a lot better technology.’
25 August 2006
[comics] PDF of DMZ #1 — the first issue of Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s great comic about a young War Reporter dropped into war-torn New York in the near-future. [via Warren Ellis]
24 August 2006
[comics] Morrison In The Cave — Newsarama interview with Grant Morrison on Batman …

‘I want to see a Batman that combines the cynic, the scholar, the daredevil, the businessman, the superhero, the wit, the lateral thinker , the aristocrat. He terrifies the guilty but he has great compassion for the weak and the downtrodden and will lay his life on the line for anybody who’s in trouble. He’s a master of yoga and meditation who has as much control over his body and his feelings as any human. He has a wider range of experiences than most people will dream of in ten lifetimes. This is not a one-note character! So, while I won’t pretend we all live on Sunnybrook Farm, I don’t think its appropriate – particularly in trying times – to present our fictional heroes as unsmiling vengeance machines. I’d rather Batman embodied the best that secular humanism has to offer – a sour-faced, sexually-repressed, humorless, uptight, angry, and all-round grim ‘n’ gritty Batman would be more likely to join the Taliban surely?’

[blogs] Blogger is 7 … Ev: ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
[comics] Tales of the Black Freighter: Marooned — a reconstruction of the Pirate Comic from Watchmen … ‘Waking from nightmare, I found myself upon a dismal beach-head, amongst dead men and the pieces of dead men. Bosun Ridley lay nearby. Birds were eating his thoughts and memories. Reader take comfort from this: In Hell, at least the gulls are contented.’
23 August 2006
[tv] Naked Keith Chegwin hits the Heights of ‘Memorably Rotten’ TV — a list of the Top 10 Worst TV Programmes. The list is:
  1. Naked Jungle .. Cheggers Plays Cock – NSFW Picture.
  2. Minipops .. Pan’s People for Paedophiles.
  3. Triangle .. 80’s Glamour on a North Sea Ferry.
  4. Quickfire Balls .. Bingo On TV.
  5. Annie’s Bar .. Seems totally unmemorable rather than awful. YMMV.
  6. Wright Here, Wright Now .. I suspect the compiler of this list supports Spurs.
  7. Love Thy Neighbour .. Racist 70’s Sitcom.
  8. Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends .. Is this really that awful?
  9. Through The Keyhole .. LLoyd Grossman is immensely annoying.
  10. A Year In Provence .. The BBC and John Thaw don’t mix?
22 August 2006
[comics] 10,000 Reasons Civilization is Doomed‘Reason 281: Frank Miller’
[comment] Charlie Brooker’s Columns on Comment is Free — On Dark Matter: ‘There are millions of people who essentially consist of dark matter; unknowable swaths of the population I have never encountered and will never understand. People who watch Emmerdale, for example. Emmerdale is Britain’s third most popular soap opera – second, actually, when EastEnders is having an off day. It attracts something in the region of 5 million viewers, which means approximately one in 12 Brits regularly tunes in. Yet I’ve never actually met anyone who watches it.’ [via linkbunnies.org]
21 August 2006
[blog] Indexed — amusing graphs and diagrams which tap the same vein as Gapingvoid’s cartoons on the back of business cards

a amusing pie chart diagram about people who never fart
[books] What I Have Read Since 1974 — a list of every book one man has read – from The Digging-est Dog to The Great Influenza.
20 August 2006
[funny] MP3 of a Psychiatric Office Answering Machine‘If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be transferred to the mother ship. If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press. If you are a manic-depressive, it doesn’t matter which number you press because nobody will answer.’
19 August 2006
[comics] The Origin of Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work — a blogger has bought the original copy of Wood’s 22 Panels and has found out it was put together by Larry Hama when he worked as an editor at Marvel … Hama: ‘I don’t believe that Woody put the examples together as a teaching aid for his assistants, but rather as a reminder to himself. He was always trying to kick himself to put less labor into the work! He had a framed motto on the wall, “Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up.” He hung the sheets with the panels on the wall of his studio…’
18 August 2006
[ww2] Fighting Jack Churchill Survived a Wartime Odyssey Beyond Compare — More details on the wartime exploits of Captain Jack Churchill …

‘He became so good with the bow that he shot for Britain at the world championships in Oslo in 1939. By then, however, the long ugly shadows of war were stretching across Europe. As the German Army smashed into Poland, Churchill returned to the British Army and the Manchester Regiment, and was shipped off to France. “I was,” he said later, “back in my red coat; the country having got into a jam in my absence.”

One of his brother officers, an old friend, saw him about that time chugging across the Flanders plain on a small motorcycle, his bow tied to the frame, arrows sticking out of one of the panniers on the back, a German officer’s cap hanging on the headlight. “Ah!” said Churchill, spotting his friend, “Hullo Clark! Got anything to drink?” Once Churchill had dismounted, his friend noticed dried blood smeared across one ear and asked Churchill about the injury. German machine gun, said Churchill casually. His men had shouted at him to run but, he said, he was simply too tired.

In later years, Churchill served as an instructor at the land-air warfare school in Australia, where he became a passionate devotee of the surfboard. Back in England, he was the first man to ride the Severn River’s five-foot tidal bore and designed his own board.’

17 August 2006
[redrum] Will’s Room — 71 Photos of Will Self’s Writing Room – if you look very closely you will see ‘Redrum’ repeatedly written on each Post-it in the photos.
16 August 2006
[london] London Walks for your MP3 Player‘Forget about guide books and maps. Listen to my description as you walk through London.’ [via Londonist]
[comics] Diesel Sweeties: 128-Bit Encrypted Flirtation.
[blogs] True to Type — the Guardian reviews a number of Edinburgh Fringe shows which adapt blogs into theatre productions … ‘It’s [the] interactive aspect of blogging that needs to be addressed if theatrical adaptations are truly to take off. For now, it looks naive and fairly opportunistic in its approach. Yes, people are turning to the internet to make their confessions – but that doesn’t necessarily mean their words make riveting theatre. Blog-based theatre is a bit like flat-packed furniture: even once you’ve put it up, you still associate it with the box it arrived in.’
15 August 2006
[music] Brian Jones vs. Indiana Jones‘Indiana Jones fought a scimitar with a whip. Brian Jones crushed butterfly on a wheel’
[tv] Jon Ronson is blogging at Amazon.com and the Guardian’s Comment is Free‘It is a Friday in December. I have now been dressed as Santa for five hours. The heating in our house in on full-blast. The costume was itchy when I put it on all those hours ago. Now I feel as if I am covered in ants. “I need to take the beard off,” I say. “No!” yells Joel, my four-year-old son. “I’m getting a rash,” I say. “Please stay with me, Santa,” says Joel.’
14 August 2006
[blogger] The New Blogger — Google are prepping a new version of Blogger.com.
[ww2] Any Officer Who Goes Into Action Without His Sword is Improperly Dressed — a summary of the almost unbelievable wartime adventures of Captain Jack Churchill

‘In 1940, some of the German commanders who were overseeing the push into France began to receive seemingly random reports of soldiers having been killed with broad-head arrows or hacked with a English Claymore. Effective enough weapons it would seem, but archaic even in that day and age. They likely could have guessed the bowman was an English soldier, but they couldn’t have appreciated these as the calling card of the rabid eccentric, Captain Jack Churchill.’

‘Commando training ended with an attack on Nord Fiord, Norway. While the two companies he commanded advanced on their target, Jack stood in the lead craft, and played on his pipes “The March of the Cameron Men”. His report at mission’s end was simply: “Maaloy battery and island captured. Casualties slight. Demolitions in progress. Churchill.”

‘In 1944 Jack’s luck and tenacity took a slip when he was ordered into an impossible situation. Most of his squad was killed, and Jack was taken captive. After being hauled to Berlin for questioning, he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was meant to stay until war’s end. He might have done so, but one night the power went out, and Jack was prepared: he had a rusty can and some onions. It was all that he needed. In the darkness he just walked away and made his escape.’