[books] Blink: The Movie — Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink to be turned into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio?! ‘…we were curious to hear what [Gladwell] had in mind for the movie. He tells us, “It takes a single character from Blink — Silvan Tompkins — and fashions an entirely new story around him, about what it means to be someone who can read other people’s thoughts.”‘

[blogs] The New Commentariat — the Guardian on the UK’s Political Blogs … ‘Britain’s bloggers are divided not just by ideology, it turns out, but by their perception of their own importance: while Samizdata proclaims that blogs are the future, for example, Oliver Kamm insists they are an essentially parasitic medium, that can only exist insofar as it feasts on the output of traditional media.’

[comics] Grant Morrison’s Six Rules for Writing “All-Star Superman” … ‘PLAY CLARK AS A ROLE WITH A GOAL – We’re playing Clark as a big, clever country guy who’s used to wide-open horizons and who can’t seem to move in a confined space without knocking something over. The real wizardry is in Frank Quitely’s art, which captures a lot of physical nuances and subtle body language that previous Superman artists have often overlooked in their portrayal of Clark. He’s not just Superman with glasses on. He’s a performer. He allows Superman to experience humility, among other things.’ [Related: Official Preview from DC]

[comics] The Killing Joke Script — the first 40 pages from Alan Moore’s script … ‘As far as the characters themselves go, I’ll describe them in detail when they make their appearances, but my only general note would be that like the landscape and the various props, they have a sort of timeless and mythic quality to them which doesn’t fix them firmly in any one age-range or time-period. The Joker looks either old or badly depraved, but then he’s always looked that way. The Batman is big and grim and older than we are, because as I remember the Batman he’s always been bigger and older than I am and I’ll fight any man that says different.’

[blogs] Diary of a London Cokehead — another UK Blog … ‘Soooo, Benny scale of Fuckedness = 900… Well done that man!!’

[blogs] Rachel from North London … ‘This blog was started to provide a place to continue my online diary that I started after surviving the 7/7/2005 London bombings, when I was travelling in the first carriage of the Picadilly line tube from Kings Cross to Russell Square. The bomb went off in my carriage, 7 feet behind me in carriage 1. 26 people died in that blast and dozens were maimed and wounded.’

[books] If You Haven’t A Clue — profile of Ben Schott … ‘The curious thing about Schott is that, despite his arcane tastes and instincts for privacy, he has a highly marketable persona: the blend of self-assurance and innocence you find in polished talkshow guests, and a nice turn of phrase. (“Google is about as good as going into the street and saying, ‘Does anyone know how much the registration threshold for VAT went up?’ And someone goes, ‘I think it’s 49,000.’ And you go, ‘Oh, 49,000, great.’ That’s Google.”)’

[comics] Glanced at: Scott Pilgrim on MySpace.

[comics] Alan Moore on Terrorism, America and Britain: ‘…You have to remember that over here there were teenagers being taken out of cellar bars in separate carrier bags all through the ’70s and ’80s because of the war in Northern Ireland. In that case, the IRA were largely being supported by donations from America. That was why I was a bit worried when George Bush said he was going to attack people who supported terrorism, I thought, oh my god, Chicago is going to be declared a rogue state and they’ll hunt down Teddy Kennedy.’

[books] The Curious Case of Malcolm Gladwell — profile of the author Blink … ‘Henry Finder says that Gladwell’s “real accomplishment is to develop a new genre of journalism — ‘a Gladwell piece.’ Everybody knows what you mean by that — a piece with an argument that is bound together by narrative and character, which often makes you take a second look at things you take for granted…”‘

[comics] The T.M. Maple Memorial Leaf Pit — a website on the King of 80’s Comic Letter Hacks. ‘…a legendary Canadian letter hack who wrote thousands of letters to comic book letter columns through the years. Burke first started writing letters in 1977 as “The Mad Maple”, but Tom DeFalco, in order to get around a new stipulation of the time at Marvel (thanks to Jim Shooter) that pseudonymous letter writers couldn’t get published, shortened it to “T.M. Maple” to sound like a real name. His letters kept getting printed, and Burke liked the new name, so he kept it for the rest of his letter-writing career.’ [via Progressive Ruin]

[war] The Military Applications of Silly String … ‘ I’m a former Marine I in Afghanistan. Silly string has served me well in Combat especially in looking for I.A.Ds., simply put, booby traps. When you spray the silly sting in dark areas, especially when you doing house to house fighting. On many occasions the silly string has saved me and my men’s lives.’ [via As Above]

[comics] Mike Sterling’s Ten Favorite Scary Swamp Thing Moments … ‘Matt Cable, who has a problem with the drink, finds himself almost certainly mortally injured in a car wreck. Upside down, bleeding to death, he finds himself face to face with…a giant yellow fly. At this point, we don’t know who the fly is or where it came from…but c’mon, we know it’s Arcane…’

[comics] Tamara Drewe — an archive of Posy Simmonds latest comic strip (published weekly in the Saturday Guardian) following on from Gemma Bovery.

[comics] The Dilbert Blog — Scott Adams has a Blog … ‘Now this bird flu business has me worried. I already circle the parking lot twelve times to find a space that isn’t under a tree and directly in the crapping zone. If birds start getting the flu, they’ll be firing from both ends. There aren’t enough squeegees in the world.’

[flash] Flash Timeline Clock … [via linkbunnies.org