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20 April 2004
[film] Plumbing Stanley Kubrick— Iain Watson reminiscences about working with Stanley Kubrick … ‘”Do you know what the essence of movie-making is?” Stanley asked me. “It’s buying lots of things.” The Labour Party was responsible for the fact that nothing bought in Britain worked properly, so he preferred to buy from a distance such as Düsseldorf or California. When Full Metal Jacket was being filmed in England a whole plastic replica Vietnamese jungle was air-freighted in from California, so I was assured. Next morning Stanley walked on set, took one look at it, and said, “I don’t like it. Get rid of it.” The technicians shared out the trees, giving a new look to gardens in North London, and a real jungle was delivered instead, palm trees uprooted from Spain.’ 19 April 2004
[blogs] Blog All About It — roundtable discussion from the Guardian’s G2 Section wondering if blogging is just vanity publishing? … Salam Pax: ‘A tip on how to make your blog popular: position yourself in a place where a bomb might fall on you. Tickles everybody and makes your hits-counter happy. Possibility of death is a downside, but hey! You get linked by A-list bloggers.’
[book] Page 23, Sentence 5 Meme … [via Feeling Listless] 1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions. ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT REASON for accepting that Satan exists is that Jesus clearly believed in him.’ — Satan Unmasked (Overcoming the Jezebel Spirit) by Colin Dye.
18 April 2004
[comics] Readers Of The Last Aardvark — the Village Voice looks back on 300 issues of Cerebus … ‘Despite Sim’s anti-feminist crusade, Cerebus stands on its own as a ferocious critique of power. Sim believes that freedom is an absolute, and to this end he has self-published Cerebus, advocated for artists’ rights, and bucked intellectual-property laws wherever possible (after his and Gerhard’s deaths, Cerebus will become public domain). In an era when selling out is considered synonymous with success, Sim’s resistance is bracing.’
16 April 2004
[books] Clearing Up The Confusion — Neal Stephenson on his new book The Confusion. On Isaac Newton: ‘…the gist of it seems to be that Newton was trying to achieve some specific goals with alchemy. Some of those goals might have been religious, but many were clearly scientific. As a scientist, he knew that he could only explain so much with the tools that he was using, and that to advance beyond that point he was going to need a different toolbox. He recognized that a lot of alchemy was nonsense, but he thought that by going about it in a systematic and rational way he’d be able to solve some scientific problems. He would have rejected the label of magician because it might have had dark connotations to him.’ [via yoz]
15 April 2004
[comics] Cartoonists CD Cover Art — great collection of Cartoonists art from CD Covers … 
[tags: Comics][ permalink][ Comments Off on Collection of Cartoonists CD Cover Art] 14 April 2004
[happy] On The Happy Trail — The Observer looks at the study of Happiness … ‘The important point to grasp, says Diener, is that although happiness has a large genetic component, none of us are prisoners of evolution. By identifying the sources of happiness in our lives and making a conscious effort to optimise them, most of us should be able to raise our average satisfaction levels. Or as Norman Vincent Peale succinctly puts it: “Who decides whether you shall be happy or unhappy? The answer – you do.”‘
[tags: Life][ permalink][ Comments Off on The Observer Looks at Happiness] 13 April 2004
[blog] The Diary of a Nobody — George and Weedon Grossmith’s fictional diary of Charles Pooter converted into a blog … ‘Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see — because I do not happen to be a ‘Somebody’ — why my diary should not be interesting.’ [via As Above]
12 April 2004
[ipod] Rejected iPod Engravings … ‘I last 8 hrs. You last 2 minutes. Who’s the man?’ [via I Love Everything]
10 April 2004
[quote] Robert X. Cringely on the Personal Computer: ‘…PC’s killed the office typewriter, made most secretaries obsolete, and made it possible for a 27 year-old MBA with a PC, a spreadsheet program and three pieces of questionable data to talk his bosses into looting the company pension plan and doing a leveraged buy-out.’
[tags: Tech][ permalink][ Comments Off on Cringely on the Personal Computer] 8 April 2004
[bbc] The Reith Lectures 2004 — the BBC is releasing the 2004 Reith Lectures as DRM-Less MP3 Files. This year’s lecturer is Wole Soyinka discussing “The Climate of Fear”. [via plasticbag.org] » The Changing Mask of Fear — download the first lecture as an MP3 file.
» BBC releases Reith Lectures online as MP3s(es) — Tom Coates on the release of the MP3’s … ‘Hopefully it’s the first open distribution of many programmes of this kind – enlightening, significant and weighty pieces of work that actually have the potential to make the world a better place – available for free from the BBC.’
[tags: BBC, MP3][ permalink][ Comments Off on BBC Releases the 2004 Reith Lectures as DRM-Less MP3’s]
[blogs] How to write a Blog-Buster — Guardian Online covers Fiction written using the blog format … On Belle de Jour: ‘The anonymous prostitute’s diary is a familiar genre in erotic fiction, one that, in print, probably wouldn’t float many boats these days. But via the blog form’s sense of immediacy, Belle de Jour has revived the cliches so successfully that publishers are offering six-figure advances and journalists are desperate to find out who the real Belle de Jour is. But her real identity, call girl or literary hoaxer, is something of a side issue. The blog gets so much attention because, with its teasing sequence of daily “entries”, it tells an old story in a new way.’
7 April 2004
[bbc] Alastair Campbell’s Wheel of Retribution — a little bit out of date but fun (especially if you work at the BBC) … ‘Whip… John Humprhys.’ [via Blah Blah Flowers]
6 April 2004
[ipod] The Incredible Future Boy Versus Malevolent Gutter Punk — blogger foils mugging attempt with iPod mini … ‘I was carrying my iPod Mini. Just in case you haven’t seen one, the mini is not your mother’s iPod. The rounded edges and soft plastic chassis that characterized the older generations have given way to one sharp little fucker of a digital lifestyle appliance.’
5 April 2004
[books] Amazon World — amusing user reviews from Amazon.com. Moby Dick: ‘I am quite the fan of stories which involve man eating sea creatures, such as Jaws. Moby Dick is nothing compared to such classics, I fear. In fact, it is boring with a capital B. What is the whales motivation? You dont know. There is no suspense, and I find the idea of people hunting whales offensive. Offensive with a capital O. Whales are lovely, peaceful creatures and that is why their slaughter has been outlawed. This book makes whales seem like demonic, murderous creatures of doom. Such a thing should not be read to a child, for it preaches that animal cruelty is ok. Never before have seen such an abundance of immoralality! I am offended! I feel as if my brainards are going to freeze over and crumble like spoiled peanut brittle. Take my word for it, dont read this book’ [via Kottke’s Remaindered Links]
4 April 2004
[blogs] New Kids On The Blog — the Observer examines blogs in the UK … ‘Those already bored with the phenomenon – particularly the techies who started blogging years ago as a way of sharing boring stuff about computer code – claim that the golden days of blogging are over, that what passes for blogging nowadays is the most banal wash-up of aimless lives, millions of pages slowing the internet and clogging Google. What they really don’t like is that publishing on the internet is not just for geeks any more.’
[tags: Blogs][ permalink][ Comments Off on The Observer on Weblogs in the UK] 2 April 2004
[book] Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg — one of the New Yorker Articles that formed the basis for Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point … [via Sashinka] ‘Once, in the mid-fifties, on a whim, Lois took the train to New York to attend the World Science Fiction Convention and there she met a young writer by the name of Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke took a shine to Lois, and next time he was in Chicago he called her up. “He was at a pay phone,” Lois recalls. “He said, ‘Is there anyone in Chicago I should meet?’ I told him to come over to my house.” Lois has a throaty voice, baked hard by half a century of nicotine, and she pauses between sentences to give herself the opportunity for a quick puff. Even when she’s not smoking, she pauses anyway, as if to keep in practice. “I called Bob Hughes, one of the people who wrote for my paper.” Pause. “I said, ‘Do you know anyone in Chicago interested in talking to Arthur Clarke?’ He said, ‘Yeah, Isaac Asimov is in town. And this guy Robert, Robert…Robert Heinlein.’ So they all came over and sat in my study.” Pause. “Then they called over to me and they said, ‘Lois’ — I can’t remember the word they used. They had some word for me. It was something about how I was the kind of person who brings people together.” This is in some ways the archetypal Lois Weisberg story.’
1 April 2004
[comics] Yet Another Dave Sim interview from the Onion AV Club … ‘It was pure guesswork on my part back in 1979 as to whether I would have the stamina to write, pencil, ink, letter, tone, and fill the back of a monthly comic book for 26 years. In retrospect, I should’ve said 250 issues. Finishing the book, the last four years, what had previously been an interesting job that left me a certain amount of spare time for other things had become a 15-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week, Herculean task. At the age of 23, I actually thought I would be fine into my 50s doing a monthly comic book, but that I would let myself slack off by ending it at the age of 47. It’s a young man’s game.’ [thanks Kabir]
30 March 2004
[tv] Kenneth Williams Quote from Neil Gaiman … ‘”I’m a cult,” Kenneth Williams said to me, in 1985. “I’m an enormous cult. People stop in the street and point to me and say look, it’s that cult from the television.”‘
[film] Citizen Kubrick — Jon Ronson explores Stanley Kubrick’s Archive … ‘Tony takes me into a large room painted blue and filled with books. “This used to be the cinema,” he says. “Is it the library now?” I ask. “Look closer at the books,” says Tony. I do. “Bloody hell,” I say. “Every book in this room is about Napoleon!” “Look in the drawers,” says Tony. I do. “It’s all about Napoleon, too!” I say. “Everything in here is about Napoleon!” I feel a little like Shelley Duvall in The Shining, chancing upon her husband’s novel and finding it is comprised entirely of the line “All Work And No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy” typed over and over again.’
28 March 2004
[bdj] ‘I am a young woman. I have sex for money. And I love to write. This is my story…’ — BdJ wrote a five page article for the Sunday Telegraph Magazine …  » Don Foster in the Observer’s Letters: ‘Never have I said, either on or off the record, that Belle’s identity has been established by anything I ever said or contributed. I made perfectly clear, in a series of telephone conversations and email exchanges with the Times, of which I have a complete record, that Champion is a person of interest. Contrary to what the Times has reported, I do not believe that the search for Belle is over.’
» Sarah Champion’s Belle De Jour Page — links and scans of articles.
» “Belle de Jour” and literary forensics — more analysis of the text of BdJ. ‘…literary forensics is harder than it looks. It’s the practice of determining authorship from quirks, styles, idiosyncrasies, etc. I’ve played around with it, and been wrong. My speculations, which again, might certainly be wrong: 1) The “Belle de Jour” blog is a fake, written by at least two people, one starting it, then another taking over later. 2) At least the second person, the one who took over, is a journalist. I’m more certain of #1 than #2.’
» Belle De Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl by Anonymous at Amazon.co.uk.
26 March 2004
[politics] Tom Watson: ‘One last thing. Intervening on Ken Clarke is as scary as you imagine.’
[comics] List of “Holy —, Batman!” uttered by Robin — from the Batman TV Series … ‘Holy Astringent pomite fruit!’ [via Neilalien]
25 March 2004
[bdj] Belle Doesn’t Ring True — the Guardian rolls out Cynthia Payne to analyse BdJ … ‘I think this is filth, and I certainly don’t want to be associated with it. I was never involved in anything like this. In my day, we did it the proper way – £25 without extras, food and drink, and a choice of ladies. We knocked off £5 for old age pensioners and we charged men half-price if they were past it, and just fancied watching. We had a high-class clientèle – no rowdy kids, no yobs, all well-dressed men in suits, who knew how to respect a lady.’
[comics] 5 Questions for Peter Bagge — another Q&A from ADD … ‘I’m pleased to see that comics are making inroads in books stores via the graphic novel route, I’m very upset at the shrinking demand for the traditional comic book format, which is by far my favorite medium to work in.’
23 March 2004
[macs] Douglas Adams’s Mac IIfx — vintage Mac collector finds a Mac IIfx which used to belong to DNA … ‘I popped an ethernet card in the IIfx, mounted an AppleShare volume and ran Norton Utilities to recover the files onto the server. The results? I recovered hundreds of documents relating to Jane Belson’s professional work and precisely two that bear the hand of Douglas Adams. I doubt whether the copyright lawyers would chase me for publishing his Idiots Guide to using a Mac but you wouldn’t be thanking me either. For now at least, the draft of a TV sketch called Brief Re-encounter is strictly for my personal enjoyment.’
[tags: Apple, Books, Mac][ permalink][ Comments Off on Apple Collector finds Vintage Mac belonging to Douglas Adams] 22 March 2004
[bdj] Did Register staffer mastermind ‘call-girl weblog’ conspiracy? — the Register responds to the allegation that Andrew Orlowski is BdJ. Orlowski: I’m shocked. To be accused of being a whore is one thing, but to be accused of being a weblogger is actionable.’
[comics] Alan Moore’s memorial for Julie Schwartz: ‘And now we hear that Julie has been… discontinued? Cancelled? But they said the same about Green Lantern and the Flash back in the early ‘fifties, so we can’t be certain. This is comics. There’ll be some way around it, be some parallel world Earth-Four Julie, born thirty years later to account for problems in the continuity, and decked out in a jazzier, more streamlined outfit.’ [via Neilalien] 21 March 2004
[bdj] I was Branded a Call-Girl Blogger — Sarah Champion on what it’s Like to be mistaken for Belle de Jour … ‘Ever since I found myself described as a ‘wild child’ in a local paper as a teenager, I dreaded that one day I would wake up to find paparazzi outside my door. Since then I’ve published a book of ecstasy drug stories in the wake of Leah Betts’s death, briefly dated a well-known TV comedian and shared a spliff with a former member of the Beatles. But it never once occurred to me that what would finally bring the paparazzi to my door would be my use of commas.’
20 March 2004
[bdj] Who is the real Belle de Jour, the internet’s best-read whore? — The Independent suggests that Andrew Orlowski is Belle De Jour. ‘…as soon as one name appeared to slip from the frame, another one sprang up to replace it. The new contender is Andrew Orlowski, who grew up on the opposite side of the Pennines to Ms Champion, but with whom she collaborated on a number of minor publications in the early years of the last decade. Described in some quarters as a “cult figure”, Mr Orlowski has a record of cultured sex writing on the internet. Yesterday, however, he was not taking any calls.’» Of Course Belle Was Faking It. That’s What Sex – And Cyberspace – Are All About — Jeanette Winterson on BdJ … ‘Belle is a natural-born blogger; her style is witty and compact, with the right mixture of intimacy and disassociation. We feel we know her, yet we don’t know her at all – doubly so, if she turns out to be a fake.’
» Tom Coates on BdJ … ‘Can we really be so shocked and startled by the idea that one of the enormous number of prostitutes in the world has decided to write a weblog? Certainly it’s worth a read. She seems like a nice, sorted, intelligent person.’
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