11 December 2003
[books] His Bright Materials — another article about Philip Pullman … ‘I saw the first preview [of the His Dark Materials Play], playing to a packed Olivier Theatre. It is a beautiful production, the daemons of the novels criss-crossing the stage with shafts of light, tissue paper creations lit from the inside. Afterwards, people filed out past the tired-looking man in red socks, sitting with his wife. Pullman looked emotionally stunned, his face showing the impact of watching his words brought to life with the full might of the Olivier’s huge chunks of stage which can be raised and lowered and wheeled round at the director’s will.’
10 December 2003
[blogger] Jerry Pournelle claims he created ‘The Original Blog’: ‘I can make some claim to this being The Original Blog and Daybook. I certainly started keeping a day book well before most, and long before the term ‘blog’ or Web Log was invented. I note that a Google Search on Blog doesn’t show me, at least not in the first 10 or so pages, but then I long insisted I don’t “blog” because I find the word ugly. But I have a fair amount of traffic and a quality readership, so I can hardly complain.’
(update) How Jerry Pournelle Got Kicked Off The ARPANET — bit of ‘Net pre-history … [thanks Phil]
9 December 2003
[archive] Good Links from the Sidebar Blog #1:
8 December 2003
[preaching] What is that Oxford Circus Megaphone Man all about? … ‘ARE YOU A SINNER OR ARE YOU A WINNER?’
‘What most people don’t know is that the religious nut used to think he was a werewolf and would occasionally get on London news reports because he would beg the police to lock him up come every full moon. Then he found God, or more specifically a cassette tape of some preacher which he is constantly listening to and repeating out loud ‘
[comics] Little things we like: American Splendor — mini review of Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor … ‘Now is the time to check out Harvey Pekar’s brilliant autobiographical comic, just before the film version makes a national hero out of him. Pekar is a downbeat hospital file clerk from Cleveland who writes about the mundanities of his daily routine, from spending empty weekends in front of the television to the dangers of getting stuck behind old Jewish ladies at supermarket checkouts, and it makes for compelling reading.’ [Related: American Splendor Movie Trailer]
[tv] Viva Johnny Vegas — profile of comedian Johnny Vegas … ‘At the end of the day he’s best live. When he came on to present a prize in last year’s Comedy Awards he held the place spellbound. There’s a dangerous, John Belushi quality to him. But he’s very English. What other country could produce a comedian whose act revolves around the potter’s wheel?”‘
6 December 2003
[blogs] Jorn Barger Has Left the Building … ‘It turns out Barger had simply relocated to a new home in the small desert town of Socorro, New Mexico, without telling his roommate.’
[science] Ancient Fossil Penis Discovered … ‘As the discoverer of a new species, David Siveter and his co-researchers provided the name for the ostracode. They have called it Colymbosathon ecplecticos, which means “amazing swimmer with a large penis”.’ [via Interconnected]
5 December 2003
[tv] Quotations from Tom Baker … ‘The notion that God was everywhere put paid to any possible peace of mind by the time I was six.’ [via Funjunkie]
[comics] The Golden Age: Uncensored — ‘Scientologists are fucking weird…’ [via Pete’s Link Farm]
[link to image] 4 December 2003
[media] Daily Mail Finally Embraces the Internet: ‘…over half of all the Mail’s readers had an internet connection, making the launch a viable prospect commercially and editorially. “The question has always been not if but when we would launch. We believe that not only is the market ready but we’re ready in terms of how we build websites and make them profitable. More importantly, I believe the readers are ready,” said Mr Hart, the former Sunday Business managing director and Ask Jeeves chief executive who completed a five-year plan for the business before taking on the new job. The new website will have a strong community element, allowing Mail readers to vent their spleen on a range of message boards and interactive features.’
[blogs] Beagle 2: Weblog — a blog for British Mars Lander which is now approaching the Red Planet … ‘Since 17 November the onboard software has been ‘frozen’ after several updates and the spacecraft is now quietly proceeding to its destination.’ [thanks Graybo]
3 December 2003
[blogs] Have you heard from Jorn Barger? — one of the earliest webloggers is missing … ‘Jorn Barger, editor of Robot Wisdom, is missing. He resides in Socorro, New Mexico, and was last seen there by his housemate in very early October.’ [Related: Profile of Barger | Metafilter Thread | via plasticbag.org]
2 December 2003
[tax] Amusing Fake Tax Demand Letter: ‘…I ought to point out that even if you did choose to “give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India” you would still owe us the money.’ [via Metafilter]
1 December 2003
[comics] Totally Grant Morrison — another long interview with GM … ‘Most people are secretly fond of the idea of comics, given half a chance. They just need an excuse to admit it. As for mainstream attention, Kristan and I went to the League premiere in Leicester Square and couldn’t help but notice that every page three boy band big brother celebrity in London was suddenly proclaiming a lifelong, undying love of comics …. Strangely enough, they couldn’t actually remember anything other than the Beano and Spider-Man when faced with questions. Progress?’
30 November 2003
[books] The Daemon King — profile of Philip Pullman … ‘His powerful trilogy touches on the great issues common to all human imagination. Eternal oppositions such as love and hate, loyalty and betrayal, life and death, truth and lies, courage and cowardice are common themes in the experience of his main characters. In epic style, these leave the security of home in the quest of something far greater than themselves whatever the danger – a plot as old as Beowulf, but as resonant as ever. Stories have always had the capacity to show us the best as well as the worst of ourselves.’
28 November 2003
26 November 2003
[quote] Memorable Book Openings (#8): The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams …
‘Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has-or rather had-a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. ‘ 25 November 2003
[wifi] In the Air Tonight — report about Wifi Networks being installed aboard trains in Britain … ‘The train is fitted with a satellite dish on top of its restaurant carriage. This connects to the internet through a range of different networks (including satellite and GPRS) and then distributes the bandwidth throughout the train. Connecting in this way means that if one connection goes down, another automatically replaces it, which allows for a constant connection even at speeds in excess of 100mph. The service, which is in its early stages, is variable. Some areas provide faster net access than others, but simple tasks, like accessing web pages and sending email, worked quite well throughout my two and a half hour journey’ [via The Daily Chump]
[comics] Deadlock — amusing online comic from Other People’s Stories. ‘…My solution was brilliant in its passive agressive deviousness! I was asking Lisa out on a date without actually going through the humiliation of asking her out on a date!’ [via IllNation]
24 November 2003
[comics] The Graphic Novel Silver Anniversary — Time Magazine on 25 years of Graphic Novels. ‘…Eisner had to come up with his own, spontaneous sleight-of-hand marketing. “[The phrase] ‘graphic novel’ was kind of accidental,” Eisner said. While pitching the book to an important trade-book editor in New York, says Eisner, “a little voice inside me said, ‘Hey stupid, don’t tell him it’s a comic or he’ll hang up on you.’ So I said, ‘It’s a graphic novel.'” Though that particular editor wasn’t swayed by the semantics, dismissing the book as “comics,” a small publisher eventually took the project and put the phrase “A Graphic Novel” prominently on the jacket, thereby cementing the term permanently into the lexicon.’ [thanks Kabir]
23 November 2003
[film] Love Actually — amusing review of Richard Curtis’ new film … ‘Does Mr Curtis have special screenwriting software to produce this sort of thing? Using a Q-tip and bodily fluid, he must have impregnated a disk of the Final Draft programme with his DNA, so that all he has to do is type, say, control-shift-NUPTIALS, to get a complete quirky-yet-touching wedding scene. Or maybe control-shift-PRESSCONF, and we get one of his press conferences with a coded public declaration of love. Perhaps apple-control-SIBLING generates a scene with a trademark disabled sibling or loved one, or maybe he just types alt-ROMCOM and the entire movie comes chuntering out of the printer…’
22 November 2003
[tv] The Miserable King of Comedy — profile of Larry David. ‘…If there is a master storyline [to Curb Your Enthusiasm], it is that Larry simply wants to go about his daily business but is constantly mystified by the obstacles thrown up in front of him. The obstacles may be no more than a bothersome word, or a small tic of behaviour, or the suspicion that some rule of social etiquette has been broken (for example, the show where he becomes convinced that a television executive has stolen the shrimp out of his Chinese takeaway). Larry’s attempts either to overcome these obstacles, or get even for them, invariably entangle him further. That’s when he gets mad – convincing himself that he is a reasonable guy when we, the audience, can see how he has set himself up for trouble from the very start.’
21 November 2003
[food] Belly — a new recipe blog from Orbyn.com … ‘Nepali, Indian, Italian, Argentine and assorted goodies are all to come, inlcuding some ancient family recipes filtered through my haphazard skills in the kitchen. Good food for and by idiots, if you will.’
20 November 2003
[blogs] Venusberg … ‘This forces us to only one conclusion. Death is MacGyver.’
[retro-games] Masters of their Universe — extract from Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford about the creation of the computer game Elite … ‘In 1982, popularised science hadn’t yet risen above the horizon in Britain as a cultural phenomenon. No chaos theory as a universal reference point; not much evolutionary biology, since Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould were only then beginning to make their mark on public consciousness; no cosmology deployed à la Stephen Hawking as a modern replacement for religious truths. In particular, computing in its DIY phase didn’t resonate as it would later. You wouldn’t have found French literary theorists writing about cyberspace in 1982, any more than they’d have written about household plumbing. Computers weren’t glamorous. The result of all this was that what Braben and Bell achieved together while they were at Cambridge was, effectively, invisible.’
19 November 2003
[potus] Reporters’ log: Bush in Britain … ‘The BBC’s team of correspondents bring you news updates, as they happen, on President George Bush’s state visit to the UK.’ [Related: Chasing Bush]
[murder] Huntley Carr Trial Reports … ‘A selection of reports of the trial of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr in connection with the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.’ [via Blah Blah Flowers]
18 November 2003
[comics] Alan Moore is 50. Happy Birthday… and enjoy your retirement!
‘Sat in a sandwich bar in Westminster I meet the sharp south-London wideboy occultist that I’d created some years previously for a U.S. comic book. He looks at me. He nods, and smiles, and walks away. Years later, in another place, he steps out from the dark and speaks to me. He whispers: I’ll tell you the ultimate secret of Magic. Any cunt can do it.’ [link] 17 November 2003
[comics] Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex — Larry Niven wonders about Superman’s Sex Life … ‘Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El’s semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet. (*One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy’s puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?*)’ [via Many Comic Blogs]
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