linkmachinego.com
27 March 2002
[buffy] The oval that men do — article on the Buffy Easter Egg … ‘Of course it might be said that Buffy, in her role as a vampire “Slayer”, acts upon the undead much in the same way that a crucifix does, albeit with more kick-ass force. The crucifix is the central symbol of Easter, indeed of Christianity, and we might care to regard Buffy as a modern equivalent. I would even dare to describe Buffy as a sort of all-American version of the Messiah (the mouse mat also says “into each generation a Slayer is born”) unless there is some kind of blasphemy legislation pending that I don’t know about.’
26 March 2002
[blogs] Are You A Hit-Obsessed Weblogger?’35 points is in the 20 through 39 precent TYPE C (HIT-CURIOUS). You do the weblog thing for yourself instead of for an audience, but you are aware that you do have an audience, small as it might be. You are often curious as to what other people find so interesting about your weblog. You check your weblog referrers every now and then just to satisfy your curiosity.’ [via Feeling Listless]
[distraction] Britney’s Naked Cat-a-Phone … very similar to the Buffy Swearing Keyboard ‘Warning: Using this software will send your cat mental. It made mine bite.’
25 March 2002
[birthday] Guess who is thirty-two next Sunday? The wishlist is here. :)
[comics] Great gallery of images from Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Elektra: Assassin



‘The daughter of a Greek ambassador, Elektra is the beloved of Matt Murdock. When her father is murdered she becomes a ninja assassin, ultimately betraying those who trained her and turning to a life of senseless crime.’
24 March 2002
[comics] Ten Essential Comics — I’ve been playing around with amazon.co.uk’s new listmania feature‘Guys. Hey. Getting Any?’
23 March 2002
[film] Harry Knowles reviews Blade 2‘I believe Guillermo Del Toro eats pussy better than any man alive. Watch his ‘HOUSE OF PAIN’ sequence in BLADE 2. BLADE 2 is the tongue, mouth, fingers and lips of a lover. The Audience is the clit. Watch your audience. This is where Guillermo Del Toro goes down on the audience. It starts with long licks with a nose bump on the joy button slowly. He smiles as he does this?’ [via Do You Feel Loved]
22 March 2002
[fashion] Shopping Rebellion — The New Yorker on Japanese Fashion … ‘One of the striking things about spending any time among fashion-conscious Japanese kids is how utterly nerdy they can be in their pursuit of cool. In Europe and the United States fashion falls decisively into the category of the frivolous and playful; in Japan the right T-shirt or cap is sought with a kind of dogged intensity, and not just by a fringe group of fanatics. Japanese boys in particular seem to treat fashion in a manner appropriate to stamp collecting or train spotting. Entire magazines are dedicated to the subject of teen boys’ haircuts.’
[blogs] MemeMachineGo! — What a great name for a blog! :)
[politics] Just What Was He Smoking? — The Washington Post takes a look at audio tapes from Richard Nixon’s White House. ‘…he does explain many other things in these drug tapes, including the insidious nexus between drugs, homosexuality, communism and, of course, Jews. The excerpts begin with the Nixon doctrine on why marijuana is much worse than alcohol: It is because people drink “to have fun” but they smoke marijuana “to get high.” This distinction was evidently enormously significant to Nixon, because he repeats it twice.’ [via Scripting News]
21 March 2002
[tv] Pass Notes does Sir Jimmy Saville OBE‘Don’t say: “Are you with the Massive Stains, Jimmy?”‘ [Related: Jimmy Savile says Ali G stole his image]
[quote] ‘In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone? …the Great Depression, passed the… Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered? …raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? The Laffer Curve. Anyone know what this says? It says that at this point on the revenue curve, you will get exactly the same amount of revenue as at this point. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-d-o-o economics. “Voodoo” economics.’ [Thanks Meg, Scally]
20 March 2002
[comics] King David — DC Comics PR for Kyle Baker’s new graphic novel … ‘Hilarity of Biblical Proportions! Violence! Intrigue! Polygamy! Mass circumcision!’
[film] The trouble with Harry — brief update on Harry Knowles… the “ultimate movie geek”. ‘…I don’t believe that their [Movie fan websites] opinions affect or alter the tastes of the moviegoing public. Far from it; most web geeks are so leadenly conservative that their opinions actually reflect and reinforce the lamest conventional tastes. “Fan”, after all, derives from “fanatic”, and fanaticism is rarely progressive, original or mould-breaking.’
19 March 2002
[war] He wants War. And he thinks he’s ready for it — profile of Saddam Hussein‘…he had two sons, Uday and Qusay, who today are his chief lieutenants. In official Iraqi paintings they are usually portrayed as young Arab horsemen loyally riding behind their father, the Sheikh. Family solidarity has been repeatedly shaken by Uday’s murderous rages. In 1988 he killed his father’s bodyguard and confidante during a drunken row at a party on an island in the Tigris river. For many years his power base, bizarrely, has been the Iraqi Olympic Committee which has a large, fortified headquarters in Baghdad with its own prison cells.’
[comics] Thrown to the Wolves — a review of my comic du jour… 100 Bullets. ‘The basic story-line is simple, but as I’ve indicated not without its complications. A highly secretive group of vengeance-seekers, the Minutemen, are locked in battle with the Trust, the obligatory nasties. The Minutemen operate outside the law, specializing in setting up victims of criminal wrongdoing with hard evidence of who did them wrong, along with a tasty firearm and one hundred untraceable bullets. The victims get to decide whether and how they are going to use the information and weaponry the Minutemen have dropped in their laps. Those who succeed in blowing the bad guy(s) away might then be approached to see if they have what it takes to join the ranks of the secret revenge society.’ [Related: 100 Bullets on-line comic]
18 March 2002
[tv] At home with Orville (and Keith) — interview with Keith Harris… the latest subject of Louis Theroux‘Certainly, I think Keith thinks he should still be on telly, as he was with his own show between 1982 and 1990. “Once you are off TV, people think you’re dead, think your talent’s disappeared. And you do lose status. You’re asked to be fourth on the bill to someone from Gladiators, and that does annoy me. Why? Because they are not as good as me. They can’t be. They don’t have my experience. Do I sound bitter?” Um. Yes?’
[massive distraction] Eight Days A Week — A totally addictive Beatles Fruit Machine… [from The Beatles Website]
17 March 2002
[celebs] Is Pete stalking Danny La Rue? ‘If you walk down Malett St and look up there’s a balcony of sorts with shrubs and trees. That’s where he lives. His front door is the one with the arm holding a hammer. I know this because someone told me.’
[911] Six Months that Changed a Year — an “absolute atrocity” special by Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci … Highlights include: ‘Julie Burchill: How I liberated Kandahar with the news that Tony Parsons is a bastard.’ [Update: Post on Metafilter]
16 March 2002
[tv] Keepin’ it Real, for Real — profile of Ali G … ‘His school reports also contain an intriguing hint about Ali’s secret life. Despite his often repeated boasts about his enormous membrum virile, his PE teacher confides that “he has, to my knowledge, only once been prepared to take a shower with the rest of the boys. Admittedly, certain cruel remarks from a few of them are probably a factor here…”‘
15 March 2002
[colon] LMG supports the campaign to pursuade Tom to irrigate his colon. [banner courtesy of Dave]

The Tom Coates Colon Irrigation Fund

‘I’m as yet unconvinced by the idea of the sponsored defudging – but I’m open to persuasion.’
[books] Salon interviews Jon Ronson about his book Them: Adventures with Extremists‘The way I portrayed the people is accurate. Because they’re human beings and we have a kind of wonderful capacity to be absurd and ridiculous. It would be easy to portray them as one-dimensional demons, but I wanted to do the opposite. Just because they’re buffoons it doesn’t mean they can’t fly planes into the World Trade Center. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.’ [via I Love Everything]
14 March 2002
[nologo] America is not a hamburger — Naomi Klein on the “rebranding” of America. ‘…Beers views the US tattered international image as little more than a communications problem. Somehow America still hasn’t managed, in Beers’ words, to “get out there and tell our story”. In fact, the problem is just the opposite: America’s marketing of itself has been too effective. Schoolchildren can recite its claims to democracy, liberty and equal opportunity as readily as they can associate McDonald’s with family fun and Nike with athletic prowess. And they expect the US to live up to its claims. If they are angry, as millions clearly are, it’s because they have seen those promises betrayed by US policy.’
[blogs] nickdenton.org: ‘People like Doc Searls and Meg Hourihan are to the weblog as Oppenheimer and von Neumann were to the A-bomb. Gentle souls whose creation will be used by others more ruthless.’
13 March 2002
[logo envy] Feeling Listless has moved — which gives me an excuse to rip-off another one of those excellent logos …

Elizabeth Wurtzel... Feeling Listless


…and mention that he’s pretty popular with Middlesbrough football team… check out Stuart’s guest book: ‘Like your site. You must put a tremendous amount of effort into it. I spend most afternoons checking it out, after my morning’s training. I shall get more of my teammates to follow suit. The links are impressive. I only wish I had a laptop so I could access it from more places.’
[film] Salon looks at Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey‘…we see Bowman, now an old man, living out his old age like a zoo attraction in a feigned Louis XVI-style bedroom, assumedly created for him by the aliens. And then suddenly the creation theme continues as a giant fetus inexplicably rises over Earth. Although birthdays have noticeably been happening in the background all along (Poole, Floyd’s daughter), all bets are off as to the movie’s ultimate statement. At the film’s Hollywood premier in 1968, Rock Hudson walked out saying, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?”‘
12 March 2002
[books] Excellent oldish interview with James Ellroy from 1995 … Ellroy on Oliver Stone’s JFK: ‘I was just enthralled for an hour and twenty minutes. Bravuro moviemaking, wonderfully layered and dense and jazzy, and then Donald Sutherland arrives to posit this preposterous theory, and it goes downhill from there. I think organized crime, exile factions, and renegade CIA killed Jack the Haircut. I think your most objective researchers do as well. When Oliver Stone diverged from that to take in the rest of the world (Lyndon Johnson, the Joint Chiefs of Staff), I lost interest. I went out and bought a copy of the video and I watch it right up until Donald Sutherland appears, then I turn it off.’ [via Book Notes]
[wtf?!] The Enema Withinslightly extremely disgusting article about colonic irrigation holidays in Thailand. ‘…octogenarian bowel specialist, V E Irons, attempted the Herculean task of selling colonic irrigation on its erotic potential. I would lose my frigidity, he promised, my sex life would go stratospheric. “How could anyone fully enjoy sex when he has up to 15 years of encrusted fecal matter and mucus in his colon?” asked Irons. “HE CAN’T – and HE WON’T. If you want to remain sexually potent for your entire life, start cleaning your colon today. I’m 87, and I still enjoy sex. And if I can at my age, I know you can at your age… so get on with it!” It was of little consolation to Mez, whose hunger had now assumed epic proportions. She was considering eating her apricot moisturiser, she told me.’ [via Coffee Grounds]
11 March 2002
[distraction] Rings — I find this oddly compulsive. Keep moving the mouse around the screen slowly. [via Haddock]