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London Bloggers [Comic Blogs][Other Blogs] | 5 January 2002
[spam] SIMPLE PILL CAN INCREASE YOUR EJACULATION By 581%!!! … really silly spam. ‘Shoot up to 13 feet!’ [via Everlasting Blort]
[comics] The Rational Shaman — great interview with Alan Moore concentrating on magic and comics … ‘After Watchmen, I felt that I was perhaps coming to a limit as to what I could further understand about writing rationally. If I was going to go any further into writing, I had to take a step beyond the rational. Magic was the only area that offered floorboards after that step. And it also seemed to offer a new way of looking at things, a new set of tools to continue.’ [via I Love Everything]
4 January 2002
[books] Choke On This — an interview with Chuck Palahniuk … On his new book Lullaby: ‘It’s about a very burnt-out, jaded newspaper reporter who is assigned to do a five-part series about crib death, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. So, he wants to profile five different crib deaths. So, paramedics take him to, first, one crib-death scene, and he notices a library book that’s there, and it’s a cheap anthology of public domain folk stories and poems and anything that could be slapped together and published, and it’s opened to page 27. And the next crib-death sight is not exactly crib death, it’s a three-year-old, but it’s the same library book. And, it’s not open, but when he sets it on its spine, it falls open to page 27. Then the third, the fourth, the fifth crib-death sight, these people have all checked out this library book, and it looks like the night before these children died, it was read, what turns out to be an ancient African culling song, which was used to decrease population during famine or drought, and to humanely euthanize elderly or diseased or injured people in a painless, almost instant way. And he realizes that this is a spell for killing people.’ [via Feeling Listless]
3 January 2002
[distraction] I Know Where Bruce Lee Lives! … Fantastic Flash “Kung-Fu Remixer”. [via Grammarporn]
[9/11] What Did They Know and When Did They Know It? … excellent resource for conspiracy theorists… a long list of 9-11 related stories.
2 January 2002
[distraction] Fantastic 20th anniversary version of a classic arcade game — Pitfall … ‘Guide Pitfall Harry through a treacherous jungle maze. He must leap over obstacles and dodge deadly dangers while grabbing all the treasure he can reach!’ [via Fark]
1 January 2002
[comics] Cat Yronwode’s website continues to fascinate… The Mojo Car … ‘As this 2001 picture of the Ford Escort shows, we have progressed greatly in our willingness to abandon functionality for aesthetics. Godzilla is still top and center, but he no longer dismounts — and he is surrounded by other tall items — a Menorah, a Black Pocahontas-like Guardian Angel, the Virgin of Los Lagos, the Statue of Liberty, a head-nodding El Diablo, Merlin with his raven, two large Santas — and a host of smaller figures, including the Devil and his Grandmother, Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West, large crowns, pyx and chalice, altar boy and altar girl, Buddy Christ, Visnu, Chango Macho, Santissima Muerte, Pikachu, and about a dozen Buddhas’ [Related: Yronwode Bio]
[9/11] Is bin Laden the Lord of the Rings? … ‘All that stands between us and this implacable darkness is a small band of ordinary guys doing extraordinary deeds in their unconventional hit-and-run style. Always vastly outnumbered, they never lose a battle and hardly ever a single life. Are they really that good? Or is it just because they embody the cosmic principle of goodness? Their devotion to honor, decency, and each other is exemplary. And they invite us to come back to the theater next Christmas to see them defend the oh-so-white city, where we all hope to live peacefully ever after. If you have seen the movie and followed the war news, you can no doubt extend the list of parallels.’ [via Wood s Lot]
31 December 2001
[comics] January 2002 Previews from Comics Worth Reading … On The Copybook Tales: ‘What joy! This series, one of my all-time favorites, is coming back into print in an omnibus volume. Contrasting modern-day young men with their earlier teenage selves, this series explored growing up and the conflicts it brings, including the conflicts between dreams and realism and enthusiasm and discouragement. J. Torres (ALISON DARE) wrote; Tim Levins (GOTHAM ADVENTURES) drew. If you can only order one book this month, get this. It’s a must-read for any comics fan.’
30 December 2001
[quotables] What they said in 2001 from The Observer…
‘Osama bin Laden? Typical middle child. He’s twenty-sixth out of 51’ — Overheard in New York theatre ‘Replace capitalism with something nicer’ — Banner at May Day anti-globalisation protest
[books] Ellroy’s Kafka Routine — interview with James Ellroy … ‘The essential contention of the Underworld USA trilogy volume one, American Tabloid, volume two, The Cold Six Thousand, is that America was never innocent. Here’s the lineage: America was founded on a bedrock of racism, slaughter of the indigenous people, slavery, religious lunacy …and nations are never innocent. Let alone nations as powerful as our beloved fatherland.’
29 December 2001
[911 comment] History is back with a capital H — Naomi Klien on the End of History and ObL … ‘It’s an idea we’ve heard from many quarters since September 11, a return of the great narrative: chosen men, evil empires, master plans, and great battles. All are ferociously back in style. The Bible, the Koran, The Clash of Civilizations, Lord of the Rings – all of them suddenly playing out “in these days, in our times.” This grand redemption narrative is our most persistent myth, and it has a dangerous flip side. When a few men decide to live their myths, to be larger than life, it can’t help but have an impact on all the lives that unfold in regular sizes. People suddenly look insignificant by comparison, easy to sacrifice in the name of some greater purpose. When the Berlin Wall fell, it was supposed to have buried this epic narrative in its rubble. This was capitalism’s decisive victory. Ideology is dead, let’s go shopping.’ [via Wood s Lot]
[comics] Excellent interview with Joe Matt … ‘The scene in The Poor Bastard where the squirrel’s on my lap, I’m feeding a squirrel in the park and it climbs right up into my lap, and I’m yelling, `Get it off!’ It’s something that really happened, and I know it can be funny because my character’s part of me, but the only reason I would put something like that in there is, it sounds pretentious, but to me that’s symbolic of a relationship forcing itself onto me, and me not wanting it, or something.’
28 December 2001
[comics] Ultimate interview Team-Up — interview with Brian Michael Bendis and Jim Mahfood … Bendis on the Internet: ‘I’m sick of these cowardly little weasels on the Internet, that are spewing hate towards books that they probably haven’t read in the first place, or have some agenda. That shouldn’t part of our job to deal with this. [..] We are the first generation of comic book creators that have the Internet to deal with. Could you imagine the shit that Watchmen would had to have taken if the Internet was around then? All the nonsense and whining about the series, when in reality it would have been only twelve guys saying those things…’
[comment] Is Bin Laden a Pisces – or is he Cancer? … ‘So far there has been comparitively little debate about the fact that all the world’s astrologers appear to have missed any auspices pointing towards cataclysmic events and vast numbers of dead on a day which, it seems to be generally agreed, changed the course of history. While the security services were immediately condemned for their ignorance, the reputation of astrologers, who have no need of Arabic, bravery or subterfuge to interpret their celestial hints, has escaped intact, not even faintly stained by this awesome demonstration of occult incompetence. While the astrologers’ failure will not surprise anyone acquainted with the essential idiocy of their occupation, or deter the millions who rushed out to buy the predictions of Nostradamus after September 11, you might think it would lead to a little self-examination among practitioners. Not a bit.’
27 December 2001
[xmas] plasticbag.org: ‘The world outside Norfolk can go fuck itself for one week.’
[911] All change? … Has the world changed in the wake of September 11th? ‘The question is, did that day cut a line through history? Were the days that came before it, as Blake Morrison wrote in the Guardian later that week, “the last week of the world as it was”? In other words, will it be a day like September 3 1939, or August 4 1914: all change, and no going back. Or a day like June 28 1914, when a Serbian nationalist knocked off the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, and for a month Vienna and Berlin debated what to do? Or merely a day like April 12 1912, when the Titanic went down, 1,500 dead? Many people, especially writers and other preachers, chose to see the last as a massive symbol of hubris, God or fate teaching over-confident “western civilisation” a lesson, rather than as – the true case – a marine accident which changed nothing other than safety regulations for ships and the career of Leonardo DiCaprio.’
24 December 2001
[linkmachineSTOP] Happy Christmas. Next update will be when I’m bored of it all — probably just after The Great Escape finishes on Christmas Day… :) [Related: Great Escape on IMDB]
[tvgohome] Charlie Brooker’s alternative Christmas Day TV listings… ‘9.30 I Love the Succession of Glittering Images Which Distract and Amuse Yet Ultimately Do Little to Quell the Boundless Sadness at My Core.’
[quote] “What’ll it be next? Choice extracts from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations? Trotting out the Nietzsche and the Shelley to dignify some old costumed claptrap? Probably. Sometimes you wonder, in an interconnected universe, who’s dreaming who?” — Grant Morrison (1989)
23 December 2001
[wtc] Only Love and then Oblivion — Ian McEwan on 911 … ‘If the hijackers had been able to imagine themselves into the thoughts and feelings of the passengers, they would have been unable to proceed. It is hard to be cruel once you permit yourself to enter the mind of your victim. Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality. The hijackers used fanatical certainty, misplaced religious faith, and dehumanising hatred to purge themselves of the human instinct for empathy. Among their crimes was a failure of the imagination.’
[2001] The Observer reviews 2001 … ‘On 10 September, 2001, the front page of London’s Evening Standard was filled with the news that Kate Winslet had denied canoodling with someone somewhere. On that same day, the headline in the New York Daily News was “Kips Bay Tenants Say: We’ve Got Killer Mold”.’
[war] Suddenly, he was gone — Where in the world is Osama bin Laden? ‘Getting information about bin Laden’s movements is not difficult. Getting reliable information is the problem. ‘There’s one [report] every day, or many every day. It’s like Elvis sightings,’ said one exasperated US intelligence official.’
22 December 2001
[comment] In the ruins of the future — Don DeLillo on 911. ‘Technology is our fate, our truth. It is what we mean when we call ourselves the only superpower on the planet. The materials and methods we devise make it possible for us to claim our future. We don’t have to depend on God or the prophets or other astonishments. We are the astonishment. The miracle is what we ourselves produce, the systems and networks that change the way we live and think. But whatever great skeins of technology lie ahead, ever more complex, connective, precise, micro-fractional, the future has yielded, for now, to medieval expedience, to the old slow furies of cut-throat religion. Kill the enemy and pluck out his heart.’
21 December 2001
[tv] What I’ve Learned — the wit and wisdom of Homer J. Simpson … ‘What kind of fool would leave a pie on a windowsill, anyway? ‘ [via Sore Eyes]
[xmas] Check out Marcia’s Crappy Crimbo Cards … ‘Bah, humbug.’
[war] Coming to a Mall Near You: Just War … ‘We don’t manufacture much of anything; just war. We don’t concern ourselves with education; just war. We don’t attend to the 40 million Americans without health coverage; just war. We don’t focus on the 30 million American children living in poverty; just war. We don’t support the arts; just war. Even though a multitude of human needs were in existence prior to September 11, and have only increased since then, we continue to direct our attention and our resources into what we do best: war. Just war.’ [via Haddock]
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