[film] Popcorn reports that Oliver Stone is planning to quit directing films. ‘The 54-year-old director is currently working on the international aid romance ‘Beyond Borders’, and he’s been telling US film magazine Premiere that he’ll then turn his attention to a major film that will be his “final movie… a funeral oration”.’ [via Ghost in the Machine]

[comment] Tea with Dirty Desmond. Francis Wheen does a fantastic hatchet job on Richard Desmond ‘…if the PM studied the porn website fantasy121.com, which is owned by Richard Desmond, he might have truly believed that the Express boss was indeed a New Labour kinda guy. Desmond is, for instance, determined to end the misery of social exclusion. Hence the appearance on his website of nude photos of Grace, a 79-year-old woman who would like to meet men under the age of 20 for sex.’

[books] An A to Z by Zadie Smith… ‘The neighbours think I’m a whore. I stay in all day, I wear nothing but a night-slip, sometimes men come bearing brown envelopes. I don’t do any work yet I seem to have money. On the face of it, whore would be my guess too. Actually I’m a scribbler, all day in a room, not seeing anyone, just looking at this screen – I don’t fuck the FedEx boys. I’m not an anchoress, either – though I remember once liking the idea. Cool to be a woman who’s isolation is self-inflicted; a mystic retreating from the world for religious purposes.’ [via Zenith of the Barbelith Collective]

[weblogs] Michael Daddino has a few talking points about blogs… ’29. Embrace the ephemeral, baby. 30. But pop teaches us: “ephemeral” pleasures have a tendency to last. DISCO NEVER DIED.’

[social magic] Just Don’t Say the R-Word. Naomi Klein talks about bringing on a recession just by writing about it… ‘There’s a name for vesting the repetition of a word or phrase with the power to change real-world events. It’s called magic. And we all know the economy of the 21st century isn’t based on magic. It’s based on carefully calibrated rules of supply and demand. I can’t bring about a recession just by writing about it, can I? Oops, as Britney might say, I did it again.’ [via the Guardian Unlimited Weblog]

[life] How time can fly into a vacuum — Big Blue Dog on Time Suckage… ‘One of the prime culprits of time suckage in the modern work environment is the cappuccino. In the old days, office workers contented themselves with a simple cup of instant Nescafé, made in the office kitchen with a grime-encrusted teaspoon and milk of dubious maturity. Nowadays, with our hifalutin’ continental ways, we want froth on top. We want chocolate. Some of us even want a skinny mocha decaff latte with a twist.’

[film] How Ben turns sinner from saint — a profile of Ben Kingsley. ‘With his performance in Sexy Beast, as Don Logan, the psychotic house guest from hell who terrorises Ray Winstone (think about that for a moment), he adds another notch to his thespian bedpost. Logan is truly terrifying; a walking, swearing ball of sick dynamism, a barrel of nitroglycerine waiting to be jolted; a shark in wolf’s clothing.’ [Related Links: Sexy Beast]

[animation] My flatmate is watching Dougal and the Blue Cat — which is the most deeply fucked up thing I’ve seen recently. He recommends it… ‘Something very unusual is happening in the garden. What are those strange noises coming from the old treacle factory? Why is everything turning blue? Dougal decides to investigate in this classic feature length story from the original Magic Roundabout.’

[books] The Digested Read covers The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook… ‘How to survive a mid-air explosion: 1. Take a deep breath and perform 3,000 somersaults in the pike position. 2. Clench buttock muscles and grab hold of your crotch. Hit the sea feet first and swim 1,000 miles to safety.’

[tv] MacIntyre uncovered — Guardian Unlimited profiles Donal MacIntyre. ‘So what precisely is Donal MacIntyre’s perspective? A man who fights to close down abusive care homes, yet describes being backstage with Naomi Campbell as a “unique experience” to tell his grandchildren about. A man who protects damaged teenage models, but gets a thrill from nearly being arrested because he “looked like” a hooligan. A man who would rather spend four of the past five years of his life undercover because, I suspect, he’s so alienated from the cynical, worldly tribe of hacks he’s found himself belonging to. A small-town lad, accidentally handsome, accidentally good at his job, accidentally famous.’

[weird tech] It does not get much weirder than this… Macs in Space. ‘Dennis Wingo is one aerospace researcher who definitely thinks outside the box. A self-proclaimed computer geek, he wants an astronaut to hurl a specially modified G4 MacIntosh Cube computer into orbit in 2001 from the International Space Station.’ [Related Links: Some Apple PR, via Unxmaal]

[weekend highlights] Friday: Blog, Oxford Street, Selfridges, Starbucks, Mark and Spencers, MyHotel, drink, Move on to Soho — more drink, Japanese food, drink, back to MyHotel, drink, cab, home, Try to Blog… too pissed, Sleep. Saturday: Badly hungover, 4 * Nurofen + time = feel better, hungry, read Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl?, Eco, Sexy Beast, Blog, Sleep. Sunday: Blog, More Powers, Cast Away, National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, Baddiel’s Syndrome, Blog…

[weblogs] Not Enough Of Me seems to like UKblogs and Comics… which is enough to get you a link on LMG. ‘…Tobey Maguire in his SPIDER-MAN costume (scroll down to the bottom). Couple this with the news that Ang (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON) Lee will be directing HULK, and comics fans are issuing forth tremendous collective orgasms… (Yeah, THAT’s a mental image you needed. Sorry.)’

[weird science] Makes me think of Blade Runner… a proposal for a standard way to encode ASCII characters in DNA. ‘Once we start editing DNA on a large scale, we will need to keep track of what we do, revision histories, comment the new genes and add copyright notices.’

[weblog avatars] Put some music on and click on this link… StorTrooperdance… any kind of music seems to work! [Find what I was listening to using Napster]

[comics] Just what you least expect… Ang Lee to direct The Hulk? ‘The story concerns research scientist Bruce Banner, who, after being caught in a nuclear explosion, finds that, when under stress, he transforms into the Hulk, a green-skinned personification of his repressed rage possessing superhuman strength. Banner is pursued by the military for a crime he did not commit. Lee’s version of the film, to be set in Berkeley, will be a big-budgeted, f/x-driven tentpole feature for Universal in 2003. No cast has been attached, nor a start date set.’

[books] Interview with Alec Garland just after The Tesseract was published. ‘…Garland has a knack for seeing and expressing things in a very understandable was, and this is no doubt part of his appeal to a generation turned off by so called ‘classic’ yet impenetratable authors. “I know exactly what you mean,” Garland says. “I think if you asked the average literary editor whether they thought my work was equitable with Salman Rushdie’s, they would say no. Well, that’s not something that bothers me very much and I doubt very much that it bothers Salman Rushdie.”‘

[moley] BBC News covers the new Adrian Mole TV series — The Cappuccino Years. ‘Adrian Mole is not just a figure of fun or soft comedy target – he is emblematic of the age in which we live. The title, The Cappuccino Years, relates to not just the current craze for coffee shop culture, explained Townsend. “It is a metaphor for the fact that Adrian Mole has a mixed race son whose skin is the colour of cappuccino, it is also a metaphor for the Labour government; a lot of froth – very little coffee. Adrian Mole is a conduit for what the country is like.”‘

[weblogs] Nobody fucks with the Blogging StorTroopers! [That page is just asking to be Hamster Danced… ]

[comics] Piercing — a fine and slightly disturbing online comic about a nipple, a ring and a bit of string… as Pete at BugPowder points out the art is reminiscent of Kyle Baker’s. Well worth the download…

[nude] Nudist ‘not a public nuisance’ — BBC News reports on a campaigner for nudism who was cleared of being a public nuisance. ‘As soon as he heard the verdict at Southwark Crown Court Mr Bethell – wearing nothing but a beard – shouted: “Being human is not a crime”. But Judge George Bathurst-Norman warned him: “I would not go away too much with that idea.’

[music] J’Accuse Indie Kids — Tanya and Tom list why they hate Indie Kids… ‘Indie kids like experimentation, but not too much experimentation. They like extremity, but not too much extremity. They like songs, but they like them to be a bit shy and fuzzed-up and nervous and not too songish. Best of all they like bands which sound comfortingly like the other ones they already know are cool.’

[final request] The final meal requests and last statements of prisoners on death row in Texas. ‘1 jar of dill pickles’ — Stacey Lawton. [thanks to Micky]

[politics] Are you a Ku Klux Gran? ‘Not old ladies dressed up in white sheets, rather very, very traditional and conservative housewives aged over 55. There are just under 2m of them in the UK and they believe that a woman’s place is in the home, disagree with the euro, buy British wherever possible and dislike foreign food.’

[weblogs] Never noticed this before — Spike Magazine has it’s own weblog… Splinters.

[old perv] Pass Notes on the Marquis de Sade. ‘The man in his own words: “Go fuck away the livelong day.” Do say: “Had a good day at the orifice, Count?”‘

[books] Friends of Meg’s Shelves. If you have bookcases crammed with books you really want to check this out. From Notsosoft: ‘Apparently, bookshelves are for ornaments and photo frames and candles, while any books that I’m not reading at the moment (and there are many many many), should be packed into boxes and “stored in the airing cupboard or something.” ‘

[distractions] “Do you speak English?” in over 190 different languages… ‘Parla inglese?’

[shipman] The true evil of this killer doctor. Interesting comments from Nicci Gerrard in the Observer on the Shipman Murders… ‘The Wests were murderous sexual sadists, performing unimaginable acts of torture on their young victims. But while there has never been a case quite like it, most of us have some understanding of sex as potentially dark and perverse and scarily powerful. The couple gave us a collective wince of terror, as if their monstrous actions offered a glimpse into a hidden side of our psyche. We called them evil and unnatural to comfort ourselves, because we feared they were human, like us – though it was a humanity taken to extremes and unravelled before our eyes. Harold Shipman does not do this. He offers us no glimpse into ourselves. He will not become a symbol of anything; his story spreads few ripples. His voice is dry, neutral. His face is blank. His eyes are polite and empty. His lips are closed. His heart is a mystery.’

[brands] The Guardian looks at the rebranding of Anderson Consulting as Accenture… ‘Not a decade ago, the amount of money and effort spent on rebranding would have been unanimously dismissed as the most self-indulgent navel-gazing, and it’s not hard to find even senior management consultants who still think it is. But this is the age of the brand: from breathless boosters such as the management guru Tom Peters to the anticorporate writer Naomi Klein, a consensus is emerging that it is brands, not commodities, that are the real centres of economic value. Tommy Hilfiger, the ultra-hip clothing label, manufactures no clothing at all; Virgin is nothing but a logo. This heady environment has spawned its own evangelists, such as Scott Bedbury, marketing chief in his time for both Nike and Starbucks: “A great brand taps into emotions [and] emotions drive most, if not all, of our decisions,” he says. “A great brand is a story that’s never completely told. A brand is a metaphorical story that’s evolving all the time, [and] stories create the emotional context people need to locate themselves in a larger experience.”‘