[LMG] Just decided to reorder things so the latest postings are at the top. I think I prefer it that way… What do you think silent readers?

[eliza] It’s a crazy idea but it might just work… somebody mixes AOL Instant Messaging and Joseph Weizenbaum’s Eliza. The resulting conversations are hilarious…. ‘Using a publicly available Perl version of ELIZA, a Mac with nothing better to do than play psychoanalyst, a few applescripts, and an AOL Instant Messenger account that has a high rate of ‘random’ people trying to start conversations, I put ELIZA in touch with the real world. Every few days I’ll put up the latest ‘patients.’ Names have been changed to protect the… well, everyone.’ [Related Links: Try Eliza, via Beesley]

[arcade] Atari Classics — Shockwave coversions of Centipede, Missile Command, Super Breakout and Frogger….

[news] Guardian Unlimited has an interesting overview of the whole Jamie Bulger case. From An ugly tabloid threat: ‘”The idea that the two boys – now almost men – could soon be free will horrify every parent,” says the Sun, before asking: “Where is the justice for James’s parents?” Then, in a scandalous aside after noting that the lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, had remarked that the boys were “making progress”, the Sun said: “Who cares? After what they did, the idea that they will be corrupted if they aren’t freed is laughable.” In other words, the paper believes that the boys who committed a foul murder aged 10, and who eight years later have shown extreme remorse for their crime and no propensity to violence ever since, should go to an adult jail. It doesn’t matter what happens to them there. The Sun doesn’t care. Let them suffer.’

[steve bell] Missed this on Friday — Mad Cows take a bite out of Gummer and Major…

[news] The Sunday Times profiles “The Bulger Killers” — Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. ‘The cost of keeping a young offender in such a unit has been estimated at £100,000 a year, and both youths have improved educationally. Thompson passed five GCSEs and has developed talents for design, painting, textiles, computer studies and catering. As a project to create an “object of beauty”, he once designed and cut a wedding dress, sewing and beading it himself.’

[film] Salon covers two books looking at Hollywood moviemakers durning the 70s and 80s… ‘Both books deliver memorable quotations, the best of them apparently generated at extreme moments of showbiz humiliation and exasperation. One source, describing the Simpson/Bruckheimer negotiating style, says, “It’s not ‘good cop, bad cop.’ It’s ‘bad cop, worse cop.'” Remembering the night his two-timing wife, Ali MacGraw, accompanied him to a party for his greatest triumph, “The Godfather,” the ineffably embarrassing Robert Evans recalls sadly: “She was looking at me and thinking of Steve McQueen’s cock.”‘

[tv] More on Blue Peter… ‘What became of the Blue Peter elephant? She went on to present the national lottery and marry Grant Bovey’ [from Guardian Unlimited’s Notes and Queries]

[comics] BBC News covers 30 years of Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury. ‘The Bush family has been among Trudeau’s hardest critics. George Bush senior said he was “a little elitist who is spoiled, derisive, ugly and nasty”. George W Bush has not been any more complimentary. But to Trudeau, abuse just adds to the fun. “This is what I live for,” he said. “The Bushes think it’s personal, when in fact, for me, it’s never personal. At the risk of sounding like Sonny Corleone, whacking people like them is my job.”‘ [Related Links: Duke 2000]

[tv] Blue Peter and Hunter S. Thompson. Stand back. Do not not mix. ‘…who is this, for Christ sakes? Fucker calls himself Groom. Looks like I’m minding the fucking baby today, I figure, well, may as well keep any possible conflict down to a minimum, after all I’m desperate enough to take this faggot job in the first place, I can’t afford another fuck up. Straight away, while the Freak’s talking some crap at me, I notice this damn idiot child badge on his fucking nylon shirt. I don’t like to ask what kind of freakin’ remedial school talisman that is. Probably just some warning badge for the good honest middle class folks to know to KEEP THE FUCK AWAY, MENTALLY DEFICIENT GIANT FREAK APPROACHING. One look back up to his dead-ass eyes. I shiver, and it ain’t the half dozen ‘Ludes I’d picked up in St. Paul’s the moment I came to this damn limey wasteland to steady my nerves. There’s evil in this bitch, I would swear on my fucking mother’s life.’

[uk weblogs] Excellent, new, [at least to me] UK weblog: Cabin Pressure. ‘you should be thinking about how lucky you are. you work in a warm womblike office for a boss that does not get too heavy with you and you have a work load that is easily manageable. you get a computer on your desk that is yours alone and you get access to the internet. you get to download what you want when you want, you get to mess about with new packages for days on end without producing results, you get to wear what you want. your father and your father’s father would have killed for your job. you should be thinking about how lucky you are but you’re probably not.’

[movies] Film Unlimited profiles Jerry Bruckheimer, Perl Harbor and Bruckheimer’s dead partner-in-crime Don Simpson. ‘They appeared on the cover of Newsweek in matching black suits. They bought matching black Ferraris and matching black Mustang convertibles. They dressed in black Levis that they wore only once – Simpson said they quickly lost “their essential blackness”. In a final act of power-drunk solipsism, they even hired identical (white) twins as their respective secretaries. “It was so sick!” remembered one of their employees.’ [Related Links: Pearl Harbor Trailer, Upcomingmovies.com on Pearl Harbor]

[comics] Quimby 2000 Vs. Lex 2000

[politics] Picking on ugly people is not funny… unless they are British MP’s. [Related Links: The Ann Widdecombe Shrine]

[eastenders] Good Grief! Sonia’s having a baby… ‘Sonia Jackson is one of a new breed of young soap mothers. She’s intelligent, hard-working, conscientious, and most emphatically not the Town Bike. She allowed Martin Fowler to get a bit carried away earlier in the year, but that’s no reflection on her – Martin would probably get carried away with Mo Harris if the lighting was low.’ [Related Links: Eastenders]

[radio] Guardian Unlimited covers the Today Programme’s new website and webcam…. ‘The presenters will slouch and sometimes slurp; they will gesticulate angrily towards the unseen producers on occasion. They will browse the newspapers. If you want a slick, professional television operation, then watch Jeremy and Sophie on the new BBC1 Breakfast show. Today may be live online – four days and counting; no catastrophes as yet – but it’s still a radio programme, and so it will remain.’ [Related Links: Today’s Website]

[attachments] It’s not everyday that you get insulted by a fictional character… ‘At a guess, bored American teenagers from Buttpoke, Ohio, with nothing better to do than chart their moribund lives through a so-called weblog. Inevitably this consists of some misguided discourse, punctuated with pictures of genital torture, many of them culled from their web community, ie a bunch of equally bored teenagers with a digital camera and too much time on their hands.’ [Related Links: Everyone Hates Attachments]

[file under WTF?] Came here searching for Scooby Porn? Check it out… LMG has high quality Buffy / Scooby-Doo fan-fiction porn links just for you! ‘Velma grinned at Daphne as she pulled her close for a kiss. Daphne wrapped her arms around Velma’s neck and moaned. Velma moved her kisses down to Daphne’s breasts as Daphne’s right hand moved between her legs to caress her clit. Velma moaned and opened her mouth to enclose Daphne’s breast. With her left hand, Daphne reached for the jar of peaches on the nightstand. She removed her hand long enough to open the jar, and Velma whimpered at her loss. Buffy turned to see Xander completely engrossed in the video. Funny, but watching naked cartoons roll around in bed together had given him an erection.’ [Related Links: Disturbing Search Requests]

[royalty] Princess Diana and the Vibrator… not porn — actually a very amusing review of Shadows of a Princess by PD Jephson… ‘Diana, Jephson breathlessly confides, returned from Paris in 1992 sporting a souvenir – ‘a large, pink, battery-powered vibrator’. By now she knew she’d never get her hands on an orb or sceptre: this plastic knob would have to do. It had ‘the aim’, Jephson notes with courtly tact, ‘of raising royal morale at critical moments’. But he denies that it was actually aimed at the critical royal part, and insists it was ‘never used for its designed purpose’. Eventually Dodi assumed the role of royal morale-booster, which made the cheeky pink chap redundant.’ [via Beesley]

[quelle surprise!] This internet thing might just have a future… Grant Morrison has launched his own website. ‘Whatever you do, make sure you go right to the top, because you sure as hell can’t piss upwards on people.’ [via Barbelith Underground]

[rubber bands] This is Bill — he has a magnificent obssession about rubber band balls…. ‘The guy who owns my corner market is building the world’s largest rubber band ball. You may think this is stupid, but he doesn’t think it is. He takes his work very seriously. I bring my friends by to look at it. It grows daily. He will tell you about how he is buying hundreds of dollars of rubber bands every week, how he is shooting for more than a thousand pounds, some sort of world record. The thing has got to be three feet across already, and four hundred pounds. You should see the guy sweat when he works on it.’ [via Yungee]

[movies] Brief interesting interview with Darren Aronofsky [director of Pi and Requiem For A Dream] on ign.com… talks about his work on the latest Batman movie with Frank Miller and his interest in comics… ‘I was not a comic book fan at all until…I really never was a comic book fan. I got into the artwork in high school, like late high school and then in college. But before that I never really read ’em.’ [via CiPHER]

[overheard] “I’ve seen bigger breasts on a pizza.” WTF?

[swearing] How to swear in foreign languages ‘No Skuche ala Gats!’ [via Bugpowder]

[comics] Mars Import provides a list of Eddie Campbell’s view of the best graphic novels. [Out of the list there’s one I would highly recommend — Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds — to just about anybody. If you like intelligent, well written, adult fiction — it’s for you. It has pictures as well! What more could you want?]

[religion] Wonderful feature by Jon Ronson reporting on attending a course designed to convert Agnostics into Christians with emphasis on the holy spirit and speaking in tongues…. ‘James rests his hand on my shoulder. “Oh Jesus, I pray that Jon will receive Your wonderful spirit. God. Please come and fill Jon with … ” It is not working. The spell has broken. I tell James again that I’m sorry, but I’m a journalist. (This is no excuse – the picture editor of a Sunday newspaper is speaking in tongues to my left, as is a producer of Channel 4 documentaries in front of me, for the first time in his life.) So James changes tack. “Oh thank you, Jesus, for Jon’s wonderfully enquiring journalistic mind … please help Jon’s career … no, not his career … his wonderful journalism … and may his journalism become even more wonderful now he is working in Your name, Jesus Christ …”‘ [Related Links: Alpha]

[comics] First panel from Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell’s new Zenith — done as Ali G… [via Barbelith Underground]

[history] Vaguely disturbing… Pictures of historical events done in the style of the Sims Computer game. [via Memepool]

[pop] Guardian Unlimited has an amusing interview with Jason Donovan… ‘Then, around 1994 when he was 26, he began to go bald. For most men it’s a blow. For Donovan it was a disaster, and his reaction was extreme. But let him tell it: “I’d just finished starring in Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and I suddenly noticed I was losing my hair. If you’re blond-haired and blue-eyed, you think it’s the death of your desirability. You don’t see the big picture and think you might be Sean Connery in 40 years. All I had was the Jason Donovan look, and I thought, fuck. That was a major thing for me, and it started me on drugs.”‘

[tv] Brief profile of Phil Davis who appears in Channel 4’s new series North Square. ‘On these pages, Mark Lawson has suggested that North Square is unduly concerned with class. Davis, unsurprisingly, doesn’t agree. “It’s only a shock to middle-class people that there is this working-class guy running things for all these middle- class, intelligent barristers. You could say that all English drama is about class to some degree, but I don’t think North Square is about class predominantly: it’s about law, and how it is applied. That’s what is really interesting: in one scenario a woman loses her children and it’s tragic, in another some nutter is stealing underpants and it’s comic; that’s much more like real life, with a tragedy tumbling over a comedy. Plus the career side of it: you’re hoping for a plea on Monday so you can do the big fraud on Tuesday. Of course it goes on.”‘ [Related Links: Davis at IMDB]