[weblogs] It’s as easy as falling off a weblog — Guardian Unlimited takes a look at weblogs… ‘Only in the past year has software been developed which allows people to get blogging with the minimum of know-how: Blogger, the most celebrated of these, has just celebrated its first birthday and its 40,000th user. But although Pyra, the company that created it, is rightly praised for increasing the number of webloggers, Blogger has also spawned “link-sluts” – cliquey, second-generation webloggers who link to better blogs in the hope of a link in return. Despite Blogger’s impressive figures, the number of quality weblogs hasn’t quite reached critical mass.’

[pizza!] I’ve recently been introduced [thanks, Teresa!] to the the wonderful Eco Pizzeria in Clapham, South London. Highly recommended… ‘The pizzas themselves are formidable. Twelve inchers can look a bit daunting to the faint hearted, but fear not, the dough is wonderfully crisp and light, and the toppings are generous and moist. [..] If you want to eat well without spending a fortune and drink well into the bargain, in a buzzy place that’s – well funky’s what we said, we still recommend ECO for best pizzeria South of the River.’ [Contact: Eco Pizzeria, 162 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UG Tel: 0207 978 1108]

[countryside] Guardian Unlimited on the Countryside Alliance. ‘It would be easy for the Labour leadership to dismiss the Alliance. This is an organisation with a predominantly Tory membership whose central aim has been to preserve the right to kill foxes and which readily compares Tony Blair to Adolf Hitler. One poster which bore its logo depicted the gay agriculture minister, Nick Brown, as a man “who loves gays and buggers the countryside”. The logo also appeared in the magazine Earth Dog, Running Dog – from which the Alliance distanced itself. The publication described the black MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, Oona King, as “typical of her species”, and told her to “direct her talents to advising her scrounging supporters on how to claim more handouts”.’

[useful maps] UK Based Multimap have redesigned — looks good, faster — and have a great London Tube Map.

[degrees of seperation] Margaret Thatcher has a Bacon Number of three… ‘Margaret Thatcher was in Some Mother’s Son (1996) with David (I) O’Hara David (I) O’Hara was in Link (1986) with Elisabeth Shue Elisabeth Shue was in Hollow Man (2000) with Kevin Bacon ‘ [Related Links: Thatcher at IMDB, Bacon at IMDB]

[king] Stephen King — the early years of bitter struggle… ‘Harry had hooks instead of hands as a result of a tumble into the sheet-mangler during the Second World War (he was dusting the beams above the machine and fell off). A comedian at heart, he would sometimes duck into the bathroom and run water from the cold tap over one hook and water from the hot tap over the other. Then he’d sneak up behind you while you were loading laundry and lay the steel hooks on the back of your neck. Rocky and I spent a fair amount of time speculating on how Harry accomplished certain bathroom clean-up activities. ‘Well,’ Rocky said one day while we were drinking our lunch in his car, ‘at least he doesn’t need to wash his hands.”

[rate my blog!!] I’ve tried to resist the temptation, honest — go rate LinkMachineGo…

[fungus in space!!] Space Fungus attacks the Mir Space Station. Life will always find a way… ‘Linenger, author of “Off the Planet,” a book about his experiences on Mir, said that he did not see any evidence that fungi or bacteria on the craft caused health problems. But he added that the station had “a strong smell of fungal contamination” – a smell he called “mushroomy” in his book – and that “there were areas you wouldn’t want to stick your hand in”.’ [via Slashdot]

[mugshots] The G-Files present a Celebrity Mug Shot Gallery… ‘Like anyone else charged with a crime, celebrities must be photographed by police after being arrested, and those images then become a matter of public record.’

[paula yates] nishlord.com pays tribute to the “original pop tart” — Paula Yates. ‘Some of us are born great. Some of us achieve greatness. And others have a pop star’s cock thrust upon them.’ [original link to Nishlord via Notsoft]

[stringfellow] The Guardian interviews Peter Stringfellow. ‘Stringfellow says 60 is a suitable age to take life more seriously, share his wisdom, help William [Hague] become prime minister. “I have all the toys, man. It’s all here. I have a club full of beautiful girls, eat and drink what the hell I want, go where the hell I want, when the hell I want. If there’s a party I just ring up and say I’ll accept. At the Conservative ball two days ago, it was brilliant, chatting to William. Ffion and Lucy get on like a house on fire. It’s a wonderful life I’ve got.”‘

[london] Thora Birch describes “My London” in This is London. ‘What was the last conversation you had with a London cabbie? This guy offered me and my mom some pot (which we politely declined) and then told us what every member of his extended family did for a living.’ [Related Link: Ghost World Movie]

[music] Radiohead are interviewed in The Observer… ”The middle-class thing has never been relevant,’ he spits. ‘We live in Oxford, and in Oxford we’re fucking lower class. The place is full of the most obnoxious, self-indulgent, self-righteous oiks on the fucking planet, and for us to be called middle class… well, no, actually. Be around on May Day when they all reel out of the pubs at five in the morning puking up and going “haw haw haw” and trying to hassle your girlfriend…”

[tv] Danny O’Brien thinks PCs are the new TVs… ‘I haven’t had a television for almost two years now. Believe me, I like television. People who don’t have televisions, I continue to believe, mostly wear bow ties and have children who are home-schooled, go to university at the age of 12 and then run away to live off chestnuts in the forest. I know this. Once I’d stopped slumping in front of the telly when I came home from work and moved into the far more sophisticated habit of slumping in front of a monitor, my viewing hours plummeted.’

[movies] The Observer on “special editions / director’s cuts” of films — includes mentions of The Exorcist and Apocalypse Now… ‘The Apocalypse Now Book, published by Faber this month, contains a detailed description of the five-hour film. The French plantation sequence is the most fully formed and vital omission. For those who have even a casual acquaintance with Apocalypse Now, it comes after the death of Larry Fishburne’s teenage conscript Clean, when the boat commandeered by Willard (Martin Sheen) pulls up to a fog-bound quay which leads to the genteel quarters of a group of colonial French. The US soldiers eat dinner with the French, and Willard shares an opium pipe and bed with a young woman.’

[degrees of seperation] What is Adolf Hitler’s Kevin Bacon Number? 2! ‘Adolf Hitler was in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) with Maximilian Schell. Maximilian Schell was in Telling Lies in America (1997) with Kevin Bacon’ [idea via NTK’s Hitler Filmography… ]

[burchill] Julie Burchill — Conspiracy theories and Paula Yates: ‘Come on down, Muriel, Justine, Jane, Deborah, Yvonne. The byline was different, but the sob remained the same: Paula Yates Died For Our Sins; Paula Yates, Innocent Victim Of A Feeding-Frenzied Media; Tragic Paula, Broken Butterfly On The Wheel Of Misogyny. Paula, We Hardly Knew You! What Are We Doing? What Does It Mean? Where Are We Going? Where Have We Been? What’s It All About, Alfie!’

[comics] The Twilight Gallery — Alan Moore’s epic Twilight of the Superheroes is brought to life as various comics artists take a passage from the proposal and sketch it out… John Totleben: ‘Y’know, when I started doing [the Doll Man sketch] I realized that what Alan was probably after was something like The Fly (the one with Jeff Goldblum). Around the time the Twilight proposal was being conceived, I had a conversation with Alan about that movie. He liked it quite a bit, but was especially amused by the part where Brundlefly was interviewing himself and talking about how he’d like to become an insect-politician. Somehow, I think that must have worked its way into his design for the Doll Man character, either intentionally or subconciously. I just played off of that’ [Related Link: Earlier Post On LMG]

[mp3 gnutella] From the Nullsoft Website: ‘”we didn’t get into this ‘space’ cuz we’re internet gold seeking cockos. we’re legitimate nihilistic media terrorists as history will no doubt canonize us.” -Rob Lord, June 9, 2000′ [via Salon Article On Gnutella]

[metafilter] Great posting on Metafilter: ‘130 Years old! See! God may not exist, but technology will outpace religion and THEN I will live FOREVER!’

[comics] The Onion AV Club interviews Will Eisner. Eisner on the origin of the term “graphic novel”: ‘Yes, that’s a true story. I was sitting there on the telephone talking to this guy, and I said, “I have this new thing for you, something very new.” And he said, “What is it?” And I looked at it and realized that if I said, “A comic book,” he would hang up. He was a very busy guy, and this was a top-level publishing house. So I called it a graphic novel, and he said, “Oh, that’s interesting. Bring it up!” I brought it to him. He looked at it, looked at me over his granny glasses, and said, “You know, it’s still a comic. We can’t publish that kind of stuff.”‘

[manics] Steve Lamacq reports on “the most disturbing” moment in 90’s pop — when Richey Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers cut ‘4 REAL’ into his arm with a razor…. ‘Nottingham Forest were playing and bassist Nicky Wire and singer James Dean Bradfield spent their pre-gig downtime in the hotel bar watching the match on TV. James was wearing a ludicrously long shiny mac. During the 15-minute drive to the venue, he sat at the back of the bus and refused to be drawn into conversation. I remember thinking: “Well, this is a good start. He hates me and I don’t like his coat.”‘

[the originals] In the beginning… there were only three Brit weblogs that I was aware of… Bifurcated Rivets, Barbelith and Daily Doozer… Doozer vanished earlier this year and there was much wailing, gnashing of teeth and pointless hitting of the RELOAD button… until today… Doozer is back… with a new design and name: extenuating circumstances. ‘There’s a few other reasons as well: how could I honestly stand back while the rest of the UK blogger community got their fame on Radio 4 and the Evening Standard? Or when my brother got interviewed by .net magazine? Exactly. Piece of the pie for me now, please. Oooh, and this whole weblogging lark is wonderful.’ Excellent news. Somebody give that man his pie right now….

[music] Ever wondered what was the No. 1 in the UK on the day you were born? Mine was: “The number 1 on the 31st March 1970 was Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon And Garfunkel.” [via Bloglet]

[jack chick] This Was Your Life! Vs. This Is Your Death. [Related Links: Chick Publications, Jack T. Chick Parody Archive]

[random link dump] These links have been sitting around waiting for something to tag them to which never came along: Old Salon interview with Jay McInerney, Slashdot review of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Comics worth Reading and finally, Alan Moore — famous vegetarian!

[sci-fi] Guardian Unlimited interviews Arthur C. Clarke as he promotes his new book… ‘The book, with its vision of a relentlessly voyeuristic society, includes a memorable sex scene on a bench in 2041AD Rome. Who wrote the sex bits, I wonder? “I had an operation for prostate cancer 10 years ago,” Clarke says. “I haven’t the slightest interest in sex. But you have to keep up with reality.”‘

[cartoon] Yet another Steve Bell cartoon — the time regarding yesterday’s Tony Blair sweat meltdown … ‘Boiling down to our irreducible core.’

[art] Disinformation wonders if Jackson Pollock was a stooge of the CIA… ‘Since there was no political content, no theme to the work, in fact, there was often nothing at all but the most self-obsessed swirls in Pollock’s huge canvases, his art was easily commandeered and made a weapon. Stalin could hug as many children and lead as many peasants to the wheat fields in an evil Norman Rockwell universe as he liked, Pollock’s empty confusion spoke to the people of a shattered Europe, the wizards of America’s corporate towers and their brainwashed suburban peasants. Behind the mess and splashes of paint, there was something scary and profound enough to be real.’

[blair] Fantastic “sketch” of Tony Blair’s conference speech yesterday by Simon Hoggart: ‘He began with a ringing battlecry. “We’re crap!” he told the adoring delegates. “Yes, we’re crap, but we’re not as crappy as the other lot!” He didn’t put it quite like that, of course, but that was what he meant. It was that rarest moment, an apology from a politician. The dome, the fuel crisis, pensions, even prime minister’s question time. But he was sorry, God he was sorry. He’d never do it again. Would a bunch of flowers help?’