[tv] What will happen to The Philisophical Car Lot if Frank Butcher leaves Eastenders? “G-g-g-g-go!!“

[film] Slashdot discusses Bladerunner. “How can slashdot embolden its readers on the one hand to boycott the movie industry because of DVD and DeCSS, and, on the other hand, encourage us to purchase the Blade Runner DVD? “

[film] Ridley Scott answers a freqeuntly asked question about his film Blade Runner — Is Deckard a Replicant?. ‘In Channel 4’s documentary On The Edge Of Blade Runner, Scott discusses the scenes and asked what they mean, he confirms with a grin: “He’s a replicant”‘.

[prostitution] Prostitutes Phone Cards and Pokémon — getting blogged everywhere. Pig Inc: “By the way, I’ve got the ‘Cindy Crawford’ transexual model card if anyone wants to swap. Very rare, posted in the Bayswater area only. Mint condition.”

[comics] Ramblings 2000 the comic book industry news and rumours column is dead. Rich Johnstone’s column has moved to Next Planet Over…“WELCOME, SWINE. Hello, my name’s Rich Johnston, and I’ve sold out.”

[net] Danny O’Brien on mailing lists and trolling. “Our new member says he has friends in high places and we should all tread carefully. He says he’s a journalist, and he’ll be calling the tabloids with stories about the other subscribers. He phones the list organiser and hangs up in midcall. He reports subscribers to their ISP’s abuse desks. He threatens another with a libel case. He hurts, too: one man who used the companionship of the list to help with a deep personal crisis unsubscribes in anger at the abuse the troll is spreading; a teenager gets scared he will call the police. He does a search on another subscriber, finds out he’s gay and hurls abuse at him. “

[music] I have just seen Robbie Williams’ new video and I am feeling… disturbed. It’s not nice. But then again just about anything can disturb me at 2:30 in the morning… Here’s a BBC news report. “The video for Williams’ new single Rock DJ sees him apparently tearing chunks of skin and muscle from his body and throwing them to female onlookers to eat.”

[old school web] I used to visit these two sites frequently way back in the old days of the web. Check out Maggie Donea’s Moments and Justin Hall’s Links from the Underground…

[comics] Warren Ellis discusses if corporate-owned comic icons like Batman should be “saved”. ‘Superheroes are ultimately difficult to take seriously. And a mass audience wants, on some level, to take its mass-market violent action entertainment with a degree of seriousness. And what we’re talking about here is a virgin who can run up walls after being bitten by a nuked spider and a bald rich single old man who lives in a big remote house with his leather-clad “students.”‘

[tory] newsUnlimited takes a look at William Hague ‘It was my first Conservative dinner, and it was a shock. The Party is old; most of the dinner guests were in their 70s. It was hard to believe that this Britain bouffant hair-dos, portly, uniformed chauffeurs, crinoline ball-gowns and floral prints still existed; Planet Tory. It was like stepping back into the 50s. One thing was sure, these people would not be knocking door to door at election time. At one table at the back was a small clique of young men from Glasgow University’s Conservative Society. They are strangely awkward, arrogant, odd-looking, dressed in clothes borrowed from their grandparents; young Williams revisited 20 years later.’

[news] newsUnlimited on runaway teenage prodigy Sufiah Yusof. ‘In the same email she told her side of the story, accusing her father of ruining his five children’s lives by hothousing them, of exploiting her older brother’s tennis skills for money, of labelling her “Crybaby Soo-Fi” as part of his motivation technique. Worst of all, she said that when she was 11, two years before she started her maths degree at Oxford University and when everything was apparently fine, she had twice tried to kill herself. “Maybe the public will have a different view of you as devoted parents . . . I’m not Crybaby Soo-Fi any more”.’

[Buy This Comic] One of the finest mainstream comics ever published. I love this comic, I hate this comic… Batman: Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. [Review] “This should be agony. I should be a mass of aching muscles… broken, spent, unable to move… and, were I an older man, I surely would… but I’m a man of thirty… of twenty again… The rain on my chest is a baptism… I am born again.”

[weblogs] It’s not everyday I get a email from a fictional character…. but Dark Currents is different…. Recommended. “I’m Random Person sometimes I’m known as Sam Hedgblot and I’m nearly 18. I’m dead. Surprisingly I’m still able to type.”

[personal shite] Well it looks like I’ll be working for BBC Technology Ltd, well probably: “Ms Salmon said around 200 job losses, predominantly in London and Manchester, are expected in the near future, and added that there could be some other impact on jobs over time. “

[tv] Burnside: “You are nicked, you slag!”. newsUnlimited covers the programme… ‘Now, with six post-watershed hours of his own to play with at last, Burnside begins as he means to go on. Five minutes into the first episode and we’ve been treated to a couple of “shits” and a “wanker” – words you’d never hear from his colleagues at Sun Hill. And the bodycount has gone through the roof. No longer fighting The Bill’s unglamorous war against shoplifting single parents and domestic violence, Burnside now faces Uzi-wielding Yardies, international gun-runners and warped serial killers. “Dark and adult”, is how the show’s producer Jamie Nuttgens describes it all. “The Bill has faced some criticism in the past but with Burnside we’ve pulled out all the stops”.’

[mobiles] The New York Times reports on Text War in the Philippines. ‘Muslim insurgents battling Philippine troops in the south have a new weapon. When the shelling and gunfire let up, they send a barrage of scathing insults to Manila’s forces by cell phone. “There is a text war among the MILF and our forces,” said Brig. Gen. Eliseo Rio Jr., referring to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of two rebel groups fighting for an independent state. “Our soldiers are texting insults to the MILF. And the MILF are sending the insults back.”‘ [via Slashdot]

[bbc] Is the BBC doing to well in New Media? “It is not hard to see why privately funded internet publishers are afraid of the BBC moving into their patch. While the start-ups struggle to raise finance and discover the so-far elusive revenue streams, the BBC has no such concerns. BBC Online’s £32m budget last year came from the licence fee, and the site does not carry advertising or sponsorship.”

[sport] newsUnlimited on John McEnroe’s coverage of Wimbledon for the BBC. ‘McEnroe, like his fellow New Yorker Woody Allen, is a master of deconstruction: he provides a narrative and then unpicks it. “Can Henman ever win?” Inverdale enquired innocently. “Sure, when Sampras is no longer around; he’ll have to slow down at some point – maybe in 2015 or something.” He cannot be serious: well he is and he isn’t, which is perfect for the hall-of-mirrors world of sport. Check out Prolific 2000 for a different view…

[weblogs] Riothero in London: Check out — Riothero, Vance, Tom and Katy’s weblogs… for the full story. There must be a collective term for a bunch of weblogs that all describe the same meeting or event… hmmm… a blogout or blogfest… no… Blogparty!

[weblogs] Pearls asks: Who is the most repulsive woman in rock? “One of the great mysteries of the world is how Celine Dion manages to sing so loudly with that emaciated frame of hers. Now that same brittle vessel is carrying the seed of her 90-thousand-year-old manager/husband.”

[america] newsUnlimited reports on how the US sees the British. “With other recent films from U-571 through to Saving Private Ryan, history is being polished or even rewritten about the various conflicts involving the US. In this respect, it is all a bit like Britain in the 50s when Kenneth More or John Mills were always sorting out the Nazis and departing fighter pilots told little boys to look after the womenfolk.”

[books] Have I ever said how much I like James Ellroy books?

[murder] BBC News reports that murder suspect put plan to kill wife on Psion palmtop. ‘Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw told the jury at Inner London Crown Court Mr Debruin wrote what looked like a macabre checklist for the killing on his Psion organiser which read: “Rubber gloves. Throat. Take telephone off hook. Purse out with contents spread about.”‘

[sealand] More on Sealand…. Wired looks at the company attempting to use Sealand as a secure off-shore data host and Slashdot interviews the chief technology officer managing the project.

[books] Quick interview with the great Scottish author Iain M. Banks. “Though it also strikes me that the Culture would only work with people who are nicer than us – less bigoted, less prone to violence and genocide. We don’t know to what extent aggression is necessary to achieve sentience, consciousness, space travel, a genuinely stable civilisation. We don’t know if we’re a particularly violent species or a relatively mild one – in which case you’d better hope we haven’t been discovered yet.”

[norfolk] Nothing interesting ever happens in Norfolk. “The women then began to strip off to distract them further, and the men escaped to their faded red Ford Granada, before trying to run the villagers down. One villager smashed a window of the car, and the raiders fled before the police arrived.”

[web] The Sunday Times goes Around the World in Eighty Clicks…

[film] newsUnlimited profiles John Cusack ‘”It’s something we, guys, have all done. Made tapes for girls, trying to impress them, to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else’s poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it, because you’re too awkward to do it. It seemed to me that Nick just nailed how men’s minds work when we’re trying to sort out what we do with women. And, of course, it’s funny.” It’s not about anything very much, except what’s going on in the characters’ minds. There’s no great plot, not a lot of narrative. But then, as he says, “There are lots of people who don’t have extraordinary things happen to them and who still live quite intense lives.”‘

[comics] Buy this comic: Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks. Here’s a review…

[ali g] Ali G Interactive Rapper [Requires Sound Card and Flash]