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5 October 2001
[movies] Another one from Colin’s Movie Monologue Page

Dr. Evil’s Secrets: ‘Okay. I have a vestigial tail. It’s more of a nub, really. The spine just goes on a little longer than it should. Also, I’ve dabbled. I mean, perform fellatio once and you’re a poet, twice and you’re a homosexual. I remember once I was being fisted by Sebastian Cabot- but here’s where the story gets interesting…’ [More]

[profile] Big Mouth Strikes Again — profile / interview with Bob Geldof … ‘Of wise words and passionate topical convictions, he’s got a tidal wave. “…this ferocious death cult called the Taliban, who have no real theology, whose every action is anti-life, including a denial of life to all women, and a shadowed half-life to all men, who can’t display their faces. These people are like having the Ku-Klux-Klan running the country. And I don’t want them in this world…” It’s nice to have the Any Questions? Bob back ? arguing with Ann Widdecombe, haranguing governments about Third World debt and starving refugees (“It’s an intellectual absurdity that people die of want in a world of surplus”), always looking to stir things up.’
[comment] Robert Anton Wilson on The War Against Some Terrorists‘Just as the War Against Drugs would make some kind of sense if they honestly called it a War Against Some Drugs, I regard Dubya’s current Kampf as a War Against Some Terrorists. I may remain wed to that horrid heresy until he bombs CIA headquarters in Langtry.’ [via Fark]
4 October 2001
[movies] Colin’s Movie Monologue Page — Some very amusing quotes… [via Haddock]

Dr. Evil’s Childhood: ‘Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we’d make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian woman named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it’s breathtaking, I suggest you try it.’

[politics] Steve Bell in Brighton — Tuesday and Wednesday‘Blair sweeps in, looking serious, determined, resolved and orange. It’s been niggling in the back of my mind as to why everybody on stage at this conference seems to be orange. It must be a combination of the lighting effects and the backdrop. Or perhaps they’ve all been inoculated against chemical attack with Sunny Delight.’ [Related: Archive of Steve Bell Cartoons]
3 October 2001
[politics] Full Text of Tony Blair’s Conference Speech [Part 1 | Part 2]

‘Just two weeks ago, in New York, after the church service I met some of the families of the British victims. It was in many ways a very British occasion. Tea and biscuits. It was raining outside. Around the edge of the room, strangers making small talk, trying to be normal people in an abnormal situation. And as you crossed the room, you felt the longing and sadness; hands clutching photos of sons and daughters, wives and husbands; imploring you to believe them when they said there was still an outside chance of their loved ones being found alive, when you knew in truth that all hope was gone. And then a middle-aged mother looks you in the eyes and tells you her only son has died, and asks you: why? I tell you: you do not feel like the most powerful person in the country at times like that. Because there is no answer. There is no justification for their pain. Their son did nothing wrong. The woman, seven months pregnant, whose child will never know its father, did nothing wrong. They don’t want revenge. They want something better in memory of their loved ones.’

[comics] Will Superheroes Meet Their Doom? … Time on what happens to the mainstream comic book industry after 9-11. ‘…publishers Marvel and DC may feel the impact most of all. They are both located in New York, but that’s not the reason why. They both specialize in a kind of entertainment, superhero books, that suddenly seems off-key. Who can now abide the fantasy of an evil madman’s nefarious plot to kill thousands of people being foiled by a muscle-bound troglodyte?’ [via Comic Geek]
[politics] Field-marshal Blair rallies the troops for war – on socialism … Simon Hoggart on Blair’s Conference Speech. ‘Throughout this conference, Mr Blair has scarcely shown his face on the platform. Instead we are allowed to imagine him in the ops room, or at least the Metropole hotel, with an open scrambler to George Bush, dispatching ships, planes, tanks and men to the most hostile terrain on the planet. Or possibly watching This Morning with Twiggy. Not that it matters. There are times when leadership means staying out of the way.’
[distraction] Could You? — Amusing spoof on recent UK Police TV Ads. [via Wanderers Weblog]
2 October 2001
[politics] Steve Bell in Brighton … Britain’s finest political cartoonist visits the Labour Party Conference. ‘To Brighton, storm-lashed and ready for war. It’s also where I live, so, as a ratepayer paying for this steel-ringed, machine gun-equipped securityfest, I am already irate.’ [Related: Archive of Steve Bell Cartoons]
[comics] Tintin’s Nazi Spin — review of Tintin: The Complete Companion by Michael Farr. On Hergé’s war years: ‘…even Farr struggles to offer a positive explanation for The Shooting Star, written in 1941, about a European expedition to recover a meteorite from Arctic waters. In the wartime version of the adventure the rival expedition is American and funded by a sinister Jewish financier called Blumenstein. In later editions the financier was changed to Bohlwinkel and the country to Sao Rico, but the unmistakably anti-Semitic caricature remained.’
1 October 2001
[comics] David Hayter and The Watchmen Movie [Link #1 | Link #2] … A Watchmen film looks more like a possibility… maybe. ‘The mood of Hollywood execs right now is to go on “retreats” so basically all these suits are at these spa retreats, hanging out and discussing how they’re going to be dealing with all of this. According to Hayter what appears to be happening is that a lot of feel-good romances and comedies are getting optioned right now as a direct result so in two years we’ll be seeing a massive wave of these happy films at a time when the US will very likely be fighting. He went on to compare this intensity in mood to the 70s and the Vietnam war where some incredibly dark and gritty movies were made, the good thing from this tragedy, if it can be called as such, is that we may see some amazing new things out of Hollywood in a few more years reflective of the country’s mood.’ [via I Love Everything]
[books] Adrian Mole — Monday, September 24‘I heard with alarm today that, due to the coming “Crusade” or “Infinite Justice” or “The Conflict” or “World War Three”, David Blunkett has warned that my civil liberties may be restricted in the future, and that I may have to carry an identity card with me at all times. Since I am constantly losing my Sainsbury’s Reward Card, the future looks dim for me. ‘
[comics] A couple of preview images and some PR for Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Strikes Again‘The Dark Knight returns once again – trimmer, more streamlined, and with a vitality that hasn’t been seen since the first years of his war on crime. Together with his army of Bat-soldiers, including Carrie Kelley – formerly Robin, and now the new Catgirl – the Dark Knight wages a new war on a diseased world that’s become completely lost. But to fight this war successfully, he must first return to being the World’s Greatest Detective and discover what has become of his former allies who were once the World’s Greatest Heroes.’
30 September 2001
[film] McQueen’s Race with the Devil — extract from a new biography of Steve McQueen … On filming Le Mans: ‘[The Paparazzi] could gauge the film’s mood by the film-makers’ own physical disintegration. Relyea’s co-producer Jack Reddish was on his way to losing 20lb and breaking out in sores. John Sturges’s remaining hair went white. Then the studio stepped in. “They took the view that we, Solar [McQueen’s production company], were now fighting among ourselves and obviously needed disciplining.” Then Sturges threw in the towel. Neile remembers his actual and classic words were: “I’m too old and too rich to put up with this shit.”‘
27 September 2001
[comics] Tragedy Hits America — Jack Chick on 9-11. ‘…here is a word of caution….politicians are trying to hold this whole mess together by creating some kind of all encompassing, universal “god”, composed of all kinds of “gods”, that doesn’t offend anybody including the Muslim god “Allah”. The Bible says there is only one true God, who did have a Son and that Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the answer for the needs of every human being. Our God is a jealous God and will share His glory with none other’ [via Fark]
[9-11] Ground Zero’s vital crumbs of comfort — Stephen Jay Gould in NYC … ‘Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the “ordinary” efforts of a vast majority.’
[comment] America’s day of terror [transcript | Audio] … Alastair Cooke on 9-11. ‘I turned on a 24-hour news station and saw a kind of movie I detest of the towering inferno type. The roaring image of a monolith collapsing like a concertina in a vast plume of smoke. And just as I pressed my thumb to switch to the “real world” I caught the familiar voice of a news man and was in the appalling real world of Tuesday 11 September 2001 – a date which to Americans will live in infamy along with the memories of Pearl Harbour – December 7, 1941 – and the grievous day of President Kennedy’s assignation. Before nightfall a famous old United States senator was to call it “the most tragic day in American history” and by that time, numb from the apocalyptic images, no historian was going to question the senator’s definition by bringing up, say, the Civil War and a million dead. But in our time – in my time certainly – the most startling, awful morning I can remember.’
26 September 2001
[blogs] Blogorama — excellent links and comments on 9-11. ‘I am beginning to think that the west’s greatest armaments – gyms, lapdancing and general decadence – may be of limited use in the coming conflict.’
[background] Why We Need Conspiracy Theories — from BBC News … ‘According to Psychology Professor Cary Cooper we are trying to stave off fear of random violence and unpredictable death. “They do that because they can’t come to terms with the fact that it could be just a few people,” said Professor Cooper, who lectures at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. “If you think it’s a rogue person or an unsophisticated group you start worrying about your daily life. If this can happen, what sense of security can you have?” We create alternate realities because we reject the world where a single madman can bring down a president, a reckless driver can snuff out a princess… and a few men with knives can terrorise a country.’
[profile] The Best of all Worlds — A Telegraph profile-interview on George Best … ‘In 1997 Best set up a business importing bottles of wine with his name and picture on the labels. As one of his partners noted, “It was like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank.”‘
Holy Fucking Shit. Attack on America.[9-11] American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie — the Onion’s take on 9-11. ‘When the president finally appeared on TV, it was George W. Bush addressing the nation, not Bill Pullman or Harrison Ford. At the conclusion of his address, Bush did not grab a leggy blonde reporter out of the crowd and kiss her. When Americans finally staggered into the streets, desperate to talk to anyone to try to make sense of what they had just seen, there were no Attack On America collector cups waiting for them at Taco Bell. The dead and injured did not, like Jon Voight, stand up in their wheelchairs as the music swelled. And Ben Affleck was nowhere to be seen.’
25 September 2001
[character] Portrait Of The Terrorist As A Young Man … The Guardian on Osama Bin Laden’s early years. ‘Yet of the young Osama there is almost nothing. Repeatedly, Saudi sources are cited describing him as “normal”, “unexceptional”, “quiet”, “intense”. Three years ago, the staff of one American magazine clearly struggled to dream up a subhead for the section of a Bin Laden profile dealing with his youth, but ended up inadvertently crystallising the state of our knowledge in six words. They were: “Ordinary young man – then joined jihad.”‘ [Related: Bin Laden Family Portrait, Steve Bell on Bin Laden]
19 September 2001
[lmg] I’m off to Italy for a few days so LinkMachineGo won’t be updated until sometime next week.
[distractions] Slime Volleyball — Yet another irritatingly hard flash game … From the Slime Forum: ‘I took a handful of anti-histimines and a half a bottle of wine last night. I love the little tail the ball has when you’re stoned. Psycho slime is beautiful.’ [via Tajmahal]
[rude] Roger’s Profanisaurus — Profanity in the UK! ‘Roger’s Profanisaurus By Roger Mellie. Edited by William H. Bollocks. Research by Ribena de Farquar-Toss. Fulchester University Press, Anus House, Fulchester, England.’
18 September 2001
[comment] Fear and Loathing — Martin Amis on 9-11 … ‘It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty: that was the defining moment. Until then, America thought she was witnessing nothing more serious than the worst aviation disaster in history; now she had a sense of the fantastic vehemence ranged against her. I have never seen a generically familiar object so transformed by effect. That second plane looked eagerly alive, and galvanised with malice, and wholly alien. For those thousands in the south tower, the second plane meant the end of everything. For us, its glint was the worldflash of a coming future.’
[books] Bare Faced Messiah — an excellent out-of-print biography of L. Ron Hubbard complete on-line… ‘The glorification of “Ron”, superman and saviour, required a cavalier disregard for facts: thus it is that every biography of Hubbard published by the church is interwoven with lies, half-truths and ludicrous embellishments. The wondrous irony of this deception is that the true story of L. Ron Hubbard is much more bizarre, much more improbable, than any of the lies.’
17 September 2001
[distraction] Turret ‘a’ Phone… another classic distraction. ‘shit wank toss minge fuck arse knob scrotes shit flange spunk flaps piss’