[LMG]LMG RSS Feed 
[Search][Projects]A Moment Of MooreMe and Belle de Jour TimeMachineGo Evening Standard Headline Pictures [UK Bloggers]
London Bloggers [Comic Blogs][Other Blogs] | 31 July 2000
[comics] For sale on eBay…. Neil Gaiman’s Leather Jacket! ‘From 1989 on, it was my leather jacket, worn day in and day out, all over the planet, for the next six years, all through the writing of Sandman. In 1996 I retired it, replaced it with a newer stranger Talanah Gamah and Ieish creation. It’s spent the last four years in a wardrobe, being worn only occasionally. (Recently I had it professionally redyed, so it’s a uniform black.)’ [via Windowseat Weblog]
[photo] There are some amazing pictures on photo.net. ‘There’s something ethereal about this delightful picture’ [via random($foo)]
[comics] Alan Moore interview in The Independent. ‘I was glad to have been forewarned as to his appearance. Draped in black, well over six feet tall, with feral eyes, unfashionably and unfeasibly long hair and beard, and fingers aswarm with silver scorpion rings, Moore looks like the kind of man who might have been thrown out of Black Sabbath for being too weird.’ [via C-Log]
30 July 2000
[media nuggets] Media Nugget of the Day looks at Apple’s Airport and The Simpson’s Archive. ‘Does the world really need a complete list of Bart’s chalkboard openings? Maybe not. But it’s a comfort just to know it’s there.’
[tech] Danny O’Brien profiles Google — possibly the best web search engine around at the moment. “Google’s secret is in being a plain, almost arid-looking search engine driven by a set of abstruse mathematical principles. Its extra selling point is that it actually works. Indeed, its many fans insist that a Google search is better targeted than any other, its unique text-matching technologies yielding a more selective and relevant set of results than the overwhelming deluge many rivals dump on you. And all in two seconds maximum.”
[farmers] The Guardian looks at why the British are so hostile towards farmers. ‘In the same Mail On Sunday that sympathised with Martin, Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote a vigorous attack on all farmers for their “greedy whingeing”. “They are always whining,” he wrote, “and they are always holding their hands out. They expect – and they get – money to grow crops, and money not to grow crops. All in all, the way in which farming is subsidised has become the greatest single affront to British democracy. What makes it worse is the astonishing ingratitude of our farmers”.’
29 July 2000
[ads] Blast from the past — umbongo.com.
[comics] SAVANT Magazine. Warren Ellis recommends it… so it must be good. ‘Never went to San Diego. Have the same feelings about heroin, quite frankly, which I’ve haven’t done either. There’s a little tiny nag to do it once, just once, and never again but deep down inside I’m terrified that one time wouldn’t be enough. Of course, the chances of meeting compulsively masturbating momma’s boys who want to yak my fucking ear off about Aquaman as I try to urinate in peace while in the midst of a grand-mal heroin binge are considerably slimmer.’
28 July 2000
[tech] It’s SysAdmin Appreciation Day! ‘Sysadmins don’t want to be apreciated, we want to be left alone! Now please excuse me while I take these disks to the bulk era….er..bulk virus scanner…’
[men] Blokes, I feel your pain… newsUnlimited covers masculinity in crisis. :) ‘And in the carpark of that pub, alone in a T-registration Ford Capri but for the bitter-sweet, heartrending sound of Phil Collins singing Another Lonely Day in Paradise, I sat down and wept. The song ended and the late news came on. Football supporters run riot in Belgium. Another clash in the House of Commons. Two men arrested on suspicion of multiple murder. Lorry driver causes fatal crash on Ml. Lone man chews gum in high-rise. Men, men, men. Men in trouble. Men at sea. Masculinity in tatters.’
[orgy] Hacker’s orgy — fails because nobody shows up… ‘Only two people showed up, and now the would-be Dionysus is trying to recoup some of his costs by selling the shirts for $15 each. In retrospect, he realizes the orgy was probably a bad idea from its conception. “The idea came out of a conversation on IRC [Internet Relay Chat],” he says. “We were bitching about how hackers never get laid.” Even at an orgy.’ [via Guardian Weblog]
27 July 2000
[bins] Benji The Binman — British newspapers hire an obsessive-compulsive to hunt through the rubbish bins of the rich and powerful. ‘As well as filling the family home with papers, his daily routine involves repeated checks of doors, locks, lights and other possessions. The illness is thought to have started in his early teens after an older brother died in a car crash. Around the age of 14 he became known as the “bag boy”, carrying around half a dozen bags stuffed with papers and books.’
[comics] C-Log — a weblog about comics…
[lists] Five Reasons for LinkMachineGo: 1) Because Sonny Barger is standing next to me. 2) Because little things please me. 3) Because I’m it for the money. 4) Because you can’t envict me from the house. 5) Because I’m a semi-hard cheese with a plastic taste! [thanks to notsosoft]
26 July 2000
[news] BBC News reports that Chinese claim invention of Flush Toilet. ‘The invention of the flush toilet is widely attributed to London plumber Thomas Crapper, who patented a U-bend siphoning system for flushing the pan in the late 19th century, and who also installed toilets for Queen Victoria.’
[comics] Jesus: The Dark Messiah Returns. Fantastic… ‘The water on my head feels like a baptism. Because it is. I’m born again. Again.’
[news of the screws] Metafilter on the Jennicam scandal. ‘Because the World Wide Web is all about two things: horrifyingly stupid psychodrama, and naked chicks.’
25 July 2000
[star wars] Star Dudes: The Bad Dudes Strike Back
[big brother] BBC News Big Brother update… ‘For her part, Sada described Andrew as “the worst type of man”, while softly-spoken Thomas revealed he may have a nine-year-old love child – if two fortune-tellers are to be believed.’
[comics] The New York Times takes a look at Death Row Marv — based on the Sin City comic from Frank Miller. ‘In “Sin City,” before his death sentence is carried out, Marv has the opportunity to kill the cannibalistic sociopath who murdered the woman he loved, a prostitute named Goldie. That gave him a sense of vindication.’ [via Guardian Weblog]
24 July 2000
[more inner turmoil] The alt.angst calendar. Let’s take a look at what the entry for my birthday is: “…most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting moments in our lives, the rest is filler, and at the end of our lives, most of us will be lucky if any of those moments connect together to form a story that anyone would find remotely interesting.” -Douglas Coupland, “Generation X” Hmmm….
[profile] newsUnlimited profiles The Coors. ‘Brother Jim seems more reserved than his sisters. In the words of a recent pop magazine profile, he exudes “the stoical air of a guy used to waiting his turn in the bathroom”.’
[domain-name craziness] How Network Solutions, Inc. made me a child pornographer — everybody with a domain name registered should read this. “Even more disturbing, I have no way of knowing if my name has been attached to other sites featuring objectionable material. Indeed, the only reason I learned of the present situation was because a pervert in Germany was so anxious to obtain kiddie porn that he mailed a letter to a complete stranger 5,000 miles away. That’s scary.” [via Flutterby]
23 July 2000
[profile] The Observer profiles John Peel. “As you might expect, Peel is as laid-back a father as a teenager could wish to not get on with, with mellow views on education (‘I always told them that passing exams and going to university was a good way of getting out of Stowmarket…’)”
[comics] I cannot believe I have not blogged Jack Chick’s website before now. This Was Your Life gives you a taste of Jack’s special magic… “Your life will be played back at the judgment. Will your name be in the Book of Life? This title is a worldwide favorite, with over 60 million sold in 65 languages!” Here’s Jack’s catalog of comics…
[inner turmoil] Loads of depressing reading at the alt.angst archive… “Angst: Discovering that the background music of your life is not sweeping strings & stirring brass; but a roomful of old men, in golf clothes, continuously playing one-note pants tubas.” [Does anybody know what “one-note pants tubas” actually are?]
22 July 2000
[news of the screws] The National Post reports on the scandal at Jennicam. ‘But today, far from being a window into the life of an ordinary young woman, JenniCam (six cameras situated around her home) provides a glimpse into a slacker’s nirvana. With seemingly no means of support besides webcam revenue, Jenni, 24, whiles away her days in her spacious well- appointed surroundings playing computer games and, quite frequently, masturbating. Last Saturday morning, visitors to the site had the treat of watching Jenni and Dex make love. Her very public betrayal of her close friend, however, has prompted many formerly devoted viewers to vow never to give her another penny. Courtney, since discharged, remains in shock. In a recent journal posting, she laments: “How am I supposed to compete with ‘Jennicam?’ She’s funny, she’s gorgeous, she’s got better furniture. This really, really sucks.”‘
[comics] A review of the latest Preacher collection — All Hell’s a-Coming. ‘The characters continue to be chipped away at: Custer lost his eye in the previous volume, having it sucked out of its socket by God. We lose pretty much all the sympathy we had for Cassidy, and Starr, the most powerful man in the world, having lost not only an eye, all his hair and a leg, now loses his genitals to an attack dog. “My cock is in the bitch’s mouth,” he says, “and not in a good way.”‘
[illness] newsUnlimited profiles Malaria. ‘Malaria, or rather P. falciparum , which infects both humans and mosquitoes, is such a fearsome adversary partly because of its protean life-cycle, which makes it seem like some mythical beast. The “thing” in the movie Alien shocked audiences when it burst out of its original pod in one form and then destroyed poor John Hurt’s stomach when incarnated in another. This Plasmodium goes through no fewer than five such transformations in its brief life.’
21 July 2000
[pop] Hours of fun with Perpetual Bubblewrap… [requires Flash]
[film] newsUnlimited reviews High Fidelity. “All the way through the film, from the opening titles to closing credits, there is a passionate, encyclopaedic love of music, combined with a disconcerting sense that this love is a kind of autism or arrested development, a symptom of some poignant deprivation of real love.”
20 July 2000
[comics] The Dave Sim Memorial Note From The President Archive — a collection of writings from the creator of Cerebus. Sim on Superman: “Superman, as originally conceived, as a force for the common man, as an answer to the mindless tyranny with which his name (as a term) had come to be identified, as a foe of corruption and injustice, as the embodiment of FDR-style liberalism and the epitome of the notion that one individual can, should and must, of necessity, make a difference; in all this Superman … Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman… the only true Superman… stands as a beacon of freedom shining as brightly for an adult who holds the ideals of the character sacred as he does for a child seeing him and learning them for the first time. As a symbol of the nearly limitless power of imagination, he has inspired creators for five decades to take up pen and brush in pursuit of excellence, to weave our tapestry once more. To aspire; that one day we might know a tenth… a hundredth of the greatness implied in knowing you are Jerry Siegel. You are Joe Shuster. You are the creators of Superman. And that no monumental and tragic injustice can strip you of that mantle. As comic book creators, this is our greatest heritage… and our greatest debt.” [via Come in Alone]
 [film] UpcomingMovies.com covers Ghost World. ‘Clowes said the film is about, “the lives of two recent high school graduates from the advantaged perch of a constant and (mostly) undetectable eavesdropper, with the shaky detachment of a scientist who has grown fond of the prize microbes in his petri dish.”‘
[weatherman] Bill Giles reviews the Perfect Storm. ‘I thought the actor who played the weatherman was lightweight. The forecaster didn’t get as excited as most broadcasting weather forecasters would do if they saw this once-in-100-years storm coming along. He just sat there. For most of us, our eyes would of have gone glazed and we would have got up and started screaming “I want more time” before broadcasting”.’
19 July 2000
[movies] What it says on the tin — Soup goes to the Movies. ‘In a comically wrenching scene, Ewan McGregor plays Mark “Rent-boy” Renton, preparing to detox himself of his heroin addiction: “Relinquishing junk. Stage one, preparation. for this you will need one room which you will not leave. Soothing music. Tomato soup, ten tins of. Mushroom soup, eight tins of, for consumption cold. Ice cream, vanilla, one large tub of. Magnesia, milk of, one bottle. Paracetamol, mouthwash, vitamins. Mineral water, Lucozade, pornography. One mattress. One bucket for urine, one for feces and one for vomitus. One television and one bottle of Valium. Which I’ve already procured from my mother. Who is, in her own domestic and socially acceptable way also a drug addict. And now I’m ready. All I need is one final hit to soothe the pain while the Valium takes effect.”‘
[children] A father talks about his daughter’s reaction to the muder of Sarah Payne. ‘When I arrive home my daughter has more news about Sarah. “She’s dead,” she says. “It’s really sad isn’t it Daddy?” she says. Yes, I say, it’s horrible, and prepare for one of those painful conversations about why anyone could do this. But she walks off. A couple of minutes later she calls me back. “Daddy, have you seen the fairy house I made?” she asks.’
[games] ClassicGaming.com’s Games of the Week Index. Hours and hours of fun. My favourite? Probably Arkanoid or maybe Marble Madness.
18 July 2000
[comics] Frank Miller is apparently going to do a comic book about the life of Jesus. Can you imagine it? [via The Warren Ellis Forum]
[bridge] Somebody call in Howard Roark — newsUnlimited talks about the emotional design of the millennium bridge. ‘At one stage, the architects successfully re-submitted some rejected drawings by making the sky bluer and the bridge users younger. “What Nor man absolutely correctly judged,” says Fitzpatrick, slipping easily into a public relations abstraction, “was generating the sense of wonderment”‘.
17 July 2000
[cheese] Check out The Online Cheese Comparator. Mine is Port Salud — “A semi-hard cheese, produced in Entrammes in North West France. Port Salut has a plastic texture, a cream colour, and a mild taste. It is matured for around 4 weeks.” [via Yungee]
[comics] I Just Type points out that I maybe wrong about Stan Lee and that the X-Men movie had a good opening weekend….
[true] Life is always stranger than fiction… the true story of a runaway princess, an american marine and the US Media… ‘Colbert adds: “no matter what the ending, it’s still a movie.” So is it being cast already? Aloe thought Brad Pitt was “a bit too laid back… Jason is a real John Wayne character, a young Steve McQueen all-American renegade, completely without fear.” Freddy Prinze Jr has already been suggested and Aloe says they want at least one big star, probably male. For the princess, Selma Hayek has already been mentioned and Aloe reckons that Shannon Elizabeth from American Pie would be ideal.’
16 July 2000
[weblogs] Excellent weblog: Follow Me Here. “‘You can only tell the shapes of things by looking at their edges…’ Some weblogs are about weblogs and weblogging; others about the web and computing; my kind is still about the world. Follow me to some of its “sharp edges” as found on the web. “
[photos] Hunter S. Thompson and Grant Morrison— Seperated at birth?
[aliens] The Observer on the search for alien life in space. “On other worlds, it has remained rooted at the level of amoebas, microbes, and primitive pond life. All aliens are scum, in other words – an observation with crucial implications. As UK astronomer Ian Crawford points out in the latest issue of Scientific American , we may be ‘the most advanced life-forms in the galaxy’.”.
15 July 2000
[weblogs] Every wondered what the word Barbelith means? Grant Morrison: “The word ‘BARBELiTH’ is derived from a dream I had when I was about 20 or 21 and coincided with my first structured ‘magical’ experiences and a minor nervous breakdown (in the dream, BARBELiTH was the name of some higher dimension or alternate reality). Like a lot of stuff in INVISIBLES I used the name unconsciously when I needed something to call the red circle that represents our Universe’s placental twin. I’d taken the etymology as far as ‘bearded stone’, which seems much less interesting and less weirdly appropriate than ‘alien stone’. My real life is getting more like the comic every day (in ways I should have suspected but didn’t really expect on this scale). There’s more on the red circle and its many meanings in DOOM PATROL #54, I just realised. That issue was written in near-trance so fuck only knows what’s been trying to get through all these years.”
[web] Zdnet on Ego-Surfing. ‘[..]Fouts says ego surfing is about more than the need for recognition. “I don’t have any real desire to be in the public eye,” he says. “It lets me know how accessible I am to the world. It’s nice to know that some random person from my past could find me.”‘
[comics] Yet another interview with Warren Ellis… “I suspect that, to successfully write superhero books through your thirties and forties, you either have to have genuine brain damage — Grant Morrison and Alan Moore come to mind — or be genuinely infantile. Grant and Alan and a bunch of others write great superhero comics because they are mad and that sick energy infuses the work. Too many others look more and more to me like confused, ageing writers-become-hacks making a vampiric living off the young. I’d rather not end up as the comics version of Art Linkletter. Or Krusty The Klown.”
14 July 2000
[cams] newsUnlimited on Being Caprice. “It made me think, also, strangely, of Mrs Thatcher. In the mid-80s, Mrs Thatcher was interviewed by Russell Harty for a seemingly anodyne series called My Favourite Things. Mrs Thatcher’s favourite things included Bovril toast and, pride of place on her mantelpiece, a porcelain depiction of the recapture of the Falkland Islands by Royal Marines. I firmly believe her downfall can, in part, be attributed to this creepy revelation.”
[comics] The wisdom of Preacher… “I mean look at me: My head looks like a penis, I’ve got one leg, one ear, one eye, and my cock’s been replaced with a rubber tube.”
13 July 2000
[some random blog] I read somewhere that a smelly dot company swaps embarrassing stories with a taxi ride from a cokehead. I was thinking that when the scooby snack loves, the herbal remedy leaves. I read somewhere that the mobile phone seldom buys an new techy toy from a radioactive screensaver. An impromptu mouse gets RSI, and an umbrella about the internet magazine redesigns. But, the outer microprocessor blogs with some lover. An unstable domain remembers a domain inside some uber-geek, and a domain around some weblog works for a fuck-buddy. Oh, and hey, check out notsosoft sometime. You might like it.
[cows] Fling Cows into Crop Circles! Woo-Hoo!
[vicars] The case of the missing Vicar. ‘Late last week, another churchwarden at St Paul’s, Captain Ian Powe, was arrested in connection with the allegations of harassment against Follett. Powe, who commanded HMS Yarmouth during the cod war, was released on bail and will have to return to Belgravia police station on August 8. He has vigorously protested his innocence. “I used to have an expression that worse things happen at sea,” Powe said earlier this week. “I’m not using it any more.”.’
[photo] Great Photo of Stanley Kubrick on the set of 2001. “My God. It’s full of stars.”
12 July 2000
[comics] I’m trying to avoid the X-Men but Salon profiles Stan Lee and manages to mention Jack Kirby. It quite literally amazes me that the media still believe the myth that Lee created most of the Marvel characters. Lee was just the editor of those comics. “Jack Kirby returned to the company that year and, lore has it, found Lee sobbing while movers took the furniture out of Marvel’s offices.” [via Slashdot]
|
