[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]

[web] Douglas Rushkoff talks about the “social currency” of the media and internet. Social currency is like a good joke. When a bunch of friends sit around and tell jokes, what are they really doing? Entertaining one another? Sure, for a start. But they are also using content – mostly unoriginal content that they’ve heard elsewhere – in order to lubricate a social occasion. And what are most of us doing when we listen to a joke? Trying to memorise it so that we can bring it somewhere else. The joke itself is social currency. Interesting in regards to weblogs — I hope LinkMachineGo provide social currency in the form of interesting/useful links… [via Metafilter]

[ukblogs] Daily Doozer went linkcrazy yesterday…

[music] Yet another “Death of…” story, this time about CD’s and Cassette’s. ‘Although he sees a time when tangible media disappears altogether, he believes it won’t be for a long time yet. “CDs are a collectable item. People want all the artwork and sleeve notes so they can find out just who it was who played guitar on track three!”‘

[lads] newsUnlimited reports on the death of the Lad. “…if [Chris] Evans is no longer deemed fashionable, if a frenzy of blokish bawdy is no longer said to define the moment, what does it mean for the plethora of lads who have swum in his wash? What will become of the pretenders if Evans is no longer reckoned capable of fighting off the attentions of Robot Wars, the show scheduled by BBC2 against his, the programme that exalts the achievements of beardy boffins? Is the news that the actress Amanda Holden has left uber-lad Neil Morrissey to return to her husband, the defiantly unblokeish Les Dennis, a wider indicator of the cultural times?”

[comics] Excellent Sequential Tart interview with Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. “Oh, yeah, why do I hate the Internet. I don’t really hate the Internet. I mean, you’ve got to remember that a lot of people probably see the comments I make on the side in the Preacher letter columns. And, uh, it’s possibly understandable that they take it more seriously than the rest of [what they hear]. I’m sure the Internet is an incredibly useful tool. I’m not likely to use it any time in the immediate future because I don’t have a computer.”

[comics] Great site… The Periodic Table of Comic Books.

[genome] newsUnlimited on biotech bullshit: We are told that the Book of Life is the most complex sequence of letters ever written, though whoever said that never took One Hundred Years of Solitude on holiday.’

[movie] Media Nugget of the Day covers Being There, an amazing film starring Peter Sellers. Highly recommended.

[books] Interesting interview with Alex Garland author of The Beach. Covers the story’s origins as a comic book… . “He had drawn a 60-page comic book, a noir-ish tale based on his experiences in the Far East. He had a go at translating it into a novel. The origins of The Beach, which is written like a sequence of discrete man-on-a-desert-island cartoons, remain apparent. Its comic-book blueprint helps to account for its storytelling pace, and why even in quite horrific and bloody scenes there is a Pulp Fiction element of slapstick.”

[stupidname] Tom at Blue Lines talks about how much he hates his name…. I could rant on about how awful my name is but I won’t…. it speaks for itself…. Fortunately, I went to school with a guy called “Larman Register” who I always think of when somebody takes the piss out of being called S********. You think you’ve got a awful name? Consider the horror of being called Larman! Did his parents hate him or what? I hope for his sake there is a long Norfolk tradition of calling your child Larman…

[comics] Great two part interview of Grant Morrison in Sequential Tart: [Part One] [Part Two] ‘It lets your head expand and it also throws you on your mettle. I always travel on my own and you find yourself in the middle of Bangkok and you think ‘what do I do?’ and that’s a great feeling to have – you solve it and you go about the world feeling fantastic because no-one knows who you are and no ones putting any personality on you – you can swam into any place and say ‘I’m James Bond!” (laughs)’ — GM on travel.

[comics] The New York Times on the problems facing the comics industry. ‘Even the staunchest supporters of comic books say that the industry is facing problems in everything from production to distribution to marketing. There are no hard and fast figures for the industry. Publishers and distributors are secretive about sales. In fact, the only figure that insiders agree upon is the number of comic-book stores. Today, there are fewer than 4,000, down from more than 10,000 during the comic boom in the mid-90’s. “I think people like comics as much as ever, but now it’s very difficult to buy them,” said Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man and an icon in the industry. “There used to be so many places to buy comic books; there used to be a corner store in every city.”‘

[comics] According to Ain’t it Cool News Frank Miller may be teaming up with Darren Aronofosky for the next Batman film. [via Ghost in the Machine]

[minogue] Minogue goes straight to Number 1…. demonstrates the power of PR, magazine covers and lucky, deformed, tiny ears!

[spam] Spamcop… for when your Inbox is full of weird porn sites, crap share deals and bad philosophy.

[reading] Buy this comic: From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Here’s a review from Salon. ‘As ambitious and affecting as anything ever rendered in pictures and word balloons, “From Hell” combines an intricate mystery, insightful social criticism and unflinching brutality capable of unnerving the most desensitized pop audience. It’s publication as a book promises to give it a new lease on life. That’s what happened with Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-Prize winning “Maus,” which was originally published in installments in the arty comic “Raw.” “From Hell” is the only graphic novel since “Maus” to rival its ambition and historical depth.’

[web] Danny O’Brien on time wasting and log watching. ‘I look at the parts of my logs that show users who stumble on my site while searching for pornography (it’s amazing what searching for “hot”, “water”, “Japanese” and a couple of other terms can point you towards); and I don’t have the ability to track down their e-mail addresses, but I do wonder whether they know they have a constant audience for their movements online.’

[midi] Today’s theme is Dueling Banjo’s [from Deliverance]

[allergies] newsUnlimited on Nut Allergies — one in 200 children in Britain are allergic to nuts and the number is growing. Nobody knows why… ‘Even if he eats the most minuscule amount, even if he simply inhales the papery dust that puffs out of tens of thousands of packets of peanuts in pubs up and down the country every day, he may become dangerously ill. First, his lips swell like party balloons, then a rash of knobbly hives flush up over his body; his skin goes blotchy, then he might start wheezing and coughing. His tongue might start swelling, his tubes may become constricted – he may start to suffocate and his blood pressure might plummet. He may collapse, lose consciousness and die.’

[comics] Warren Ellis talks about the best comics you don’t read. ‘Harvey Pekar is as fucked a human as you’ll find, put bluntly. And he’s honest about it.’

[comics] The Washington Post on Marvel’s new range of comics aimed at kids. ‘Ralph Mathieu first got hooked on the Flash when he was 13 and has read comics the 25 years since. Now the owner of Alternate Reality Comics in Las Vegas, he believes that no matter how good comics are, convincing large numbers of kids and teens is an uphill battle. “Sadly, the number of kids who’ll pick reading for entertainment over video games, renting movies, the countless channels television offers, or the Internet, is a very small fraction,” he says. “I also think that today, more then ever, kids and teens regard superhero comics as geeky.’

[link dump] Some tech links: MacOS X Weblog, and two applications I use everyday at work — vnc and Security Explorer.

[film] Media Nugget of the Day covers Dogma. ‘It’s Mall Rats meets Life of Brian meets Up in Smoke, but it’s definitely not for devout Catholics or anyone who likes their humor measured, mature, or sanitized.’

[web] newsUnlimited reports on the-bullet.com’s recent problems. “What advice would they give to other dot.coms? Billam says: ‘The main thing is don’t expect too much from other people and expect everything to take twice as long as you planned. Keep a close eye on what everyone is doing, and if you do trustpeople to do things for you, make sure you have got goals, and assess their progress. Also don’t be afraid to question the experts.'”

[unabomber] Nice article on the Unabomber at Harvard — where he was psychologically tested (to destruction?). “When, soon after, Kaczynski began to worry about the possibility of mind control, he was not giving vent to paranoid delusions. In view of Murray’s experiment, he was not only rational but right. The university and the psychiatric establishment had been willing accomplices in an experiment that had treated human beings as guinea pigs, and had treated them brutally. Here is a powerful logical foundation for Kaczynski’s latterly expressed conviction that academics, in particular scientists, were thoroughly compromised servants of “the system”, employed in the development of techniques for the behavioral control of populations.”

[minogue] The Editor of GQ on Kylie’s bottom. “Kylie, I think, has come out of this rather well, at least as well as GQ. People are talking about her again, stills from her raunchy new video are being used liberally in the tabloids, and Radio 1 have even A-listed her single. So in a way we have been responsible for helping resuscitate the diminutive antipodean’s career. Which is nice.” Three Words: TINY DEFORMED EARS!

[old games] I spent a lot of time playing these gentlemens computer games when I was younger: Jeff Minter and Matthew Smith. Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy were probably my favourite computer games as a child — they are now available for download in PC versions.

[violence] Jeremy Paxman on football violence in This is London. “Perhaps he is as blameless as many of those arrested have claimed. But what seems to have shocked the British authorities is that so many of those accused by the Belgians do not fit the stereotype. “Some of those who have been sent back,” the Home Secretary gulped in a radio interview, “are barristers and engineers.” The shock with which Mr Straw – himself a barrister, as, of course, is our Prime Minister – had received this intelligence was audible in his voice.”

[male struggle!] newsUnlimited reports that a clenched fist is the new image of Old Spice. “Vegas has replaced it with a clenched fist as a mark of resistance against post-feminist man’s weakness for effete eau de Cologne and skin balm. “The fist is also a symbol of men’s struggle to be taken seriously by women,” he said. “I prefer to think of it not as a stopper but as five fingers of angst and frustrated male desire.”

[comics] The Guardian’s Steve Bell on the deaths in Dover. [Earlier BBC News Story]

[film] Deconstructing Harry — Film Threat on Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News. “GRAFT. One tends to question Harry’s credibility due to the volume of gifts and gratuities he receives from both studios and filmmakers. Not only does he admit it, he begs for it! The only words in a story title that will turn me off faster than “Harry’s Adventure In…” would be “WAAAH! ME WANT PWESANTS!!!” Damn, son. Show some dignity.” [via Ghost in the Machine]

[crime] newsUnlimited on Identity Theft. “You, meanwhile, know nothing of this until – several months later – debt collection agencies begin to harass you. Life becomes Kafkaesque. You inform the police – but they can’t see that you are the victim of any crime. The law holds you liable only for the first $50 on the phoney credit cards and nothing on the other bills. The cops can’t get involved with working out who is the real you. There are drug dealers and paedophiles out there. Take it to Mr Visa and Mr AT&T, they say.”