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21 September 2000
[tech] Was the real winner of Big Brother Real Media? ‘The extent of the Big Brother achievement should not be under-rated. Not only did it prove video streaming could reach a massive market, it was also a technologically smooth ride. Most of the people who signed up for the Big Brother RealPlayers were novices to the Net, yet the first job they had to do was download and install an intricate piece of software, something that even baffles experts from time to time.’ [via Yungee]
[comics] Alan Moore and Dave Sim discuss Life, Magic, Religion, Comics and pretty much everything in between… [Click the four links for different parts of the conversation] ‘As so, too, From Hell: the Whitechapel murders took place over a finite period of time and claimed a finite number of victims. Looked at in terms of the area of information covered, this appears at first glance to be a containable task with clearly defined limits. The problem is all in the surface detail. As more detail becomes apparent with closer and closer examination, so too does the “surface” of the narrative become more crinkly, prickly, and fractal. The perimeter of the story starts to extend towards infinity.’ [ Related Link: The Alan Moore Magic Site]
20 September 2000
[comics] Fantagraphics presents a Ghost World Gallery. ‘Fuck you bitch… THIS IS MY HAPPENING AND IT FREAKS ME OUT!!’ [ Related Links: Dan Clowes]
[big brother] BBC News looks at whats next for the Big Brother competitors. On Darren: ‘He spent a good deal of his time in the Big Brother house looking after the often poorly chickens, including Marjorie – his favourite. Speculation that he will soon be back on TV screens as frontman to an advertising campaign for instant chicken sauce Chicken Tonight – for a six-figure sum – should come as no surprise.’
[cringely] Robert X. Cringely answers questions on Slashdot. Cringely on the origin of Cringely: ‘Cringely came to be as a guy on the masthead who could be blamed for fuck-ups. The idea was he’d be fired from time to time then reinstated when the advertiser (it was always an advertiser) had cooled down. He could never come to the phone because he was the Field Editor — always out in the field.’ [ Related Links: I, Cringely, Accidental Empires at Amazon]
[film] Guardian Unlimited talks to Quentin Tarantino about his current obssesion with Roy Rogers and Trigger. ‘Nowadays, Roy Rogers seems almost too good. I find myself being moved by his common decency. Life’s events and other people’s actions have no effect on him and his heart. He didn’t save Trigger to become a bitter man; he did it because it was what he had to do. His code is his code. The whole world can change, and it doesn’t change his code.’
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19 September 2000
[net] Guardian Unlimited covers the paratrooper who was sacked for looking at too many dull websites. ‘Jim was dismissed by his employers for excessive use of the internet when he was supposed to be working. Our best point is that Jim, unlike I suspect most bored surfers, was not looking at hotchicks.com or pussytown.com or any other sort of porn. Jim was looking at some very dull stuff. I’ve seen the logs. Jim spent over an hour looking at avocado recipes on one occasion. At other times he conducted searches on: his mother’s maiden name, various cricket players [and] verrucas.’
[comics] Warren Ellis interviews Mark Waid. “Look, I’ve said this before: you can make fun of my less-than-lofty goals all you like, but from the time I was 17, writing Superman – or, more accurately, being able to give back to someone who, fictional or not, quite literally saved my suicidal young life – was all I ever really wanted to do. I had no grand aspirations to transform the medium. I was perfectly happy being a journeyman. But the day I was told that I would never, ever, ever be allowed to fulfill that dream – well, that’s when I finally came to my senses and stopped trying to do what a 17 year old wanted to do. Now at least I’m on a road.”
18 September 2000
[beeb.com] According to my flatmate [who wants me to link to this and this for some reason] the BBC has released it’s first commercial television advertisement… it’s advertising beeb.com a internet shopping site.
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[yates] Paula Yates’ Obituary from todays Guardian Unlimited. ‘Renowned for her dizzy, flirtatious television persona, Yates seldom received credit for the qualities that made her a more substantial person. Widely read, with a quick wit and sharp intelligence, she was also a devoted partner and mother to her and Geldof’s extravagantly-named daughters, Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches and Pixie.’
[big numbers] According to this calendarhome.com I am 11,129 days old. Which is interesting.
[books] Crime Magazine asks if In Cold Blood is a dishonest book. Interesting look at the story behind the creation of the book — but be warned… the page contains some disturbing images. ‘However, early on I’d like to raise the question of Capote’s basic honesty in writing this book. He set out to write a masterpiece, yet he took no notes. He recounts lengthy, complex conversations – sans notes. Capote told Plimpton that he had trained himself to do this – that, for a year and a half prior to embarking on the book, he had a friend read passages from a book to him, for an hour or two a day, then he would write down what he had heard – and in his estimation he had a unique facility for accurately remembering interviews, with an accuracy quotient of 95 percent. Which any newspaper reporter can tell you is horse feathers.’
17 September 2000
 [books] The Guardian’s original book review of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. ‘The utter banality of the Clutter murder, the fact that it was resolved not through some acute feat of detection but by a facile indiscretion – one of the assassins had discussed the family with a cell-mate before leaving prison – make Truman Capote’s radical point. Looked at minutely enough, filtered through the lens of a highly professional recorder, caught by the tape recording ear in its every inflection and background noise, the most sordid, shapeless of incidents, take on a compelling truth. Exhaustively rendered, the fact is richer than any fiction.’ [Buy this Book: UK / US]
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[gummo] The Loafer’s Guide to Harmony Korine… ‘What next? Korine has been making Fight Harm, a film in which he provokes fights with strangers, a camera recording the violence. ‘I wanted it to be the funniest movie ever made, a cross between Buster Keaton and a snuff movie,’ he says. Work was stopped after he ended up in hospital or jail too often. After breaking his ankles in one fight, he’s had to abandon his plan ‘to invent a new form of tap-dancing’.’
[tags: Movies][ permalink][ Comments Off on The Loafer’s Guide to Harmony Korine]
[uk weblogs] Blue Lines returns. Better than ever. ‘The current affairs content of this page has been low recently, because while incidents such as doctors getting attacked by illiterate mobs who couldn’t tell the difference between a paediatrician and a paedophile hold a certain black humour value, they’re also symptomatic of what a fucking depressing Summer it’s been for anyone of vaguely liberal leanings.’
[horror] The Observer interviews Stephen King. ‘Stephen King paused, took a breath, he got stiffly to his feet, and smiled. ‘That’s not to say that there won’t always be a market for crap… Just look at Jeffrey Archer! He writes like old people fuck, doesn’t he?” [part of the Observer’s Stephen King Season]
16 September 2000
[ch-ch-ch-changes] Guardian Unlimited explores how to change your life. ‘…many of us are creatures of habit: we know exactly what we like and we make sure we stay well inside our comfort zone. Just remember that there’s always somewhere more comfortable than your comfort zone, and eventually that thought will make you so uncomfortable that you’ll venture out.’
[weblogs] Linus, Bill and Steve have an amusing Newbie Blog Chat… ‘BillGates34: My blog is named Blog O’ Bill, in case you guys wanna link me. It’s an acronym…..B.O.B. ….it spells Bob. A guy’s name. Cool, eh? SteveJobsMac: Um….yeah, Einstein. Real cool. Except that your name isn’t Bob. Correct me if I’m wrong. BillGates34: Sheeesh…it’s just a joke. Lighten up, dude. Hey…what browsers do you guys use? I use IE :) LinusTorvalds69: DUH!! SteveJobsMac: DUH!!’
[tags: Blogs, Funny][ permalink][ Comments Off on Newbie Blogger Linus, Bill and Steve On Blogging]
15 September 2000
[more big brother] The Daily Express interviews the Big Mother behind BB… On Nasty Nick: “It was obvious we had to get him out. People asked why we didn’t get rid of him earlier but this was the first time we had concrete proof he’d been trying to sway nominations and he was told he had to go. He came straight out of the house and into the back of a car. I was with him. We drove out to Welwyn Garden City to a hotel. He was very shaken and upset and had absolutely no concept of the scale of the big debate, so for the first four hours it was my job to gently tell him that he was probably the most talked about man in Britain…and that it wasn’t all good.”
[big brother] Desmond Morris on the Human Zoo that is Big Brother. ‘The housemates were nextdoor neighbours to millions of us, and gave us a great deal of innocent fun. If ever you find yourself in the midst of a remote tribe, living in primeval conditions and you investigate what they are chatting about around the fire, you can be certain that they will not be reminiscing about their tribal myths or ancestor figures, but gossiping incessantly about village trivia. Gossip is the oil that lubricates social conversation and that helps us to understand our tribal relationships and our shared feelings and attitudes. In an urban world, this village smalltalk finds it hard to survive. Many people hardly know their neighbours. Big Brother has given us, briefly, a small group of national neighbours and we have all enjoyed comparing notes about them the following day. That’s all it is, a bit of gossipy fun, and good luck to it.’
14 September 2000
[ellroy] Old Salon interview with James Ellroy… On his mother: ‘She gave me gifts — her death did. Those gifts have stood me in very good stead. I cannot go back and undo the past. I never even think of what might have happened had she lived. Would I be a writer? I had gone to great lengths in my life, in my career, to seek consciousness and get better and better. That eclipsed everything with me, everything in my subconscious.’
[cartoon] Yet another great Steve Bell cartoon on the petrol crisis… ‘Fat Blokes United in Disgruntlement’
[comics] Comic Book Geek Purity Test. I got: “You answered “yes” to 103 of 300 questions, making you 65.7% comic pure (34.3% comic corrupt).” [via T hreadnaught]
[censored] Guardian Unlimited covers the handling of Lady Chatterley’s Lover censorship case back in the 1960s. ‘Under the heading “Gratuitous filth”, the DPP’s office had tried to keep a running count of the offending words. It notes on page 204 a “bitch goddess of Success (coined by Henry James)”, a “fucking”, a “shit”, a “best bit of cunt left on earth” and “balls” (three times). On page 232 is found “arse” (twice), “arsed” and “slits” (twice), and so the file goes on. At the trial Griffith-Jones told the jury that the word “fuck” or “fucking” appeared no fewer than 30 times.’
[aids] Heretic! Scientists argue over whether AIDS was caused by western virologists developing polio vacines in the 1950s… ‘Since The River was published Hooper has had his integrity questioned throughout. His powerful critics have accused him of being a “madman”, “a tenth-rate journalist”, a “conspiracy theorist”, of having “more time than sense”, and of being “speculative”. His accuracy has been questioned as well as his journalistic methods and motives. John Moore, professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell University, has accused him of “twisting and manipulating” facts, of being paid by his “crony Hamilton to write about his pet theory”.’ [BBC Report: Scientists rule out polio link to Aids]
12 September 2000
[comics] Bad weblogger…. did not spot this great Steve Bell cartoon on the Petrol Crisis earlier.
[weblogger on the verge of a…] … Nervous Breakdown. Sunday’s Observer actually covers what a nervous breakdown means… ‘The most common kind of breakdown, according to Dr Philip Timms, a consultant psychiatrist with the South London and Maudsley Trust, is someone developing moderately severe depression, normally over a period of weeks. ‘A person would begin to feel more on edge, find it more difficult to sleep, find themselves thinking more negatively about themselves, feel increasingly hopeless and incompetent about what they’re doing, and then there comes a day when they just can’t face going to work, or getting out of bed, perhaps. Breakdown occurs if a depressive episode is not dealt with – it builds up and it’s part of a process.’ ‘
[tags: Life][ permalink][ Comments Off on What Is A Nervous Breakdown?]
[big brother] Is Bernie Winters dead? Yes he is… and here’s his gravestone. He’s buried in Golders Green cemetary along with Peter Sellers.
[weblogs] blogger.com covers How to publicize your blog.
11 September 2000
[tv] seethru.co.uk goes live… reads a bit like a weblog “music – wit – no shit my personal Internet filter” But it’s not. It’s a manufactured website for the new TV series Attachments.
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[McCartney] Guardian Unlimited interviews Paul McCartney. “It was summed up one morning when we were doing the White Album. I was working all day and till three in the morning and we’d worked late right through the weekend. I was coming into work and there was a guy watering his garden. It was a sunny morning and he just looked at me and smiled, ‘Good morning !’ and I said, ‘Good morning,’ and I just stopped and said, ‘Shit, who’s got it right here?'”
10 September 2000
[weblogs] NoLondon has combined EuroBlogs and webloging in the UK! into one page. Excellent!
[80’s authors] Bright Lights, Big City — the Observer profiles Jay McInerney. “‘I think I’ve been trying to prove I’m a really bad guy for 20 years, that I’m not a mother’s boy. But part of me is stuck with being a Catholic boy who is slightly shocked by things.’ Part of him – but perhaps a decreasing part. He once admitted that, as a teenager, he was deeply influenced by the Playboy ‘Adviser’ section and he still retains that slightly tacky notion of sophistication – he really has to have a beautiful woman on his arm. And the emotional detritus is piling up.”
[ARTICLE NUMBER REMOVED] Need To Know seem to have removed article numbers pointing at usenet news postings on deja.com containing the hoax transcript of Jimmy Saville on Have I Got News For You which they published on Friday. Why? [ Related Links: Some of the Corpses are Amusing, LMG Posting #1, LMG Posting #2]
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9 September 2000
[adrian mole redux] Must…. not…. blog… Adrian Mole… ‘It’s time I found a sexual partner: a non-neurotic, childless, non-smoking, beautiful woman who enjoys literature, spotting Eddie Stobart lorries and housework would be ideal. Is it too much to ask that I should be allowed a little happiness?’
[bad craziness] Some deeply weird headfucks on the Barbelith Underground… ‘ “The simplest explanation is most probably the truth.” — Occam’s Razor.
[life] 101 ways to slow down… ‘102. Don’t worry about finding interesting/useful/life-changing links for your weblog.’
[weblogs] Getting blogged everywhere — Rebbeca Blood talks about the rise of weblogs. ‘Dell manages more webpages than all of the weblogs put together. Sprite’s PR machine can point more man-hours to the promotion of one message–“Obey Your Thirst”–than the combined man-hours of every weblogger alive. Our strength–that each of us speaks in an individual voice of an individual vision–is, in the high-stakes world of carefully orchestrated messages designed to distract and manipulate, a liability. We are, very simply, outnumbered.’ [ One Word: Linux]
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8 September 2000
[words fail me] A profile of Nicholas van Hoogstraten. ‘There is a mausoleum in the basement, the only bit we don’t get a tour of because Van Hoogstraten thinks we will poke fun at it. At each stage, he stops to point out a) the quality of the fittings, b) the uselessness of the people who installed them. I ask if he enjoys being aggravated. “I used to,” he says. “Twenty years ago I would go out looking for it, but now I’d rather stay in and watch EastEnders – for God’s sake don’t put that in the Guardian.” Why not, I ask. Would it damage his image? He says: “I only watch it because Leslie Grantham is a friend of mine.”‘ [Sorry for overusing the Guardian — but I cannot resist a profile of Hoogstraten]
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[comics] Eddie’s Campbell’s new website looks good… The Eddie’s Shout section asks: Who Drew Batman? ‘I recently pulled out those 1966, thirty-year-old yellowed paperbacks. There are two panels approximately to a page, some enlarged, some reduced, some chopped up like the cat’s dinner. I’ve been photocopying them and reassembling them back into their original comic book page format so that I may examine the layout styles more thoroughly. Some of the photocopying is made difficult by the fact that many pages have been coloured in with wax crayons. Who coloured Batman? I confess; it was me.’
[allergic to microchips] Guardian Unlimited reports on a woman living in a timewarp — she’s unable to go near microchips which are omnipresent in modern society…. ‘Mrs Stock says that if she goes near a computer or sits in a modern motor car she quickly begins to suffer with a pain that she likens to a pencil boring through the back of her head. “I have earache and toothache and my vision goes distorted. It is just as though you are drunk and you don’t know what you are doing,” she said yesterday. “I find it very scary, especially when the eyes go. They can be like that for hours and I worry that they may not become all right again. The pains in my head can last for days.”‘
[tags: Life, Tech][ permalink][ Comments Off on The Woman With An Allergy To Microchips]
[comics] Steve Bell on William Hague and The Millennium Dome — ‘…a pointless tent in the middle of nowhere…’
7 September 2000
[LMG] Slight redesign… nothing serious. Less whitespace, smaller fonts, more room. Let me know if you have any problems.
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[falklands] Twenty-Two Royal Marines Vs Argentine Naval Frigate Guerrico. No Contest: ‘Marine David Combes, who was normally the ships steward on Endurance now placed his name in naval history books by firing his Carl Gustav 84 mm anti tank weapon at the Guerrico. The Royal Marines watched as the 10lb projectile staggered across the waves and then, on it’s last legs, smashed into Guerrico’s hull just above the waterline, sending up a column of white water. They then heard a loud rumble come from inside the ship. Below decks Argentine damage control parties struggled to stop the flow of water that was now coming though the hole.’ [ Note: This entry was blogged by the part of Darren’s brain which is still a 12 year-old right wing war film and comic loving little boy. It’s a small part — honest. :) ]
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[oasis] Guardian Unlimited covers Noel Gallagher and Meg Matthews marriage breakup. ‘Male stars are so used to having the most adolescent behaviour indulged that they need partners who are prepared to knock sense into them. What they crave, what Gallagher probably craved even as he and Mathews groped through a drug haze (“We got to know each other through drugs; when I came off them I didn’t know if I’d still like her,” he said), is a steadying influence.’
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[lone nut] Following on from an earlier post… Guardian Unlimited’s Netnotes covers Mark Chapman. More from the John Lennon’s Murder Site: ‘Two days later, he is watching television, when the picture goes blank and “Thou Shalt Not Kill” appears across the screen. It is the sixth Commandment, as written in The Gospel of St. Mark – his Gospel, and Mark Chapman is shocked at the intensity of the experience, and sees it as an example of synchronicity, giving him a message to go back to reading the Bible.’
6 September 2000
[corrections] From the Guardian’s Corrections and clarifications page: ‘Lady Birdwood whose death was reported in a brief item on page 6, June 29, appeared repeatedly before the courts for anti-semitic pamphleteering, not anti-semitic profiteering.’ Who was The Dowager Lady Birdwood? ‘In a memorably fatuous observation in 1994, Judge Henry Pownall told Birdwood he accepted that she did not intend to stir up racial hatred. “You are not a wicked old woman in that sense,” he added. Birdwood had been convicted of distributing a pamphlet, which denied the holocaust, and proclaimed a Jewish conspiracy to subvert society. She had also suggested Jews drank the blood of gentile children. Judge Pownall sentenced her to a three-month suspended sentence.’ [via Beesley]
[tags: History, People][ permalink][ Comments Off on ‘…anti-semitic pamphleteering, not anti-semitic profiteering.’]
[i have a cunning plan…] BBC News reports on a film about a sneaky Argentine filmaker who visits the Falklands Islands whilst trying to impregnate as many locals as possible in a inspired mission to retake the islands by love not war… the film is course called Fuckland. ‘So how hard would it be for another Argentine to find a date on the island? Las chicas en la isla no abundan, he says on the Web site, meaning that there’s not exactly a cornucopia of willing girls to begin with, and that the British military base there holds about 1,000 troops. ‘It’s terrible when you consider your competition,” Stratas says. Now you’re warned.’ [ Related Link: Covert Operations in the Falklands: No Guns, Just Three Digital Cameras ]
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5 September 2000
[murder] GuardianUnlimited profiles Tony Martin. ‘He described his thrombosis (responsible for the limp), his run-down farm, his closest companions (three rottweilers), his love of travel, farming at night, his love of solitude. This disconnected rambling ranging across his life often returned to the first thing he had said that day; what was happening to him was surreal, beyond his control, not his responsibility.’
[my inner voices use URL’s] Must… keep… hands… away… from… keyboard! Must. Not. Buy. BUDDY CHRIST!! [via lukelog]
[internet] How fast is your internet connection? ’56K modems also require a clean, straight through telephone connection to the telephone company’s central office switching center. Phone company line amplifiers that boost a telephone signal over a long distance, PBX switchboard systems, and other phone equipment alter the phone signal and force 56K modems to fall back to speeds of 33.6Kbps and lower.’ [via Sounding Off Column in Sunday Times]
[lennon] Guardian Unlimited reports that John Lennon’s murderer is about to apply for parole. ‘Chapman has said that he killed Lennon to be famous. “I had to usurp someone else’s importance, someone else’s success,” he said. “I was Mr Nobody until I killed the biggest somebody on earth.”‘ [ Related Link: Lennon/Chapman website covering ‘the parallels, coincidences and strange synchronicities that brought together John Lennon and Mark Chapman on December 8th 1980.’]
[tags: Crime][ permalink][ Comments Off on Mark Chapman To Apply For Parole]
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