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15 November 2002
[comics] BY MARVEL BETRAYED! SOMEBODY SUES! STAN… LEE… FIGHTS…. ON! - It’s official: Stan Lee sues Marvel / Stan Lee Damage Report: Day Two — loads of coverage from ¡Journalista! … ‘Every time I think I’m done with the bastards, Marvel Comics finds a fascinating new way to wind up with egg on their faces. From trying to decide whether female comics fans are whores or sluts, to generating friendly waves of love from comics retailers, Marvel has finally scored the public-relations anti-coup for which they’ve been aiming: yesterday Stan Lee filed his lawsuit against Marvel.’
- Neilalien also has extensive links and commentary … ‘The way Neilalien sees it, both Lee and Ditko created Spider-Man. 50% each. Or, 100% each. Both men were critical to the success of the character- one designed and defined the character re: the costume, the angles, the poses, the shadows- while the other one huckstered books off the shelves, and wrote those defining Peter Parker monologues and themes. Both men are deified on this website re: Doctor Strange and Spider-Man. And both men are probably difficult to work with- the working relationship was doomed, as most great ones are.’
- Warren Ellis on Stan Lee: ‘… his position as Publisher Emeritus makes him a million dollars a year, just for the use of his name. The co-creator of Spider-Man, Steve Ditko, is the invisible man. No money, no participation, no mention. Perhaps he doesn’t care. Like Stan Lee didn’t seem to care, until a few weeks ago. I mean, a million dollars a year is pretty good. Until an American news program asked him how he felt about earning and owning nothing of last year’s cinema phenomenon and this year’s DVD phenomenon. I saw the clip. 30-odd years of media savvy choked. Hesitation is fatal in a medium like TV. He choked and burned and suddenly he couldn’t be 100% positive. Suddenly he was Jack Kirby.’
14 November 2002
[war] ‘Saddam, tell me about your mum’ — interview with the CIA psychiatrist who studied Saddam Hussein … ‘”It all goes back to his mother’s womb,” Post declares with some professional satisfaction. “During the mother’s pregnancy with Saddam Hussein, his father died, and another son died when he was only 12 years old. She both tried to commit suicide and to have an abortion.” As the story goes, Saddam’s mother, Subha, was prevented from killing herself and her unborn child by a compassionate family of Iraqi Jews. That family is now reported to be living in Israel, where it may think itself the tool of some huge cosmic joke.’
[tech] How al Qaeda put Internet to use — article looking at al Qaeda’s use of computers and the internet … [via Guardian Weblog] ‘Al Qaeda operatives struggled with some of the same tech headaches as ordinary people: servers that crashed, outdated software and files that wouldn’t open. Their Web venture followed a classic dot-com trajectory. It began with excitement, faced a cash crunch, had trouble with accountants and ultimately fizzled.’
‘While fiercely hostile to any religious or social norms tinged by modernity, Islamists “have no problems with technology,” says Omar Bakri, a radical cleric from Syria who lives in Britain. “Other people use the Web for stupid reasons, to waste time. We use it for serious things.” (U.S. officials say Islamists weren’t always so earnest: Many computers the CIA recovered from suspected al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and elsewhere contained pornographic material.)’
13 November 2002
[tech] Making the Macintosh — a website documenting the creation of the Macintosh … ‘The exhibit features primary documents, such as memos tracing the evolution of the Macintosh mouse; images, such as technical drawings, stills from commercials, notes from user tests; and interviews with members of the Macintosh development team, technical writers, and founders of user groups.’ [via Red Rock Eater Digest]
12 November 2002
[quote] ‘But I don’t understand! I don’t understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she’s, there’s just a body, and I don’t understand why she just can’t get back in it and not be dead anymore! It’s stupid! It’s mortal and stupid! And, and Xander’s crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she’ll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why.’
[mobiles] ‘Hi, I’m in G2’ — a look at how the mobile phone has changed the world … ‘A friend described how she had accidentally locked herself in the bedroom after her partner had gone to work. Without a mobile, she would have been trapped in there all day. Doors slam. Buildings collapse. Far worse things happen. You go to the office, as you do every day, Monday to Friday, and one morning, an airliner intersects with your life, and you realise immediately that you are very likely to die. If there were a God, he would have noticed by now that things have become quieter, no matter how bad it gets down there; given a choice between praying, and talking to the people we love, we are bound to choose the people every time.’
11 November 2002
[comics] Get Your Brain on with Cartoonist David Rees — an interview with the creator of Get Your War On … ‘He wishes the media, the Bush administration, and the American people would admit the truth about the devastating consequences of war — in both the Middle East and in our own country. He’s not opposed to fighting terrorism, he says: “It’s okay to be against dictators. What you want is for people to be free.”‘ [via ¡Journalista!]
[tags: Comics][ permalink][ Comments Off on Interview with the creator of Get Your War On]
[movies] Focus Puller — interview with Paul Schrader about his film Auto Focus … Schrader: ‘With Raging Bull, the fights were accurate, but the arguments between the brothers were completely imagined. Of course, Jake LaMotta liked those scenes so much that he started believing they actually happened. My intent with Auto Focus is not to be true or definitive. People’s actual lives are not really that interesting. And with [Bob] Crane I wanted to get at something meaty. Otherwise, who cares?’ [Related: Auto Focus Trailer]
8 November 2002
[comics] Moore The Merrier — yet another interview with Alan Moore … ‘This planet has a physical geography with which we have already familiarised ourselves. But since the dawn of the first stories, there is a fictional geography, where the gods and demons live. We have created this big imaginary planet that is a counterpart to our own; and in some cases these places are more familiar to us than the real ones.’ [via Bullets]
7 November 2002
[life] The Cost of Reunion — True life story which combines Friends Reunited, internet romance, sex and death … ‘Married for 22 years with a 12-year-old son, Joanne registers with Friends Reunited in January; her former fiance Tim responds in March; they meet up again for the first time in April, have sex once, and in June move in together, having seen each other only about a dozen times. The whole extraordinary process of getting to know a person – even if it is for the second time – flirting with them, falling for them and wanting them forever is concertinaed into just a few dizzying weeks – thanks to emails and mobile phones. In one four-week period they exchanged over 30,000 words in emails.’ [Related: Spouses Disunited]
[comics] Big Mouth Types Again — Evan Dorkin has a web journal … [via Egon]  ‘…I realized that I’ve allowed many stupid things I’ve said or thought to be printed in comics and magazines, and I’ve regretted them and lived, so what the heck, I’ll give this here journal thing a whack and see what happens.’
6 November 2002
[russian proverb] ‘The situation is hopeless, but not yet desperate.’
[magazines] Dennis The Menace — an interview / profile of Felix Dennis … [via Kookymojo] ‘Issue 28 of Oz was edited and written by schoolchildren. It was probably the montage of the cartoon characters Rupert the Bear and Gipsy Granny having sex that led to Dennis, Neville and Jim Anderson being prosecuted in 1971 for obscenity and conspiracy to corrupt the morals of young children. The case pitted Establishment against counterculture as squarely as Punch versus Judy. Judge Michael Argyle, QC, MC was a Cambridge-educated racing and boxing enthusiast known for the severity of his sentencing, and an almost comic disconnection with the modern world. He’d described one gay victim of a street attack as a ‘little sodomite from Glasgow’. Argyle said Dennis was ‘very much less intelligent than his fellow defendants’ and sentenced him to nine months, which was quashed within a week by appeal judges who identified 78 misdirections to the jury.’
[tags: People][ permalink][ Comments Off on Felix Dennis Interview / Profile]
[wtf?] Superhero for Single Girls — a real life superheroine in NYC … ‘For the past seven years Terrifica has been patrolling New York’s party and bar scene, looking out for women who have had a little too much to drink and are in danger of being taken advantage of by men. She says she has saved several women from both themselves and predators who would prey upon their weaknesses — both from alcohol and a misguided notion that they have to go out drinking to find a companion. “I protect the single girl living in the big city,” says Terrifica, sporting blond Brunhild wig with a golden mask and a matching Valkyrie bra.’ [via Boing Boing]
5 November 2002
[tv] Stick It Up Your Chuffer! — a memorial page for Edmund Trebus … ‘He reached the public consciousness in the BBC documentary A Life Of Grime which showed his heroic determination to hoard what most people call rubbish in his house and garden.’
4 November 2002
[comics] Unseen Artwork from Big Numbers … [via Egon]  ‘…with the world political situation as it is at the moment the political radical is put in a difficult position because, hum, how do you rebel against chaos? You know, much as political conspiracy theorists would like to think otherwise, the brutal truth of the thing is nobody’s in control, this is a runaway train. Nobody’s in control, there’s not some big conspiracy in control, whether it’s Jewish bankers or nazis or CIA spooks, the simple truth is that the world is a complex storm of mathematics, basically… Very complicated mathematics that is beyond human comprehension.’ — Alan Moore.
3 November 2002
[books] Why He Died Before He Got Old — Pete Townshend reviews Kurt Cobain’s Journals … ‘The entries are not uninteresting. It is simply that they are devastatingly hard to contemplate. They actually hurt. These are the scribblings of a once beautiful, angry, petulant, spoiled, drug-addled middle-class white boy from a divorced family who just happened, with the help of two of his slightly more stable peers, to make an album hailed as one of the best rock records ever. I sometimes get letters from people who write and draw like Cobain. I put them in a file marked ‘Loonies’, just in case they try to sue me in the future for stealing their ideas.’
[tags: Books, Music][ permalink][ Comments Off on ‘I hope I die before I become Pete Townshend.’]
2 November 2002
[holiday] Happy Campers — Johnny Vegas on his childhood memories of Butlins … “…the real beauty of [Butlins] was parents being able to go, ‘Right, you’re not really mine. From a certain time in the morning to a certain time at night, I don’t really care. Unless it’s something really serious, and the matron calls us.’ Because, really, there’s nothing worse than going on a family holiday, and your parents are finding things to do in the day that they think’ll be fun for you; they’re miserable, because they’d much rather be in the pub. You’re miserable, because you’re not really that arsed about castles. It was the entertain-yourselves thing at Butlin’s, while your parents were off doing their Paxo-sponsored chicken dance.” Paxo-sponsored chicken dance? “It was like the conga meets the chicken dance.”
1 November 2002
[comics] Geek Chic — vaguely annoying profile of Adrian Tomine … ‘It was lunch hour and all manner of awkward-looking males were standing quietly around the [comic book] store, hardly looking up from their reading to see who was passing. Tomine headed straight to the back where the new releases are shelved. He browsed through a couple items, but quickly put them back where he found them, unimpressed. “It’s pretty rare that I actually buy comics now,” he says. Alternative cartoonists are a lot like music snobs that way. To be a high-caliber geek means maintaining high standards and discriminating tastes, and Tomine is of the highest caliber.’ [via Bugpowder]
[tags: Comics][ permalink][ Comments Off on Adrian Tomine — Alternative Cartoonist]
31 October 2002
[tv] 24 Continues to Thrill — Jack Bauer is having another bad day. ‘…the star of the show remains federal agent Bauer, played to understated perfection by Kiefer Sutherland. We catch up with Bauer a year after he has left the government counter-terrorism unit he once headed. He is a mess – still mourning the death of his pregnant wife at the hands of his former lover and also dealing with the fact his daughter Kim wants nothing to do with him.’
[tags: 24, TV][ permalink][ Comments Off on I’m Federal agent Jack Bauer. This is the longest day of my life.]
[comics] The Transmetropolitan Condition — interview with Warren Ellis … ‘There are moments of pure, heart stopping beauty in the most tragic and broken environments. And the loveliest community on earth will not be able to eliminate the dog turd.’ [via Boing Boing]
30 October 2002
[distraction] Atari Adventure — my favourite 2600 game gets a Flash Conversion. [via Metafilter]
[comics] A useful directory of the Comics Forum on Barbelith. ‘They can’t kill Beak, he’s a Van Sciver creation, which surely bears as much weight as a Kirby creation!’ — Ethan Van Sciver.
29 October 2002
[dna] DNA as Destiny — a Wired writer gets his DNA scanned for problems. ‘…the string of genetic letters from my mtDNA readout that indicates I’m mostly Celtic, which makes sense. But other bits of code reveal traces of Southeast Asian DNA, and even a smidgen of Native American and African. This doesn’t quite have the impact of discovering that I’m likely to die of a heart attack. Nor am I surprised about the African and Indian DNA, since my mother’s family has lived in the American South since the 17th century. But Southeast Asian? Sykes laughs. “We are all mutts,” he says. “There is no ethnic purity. Somewhere over the years, one of the thousands of ancestors who contributed to your DNA had a child with someone from Southeast Asia.”‘
28 October 2002
[comics] The Magus Speaks — extracts from Eddie Campbell’s interview with Alan Moore … [via Bugpowder] ‘Ah, Lost Girls. Can you imagine anyone else being able to get a wonderfully accomplished artist to spend thirteen years drawing pornographic material for them, customised to demand; being able to declare himself a pornographer and have everyone take it as some bold new intellectual position; or even claiming against tax for high class scud-books like The Art of the Marquis Von Bayros as “reference material”? No. You can’t. This is why I am a genius. “What are you doing in that bathroom, young man?” “Mother, I am doing highly paid reference work.”‘
[redrum] All Work and No Play Make Jack a Dull Boy … ‘All Work and No Play Make Jack a Dull Boy’
26 October 2002
[comics] ¡Journalista! — the Comics Journal Weblog [via Bugpowder]
25 October 2002
[radio] ‘I don’t take myself too seriously’ — portrait of Tony Blackburn … ‘A few years later, after his actress wife Tessa Wyatt ran off with Richard O’Sullivan (of Man about the House sitcom fame), he gave full vent to his despair on air, though he now denies playing Kool And The Gang’s divorce anthem Jones Vs Jones 17 times in one show. He was reportedly sacked by the BBC for criticising management in the press, something of a habit of Blackburn’s, which might surprise those who regard him as an establishment figure. Depressed, he sought refuge in one-night stands – about 300 of them, in fact, a statistic that has earned him, according to one website, seventh position in the promiscuous celebrity stakes, ahead of Charlie Sheen but way behind former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman and Julio Iglesias, whose tallies are in the thousands.’
24 October 2002
[politics] The Friendly Dictators — political Trading Cards richly illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz and originally published by Eclipse in 1990 … [via jwz’s LiveJournal]  ‘…”Captain General” Augusto Pinochet seized power from democratically elected President Salvador Allende in 1973, and buried Chile’s 150 year old democracy. “Democracy is the breeding ground of communism,” says Pinochet.’
[blogs] Updated UK Weblogs — moves to a new home … Thanks to Jez, Ben and especially to Jen. Tom raises some interesting points after the demise of GBlogs … ‘I can’t tell whether it’s because we’re English or because we’re bedroom-bound webloggers that being part of such a community seems to terrify so many people.’
23 October 2002
[ai] I love Lucy — Jon Ronson meets the cleverest robot in the world … ‘I bought my son an Aibo dog for Christmas last year. “From the first day you interact with Aibo it will become your companion,” the packaging promised, adding that if you feed it, it will yelp in delight, if you put it to bed, it will sleep, etc. As we strung it up off the light fitting to see if it would cry, and deprived it of food and light and finally got bored with its constant yapping and turned it off completely and put it in a box, I pondered the same questions the scientists consider. The good news was that we gave Aibo perfect motive to rise up and enslave the Ronsons, and it didn’t. But did it offer a thrilling window into tomorrow’s world? No. Maybe it was our fault; maybe we didn’t give it an opportunity to flourish and learn and grow.’
22 October 2002
[comics] Mists of Time — Warren Ellis discusses Alan Moore’s out-of-print work … On Moore and Sienkiewicz’s Brought To Light: ‘ It’s an absolute tour de force. Sienkiewicz produces mad images, political caricature via Ralph Steadman, slapping down anything that might work — photocopies, splatter, bits of metal, anything that might work. The Eagle, pissed out of his mind and coked to the tits, hunches there at the bar and vomits out the secret history of the American century — impeccably research documentary coming out of the beak of a fictional beard. Remember the best bit of the film JFK? Where Donald Sutherland lays out the whole thing in one long riveting monologue, and then concludes it with a sigh, and: “Well, I never thought things were the same after that.”? It’s like that, only funnier and scarier and more compelling. It demands it be read in one sitting, and it just sears with passion and commitment.’
[blogs] Biased BBC — a weblog from Natalie Solent… ‘exposing the left-wing agenda of the British Broadcasting Corporation’.
21 October 2002
[books] The Rules of Adaption — Brett Easton Ellis interviewed regarding the Rules of Attaction film …  ‘One of my only complaints about the movie was that it was so much colder and harsher than the book. It’s like Kubrick directing a college film. I really thought there was going to be much more of an emotional pull toward the end, and there wasn’t. This is not a movie to bring your Kleenex to. But I think Roger captured that lack of feeling among college kids as accurate. During that age, you’re becoming an adult, and in that process you realize, “Okay, the world works this way, and it’s hurtful,” and you pretend it doesn’t hurt you, and you pose a lot.’ [via Anglepoised]
20 October 2002
[comics] Garth Ennis interviewed by Jimmy Palmiotti … ‘I was talking the DC editor Dan Raspler about good artists for war stories, and Carlos [Ezquerra]’s name naturally came up. Dan pointed out that no one’s really done a story about the Spanish civil war, at which point a lightbulb went on over my head. It seems odd that Carlos has been drawing for over thirty years and he has never done a story set in his own country, never mind one of its most important moments in its history. Well, here we go…’ [Related: Carlos Ezquerra’s Home Page]
[film] ‘It seems like exactly the wrong film to make’ — Salon interview with Roger Avery … ‘For Avary it was about capturing Ellis’ Faulknerian storytelling mode, not plot or dialogue. “I worked with multiple narratives on ‘Pulp Fiction,'” says Avary. “And Bret’s novel is composed of multiple first-person narratives, each a chapter told by a different person. And they’re all talking about various events, sometimes the same event with completely different perceptions of reality. “It’s an impossible structure to turn into normal, narrative form. But to strip away Bret’s structure is to rob yourself of what makes him so unique. I wanted that literary device. And if you’re doing multiple perceptions of the same moment and you just cut, the way we did in ‘Pulp Fiction,’ then you sever the characters both in their timeline and psychology. The key isn’t to cut, but to play out the scene and pull back to another part of the room. That way you’re actually uniting the timelines as one and making sure everybody is connected.”‘ [via Sore Eyes]
19 October 2002
[music] A troubled hero for our times? — profile of Kurt Cobain. ‘… his formative tastes took in soft-rock bands such as Journey and Foreigner …’
[film] The Soiling of Van Der Beek (scroll down page) — brief mention of Roger Avery’s new film The Rules of Attaction … ‘My notes for The Rules of Attraction include capitalised mentions of all the naughty stuff his drugs-vacuuming collegian gets up to: “Dawson deals coke and crack!”, “Dawson has an eye-popping wank!”, “Dawson shags another bloke!” Sadly, he’s not the character who pukes on an unconscious Shannyn Sossamon’s back, at which point the film runs backwards, showing the vomit flying into its owner’s mouth. If that had been Van Der Beek’s up-chuck, the deal would have been sealed: Dawson is Horrid – Official!’
[tags: Movies][ permalink][ Comments Off on Dawson and The Rules of Attraction]
18 October 2002
[distraction] Candy Train — similar to that classic old game Pipe Dream, rotate the tracks and keep the train moving. … [via Diminished Responsibility]
[issues] Word Association Test — my inner turmoil revealed … [via Dreadberry]  | I have issues with… | work
fate
genetics
past
anxiety
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17 October 2002
[blogs] Will Blog for Cash — a “webby lament” from Andrew Sullivan … [via Nick Denton] ‘I’ve written tens of thousands of words; I’ve made hundreds of new web-friends; I get around 400 emails a day. I have to say I’ve never enjoyed myself as much as a journalist, had as much impact with my writing, or had as much sheer fun as a commentator on things large and small.’
‘Whatever else it is, [webloging] isn’t much of a business model. I pay my mortgage by writing for the old media – for this beloved paper, for the New Republic magazine, for Time, and other outlets that do the old-fashioned thing and provide remuneration for work. And yet, for all its economic dysfunction, the new medium has never been as powerful as it is today. In fact, I wonder if there’s ever been a technological innovation that has combined such extraordinary new power with such dramatically poor financial rewards.’
[tags: Blogs][ permalink][ Comments Off on Andrew Sullivan on the lack of a weblog business model]
[science] You Ask The Questions — Robert Winston … ‘Q: Is it true that your new series, ‘Human Instinct’, is going to explain — scientifically — why men have the urge to cheat on their partners? A: Well, the accompanying book goes into more detail. It’s because a woman’s egg is much more precious — she only produces one so it’s a huge investment. While the man produces millions of sperm that he can spread around. In the programme, we go round a university quad with a male and a female wearing a hidden camera asking the students whether they’ll sleep with them that night. All the women shy off immediately. And all the men look at their watches and say, “Yes, I’m free at 8.30”! It’s quite an important scientific point.’
16 October 2002
[terrorism] Don’t blame The West — Clive James on the events in Bali and the reaction in Australia … Australia’s pundits on 9-11: ‘Imperialist America was not only treating the helpless Middle East as its personal property, it had racist Australia for its lackey. No wonder al-Qaida was angry. On Christmas Eve, in the Melbourne Age, another pundit, Michael Leunig, called for a national prayer for Osama bin Laden on Christmas Day. “It’s a family day,” Leunig explained, “and Osama’s our relative.” It is not recorded whether the aforesaid Osama, sitting cross-legged beside his Christmas tree somewhere under Afghanistan, offered up a prayer for Michael. He might have done: after all, they were on first-name terms.’ [Related: We should try to love bin Laden, for Christ’s sake by Michael Leunig]
[web] dot.conqueror — interview with Jeff Bezos … ‘He defends [Amazon] bullishly: “We’ve saved our customers money and time, and if we’ve changed anything it’s been in a good way. I don’t know how you could argue we’ve changed things in a bad way. Making products cheaper and easier to find is good.” A beat. And then the Laugh. Another beat. The acolytes laugh. What really strikes me is how utterly mirthless it is, how Bezos seems to use it aggressively to control the conversation. Today, Bezos is laughing very loud indeed.’
15 October 2002
[politics] R. Robot is Making Sense — automatically attack the liberal of your choice … ‘LinkMachineGo, what kind of a man are you? “Don’t hurt me,” says LinkMachineGo. Well, duh. LinkMachineGo, what kind of a man are you? It must be obvious to anyone who can think that the charges against the dirty bomber are true. When will LinkMachineGo come clean about the way he criticizes Ann Coulter? Instead of constructing arguments based on logic, the hot-tubbers assume that whatever they want to be true must be. “‘Department of Homeland Security?’ What the fuck is this, Brazil?” says LinkMachineGo. LinkMachineGo’s disgrace was obsessive and even dangerous. It was ad-hominem. It was ideological. But I understate.’
14 October 2002
[stuff] Linkage: - Cory Doctorow’s Sad Mac Tattoo … ‘The sad Mac icon, taken from the ROM of his MacSE/30 (inset), measures 27 pixels square.’ [via Aprendiz de todo]
- Read Comics in Public — another comics weblog. [via Bugpowder]
- What is LMG? ‘LMG is a video recorder that jams mobile phone frequencies, crushes ice and never gets tired.’ [via Lukelog]
- The Quiet Man Speaks — Steve Bell on Iain Duncan Smith.
- Comment from Sri Chinmoy supporter regarding the Sri Chinmoy Project … ‘When I look at this curious confrontation between weblog culture and yoga culture in cyberspace, in reminds me of a Star Trek episode. Aliens from planet Chinmoy are flooding the ship’s computers with poetry for some unknown purpose. At first this is seen as a potential threat (such as a DoS attack); but by the end of the episode we discover that the “aliens” are humanoid, and that they are in fact a peace-loving race who simply choose a different way of life. They are sending out vast quantities of poetry because this is their instinctive way of defending themselves against attacks by Vogon-like anticultists.’ [Related: Original Post]
12 October 2002
[politics] The Man of Faith who has made a Mockery of his Doubters — profile of Jimmy Carter … ‘As petrol and fuel prices soared, Carter promoted energy conservation to Americans as the “Moral Equivalent of War” — instantly reduced by his foes to the damning, and undeniably apposite, “Meow”. Capping everything was the immortal “killer rabbit” affair, too complicated alas to relate in detail here. It stemmed from a 1979 fishing trip to his native Plains, Georgia, during which Carter encountered a furry rabbit-like beast in a lake. The President himself started the story; and as others embellished it, the tale quickly entered the realm of the absurd. Carter, it was said, tried to defend himself against this dastardly amphibious assault with a paddle — then for fear of offending the animal rights brigade, he issued a clarification, that he had merely splashed water at the aggressor.’ [More on Carter’s Killer Rabbit: Staight Dope and News of the Odd]
11 October 2002
[comics] Speaking with Frank Miller — First part of a Pulse Interview … On his reaction to 9/11: ‘I threw out all my notes for future stories. I started developing new ones. Being an obvious person, I had terrorists as villains in every one of them and I’m working on those stories right now. I feel like people talking about getting over 9/11 or moving along and so on, and I’m like yeah yeah, just like Jack Kirby got over Pearl Harbor. It ain’t gonna happen. This is my story now. And maybe for the rest of my life. It may be. I don’t know. It’s what I’m pursuing in every story now. I feel like my world has been reconfigured. I’m at the peak of my powers and talent, and I’m going to address this because every other story seems so tiny and out of it.’
[web] NTK Not — a random NTK story generator from Blogjam … ‘An older boy mentions he’d do anything to see the ‘t*ts’ of the Daisy Duke character on the old TV show ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’ But we’re not listed on the Lovebytes site at the moment – ‘cos we like to keep it underground, and don’t want to play that corporate game with the likes of Lego and Apple. http://bitey.net/slashdot-sigs/ – back again now. And good luck to ’em!’
[comics] Is There A God? — the Onion asks a bunch of celebs the Big Question … [thanks Matt.] Frank Miller: ‘I don’t think so.’
Stan Lee: ‘Well, let me put it this way… [Pauses.] No, I’m not going to try to be clever. I really don’t know. I just don’t know.’
Alan Moore: ‘[Laughs.] Well, I can’t move for them, quite frankly. I’m looking at about 12 of them from where I’m sitting at the moment. I’m kind of swamped for choice. Yeah, there’s probably tons of them. There’s probably a swarm of gods.’
9 October 2002
[comics] Weblogs and Comics: How weblogs can help the comics community — a how-to guide from Pete Ashton … ‘[Weblogs] essentially allow the artist to communicate and create outside of the usual channels, be they self publishing their own books or being published by a company. They add the human aspect that their readers would otherwise miss out on.’
[games] Solitary Confinement — The inside story behind Solitaire for Windows … ‘Generations of Windows software have come and gone, but Solitaire continues on. How much has Cherry earned for this staple of world computer culture? Nothing. Nothing upfront. No royalties. Zero. How ironic. The richest man in the world (or is he second-richest this week?) got that rich by collecting software royalties, but the actual creator of the most distributed, most used program of all gets none of those royalties passed along to him.’ [via Rodcorp]
8 October 2002
[politics] We’re Shit And We Know We Are — cartoon from Steve Bell.
[film] Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Shooting Script … [via Kookymojo] ‘CAMERON (grim monotone): 1958 Ferrari 250 GTS California. Less than a hundred were made. It has a market value of $265,000. My father spent three years restoring it. It is joy, it is his love, it is his passion.
FERRIS: It is his fault he didn’t lock the garage.
CAMERON: Ferris, my father loves this car more than life itself. We can’t take it out.
FERRIS: A man with priorities so far out of whack doesn’t deserve such a fine automobile.’
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