LinkMachineGo

[comics] Morrison’s Big-Time Return To The DCU — Newsarama interview with Morrison regarding two new DC Projects. Morrison On JLA: Classified: ‘Aquaman has no beard and John Stewart is Green Lantern so it’s pretty much set in some kind of current continuity but I’m afraid it’s not the gloomy ‘adult’ world of Sue Dibny’s shredded lycra pants so keep well away if it’s attempted rape you crave. Cannibalism, yes, rape, no. My DCU is a day-glo, non-stop funhouse, where the world is threatened every five minutes and godlike beings clash in the skies like fireworks.’

[blogs] This Isn’t London — lots of amusing made up facts about London… ‘All of London’s dogs are owned by the same company. Amalgamated Canine Industries was founded when the dog population of the city was nationalised under the Attlee government in 1948, and its holdings were leased back to the pooches’ former owners. Since then, this company has, in various forms, regulated all dog activity in the capital.’

[comics] State of the Art — Charlie Higson reviews McSweeney’s 13: The Comics Issue … ‘Why does the novel maintain its exalted status as the pinacle of human achievement? Any idiot can write one: you just need patience and a massive ego. It seems extraordinary, when we are surrounded by so much visual information, when we rely on the visual to tell us so much, and the lines between comics, films, advertising, TV and computers are becoming so blurred, that comics should still be considered trivial in some quarters.’

[comics] ‘Watchmen’ unmasked for Par, Aronofsky — details from Hollywoodreporter.com … ‘”Watchmen,” the seminal DC Comics limited series, has landed at Paramount Pictures. Darren Aronofsky will develop and direct the project, which is being written by David Hayter.’

[windows] Lookout V1.2 — If you use Outlook you need this – fast Google-esque searching of your emails … ”An addin to Outlook to quickly search all of your email, contacts, calendar, and filesystem.’ [via Joel on Software]

[comics] Dave Sim’s Follow-Up to Cerebus … ‘The Collected Dave Sim Letters: Just when you though The Last Day would end it all, scheduled for Spring 2005, is a compilation of Dave’s responses to EVERY letter that he received since 2001 (when Carol West quit). 691 pages (at least in Word). Dave’s been working on these responses, at a rate of 3-4 letters per day, since his post 300 “vacation” ended on January 23, 2004. He’s now working on an INDEX for the volume, using Word’s INDEX function. It took him 4 hours to get through the first 19 pages (of the 691).’ [via Meowwcat’s Cerebus Links]

[politics] Kilroy, the Apricot Jam in the Tapioca Party — nice sketch by David Aaronovitch on Kilroy and UKIP’s first day at the European Parliment in Strasbourg … ‘Kilroy slumped low in his seat, emaciated, well-preserved, brown and scowling, listening to the proceedings through headphones pushed back towards his neck. It was as though Pharaoh Senwosret III had been teleported by mistake from the mummy room at the Cairo Antiquities museum to the dock at the Nuremberg trial.’

[apollo] July 21st 1969: Neil Armstrong – The Awful Truth

‘TRANQUILITY: I abso-fucking-lutely am standing on the surface of the fucking moon. I am talking to you from the goddammed fucking moon. Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket.

HOUSTON: Holy Shit.

TRANQUILITY: Holy mother of fuck. The fucking moon. Over. ‘

[comics] The Fink Brothers – Mutants in Mega City One — a MP3 curiosity from the 80’s – Suggs and Carl from Madness perform a song about Judge Dredd and Mega City One as “The Fink Brothers”. Probably of interest to aging fans of 2000AD only … ‘From Justice Hall to Zappa Block, We patrol the streets around the clock! Judge, Judge, Judge, Judge, Judge, Judge, Judge, Judge Dredd! My God, my brain’s exploding!’

[comics] Every Generation’s Favourite Superhero — profile of Spiderman… ‘For each new generation of teen inadequates, he is the hero-as-nerd, the shy, tongue-tied, non-jock ninny who nevertheless wastes the bad guys and gets into the bra of the top cheerleader. He is always stuck somewhere between 17 and 22. He is the Immortal Teen who, for brief periods, turns into the Urban Ãœbermensch. For the mag-loving kid in the omniplex stalls, he could so easily be one of them. That’s why fans, anoraks and commentators discuss his exploits as if he’s a friend and call him by the matey diminutive “Spidey”. No Batman fan ever dreamt of calling his hero “Batty”.’

[kook] Bobby Fischer’s Pathetic Endgame — 2002 profile on Bobby Fischer’s long downfall … ‘The old Bobby Fischer was back, and more bizarre than ever. This was made eminently clear when Fischer informed tournament officials that he wanted the toilet in his bathroom to rise higher in the air than anyone else’s.’

[bittorrents] UK Nova — BitTorrents for UK TV. [via Haddock]

[comics] Collector Amasses Complete DC Collection … ‘A private collector in the northeastern United States has accomplished the astounding and unprecedented feat of assembling a complete collection of every comic book ever published by DC Comics. For those of you who have trouble visualizing the enormity of the task, that’s over 30,000 individual comic books!’

[cartoons] Useful — All Steve Bell’s recent Editorial Cartoons as an RSS Feed.

[quotes] Sally Emerson’s top 10 books of quotations … ‘One test of excellence when judging a collection of quotations is finding something intriguing every time you open a page. For instance: “Everything goes wrong for a government which is going wrong” – Richard Crossman, Diaries, Dec 1 1986.’

[blog] The Guardian’s New Media Top 10 includes Belle De Jour … ‘And sneaking in at number 10, anonymous call girl blogger Belle de Jour, who sparked a ludicrous media guessing game over her identity that led to a book deal for the author, makes the list as a representative of the millions of online bloggers and the year that blogging went overground.’

[comics] Not Funnies — long NYT article on Graphic Novels … ‘In certain ways, graphic novels are an almost primitive medium and require a huge amount of manual labor: drawing, inking, coloring and lettering, most of it done by hand (though a few artists have begun to experiment with computer drawing). It’s as if a traditional novelist took his printout and then had to copy it over, word by word, like a quill-wielding monk in a medieval monastery. For some graphic novelists, just four or five panels is a good day’s work, and even a modest-size book can take years to complete.’ [thanks Kabir]

[blog] Belle De Jour: Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl — BDJ’s novel has aquired a synopsis over at Amazon: ‘Belle de Jour is the diary of a London call-girl. The author will remain anonymous, but she’s from a nice middle-class family, in her late twenties, writing a phD who writes about her rather unusual job with humour, affection and honesty. This isn’t a salacious catalogue of sexual encounters, rather it’s the unfolding story of her life: the difficulties in juggling her very understanding boyfriend with her profession; the question of what to wear to work; the problems associated with managing pubic topiary and the often hilarious hypocrisies she bears witness to every day. And of course, there’s the odd sexual encounter thrown in for good measure… It’s witty, compelling, educative and oddly moving. Belle is a twenty-first century Moll Flanders who will appeal to women because of her honesty and guts, and to men because she lifts the lid on what call girls are really thinking…’

[comics] Interview with Craig McGill – Grant Morrison’s Biographer … ‘As I mentioned, the book is now about everything in his life – school years, when he dressed as a woman, the drugs, the friends, the fallouts, magic. Everything. Doing it chronologically will make it easier for the incoming reader who is not au fait with Grant’s work and the book will probably run in a very linear sense. I think if I had to sum up one core part of it, it would be honesty. It covers all of his life, but he’s being very blunt with himself and about others. There’s an emotional core to the book, I don’t know if there’s a focus on one part of him, more than any other though.’

[tv] Northmoor — well done Edge of Darkness fan-site … ‘Edge of Darkness is the product of the years 1982 to 1985. These were the days before détente, when born-again Christians and cold-war warriors seemed to be running the United States.’ [via Haddock]

[comics] Grant Morrison: Master & Commander — a huge Popimage interview with Grant Morrison … ‘What people often forget, of course, is that Magneto, unlike the lovely Sir Ian McKellen, is a mad old terrorist twat. No matter how he justifies his stupid, brutal behaviour, or how anyone else tries to justify it, in the end he’s just an old bastard with daft, old ideas based on violence and coercion. I really wanted to make that clear at this time.’

[royalty] Remembrance Di — Diamond Geezer visits the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain and Kensington Palace and spots a fantastic placard and poem to the dead Princess … ‘Today you would have been 43, You were so lovely, Why did you have to die, Why, why, why, why?’

[blogs] Random Reality Bites — the Guardian interviews UK Ambulanceman blogger Tom Reynolds … ‘The Londoner’s blog, Random Acts of Reality, charts the ups and downs of his life as an emergency medical technician, or EMT, for the ambulance service. Since he started blogging a year ago, Reynolds has built up a dedicated audience who have been absorbed by his accounts of dealing with knife fights, spurious call-outs and little old ladies grabbing his testicles.’

[web] Group Hug continues to pull me back … Kissing the Stripper and Grandma: ‘…while I was with a stripper, I kissed her a few times. And after showering and brushing, of course, the next person I kissed on the lips was my grandmother, on mothers day.’

[web] Ghosts in the Machines — “What happens to your online self when you die?” – a question most bloggers have probably asked themselves occasionally … ‘The multitudes of LiveJournal communities and Web pages devoted to deceased young people are a testament to how real some of the relationships between online friends can be, and also how persistent online culture has become, even in the way we approach mortality. Pieces of people’s lives become nonphysical totems to their memory and exist indefinitely until the next hard drive wipe or crash.’ [via del.icio.us]

[comics] Women in Refrigerators — a list of female characters in comics who have been “killed, raped, depowered, crippled, turned evil, maimed, tortured, contracted a disease or had other life-derailing tragedies befall her.”

[virus] News from the Lab — a weblog written by the F-Secure Antivirus Research Team … ‘I think we’ve seen more virus writers caught during year 2004 than during last five years combined.’

[politics] NO-ONE! EVER! TELLS ME! WHAT TO! FUCKING! DO! … ‘And then I’m sitting up last night, sucking cherry menthol throat drops and watching the coverage of the European Election, and gazing at the permatanned face of the vile Robert Kilroy Silk as the UKIP see their tally of votes mounting across the country. And I realise that his entire campaign is based on “No-one tells us what to do.” And I realise that it’s people like Billy for whom that message resonates very deeply.’ [via Mo Morgan]

[politics] Another Interview with Boris Johnson — from the Independent … ‘Asked the inevitable question, Mr Johnson dismissed his own chances of becoming the Leader of the Conservative as “about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars”. However, there remain “fans of Boris” who believe that alongside all the bland hopefuls joining the Tory ranks from banks, public relations firms and the media, he would be the people’s choice for leader of the Conservative Party after Michael Howard steps down.’

[mp3] Winamp Unlimited — the weblog for Winamp has a new home … ‘Winamp Unlimited is your #1 source for Winamp news, rumors, forum highlights, and general propoganda. Awesome!’

[web] ‘Nerd Values’ Help Propel Tiny Craigslist Into Classifieds Threat — more on Craigslist and Craig Newmark … Peter Krasilovsky: ‘One thing about Craigslist — it is real thin. That makes it easy and fun to read, easy to maintain. While newspapers have been adding feature after feature to keep up with (job site) Monster.com’s own feature creep, there is Craig with these little text postings, and they do the trick.’

[comics] Batman on Film — latest news and rumors about the Batman films … ‘BATMAN ON FILM is the voice of the Bat-fan as we lobby for the production of the ultimate BATMAN movie. We’ve been doing this since June of 1998…’

[comics] Remixed Spiderman Strips — amusing, nasty, probably NSFW … [via Die Puny Humans]

[books] The Condensed Bill Clinton — Slate reads Clinton’s autobio ‘My Life’ so we don’t have to… ‘Page 197: “I was so exhausted I fell asleep while the stripper was dancing and the goat head was looking up at me.” Look it up for yourself.’

[film] Unfairenheit 9/11 – The lies of Michael Moore — Chris Hitchens on Fahrenheit 9/11 … ‘I have already said that Moore’s film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it’s much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex,” and the use of “spin” in the presentation of our politicians. It’s high time someone had the nerve to point this out.’

[web] The Craigslist Phenomenon — profile of Craig Newmark – creator of craigslist … ‘While he was at his first job, as a software programmer for IBM, he enrolled in ballet and jazz dance classes to meet women. He ended up in the hospital with a hernia.’

[tv] Big Brother Gets Therapeutic — interesting essay on Big Brother’s approach to last Thursday’s events … ‘To anyone who has ever been involved in a drinking session that went a bit too far, nothing especially outrageous happened in the house on Thursday morning. The reports say there were ‘death threats’ – well, Jason (the bodybuilding Scot) did threaten to ‘rip the head’ off Marco (the gay one), but I don’t think he was literally going to do it. Yes there were ‘violent confrontations’, if you think that throwing a plastic tray at someone counts as violence. There was also ‘verbal abuse’, some of which was quite funny – especially when Jason told the strange, wiry, helium-voiced Marco, ‘Don’t fucking disrespect me, gimp boy Gollum’. Yet reading today’s reports you’d be forgiven for thinking that all hell broke loose…’

[film] ‘9/11’: Just the facts? — Roger Ebert on Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 … ‘That’s where you’re wrong. Most documentaries, especially the best ones, have an opinion and argue for it. Even those that pretend to be objective reflect the filmmaker’s point of view. Moviegoers should observe the bias, take it into account and decide if the film supports it or not. Michael Moore is a liberal activist. He is the first to say so. He is alarmed by the prospect of a second term for George W. Bush, and made “Fahrenheit 9/11” for the purpose of persuading people to vote against him.’ [Related: Fahrenheit 9/11 Trailer]

[comics] A Farewell to Aardvarks — another summing up of Cerebus … “If Dave Sim recorded an album, it would be called Genius, Asshole or Madman.” [via Meowwcat’s Cerebus Links]

[politics] You Ask The Questions — Boris Johnson … ‘Q: Admit it: you want to become prime minister, don’t you? A: There is no use in having politicians who are not ambitious. You might as well have racehorses who want to eat the grass by the verge. On the other hand, my chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.’

[comics] Bat Out of Hell — preview of Batman Begins. ‘…the comic-book franchise does have a checkered past. The new chapter, which will hit theaters in June 2005, is called “Batman Begins” — presumably because “Batman Sucked the Last Time So We’re Starting Over” was too clunky.’

[knowledge] The Two Things — apparently, for any subject there are only two things you need to know — the rest isn’t important or an application of the original two things … ‘World Conquest: 1. Divide and Conquer. 2. Never invade Russia in the winter.’ [via del.icio.us]

[bdj] Some Belle de Jour links I missed …

» Belledejour.co.uk … BDJ has a domain name.

» I am not Belle de Jour … somebody should sell this to Sarah Champion.

» Who is Belle de Jour? — the Daily Mail “investigated” the identity of BDJ back in April. ‘…we know rather a lot about Belle. Except, of course, her true identity, which has been the subject of frenzied speculation in publishing circles. Rumours abound. There are even those who even insist Belle is a he, not a she.’

[mp3] We’re Stuck with MP3 — why the standard music compression format isn’t going to be replaced anytime soon… ‘The newer audio formats, including Ogg Vorbis, seem to have at least two things going for them compared with MP3: smaller files and less expense. But because any change would require conversion of billions of files – a royal pain in the butt – it just won’t happen.’ [via 2lmc]

[monologue] West Wing – Two Cathedrals … President Bartlet talks to God:

‘You’re a son of a bitch you know that? She bought her first new car and you hit her with a drunk driver. What, is that supposed to be funny? “You can’t conceive nor can I the strangeness of the mercy of God,” says Graham Green. I think I know who’s ass he was kissing there, ’cause I think your’re just vindictive. What was Josh Lyman, the warning shot? That was my son, what did I ever do to yours but praise his glory and praise his name? There’s a tropical storm that’s gaining speed and power. They say we haven’t had a storm this bad since you took out that Tender ship of mine in the North Atlantic last year, sixty-eight crew. You know what a Tender ship does? It fixes the other ships, and, delivers the mail, that’s all it can do. Gracias Tibiago Domine. Yes, I lied. It was a sin, I’ve committed many sins. Have I displeased you, you feckless thug? Three point eight billion new jobs that wasn’t good? Bailed out Mexico, Increased foreign trade, 30 million new acres of land for conservation, put Mendoza on the bench, we’re not fighting a war, I’ve raised 3 children. That’s not enough to buy me out of the doghouse? Am I really to believe that these are the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To hell with your punishments. I was your servant here on Earth. And I spread your word and I did your work. To hell with your punishments. To hell with you.’

[film] Let’s Not Get It On — a guide to the least erotic moments in recent films … ‘All it takes for Eminem to bed (or, in this case, stack of metal) Murphy is an awkward request for a date, which she parlays into some immediate workplace action: Looking for all the world like a crack whore, Murphy soaks her palm in her own saliva and heads down south. A moment of mostly silent sex – broken up by clanking factory noises – ends with Eminem, in a rare moment of vulnerability, gasping “Oh, God.” His savage beast isn’t soothed for long, though: After two seconds of postcoital bliss, he’s already shouting, “Your friends don’t even know me!”‘ [via I Love Everything]

[venus] A piece of History Passes By and 350 years on the Sun Shines for Jeremiah the Genius — Simon Hoggart spent yesterday up a Hill in Lancashire with 92 astronomers as the Transit of Venus happened …

‘…it is the unity between our own past and the immensity of the universe which is skin-tingling. Just after the last transit, in 1882, Robert Ball wrote: “The next time people will see it is when the flowers are in bloom, in June 2004.” It was good to be there with the flowers.’

[comics] 5 Questions for… Seth — the writer/artist is interviewed by Alan David Doane at Newsarama … ‘If you were to take the first part of Clyde Fans and change the electric fan, like all references to electric fans, to comic books, it would kind of explain who the character of Abraham is, because being a cartoonist in the 20th century has that same kind of feeling of, say, being an electric fan salesman, it’s a kind of an antiquated occupation that’s sort of fallen by the wayside as technological progress has moved us into such totally different media. In many ways, like working as a cartoonist, just drawing little things on pieces of paper seems like such an old fashioned method compared to all of the technological computer science that has come along.’

[web] Cracking the Code to Romance — brief profiles of hackers using the web for dating… the googler, the blogger, the sniffer and the stalker …

‘Moore has written several Unix shell scripts that run on-the-fly background checks on people who use wireless networks in his neighborhood. With the help of the popular network-traffic analysis utility Netcat, his script “sniffs all the traffic on the Wi-Fi network, greps for email addresses, and looks them up on Friendster.” Then the script sends Moore an email that includes a link to the users’ Friendster profiles, along with their pictures and login IDs. At a time when it seems that nearly everyone has a Friendster account, Moore says, “You can do really creepy stuff. You can get the profiles on everyone in your local café, then see who their friends are, and just walk up to them and ask, ‘Aren’t you Tom’s friend?'” More disturbing, Moore’s toolkit allows him to get zip codes and last names, making it easier to track down the real-world addresses of his targets, thus opening up a whole new universe of creepiness. “You could do all sorts of mean things,” he says.’

[fgi] Fucking Google It … ‘Google Is Your Friend. All Smart People Use Google. You Appear To Not Be One Of Them’

[war] Sixty years on, D-day veterans pass torch into hands of history — Jonathan Freedland on the 60th Aniversary of D-Day … ‘The end of the cold war allowed another new guest. For decades Russia was the forgotten ally but, now free of communism, it was allowed back in yesterday. Vladimir Putin rode in on the world leaders’ charabanc along with the rest of them (only the Queen and Bush were too grand to use the coach, preferring their own cars). When the Polish armed forces’ band formed part of the warm-up entertainment – doing a medley of Abba tunes, including a goose-stepping version of Dancing Queen that seemed to be a straight lift from Mel Brooks’ Springtime for Hitler – the picture of a united Europe was complete.’

[chris morris] Second Class Male and Time To Go — Hoax columns by Chris Morris (published in The Observer in 1999) … ‘Not for publication: You have made me too depressed to write. Unlike the great melancholics – Baudelaire, Beethoven – I have no genius from which to draw consolation. I am at best a Brian Wilson, but a Brian Wilson who went to bed before making Pet Sounds. Fuck you all.’

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