linkmachinego.com
14 December 2009
[music] Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” compressed over and over as an MP3 666 times… If you listen to this you will bleed goats blood out of your ears – FACT … ‘and if u r wondering, YES it does lose quality each time it is compressed.’ [via Kottke]
13 December 2009
[comics] Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns on Batman‘He’s kind of a dick.’ [more…]
12 December 2009
[curtis] Dubai 1975 … Adam Curtis digs up some intriguing footage of Dubai in 1975 from the BBC Archive‘It is a glimpse of Dubai just before it started to become the strange fantasy world it is today. It has a great creepy British under-secretary for foreign affairs, plus very good tartan fashions.’
11 December 2009
[comics] Time Lost Batman is on Twitter: ‘You don’t get it, Pharaoh. This isn’t a desert. It’s an operating table, and I’M THE SURGEON!!!’ [more…]
10 December 2009
[comics] The Comics Reporter’s Holiday Shopping Guide ’09 … great selection of comic gifts to buy this year … On A Drifting Life: ‘Very few if any reviews of this massive autobiographical work from the great Yoshihiro Tatsumi note how completely mad it is on a certain level to follow a young man around as he reads and draws comics over the space of several decades. This book more than has the courage of that particular conviction, and I’ve never seen any artist invoke the relationship-warping monomania of creativity as well as Tatsumi does here.’
9 December 2009
[funny] New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths

“The most disturbing facet of this ubiquitous childhood disorder is an utter lack of empathy,” Mateo said. “These people—if you can even call them that—deliberately violate every social norm without ever pausing to consider how their selfish behavior might affect others. It’s as if they have no concept of anyone but themselves.”

“The depths of depravity that these tiny psychopaths are capable of reaching are really quite chilling,” Mateo added.

8 December 2009
7 December 2009
[morrison] Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods Trailer … a bunch of comic-types try to sum up Grant Morrison … [more…]
[comics] The Best Comics Of The ’00s … from The A.V. Club. On Morrison and Quitely’s All Star Superman: ‘…Morrison puts a fresh spin on old Superman ideas—Bizarro, Jimmy Olsen’s monstrous transformations—and introduces some of his own, including a story in which Superman is secretly responsible for the world you’re living in right now. It’s enough to send even the most jaded comics fan outside to look up in the sky.’
4 December 2009
[interesting] The 50 Most Interesting Articles On Wikipedia … including… ETAOIN SHRDLU: ‘The letters on Linotype keyboards were arranged by letter frequency, so ETAOIN SHRDLU were the first two vertical columns on the left side of the keyboard.’
3 December 2009
[comics] Counterculture Comics Hero Grant Morrison Gets a Biopic … Wired cover a new documantary about Grant Morrison … ‘Morrison has lived a very full life, from playing in rock bands to experimenting as a transvestite to becoming, like Alan Moore, a chaos magician. There’s a lot of fertile ground in his personality alone, to say nothing of his sometimes autobiographical comics. In the process, Morrison has become a counterculture icon primed for mainstream crossover.’
2 December 2009
[google] Autocomplete Me … a blog revealing oddball search requests via Google’s autocomplete feature … ‘monsters are… real and ghosts are real too. they live inside us and sometimes they win.’
1 December 2009
[bdj] Meanwhile… Belle de Jour on Celebrity Big Brother? ZOMG!!

belle de jour on celebrity big brother

[bdj] Yes, the bozos who claimed I was Belle de Jour were completely deluded! … Stewart Home’s reaction to Belle de Jour revealing her identity … ‘One thing I am absolutely certain of is that I didn’t write the Belle de Jour blog and books despite the claims to the contrary made by various conspiracy nuts.’
30 November 2009
29 November 2009
[books] In Cold Blood, Half A Century On … revisiting the senseless murder of four people, Kansas and Truman Capote …

For Truman Capote the outcome of his sojourn in west Kansas was decidedly mixed. In Cold Blood, which he immodestly heralded as a new form of non-fiction novel, was received with delirious approval; Norman Mailer dubbed Perry as one of the great characters in American literature. The book earned its author more than $2m, which he used to buy homes in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Palm Springs and Switzerland. But by all accounts such heavenly success also went to his head, and contributed to his downward spiral in a haze of lavish parties, drink and drugs. He failed to write another substantial work, and died in 1984.

27 November 2009
[comics] Skin … The Forbidden Planet blog remembers Skin the long out-of-print comic from Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy‘McCarthy’s art is astonishing, from the brutal leer on Martin’s face in one scene to the psychedelic, drug-fuelled sex scene with the young skinhead and some hippies (aided in no small part by Carol Swain’s brilliant colouring) which is a great example of how bloody amazing McCarthy’s art often is. Both art and story combine perfectly to tell a powerful tale of a disturbing subject and do so while denying the reader the normal emotional crutch of having a loveable but put-down hero to root for…’
26 November 2009
25 November 2009
[books] Is James Ellroy The Best Judge Of His Own Novels? … James Ellroy on The Cold Six Thousand‘Ellroy was already there, sitting on a dais, dressed casually – khaki jumper with suede elbow pads, chinos and surprisingly fashionable shoes – more geography teacher on a field trip than “the demon dog, the foul owl with the death growl”. But there was nothing ordinary about Ellroy’s voice. Deep, rhythmic and gruff, his voice imbued the opening passage from American Tabloid with such ferocity and menace it was pure visceral theatre.’
[simpsons] The 14 Most Awesome Fake Products From The Simpsons‘Krusty’s low standards for product endorsement have resulted in a slew of hilarious products. One of the best is the Krusty Home Pregnancy Test (warning: may cause birth defects).’
24 November 2009
[funny] Internet Vices‘YouTube is shots of tequila. “Just ONE” to humor your friend quickly turns into 4 or 5…’
23 November 2009
[bbc] Melvyn Bragg history show In Our Time to go online in BBC Archive‘The show, which chronicles the history of ideas, is among the first BBC programmes to have its complete archive made accessible online…’
[goog] Mystery Google … the results are what the person before you searched for. I got MLIA.
22 November 2009
[quote] ‘I worry. I mean, little things bother me. I’m a worrier. I mean, little insignificant details – I lose my appetite. I can’t eat. My wife, she says to me, “you know, you can really be a pain.” ’ — Columbo.
21 November 2009
20 November 2009
[bdj] For Whom The Belle Tells … another old-time UK blogger breaks cover and admits he guessed who Belle de Jour was … ‘The first blog to link to BDJ was in fact this humble blog, Parallax View. And the lead? An email from a fellow blogger casually asking whether I’d noticed on the UK Blogs aggregator a blog by a prostitute. The blogger? Oh, you’re ahead of me… Dr Brooke Magnanti.’
19 November 2009
[bdj] How Belle de Jour’s Secret Ally Googlewhacked The Press … First personal post I ever do makes the front page of the Guardian. Never again … ‘The sympathetic online diarist, who gives his name only as Darren…’
18 November 2009
[bdj] The Belle de Jour Googlewack … this screengrab was taken in 2005.
[bdj] Reg hack beats ‘Belle de Jour’ sex rap‘The stigma of suspected blogging followed [Andrew] Orlowski until yesterday, when Dr Brooke Magnanti, a Bristol research scientist, outed herself in The Sunday Times. Today our man, who is rarely mistaken for Billie Piper, declined to comment from his North London brothel.’
17 November 2009
[bdj] Add a blog to the updated list? … The original email Belle de Jour sent asking to be added to the Updated UK Blogs List.