LinkMachineGo

[rail] The Guardian studies the story behind the cracked rail which caused the Hatfield train disaster…. ‘The public mood, so far as one can tell, would like big fish in the net and a charge of corporate manslaughter. That is unlikely; as someone close to the Hatfield investigation said to me, you would need to find a piece of paper with such improbable words written on it as “Do not repair this track, we can’t afford it. Yrs sincerely, The Fat Controller.” More likely is a charge of manslaughter – culpable homicide – against individuals lower down the ladder, or their prosecution for a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act.’

[politics] The Guardian interviews Michael Helseltine — another politician retiring at the next election…. ‘If you push your hair forward, how far would it go, I ask. My bet is that it would hang off his chin. “I haven’t the first idea.” Go on, try it. “No, I shan’t. I certainly won’t try it.” Go on. “No, not at all. “I didn’t always want long hair. I just had long hair. There was no conscious decision.” Come off it, hair length is a choice! “You can have a passive choice.” Laziness? “Yeeeeaassss. Indifference.” Indifference!’

[comics] Another comic-related weblog ComicGeek. Looks pretty comprehensive…

[chat] The Barbelith Underground has returned…. the bulletin board for ‘cool egghead stoner motherfuckers’.

[weblog performance anxiety] I love it when a plan comes together. Actually, a random drunken post comes together…. ‘In soothing tones, they will be ready to assist you with a selection of web links of various types – witty, profound, bizarre or even “all your base are belong to us”, if you’re really at the end of your mental tether with desperation. They can also be consulted about the news stories that you should be commenting on, or give you advice on how far you should go into details about various aspects of your personal life (rest assured that the trained advisors have a selection of metaphors or suitable quotes to hand, which you can use to comment knowingly but without fear of giving away sensitive information). In short, it’s the essential service for any tired and emotional blogger.’ [thanks to Vaughan]

[tedious autobiography] Doing a linklog is very difficult sometimes… I often have Weblog Performance Anxiety*…. but if you spend the day drinking champagne cocktails in a bar with Mini-Me your tedious life becomes easy to blog… Goodnight! ‘Talk to the hand… ‘cos the face ain’t listening…’
* The anxious feeling a weblogger gets when other blogs they read casually update through out the day and all the sufferer of WPA can come up with is a link to a story about interest rates or something equally boring…

[comics] Superheroes are evil ‘Let’s start with Superman. The Bible never mentions life in other planets. But Superman is not from Earth; he is from Krypton. This fact alone goes contradicts the Bible. And the horror continues. Superman is raised on Earth and grows up to become a superhero. People all over the Earth start worshipping this mysterious character. And where is Jesus in this picture? Superman never mentions God or Jesus. He is probably an atheist. And people in Metropolis see him as their Lord and Savior.’ [thanks Pete]

(Manually Published yesterday)

[services] Blogger is down so don’t expect any updates today….

[random link for no apparent reason] On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. ‘He had a lot of guts’ — James Bond.

What a nightmare updating by hand is… I’m going back to bed. :)

[comics] Who’s hotter? Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis? Let the fans decide…. ‘I suggest you take this down. Now.’ — Ellis. [via WEF]

[politics] Dogged as does it — interesting profile of William Hague from a reporter who followed him around for a week…. ‘Hague works his way around the room, shaking hands, signing autographs, having his photograph taken next to candidates for the local council elections. I overhear a woman say, ‘Taller than you think, isn’t he?’ A man with a pound sign in his lapel says: ‘Isn’t that Seb Coe over by the door?’ It is. When I wander over to join Coe he says, ‘I’ve just remembered I was once kicked out of this bar when I was a student.’ (Drunken revelries, apparently. These Tories never pass up a chance to show that their formative years were ‘normal’.)’

[comics] Jack Chick vs. Freemasonary. There can be only one winner…. JESUS!

[politics] As the UK elections approach it’s important to know which party the major cartoon characters are supporting. (By the way, Porky the Pig was slaughtered and burned earlier this week… so I suspect he’s not supporting Nick Brown any longer.) [thanks to Marcia]

[comics] 90 Christian Comics Tracts by Jack T. Chick! on sale at Ebay…. ‘I remember … reading 70 tracts in one sitting and being completely convinced I had wasted my life and was going straight to hell. … It’s a truly powerful experience to have this guy yelling at you for 70 tracts.’ — Dan Clowes, comic book artist. [Related Links: This Was Your Life!, Chick Publications]

[movies] Another memoir about Stanley Kubrick — this time from Wendy Carlos who did the soundtracks for The Shining and A Clockwork Orange…. ‘You can understand why recent attempts since his death to paint a revisionist (revisionary “historians” — right out of Orwell — feh!) image of Kubrick as some kind of warm and fuzzy fond old uncle are both ignorant and bizarre. The world has plenty of avuncular supportive seniors already. What’s in short supply in the world is Stanley Kubricks: artists who will spare no effort to do work of the highest caliber. Yes, it’s impractical, and not a role most artists are able to inhabit with comfort, unless you command the respect and financial support system he needed.’ [thanks Luke]

[cartoon] Steve Bell on the Foot and Mouth Crisis…. ‘Contented Farmer at Twelve O’Clock!’

[conspiracy] It comes as no surprise that David Icke has plenty to report on the Foot and Mouth Crisis… ‘Here we have yet more evidence that the Foot and Mouth “crisis” has been manufactured from the start. The question is…did the UK government call these timber merchants because they already knew that there was an outbreak long before it was officially revealed, or because they knew one was about to start through artificial means? I strongly suspect the latter to say the least.’ [Related Link: Foot-and-mouth ‘cover up’ denied]

[politics] tothepolls.com launches…. a ‘Balanced News Filter for the UK General Election’.

[movies] The truth about Kubrick. ‘…although one of the few critical remarks is Woody Allen’s statement that he was utterly baffled by 2001: A Space Odyssey the first time he saw it. Introducing a new 70mm copy of the film in London earlier this week, Harlan tried to help out. “On a bad day Kubrick wouldn’t answer the question. But on a good day I think he might have said the film was made by an ignoramus about the unknowable. He might have said – if he didn’t think it was too pompous – that he wanted to take the audience into a place that he actually couldn’t imagine himself all that well. He was really a self-taught and very learned man and he guessed that, even then, he knew very little. He wasn’t at all religious but he had a very strong sense that there were mysteries, within and outside our world, that he could never begin to solve.”‘

[blog meme] Write your URL on a Fiver Day! ‘is it a criminal offence to write on money? i dunno. possibly. but i remember reading about a bloke who wrote on a five pound note, spent it and got it handed back to him 300 miles away when he was on holiday.’

[comic] Some great postings on Dave Sim Vs. Jeff Smith at the Comicon message board from industry insiders like Colleen Doran, Stephen Bissette and Rick Veitch…. Doran’s comments are particularly insightful (click on the linked pages and scroll down looking for postings from “Colleen”). Doran: ‘What is the essence of Dave Sim? What is at his core? This man wants to be history, not a footnote in history. He wants to be big. He wants to be important. He is terrified that Cerebus, his life’s work, the primary focus of his waking hours for decades, will be marginalized, dismissed, stuck on the back shelf. Dave’s immortality is Cerebus and he is terrified he will not live forever. He is apalled that others, whom he perceives to be less worthy, will. That includes people like Picasso and Hemingway.’ [Related Link: Cerebus Fan Site]

[religion] Is this the face of Christ? ‘The BBC used a combination of 2,000-year-old Jewish skulls and ancient religious images to generate what it claims is the first “true-to-life” picture of Jesus Christ.’ [Related Links: Large image of Real Life Christ, Metafilter Posting]

[tv] The Guardian interviews Mary Whitehouse. ‘On Wednesday mornings, the hairdresser visits. And at lunchtime, the dining room of the Essex nursing home is a sea of high set curls. Mary Whitehouse surveys the wispy throng with a gimlet eye, then leans across the table. Her huge bead necklace swings precariously close to the plate of brown stew and swedes boiled senseless. “Some of these dears don’t have much hair to do,” she whispers.’

[collectibles] The Onion reports that Everything In Entire World Now Collectible. ‘Rarity, once a prerequisite for an item to have collector’s value, is no longer relevant. An early sign of this shift occurred in the early ’90s, when Marvel Comics encouraged fans to pre-order multiple copies of the much-hyped “Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man #1” because of the book’s anticipated collector’s value. The issue sold more copies than any comic book in history, but fans still hoarded multiple copies in special dust-proof Mylar bags, in part because of its unique status as the least rare comic book ever. “Rarity is nothing. Do you have any idea how many Beanie Babies are out there?” asked Barbara Mason, editor of Beanie Baby Illustrated. “Let’s put it this way: There are approximately twice as many Scoop The Pelican Beanie Babies on the planet Earth than there are actual pelicans. And they’re worth more, too.”‘

[movies] The Independent profiles Steven Soderbergh just before the Oscars on Sunday Night. ‘Chances are it is Monday morning, not Sunday night, that Soderbergh is most looking forward to. With him, it is always the work that counts, nothing else. (As he once wrote: “The fun part is making them. The rest is crap.”) He’s built quite a reputation for himself as the ascetic about Hollywood – working constantly, focussing everyone’s attention on the film and the film alone, dodging the studio politics, shooting fast with relatively few takes, coming in on time and under budget, doing the publicity rounds quickly and politely, and then moving on to the next project.’ [Related Links: Soderbergh at IMDB, Ocean’s Eleven at Upcoming Movies]

[comics] Disinfo has the transcript of Grant Morrison’s interview with Richard Metzger (which has on Channel 4 a couple of months ago). ‘WOOOOOOOOOW! Here we are! Right! Fuck man, I tell you when I was a kid I read Robert Anton Wilson and all this shit and here we are, we’re standing here, talking about this shit and it’s real! OK, I’m pissed (Holds up red beaker.) and in half an hour I’m gonna come up on drugs, so watch for it!(Audience laughter.) I guess, I don’t know, is there any practising magicians in the audience? Put your hand up if we got any? Yeah? Come on! (Puts his hand up.) Bold! OK, a few. OK, by the time we finish this you’re all going to be practising magicians. This shit’s easy right?’ [Related Links: Grant Morrison’s Website, TimeMachineGo, Barbelith]

[distraction] The McSweenifier. ‘A Method for Formatting Arbitrary Text In the Style of the Popular Internet Journal “McSweeney’s”.’ [via FOAF]

[distraction] If you want a serious laugh check out… Cliff Yablonski Hates You. ‘jesus christ, you whiny little bitches need to go out and get a life for gods sake. all I get is “WAH, CLIFF, UPDATE YOUR PAGE, IM TIRED OF JACKING OFF TO THE ABC NEWS ALL DAY, WAH, UPDATE YOUR PAGE.” fuck you all. I hate you. Ive updated my fucking page, so shut the hell up you mongrel bastards.’

[movies] The Independent interviews James Coburn. ‘James Coburn is 72, Gwyneth Paltrow is 28: what else is there to say? James Coburn isn’t likely to be fending off asteroids or refighting the Second World War at a multiplex any time soon. Nor will he be modelling underwear in Harpers & Queen. Older audiences may have fond memories of his outings opposite Steve McQueen, or his collaborations with Sam Peckinpah on Major Dundee, Cross of Iron and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. He may still be a terrific actor, with his rich bass-baritone voice, his magnetic blue eyes and thick white hair, and his dogged application of technique learned over more than 40 years. But the hard truth is that most of Hollywood’s key marketing demographic, the 15- to 24-year-old age bracket, has never heard of him.’

[politics] The Guardian interviews Tony Benn and Sir Edward Heath about their 50 years of service in the British Parliment…. ‘Heath remains silent. As an Oxford student of modest origins and progressive instincts, he took himself off to Germany to inspect Hitler at close quarters. Making his way to Nuremberg in 1937, his memoirs report, he witnessed the FÃ¼hrer walking to the podium, “his shoulder brushing mine as he went past”. “This experience subsequently dominated my political life,” Heath would one day write, confirming him as an anti-appeaser, later (after he had returned to Germany in battle) as a passionate European, convinced that only a Europe “united, free and democratic” would be safe from the demons of ultranationalism.’

[cartoon] Steve Bell on the Foot and Mouth Crisis. ‘Ask yourselves – is the timing of this particular cull entirely appropriate?‘

[fanfic] Internet fan fiction never ceases to amaze me… The Frog Brothers (the comic shop owning vampire hunters from the Lost Boys) have their own fan fiction…. ‘”I’m telling you, the Superman number one-eighteens do not belong with the two hundreds,” Sam Emerson complained. On this warm, summer evening, the Frog brothers were entertaining their friend inside the family-owned Frog’s Comics, the best comic book store on the Santa Carla Boardwalk. “When are you guys going to get that straight?” Sam continued his gripe. “Sorry, Sam,” said Edgar in the gruff voice that was his trademark. “We’ve been too busy ridding the world of evil to arrange our shelves to your liking.”‘ [Related Link: Lost Boys Fan Fiction]

[comics] Running A Publishing House Out Of The Front Room — a five page Alec comic from Eddie Campbell. ‘The Alec stories are, it can finally be revealed, the autobiographical escapades of Eddie Campbell himself. From Bill “Saturday” Knight in The Days Of The Ace Rock’n’Roll Club to Alec MacGarry, to the unmasked Eddie Campbell in the most recent work (appearing in the monthly Bacchus comic), Campbell manages to find in the minutiae of everyday life the source of grand entertainment.’

[masons] The Guardian profiles the Freemasons who have just hired a PR company to try and improve their image… ‘The editor of The Square, “the independent magazine for freemasons”, devotes his editorial in this month’s issue to the important question: “To eat or not to eat”. “Any masonic group which sought to eliminate my choice of whether I dine or not can do without my presence,” he thunders in a vigorous defence of the “festive board” against the “Nazis of the masonic world” who want it reduced or eliminated. It is, he explains, “one of the big topics of conversation in masonic circles”.’ [Related Link: The Grand Lodge of England Website]

[tv] Anne Robinson: Cruella of prime time — a interesting profile from the Independent. ‘Anderson, then a junior hack on the Echo, remembers Robinson as “gutsy” even in the hard, recovery years. He recalls the moment she discovered her copy was being “blacked” by sub-editors because she was not a union member. Sheweighed barely six stone at the time. Anderson says she tottered up to the sub-editors on platform heels. “She stood in the middle of these guys and demanded to know who was blacking her copy,” he says, with some fondness. “Suddenly they were all taking great interest in their shoe laces.” There was never a problem with her copy again.’ [Related Link: Anne Robinson Version 3.0]

[music] Dotmusic have got the video to Gorillaz’ Clint Eastwood on their website… some excellent animation designed by Jaime Hewlett. [personally, I always thought Philip Bond was vastly superior to Hewlett… but what do I know?] ‘Created to accompany the lazy splendour of ‘Clint Eastwood’ from the forthcoming Gorillaz album, the video is the work of Tank Girl mastermind Jamie Hewlett and animators Passion Pictures. Though the project is known to involve Blur’s Damon Albarn and hip hop producer Dan The Automator – responsible for cult favourites Dr Octogon and Handsome Boy Modelling School – the identities of the other members of the band has not been disclosed.’

[comics] Master of the Universe — Wired has a great article about Neal Adams and his slightly off the wall ideas about science. ‘Adams has been fascinated by science for as long as he can remember, and he travels between disciplines like a car zigzagging on the freeway. For him, the notion of a growing Earth is just a starting point on the way to debunking not only a core principle of geology – plate tectonics – but the very underpinnings of geophysics, cosmology, particle physics, even Einstein’s assertions about the speed of light. If the Earth is growing, he insists, this means the total amount of matter and energy in the universe is increasing – which means matter is infinite, not finite like big bang theorists believe. Adams doesn’t even believe there was a big bang. It was more like a whimper, a birthing cry to herald what’s really been going on ever since: Matter is being created all the time, in astounding quantities. The Earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, the entire universe – it’s all growing. Not just expanding relative to one another through space. Growing.’

[search requests] The number one search request on LMG has always been ‘Charlie Dimmock Nude‘ but recently ‘Danniella Westbrook Nose‘ has been cropping up a lot…. Unfortunately, I never had a link to a picture…. until now. [via fneh.net/simon]

[comics] Popimage previews comics arriving in May. It’s Grant Morrison’s month as DC reprint some of Animal Man, Marvel reprint Marvel Boy and the new X-Men series kicks off. On Animal Man: ‘Grant’s run on the book was a serious high point in his career. He managed to merge politics, satire, superhero fun, and good old-fashioned Grant wackiness together without running the book off track or losing his readers attention. Good job reprinting this DC, lets just hope more DOOM PATROL is next!’

[interview] The Independent interviews Chris Eubank. ‘Chris’s head looks as if it’s been largely achieved with plane and spirit level. Actually, it’s more as though a sculptor got this big, fat square of glossy dark stone one day, started chiselling, but then lost interest before rounding anything off. Everything is hard, geometric angles, apart from his nose, which isn’t. His nose is a big soft, squidgy splodge. As a kid, Chris hated his nose. “I used to. Get ridiculed,” he says, talking in his odd, precise way, articulating every syllable and putting in full stops wherever he fancies. “I used to get called. Names.” Such as? “Hoover. But now I’ve come to love it. It’s made me a great deal of money because when it’s hit, it goes flat. It doesn’t. Break. It’s a marvellous instrument I have here. My nothe.”‘

[men] My Ideal Woman. ‘If you are or know of someone who meets these requirements, email me. Chances are, though, that I will miserably fail her requirements for a man. Hence, I am most likely going to remain a bachelor.’ [via Wacky Brit]

[comics] The Dave Sim Misogyny Page — the text of Cerebus #186… Hopefully, my final link about Dave Sim and Cerebus for some time. ‘I am alone, said Viktor Davis. I am not lonely. There is a big difference. I have not had a Merged Permanence in my life for five years. It took at least three of those five years for my brain to start functioning properly again. In the aftermath of being part of a Merged Void, all that is left for some time is Void Residue: Emptiness, Fear and Emotional Hunger. It is these three and the endless, fruitless search for a Permanent Cure that the Emotional Female Void calls Love. If you merge with that sensibility, you will share in its sickness. No matter what you pour into it, it remains empty; no matter how you reassure it, it remains afraid; no matter how much of yourself you permit it to devour, it remains hungry. If you look at her and see anything besides emptiness, fear and emotional hunger, you are looking at the parts of yourself which have been consumed to that point.’ [BTW, Merged Permanence = Loving Relationship in Bizzaro-Dave World.]

[comics] My Obsession With Chess — I’ve been meaning to blog this for ages — a terrific on-line autobiographical comic from Scott McCloud.

[tv] Mob Rules. Interview with Sopranos creator David Chase. ‘The one big problem with a TV series — and let’s take The Sopranos out of it, because one hopes this doesn’t apply to it — is that the leads of a TV series aren’t going to die. They just aren’t. And they’re certainly not going to die after the fifth week. So once life and death is taken out of a story about life, how pressing is it? In our lives, there’s life and death all the time. We’re afraid we’re going to get sick, we’re afraid we’re going to get hit by a bus, or someone we love is going to die. But in television that fear doesn’t exist, so the whole thing becomes rather . . . uninvolving. You have cops running around getting shot at, but by and large you know that these cops are not going to get killed.’ [via Guardian Weblog]

[amis] Martin Amis examines the US Porn Industry. ‘It is barely 10 o’clock in the morning, and I am, I realise, experiencing the kind of anxiety that usually precedes a mild ordeal. A line is about to be crossed. I shouldn’t be here. None of us should be here. But we all have work to do. Fifteen minutes later, referring to the achievements of Lola, Chloe stabbed a hand through the air at me, and shouted with joy and triumph (Chloe is the director, remember, and she was thrilled to have this scene in the can): “That’s the kind of blowjob I was telling you about yesterday!”‘

[politics] BBC News reports that the infamous ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ poster was a clever fake. ‘After the election Lord Thorneycroft, Tory party treasurer at the time, claimed that the poster had “won the election for the Conservatives”. When, in the 1980s, unemployment began to soar, the poster stayed in the public spotlight – this time as a prime example of both political hypocrisy and, just as importantly, the ability of advertising to sell almost anything.’

[comics] Dave Sim want to have a boxing match with Jeff Smith. ‘Having had a year to try to figure out how to explain this to a largely feminist, largely feminzed crowed I figure the best bet is a (may God forgive me) movie analogy: Do you remember in the movie The Color of Money, the sequel–make that, the “sequel”–to The Hustler where the Tom Cruise character tells the Paul Newman character that he “threw” their big championship game, so he could “clean up” on side bets? And the Paul Newman character corners the Tom Cruise character and challenges him to a game, a for-real game? And he says to the Tom Cruise character, “Let’s clean this up”? That’s what I’m doing here. You can’t “clean up” a mess like this in a circus atmosphere. Jeff, I am saying, flat out, that you have lied. In lying, you have made a mess–a non-masculine mess. You have made a mess. Publicly. Let’s you and me, man-to-man, clean up the mess that you have made. Privately.’ [Related Link: cerebus.org, Hey, kids!! It’s the Dave Sim Misogyny Page!]

[music] Guardian Unlimited interviews Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett about Gorillaz — their ‘Virtual Band’. ‘Tank Girl didn’t even make Hewlett rich. “I made some money,” he says. “You got screwed, mate,” Albarn tells him. “I didn’t get screwed, I mean, Jesus,” retorts Hewlett. “The comic industry just collapsed. But we got to spend the best part of a year hanging out in LA. And we got paid a big lump of cash for it.” Despite a good deal of hype, the 1995 film starring Lori Petty bombed. “I think we always knew it was going to be dreadful.”‘ [Related Link: Gorillaz Website]

[tv] The Sopranos – easily the best thing on TV at the moment…. ‘Uncle June and I, we had our problems, with the business. But I never should’ve razzed him about eating pussy; this whole war could’ve been averted. Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this.’ — Tony Soprano. [Related Link: Ray Liotta Turned Down ‘Sopranos’]

[world domination] Starbucks To Begin Sinister ‘Phase Two’ Of Operation. ‘Though the coffee chain’s specific plans are not known, existing Starbucks franchises across the nation have been locked down with titanium shutters across all windows. In each coffee shop’s door hangs the familiar Starbucks logo, slightly altered to present the familiar mermaid figure as a cyclopean mermaid whose all-seeing eye forms the apex of a world-spanning pyramid. Those living near one of the closed Starbucks outlets have reported strange glowing mists, howling and/or cowering on the part of dogs that pass by, and electromagnetic effects that cause haunting, unearthly images to appear on TV and computer screens within a one-mile radius. Experts have few theories as to what may be causing the low-frequency rumblings, half-glimpsed flashes of light, and periodic electronic beeps emanating from the once-busy shops.’

[credit] Finally, the homepage of the amazingly rude tube map which I saw on Usenet a few months ago… [via tsluts]

[distractions] Ah… the Muppaphone. So distracting and clickable…. [thanks to Brainsluice] and Safeplaces — a ‘digital playground’. [thanks to Chris]

[gun fish barrel] So bad it’s good — Julie Burchill on Celebrity Big Brother. ‘The pathos of the short-term presenter is summed up heartbreakingly in the persons of Anthea Turner and Vanessa Feltz, the twin occupants of the lowest rung of the Big Brother ladder; as they fall apart – Vanessa messily and swiftly, Anthea more photogenically and professionally – it is horribly compelling, like watching a John Cassavetes film or hearing your neighbours’ marriage break up in gory detail through the wall. They are the flimsiest, most damaged and most compelling creatures in the house, with none of the confidence born of talent that Dee and Sweeney possess, or the dumb macho swagger of Eubank and Duffy.’

[comics] The Trials of a Comic Book Hero. Proof that what goes around comes around — Stan Lee gets fleeced… ‘The white-haired comic book legend may be the head of an Internet entertainment startup, but he still hasn’t quite figured out how to work his computer. “This is how you save a file,” the twentysomething assistant begins. “And I double-click?” Lee asks. “No, you only have to click once.” Lee’s naiveté would be touching if it weren’t symptomatic of a potentially bigger problem: gullibility.’ [via Comics Journal Message Board]

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