LinkMachineGo

[books] Interesting interview/profile of Zadie Smith in Books Unlimited. ‘White Teeth is a rich, sprawling domestic epic, about how families and people come together and fall apart in the most unlikely ways. It’s also very much a book about modern London, a city in which 40% of children are born to at least one black parent, a city in which the terms black and white become less and less relevant as we gradually meld into different shades of brown. White Teeth reflects a new generation for whom race is the backdrop to daily life rather than the defining characteristic of existence. Some people have said Smith is depoliticising race, removing it from its historical context, others say she’s ahead of her time, representing modern London as it really is for the first time.’

[politics] More on the Widdy Web from Simon Hoggart in the Guardian. ‘I found myself rather moved. Miss Widdecombe pretending to be horrified by something Jack Straw has said is much sillier than her thoughts about her cats, which at least are sincere and passionately felt.’ [via Pete@Bugpowder]

[666] I’m wondering… Does the devil have the best web designers? Church of Satan vs. Church of England.

[state of mind] Happy? Most of this article seems pretty self-evident to me… ‘Depression, unhappiness and happiness can be understood and dealt with only by understanding how we each interpret ourselves and our world. We create our own individual interpretations, and our interpretations determine what we do and feel. We cannot always change what is happening to us, but we are always free to change how we interpret what is happening to us.’ [Coincidentally, whilst reading the ‘Happy?’ article I was also checking out my Amazon personal recommendations… they had chosen for me: You Are Worthless. :) ]

[watching] Magnolia. ‘I’ll tell you the greatest regret of my life: I let my love go.’ — Earl Patridge. [Related Links: Magnolia Trailer]

[savile] Morrisey Investigates… Jimmy Saville. ‘The first recorded instance of this charming man Jimmy Saville was in 1765 when the local minister of the small village of Piddletrenthide in Dorset recorded ” a man claiming witchcraft” who said he could make all our dreams come true. He proceeded to light up a magic stick in his mouth – he called this witchcraft a “cigar” then gave each of us badges reading “Jim Hath Fixed It For Me?” We naturally tried to burn him at the stake but he managed to flee before we could catch him. It seems certain that this was Saville.’

[top trumps] Prostitute Trading Trumps. ‘Pete’s gone for an advanced tactic here. There’s not much text information on the card, so he’s going for a picture play. The more nudity the better. Two breasts beats a buttock and a half by a mile. Matthew wins.’ [via Pete@Bugpowder who also hosts an excellent comic related weblog]

[burchill] John Lennon? What a phoney! ‘Ah, the Yoko years! Move over Romeo and Juliet, Dante and Beatrice and Jimmy and Janette Krankie, and let this pair of lovers show you how it’s really done! In reality, of course, their alliance was a fetid mess of domestic violence, drug addiction and mutual adultery – hey, if I’d wanted that, I could have got it at home. After the initial provincial excitement of copping off with a “Jap”, as Lennon so frequently referred to his lady love, I think it fair to say that there wasn’t even a great deal of physical attraction – on either side, and who can blame either one after seeing that album cover?’ [Related Links: It’s Fandabidozi! It’s Krankie Web]

[history] Interesting page that looks at how the major TV channels (particularly the BBC) in the UK reacted to the news that Princess Diana was dead. ‘In the early hours, the BBC were quite happy to play this interview with eye witness Michael Soloman sourced from CNN. For some reason they cut the part at the end where he says “Baba Booey!”. As Private Eye reports, this is the catch phrase of American Shock Jock Howard Stern who encourages his listeners to phone CNN with bogus testimony of breaking news stories.’

[kill!] KILL! DIE! KILL! Hamster Blast. Ah… I feel better now…

[books] From BooksUnlimited — Five minutes with Naomi Klein. ‘…in Britain I think there are a few things that have put the discussion around the difference between branding and advertising into the public discourse. One of those things has been the branding of Britain – the whole idea of very consciously building an identity around a country. I also think that having Richard Branson as a kind of rock star CEO (he’s basically the most well known CEO in Britain) has taught people in Britain a lot about what branding means. Here you have a company that is all brand, that is all about extending into new areas, about building these branded temples. It is really about selling an idea, selling a persona as opposed to selling products and that’s something that’s quite difficult to grasp. That’s why I think the discourse around branding is a lot more advanced in Britain than anywhere else.’

[comics] It seems that Kevin Smith does not read many Warren Ellis comics…. ‘I just hope that the comics field never loses its luster for me the same way it seems to have for Ellis. If I ever wind up a githeaded pillock who takes shots at a newcomer who’s sold tens of thousands of more comics than I did their first time up at bat, someone please pull a mylar bag (and board) over my head and cut off my air supply. Life’s too short to keep score like that.’

[film] Media Nugget of the Day covers Touch of Evil… ‘Charlton Heston as a Mexican (yes, Mexican) narcotics investigator is just a bonus. Welles himself plays an obese and corrupt Texas cop, and Janet Leigh is wonderfully innocent as Heston’s American bride. Welles set out to make the ultimate B-movie and with the combination of pulp-novel plot, camp dialogue, and sleazy locales, he inevitably succeeded.’

[music] Julian Lennon reflects on John ‘Julian, Lennon’s son from his first marriage, described his father as a “guiding light” who was “sucked into a black hole”. He said he went through “love/hate relationships” with him whether he was there or not. “I wonder what it would have been like if he were alive today,” he wrote. “I guess it would have depended on whether he was `John Lennon’ (Dad) or `John Ono Lennon’ (manipulated lost soul).”‘ [Related Links: News Posting on Julian Lennon’s Website]

[comics] Great interview with Evan Dorkin in Psycomic. On Worlds Funniest: ‘I think a lot of these guys who know the DC stuff just have a fondness for these old comics. We aren’t trying to do anything Earth-shattering here. This isn’t the Dark Knight of humor books. It’s just a goofy, satirical, jerky funny book about how dumb comics are. And how great and loveable they can be at the same time. It’s a very sweet book even though we kill billions of people over and over again.’

[ann widdecombe] Hey Kids! Put down that Playstation 2! Come and check out The Widdy Web Junior!! ‘I am called a Member of Parliament. We call this MP for short. A Member of Parliament looks after a lot of people in an area which is called a constituency. My constituency stretches from Maidstone almost to Tunbridge Wells.’

[annoying introspection] Wherever You Are asks Have You Ever?. Vaughan has turned weblogging into a destressing late night party session of Truth or Dare with a bunch of complete strangers…

[comics] Excellent interview with Dan Clowes in Salon. The humdrum life of a cartoonist: ‘Clowes and his wife, Erika, whom he met on a small-scale California signing tour in 1992 (“I had just gone through a depressing separation from my first wife, and was trying to escape from the grim horribleness of Chicago; a beautiful young woman in Berkeley asked me to sign her underwear, and the rest is history”), will soon vacate the house for a larger one not far away.’ [Related Links: Buy Ghost World. You won’t regret it. Via Robot Wisdom]

[simpsons] What more do you need from a link? The 50 Greatest Moments in Simpsons History. From Rosebud: ‘Homer: “Mmm… 64 slices of American cheese.” “64… ” [eats a slice] “63… ” [eats another] [Next morning] “Two… “[slowly] “One… “[finished] [Marge walks in] Marge: “Have you been up all night eating cheese?” Homer: [slurred] “I think I’m blind… “ [via LukeLog]

[it must be love] BT’s lastest banner ad for ISDN. ‘If we can still monopolise it, we can still be cack at it.’

[chat] The Barbelith Underground discuss what will be the next name on Madonna’s t-shirt. Saveloy sez: ‘”Your Mum” is what it will say. When you next see your mum, she’ll be wering a t-shirt that says “Yeah, that’s right, ME.” Later, Madonna will play a gig with EVERYBODY’s mum coming on in turn to do an excruciatingly embarrassing dance, and thus the whole world will be united in humiliation and so drawn together and there will be no more war or death.’

[weblog] Great archive of links about articles on weblogs [via Under.Construction]

[quote] The Wisdom of Steve Aylett: ‘One golfer a year is hit by lightning. This may be the only evidence we have of god’s existence.’

[web] Danny O’Brien discusses web stalking… ‘Over the decades I have been online, it is incredible how many personal tidbits I have let slip onto the net. These days, a determined net stalker, armed with a search engine, could find out where I have lived in the past five years, my previous employers, a summary of my political interests, the names of all of my close family, and three or four of my most recent haircuts.’

[comics] Jon Katz reviews Unbreakable. A film which improbably casts Samuel L. Jackson as a comic book collector….‘The Superhero stories are among the great and most enduring American myths, an often unacknowledged part of this country’s original and unique folklore. One of the distinctive traits of the Superhero genre in comics is the ambivalence of many of the characters. Heroes (Batman, Spiderman, the literal Superheroes themselves) are often innocents. They are ambivalent, reluctant. They are far from indestructible, in fact they are all oddly vulnerable. They never asked for their gifts or reveled in their powers.’ [Related Links: Unbreakable Trailer, Unbreakable at IMDB]

[weblogs] Meg’s Under.Construction has got off to a good start with a number of interesting posts… ‘Welcome to under.construction. This weblog is intended as a forum for discussion of cyberculture, community, communication and other cultural facets of cyberspace. It’s also intended to be a repository for interesting stories and links – an evolving, collaborative bookmark list.’

[books] Jorn from Robot Wisdom has a great list of links about Tom Wolfe. Here’s a chapter from The Bonfire of the Vanities. ‘Sherman leaned back in his chair and surveyed the bond trading room. The processions of phosphorescent green characters still skidded across the faces of the computer terminals, but the roar had subsided to something more like locker-room laughter. George Connor stood beside Vic Scaasi’s chair with his hands in his pockets, just chatting. Vic arched his back and rolled his shoulders and seemed about to yawn. There was Rawlie, reared back in his chair, talking on the telephone, grinning and running his hand over his bald pate. Victorious warriors after the fray . . . Masters of the Universe . . . And she has the gall to cause him grief over a telephone call!’

[comics] suck.com talks about ‘the long fruitful death’ of comics…. ‘Why comic books? And why now? Fifty years since their brief flirtation with becoming a widely-read mass medium, seven years into a sales decline that changed comics’ status from a profitable but secondary magazine market to an absolutely marginal feeder industry for television and film, what is so seductive about the comic book that it continues to intrigue so many serious-minded adults and aesthetes?’ [via Barbelith Underground]

[comics] Warren Ellis releases PR for his latest comic:. ‘MINISTRY OF SPACE is an English science-fictional idyll: a fantasia on the notion of a British space programme that outraced the rest of the world, as found in such as Dan Dare. Now that Britannia rules the waves of space, a utopian green-field England plies ships to the Moon, to Venus, to Victoria Station in low Earth orbit. This is the Ministry that sent a colonisation flotilla to Mars in 1963. The Ministry that destroyed a city and ran an exploration program unseen in human history. A Golden Age – and what it cost.’

[crime] The Jigsaw Man — Interesting profile of the man who inspired Robbie Coltrane’s Cracker… ‘The hearing will concentrate on the role of Britton in the investigation into the killing of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in London. One allegation is that he offered support and advice to the police not backed by accepted scientific practice as they prepared a “honeytrap” for the prime suspect; he is also accused of having exaggerated claims about the effectiveness of his methods.’

[politics] Why I am Eating all the Pies by Chancellor Gordon Brown, MP. ‘I have eaten all the pies. Or rather, I have eaten as many pies as one man can safely eat. The other pies I am saving for later on, in my freezer. To the uneducated man, this may seem greedy. But I can assure you it is not. It is, in fact, essential to the well-being of Britain that I eat as many pies as possible.’ [via Interconnected]

[think really different] The LC Cube ‘Apple’s new G4 Cube inspired me to produce a similar machine, and this is the result – the LC Cube. It even has a vertically mounted floppy drive which spits out disks in the same toaster-like fashion as the G4 Cube. The LC Cube is built around an LC II logic board I salvaged from the rubbish heap of a Mac wrecker. It sports a 16MHz ‘030 CPU and has been maxed out to 10MB of RAM. The front panel has an illuminated electric oven-style On/Off switch and a hard disk activity LED’ [via the Master of Old School Apples]

[hst] Hunter S. Thompson on the US Elections… ‘There are rumors in Washington that Gore’s most trusted advisors have sealed him off so completely that he still firmly believes he Won. … Which is True, on some scorecards, but so what? Those cards don’t count. … George W. Bush is our President now, and you better start getting used to it. He didn’t actually steal the White House from Al Gore, he just brutally wrestled it away from him in the darkness of one swampy Florida night. He got mugged, and the local Cops don’t give a damn.’

[tv] Cheap night out? Book tickets for a TV show. Includes Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and The Richard Blackwood Show.

[morrison] Magic for Mutants — Grant Morrison’s column on his new website is well worth checking out… ‘Corporate entities are worth studying. They and other ghosts like them rule our world. So…figure out why the Coca-Cola spirit is stronger than the Doctor Pepper spirit (what great complex of ideas, longings and deficiencies has the Coke logo succeeded in condensing into two words, two colours, taking Orwell’s 1984 concept of Newspeak to its logical conclusion?) Watch their habits, track their movements over time, monitor their repeated behaviours and watch how they react to change and novelty. Learn how to imitate them, steal their successful strategies and use them as your own. Create your own brand, your own logo and see how quickly you can make it spread. Build your own god and set it loose.’

[plagiarism] Comparison of Glenn Brown’s The Loves of Shepherds 2000 and Tony Robert’s book cover Double Star.

[books] Books Unlimited has the first chapter of Naomi Klein’s No Logo available… ‘And so the wave of mergers in the corporate world over the last few years is a deceptive phenomenon: it only looks as if the giants, by joining forces, are getting bigger and bigger. The true key to understanding these shifts is to realize that in several crucial ways – not their profits, of course – these merged companies are actually shrinking. Their apparent bigness is simply the most effective route toward their real goal: divestment of the world of things.’

[savile?] Bella wonders if it’s Savile or Saville… and so do I. The answer from Google: “Jimmy Savile” – 390 Vs. “Jimmy Saville” – 1180.

[celebs] A list of the Top 50 Celebrities of the 20th Century. Unsurprisingly Keith Chegwin is number one… ‘Hyperactive television presenter, whose finest moment was undoubtedly “Cheggers Plays Pop”, the seminal 1980s quiz show aimed at children. Cheggers would question several obnoxious kids, who were split into teams – a typical question would be “Which member of Spandau Ballet hibernates during the winter?” to which the correct answer is, of course, vocalist Tony Handley.’

[weblogs] Tom starts his redesign of Barbelith… ‘Over the next couple of weeks, you can expect several weblog-style columns provided by regular contributors to the Barbelith Underground concentrating on interfering in things that don’t concern us, spouting ludicrous ideas that no one believes in and working for the transformation of the world into a place where there is passion, magic, energy and change.’

[comics] Eddie Campbell has published the first chapter of From Hell online. ‘Now, meself, I come from a working family. We vote Tory, always have done. The working class don’t WANT a revolution Mr. Lees: they just want more money.’ [via Lukelog]

[mobiles] Great article about how awful mobile phones are… ‘What is it about these things that makes us so obedient, and so oblivious to that which lies outside them – such as actual people? I once asked a man who was bellowing into a cell phone in the coffee shop in San Francisco why he was talking so loudly. A bad connection, he said. It had not crossed his mind that anything else mattered at that moment. Like computers and television, cell phones pull people into their own psychological polar field, and the pull is strong.’ [via Guardian Weblog]

[comics] Warren Ellis writes about his adventures at Garth Ennis’ Stag Weekend… ‘As indicated by other people in previous editions of this column: comics are a first love affair, the one that sinks its teeth into you and won’t let go, because of its freedoms and its glories. The sex is great, but everything else is shit. And I’m reminded of a quote from Neil Gaiman: “I stopped doing comics because I wanted it to continue being fun, I wanted to continue to love and care for comics, and I wanted to leave while I was still in love.”‘

[weblogs] Metafilter blogs the satellite image of Selhurst Park… and someone points out that the image of the football field is probably Jakob Nielsen… ‘But does Jesus support Crystal Palace or Wimbledon?’ — Holgate.

[king] Guardian Unlimited profiles Jonathan King. From the Guardian: ‘King classes veteran TV presenter Jimmy Savile [sic] as one of his closest friends – they have known each other for 25 years. Savile [sic] once said of him: “He’s a sabra. A sabra is an Israeli fruit that’s prickly on the outside and all soft and lovely inside. That’s Jonathan King.”‘ [“Savile” should be spelled “Saville”. Interesting spelling mistake from the Guardian.]

[comics] Amazon.co.uk picks their ten best comics… It’s no surprise that Watchmen is Number 1: ‘Imagine a future where Nixon is still President, America won the Vietnam War, and the nuclear clock stands at five minutes to midnight.’

[movies] Apple have got a quicktime trailer for Requiem for a Dream up…

[picture] Satellite image of Selhurst Park football ground reveals image of Christ!

[the great unknown] Deathbed book a first for China: ‘In this passage, Mr Lu recalls an idyllic trip with friends 20 years ago to the lower Yangtze valley, a peaceful swath of countryside at the time, where heavy rain kept them stuck for several days. A local girl looked after them, listening quietly as they talked about poetry and the world and drank local wine with dried beancurd. Mr Lu was captivated by her innocence and purity, but was too shy to go any further. Now he muses on what might have happened if he had stayed and married her. “What would I be now? Maybe a teacher in the town’s primary school?” He wonders too whether he would have contracted the cancer. “Is life like a chess competition, where with one wrong move we change the result completely?”‘

[history?] UK Blogs discuss the ten year aniversary of Thatcher’s resignation… NotSoSoft, Blue Ruin and Wherever You Are. ‘I was really too young to have experienced exactly what the Thatcher years were like for myself, though, so to me she seems like some mythical beast. With her teeth drawn, I hope.’ — Blue Ruin. [Some other links: yet another great Steve Bell cartoon on Thatcher and Blair — The End of the Affair, and a once famous Thatcher impressionist — Steve Nallon’s website.]

[history] Guardian Unlimited interviews Lady Mosley wife Oswald Mosley, the leader of British Fascists during World War II. ‘On October 6 1936 Diana and Mosley were secretly married in Joseph Goebbels’s drawing room. Hitler came to the wedding and gave her a photograph of himself in an eagle-topped silver frame. I asked her where it is now. “I put it in a parcel in a bank when the war began because I thought it might hurt people’s feelings.’

[picture] God’s eye view — my house (as seen from space). [via Glamvan]

[stories] Interesting list — the top 100 Works of journalism in the US over the last 100 years.

[thatch] Guardian Unlimited asks: Where were you when Thatcher resigned? Ken Loach: ‘I was in a car going back to a flat we’ve got in Chiswick. I remember it must have been how people felt at the end of the war – street parties and people singing songs to a piano in the street. I knew the malign influence would carry on, but there was a wonderful feeling of caps in the air.’ [Tedious Autobio: Where was I? 1990. I was… twenty, living in Portsmouth, and a student. It was about 9.30ish in the morning and I was having a long relaxing shower. One of my flatmates banged on the shower door and shouted: “Hey Dazza! Thatcher’s resigned!” I started to shuffle a happy dance (it was a small shower) and sing Morning Has Broken at the top of my voice.]

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