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[comics] I cannot believe I have not blogged Jack Chick’s website before now. This Was Your Life gives you a taste of Jack’s special magic… “Your life will be played back at the judgment. Will your name be in the Book of Life? This title is a worldwide favorite, with over 60 million sold in 65 languages!” Here’s Jack’s catalog of comics…

[inner turmoil] Loads of depressing reading at the alt.angst archive… “Angst: Discovering that the background music of your life is not sweeping strings & stirring brass; but a roomful of old men, in golf clothes, continuously playing one-note pants tubas.” [Does anybody know what “one-note pants tubas” actually are?]

[news of the screws] The National Post reports on the scandal at Jennicam. ‘But today, far from being a window into the life of an ordinary young woman, JenniCam (six cameras situated around her home) provides a glimpse into a slacker’s nirvana. With seemingly no means of support besides webcam revenue, Jenni, 24, whiles away her days in her spacious well- appointed surroundings playing computer games and, quite frequently, masturbating. Last Saturday morning, visitors to the site had the treat of watching Jenni and Dex make love. Her very public betrayal of her close friend, however, has prompted many formerly devoted viewers to vow never to give her another penny. Courtney, since discharged, remains in shock. In a recent journal posting, she laments: “How am I supposed to compete with ‘Jennicam?’ She’s funny, she’s gorgeous, she’s got better furniture. This really, really sucks.”‘

[comics] A review of the latest Preacher collection — All Hell’s a-Coming. ‘The characters continue to be chipped away at: Custer lost his eye in the previous volume, having it sucked out of its socket by God. We lose pretty much all the sympathy we had for Cassidy, and Starr, the most powerful man in the world, having lost not only an eye, all his hair and a leg, now loses his genitals to an attack dog. “My cock is in the bitch’s mouth,” he says, “and not in a good way.”‘

[illness] newsUnlimited profiles Malaria. ‘Malaria, or rather P. falciparum , which infects both humans and mosquitoes, is such a fearsome adversary partly because of its protean life-cycle, which makes it seem like some mythical beast. The “thing” in the movie Alien shocked audiences when it burst out of its original pod in one form and then destroyed poor John Hurt’s stomach when incarnated in another. This Plasmodium goes through no fewer than five such transformations in its brief life.’

[pop] Hours of fun with Perpetual Bubblewrap… [requires Flash]

[film] newsUnlimited reviews High Fidelity. “All the way through the film, from the opening titles to closing credits, there is a passionate, encyclopaedic love of music, combined with a disconcerting sense that this love is a kind of autism or arrested development, a symptom of some poignant deprivation of real love.”

[comics] The Dave Sim Memorial Note From The President Archive — a collection of writings from the creator of Cerebus. Sim on Superman: “Superman, as originally conceived, as a force for the common man, as an answer to the mindless tyranny with which his name (as a term) had come to be identified, as a foe of corruption and injustice, as the embodiment of FDR-style liberalism and the epitome of the notion that one individual can, should and must, of necessity, make a difference; in all this Superman … Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman… the only true Superman… stands as a beacon of freedom shining as brightly for an adult who holds the ideals of the character sacred as he does for a child seeing him and learning them for the first time. As a symbol of the nearly limitless power of imagination, he has inspired creators for five decades to take up pen and brush in pursuit of excellence, to weave our tapestry once more. To aspire; that one day we might know a tenth… a hundredth of the greatness implied in knowing you are Jerry Siegel. You are Joe Shuster. You are the creators of Superman. And that no monumental and tragic injustice can strip you of that mantle. As comic book creators, this is our greatest heritage… and our greatest debt.” [via Come in Alone]

[film] UpcomingMovies.com covers Ghost World. ‘Clowes said the film is about, “the lives of two recent high school graduates from the advantaged perch of a constant and (mostly) undetectable eavesdropper, with the shaky detachment of a scientist who has grown fond of the prize microbes in his petri dish.”‘

[weatherman] Bill Giles reviews the Perfect Storm. ‘I thought the actor who played the weatherman was lightweight. The forecaster didn’t get as excited as most broadcasting weather forecasters would do if they saw this once-in-100-years storm coming along. He just sat there. For most of us, our eyes would of have gone glazed and we would have got up and started screaming “I want more time” before broadcasting”.’

[movies] What it says on the tin — Soup goes to the Movies. ‘In a comically wrenching scene, Ewan McGregor plays Mark “Rent-boy” Renton, preparing to detox himself of his heroin addiction: “Relinquishing junk. Stage one, preparation. for this you will need one room which you will not leave. Soothing music. Tomato soup, ten tins of. Mushroom soup, eight tins of, for consumption cold. Ice cream, vanilla, one large tub of. Magnesia, milk of, one bottle. Paracetamol, mouthwash, vitamins. Mineral water, Lucozade, pornography. One mattress. One bucket for urine, one for feces and one for vomitus. One television and one bottle of Valium. Which I’ve already procured from my mother. Who is, in her own domestic and socially acceptable way also a drug addict. And now I’m ready. All I need is one final hit to soothe the pain while the Valium takes effect.”‘

[children] A father talks about his daughter’s reaction to the muder of Sarah Payne. ‘When I arrive home my daughter has more news about Sarah. “She’s dead,” she says. “It’s really sad isn’t it Daddy?” she says. Yes, I say, it’s horrible, and prepare for one of those painful conversations about why anyone could do this. But she walks off. A couple of minutes later she calls me back. “Daddy, have you seen the fairy house I made?” she asks.’

[games] ClassicGaming.com’s Games of the Week Index. Hours and hours of fun. My favourite? Probably Arkanoid or maybe Marble Madness.

[comics] Frank Miller is apparently going to do a comic book about the life of Jesus. Can you imagine it? [via The Warren Ellis Forum]

[bridge] Somebody call in Howard Roark — newsUnlimited talks about the emotional design of the millennium bridge. ‘At one stage, the architects successfully re-submitted some rejected drawings by making the sky bluer and the bridge users younger. “What Nor man absolutely correctly judged,” says Fitzpatrick, slipping easily into a public relations abstraction, “was generating the sense of wonderment”‘.

[cheese] Check out The Online Cheese Comparator. Mine is Port Salud — “A semi-hard cheese, produced in Entrammes in North West France. Port Salut has a plastic texture, a cream colour, and a mild taste. It is matured for around 4 weeks.” [via Yungee]

[comics] I Just Type points out that I maybe wrong about Stan Lee and that the X-Men movie had a good opening weekend….

[true] Life is always stranger than fiction… the true story of a runaway princess, an american marine and the US Media… ‘Colbert adds: “no matter what the ending, it’s still a movie.” So is it being cast already? Aloe thought Brad Pitt was “a bit too laid back… Jason is a real John Wayne character, a young Steve McQueen all-American renegade, completely without fear.” Freddy Prinze Jr has already been suggested and Aloe says they want at least one big star, probably male. For the princess, Selma Hayek has already been mentioned and Aloe reckons that Shannon Elizabeth from American Pie would be ideal.’

[weblogs] Excellent weblog: Follow Me Here. “‘You can only tell the shapes of things by looking at their edges…’ Some weblogs are about weblogs and weblogging; others about the web and computing; my kind is still about the world. Follow me to some of its “sharp edges” as found on the web. “

[photos] Hunter S. Thompson and Grant Morrison— Seperated at birth?

[aliens] The Observer on the search for alien life in space. “On other worlds, it has remained rooted at the level of amoebas, microbes, and primitive pond life. All aliens are scum, in other words – an observation with crucial implications. As UK astronomer Ian Crawford points out in the latest issue of Scientific American , we may be ‘the most advanced life-forms in the galaxy’.”.

[weblogs] Every wondered what the word Barbelith means? Grant Morrison: “The word ‘BARBELiTH’ is derived from a dream I had when I was about 20 or 21 and coincided with my first structured ‘magical’ experiences and a minor nervous breakdown (in the dream, BARBELiTH was the name of some higher dimension or alternate reality). Like a lot of stuff in INVISIBLES I used the name unconsciously when I needed something to call the red circle that represents our Universe’s placental twin. I’d taken the etymology as far as ‘bearded stone’, which seems much less interesting and less weirdly appropriate than ‘alien stone’. My real life is getting more like the comic every day (in ways I should have suspected but didn’t really expect on this scale). There’s more on the red circle and its many meanings in DOOM PATROL #54, I just realised. That issue was written in near-trance so fuck only knows what’s been trying to get through all these years.”

[web] Zdnet on Ego-Surfing. ‘[..]Fouts says ego surfing is about more than the need for recognition. “I don’t have any real desire to be in the public eye,” he says. “It lets me know how accessible I am to the world. It’s nice to know that some random person from my past could find me.”‘

[comics] Yet another interview with Warren Ellis… “I suspect that, to successfully write superhero books through your thirties and forties, you either have to have genuine brain damage — Grant Morrison and Alan Moore come to mind — or be genuinely infantile. Grant and Alan and a bunch of others write great superhero comics because they are mad and that sick energy infuses the work. Too many others look more and more to me like confused, ageing writers-become-hacks making a vampiric living off the young. I’d rather not end up as the comics version of Art Linkletter. Or Krusty The Klown.”

[cams] newsUnlimited on Being Caprice. “It made me think, also, strangely, of Mrs Thatcher. In the mid-80s, Mrs Thatcher was interviewed by Russell Harty for a seemingly anodyne series called My Favourite Things. Mrs Thatcher’s favourite things included Bovril toast and, pride of place on her mantelpiece, a porcelain depiction of the recapture of the Falkland Islands by Royal Marines. I firmly believe her downfall can, in part, be attributed to this creepy revelation.”

[comics] The wisdom of Preacher… “I mean look at me: My head looks like a penis, I’ve got one leg, one ear, one eye, and my cock’s been replaced with a rubber tube.”

[some random blog] I read somewhere that a smelly dot company swaps embarrassing stories with a taxi ride from a cokehead. I was thinking that when the scooby snack loves, the herbal remedy leaves. I read somewhere that the mobile phone seldom buys an new techy toy from a radioactive screensaver. An impromptu mouse gets RSI, and an umbrella about the internet magazine redesigns. But, the outer microprocessor blogs with some lover. An unstable domain remembers a domain inside some uber-geek, and a domain around some weblog works for a fuck-buddy. Oh, and hey, check out notsosoft sometime. You might like it.

[cows] Fling Cows into Crop Circles! Woo-Hoo!

[vicars] The case of the missing Vicar. ‘Late last week, another churchwarden at St Paul’s, Captain Ian Powe, was arrested in connection with the allegations of harassment against Follett. Powe, who commanded HMS Yarmouth during the cod war, was released on bail and will have to return to Belgravia police station on August 8. He has vigorously protested his innocence. “I used to have an expression that worse things happen at sea,” Powe said earlier this week. “I’m not using it any more.”.’

[photo] Great Photo of Stanley Kubrick on the set of 2001. “My God. It’s full of stars.”

[comics] I’m trying to avoid the X-Men but Salon profiles Stan Lee and manages to mention Jack Kirby. It quite literally amazes me that the media still believe the myth that Lee created most of the Marvel characters. Lee was just the editor of those comics. “Jack Kirby returned to the company that year and, lore has it, found Lee sobbing while movers took the furniture out of Marvel’s offices.” [via Slashdot]

[photo] Young William from The Guardian’s Left a Bit Gallery. “Apart from the hair nothing has changed.”

[bulls] newsUnlimited profiles an English toreador. “The gore, shouts and sand seem impossibly remote two days later, as El inglés – The Englishman, a title he increasingly uses in tourist fights – looks back on his dual career as a toreador and supplier of fitted kitchens in Salford.”

[random weblogs] Doozer has left the building. Trying to fill the gap I find: Irish Weblogs… Not-so-Soft talks about the electronic traces you leave behind [She is right… Check out a Google search on: Darren S********], Lukelog blogs foreskins and finally, Blue Lines covers the horror that is sports lessons… “I’m am amazed that this survey can come as a shock to anyone. Doubly amazed that more words like ‘humiliating’, ‘demeaning’ and ‘crushing’ weren’t used as well as the typical ‘tedious’ and ‘boring’. Fuck Vogue and Ally McBeal, compulsory team sports has screwed up more people’s self image than a billion starved models.”

[vikings] The BBC wants to find out if you are a Viking.

[mobiles] If you have a Nokia mobile phone you really need to check out yourmobile.com. [via ChrisH]

[tv chef] Thank God for Delia — the life of a Chef. “Yesterday he was served with a subpoena as a witness in Marco Pierre White’s libel case against a fishmonger and he’s just found out his brother, Ronnie, is back on heroin.”

[tv] What will happen to The Philisophical Car Lot if Frank Butcher leaves Eastenders? “G-g-g-g-go!!“

[film] Slashdot discusses Bladerunner. “How can slashdot embolden its readers on the one hand to boycott the movie industry because of DVD and DeCSS, and, on the other hand, encourage us to purchase the Blade Runner DVD? “

[film] Ridley Scott answers a freqeuntly asked question about his film Blade Runner — Is Deckard a Replicant?. ‘In Channel 4’s documentary On The Edge Of Blade Runner, Scott discusses the scenes and asked what they mean, he confirms with a grin: “He’s a replicant”‘.

[prostitution] Prostitutes Phone Cards and Pokémon — getting blogged everywhere. Pig Inc: “By the way, I’ve got the ‘Cindy Crawford’ transexual model card if anyone wants to swap. Very rare, posted in the Bayswater area only. Mint condition.”

[comics] Ramblings 2000 the comic book industry news and rumours column is dead. Rich Johnstone’s column has moved to Next Planet Over…“WELCOME, SWINE. Hello, my name’s Rich Johnston, and I’ve sold out.”

[net] Danny O’Brien on mailing lists and trolling. “Our new member says he has friends in high places and we should all tread carefully. He says he’s a journalist, and he’ll be calling the tabloids with stories about the other subscribers. He phones the list organiser and hangs up in midcall. He reports subscribers to their ISP’s abuse desks. He threatens another with a libel case. He hurts, too: one man who used the companionship of the list to help with a deep personal crisis unsubscribes in anger at the abuse the troll is spreading; a teenager gets scared he will call the police. He does a search on another subscriber, finds out he’s gay and hurls abuse at him. “

[music] I have just seen Robbie Williams’ new video and I am feeling… disturbed. It’s not nice. But then again just about anything can disturb me at 2:30 in the morning… Here’s a BBC news report. “The video for Williams’ new single Rock DJ sees him apparently tearing chunks of skin and muscle from his body and throwing them to female onlookers to eat.”

[old school web] I used to visit these two sites frequently way back in the old days of the web. Check out Maggie Donea’s Moments and Justin Hall’s Links from the Underground…

[comics] Warren Ellis discusses if corporate-owned comic icons like Batman should be “saved”. ‘Superheroes are ultimately difficult to take seriously. And a mass audience wants, on some level, to take its mass-market violent action entertainment with a degree of seriousness. And what we’re talking about here is a virgin who can run up walls after being bitten by a nuked spider and a bald rich single old man who lives in a big remote house with his leather-clad “students.”‘

[tory] newsUnlimited takes a look at William Hague ‘It was my first Conservative dinner, and it was a shock. The Party is old; most of the dinner guests were in their 70s. It was hard to believe that this Britain bouffant hair-dos, portly, uniformed chauffeurs, crinoline ball-gowns and floral prints still existed; Planet Tory. It was like stepping back into the 50s. One thing was sure, these people would not be knocking door to door at election time. At one table at the back was a small clique of young men from Glasgow University’s Conservative Society. They are strangely awkward, arrogant, odd-looking, dressed in clothes borrowed from their grandparents; young Williams revisited 20 years later.’

[news] newsUnlimited on runaway teenage prodigy Sufiah Yusof. ‘In the same email she told her side of the story, accusing her father of ruining his five children’s lives by hothousing them, of exploiting her older brother’s tennis skills for money, of labelling her “Crybaby Soo-Fi” as part of his motivation technique. Worst of all, she said that when she was 11, two years before she started her maths degree at Oxford University and when everything was apparently fine, she had twice tried to kill herself. “Maybe the public will have a different view of you as devoted parents . . . I’m not Crybaby Soo-Fi any more”.’

[Buy This Comic] One of the finest mainstream comics ever published. I love this comic, I hate this comic… Batman: Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. [Review] “This should be agony. I should be a mass of aching muscles… broken, spent, unable to move… and, were I an older man, I surely would… but I’m a man of thirty… of twenty again… The rain on my chest is a baptism… I am born again.”

[weblogs] It’s not everyday I get a email from a fictional character…. but Dark Currents is different…. Recommended. “I’m Random Person sometimes I’m known as Sam Hedgblot and I’m nearly 18. I’m dead. Surprisingly I’m still able to type.”

[personal shite] Well it looks like I’ll be working for BBC Technology Ltd, well probably: “Ms Salmon said around 200 job losses, predominantly in London and Manchester, are expected in the near future, and added that there could be some other impact on jobs over time. “

[tv] Burnside: “You are nicked, you slag!”. newsUnlimited covers the programme… ‘Now, with six post-watershed hours of his own to play with at last, Burnside begins as he means to go on. Five minutes into the first episode and we’ve been treated to a couple of “shits” and a “wanker” – words you’d never hear from his colleagues at Sun Hill. And the bodycount has gone through the roof. No longer fighting The Bill’s unglamorous war against shoplifting single parents and domestic violence, Burnside now faces Uzi-wielding Yardies, international gun-runners and warped serial killers. “Dark and adult”, is how the show’s producer Jamie Nuttgens describes it all. “The Bill has faced some criticism in the past but with Burnside we’ve pulled out all the stops”.’

[mobiles] The New York Times reports on Text War in the Philippines. ‘Muslim insurgents battling Philippine troops in the south have a new weapon. When the shelling and gunfire let up, they send a barrage of scathing insults to Manila’s forces by cell phone. “There is a text war among the MILF and our forces,” said Brig. Gen. Eliseo Rio Jr., referring to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of two rebel groups fighting for an independent state. “Our soldiers are texting insults to the MILF. And the MILF are sending the insults back.”‘ [via Slashdot]

[bbc] Is the BBC doing to well in New Media? “It is not hard to see why privately funded internet publishers are afraid of the BBC moving into their patch. While the start-ups struggle to raise finance and discover the so-far elusive revenue streams, the BBC has no such concerns. BBC Online’s £32m budget last year came from the licence fee, and the site does not carry advertising or sponsorship.”

[sport] newsUnlimited on John McEnroe’s coverage of Wimbledon for the BBC. ‘McEnroe, like his fellow New Yorker Woody Allen, is a master of deconstruction: he provides a narrative and then unpicks it. “Can Henman ever win?” Inverdale enquired innocently. “Sure, when Sampras is no longer around; he’ll have to slow down at some point – maybe in 2015 or something.” He cannot be serious: well he is and he isn’t, which is perfect for the hall-of-mirrors world of sport. Check out Prolific 2000 for a different view…

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