[weblogs] Riothero in London: Check out — Riothero, Vance, Tom and Katy’s weblogs… for the full story. There must be a collective term for a bunch of weblogs that all describe the same meeting or event… hmmm… a blogout or blogfest… no… Blogparty!

[weblogs] Pearls asks: Who is the most repulsive woman in rock? “One of the great mysteries of the world is how Celine Dion manages to sing so loudly with that emaciated frame of hers. Now that same brittle vessel is carrying the seed of her 90-thousand-year-old manager/husband.”

[america] newsUnlimited reports on how the US sees the British. “With other recent films from U-571 through to Saving Private Ryan, history is being polished or even rewritten about the various conflicts involving the US. In this respect, it is all a bit like Britain in the 50s when Kenneth More or John Mills were always sorting out the Nazis and departing fighter pilots told little boys to look after the womenfolk.”

[books] Have I ever said how much I like James Ellroy books?

[murder] BBC News reports that murder suspect put plan to kill wife on Psion palmtop. ‘Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw told the jury at Inner London Crown Court Mr Debruin wrote what looked like a macabre checklist for the killing on his Psion organiser which read: “Rubber gloves. Throat. Take telephone off hook. Purse out with contents spread about.”‘

[sealand] More on Sealand…. Wired looks at the company attempting to use Sealand as a secure off-shore data host and Slashdot interviews the chief technology officer managing the project.

[books] Quick interview with the great Scottish author Iain M. Banks. “Though it also strikes me that the Culture would only work with people who are nicer than us – less bigoted, less prone to violence and genocide. We don’t know to what extent aggression is necessary to achieve sentience, consciousness, space travel, a genuinely stable civilisation. We don’t know if we’re a particularly violent species or a relatively mild one – in which case you’d better hope we haven’t been discovered yet.”

[norfolk] Nothing interesting ever happens in Norfolk. “The women then began to strip off to distract them further, and the men escaped to their faded red Ford Granada, before trying to run the villagers down. One villager smashed a window of the car, and the raiders fled before the police arrived.”

[web] The Sunday Times goes Around the World in Eighty Clicks…

[film] newsUnlimited profiles John Cusack ‘”It’s something we, guys, have all done. Made tapes for girls, trying to impress them, to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else’s poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it, because you’re too awkward to do it. It seemed to me that Nick just nailed how men’s minds work when we’re trying to sort out what we do with women. And, of course, it’s funny.” It’s not about anything very much, except what’s going on in the characters’ minds. There’s no great plot, not a lot of narrative. But then, as he says, “There are lots of people who don’t have extraordinary things happen to them and who still live quite intense lives.”‘

[comics] Buy this comic: Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks. Here’s a review…

[ali g] Ali G Interactive Rapper [Requires Sound Card and Flash]

[web] Douglas Rushkoff talks about the “social currency” of the media and internet. Social currency is like a good joke. When a bunch of friends sit around and tell jokes, what are they really doing? Entertaining one another? Sure, for a start. But they are also using content – mostly unoriginal content that they’ve heard elsewhere – in order to lubricate a social occasion. And what are most of us doing when we listen to a joke? Trying to memorise it so that we can bring it somewhere else. The joke itself is social currency. Interesting in regards to weblogs — I hope LinkMachineGo provide social currency in the form of interesting/useful links… [via Metafilter]

[ukblogs] Daily Doozer went linkcrazy yesterday…

[music] Yet another “Death of…” story, this time about CD’s and Cassette’s. ‘Although he sees a time when tangible media disappears altogether, he believes it won’t be for a long time yet. “CDs are a collectable item. People want all the artwork and sleeve notes so they can find out just who it was who played guitar on track three!”‘

[lads] newsUnlimited reports on the death of the Lad. “…if [Chris] Evans is no longer deemed fashionable, if a frenzy of blokish bawdy is no longer said to define the moment, what does it mean for the plethora of lads who have swum in his wash? What will become of the pretenders if Evans is no longer reckoned capable of fighting off the attentions of Robot Wars, the show scheduled by BBC2 against his, the programme that exalts the achievements of beardy boffins? Is the news that the actress Amanda Holden has left uber-lad Neil Morrissey to return to her husband, the defiantly unblokeish Les Dennis, a wider indicator of the cultural times?”

[comics] Excellent Sequential Tart interview with Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. “Oh, yeah, why do I hate the Internet. I don’t really hate the Internet. I mean, you’ve got to remember that a lot of people probably see the comments I make on the side in the Preacher letter columns. And, uh, it’s possibly understandable that they take it more seriously than the rest of [what they hear]. I’m sure the Internet is an incredibly useful tool. I’m not likely to use it any time in the immediate future because I don’t have a computer.”

[comics] Great site… The Periodic Table of Comic Books.

[genome] newsUnlimited on biotech bullshit: We are told that the Book of Life is the most complex sequence of letters ever written, though whoever said that never took One Hundred Years of Solitude on holiday.’

[movie] Media Nugget of the Day covers Being There, an amazing film starring Peter Sellers. Highly recommended.

[books] Interesting interview with Alex Garland author of The Beach. Covers the story’s origins as a comic book… . “He had drawn a 60-page comic book, a noir-ish tale based on his experiences in the Far East. He had a go at translating it into a novel. The origins of The Beach, which is written like a sequence of discrete man-on-a-desert-island cartoons, remain apparent. Its comic-book blueprint helps to account for its storytelling pace, and why even in quite horrific and bloody scenes there is a Pulp Fiction element of slapstick.”

[stupidname] Tom at Blue Lines talks about how much he hates his name…. I could rant on about how awful my name is but I won’t…. it speaks for itself…. Fortunately, I went to school with a guy called “Larman Register” who I always think of when somebody takes the piss out of being called S********. You think you’ve got a awful name? Consider the horror of being called Larman! Did his parents hate him or what? I hope for his sake there is a long Norfolk tradition of calling your child Larman…

[comics] Great two part interview of Grant Morrison in Sequential Tart: [Part One] [Part Two] ‘It lets your head expand and it also throws you on your mettle. I always travel on my own and you find yourself in the middle of Bangkok and you think ‘what do I do?’ and that’s a great feeling to have – you solve it and you go about the world feeling fantastic because no-one knows who you are and no ones putting any personality on you – you can swam into any place and say ‘I’m James Bond!” (laughs)’ — GM on travel.

[comics] The New York Times on the problems facing the comics industry. ‘Even the staunchest supporters of comic books say that the industry is facing problems in everything from production to distribution to marketing. There are no hard and fast figures for the industry. Publishers and distributors are secretive about sales. In fact, the only figure that insiders agree upon is the number of comic-book stores. Today, there are fewer than 4,000, down from more than 10,000 during the comic boom in the mid-90’s. “I think people like comics as much as ever, but now it’s very difficult to buy them,” said Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man and an icon in the industry. “There used to be so many places to buy comic books; there used to be a corner store in every city.”‘

[comics] According to Ain’t it Cool News Frank Miller may be teaming up with Darren Aronofosky for the next Batman film. [via Ghost in the Machine]

[minogue] Minogue goes straight to Number 1…. demonstrates the power of PR, magazine covers and lucky, deformed, tiny ears!

[spam] Spamcop… for when your Inbox is full of weird porn sites, crap share deals and bad philosophy.

[reading] Buy this comic: From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Here’s a review from Salon. ‘As ambitious and affecting as anything ever rendered in pictures and word balloons, “From Hell” combines an intricate mystery, insightful social criticism and unflinching brutality capable of unnerving the most desensitized pop audience. It’s publication as a book promises to give it a new lease on life. That’s what happened with Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-Prize winning “Maus,” which was originally published in installments in the arty comic “Raw.” “From Hell” is the only graphic novel since “Maus” to rival its ambition and historical depth.’

[web] Danny O’Brien on time wasting and log watching. ‘I look at the parts of my logs that show users who stumble on my site while searching for pornography (it’s amazing what searching for “hot”, “water”, “Japanese” and a couple of other terms can point you towards); and I don’t have the ability to track down their e-mail addresses, but I do wonder whether they know they have a constant audience for their movements online.’

[midi] Today’s theme is Dueling Banjo’s [from Deliverance]