[tv] Why do I like Friends so much? I have no idea… anyway… the cast of Friends have signed on for another two years!

[mp3] Napster is irrelevant reports Wired News. “The amazing thing about Napster isn’t the program, it’s the idea,” Weekly said. “You can’t litigate the idea. You can’t tell people that they need to stop thinking about the idea. Already we’ve seen commercial alternatives pop up with Scour Exchange (a commercial file-trading exchange), so even if Napster is sued out of existence, there are alternatives popping up everywhere.”

[tech] Much of the Internet leads nowhere according to a recent mapping project. “If you picked two random pages and tried to click from one to the other, “there’s a 75 percent chance that you will never get there,” LaMore said. If a path did exist, the average click separation would be 16, the researchers said.” Hmmm… I always said you were never more than four clicks away from porn on the Internet… I guess I was wrong!

[comics] Lots of interesting rumours about comics over at Ramblings 2000. Mark Millar talks about his new vampire TV series for Channel 4 called Sikeside: “The big difference between me and Buffy is that Sikeside is going to be the most appalling thing ever seen on TV… and I mean in terms of bad taste. It really, really, really, really is absolutely horrific and a response to all the overseas vampire dross we’ve been subjected to. I promise you won’t have seen this stuff before.”

[books] More profiles of Martin Amis: [BBC] The Martin Amis Experience [Sunday Times] Middle age is drawing the poison from his pen.

[america] America planned to drop a nuke onto the moon! [I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.]

[quote] “I am myself a Norfolk man.. and glory in being so.” – Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson

[comics] Warren Ellis talks about David Icke. [Icke’s Web Site] “There is an essential piece of this obviously quite decent man’s brain that is missing; the Quality Control function that allows most of us to cross the street when badly deluded people walk towards us waving a matchbox shouting “Do you want to see my bomb?””

[comics] Warren Ellis talks about Cerebus. “Dave Sim is more than a little mad, as I think anyone who’s read a great deal of CEREBUS would attest to. Us old lefties instinctively shy away from someone who communicates what is at best gynephobia and at worst pure bloody misanthropy in the way that Sim does, even allowing for the dichotomy between auctorial intent and personal belief. But as a creator I keep coming back to Sim for his masterful, hugely inventive storytelling. Creatively, he’s the mutant bastard child of Will Eisner, The Studio artists (Barry Windsor-Smith and those guys) and Chuck Jones.”

[books] Another Amis posting — the Digested Letters of Kingsley Amis.

[two random stories] BBC News reports that Malcolm McDowell mellows out and infertile woman gets pregnant after taking viagra.

[tech] It’s Anti-Microsoft Day at Barbelith Towers with excellent coverage of Microsoft Vs. Slashdot and Security issues in Internet Explorer. [Where does Tom find the time and energy to do these great articles?]

[tech] BBC news reports on perks for IT workers … “The more common perks include pensions, healthcare, cars, share options, flexi-time or a corporate box at a football ground. “However, companies such as Oracle provide a benefits cafeteria system in which employees are awarded points with which they can purchase the perks they want. These include extending annual holiday and life assurance for partners.

[tech] Embrace, extend, censor — Microsoft goes after Slashdot. Here’s the original article…

[weblogs] Barbelith reviews top eight weblogs. [Voice in head: Must… find… online… personality…]

[film] newsUnlimited reports that Florence attempts to ban Hannibal [Text Only]

[comics] Marvel to abandon comics for videogames and Movies? “The simple paper medium of comic books just isn’t cutting it in the age of video’s flashy special effects, explosive audio and interactive action.” – The Wall Street Journal. [via Ghost in the Machine] SOMEBODY DIES! BY MARVEL BETRAYED!! EVERY BUSINESS EXEC MY ENEMY… COMICS… FIGHTS… ON! I’M BORN AGAIN! A COMIC BOOK WITHOUT HOPE…. IS A COMIC BOOK WITHOUT FEAR!!! MY… SPLEEN… EXPLODES…

[books] Final extract from Amis Autobiography — When darkness met light

[mp3] Interesting article on Slashdot about my favorite MP3 Encoder — Lame

[film] filmUnlimited on trailers being released on the internet. Mat Snow, former editor of the mature gentleman’s rock monthly Mojo, once explained how he had fully enjoyed Godzilla without ever having seen the film. For the months of build-up beforehand, he had the pleasure of getting excited about the film, imagining the monster and the movie in his head, getting off on the hype. By the time the film actually came out, he had been reliably informed that it stank. So he didn’t go to see it. But he didn’t feel cheated – he had had four months of enjoyable anticipation at no cost.

[clones] First cloned mouse dies reports BBC News. “Dr Yanagimachi has indicated that Cumulina’s remains will be preserved and mounted in a new permanent exhibit in a new Institute for Biogenesis Research.”

[tv] Clerks [The Cartoon] — it’s times like these I really wished I lived in America….

[books] Extracts from Martin Amis’s new autobiography Experience: “I’ve been name dropping, in a way, ever since I first said: ‘Dad'” and “Mum, do you think I’m her father? – Definitely”

[ken4london] Livingstone and Labour close to compromise deal reports newsUnlimited.

[my inner turmoil] Do you think your friends, family and colleagues hate you? You can tell! The most common means of doing so were: being reserved by avoiding all intimate topics of conversation; not asking questions, so as to speed up any interaction; treating the other person as a stranger; physically avoiding them; not paying attention to them; and showing excessive politeness. [from newsUnlimited]

[tech support] It was a bad weekend for technical Support team at Australia’s federal trade commission, Austrade after the ILOVEYOU virus was released last week….

[comics] Entire run of The Invisibles available on Ebay.

[conspiracy?] Has anybody noticed that the Doctor from UFO looks just like the Russian President Vladimir Putin?

[weblogs] Interview with Jorn Barger – Portrait Of The Blogger As A Young Man . “I try to make it my ethic that whenever I see something that I enjoy, I don’t filter. You know, if it’s some silly thing about a TV commercial, I won’t say, well, that’s too frivolous.”

[uk weblogs] UK weblogs I’m currently eyeballing: Blue Lines, not so Soft, SK², Vavatch Orbital and Nutlog along with the old stalwards: Barbelith and The Daily Doozer.