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26 June 2012
[comics] Comics I Read In Series Form In The 1980s: Miracleman … Tom Spurgeon On Marvelman / Miracleman … ‘I can sure recall any number of individual moments in these comics. There’s a birth. There’s the way the character initially puts together his “magic word.” There’s a scene where they’re reading comics for clues. There’s a man with scary teeth. There’s one where they talk about sex education as something that should involve having sex as part of that education. There’s a bunch of stuff with the creepy Kid Miracleman character, a wonderful bad guy. There’s the arch-villain that looks like the late Joe Paterno. And then there’s the single issue with all the killing, which I remember mostly in terms of its visual texture, one giant smear of pain. That was one of the actually rare comic books of its day, incidentally; I had two or three interns at TCJ that asked to read the office copy the day they arrived.’
25 June 2012
[life] Why Aren’t Cities Littered With Dead Pigeons? … On the numerous and brutal threats to pigeons existence in cities … Stray and domesticated cats: Your precious Chairman Meow is likely an avian serial murderer if you let it roam around outdoors. Researchers believe that cats kill hundreds of thousands of birds every year; the National Audubon Society has passed a “Resolution on Cats” that states that felines “may have been involved in the extinction of more bird species than any other cause, except habitat destruction.”
20 June 2012
[tv] William Shatner confirms Devon town actually prostitute free‘One knowledgeable Register source confirmed that Ilfracombe is indeed prostitute free, but full of “dodgy brummies and scousers who are too dodgy for Liverpool”. He added the “toilets up on Oxford Grove” had been shut down because of immoral activity.’
19 June 2012
Entire Facebook Staff Laughs As Man Tightens Privacy Settings“Look, he’s clicking ‘Friends Only’ for his e-mail address. Like that’s going to make a difference!” howled infrastructure manager Evan Hollingsworth, tears streaming down his face, to several of his doubled-over coworkers. “Oh, sure, by all means, Jason, ‘delete’ that photo. Man, this is so rich.”
18 June 2012
[comics] Behold! Alan Moore! Cliff Richard! Shakin’ Stevens! Alvin Stardust! A Black Dog! TOGETHER AT LAST! … quite possibly the weirdest photo of Alan Moore in existence.
15 June 2012
[web] Keep Calm Must Stop … a tumblr examing the worst of the “Keep Calm” meme … ‘Keep Calm It’s Our 2 For 1 Sale’
14 June 2012
[funny] Existential Star Wars … C3PO: ‘All actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.’
13 June 2012
[tech] In Memoriam: Our Favorite Apps and Services That Have Gone Belly Up (and Their Replacements) … useful list from Lifehacker … ‘Delicious (Web): 2003-2011 – The history: Delicious is a web-based social bookmarking app that is technically still around, but it isn’t really the same site it used to be. Many users have jumped ship entirely to other similar services instead. What’s taken its place: We rounded up our favorite Delicious alternatives back when it was headed for death, and Pinboard is still our top choice.’
12 June 2012
[comics] Comics I Read In Series Form In The 1980s: American Flagg! … Tom Spurgeon On American Flagg … ‘That first 26-issue run felt like it spanned the entire decade. In actuality, issue #26 appeared a mere 25 months after the debut. Sometimes I wonder if the difficulty in repackaging American Flagg! for other formats comes down to something spiritual. The serial comic book edition was pretty close to perfect in its way: a regular visit to a giddy clash of satire, comedy, adventure-comic beats and general rudeness delivered with aplomb by an artist working at the far edge of his talent while being supported by able, compelling craftsmen. Reading American Flagg! as comics felt like getting a broadcast from someplace else and watching it on a broken, filthy, slapped-together computer screen.’
11 June 2012
[funny] Leaving child in pub ‘right for Britain’ says Cameron‘DAVID Cameron has insisted that leaving his nine year-old daughter in a pub is the sort of tough decision that will rescue Britain from recession. The prime minister left Nancy in a pub near Chequers after the move was agreed during a conference call with chancellor George Osborne and Nick Clegg…’
[books] What The Author Meant Vs. What Your English Teacher Meant‘The curtains were fucking blue.’

What The Author Meant vs. What Your English Teacher Meant

8 June 2012
[blogs] Jim Davidson’s Official Blog‘I have put on some replies to my blog on the Jubilee. It would seem that I am once again a racist. I am not. Why do people get so upset? was it because I didn’t like Grace Jones or because I described her as a black woman dressed as bat girl. Well I’am sorry if that caused offence. I really am, but come on, get a life.’
[comics] A Portal to Another Dimension: Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and Neil Gaiman … the Watchmen Panel at UKCAC ’86 – moderated by Neil Gaiman … ‘I think that because there’ve been a lot of fascist overtones in Marvelman [Miracleman] people assumed that the superheroes had taken over. There aren’t really any fascist superheroes in Watchmen. Rorschach’s not a fascist; he’s a nutcase. The Comedian’s not a fascist’ he’s a psychopath. Dr. Manhattan’s not a fascist; he’s a space cadet. They’re not fascists. They’re not in control of their world. Dr. Manhattan’s not even in control of the world — he doesn’t care about the world.’
7 June 2012
[comics] Posy Simmonds Profile … by Paul Gravett‘Posy is simply one the world’s most sophisticated contemporary authors expanding the scope and subtlety of the graphic novel. Based in London, Posy has become renowned since the early Seventies, not only as a brilliant strip cartoonist for the national press, but also as a much-loved author and illustrator of children’s books.’
6 June 2012
[space] All the Water on Europa vs. All the Water On Earth‘The subsurface ocean plus ice layer could range from 80 to 170 kilometers in average depth. Adopting an estimate of 100 kilometers depth, if all the water on Europa were gathered into a ball it would have a radius of 877 kilometers.’
4 June 2012
[politics] Oh Happy Days: A Personal Recollection Of Working For Jeremy Hunt‘I distinctly recall one presentation after a period of company expansion. All of us, old stagers and new recruits, were gathered together in front of a Powerpoint screen. On it were projected smiling photographs of various members of staff, the heads of sales, IT and so on. The company had recently outsourced much of the data entry work to a centre in India. Jeremy Hunt, smiling away in that peculiarly insincere, head-bobbing way that you’ve all seen on the news, was leading. We gasped in horror as our “new colleagues in India” were introduced: there glowed a slide that featured row after row of the same cartoon clip art Generic Brown Person, sat behind a computer.’
1 June 2012
[space] Methone, an egg in Saturn orbit? … fascinating blog entry with pictures about a recently discovered moon of Saturn … ‘Methone is really shockingly round. Some of the other small moons that orbit near the rings have a smoothed appearance, but they all still have some craters or some topography. The smoothness probably results from these things collecting dust, a substance that there is a lot of in this part of the Saturn system, but it’s kind of hard to understand what could make the dust slide around to fill every topographic low on this little world, covering it with what’s essentially a global ocean of very puffy dust. I think the roundness tells us that whatever Methone is made of, that material behaves like a liquid — it has no strength to hold any shape whatsoever.’
31 May 2012
[movies] The Fake Magazines Used in Blade Runner Are Still Futuristic, Awesome … the story behind the fictional magazine covers used in the background of Blade Runner which have been discovered recently by the Internet … ‘These covers are bouncing around the Internet right now (at Gawker’s io9, etc) and now it may be that they are fakes, but not in a bad way. The idea that some guy out there saw the movie and painstakingly recreated them with the vintage clipart that the original designer used is mindblowing!’
30 May 2012
29 May 2012
[life] The Overthinking Person’s Drinking Game‘If you spend a long time mulling the nature of ‘deserving’ and what it actually means, and if you can’t really resolve the question of whether anyone specifically ‘deserves’ anything and come to an impasse about chaos and the innate unfairness of life, drink.’ [via Metafilter]
28 May 2012
[people] Mountaineer laughs off Twitter row with ‘spotty schoolkids’ … the teenage readership of Touching The Void engage with the author on Twitter …

“Your book is shit and you should feel bad,” wrote one. “Three chapters of crawling didn’t inspire me to write about your book in my exam,” confessed another. “It was rather boring really.”

Other correspondents were even more blunt: “YOUR BOOK IS THE REASON MY ENTIRE YEAR WILL FAIL OUR ENGLISH EXAM!!,” screeched one. “LEARN TO WRITE ILLITERATE FOOL!”

25 May 2012
[comics] Dave Sim vs. Spider-man in 1985 … I believe this photo is from a lost episode of Miami Vice where Crockett and Tubbs bust some drug dealers at a comic convention.
24 May 2012
[comics] Nick Abadzis Interviewed by Tom Spurgeon … long, readable interview with Nick Abadzis the writer/artist of Hugo Tate and Laika … ‘There’s too much crappy work out there to bother wasting time with, and a lot of good stuff that I do want to read, so it becomes a sort of exercise of the instincts, sniffing out the superior work or the stuff with a higher likelihood to engage. There is a lot of incredible talent working today and I do believe we are in a golden age of comics in some ways. It’s such a pleasure to come across the work of a cartoonist I haven’t encountered before and see with new eyes, their eyes. I get excited about that.’
23 May 2012
[life] 25 Handy Words That Simply Don’t Exist In English‘Backpfeifengesicht (German): A face badly in need of a fist.’
22 May 2012
[gmail] Gmvault … great little cross-platform backup solution for Gmail which dumps your email in flat files to a local disk.
21 May 2012
[water] All the Water on Planet Earth … picture showing what would happen if all the water in the world was collected into a ball on the surface of the Earth.
18 May 2012
[tv] Law & Order & Food … today’s favourite Tumblr … ‘You Have The Right To Remain Delicious.’ [via Waxy]
[history] Easter island heads have bodies!?? … I never realised the heads on Easter Island had bodies – this blog has some great photos … ‘ It’s generally accepted that the statues were made sometime between 1250 and 1500 AD. There is controversy surrounding why the bodies are buried. Was it time and erosion, or were they buried on purpose? Aliens? The soil surrounding the bodies for so long has preserved interesting carvings…’
17 May 2012
[shining] This is Uncanny: Number-play in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’‘If one needs further proof of Kubrick’s fascination with number play, the title page of his copy of Stephen King’s novel of The Shining is filled with Kubrick’s own handwriting as he works out creative ways to use the number 217. Room 217 was the number of the dead woman’s room in the novel, which Kubrick changed at the request of the Timberline Hotel management. His selection of 237 was not without forethought.’
16 May 2012