What’s that? Cold? Snow? Ice? Not where Meredith Yayanos is living. She’s down in New Zealand, and the weather is apparently fine.

This is warren ellis dot com and I want to go back to bed please.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

...а снег все идет и идёт...
И было радостно это видеть, ощущать, чувствовать...
Новый год начался удивительно хорошо.
Это  вселяло надежду. Это вселяло уверенность в том, что  происходит, правильно.
Хотелось всем сказать, даже  тем, кто тебя не любит, кто тебя не понимает  и   кто не принимает - я вас всех очень и очень люблю! Очень!
И это  даже несмотря на то, что физически ощущалось в общем-то херовато, ибо предохранители оберега себя давно уже сгорели.
Но позвонил...
Зачем?
Просто было интересно узнать что-то. А почему бы и нет?  Вроде бы, не чужие....
И....
Не дал. Не сделал. Обманул. Не оправдал. Не то сказал. Про стыд за моё существование.
Реакция была совершенно неадекватна вопросу. Слушать это  было невыносимо.
Ибо это был бред больного человека.
Ощущение радости и гармонии пропали.
А снег также, тихо кружась в воздухе,  падал  и падал....

Правда ли, что люди, поддерживающие шумиху по поводу "нового десятилетия", не умеют даже на пальцах считать?

like in the film the hill, at my very local-est park there is a manmade hill (presumably filled with the bits of road and pavement they dug up when they expanded it last year, and made a play area and generally improved things) which has some steps up and a slide down. it gave me the cunning plan of throwing the ball from the top of it, thus exercising the pooch more than on the flat. i still can't throw for toffee, but that matters less on the hill.

we had the park to ourselves for the most part, and poppet enjoyed skidding about in the snow catching the ball, and even though i had not brought bribes, she brought the ball back up the hill several times, though not exactly dropping it to order.

we had a bit of a 'naughty tail' incident when we got home, because she followed the builders into a flat that is getting a new kitchen. this poor woman had enough on her plate without my dog muscling in on her cat food action, but it could sincerely have been very much worse since poppet is a chaser. i don't know where her kitties were hiding, but they had the right idea. she was very nice about it, and no real harm was done.

неплохой видеоряд, красивый... хотя и надерганный отовсюду :)

Андрей удивляется, почему я слушаю музыку 60х-70х годов. Говорит, что странно, ведь у меня с ней ничего не связано. Меня тогда даже на свете не было. Сейчас полно отличных современных проектов: The Knife, Fever Ray, и т.д.

Ну и что? У каждого человека свое видение красоты и представление о качестве. Эта история началась еще с фильма Blow с Деппом в цветных рубашках и очках Ray-Ban. Тогда я просто влюбился в винтажный диско-стиль, и до сих пор остаюсь ему верен. Альтернативы в современном мире пока не вижу ни в моде, ни в кино, ни в музыке. Если что-то появляется интересное, то явных закос под то, что уже когда-то было.

Ок, стоп машина, машина времени! Так можно договориться до того, что начну задаваться вопросом — зачем все слушают новую музыку, если старая лучше? Она действительно лучше и даже не спорьте. Это совершенно иное душевное ощущение. Иногда кажется, что к скрипу иголки на виниле можно прикоснуться рукой. Даже в аудиокассетах существует некий заряд энергии, на каждой кассете он всегда разный, т.к. больше одного альбома не запишешь. Позитивные эмоции накручиваются вместе с пленкой и становится безумно жалко, если кассета теряется или ломается.

( Vous êtes sur le point de voir une page qui peut ne pas convenir aux mineurs. )

• 09:13 I'm very pleased to announce that, with the fire inspection successfully completed, TODAY THE DEAD LETTER TRUCK (DLT) WILL ENTER THE MAI ... #
• 09:14 With the fire inspection successfully completed, TODAY THE DLT WILL BE REBUILT1 #

____________________
deadletter: you've got a friend in noise!

I'm doing a little roundup of print-and-paper today, because it's something I'm fond of, in a retro-sentimental sort of way. I'm particularly interested in print's Unique Sales Proposition in the digital age; what it has to offer post-internet, or alongside-but-distinct-from-internet... if anything? When I "make myself scarce" by ending this blog on February 10th 2010, for instance, will I "graduate" from free to paid, purchasable, print-only writing?



That's what Momo Nonaka (right, above) seems to have done. Momo is an old friend, and from the 90s to the mid-noughties her blog Tigerlily made her one of Japan's best-known culture-bloggers. Now Momo is concentrating on print, and specifically zines. Tigerlily has become a paper magazine called Lilimag. Momo is using the internet to distribute , and blog about distributing, her mags, but the products themselves are made of pure post-internet paper.

My alongside-internet, print-only novel The Book of Jokes gets an interesting review in the January edition of American literary review The Believer. Although The Believer is primarily a print publication, you can read Justin Taylor's review online. The reviews editor has tried an interesting "read-without-prejudice" experiment, sending Taylor my book without its cover or title pages, its spine blacked-out with a sharpie, and a ban on all googling. The result is a review I'm tempted to call "disorienteered", but also a satisfyingly context-free take on a wedge of paper, which is what a book finally is. This review doesn't rewrite the press release, but simply lets the unfolding text lead the reviewer through revulsion, amusement, disorientation, and trains of personal association. It's something I tried myself recently when I wrote a Playground column describing step-by-step my real-time discovery of a band called Hecuba. Taylor links my Book of Jokes to Lynne Tillman, a writer I met a couple of times in London in the 80s, via mutual friends, and who's apparently also written a book based on jokes (1999's No Lease on Life).

Turning to newspapers, the Israeli daily Haaretz mentions me today. Swiss "pop literature" writer Christian Kracht, in an interview with the paper, quotes the whole lyric to my song Germania, which, as I recall, was an attempt to channel a Germanic sensibility I'd found in art by Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys, and imagery from the poems of Paul Celan and Rainer Maria Rilke. Kracht is one of my most important print mentors -- he published my debut short story 7 Lies About Holger Hiller in literary review Der Freud in 2004, and he's the executive editor of the German edition of The Book of Jokes, which will appear this autumn on the Blumenbar / Buenos Aires imprint. More paper!

There's less paper in the world thanks to the official closure last month of ID magazine, the American design magazine to which I contributed regularly. I even managed to get a young Norwegian graphic design collective called Yokoland onto the cover. ID was great to write for, because they paid a dollar a word. This time last year I managed to live for about three months on their fees for three or four easy-to-write articles. The magazine's closure seems to reflect the axiom that anything the internet can do better than print, it will do better than print. Designers are well-served now by design blogs, which they expect to read free online.



Japanese magazines are still my favourite form of print (and since I can't read them, that must mean that print has some sort of talismanic-fetishistic quality for me). In the photo above (Tsutaya's "recommended titles" shelf) you can see the camera jyoshi mags called Phat and Snap. A camera jyoshi is a young woman who's obsessed with cameras and photography. She's about 22, possibly an art student. She usually has an elegant retro model of camera (she prefers film to digital) which may or may not be covered with stickers (as Ume Kayo's is). The only thing she likes more than photography is sitting in old cafes eating the tasty lunch set and leafing through old magazines, or traveling in other Asian countries. Hisae -- essentially a camera jyoshi herself (her photos grace the current edition of Apartamento magazine) -- flipped enviously through Phat and Snap and told me that there weren't all these titles for camera jyoshis when she was in her early 20s. Magazines must be doing something right if they're diversifying titles about obscure dead-tech hobbies.

I showed Maggie from street fashion / interview blog Broad&Market a Japanese mag called Tokyo Graffiti, and we both went into raptures over its current edition. "This is the perfect magazine for me," said Maggie, leafing through pages showing people stopped on the street to talk about what they're wearing, or holding up Gillian-Wearingesque signs stating their worries about the world, or sitting in their bedrooms describing their decoration preferences. Tokyo Graffiti -- which features almost no advertising, though it may be doing some subtle product placement, for all I know -- is the ultimate vox pop magazine, and so far no blog can provide enough research, content, context and detail to endanger it. But after flipping through the whole of Tokyo Graffiti in the act of intellectual shoplifting called tachiyomi ("standing and reading"), Maggie and I -- blogger pirates both -- replaced the mag on the recommended shelf unbought, took a snap of the cover, and resolved to blog about it. Paper is doomed.

I was up and thought I'd post this now. Have fun. ( weekly update )

when do you find time to study languages?

Dear Paper Towel Distributors,

I found your ad searching for a Customer Service Assistant on Craigslist.
Let us review my accomplishments in the fields you desire service:
I can communicate so well I earned my BA from Regis University in Communications. Graduated Magna Cum Laude.
I am reviewing the data from your transmission as a basis for this field report as requested by your company.
My resume describes a great deal of assisting I have provided over the years. From customers to co-workers, young and old!
Do you have a database I can maintain? If not, I have experience in creating them.

The bidding war for the honor of being called my employer begins at 9 a.m. Mountain Time on Wednesday, January 5th 2010. Bids open at a starting salary of $.

Thank you for your consideration,

The obits for Kenneth Noland, maybe the worst painter in all of art history, are rationalizations for his presence in museum collections. Like big banks, the big art institutions are just not allowed to fail - their holdings are propped up by art insiders whose blindness is evident in a fawning droolage spilled over a terrible colorist who couldn't even shoot straight.

_

It seems like I think every serial I watch is one of the best I've ever seen, but that's probably because I've been looking for serials that were highly recommended... so they really ARE good. It's not like I'm sitting through a marathon of BRUCE GENTRY, PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO or HOP HARRIGAN without breaks. Anyway, I had read and enjoyed all of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories over the course of a year or two (as well as his Sumuru books), and was really looking forward to watching this chapterplay.

It certainly doesn't disappoint. DRUMS OF FU MANCHU is remarkably faithful to the tone and mood of Rohmer's books. Chapter Five, where the Devil Doctor and his Dacoits assault an isolated mansion in a thunderstorm, while inside Nayland Smith vainly tries to warn an intended victim of the danger, is just like a chapter from the early books brought to the screen. We have an evil, ageless Chinese super-villain invading Western society with his army of vicious assassins, his beautiful heartless daughter and his trademark of bizarre torture methods. He even is accompanied by the Council of Seven of the dreaded Si-Fan, meeting in ceremonial robes around a dragon-emblazoned table.

Fu Manchu is opposed by staunch British Foreign Office agent Nayland Smith and his friend Dr Petrie, as well as a burly younger man delegated to handle the rougher fistfights... in this case, Allan Parker. The Devil Doctor is after some artifacts, a scroll hidden in a Dalai plaque and a shard from an ancient temple, which will give him the sacred scepter he needs to claim authority from Genghis Khan himself and thus launch an all-out holy war in Asia. (Sounds a lot like the book and film versions of MASK OF FU MANCHU, both great in themselves.) So the sides are drawn up, the hot potato is thrown from hand to hand and the fun starts.

One thing I loved about this serial is its visuals. DRUMS looks like a 'B' horror film, very atmospheric and shadowy; since the first half is set in California rather than the foggy streets of London, heavy rainfall and thunderstorms set the proper mood. The Dacoits are all as sinister as you might hope, skulking around in the shadows with their bolos and poison dart blowpipes, flinging an inordinate number of daggers into peoples' backs.

These assassins have all had brain surgery performed on them by Fu Manchu himself to remove their free will and make them absolutely obedient. As a result, they have shaved heads with a large V-shaped lobotomy scar on the brow. Some of them also have vampire fangs for some unexplained reason. (And just to show not all Asians are incarnate devils, Philip Ahn appears as the cultured Dr Chang to provide an important piece to the puzzle and to courageously stand up to Fu Manchu's threats. It's a small touch but well meant.)

Henry Brandon is just fine as Fu Manchu himself. At first, the completely bald head and 45-degree uptilted eyebrows seem odd, but Brandon gives an all-out highstrung performance that won me over. (I still like the demonic interpretation seen in MASK OF FU MANCHU better, but hey, Boris Karloff is a tough act to follow for any actor.) Gloria Franklin is not as glamorous or enticing as Myrna Loy (again, admittedly a tough act to follow) but she is malevolent and cunning as Fah Lo Suee; one thing missing from Rohmer's formula is that she doesn't harbor lustful thoughts about the Western infidels, but then serials were aimed at juvenile audiences.

As for the good guys, ah well. William Royle doesn't seem much like the gaunt, hyperactive Smith of the books (and he seems to have imsplaced his first name Denis, called "Sir Nayland Smith" throughout) but Royle is a staunch, determined pipe-smoking hero is is believable as someone capable of tackling Fu Manchu. For someone getting on in years and packing a few extra pounds, he still doesn't hesitate to trade punches with a Dacoit or to enter a certain trap. Olaff Hytten is bland but okay as Dr Petrie (and considering how badly Dr Watson was being portrayed at the time, we should be glad Petrie kept some dignity).

The surrogate hero who can be counted on for wrassling Dacoits, climbing down rope ladders from planes and leaping off crashing trains is Allan Parker (played by Robert Kellard). For someone who is supposed to be just the son of an archaologist, Allan plays pretty rough. He throws a punch like he means it, and handles a revolver with a confidence that suggests he and his father had been in tight spots on digs many times. Also tangled up in the antics are Tom Chatterton as Professor Randolph and Luana Walters as his daughter Mary, along to aid the damsel factor.

The action scenes are not quite the highly polished choreography that Republic would showcase in a year or so, but they are accordingly more believable. The punches and grappling seem more like real fights than the amazing acrobatics we would soon see in SPY SMASHER or PERILS OF NYOKA. The essence of a serial is in its cliffhanger endings, and the ones here are more imaginative than in later years. Our heres find themselves strapped beneath a swinging razor-sharp pendulum, dropped into a tank with a belligerent octopus, tied down and about to be lobobomized into an obedient slave --- all very cool chapter endings.

DRUMS OF FU MANCHU does drag a bit in the second half, once the action transfers to what is either supposed to be india (or maybe Central Asia, maybe Afghanistan?) It's a tribute to Fu Manchu that he explicitly survives to the end credits. Arm in a sling and somrewhat worse for the wear and of the fifteen chapters, the Devil Doctor humbly appears at the tomb of Genghis Khan and apologizes for his failure. But, he says, there will another day when he succeeds in conquering Asia. "This I pledge", he promises as he bows. Unfortunately, WW II made a Chinese archvillain as unworkable as a Japanese hero like Mr Moto, and so both characters were shelved for the duration.

I made a point to space out the watching of this serial instead of just viewing three or four chapters at a time, and it enhances the experience enormously. I still am neither patient nor organized enough to wait a week between chapters, but I can get a glimpse of the delicious anxiety fans must have felt waiting for the next Saturday back in 1940.

_

I have quite a vivid dream life, usually remembering two-three dreams each night. I've been sharing the ones that can be explained briefly both on twitter and facebook, while those that are more convoluted get recounted on LiveJournal.

But since twitter is ephemeral, I thought I'd gather my tweet dreams together in one place, both out of a fear that they might fade, and to see if there's any overarching theme. So here are three months worth of them in reverse chronological order. I already knew that many of you in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror communities had starring roles in my dreams. But what I didn't realize was how many of the dreams I'd already forgotten.

Looking at these, I have a feeling that I'll someday do something more formal with them. But for now, just seeing them in one place is satisfying enough.

Welcome to my subconscious!

December 2009

I dreamt I was in a railway station discussing the print histories of Dune and LOTR with Cheryl Morgan as ancient steam engines roared by. 7:41 AM Dec 31st, 2009

I can't believe I dreamt I was driving while explaining SCI FI Wire's Moveable Type system to my bored passengers. I need to get out more. 8:10 AM Dec 30th, 2009

I dreamt I was at an awards banquet, polling my friends as to whether or not I should shave my head. But I woke while tallying the votes! 7:56 AM Dec 29th, 2009

I dreamt I was reading the nonexistent The Complete Jules Feiffer, which contained thumbnails for comics I _know_ he had nothing to do with. 7:57 AM Dec 28th, 2009

I dreamt I could play the guitar, but when I tried to sing along, I couldn't recall the lyrics to a single song. But the music was amazing. 8:38 AM Dec 27th, 2009

I dreamt I was at a con dinner for ten (including Jenn Reese and Karen Meisner) in Australia. A ladybug crawled on Karen, who didn't mind. 8:26 AM Dec 25th, 2009

I dreamt I was in a corrupt Third World country trying (and failing) to convince rebel leaders to cooperate with the church, and vice versa. 8:20 AM Dec 25th, 2009

I dreamt that a strange insect, half stick bug, half praying mantis, had gotten into the house, and we were having a staring contest. I won. 7:35 AM Dec 24th, 2009

I dreamt I was visiting with Paul Di Filippo and preparing to eat at Prosciutto's, an all-prosciutto restaurant that exists only in dream. 7:33 AM Dec 24th, 2009

I dreamt I was wandering NY with Irene Gallo while describing the new mag I intended to publish, one with a different format for each issue. 7:29 AM Dec 24th, 2009

I dreamt I'd volunteered for a space mission from which I'd never return, and saying my goodbyes while trying to decide whether to back out. 7:28 AM Dec 22nd, 2009

I dreamt I was working at Marvel with a suddenly alive John Verpoorten, a suddenly young Len Wein, and a suddenly in comics Paul Shaffer. 8:32 AM Dec 21st, 2009

I dreamt I was at a state dinner at which Michael Swanwick said I could sit at his table, but as a new congressman, I had to sit elsewhere. 8:46 AM Dec 20th, 2009

I dreamt I spotted Fringe's John Noble visiting Syfy, and so I searched for my camera, but by the time I was able to find it, he was gone. 8:37 AM Dec 18th, 2009

I dreamt I'd moved back to Brooklyn, and was crossing Coney Island Avenue at Avenue O. I heard my wife and father talking in the distance. 6:23 AM Dec 12th, 2009

I dreamt that I parted with Bill Shunn in the Village to have dinner with Tom Disch, who had a new book out cowritten with David R. Bunch. 5:34 AM Dec 12th, 2009

I dreamt I worked at a Marvel Comics with a view of Grand Central, and saying goodbye to long-dead Bullpenner Duffy Vohland, who seemed sad. 6:36 AM Dec 11th, 2009

I dreamt I wandered a NYC that never existed, one with monuments only Jack Kirby could have designed. And I was looking for my lost iPhone. 7:50 AM Dec 8th, 2009

I dreamt I was with Bill Willingham as he was interviewed for radio, and trying to be very quiet. Then my wife and Neil Gaiman showed up. 8:31 AM Dec 6th, 2009

I dreamt Will Smith dropped by, and since I am a good host, spent his visit trying _not_ to ask about Scientology, even though I wanted to. 7:45 AM Dec 6th, 2009

I dreamt I was a kid setting the dining room table with my sister, and our dad was Benjamin Linus, and he wasn't happy with us. Not at all. 9:15 AM Dec 5th, 2009

I dreamt I attended a holiday party at Bob Silverberg and Karen Haber's NYC apartment, reading ancient fanzines and eating blueberry scones. 8:29 AM Dec 4th, 2009

I dreamt I was at a huge convention, but every pro writer bailed except for me and Catherine Asaro, and we were forced to do _every_ panel. 8:47 AM Dec 3rd, 2009

I dreamt I was working on a graffiti-spree case, first as Gillian Anderson, then as Zooey Deschanel, but I woke before the crime was solved. 8:47 AM Dec 2nd, 2009

( Click here for October and November tweet dreams, so that only the truly obsessive need suffer. )

"Tiara"
Mark Doty

Peter died in a paper tiara
cut from a book of princess paper dolls;
he loved royalty, sashes

and jewels. I don’t know,
he said, when he woke in the hospice,
I was watching the Bette Davis film festival

on Channel 57 and then—
At the wake, the tension broke
when someone guessed

the casket closed because
he was in there in a big wig
and heels, and someone said,

You know he’s always late,
he probably isn’t here yet—
he’s still fixing his makeup.

And someone said he asked for it.
Asked for it—
when all he did was go down

into the salt tide
of wanting as much as he wanted,
giving himself over so drunk

or stoned it almost didn’t matter who,
though they were beautiful,
stampeding into him in the simple,

ravishing music of their hurry.
I think heaven is perfect stasis
poised over the realms of desire,

where dreaming and waking men lie
on the grass while wet horses
roam among them, huge fragments

of the music we die into
in the body’s paradise.
Sometimes we wake not knowing

how we came to lie here,
or who has crowned us with these temporary,
precious stones. And given

the world’s perfectly turned shoulders,
the deep hollows blued by longing,
given the irreplaceable silk

of horses rippling in orchards,
fruit thundering and chiming down,
given the ordinary marvels of form

and gravity, what could he do,
what could any of us ever do
but ask for it.

She's back doing post-graduate work at the University of Oslo, and sends everyone her love. Agnetha says she has been a complete macrobiotic Vegan diet, with lots of distilled water and homeopathic vodka. She claims to never have felt better, but I don't know...




She just doesn't look quite herself.

"Dear Miss Emily"
James Galvin

I knew the end would be gone before I got there.
After all, all rainbows lie for a living.
And as you have insisted, repeatedly,
The difference between death and the Eternal
Present is about as far as one
Eyelash from the next, not wished upon.
Rainbows are not forms or stories, are they?
They are not doors ajar so much as far-
Flung situations without true beginnings
Or any ends—why bother—unless, as you
Suggest—repeatedly—there’s nothing wrong
With this life, and we should all stop whining.
So I shift my focus now on how to end
A letter. In XOXOXO,
For example, Miss, which are the hugs
And which the kisses? Does anybody know?
I could argue either way: the O’s
Are circles of embrace, the X is someone
Else’s star burning inside your mouth;
Unless the O is a mouth that cannot speak,
Because, you know, it’s busy.
X is the crucifixion all embraces
Are, here at the nowhere of the rainbow’s end,
Where even light has failed its situation,
Slant the only life it ever had,
Where even the most gallant sunset can’t
Hold back for more than a nonce the rain-laden
Eastern sky of night. It’s clear. It’s clear.
X’s are both hugs and kisses, O’s
Where stars that died gave out, gave up, gave in—
Where no one meant the promises they made.
Oh, and one more thing. I send my love
However long and far it takes—through light,
Through time, thorough all the faithlessness of men,

James Augustin Galvin,

          X,

His mark.

See, the first Blackhawk comics I saw were from the early 1960s. I just didn't see the point of the team. They seemed interchangeable with the Challengers of the Unknown... normal humans fighting aliens, monsters, mad scientists etc. But there were seven Blackhawks, so none of them got much of a chance to shine except the leader himself. Why did they each fly a jet? Why did they seem to be a military group fighting crime? I just wasn't taken with the comic.

Years later, though, I found issues of MILITARY COMICS (later MODERN COMICS) and BLACKHAWK from the WW II era, and the team came to life with purpose and intensity. They were a group of air pirates, men who had escaped from countries which had been conquered by the Axis, and they fought back against the aggressors with a vengeance. No harmless gas guns or gimmicks, either... these guys carried Tommy guns and 45s and used them. They were not super-heroes, they were soldiers with a mission.






The Blackhawk strip first appeared in MILITARY COMICS# 1, August 1941, a product of the Will Eisner studio (although he doesn't seem to have had as much to do with their creation as did Bob Powell and Chuck Cuidera. Reed Crandall soon became the artist most identified with the strip in its glory days, with his solid realistic style (he was the Norman Rockwell of comics, that's his cover with Blackhawk holding up the hawk). It's hard to recapture today the emotional power that the strip's concept must have carried at the beginning of the war. One nation after another had fallen to the Germans, and Japan was spreading its conquests in the Pacific. The future looked very dark and uncertain. The idea of men who belonged to the conquered nations banding together to fight back was a potent one.

After the war, the Blackhawks went after Communist agggression with the same grim determination, and the stories up until the mid-1950s are still dark and fatalistic and exciting. Then DC bought the property from Quality, and Blackhawk quickly became as I mentioned earlier... a copy of the Challengers of the Unknown, but with accents and jets. Since then, the Blackhawk characters have been through a lot of abuse and reincarnations and debasement. But luckily, their original comics still exist to be enjoyed, safe beyond tampering and improving.

__

__

Bit more obscure than usual, but then you guys always surprise me with your knowledge. This fellow loaned his name to a famous fictional villain.

• 21:56 Re: Intervention. If it weren't for these shows flipping the bill, would these people be able to afford these Malibu/FL rehabs? #
• 22:04 LOL Hoarders. I love how people can just oh gosh shrug at their filthy messes when they just admitted that they're too lazy. #
• 22:42 Hoarders is basically the brutal, ugly, uncutesy Mayhem and Foolishness side Clean House never shows you. Niecy Nash would smack-a-hoe. #
• 22:50 @DavidShuster. I love you dude but... Buddhists. BUDDHISTS!!!! lol my friends will be chanting for you now. lol. #
• 22:54 Oh, yays! The Hoarder dude found his gun! Yays... wait- This is why we fail as a people. Can't wait until the robots rise and enslave us. #
• 22:58 No lady the boy is not missing "the nice people". He's upset he knows when y'all leave his mom still won't clean anything. TherapistFail #
• 23:04 @DavidShuster <3. #
• 23:10 While making Cheese Toast, thoughts I should order the Sham Wow so I can get the Graty with it. Tacos Fettuccine Linguine Martini Bikini. #
• 12:40 www.photobasement.com/41-hilarious-science-fair-experiments/ #

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DO ANYTHING was mostly written in a Moleskine reporter’s notepad with a propelling pencil. The page reproduced below — cranked up in GIMP to make it visible, if not legible — appears to date from late May 2009. It’s written in block caps because I needed to be able to copy-type from it, and as we know from earlier posts, my handwriting is shitty.

Pretty much every page of DO ANYTHING in this notebook looks like this:

If you’ve read DO ANYTHING, you know a lot of it is pretty densely layered with connections. The column was written in a very specific way to maximise the information. It always, always started out as longhand, early in the day. The longhand was always about the forward thrust of the column — the column meanders a lot, but it doesn’t wander, it’s constantly following a channel. As I go, I’m signposting things I need to check later, or need to remember to tie in.

Later, I sit down and copy-type the thing into Notepad, with a browser open, because I’m fact-checking as I go. The longhand draft is all mental, and that includes working in information from memory. Since I often can’t remember what I did yesterday, it needs to be checked.

I’d write the longhand version in intense two-hour stretches, and usually had way too much for a single column. After 003, in fact, I just kept writing without thinking about column breaks, and found those breaks later after the copy-typing.

Once I’d typed the column up, the real draft started. Because I’d then spend an hour plugging names from the column into Google, looking for more connections, as well as following my signposts, and layering that stuff into the piece. The Notepad draft after an hour or so on Google was the actual first draft, and that’s what’d get pasted into OpenOffice to get edited and cleaned up.

Really, an incredibly complicated and time-devouring process for a column no-one read. But it was fun, and it taught me things.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

( Vous êtes sur le point de voir une page qui peut ne pas convenir aux mineurs. )

I agree.

Зашла сейчас в комнату, некоторые шарики опустились Даньке на кровать, "присели" на ступеньки. А он спит меж ними, будто цветные сны спустились и тихонько ждут своей очереди.

The serial version of the first DO ANYTHING book concluded today. It’ll be out in print in April, and it’ll look something like this:

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Ever wonder where all the souls of unfertilized eggs, laden with potential, go when flushed out of the body, and flushed down the drain?

What happens when that hell… becomes full?

Three days before her period, one young woman is the first of many:

The Preggening

It's the hellish inverse of immaculate conception.

No condom will protect you from the evil growing in your belly.

It's 50% of your DNA… but 100% ZOMBIE.

• Charitable Front: Some Bay Area organizations appear to be part of a secretive group
  "Mysterious organizations in the Bay Area profess to be advocating for liberal causes. In truth, they appear to be part of a secretive group with a bizarre radical past."
  (tags:cult pol )
• Sikhs strive to keep language alive
  "The Sikh scriptures and the Punjabi language of many Sikhs were written in a script known as Gurmukhi. So to be fully initiated into the religion, you must know how to read it."
  (tags:cult culture language history social )
• U.S. Evangelicals? Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push
  "…the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how ?the gay movement is an evil institution? whose goal is ?to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.? Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior…"
  (tags:cult crime )
• Freescale promises bargain-price tablet this year
  "Freescale Semiconductor unveiled blueprints for a tablet computer to be priced at less than 200 dollars (US) when it debuts later this year."
  (tags:tech computing )

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

 Отныне я снимаю только на любительском уровне.
так сказать для себя.

I so this morning at 6:30 I was awakened by the sound of large sheets of paper moving around (the enormous sheets of paper I use for my paintings), and at first I believed it must be my bird flapping his wings causing things to blow around. But then I saw his dark silhouette – he was deep in sleep, perched up on his tree. I tried to peer into the darkness to see, but couldn't make anything out, so I got up and turned on the lights. All was still. There were a bunch of large sheets of paper that I'd dipped in paint a few days ago (to make cool drool-y patterns) stacked in a corner, so I lifted them all up one by one, trying to see if there was anything beneath. Finding nothing, I put it all up on my work table and went back to bed. I figured it must have just been a very vivid dream and that I had imagined the sounds. But then about 15 minutes later I heard something rustling the paper again, so I know it was real. So crap. I probably have a mouse in the house.

Curzon from Coming Anarchy took some photos of the opening of the Burj Khalifa, the new top medieval folly in Dubai. The thing about criminal lunatics who live like God’s just keeping their chairs warm is that, well, they do know how to put on a show:

More at the link.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Вчера мальчишка приготовил своё первое блюдо: некий вариант окрошки. Покромсал варёное яйцо, огурец и колбасу, с зеленью ему помогли. Сметана, соль, квас и вуаля. Причём почти литровую миску смолотил сам же.

Вообще, к готовке у него сейчас очень большой интерес. Интересно, надолго ли.

Kenneth Noland, dead at 85

...много снимал.  Шибко  устал. Вот это из свежесделанного.
Пойду, однако, отдыхать.

( Vous êtes sur le point de voir une page qui peut ne pas convenir aux mineurs. )

you can tell this is not my sofa since there is no blood on it and no toy stuffing. my flat has taken even more of a turn towards war zone aesthetic but there has to be a sort of point where it just doesn't get any worse, no? i mean, quentin crisp never cleaned his apartment, and he said that after, i think it was 12 years, that the dust didn't get any thicker. mind you, he lived ALONE.

i don't 'have' to confine poppet yet, apparently, the first week it's okay for her to 'socialise' but it's already not very nice - even neutered dogs are all over her. and she gets fed up with it. and i have an absolute horror of risking her getting pregnant, so i am starting the new regime now. it's not what i had planned - she should be scheduled in for the snip this week, i thought we would be recovering from that, and just getting on with leash training, but since she has got used to running around in parks i need to give her exercise, so have found a fenced off area that is unused by anyone during the day, so i can take her pee and poo walks for those functions to the little park, and, in the fenced off bit, wait for it, i am teaching her to play with a ball! i had no interest in doing this before, since she runs around quite happily without a motivator, but now we can't do park, i still want her energy drained off, so 'fetch' it is. we made a little start today. she is not brillant at bringing the ball back or letting it go, so i was doing more exercise that i want to... so we will see if some bits of chicken make a difference tomorrow. some time ago a friend showed me a trick with staffies which is to use two balls, to get them to drop the first one and go for the second. i also want to get one of those ball flingers, since i most certainly throw like a girl, and am likely to continue to do so.

yesterday my friend alistair brought over his little boy who is three. when they arrived he was asleep, having tired himself out on his new bike toy earlier. when he finally opened his eyes he was awed to see dorg. poppet was very gentle and lovely with him, and he was shy at first, but by the end of the visit was commanding the dog to come on the 'bus' (sofa). when she got off and went onto the other sofa i said that she had gone on another bus to musselburgh, and cam's response was to jump off our 'bus' and proclaim that he was going to musselburgh as well, then waved goodbye to us, calling us 'you guys', which is a new one on me.

they are coming again on friday, which is a relief to me, since poppet's confinement is also mine. not only do i want to leave her too much, but also i am exhausted as it is keeping up with her, but having to construct a new routine and step up to it myself, so i haven't the energy to go to others. i also have visitors tomorrow night, too, which is nice. (poppet will like it too, she does love company.)

Of a 300-word column on comics for SFX. 300 poxy words. This usually means I’m going to have to scrap it and start again. It’s not due to file until the 11th, but I want to get it out of the way today, because I need to be producing some comics pages by the end of the week. Of course, at the end of the week, I’m planning to be in London to consult with a few people on a few things, so…

Provided London hasn’t been cut off by snow, of course. Extreme weather warnings are popping up all over the country today, and both London and Southend are pegged for "heavy snow" tonight — about a foot of it, by all accounts. People in other parts of the world are laughing their arses off at the very idea of that being "heavy snow," I know. But you can confidently expect this shambles of a country to fall over and play dead after a foot of snow.

Today I had a very, very strange job offer.

This turned up in my inbox the other day, from artist Sam Haney.

(Larger version)

You too can send me dirty pictures at my "dump" email address, which I check every day or two, at warrenellis [at] gmail dot com.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Friends,
(1)
It seems that Victoria Taylor-Gore ,whose pastel art I linked
yesterday, is reading this journal and kindly sent permission to
post her work. Thank You! I have posted several. Blue Fireplace is
from a Christmas-eve show in Santa Fe. So,if you will...( Read more... )
(2)
Had supper at a Greek diner last night. Not worth note, first of all
the mousaka was not well cooked or designed for that matter, but I
took a book with me to read a few pages of during meal and chose
the Philip Wheelwright Heraclitus a superior translation and
commentary. Wondering if I could find something somehow interesting in
reading a bit of this familiar material. And I did, and think you
might find it interesting too.

"there must be an activity and resilience of mind corresponding
to the ever fluctuating character of the world it seeks to know."

This commentary by Wheelwright struck as a good statement of a basis
for an appropriate Christian 'ascetics'. If this interests I will add
a bit more. ( Read more... )
(3)
A poem by Robert Lax which I think ought interest everyone
I bold hoping a few will read this...is it not where we are?( Read more... )
(4)
But the diner, named Lefteris, bad as the mousaka was had
wonderful paintings of Greek island scenes on the walls
blue sea and sky...

Today these and invite all your response from the
pastel color and form of Victoria's work, to Lax's
question, to Heraclitus to diners and as always
I am yours
+Seraphim
.
Gateway. Victoria Taylor-Gore
http://www.victoriataylorgore.com/

At my internet cave today:

* The Katie West Residency

* The Brian Wood Residency

Both here until end of Friday. Go and meet them.

* REMAKE/REMODEL: Ace Of Space – return of the artists’ challenge thread.

* Free Paper Science newspaper from We Are Words + Pictures – oh yes. We do free stuff now.

* Comics on Sale This Week (Jan 6) – For people with a local comics store.

* SHUDDERTOWN; March 2010 from Image/Shadowline

* GHOST PROJEKT: Coming in March from Oni Press

Preview material for two new comics by creators who visit Whitechapel

* DJs lets post some mixes thread!

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)