Get The Word Out

Shopping basket items

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:42:32 GMT

I heard someone talking about this book, Brush with Passion: The Life and Art of Dave Stevens. They said, “It’s all taken from his diaries. He died broke, living from convention to convention, convinced he wasn’t a very good artist.” Is there something wrong with me that I immediately thought “I have to read this”?

autoposted from stuartwest.com

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:04:57 GMT

Someone seriously needs to make a YTMND out of "I'm Peggy Olson and I'd like to smoke some marijuana."

I remember Big Comic Monthly

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:20:54 GMT

Big Comic Monthly. It sounds a bit Engrish-y, but it was a thick black and white reprint title with loads of one-page strips from old British comics. Characters included Shiner, whose every adventure ended with him getting a black eye; Bookworm, a studious child whose parents kept signing him up for more physical pursuits “with hilarious results”; Wear ‘Em Out Wilf, whose gimmick I’m not going to bother explaining; and many more.

I thought one of the strips was called Kid Calc, but according to wikipedia it was actually known as Calculator Kid, “a young boy with a distinctive rollercoaster-shaped hairstyle and a helpful calculator which helped him out of scrapes.” Like, if the kid needed money, the calculator would tell him to go out and lie on the street where he would be stepped on by a passing billionaire who would shower him with riches by way of apology.

Anyway, I just thought of a great modern update: Alan Moore’s iPod Kid. A young boy comes into possession of an mp3 player inhabited by the spirit of the beardy genius himself. Every month, the kid gets into some sort of hideous debacle, and asks his iPod for help. In response, the device ponders his dilemma and unhelpfully comments on the storyline by selecting a song with ironically appropriate lyrics. Good, eh? You may have this idea for free, internet.

autoposted from stuartwest.com

His eyes are as red as the sun

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:43:35 GMT

I have ‘Ballroom Blitz’ by The Sweet stuck in my head. I just thought you should know.

Okay, I shouldn’t get pissed off when the Daily Express prints yet more bullshit ON ITS FRONT FUCKING PAGE, but today’s story about how, and I quote, “handouts now make up 25% of all Government spending” in the UK cannot go without comment.

The word ‘handout’ has a certain connotation. If I had to boil it down to a sentence, it would be “Layabout dole scum will bankrupt us all.” But let me point out that the Express based their story on a report by a right-wing think tank, and the report is available online, and you should check out the table on page 7 which shows how much money is spent each year on the major benefits.

What is by far the largest item? The state pension. Is the Express really happy to accuse whatever pensioner readers it has of being reliant on handouts? Jobseekers Allowance costs less than one-thirteenth as much, which frankly surprised me, and I’m taking that as proof that I’ve read too many tax-dodgers whining in online comments sections and have started to believe that shit.

autoposted from stuartwest.com

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:23:45 GMT

"...the frog is halfway across the river with Rudolf Schenker on his back when he hears a familiar combination of whistling solo and electric guitars.

"'Aaaaargh!' the frog says. 'You promised you wouldn't play Wind Of Change! Now we're both gonna die! Why would you do that?'

"And Rudolf Schenker says, 'I'm a Scorpion; it's in my nature.'"

links

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:30:55 GMT

Today's Times has a story about alleged stab sounds found on Saddam Hussein's corpse. Like a couple of the commenters, I don't see why this is much of a story. The video of his execution is in the public domain; anyone who cares to will already have seen it. As I wrote at the time, I think it was a disgusting spectacle which ensured the murderous thug went to his death with more dignity than anyone else in attendance. And frankly any violations which took place post-mortem are irrelevant in the face of that.

--

I love spy stories, but as time goes on I have increasingly little patience with material about the clash of cold war ideologies. I think modern spy stories will concern themselves more with things like we see in this Times article: Japan's new professional seducers, or this New Statesman piece: The New Spies.

Unfortunately, I don't know where you would find non-fiction books about this sort of thing. Borders files espionage under 'Military History' and increasingly the stuff I'm interested in is about subterfuge in the civilian sector.

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:04:54 GMT

This strip comes from the first issue of Tales Designed To Thrizzle by Michael Kupperman. He has a new issue out, and according to the AV Club review it introduces Sam Spread: Sandwich Spread-Obsessed Detective among other new features.

(It has taken Kupperman 3 years to produce 4 issues of TDTT, but he was working on The Peter Serafinowicz Show in between times.)

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:26:29 GMT

I'm not sure I quite understand why a parent would give their kid both the first and last names of some famous or historical figure. You know, like James Dean Bradfield, or Martin Luther King. Or, if your memory goes that far back, John Wayne Bobbit. It seems a bit dodgy to turn someone's name into a blatant cultural reference like that.

(My dad's full name is William Gladstone West. Now you know everything.)

Anyway, the AV Club posted this list of fictional political campaigns the other day. You can look at it and see how many cartoon characters have run for president.

Only after reading it did I realise that we have a cultural reference at the head of the UK government: James Gordon Brown.

I leave it to you to decide who or what he summons by shining a spotlight into the sky...

dark autumn nights

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:04:32 GMT

Great Western Road, 7:15 p.m.

every one i have ever texted with 2000—2008

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:25:29 GMT

I resisted getting a mobile phone for a long time. Everybody I know had one by Christmas 2000, which is when someone got fed up of not being able to contact me and gave me this as a present:

It was a prepay phone on Cellnet. It made calls and sent text messages and that was it. I had it for nearly three years.

2003: This thing looks like a fist-sized silver bullet. I transferred to Orange on a 12-month contract and got it as part of the deal.

This was during my brief, ill-advised, flirtation with using a PDA. The phone had very basic, slow, internet capability and the PDA used it like a modem. You had to keep the infrared port of the phone pointed at the infrared port of the PDA the entire time you were using it, not so easy unless you're double-jointed. The service was absolutely hopeless and incredibly overpriced. I think my package included 1MB of data per month.

2004: the Nokia 3650. What this picture doesn't show is how bulky and cumbersome it is. What it does show is the pseudo-rotary dial number pad layout. I would rather learn to communicate via semaphore than try texting with this thing again.

I got this for free by moving to T-Mobile. All I can really remember about it is it had a colour screen and a camera.

2005: Back to Cellnet! Which had changed its name to O2 by this point. Ah, the Nokia 7610. A camera. A key layout not designed by someone's gran. Slightly faster bad internet. I used it until it fell apart. By the end, both flash memory cards were fried, it could only hold 2 photographs in the phone memory, and it crashed at least twice a day.

I have had the same mobile number from the very beginning. Because I first changed network in 2003, I got a number portability code and took my number with me. The change between phones 2 and 3 was a bit hairy. We had put in a bid to buy a house. The house was the perfect size, in the perfect location, just within my price range. The closing date was noon on the day the network transfer happened. At one minute past noon, both phones went dead for several hours and I didn't find out what had happened with the sale until the next day. (Someone else put in a higher bid.)

This year, with my 7610 on its last legs, I called the network for another number portability code. Their retentions department offered me a free phone, unlimited internet and a low tariff, so I wound up staying with O2. They sent me this:

2008: The BlackBerry Pearl 8120. This is easily my favourite phone ever. My computer almost became irrelevant. Email comes to the phone, Google Reader runs on the phone, it has a Facebook application, if you're at home you can use your own WiFi connection instead of the mobile network...

All the little alerts are fantastic. Various symbols appear on the desktop to let you know you have new messages. There's one for new texts. A different one for new emails. Another different one for new Facebook messages. Today I had a little smiley face pop up. It apparently means someone added me on BlackBerry Messenger. I don't even know what that is, but I love it.

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:57:28 GMT

alkennedy and I had set up a professional karaoke rig in the main concourse of Queen Street train station. There was going to be a karaoke-off. One one side, a metal-loving member of the public would perform the songs of Metallica. On the other side, Metallica's James Hetfield would sing the hits of Tom Jones.

This was a dream, I think, but you would have to check with James Hetfield to be sure.

Everything was going well until Tom Jones showed up...

where in the world is frank miller?

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:18:11 GMT

Maybe you've been wasting time thinking about the credit crunch when you should have been wondering: what does the future hold for new comics from the creator of The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City?

Well, he's not planning to make any more comics. Despite being due to write another four or five issues of All-Star Batman and start a new series about al Qaeda based on his Batman vs. bin Laden story Holy Terror, Batman!, which he had drawn 120 pages of before deciding it actually wouldn't feature Batman after all.

I'm glad we could clear up any confusion.

that was fast: list time again

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:01:57 GMT

budgie_uk just did it.

"List ten books you have which you think nobody else on your friends list might have."

Stewart Lee Allen, The Devil's Cup: Coffee, the Driving Force in History
Ernest Lehman, Screening Sickness: and Other Tales of Tinsel Town
Amy Hempel, Tumble Home
Scott Bedbury, A New Brand World: 8 Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century
H Bruce Franklin, War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination
James Rogers, Dog's Life
David McDaniel, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Dagger Affair
Neil Gaiman, Adventures in the Dream Trade
Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides
William Poundstone, Prisoner's Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb

mildly agape

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:35:18 GMT

Paul Krugman just made an 'all your base' reference. I know it's not exactly up to the minute stuff but come on, he's a professional economist who is only slightly younger than my Dad.

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:09:37 GMT

After several months of summer break, all my library books suddenly came due at the same time. My inbox was filled with 'Courtesy Reminder' notices this morning and I just had to walk along to the library hefting what can only be described as a teetering pile of volumes on the Blitz, the Manhattan Project, and other miscellany.

(Roughly two of them were actually worth the strain: Richard Rhodes' The Making Of The Atomic Bomb and a compilation of HL Mencken's Days books. The rest could pretty much have stayed on the shelves.)

Speaking of books staying on shelves: DC Comics has cancelled its Minx line of young adult comics aimed at females. From what I saw of some and what I heard of others, none of those books were set-the-world-aflame brilliant. Granted, I'm not the target audience, much as I'm not the target audience for most of what Tokyopop publishes, but I actually have heard people being enthusiastic about Tokyopop's stuff.

Not that you would expect the Minx line to be as good or as successful as manga from the get-go. They're going after the same audience, but original English-language comics for girls is basically a genre that has to be invented from scratch at this point, while the manga boom is feeding off an industry which has been training this sort of talent and producing this sort of material for decades.

There's a well-established principle in international economics, which is: in order for a nascent domestic industry to be able to contend with an established overseas competitor, it has to be sustained for a time through deficit spending. Otherwise the established competitor, which has a superior initial product plus economies of scale on its side, will simply wipe them out. Minx might have proved to be a successful line, but not if DC's criterion for success was 'we have to be making money 18 months in'.

DC just don't have the follow-through to try new things. That was true when they folded their sf line (Helix) and it's true now. Because of the fuss they made over Minx's launch and the way they bragged about their advertising budget I thought that might have changed, but turns out it's just the same song, second verse.

warning: to blokes

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:31:58 GMT

If you are a guy, never make 'Top 5' lists of anything. You will feel a biological imperative to go back and change them later. The all-time top 5 comic books is now the all-time top 10, and I've posted it on a blog where I can more easily revise it once an hour for the next six weeks.

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:17:34 GMT

More on Golgo 13, the anime I'm watching. BSS, the fansub group who are translating the series, have reached episode 15. I just watched episode 12: Duke Togu is hired to assassinate a pro footballer. You can see the target's name on the billboard in the picture above. Here's a clearer look:

That's right, the quarterback's name is Lionel Blue. Same as the openly-gay rabbi who contributes to Thought For The Day on Radio 4. That caused some cognitive dissonance, I can tell you. Who knew Golgo 13 was so opposed to wry faith-based observations on daily life?

(I may well be the only person in the world who has these thoughts. I suspect the audience crossover between TFTD and G13 is not massive.)

the 5 best comics of all time

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:10:41 GMT

These are they.

scott mccloud: corrupter of youth

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:20:32 GMT

Bit of a stir in Vietnam: apparently the kids are reading manga and it is causing their moral centres to disintegrate.

Commenting on the negative effects of these comics on children, one educator in HCM City said mostly teenagers, aged 12 and over, prefer Japanese comics — which are full of inappropriate pictures and content, compared to books produced domestically. Teens are reading these harmful comics with great concentration.

...

"I’m worried sick about my son and his classmates when they read foreign comics. These books are not suitable for teens but they are very attractive to them," said Nguyen Thi Uyen. "I don’t want any more comics for my son."

Alright, it's true. Reading Rumiko Takahashi comics has led to my striking up a close personal friendship with a panda and avoiding baths at all costs.

What really bothers me is that the Vietnamese are only just now getting around to channelling xenophobia into a "ban the comics" campaign. Know when we did this in Britain? 19fucking54, slackers! See this here Children And Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act of the following year:

1. This Act applies to any book, magazine or other like work which is of a kind likely to fall into the hands of children or young persons and consists wholly or mainly of stories told in pictures (with or without the addition of written matter)

...

2. (1) A person who prints, publishes, sells or lets on hire a work to which this Act applies, or has any such work in his possession for the purpose of selling it or letting it on hire, shall be guilty of an offence and liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding four months

Well, you can read the rest of it yourself, in your own time. As far as I know no-one was ever convicted for comics in Britain, but the law is still in force.

The secret history of the 1955 Act is written up in Martin Barker's book A Haunt Of Fears. Here's the short version. The 1954 anti-comics Senate hearings in the USA came about because of worries that kids were being corrupted by unAmerican stories featuring murder, sex, and a gay Batman and Robin. In Britain it was almost the exact opposite. A movement on the hard Left was worried about kids being exposed to American pro-capitalist propaganda in their reading material. They wound up passing a law to ban sales of the EC horror comics, but they should really have gone after Scrooge McDuck.

(I actually think Scrooge might have been spared because his adventures were written and drawn by Carl Barks. Trying to ban Carl Barks is a little too near the knuckle if you're a member of the Communist Party.)

uh am the luh

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:44:47 GMT

Judge Dredd, the movie version with Sylvester Stallone, is on TV. So bad! So generic! Can't stop watching! COMPLETE FAILURE TO EMBRACE THE FASCIST ANTI-HERO, HOLLYWOOD.

thought for the day

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:15:39 GMT

"A lot of Scots didn't think Mel Gibson could play a convincing Scotsman, but look at him now: an alcoholic racist." — Frankie Boyle

I just had a look at my last.fm profile page. A dispiriting business, this. From looking at the top 10 most listened-to artists I would say that this person likes all types of music, as long as it is by blokey white guitar bands. Maybe I should do something like the guy who writes Popless at the AV Club: nothing by any of the top 10 for the next three months.

surprisetruck's 33 rpm meme

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:31:26 GMT

1) The Beatles or The Stones
Beatles.

2) Lennon or McCartney
McCartney. Solo he did Maybe I'm Amazed, Jet, Junior's Farm, Let Me Roll It, Live And Let Die, Magneto And Titanium Man, on and on. Solo Lennon I skip all but about three songs on the Greatest Hits. He gets a better press because he died before he became too awful but go listen to Double Fantasy a couple of times and tell me that's an artistic powerhouse waiting to re-emerge. I fucking dare you.

3) Christina Aguilera or Madonna
Madonna, although like McCartney you have to sort of pretend she stopped recording a long time ago (sometime around Like A Prayer).

4) Emmylou Harris or Patti Smith
Emmylou Harris by default. I saw Patti Smith in concert in '98 (supporting REM at the Bercy in Paris) and it was one of the most excruciating experiences of my life. Shambling old hippy on stage banging a colander with a spoon. No thanks.

5) Black Sabbath or Led Zepellin
Zepellin.

6) Folk or Country
Folk. I do like some finger-in-the-ear folkie stuff, but the only country I like is stuff like Johnny Cash, who was chucked out of Nashville for not being country enough.

7) Elvis or El Vez
Elvis.

8) House or Rap
Rap.

9) Trance or Techno
Techno. In fact, techno techno techno techno.

10) Drum or Bass
Drum.

11) Orange Juice or Aztec Camera
Orange Juice, although I know nothing of their output beyond Rip It Up.

12) Mercury Rev or Flaming Lips
Aaargh... second worst concert-going experience of my life was watching Flaming Lips at Reading in (...99?). Wayne Coyne banging a gong while smearing himself with fake blood. Rubbish! However, Mercury Rev are so boring and Aaron Sorkin isn't even writing a musical based on them so it has to be the Lips.

13) Julian Cope or Courtney Love
Courtney Love is the best answer to question 13 in the world.

14) Altered Images or KT Tunstall
Tunstall. Go on, watch her multitracking herself on Jools Holland's show. Pretty good.

15) Eminem or Snoop Dogg
Eminem.

16) "Hallelujah" by Rufus Wainwright or "Hallelujah" by Kathryn Williams
The first one.

17) Rufus or Martha
The second one.

18) Luke or Matt
The one who was in Blade II.

19) Jay or Donny
The one who was in Dreamcatcher ("The Citizen Kane of films about face-eating turdmonsters.")

20) Kylie or Danni
The one who sang a song based on a typeface then perished foolishly in Voyage of the Damned.

21) Righteous or Walker
Unchained Melody FTW!

22) Nina Simone or Billie Holliday
Billie. There is no song in the world like Strange Fruit.

23) Bob Dylan or Neil Young
Bob Dylan can't sing, can't play guitar, has about one decent song. Neil Young is a God. End of.

24) Marvin Gaye or Isaac Hayes
Ooh, tough. Hot Buttered Soul tips the balance in favour of that victim of Dianetics, Mr Hayes.

25) Aretha Franklin or Diana Ross
Aretha.

26) Barbra Streisand or Judy Garland
GAH! Judy Garland. Go and read the first chapter of William Goldman's book The Season, by the way, an account of a Judy Garland concert. A more devastating account of a soon-to-be-dead star you will never read.

27) Robbie Williams or Take That!
Only Take That! collaborated with Lulu. Win.

28) Human League or OMD
I know one Human League song, so it has to be them.

29) Sex Pistols or The Damned
Pistols.

30) Cassette or Cartridge
Cassette.

31) Live or Studio
Studio.

32) CD or MP3
MP3.

33) 33rpm or 45rpm
Er... I dunno. 33rpm. Yeah, that's it.

briefly

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:55:32 GMT

I went to the bookstore to buy some manga, but got confused because the series were in alphabetic order from left to right.

Writer 'stable' after toxic mushrooms

I'm just not used to seeing a newspaper headline featuring 'writer' and 'mushrooms' unless it also has the words 'crack cocaine', 'hookers', 'Burbank airport' and 'Sorkin'.

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:56:29 GMT

I'm halfway through watching The Sunshine Boys, the 1995 remake with Peter Falk and Woody Allen. The Matthau/Burns version is one of my favourite movies, but this update is doing very little for me. So instead let's have a brief roundup of...

TV I'm Watching (Aug/Sep 08)

This list has to start with Mad Men, which is just the best show going. I'm a bit surprised to see so little discussion of it online: the AllTV thread for season 2 has only managed 25 posts so far. I'm just going to assume people are silently loving it. I've also stopped fidgeting and thinking "When are they bringing back Rachel and/or Midge?" so the second year is as good as the first in my book.

Gurren Lagann. I keep thinking what a good idea it would be to watch some anime, then getting pissed off at how aggressively brainless it all is. People say episode 8 of this bizarre robotic-MODOK-with-a-drill series is excellent, so hopefully I'll be able to make it that far.

Golgo 13. Wait, I spoke too soon. I love this anime about a freelance espionage agent. The first episode is hard as nails, and there are even some hints that there may be a brain ticking away somewhere in there as well. I read a couple of the comics; my favourite is the one where the World Wildlife Fund hire Golgo 13 to break up a poaching operation in Uganda.

If Mad Men is the best show on TV, The Shield is the best show not on TV, because the new season doesn't start for another few days. Season 6 concluded with more of a fizzle than a bang, but I have faith that the final 13 episodes will be a fitting send-off for the best show ever made about a cop who resembles a testicle.

Lastly, and frankly also leastly, we have True Blood. I cringed through every misjudged, unconvincing scene of the leaked pilot to this vampire drama from Alan Ball, of American Beauty and Six Feet Under fame. For a while now, I've been thinking that I should read those Stephanie Meyer books to see if they really are as awful as they sound. True Blood is going to save me the effort. It has vampires, it is utterly appalling, and it comes in tidy little 50-minute chunks. Thank you, HBO!

(Oh alright, and starring Anna Paquin doesn't exactly hurt, either.)

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:59:04 GMT

I dunno. Don't the police have anything better to do with their time?