nixsight

Warren Ellis has requested that people remind their readers that FreakAngels continues every Friday.

It’s very good. So you should go read it.

http://www.freakangels.com/

• @Emmavieceli Aww, man… Maybe Microserfs is meant to stay as a unique, perfect object. Tho, each DC that I have loved has been v.different! #
• @kmellon But aren’t we all a little crazy? Actually, scratch that. Past gfs have proven there’s a definite watershed on practical sanity. #
• @steevbishop Oh My GOD, what has science done!? It’s supposed to be “Monkey VS Robot”! Why are we bringing our two natural enemies together? #
• Unbelievable. Just discovered that yesterday I wrote “Right” when I meant “Write”. Hanging head in shame, now… #
• @steevbishop That interpretation momentarily occurred to me, too, as it happens…! #
• It occurs to me that every wife-beater I have ever met in person was an egg-shaped man (or woman, come to think of it). #
• Although it is by no means a definitive observation, I have to admit that this realisation has somewhat spoiled my fun memories of Weebles. #
• Oh, how they wobble, but they never fall down. They never, ever, never will fall down. #
• Oh, also, idea for website/blog. Daily bullshit. Writer posts a very short, completely fabricated fact or event, with varied tone & results. #
• Variations on that theme: Only post a lie that you’ve convinced someone of on that day. Or: “facts” you’ve passed off to your kids. #
• Oh fuck. I’ve become the web equivalent of Alan Partridge. #
• “A Youtube channel full only of children dancing to popular songs!”"Days Of Our Second Lives, a fab new soap!”"Charlie Bit Me, the musical!” #

Josh just linked to this, and it’s sad and awesome.

Coco Wang is a cartoonist from China, who has drawn some comic strips of smaller stories of the earthquake hit country that we haven’t really heard so much in the west.

I’m not saying that comics are the only way of doing this sort of reportage, but in this case they are certainly pretty effective, especially when news media have become difficult to trust or respond to without cynicism.

Without some pretty brutal resizing, I can’t get an image to show, so you should probably go visit instead…

• @Emmavieceli What did you think of jPod? I haven’t read it yet, but loved Microserfs n’all. Enjoyed the short-lived show, though… #
• On big wet bus to Warsash, a place that already sounds like it should be flooded out & waterlogged. Bus not good for bad neck, I tellsyou! #
• I am on a bus full of bombastic male asians, talking loudly and fast in a different language, or maybe more then one. #
• As is often the case when I listen to my own family speaking greek, I almost fantasise that they are making it up as they go along. #
• Even more then greek, the very different language, in many voices, overlapping, becomes totally alien. In some ways, it’s relaxing. #
• In others, a little unsettling. It’s understandable, being a bit freaked out by a crowd of shouters, who you can’t understand… #
• It’s not racism, I think, but may be xenophobia in it’s purest sense… Fear of the other. Happens with any group that speaks differently… #
• Teens, drunks, foreign speakers, the mentally ill. If toddlers could muster gathering en masse, I bet their babble would be scary. #
• Managers, marketers, advertisers, and the people who right articles for local papers… They’re the worst! #

• Where is everyone getting their Wii stuffs? Amazon throws up too many options, is confusing. :/ #
• Just been to Dr. The thing wrong with my neck is something latin, meaning “neckfuckeddon’worryaboutit” or somesuch. Ibuprofen is the cure! #
• @bremxjones Good question. Pedro & Me, always… perhaps a bit grown up for youngsters, but perfect for teens. One Bad Rat, again for teens. #
• @bremxjones I will always have a soft spot for PeanutButter and Jeremy. And I thought Suburban Glamour would be an excellent teen+ read. #
• @steevbishop The iTunes Library Late Night Recovery is a familiar dance, for which you have my sympathy. #
• @steevbishop … Or at least DID have, until I saw that Bryan Adams suggestoporn. Some images can’t be scrubbed away, even with MindRubbers. #
• @idsharman “Badgers? We don’t need no steenking badgers!” #

• Fuck politically motivated passive aggressive enthusiasm. That self-serving interest shown in a job, but only when the audience is right. #

• @mattfraction Never thought of it before, but yeah, it’s possible that we do. Well spotted! #
• @mickipedia Oh awesome… thanks to you, I am both imagining showering, and listening to that podcast. It is very funny. #

• @brianwood Congratulations! Seriously, tho, really? Over at EW sometimes it feels like ALL longpig, ALL the time! #
• @josiefraser I think clever is relative… Your capacity for theory and complicated stuff seems to way surpass mine. #
• @josiefraser And you can get rusty on scientific stuff. Example: After a break it always takes me weeks to understand New Scientist again. #
• Office empty, so Katie Enlow on the pc’s speaker instead of earphones. #
• So RTD leaving DW is finally official. Thank fuck for that. Steve Moffatt is a much better writer… #

Incidentally, this is something I utterly failed to mention during my other Bristol reviews:

Necessary Monsters was the most pleasant comic surprise of the weekend. The premise, involving as it does semi-archetypal monsters forming a squad employed by a shadowy spy agency, doesn’t seem like it will be particularly groundbreaking when you hear it, but the execution feels authentic, and the art is very cool and gritty, and played completely straight.

This first issue is not at all what I expected from the always wonderful, often groundbreaking, but normally philisophical or metaphysical E-Merl Goodbrey, another pleasant surprise from the Expo, but this book doesn’t have the almost whimsical tone of some of his other work.

Sean Azzopardi does an excellent job of laying out the spy story in noirish and clear art sequences, but is totally on form for the more graphic sequences, too.

I get the feeling that further issues of this book are going to deliver enough genuine horror and espionage for fans of either genre.

The comic’s website, empty as it is at the moment, is here, and should be subscribed to: http://www.necessarymonsters.com/

As some of you may already know, my thirty-something-uff is upcoming on the 7th of June.

Bearing this in mind, I would like to respectfully direct anyone who cares to my Amazon wishlist.

It is here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/registry/36CYGGXOG0LK0

I don’t honestly expect anyone to get me the XBox, and if you decide to get us something, it doesn’t have to be from the list… or if it is from the list, it doesn’t have to be from Amazon.

This list basically exists because in the past, people have asked me what I’ve wanted more than anything for my birthday, more even than world peace or fluffy hair on a polar bear, and I haven’t been able to answer them, due to the slow-bleeding pustules on the surface of my brain.

Also, while tokens are nice, I thought this might be worth a try…

So anyway, thankyou all in advance for your generosity…