Ecletic interesting links and articles collected by a painter, teacher, writer, and ex-PhD student
So, feeling happy? Here’s something to balance that right out… Where children sleep around the world. It’s a series of portraits of children and their beds, and if you don’t end up with mixed feelings from this, then you might not be human.
Manic episodes are the bane of some people’s lives, where almost anything seems like a good idea.
However, not many people think that it is a good idea to moon a biker gang, throw a puppy at them, and then try to escape on a stolen bulldozer. Someone was having a very bad day, that day.
Moebius was an artist who began drawing a cyberpunk future before punk existed. His ideas illustrated steampunk decades before William Gibson and Bruse Sterling wrote the first authoritative steampunk novel The Difference Engine
He will be sadly missed, but his influence will live on.
Here is a good tribute and summary of his work, also, here is Neil Gaiman’s tribute.
After all the snow this winter, there is a high chance of flooding. Fear not! The web provides answers for all occasions! If you have been thinking to yourself ‘Hmm, it’s about time I gathered up a load of animals in a big wooden boat’ then here’s how to go about it:
Oh, and happy new year!
There really is some pretty random stuff out there in the internet, even on generally serious websites. You will probably have seen the Three Wolves Moon T-shirt reviews on Amazon. You may have seen the reviews for uranium ore on Amazon too (best title for a review ‘I’m so glad I don’t have to buy this from Libyans in the parking lot anymore’). Another slightly obscure one is for the Bic Crystal medium point pen (known to the rest of the world as a completely normal biro), the chief point of the humour there being why would anyone buy a biro online? Even on the less mainstream sites you still get some lovely little flashes of humour. I found this review of a Samsung PS42C450 television – now, for a 42 inch HD TV you’d think not showing full-HD resolution would be the biggest downside, but apparently it’s not. In the pros and cons section of the review, the number one ‘con’ of the TV is ‘doesn’t dust itself’.
Maybe I’m a grammar geek sometimes, but I love the way unordered lists can create something funny.
I know what you’re thinking – “I’ve got a bottle of wine and nothing to open it except a shoe, how on earth do I get to the tasty liquid?”, well wonder no more!
Now that’s what I call a light show. A 40ft shark leaping out of the water to attack a bridge. Now all it needs is dinosaurs and explosions to get up to the level of astonishing awesomeness.
Gods bless those bonkers LA people: have you ever wondered how would a stormtrooper would look in a corset? Or if C3P0 would look good with boobs? Then wonder no more – Star Wars Burlesque is here to help!
Apparently there are eight police officers in Scotland who in a survey identified themselves as being of the Jedi faith (plus two more in office support). The question is not ‘why are there Jedi in the police force?’, but ‘why aren’t there any Jedi in the English police force?’
It does exactly what it says on the tin link. Random computer game name generator creates weirdly believable game names and is almost gauranteed to amuse you for twenty or thirty seconds, or longer if you actually try to imagine how ‘Medieval Jazz Jihad’ might work.
Excellent use of space… But I didn’t notice a letter box. I swear I’ve lived in worse places than that. Smaller ones too.
Apparently, not much at all. I’ve always thought that many cables are ridiculously overpriced, and so this article really cheered me up!
Shear genius by the underpaid workers over at the 2008 Olympic gardens. ‘Shear’… Geddit? Like ‘shears’… Used on hedges…
Woah. Tough crowd.
In the UK, we’ve had an advert for ‘New York Deli-style’ mayonnaise. The idea of the advert is that the mother, who is making sandwiches, has been transformed into a male New York deli owner by using the product. Get ready for the shock – s/he kisses goodbye to her/his husband! On TV!
Beware. This advert may signal the beginning of the apocalypse.
I’ve got no problem with this whatsoever, but it’s rather funny reading the comments of people who do… Or perhaps it’s a bit tragic? Or maybe people on the internet all have their react-o-meters instantly set to eleven. My favourite response? It’s tricky, I’m torn between two:
The first time I witness this advert I shall be complaining loudly to the appropriate authorities, and will certainly not be buying the product.
That wins points for deciding in advance of seeing the advert to ‘complain loudly’ afterwards. It’s good that they’re keeping an open mind until they’ve seen it.
Second up we have a wonderful bit of hyperbole:
This is what the word boycott was invented for!
Err… No, I don’t think getting in a flap about a mayonnaise advert was what the word was intended for. I also like another comment that describes the leader of the Christian Anglican Church, Rowan Williams as a “liberal druid”. Priceless.
For UK readers, you’ve probably already guessed that these delights come to us courtesy of the Daily Mail. (In fairness, there are a fair number of sensible people on there too, who can’t see what the fuss is about.)
What a fantastic set of creations he’s left us, and what an inspiration to future effects artists.
Here’s the tribute from Ain’t It Cool, and in case you need reminding of all the things he’s done, here’s his IMDB page. He made The Terminator, the Predator, and was instrumental in making H. R. Giger’s designs for the Alien come to life. He’s a great loss to special effects.
A friend has baked some rather funky Space Invader cookies. They were created by building up strips of cookie dough to make each pixel, ending up with a huge log of destructive alien menace (and there are photos to prove it). Hurrah!
Today Is The Day is a very odd story of a man made of sponge. I can’t really say what it’s about, but it’s quite enjoyable if you’ve got a minute and the desire to scroll.
It’s as simple as that: watch the video here.
The funniest thing for me is that people are taking photos, still images, of complete strangers who are standing still. Now that’s the digital present for you.
It’s the latest stunt by the superb performance/art group Improv Everywhere. Click here for more about them.
In Neuromancer, the main character Case has killed people in dirty meaningless fights, he’s a self-destructive drug addict, running himself into the ground, barely eating, and trying to convince the city streets to open up and swallow him in a dark alley one night. This character is a vortex of self-loathing, and I just don’t see many actors who would want to try and do that in a science-fiction film. I’ve spent fifteen years getting to know the character and seven years writing about it, so in this regard I feel that I know Case pretty well.
Does that character description fit with Hayden Christensen in your head? He’s most famous for playing Anakin Skywalker (who became Darth Vader) in the second and third of the Star Wars series. In fairness to Christensen, in the Star Wars films he (allegedly) went to Lucas and said ‘Are you sure you want Anakin to be this whiny?’ and Lucas said ‘No, make him more whiny!’. With direction like that the it’s hard to do much. While Christensen may yet display previously unseen depths of acting and character in his performance as Case, he’s not yet shown that he is capable of portraying the complexity of the part. I really hope he surprises us, and I’ll be the first to stand applauding if he does.
Christensen might be able to pull it off with good direction, but the director attached to the project, Joseph Kahn, doesn’t give me a lot of hope on that one. He’s best known for the very dumb action film Torque (scoring a rating of 3.4 out of 10, barely skimming out of the worst rated 100 films on IMDB) and the Britney Spears video for the song ‘Toxic’. The story of Neuromancer is fairly complex, with multiple antagonists with differing agendas, which is partly why this film hasn’t ever happened yet despite 20 years of people trying to make it. I’m very concerned that they are going to strip it back to a pile of meaningless action sequences.
If they made this film feel like a drunk hurriedly stumbling home through the bad area of town, people hurrying past and predatory eyes watching the progress from shadows, then it would feel right. It’s more likely to feel like a glossy jet-bike ride, and that’s going to be a huge betrayal of the book. Christensen’s casting feels like the jet-bike version of the story, and that’s why the people who want this film to be good are so worried about him.