January 7th, 2010
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) warren_ellis:
Home internet is down, possibly for some hours. Posting this via Blackberry. Talk amongst yourselves.
(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.)
January 6th, 2010
warren_ellis:
"Vessel," by the phenomenal Grouper, from a recent split EP (with Roy Montgomery). Grouper’s DRAGGING A DEAD DEER UP A HILL was one of my favourite records of 2008, and this EP has basically made my night.
(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.)
warren_ellis:
I discovered Scott Tuma’s work a few years ago, with a record called THE RIVER. He’s usually filed under "Americana," but I find this reductive.
This is a piece from a collaboration with Mike Weis called TARADIDDLE, just because it’s what I’ve got to hand right now, but I find it preserves what’s important about Scott Tuma. His work is powerfully strange and estranging: it smacks of mutated ground, poisoned water, rust and death. The first track off 2008’s NOT FOR NOBODY is actually kind of harrowing, in the way that recent Elegi and Svarte Greine records have been — the sound of someone in extremis in an unforgiving environment. But I seem to have misplaced that. And TARADIDDLE is a fine record. So, from it, I play you "On Cox."
(mp3 provided for review purposes only, dies in seven days, contact me at warrenellis [at] gmail.com if you need it removed)
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warren_ellis:
(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.)
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) stuart_immonen:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ImmonenIllustrationsInc/~3/a3HJXFuVROo/2661 http://www.immonen.ca/?p=2661 Updating the site progress:
+ implemented an events calendar, with appearance info, sale dates and anything else relevant
+ corrected the category link structure problem, which was sending people to non-existent pages
+ corrected the gallery and store feedback loops, which prevented people from seeing these pages
+ updated the inventory numbers– only 3 copies of LADIES AUXILIARY left.
+ EDIT: fixed RSS feed.
Still to do:
+ more in the gallery
+ decide if I like the whitespace leading the right sidebar
+ crossbrowser check
stuart_immonen:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ImmonenIllustrationsInc/~3/pZHXp2qBwgE/2636 http://www.immonen.ca/?p=2636 No, not that New Look.
In an effort to keep you on your toes, we’ve implemented some deperately-wanted changes around the site. If you’re reading this via RSS, perhaps visiting immonen.ca will be worth a few moments of your time. If you’re approved for comments (and K doesn’t delete them), you’re still good to go, and Gravatars are still enabled.
If you notice something amiss, don’t hesitate to let us know. In the meantime, I’ll be sifting through links, trying to ensure everything work the way it’s supposed to.
warren_ellis:
Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, which is where you can read a shitload of Marvel comics for between five and ten Yanqui dollars a month, is sorting their inventory by creator.
Which means there’s a Warren Ellis page on Marvel Digital.
A lot of it is, of course, appalling shit that I was hoping might disappear forever. But, on the other hand, you can spend ten bucks on joining for one month and read all of NEXTWAVE and all of my THUNDERBOLTS run (which was quite funny in places, and apparently my having the Green Goblin give monologues while naked was somewhat influential on the development of the Marvel universe or something)…
(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.)
warren_ellis:
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.)
warren_ellis:
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.)
officialgaiman:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/01/home-again-with-additional-dog-pictures.html posted by Neil
I'm home. This is the weather the dog likes: crisp, cold, weather that puts him in mind of wolfish ancestors hunting on the steppes. Me, I put on long underwear and dozens of layers over that, and top it off with the sheepskin Uigur hat I haggled for in Xinjiang, and trudge in the snow behind him. It's frozen on top, so you crunch and rock and hunt for ruts that already exist as you walk, or you teeter-totter across the surface, half-falling at every second step. While Cabal is happy in a world filled with sharp smells and frozen rivers, and he bounces over the ice and snow with joy.
*** Many years ago I discovered (via the currently hiatus-bound Fabulist) Jason Webley. I posted this a link to this song, Eleven Saints, a song Jason Webley wrote and performed with Jay Thompson... Jason was pleased, and wrote to me to say thanks, and then, a couple of years ago, introduced me in email to his friend Amanda Palmer, with whom he was working on a project, as they worked to bring the music of two conjoined twin sisters they had discovered on the internet to the world. There were two songs out on the internet by the mysterious pair for a long time, but a new song, " A Campaign of Shock and Awe", crept out today: you can hear it at http://www.myspace.com/evelynevelyn. Highly recommended, and not just because of the, y'know, family connections. ... Right. I do not want to be disturbed tonight. Maddy and I will be beginning our New Year's catch-up by watching the first part of Doctor Who 'The End of Time'.
January 5th, 2010
warren_ellis:
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.)
warren_ellis:
(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.)
warren_ellis:
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.)
warren_ellis:
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.)
warren_ellis:
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.)
stelpa:
I break my silence for the following announcement after headlines such as: "Iceland blocks deal to pay Britain and the Netherlands £3.6bn for losses caused by collapse of failed bank Icesave" (UK Daily Mail) and "Iceland's president blocks £2.3bn Icesave deal to compensate the UK" (UK Daily Telegraph) To all you reporters from the UK and Holland who can't see this anyway: Are you stupid?The Icelandic president did NOT decide we wouldn't pay, you morons. He decided to allow a public vote on whether we will pay with the existing law from August or with the new law that was passed last week. It's not a question of IF, but HOW, we pay. So fuck off with your total lack of basic investigative journalism you half-brained sensationalist retards. Don't know what I'm talking about? Banks were privatized. Greedy people had control of them. Icelandic law and administration didn't cover some of their entrepreneurial maneuverings such as the infamous Icesave - a bank that allowed UK and Netherland nationals to avoid paying taxes by using the banking equivalent of a duty free zone. The banks crashed as a result of the big crisis. Icelandic banks were hit hard. Icesave customers suddenly lost access their money, just like a lot of other people. But Icesave wasn't guaranteed by their respective countries for the same reason that they were able to get better interest on their savings - it's registered in Iceland. Icelandic law had no clear picture of this and they clearly didn't have a clue about what the Icelandic banks had been doing or what that entailed. They failed. Miserably. And since we are a responsible nation, and since ultimately our government operates by a democratic process, we are responsible for the actions of our government. We have since replaced the government, by the way, but in my personal opinion, a lot more needs to change. The people who had been running those banks stole SEVERAL TIMES THE AMOUNT OF THE TOTAL ICESAVE DEBT from the Icelandic people. They're still not in jail. In fact, many of them are currently suing the crashed banks they had been running for millions more in "lost severance" and other such crap. Some were blatantly stealing (one guy is suing his bank for more than the 120million of bank funds he stole, oh sorry, "stored" in his private account "to keep it safe"... wtf? seriously?) Anyway. If you want to read about the situation, don't read the bullshit the media is delivering, or do so with a very critical eye. As for Icesave - the new law stands until it is either passed or failed in a public vote. We're paying, and we're paying with gargantuan interest (normal payment of international debts are in the 0.5% interest to the highest of 3% interest rate. We're supposed to pay 5%). There's only 300.000 of us, and that number is declining as people flee the soaring inflation and tax rates. The old law had clauses the brits and netherlanders didn't like, such as if the debt we have to pay in a year is larger than x% of the global production, we could postpone payment so that we could, you know, continue to provide minimal health care, education and public safety. That, apparently, is too much to ask. Fuckers. So there's a new law without any such clauses, and it STANDS FOR THE TIME BEING YOU FUCKTARDS AND IF IT FAILS WE STILL PAY.
warren_ellis:
Concluding the first volume.
(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.)
warren_ellis:
Clayton "Siege" Cubitt’s notebook is probably a lot nicer to wake up to than mine, you know.
Good morning. This is warrenellisdotcom. I write things here.
(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.)
January 4th, 2010
warren_ellis:
Broadcast and network culture. (And Atemporality, which, like the term "post-industrial," you’re likely to hear a lot about this year.)
In my part of the world, in the 1960s, you’d come home from work — as my mother did, as Niki’s mother did — and the first thing you’d do is put the radio on. You’ve already selected the broadcast channel you want. You’ve found out the frequency from friends, from a magazine, or just twisted around the dial ’til you hunted it out and left it there. Radio Caroline, or Radio Essex, broadcasting off the Maunsell Sea Fort called Knock John. These are pirate radio stations, outside the control or mandate of the BBC. And you’ve left the dial locked to that frequency because it’s the only way you can hear the music you like. It’s music the BBC doesn’t play, and the BBC’s pretty much the only game in town, if your town is ashen, brick-faced Sixties Britain. Broadcast technology has gotten to the point where nutters like Paddy Roy Bates can lash together a kit on a concrete plug sticking out of the Thames Estuary and blanket the area in modern music. It’s on the verge of a consumer-society democratisation.
My RSS feed reader is tuned to several broadcasters. I’ve found out the web addresses from friends, from magazines, from twisting around a search engine until I found what I was looking for. These broadcasters send music directly to my main daily listening device, which is a X61 Thinkpad (as opposed to an ITT transistor radio). And, even though I live in 2010 Britain and have a few more options than three or four BBC stations, it’s still often the only way I can hear the music I like.
(My daughter comes home and puts on YouTube, clicking around playlists. YouTube is in fact the radio for her and her friends, right now to the shitty sound quality.)
We’re in the depths of the consumer-society democratisation of the relevant technologies. It is really not hard to be a broadcaster now.
There’s obviously going to be a rush of tablet technologies this year. These are largely going to be about the broadcast of magazines. This is going to be kind of a new thing: over-the-air simultaneous delivery of post-print journalistic/design digital objects to handheld devices. Without immediate democratisation. This is a thing that large publishing corporations would presumably be intent on controlling access to. This will, equally obviously, not happen.
This is something I’m going to be kicking around for a while.
(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.)
warren_ellis:
Recent work:
(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.)
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