Tag Archives: weblink

A Fine Sceptic

“I mean, if you want to believe in psychics, fine. You’re a dangerous idiot and I wouldn’t trust you to operate a spoon without putting an eye out … but fine.” – Charlie Brooker, from the article “When it comes to psychics, my stance is hardcore: they must die alone in windowless cells“.

And I strongly urge you to click through and read the piece on Creationism at the bottom of the article. It’s not going to tell you anything you don’t know, but it’s bloody funny. Say what you like, the man has a gift for the bile-filled phrase…

Do me a favour: Fight Crime!

The They Fight Crime! synopsis generator has a new home.

The reason I mention this is that it had fallen off the internet for a while (I’m currently wrangling to get my black-ink.org domain back up and running). In fact, it’s been gone for over six months. And in the interim, a load of people who have basically done nothing other than rip off the original and remove the credit, have started to clog up the google listings for “they fight crime”. And I object to other people thinking it’s OK to steal Andrew’s and my work (mostly Andrew’s), remove the authorial credit, and (in some cases) make money off it via ads, when the original was free.

So, if anyone fancies posting the link up in forums, blogs, LJs, myspace, with the usual “Here’s a funny link” nonsense, and perhaps a few choice generated phrases, that’d be ace. If you felt like explaining the reason I’d like the link to do the rounds again, including words like “The original they fight crime generator is back”, or similar, and generally encouraging people to send it about so that we get back to our fair place, that’d be great, too.

Thanks, folks.

A few from the archives:

I don’t expect anyone else will give much of a shit, but I’m delighted about this.

About what?

Well, a few years back, a database that held the only copies of a few things I’d written crashed and died, and I had no backup. I had assumed they were lost. But the wayback machine came up in conversation this afternoon, and on a whim, I plugged an old url into it.

Result.

I’ve managed to scrape 8 bits of my lost writing out of it – some of it stuff I wrote almost ten years ago, most of it stuff I still like. I’ve slapped it up in no particular order on http://www.dead-air.org just while I work out what, if anything to do with it. (Both the writing and the domain.)

Slightly depressing thing though: I’m sure I wrote better a few years ago that I do now. Or at least, about more interesting things. I know I’ve burbled in the past about the deformative effect of livejournal on the things I write, though – I’m much more willing to talk about absurdities when I don’t know the people that are watching by name. I think I may try dusting Dead Air off properly, and giving myself a blog site back, rather than being part of this terrible “community” nonsense. At worst, it’ll just confirm the diagnosis, and I’ll come sauntering back.

The Heart Of The World

Jhayne Holmes (porphyre) is one of the more interesting strangers on my friends list, and she would like your help.

She’s found an old theatre for sale in Vancouver, a place where acts like Neil Young and Sonic Youth once played. She wants to re-open it as an artistic space – a place for theatre, and cinema and music, a place for art of any kind. As she says:

Imagine buying a space and starting your own theatre, or your own art gallery, or your own movie theatre, or your own music hall. Imagine being able to host performances of all sorts- giving your creative friends space to perform or exhibit their work. I’ve got friends who are dancers and painters and lighting designers and actors and directors and writers and photographers and cinematographers… it would be amazing to give them a space to create what they dream of, to be seen, heard, and appreciated.

You can find out more here: http://porphyre.livejournal.com/535610.html

She has three weeks to raise a million dollars. Please, if you can: help. Donate a token amount, if that’s all you can think of to do (like I have). If you’re able to help in some other way, do that. She’s trying to create the kind of space that’s hard to come by, the sort of place that there should be more of. It’s the sort of place I’d love to run myself in London. Please: send the link around. Talk about this attempt. Tell people about it, and tell them to help, too.

(Donate a token amount anyway – you’d do it for charity, and this is Art, and deserves your support every bit as much, and that’s a hell of a target she’s aiming for.)

Today’s links:

1) Bush Moves Toward Martial Law. The US has previously had admirably strict laws regarding the use of the military on it’s own soil. Is this a move toward a dictatorship? I’d be astonished if it were (although the fact that the question is one that even occurs is a little disturbing). Is it alarming anyway? Yes. You all know the quote I’m thinking of about liberty and safety…

2) Via sigma7, strong rumours that Studio 60 is to be cancelled. Not a shock, given that it’s a ratings disaster, but the rumours that it’s to be replaced by reality TV or a game show have a particularly (sickeningly) inevitable ring.