Undulating Ungulate

It has been really interesting to see the facial expressions and colours people turn when I say I am going to go live at the beach and have *no internet*.

Anyway. Here are some random things I encountered on the internet in the last months that didn’t quite get passed on.

This is possibly the greatest political speech ever. Makes some interesting points about the plight of the minority in a democracy, while being impressively mad.

Via Hamo, and just to mess with nonwrestler‘s head, mind altering parasites. Just creepy and wrong. Thanks, nature.

William Burroughs article on Led Zepellin, and sort of interview with Jimmy Page, from 1975.

Performance artist Marina Abramovic is more interesting than most people.

Breakdown of the 17 million US graduates in menial jobs.

And just cos why not: Aliens have deactivated British and US nuclear missiles, say US military pilots.

Aaaaand, that’s all for a while, folks.

Filed by billy at 1:26 pm under culture,meta,politics,the world
8 Comments

Sometimes lately I have been feeling like the practitioner of a dying art. (Of course, on a long enough scale, I surely am.) What with all the talk of publishing collapsing, attention spans fraying while the total amount of material vying for attention curves ever up, and the general dominance of other entertainment mediums – games and films – among the young (whose attention spans are apparently ever decreasing) it is all a bit depressing for the unknown authors out there.

The other day though, something occurred to me. People always say the book was better.

They don’t say, the film was an excellent rendition of the same story in another medium.

They say “the book was better”.

The experience of reading a book, as an immersive delivery medium, is actually awesome, and in some important sense, better, than other mediums.

The book is better.

Books can survive as they offer a tangibly awesome experience.

Filed by billy at 2:05 am under culture,reading,the moose
4 Comments

This weekend I am moving to the beach for 6 weeks or so. The bach has no internet. Thus there will probably be no blogging, or keeping track of the online world.

I will probably check email once a week or so. Anything important get me via cell. I may pop back to town if anything particularly amazing is happening.

Peace.

(may squeeze out a couple of lingering posts before I go, may not.)

Filed by billy at 3:02 pm under meta,the moose
2 Comments

Today’s WTF, via Charlie Stross:

A Lord in the English house of lords stood up in parliament two days ago and admitted money laundering for the IRA (sort of as an aside) – the main thing he was talking about was his contacts with an unnamed “foundation” which is seemingly offering the UK however many billion pounds it needs to sort its economy, ostensibly interest free, no strings attached. (Though one wonders what the content of the conversation with the foundations chairman – that is the sole condition – would be.)

The process as described is quite surreal and cloak and dagger.

Here is the Hansard record for Nov 1.

Stross has excerpted the relevant section here.

*shrug*

Interesting, anyway.

(The Lord in question is David Noel James, Baron James of Blackheath, CBE (born December 7, 1937); “a British businessman and corporate trouble shooter and Conservative life peer”.)

Filed by billy at 4:04 pm under politics
1 Comment

For Halloween, I went to McDonalds and ate a burger.

Also watched a very entertaining Hammer horror film, The Devil Rides Out.

Filed by billy at 12:12 am under culture,meta
3 Comments