The Friday Telescreen [11]
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next few hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next few hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next few hours, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 24 hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
November 20th, 2009 | brainjuice
Because it watches you while you look at it. For the next 20-odd hours or so, I present a selection of the readers of this website:
(Join in by sending a self-portrait to warrenellis@gmail.com.)
November 19th, 2009 | brainjuice
So every year I do a thing where all the readers of the site take a photo and send it in to me, and I run as many as I can. It started off as World Wide Wednesday, and last July I did a World Wide Week just because of the volume of shots I get. I just realised today that I haven’t done one of these stunts this year. And that I don’t have a clear week between now and New Year where I’m actually at the keyboard every day. So I’m going to bring back the iteration from 2008, I think. Tomorrow will be The Friday Telescreen 2009.
Take a picture of yourself, email it (not a link to it) to warrenellis@gmail.com and I’ll run as many of you as I can here during Friday.
Why do I do this every year? I dunno. Kind of a tradition now, since the days of the WEF and Die Puny Humans. I have this idea in my head that the internet, like Soylent Green, is made out of people, and it doesn’t hurt to see the people you’re with when you come here.
It begins.
November 17th, 2009 | brainjuice
November 15th, 2009 | brainjuice
November 15th, 2009 | brainjuice
November 12th, 2009 | brainjuice
November 11th, 2009 | Work, brainjuice, shivering sands
So, one week later. Copies of SHIVERING SANDS are now starting to arrive with people — I found this on Kat Foisy’s blog this morning:
(If you want to send me a photo of you posing with SHIVERING SANDS? Email it to my dump address at warrenellis [at] gmail dot com, along with your website address or twitter ID or whatever, and I’ll run it and your link here)
A week since launch of the book. We’ve sold, I believe, a little over four hundred copies. Given that the production of the book involved 1) me culling from seven years of jabbering and sticking it all into a couple of RTF files 2) Ariana flowing all that into a single file and spending a couple months’ worth of spare moments fiddling with it 3) Ariana uploading the thing, ordering a proof and spending an hour checking it over… we were well into any definition of profit by the end of day one.
It is, of course, the long game that pays off. It’s interesting to look at the first week, but it’s not defining.
A persistent criticism of my interest in POD has been that only writers at my level of cultural awareness can make any kind of success out of it. And some of them will now be saying, well, even Warren Ellis can only move 400 copies in the first week of a POD project. But, for one thing, it is about the long game. For everybody. The book doesn’t go away. And, for another, if I’m not aware enough of you to order that POD project — whose fault is that, really? Because, I’ve got to tell you, I wasn’t born with a book deal in one hand and an exclusive comics contract wrapped around my other flipper. Hell, when I was starting out, there wasn’t even an internet.
November 10th, 2009 | brainjuice
At my shithole today:
* The MATT FRACTION Interrogation 2009 - comics writer Matt Fraction kindly taking questions from the proletariat
* Warren’s Ancient Jukebox - fear
November 10th, 2009 | brainjuice, researchmaterial
(I’m in a foul mood today.)
All you people with your augmented reality unlocking the digital city outernet designing the sentient city rhetoric and toys? You know what you’re making?
Street Clippy.
Now fuck off and make something that’ll do useful work on a phone in a village, instead of something that’ll get you laid in fucking Hoxton. Make something that has meaning outside a major metropolis.
Oh jesus, I’m sorry, you were working on building the urban digital future playing Foursquare and I disturbed you.
(I’m off to kick the cats.)
(Yes, playing Devil’s Advocate a bit. But, see above about foul mood. An article I’m not linking to because they don’t deserve my ire just tipped me over the edge into shoutiness.)
November 6th, 2009 | brainjuice
November 5th, 2009 | brainjuice
November 5th, 2009 | brainjuice
Been in the work mines all week, and today isn’t looking any better. Catching up is becoming a full time job in itself.
So it’s been confirmed that the wonderful Helen Mirren — a good old Southend girl, don’t you know — has joined the cast of the film adaptation of me’n'Cully’s graphic novel RED. So the top of the cast is now Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren. Which is a little surreal. They’ve also set a release date, which I think is 2 November 2010. So we’re a year away from seeing it. Shooting starts in January, in Toronto and New Orleans, I believe.
And BLACK SUMMER is now in development, with Ryne Pearson writing the adaptation. He wrote the recent KNOWING, which I haven’t seen, but which I know made its money back. Pearson’s a novelist by trade, according to the internet. Also, according to the internet, a man of devout religious conviction. Just as well SUMMER doesn’t contain any of my usual atheist ravings. And no, I have no idea if the death of an American President will be retained in the script. It’s theirs to play with, no. I imagine I’ll be talking to them in the near future.
And next week I’m on the phone with Legendary to get GRAVEL moving.
PLANETARY Volume 4 now has a subtitle: SPACETIME ARCHAEOLOGY. I understand that ABSOLUTE PLANETARY Vol 2 is also being prepared right now.
(I should actually write a new work FAQ. There’s one on Whitechapel that hasn’t been updated in a month or so. So I’ll add here: FELL moves along slowly, DESOLATION JONES remains on hold for various reasons, NEWUNIVERSAL will get finished up next year once Steve and I are past ARMOR WARS, I have no idea what the state of the CASTLEVANIA animated property is, and, in general, assume that a prolific career of many projects contains several that have just run into trouble or stalled out because, guess what, shit happens. And no, I never got my dead computer back. That’s a tale in itself, which includes the guy who was trying to repair it dying on an operating table.)
November 5th, 2009 | brainjuice, people I know, photography
Wakey wakey.
Back to something like normal broadcasting today. But first, something to eat, and then to the pub.
(Image: Agent Redhead, photography by Beth Anderson)
November 4th, 2009 | brainjuice, music
Too much to do, so I’m bailing out of warrenellis.com for the night. Tomorrow, we go live with SHIVERING SANDS.
I am being played off tonight by NEU! and the phenomenal "Fur Immer." Been dragging out, dusting off and re-playing all my Krautrock since watching a pretty good documentary on those days by the BBC. I shouldn’t call it Krautrock, mind you, they didn’t like that term…
G’night.
November 3rd, 2009 | brainjuice
November 3rd, 2009 | brainjuice, comics talk
At my internet hovel today:
* The Starry Wisdom Of Warren 3nov09 - my daily notes on what I’m up to, and what (or if) I’m thinking about.
* REMAKE/REMODEL: Kardak The Mystic - this week’s challenge for artists, all are welcome to play
* The Self-Portrait Imagethread (Nov 2009)
* Netlabels - a rolling list of the ones we like. If you’re running a netlabel, feel free to stop in.
* Comics Shipping This Week (Nov 4) - the list
* NaNoWriMo 2009 - a support thread for the people participating this year.
November 3rd, 2009 | brainjuice
Yesterday got pretty much swallowed up. Today, I huddle here under the plastic roof in the pub smoking compound, as the weather shifts from torrential rain to sunlight and back again every five minutes. The workload’s pretty hairy today, but let’s see if we can’t do some embloggening in between the usual shouting and crying. Probably mostly linkblogging, as I fight to get my RSS reader under 1000 articles… but, as usual, probably also mostly about my friends and fellow-travellers. Jamais Cascio has a Cheeseburger Carbon Footprint t-shirt and tote that I should show you later. Matt Jones had dinner with Brian Eno last night and put all kinds of arcane knowledge into his notebook, some jabbering about a “minimal book” that I have to decode at some point… COILHOUSE turned 2 and I was too busy to notice, Cherie Priest’s BONESHAKER was made a book of the year by Publishers Weekly… and, in general, I’m not doing a good job of keeping up.
And SHIVERING SANDS goes live tomorrow.
(Also, I want to post more music, which will probably make most of you go “oh god no.”)
More in a bit. My fingers are freezing up out here.
November 2nd, 2009 | brainjuice
October 30th, 2009 | brainjuice