Mperia Sampler 2: zipfile of mp3s, as free as air.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, one of the most influential British artists of the 20th Century, has died aged 81…

(This seems to have happened yesterday. Fucking hell.)

According to the BBC, Sir John Mills has died aged 93.

I saw him in a restaurant a couple of years ago. He smiled and nodded to everyone as he moved through the place (very slowly) — because people didn’t turn and stare at John Mills, they turned and smiled — his hair a long white mane, and sat down with Liza Minelli and David Gest, who proceeded to chainsmoke all over the guy for the next hour.

The person I was with is quite well known in British TV. And he did a complete fanboy. Because, you know, that was John Mills.

And John Mills was brilliant.

– W

My copy of OK FRED #5, a bilingual magazine out of Tokyo, arrived just before I headed into darkest eastern England, and I took it with me. Sitting in an Elizabethan drawing room in a remote vineyard reading a NihonAnglo magazine from about five minutes in the future: very nice.

You can get it sent to you straight from Japan for USD $12, and you can buy with PayPal. It’s a beautifully-designed thing, and the English sections are excellent. You would like it. You should buy one.

Go here for details.

Key 23:

Googlemancy is a term which is catching on in occult circles as quickly as its secular counterpart ‘googling’ is in the mainstream. Search engines offer us the ability to train our magickal consciousness using (Austin Osman) Spare’s framework. Though googlemancy is primarily seen as a divinatory process, it also has applications in enchantment and illumination…

I have been listening to this all day. Percussive tribal ambient. Good thinking music, for certain projects.

American reader Eric Palicki sent me a zipfile of scans he made, and the note: “I found this in a stack of my dad’s old books. The copyright date is 1942.”

This is just fascinatingly vile. Thanks, Eric.

Stephen Fry described his character in the film version of the Alan Moore/David Lloyd graphic novel V FOR VENDETTA:

I’m playing the character of Gordon Deitrich, who’s a chat show host who questions the authority of the people who run Britain in this post-viral fascist state, as it were…

For anyone who is wondering what this means: Fred Abberline was not a psychic junkie in FROM HELL, and Dorian Grey was not an indestructible gunman in THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN.

I fully expect the film version of WATCHMEN to be a fucking musical.

GreenZap is being set up as, by the looks of things, an easier alternative to PayPal. It goes live in the summer, but if you sign up through the linky bit in this post, it seems they’ll drop $25 into your account when they launch (Josie says PayPal did something similar when they launched).

– W

Suspended animation has been deliberately induced in a species of mouse which does not naturally hibernate. It is the first time such a feat has been achieved, say the procedure’s pioneers.

If a similar response could be triggered in humans, there would be major healthcare benefits and the futuristic idea of putting astronauts into suspended animation on long-haul space flights could move a step closer to reality.

The mice were induced to fall into their deep sleep after being exposed to hydrogen sulphide – the gas which gives rotten eggs and stink bombs their characteristic foul odour. The animals later revived in ordinary air.

Mark Roth, head of the team which pioneered the procedure at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, US, explains that hydrogen sulphide all but shuts down the body’s usual demand for the oxygen it needs to keep cells ticking over. Usually, cells denied oxygen – after a heart attack or stroke, for example – die quickly. But hydrogen sulphide instead sends cells into a state of dormancy…

Katie West:

Details here.

Am still away — please, no email til Thurs night — but am using brief connectivity for public service announcement — one of my favourite bands is playing Brooklyn:

Go see they. The Nervous Cabaret are really fucking good also.

As you were.

– W