Still fucked up here. Have enough strength to post flyer for photography show Laurenn’s curating. Then I die.

Oh, and there’s Laurenn again, bottom middle:

Sick as a dog, no bloggery today. Move along.

Racy, adult-oriented Spanish-language novellas stripped from shelves of Denver’s public libraries are hardly the only picture books with strong sexual content available to children in the city’s 22 branches.

A Denver Post review of English-language illustrated novels and comics taken from a handful of libraries citywide shows books containing nudity, sexual acts and violence against women.

So DPL officials worry that a new inquiry into 6,000 fotonovelas this month could lead to a full review of the system’s 2.5 million books, compact discs and videotapes, depending on the criteria developed to weed out the undesirable novellas – some of which depict sexual acts, nudity and violence.

English-language books still on shelves include the comic “Transmetropolitan, Gouge Away,” which depicts a character engaged in a sex act with a woman with plastic breasts and the words “100 percent Plastic” emblazoned across her chest…

“We are not circulating them as children’s material; we’re circulating them as adult materials,” said Beckie Brazell, head librarian at the Ford Warren branch in the Whittier neighborhood. “It’s the place of the parent to decide what their children read and check out.”

(Found by Tom Reynolds, thanks.)

I upgraded from WordPress 1.2.1. to the current 1.5.* build of WordPress last night. It seems to have done something odd to some of the categories. So if you’re looking for something by category or via the search box and it’s not turning up, try searching via Google until I work out what weirded out and how to fix it…

– W

I need to be recommended good vlogs. The only one I’ve found that I like is Rocketboom, which I’ve been watching almost since its inception. Warrene @ aol.com if you’ve got anything.

– W

Troubled actor Tom Sizemore is battling a rare medical condition that leaves him sexually insatiable. The Saving Private Ryan star was recently diagnosed with priapism, which doctors believe could have been caused by years of alcohol and drug abuse. Sizemore’s manager says, “He can have sex nine times without stopping. His condition explains his sexual addiction. He’s in the midst of a massive depression, but he’s making tremendous progress.” A Los Angeles based urologist confirms, “Priapism is an abnormal, persistent, and painful erection that won’t go down in spite of orgasm, and can be caused by alcohol or drug abuse.” Tucker claims Sizemore’s addiction prompted the actor to rig video cameras up around his house, which for the past three years have documented his activities with a string of women he has lured back to his California pad. Three such tapes have been allegedly stolen and are expected to be released on the internet.

(Found by Adi, and I don’t want to know how)

Well, I checked the stats on the system provided by the host I use for the Superburst Mixtape, Libsyn, last night, and it seems like they’ve gotten the stats system working again. The bad news is that Libsyn’s outages, so many people moving to iTunes for their podcast-catching (where people are still telling me they’re having trouble finding the thing) and, presumably, people losing interest have taken their toll.

Regular visitors will have seen the Player in the right-hand menu come and go at random over the last fewweeks. Libsyn provide a great service at a reasonable price, but if it doesn’t work reliably, and if I can’t give bands stats that show the word’s being spread, what’s the point?

Hell, they’ve been promising me they’ll take commenting off the download page for the best part of three months…

So Superburst Mixtape 25 will be the last one. I’ll give people a week to grab any they don’t have from http://warrenellis.libsyn.com, and then I’ll terminate the PayPal subscription, and the page will go away soon after. I’ve got other uses for the money.

Like giving Laurenn some cash to design me a t-shirt.

– W

Found here:

A Hong Kong official said one of the territory’s tiny islands could make a killing with a novel theme park based on its unsavoury reputation as a suicide spot, a media report said on Tuesday.

The morbid suggestion to create a ghost-town attraction where guests were dared to spend the night in “haunted flats” came at a meeting of local leaders on little Cheung Chau island.

Councillor Lam Kit-sing said the island should capitalise on the grisly reputation of one of its holiday homes, where 20 people have taken their lives in the past eight years. Another five people attempted suicide there. Lam believes the macabre park could be an added attraction for the millions of people expected in the city when Hong Kong Disneyland opens in September.

“A dirty spot yesterday will be an attraction tomorrow,” he was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post. “This is innovative and has a selling point…”

Photos here:

A photo of two peculiar dragon-shaped objects taken from a plane flying over Tibet’s Himalayas piqued many users’ interest when displayed on a Chinese website. The photographer is an amateur.

On June 22, 2004, the photographer went to Tibet’s Amdo region to attend the Qinghai-to-Xizang Railroad laying ceremony, and then took a plane from Lhasa to fly back inland. When flying over the Himalaya’s, he accidentally caught these two “dragons” in a picture that he took. He called these two objects “the Tibet dragons.”

Looking at the photo, these two objects appear to have the characteristics of crawling creatures: The bodies seem to be covered by scales, the backs have spine-like protuberances, and also they have gradually thinning rear ends. Although the photo caught only a portion of the entire scene, it was sufficient create the appearance of two gigantic dragons flying in the clouds…

In the previous dynasties in China, there had been many documents recording eyewitness accounts of magical dragons. The most amazing events are the various “falling dragons,” dragons that suddenly fell to the ground under peculiar circumstances, and were witnessed by many. A relatively recent tale occurred in the puppet Manchuria regime in August, 1944. A black dragon fell to the ground at the Chen Family’s Weizi Village, about 9.4 miles northwest of Zhaoyuan County, on the south shore of the Mudan River (the old name of a section of Songhua River) in Heilongjiang province. The black dragon was on the verge of death. The eyewitness said that this creature had a horn on its head, scales covering its body, and had a strong fishy smell that attracted numerous flies…

Gary Spirito, host of the Shopping Mania Auction Show, thought it was a prank. When a man came in and demanded Spirito’s car keys, Spirito informed his audience that this was no joke.

“There’s a guy robbing us, somebody call the police, he came in with a gun. Somebody call police, there’s a guy in here trying to rob us,” Spirito said.

That’s when Spirito addressed the alleged robber directly.

“Then I looked up at him and said, ‘We’re doing a live show here and there’s probably hundreds of people out there right now calling the police to come down on this building, just so you know,’” he said…

(Video at the link.)

New Dutch commercial television channel Talpa is planning to broadcast a show called “I want your child and nothing else” featuring a single woman who gets to choose a sperm donor to father her child, Dutch media has reported.

The program is initially a one-off that will be aired on August 23 with viewers allowed to vote on whether it should stay on the air…

The idea for the “Spermshow”, as Dutch media are calling it, was already launched once in 2001 but caused a storm of protest in the Netherlands even leading to questions in Parliament…

Scientists have found large quantities of a cocaine by-product in a river in northern Italy – suggesting consumption is much higher than previously thought.

The River Po was found to be carrying the equivalent of nearly 4kg (8.8lb) of cocaine daily. The Po Valley is home to about five million people. The study estimated daily consumption to be about 27 doses (100mg or 0.004oz each) per 1,000 young adults…

Pig brain cells could be implanted into human brains by the start of next year if trials of a pioneering treatment for Huntington’s disease are approved in the US.

Similar tests on primates have proved “astonishingly successful” in treating the degenerative brain disease, according to researchers who carried out the work at Living Cell Technologies (LCT) in Auckland, New Zealand.

The injection of live animal cells into human brains is likely to raise ethical concerns and fears of pig viruses being transmitted to humans. But researchers say the benefits of a cure outweigh such concerns. “Yes, we have created a chimera, but one that is tolerated and beneficial,” says Bob Elliott, LCT’s medical director…

The world’s largest frozen peat bog is melting, which could speed the rate of global warming, New Scientist reports.

The huge expanse of western Siberia is thawing for the first time since its formation, 11,000 years ago. The area, which is the size of France and Germany combined, could release billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

This could potentially act as a tipping point, causing global warming to snowball, scientists fear…

An interview with Katiejane Garside and Dan Schaffer about their imminent original graphic novella INDIGO VERTIGO. Includes preview material. Go now.

(And pray that I haven’t just fucked The Pulse’s server.)

Many disturbing stills from the film ONNA HARAKIRI: SANGE.

From a review by Chris Mayo found here:

Seppuku was a code followed by samurai warriors to avoid the shame of falling into enemy hands. The Daimyo (or feudal lords) could also order samurai to commit seppuku. Dishonorable samurai were sometimes allowed to choose seppuku rather than face a disgraceful death by a normal manner of execution. The purpose of the act of seppuku was designed to protect and restore the honor of the samurai warrior.

Seppuku lives on today throughout Japanese cinema, from sick fetish films to Yakuza crime. While the films predominantly do not showcase the ritual suicide of samurai, as it stands, Seppuku is shown as more of a fetishism within modern Japanese culture. A prime example of this can be found in Fuji Kikaku’s presentation of Ah-01: Onna Harakiri: Sange, produced by Right Brain.

Rb-01: Onna Harakiri: Sange begins with a woman sitting in a dark corner, lighted by nothing other than a small lamp. She stares at a soldier’s uniform in mourning. We fade to white. Thus begins our journey into the cinematic form of ritual suicide.

Crawling at a snails pace, the film continues with the woman sitting on a white sheet, now appearing in a pinkish colored outfit. In front of her sits a knife in its sheath. After caressing if for some time she finally begins to remove it from its case. Taunting the viewer, she decides to place the knife back in its sheath, leaving you wondering when she will even follow through with the inevitable deed…

A deviantART user’s diary: the details and continuing story of deviantART co-founder Scott Jarkman being bounced out of the company by dA business manager Angelo Sotira, a dozen administrators resigning in the wake of it, and hundreds of members of the community attempting to hold Sotira accountable for it.