The beautiful and disturbing t-shirts of disturbing and beautiful webcomicsman* Ryan North:

katiewestdotca: using LiveJournal as an announcement system for the release of her new prints. RSS is http://katiewestdotca.livejournal.com/data/rss.

There are now 24 pages of the projected 80pp graphic-novel-for-the-web BUSTED WONDER for you to marvel at. By Kieron (PHONOGRAM) Gillen and the supernaturally gifted artist and designer Charity Larrison.

Another profoundly important t-shirt from TopatoCo.

Excuse the shrunken-to-fit version of the new DIESEL SWEETIES shirt by R Stevens. Full-size version and all details at this linky bit here. Go and buy this highly-scientific t-shirt now.

Photo by Jean Snow, who says:

I had a blast the other day playing with this remote-controlled robot at the KDDI Designing Studio in Harajuku. The robot is controlled through an AU mobile phone with special software, and you either make it do pre-programmed moves, or just move around with the directional pad. Seeing it get up is simply amazing.

In an experiment to see exactly what this does to site traffic flow, I present adult film performer Rita Faltoyano, with make-up by my acquaintance, painter/photographer/model Zoetica Ebb. Check out the larger size at the link to get a better look at those evil chrome shoes.

Seriously, the hit rate should go nuts today. I will make the most of it when I return from the pub.

• Sex theme park to open in London
  £7m sex theme park, which has no rides, is to open in London’s West End later this year
  (tags: sex)
• The Mathematical Structure of Terrorism
  As our catalogue of natural phenomena has grown more complete, more and more scientists have begun to look for interesting patterns in human society
  (tags: war)
• New Orleans faces 3in10 chance of hurricane winds
  Louisiana Gulf Coast faces the highest probability of any area in the country of getting struck by hurricane-force winds during the 2006 hurricane season
  (tags: gmf viridian)
• another sky press
  “Welcome to Another Sky Press. We want people to read our books, even if they read them for free (though we’d love it if you bought a copy!). If you dig us, please spread the word” – (CLICK:”Intelligent fiction for the mentally unhinged”)
  (tags: books pod web)

Soundbombs are New-Media-Accessories. Each one a lowtech object for interactive transmission. An integrated soundmodul makes it possible to record any given sound and then activate it through a motiondetector. As a Non-Visual Graffiti, with its origin in streetart, Soundbombs give the possibility to tag a place in an acoustic form…

Also, http://flickr.com/photos/nearnearfuture/tags/soundbomb/

(Via Sveinung, thanks)

When operatives of the Priory of Semen discover that Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa using his own sperm, a group of young hotties get embroiled in the mystery that finds them seeking the master’s bodily fluids at all costs. Such is the yarn woven in Hustler Video’s The Da Vinci Load…

I haven’t run a shot of geek renaissance woman Josie Nutter in ages, so here she is as a young, surrealist Liz Taylor. Details in the link:

NIKE +

Sensors in the Nike+ shoes talk to a receiver plugged into your iPod. You go out jogging or running with your iPod, earbuds in. Your Nike+ shoes talk to your iPod, and your iPod talks to you — a speech program gives you your performance stats in real time.

Wrong.

• Andean pyramid is giant farming clock
  “This alignment meant that at dawn at every winter solstice 4,200 years ago, key stars would appear in line with the temple and alert priests that river flooding was due and it was time to start planting crops. It was laid out as a wake-up call to the c
  (tags: history)
• Slovak doctor says solar flares could raise strokes | Reuters.com
  fluctuations in the earth’s magnetic field caused by the ejections may disturb the electro-chemical reactions that make human bodies work
  (tags: medical)

Buy a print:

One of a series of photos taken in toilets, apparently:

@Newsarama:

Video games are some of the strongest memories I have from my youth, which is sad and pathetic but not limited to me, I think. When you spend hundreds of hours playing these things, they inevitably become part of the fabric of your life, and Scott Pilgrim reflects that. Rock music and video games were a huge part of my youth, and now I can spit them back out in the form of comics/manga, so we get all three.

A nice introductory profile of Sasha Shulgin:

The jolly, white-haired and bearded chemist, who resembles a rather malnourished Santa Claus after several nights on the tiles, claims he has always been motivated by a higher purpose than just getting high.

“My art is being able to make new compounds that can be used as tools in new ways,” he says picking at a piece of quiche on the long wooden dining table in his photograph-cluttered dining room. “I’m exploring these areas to develop tools for study of the mind. The purpose has always been that, in time – probably not in my lifetime – people would have access to these materials and actually go into the mental process to try to work out the mechanism of the human mind. Not the brain, but the mind.”

Shulgin’s own mind is still working well. His body may be failing him – “I’m virtually blind in my left eye and my teeth are falling apart” – but his brain is fully functioning and, throughout our interview, he only occasionally fails to recall places rather than people or the complex names of chemicals…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon is writing a new six-issue Buffy mini-series for Dark Horse Comics. The first volume is due out in October. A Dark Horse spokesperson has confirmed to ICv2 that the new series chronicles events that happened to Buffy and her friends after the conclusion of their televised adventures and will function as a “Season 8″ to the highly popular cult hit TV series that ran for seven seasons…

Gillen/McKelvie.

Also:

… returned from my local printer yesterday with a couple of surprisingly-heavy boxes full of postcards advertising Phonogram, each one sporting the B-side strip. Now we want to get them into the hands of people.

This is where you come in.

While we’re planning to get the postcards to local comic shops directly, for our initial sending out we’d like to stay true to our punky fanzine roots and get other humans involved.

Basically, do you have a local comic shop you enter regularly? Would you be willing to take a small pile of these lovely /objects d’art/ in and ask the proprietor to have on the counter? Do you wish to join arms in a grand fraternity of Phonogam and chant to our dark and nameless Gods?

If the answers to all of the above are yes, drop me a line at Kieron dot Gillen at Gmail dot com and I’ll get the little parcel in the post to you.

• Irresponsible Pictures: My new manga technique is unstoppable
  the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reviews a “Manga Clip Art” software package
  (tags: comics)
• Lux and Alby Sign On and Save the Universe
  Martin Millar & Simon Fraser: first two issues of the out-of-print series spun out of Millar’s excellent 80s sleaze-comedy novels
  (tags: comic)
• No Hurry in Africa: New Diet to Sweep Nation
  “Tippa, darling, how do you stay so thin?” “Why, Marie, I drink milk, eat beef, and I like to jump. I also spear lions.”
  (tags: people)
• Lagomorphography – SUPERMOUSE
  In which my friend Melinda is outsmarted by a mouse. That Melinda is blonde should not be held against her.
  (tags: people)

Donna Kostika at Alfie’s Moblog:

It begins again.

There appear to be at least two bands called “Spider Jerusalem”.

This year’s Atlantic hurricane season will be “above normal”, according to the US climate agency.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts there will be 13-16 named storms, four of which will be “major storms”… reaching category three or above.

“Although we do not anticipate reaching or exceeding last year’s extraordinary tally of storms, these forecast numbers exceed the seasonal forecast average…”