“SVL (Russian abbreviation of ?high-speed laboratory car?) was developed in Kalininsky carriage-building factory in the far 1970. Based on the train model ER22 (the picture below) it was able to move by means of two engines from the passenger jet Yak-40, installed at the front…”

For the dog lovers in the audience, via EnglishRussia:

Oh my fucking god. The picture linked at the clickthrough is probably comedy for women.

Details at ModBlog:

Via Irene: this is just too surreal to be true. Except it’s the New York Times reporting on it:

The John Galt Corporation of the Bronx, hired last year for the dangerous and complex job of demolishing the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, where two firefighters died last Saturday, has apparently never done any work like it. Indeed, Galt does not seem to have done much of anything since it was incorporated in 1983.

Public and private records give no indication of how many employees it has, what its volume of business is or who its clients are. There are almost no accounts of any projects it has undertaken on any scale, apart from 130 Liberty Street. Court records are largely silent. Some leading construction executives in the city say they have never even heard of it…

(John Galt, by the way, is a central character, an engineer, in Ayn Rand?s novel ?Atlas Shrugged.? The book begins with this line: ?Who is John Galt??)

(Alpha and Omega)

bad signal
ME

For those who were interested in
this -- and for those laughing at
me, you bastards -- I sorted out
the kit I'm carrying in Teh Bag. 

The bag itself is a weathered-looking,
leathery satchel thing -- not enough
pockets, not really big enough, but
it'll do for now.  It contains:

*  Sony Cybershot P200, 7.2
megapixels.

*  A ruled Moleskine and a blank
Moleskine -- one for notes, one
for sketches.

*  A black Pentel gelpen, a cheap
propelling pencil.

*  1GB Sandisk Sansa mp3 player
with noise-cancelling earbuds.

*  Treo 600.

*  Treo foldaway keyboard (no
longer made!).

*  Baggallini travel pouch zipped
into the back for holding bank books
etc.

*  Docupen R800 handheld mobile
scanner.

*  Nokia N73 phone.

*  Nokia bluetooth foldaway
keyboard for the N73.  Which is
amazingly useful, as the phone has
excellent email and websurfing
provision.

*  Dynamo windup micro-torch.
Which has its uses, believe me, as
we tend to take weekend breaks in
the country, often miles from any
streetlight.

*  Gelert 8x21 monocular.  Also
for country travel.

*  Victorinox Swiss Champ knife and
survival kit.  Not my favourite
Swiss knife, but since I can't find my
Huntsman, this'll do double-duty
in the garden.  The survival kit
holster it sits in has useful pockets
-- I can get rid of the signal mirror
and other Ray Mears-style stuff
and repack it with plasters and meds.
Also comes with a handy sharpening
stick.

*  Currently MIA -- a wind-up phone
charger I got for Xmas.

Obviously, I can't leave the country
with any of this shit.  But in daily
life I always found myself wanting
one of these items and not having
them on me.  I mean, clearly there's
something wrong with my life that
I'd find myself deep in East Sussex
woodland, miles from civilisation,
and wanting a monocular (or a
signal mirror, come to think of it).
But one day I may need to whittle
myself a coracle out of a tree
stump and then fashion a sail out
of ferns, bark and forty feet of
nylon cord.  In the dark.  While on
the web.

Shut up.

-- W

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• Ming Doyle
  (tags: art)

Because everyone loves Bookslut, right?

But the most subversive thing about Vein is that it’s also a sweet little love story, boy meets girl. It’s just that the boy is in search of a book bound with alien skin, and the girl likes to get saline injected into her labia to simulate the sensation of having testicles. Crooked Little Vein is a tale of the fringes, the strange things people do to themselves and others. But there’s something refreshing about it, something raw and real behind all the oddity. Perhaps it’s as simple as this: Ellis’s characters are honest — unflinchingly honest — about what they think, what they feel, what gets them going and what turns them off.

From the August 20 issue:

Crooked Little Vein
By Warren Ellis, William Morrow; $21.95

If you?re looking for an antidote to the stifling formulae of genre fiction, this could be your book. But be warned: The first sentence has a rat pissing in our protagonist?s coffee cup, and that?s about the most normal thing that happens. It?s a detective story, and the plot is loony, involving the retrieval of a secret Constitution that U.S. presidents are supposed to pass on to each other. Ellis, a highly regarded graphic novelist, continually drives the reader to the edge of exasperation with his fetid imagination, and then, just as one?s thoughts turn to hurling the compact volume across the room, delivers a winning bit of totally bent humor.

Updated website:

“I nearly asked the kid behind the register to list ‘fuck you’ as the name on my hazelnut latte.”

Print of cover illustration for “My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up”, written by Stephen Elliott. Print sales point here.

(Flickr page)

Warren Ellis: I glow in the dark. BECAUSE I CHOOSE TO.

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

Well, yeah, I think it's definitely
autumn now, as I'm now back in
the long leather jacket.  High
winds, driving rain, and persistent
cold.  I think we'll be picking the last
of the cucumbers tonight, and
giving up on the tomatoes -- not
enough sunlight for them to ripen.
Gales took down the mini-greenhouse
last night -- luckily it's all soft 
plastic and wire shelving, and was
empty but for some curly-leaved
parsley that would probably 
survive a nuclear exchange.  Will
pull the last of the lettuce when I
get home, too.

My spare-time (ha!) job for this
week is considering a new book for
Marvel.  I don't really have the heart
to pursue the book Mike Wieringo
and I were going to do with a 
different artist, so I need to
generate something else to fill the
schedule.  This means reading
through a frightening amount of
research material, looking for a
Marvel property that sparks
something.  In practise, this actually
means editor Nick Lowe and I
terrifying each other with old
Marvel stuff.  Illuminator, the
Christian superhero!  Torgo, the
alien fighting robot!  Nick's fixated
on Dum Dum Dugan, nonogenarian
bowler-hatted deputy director of
SHIELD and WWII Howling Commando,
but he's not going to beat me down
on that one, the bastard.

So, yeah, this afternoon I'm half-
blind from spending last night reading
the Wikipedia page listing every
single comics title Marvel ever
published.  I know what I'm looking
for -- something that can carry an
approach to the page that I'm
calling, in the privacy of my own
head, NewPulp -- but it's not turned
up yet.  Not recycling pulp tropes,
but an approach to the page itself,
the panelling, the colouring, the
cuts and the text load.

Just wrote a very brief thing for
ROLLING STONE on BATTLESTAR
GALACTICA, dunno when that
appears... Next month, maybe?
Also have a commission for Forbes,
of all places, to get to next week...


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(Shrapnels)

“Bottom line: This book is hilarious as fuck, the story is fast and interesting, and it’ll make you much, much more open to the idea of sitting on an airplane and talking to a serial killer while you’re taking orders from a functioning heroin addict who has commissioned you to find a lost artifact. Or whatever. Just read the book.”

I’m being taught in college.

“Good Technology” – Red Guitars

(It’s an oldies afternoon, here at Old Ellis Bunker. Mp3 removed in seven days, review purposes only (you can still buy it at shiTunes!), contact if you need it deleted sooner)

(Now at Gas Stations Nationwide)

Warren Ellis: Autumn has arrived in south east England. Headed out into the cold and wind, smiling.

• BBC NEWS | Health | Virtual game is a ‘disease model’
  An outbreak of a deadly disease in a virtual world can offer insights into real life epidemics, scientists suggest
  (tags: med secondlife sls)
• Dwarf’s penis gets stuck to vacuum cleaner – Arts – Entertainment
  A dwarf performer at the Edinburgh fringe festival had to be rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went horribly awry.
  (tags: wtf)
• Lanterns on the Lake – Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK – Alternative / Ambient / Pop – www.myspace.com/lanternsonthelake
  (tags: music)
• Krushed Opiates – Electronica / Industrial / Electro – www.myspace.com/krushedopiate
  (tags: music)

This amused the hell out of me: someone’s fashioning a replica of the neoVictorian weapon from the early chapter of Bryan Talbot’s LUTHER ARKWRIGHT. I wonder if Bryan’s seen it yet? Via Brass Goggles — details in link.