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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“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.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of “wet artificial life.”

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

*  Funny:  http://clubofmars.ning.com/ is probably one of the biggest
groups on the Ning  system now.  Pretty daft for something I only
activated as a toy for you  all to play with.  Huge amount of activity
there now, blogging, videos,  photo uploads.  Plenty to waste that
valuable work time  with.

*  I'm in the middle of wrapping up a ton of script pages to  send
to Avatar, and finishing CASTLEVANIA with the other hand (it's
in the  "donkey work" stage now, writing the connective tissue,
polishing up bits,  fixing/hammering awkward sections).  So I'll
probably remain pretty  uncommunicative for the rest of the week,
beyond the first thing in the  morning/last thing at night blogging
passes and managing the really fucking  frightening amount of
messages I get at  http://www.myspace.com/warrenellis.

* But I did note that apparently the  Gene Hunt role in the
ill-advised American remake of LIFE ON MARS is going  to
good old Colm Meaney.  And god knows Meaney's made some
crap to  pay the mortgage, but he tends to elevate a thing --
or at least let some  light into it -- just by showing up.  So I
might give the remake a look  after all, even though it's
almost guaranteed to be a train  wreck...

-- W  

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Warren Ellis: Fuck me, I think I saw some blue in the sky. That can’t be right.

BBC map shows path of Hurricane Dean and predicted course at 1500 GMT.

I mentioned a few days ago that I was having to consider purchase of a man-bag/murse/go-bag/machismo tote (that last still makes me crack up for some reason). This is one of the reasons why.

This is a Docupen. I have always wanted and needed a fully mobile hand scanner, and this seems to be it. Rechargeable, will hold at least 100 images after I fitted a 1GB card into it, perfectly sized to sweep down A4 pages, weighs nothing, and, amazingly, it worked first time, practically right out of the box. How often does that happen?

Comes with a decent leather holster, and will obviously fit in the side of a bag. It’d be more trouble to carry in the inside pocket of my jacket — and the problem I’m having now is that in the summer it’s too hot for the jacket at all, and since for years I’ve stuffed everything into it, well… time for a bag.

Next decision: do I get a new Treo next January, or give up on that paradihm entirely and get an ultralight computer instead?

(Handy photos ganked from Geekzone.)

• Deputies: Man ‘Mad At God’ Drives Into Church – Local/Florida News Story – WJXT Jacksonville
  A 23-year-old St. Augustine man who told deputies he was “angry with God” and intentionally drove his pickup truck into a Catholic church early Tuesday morning, according to the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.
  (tags: crime religion)
• PNG ‘sorry’ for cannibal killings
  The descendants of cannibals in Papua New Guinea, who killed and ate four Fijian missionaries in 1878, have said sorry for their forefathers’ actions
  (tags: crime religion history)
• Sharks Have Genes for Fingers and Toes
  Researchers identified genetic activity in spotted catsharks embryos that signal the creation of digits
  (tags: sci)
• Dairy farmer accused of giving cattle hormone to woman to force miscarriage
  A dairy farmer hoping to induce a woman he impregnated to miscarry gave her a soda containing a cattle hormone sometimes used to force abortions in cows, police said.
  (tags: crime)
• Particls – About Particls
  “Particls helps you track your favourite sites, topics and apps by displaying desktop alerts for important changes. “
  (tags: web)