At young Jamie McKelvie’s house. He’s quite a prodigy, for only being thirteen and all.

Full version of the cover, notes and details can be found at this link.

From today (Monday) until Friday, Richard von Stevens VIII, creator of the brilliant DIESEL SWEETIES webcomic and newspaper strip, workaholic and 24/7 cryptoid-stabbing netizen who bleeds bacon when you cut him will be hanging out in this thread on my message board Whitechapel. His comics: he will show you them. Including e-books and stuff. And probably also talking about reptoids and Art Bell. He is here to take your questions and make you pay attention.

Say hello to R Stevens now.

– W

(link)

So it got out on Friday that I’m leaving THUNDERBOLTS with issue #121.   For those of you who don’t quite grasp why I only do short stints on company-owned work, there’s a short statement here:

http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=1606

The judge has issued a ruling in the case regarding the Siegel family’s rights in Superman. Even with the limitations noted in the supporting article, this is fucking immense:

After seventy years, Jerome Siegel’s heirs regain what he granted so long ago – the copyright in the Superman material that was published in Action Comics Vol. 1. What remains is an apportionment of profits, guided in some measure by the rulings contained in this Order, and a trial on whether to include the profits generated by DC Comics’ corporate sibling’s exploitation of the Superman copyright.

The Siegel Superman decision – Uncivil Society

A man who claims that he was molested by Bigfoot as a child was ordered to serve 20 years in prison yesterday for his own molestation-related activities.

Convicted Molester Claims He Was A Victim of Bigfoot|ABC 7 News

Good morning, comics.

The Quantum Sleeper is America’s premier anti-terrorist bed.

The Quantum Sleeper Unit is a high-level security system designed for maximum protection in various hostile environments

Quantum Sleepers can also be fitted to provide protection from destructive forces of nature such as tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods.

The Quantum Sleeper is the ultimate in protection, entertainment and communications, “ ALL ROLLED UP IN ONE”.

(found by Sarah at Shortpants Press, thanks)

Jamais Cascio is doing a talk at Future Salon in Palo Alto this evening. All details are here.

For the rest of us, they’re going to try and webcast the presentation, asking that we "point your Quicktime viewer to the following address: rtsp://207.105.30.90/salon.sdp"

Whitechapel being my message board and usually the easiest way to find me:

* This week’s comics reviews & discussion thread.

* Someone collecting up sex-blog links.

* The monthly self-portrait thread.

* The cultural ethic of steampunk.

* Kings of Power 4 Billion % (no, I don’t have a clue what that means either)

Francesco d’Errico, an archaeologist from the University of Bordeaux, France, has found crafted lumps of pigment – essentially crayons – left behind by Neanderthals across Europe. He says that Neanderthals, who most likely had pale skin, used these dark pigments to mark their own as well as animal skins. And, since body art is a form of communication, this implies that the Neanderthals could speak, d’Errico says.

Neanderthals wore make-up and liked to chat – being-human – 27 March 2008 – New Scientist

MASSIVE DEFEAT is back in Iraq:

Debauchette provides five or six Quotes Of The Day in a single post. Here’s a few (and she’s been turning out some excellent writing lately):

Handjobs can be a little rapey.

I like hand-raping shy men with cute smiles.

I attack obtuse, illegible men the way I attack anything I don’t understand. I want to get in there, understand it, and own it.

(Pulp of the Day)

The "a-side" to this record, "Little Bit," is forgettable mush. The other track is "Dance Dance Dance," and it’s entrancing. Nervous, hopping and febrile and fragile to start off with, but the echoing isolated opening builds up a beautiful force. It’s pop, sure, but it’s perfect pop.

Lykke Li – "Dance Dance Dance"

(link degrades in five days, contact if you need it removed sooner)

Last year, I wrote a piece about the distances the American porn business is traversing in search of la difference. Here’s two news stories from today that struck me as apposite:

One:

Internet content company Yappo has announced an exclusive deal with Redpath Productions for the launch of the Ass Smoothie video line.

Ass Smoothie features adult starlets making their favorite blended drinks by pouring the ingredients into their bodies, mixing them internally and then drinking the concoction.

"…It’s not every day that we get a line of videos that deals solely with women putting frozen fruit drinks in their asses and then drinking them…"

And two:

Director Richard de Montfort… tried to shake things up when he lensed Hustler Video’s Strollin’ in the Colon.

"…I wanted to break out of the mold of bad acting and storylines that are nonsensical and with performers pretending to ignore the camera when they know it’s there…This is pure anal sex at its most raw with no pretense of the performers having anal sex for any other reason than pure exploitation."

Trinity Post, one of the stars of Strollin’ in the Colon, provided weight to Montfort’s description: "I did a girl/boy/boy scene. It was me and two men. At the same time, Tyla Wynn and Michelle Aston and Lee Stone were in the same room with me, and they basically fucked the shit out of me! I can’t really remember much. I even forgot about the d.p. I did… It was everything I hoped it would be."

As space shuttle Endeavour raced into space to begin the STS-123 mission, an amateur photographer captured this view from the waterfront in Titusville, Florida.

NASA – Beauty in the Night