And we’re back.

First edition of her new column, EMBEDDED:

“Justin” moved to the Bay Area from Modesto – not seeking some sexual refuge, but heeding that other great siren call, a software engineering job in the Valley. He’s still in his early 20s, and cute in that slight and skinny way. You would never know that he’s got a secondary encrypted operating system running inside his computer just for his transwoman-on-man porn.

Everything in Bytescout Post2Blog is still in Tiny Tiny Type. And it doesn’t seem fixable — so weird — so I’m looking for another desktop blogging client today.

It’s feeling like a quiet week anyway. Russian Devil Girl is in Nevada on a hobo-raping trip. Gauger is painting:

Jean Snow is fnally famous in his home town, and has also found some wonderful things this week.

Matt Jones on the iconography and toyetic subtext of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. New Jamais Cascio talk.

In a nutshell:

A German steel foundry worker has been given a nine months jail sentence after poking an air rifle up his friend’s bottom and firing it – causing his intestines to explode.

Denis Schwarz, 25, said he’d only wanted to help his pal who had complained about sweaty buttocks from working in the Halberg Guss factory where molten metal kept temperatures soaring.

Lena puts the last word on those creepy/crappy "Ex-Masturbator" t-shirts:

More Year Of POD joy — Wil Wheaton’s released a new book:

Sunken Treasure is a short collection of my favorite pieces from my books and blog, including a production diary from my 2008 role in Criminal Minds, and excerpts from a collaborative fiction I took part in called Ficlets. As a bonus feature, it also includes the never-before-seen script to a sketch I wrote and performed at the ACME Comedy Theater. If you ever wanted to know where to start with all my writing, Sunken Treasure is the book for you.

Cover design by D’Israeli, who some of you may remember from LAZARUS CHURCHYARD, waaaay back when. Some of you may also remember I wrote a blurb for Will’s previous HAPPIEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES.

Jamais Cascio’s HACKING THE EARTH, now available in digital and print versions:

What do we do if our best efforts to limit the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere fall short? According to a growing number of environmental scientists, we may be forced to try an experiment in global climate management: geoengineering. Geoengineering would be risky, likely to provoke international tension, and certain to have unexpected consequences. It may also be inevitable. Environmental futurist Jamais Cascio explores the implications of geoengineering in this collection of thought-provoking essays. Is our civilization ready to take on the task of re-engineering the planet?

1. Harmonica Players, 2. Untitled, 3. My Ancestor’s Daughter, 4. Dearly love, 5. Bye bye New York, 6. Garth Ennis

Hi I am very tired today and my blogging software has shat itself and decided to make type very very small and doesn’t want to change back so bloggery will be fragmented today and probably mostly pictures and cutpaste because I can barely see what I’m fucking typing

• Robot Messenger Displays Person-to-Person Notes In Public (Aug, 1935) on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
  "Known as the ?notificator,? the new machine is installed in streets, stores, railroad stations or other public places where individuals may leave messages for friends" – retro-Twitter!
  (tags:retro tech history )

Subterranean Press have laid their hands on a few more copies of the limited hardback edition of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, the one with the brilliant cover by Clayton Cubitt. I figure they don’t have more than twenty, so if you wanted one, now’s the time. All copies are signed by myself and Clayton (better known to many of you as Siege).

(Got fwis.com’svote for cover of the year.)

“I’ll kill the first piece of cockshit comes near me,” giggled Stabbity Jones, the last legendary knifeman of the old West. He showed them his crooked penis, with the razorblades screwed into the head. “I’ll fuck ‘em to death and make ‘em like it. Your daddies came cowshit up your mommies, and I’m Stabbity fucking Jones.” He bounced in his testicle-hide boots, making the spikes in his nipples jangle. “Stabbity Jones will fight any man here and fuck ‘em good as they bleed before my nekkidness.”

Stabbity Jones was the last knifeman in the West. Everyone else had guns.

(Stabbity Jones went from here to becoming a one-panel gag in an episode of the Marvel comic THUNDERBOLTS, poor bastard. © Warren Ellis 2006)

“So what we do is take one of those morphine pumps that they implant in the thigh for pain management, and have it deliver a chemical cocktail. Viagra, a mild hypnotic, a little amphetamine. And hook it to a voice-activation chip, reset to respond to certain words from me. ‘Mine,’ for instance. TENS electrodes to numb your arms and legs, connected to a clapper switch. Or we could just get one of those penile erection-implant devices that I could operate remotely.”

“Couldn’t we just, you know…have sex?”

“Do you want the scrotal taser again? Shut up.”

(© Warren Ellis 2006)

Melissa Gira is starting a new weekly column for the SF Bay Guardian’s SexSf, and Eliza Gauger’s back at Dtoid. (And, hey, the Goons finally took over EVE. Nice.) Simon Reynolds cites me in his Guardian piece on Animal Collective, which made my head explode for reasons we don’t need to get into right now.

Paul Pope:

Matt Jones just pointed me at this. This is insane in its implications:

Our first commercial autopilot, the Arduino-compatible ArduPilot, has been released and our goal of taking an order or two of magnitude out of the cost of an autopilot has been achieved: it’s $24.95!

Combined with a RC plane, this makes it easy to build a complete UAV for less than $500, which is really kind of amazing. As exciting as that it is, it’s also sobering to know that a technology that was just a few years ago the sole domain of the military is now within the reach of amateurs…

Sobering. Yeah. When Jamais Cascio saw this, he commented that 4th Generation Warfare expert John Robb would go nuts with this. Putting the technology to fly your own UAV on the street is potentially explosive. Probably quite literally. There are obviously art/media applications, as well as net applications, but the first things that occurred to me were surveillance and strike…

A "living doll" made from human liver cancer cells could allow new drugs to be tested in conditions closer to those inside the body.

I mean, we might as well just kill ourselves now. Because everyone knows that medical need doesn’t drive new technology — porn does. You know what’s going to happen.

Jodi Whitney, better known to some of you as Slinka and half of Ego Assassin, responds to the Ex-Masturbator shirt within seconds. Visit Liberal Masturbator:

Avatar Press are at booth #1066: Mike Wolfer is there all weekend, Garth Ennis is there on Saturday only.

The PHONOGRAM boys, Gillen and McKelvie, are there all weekend too: this is their signing schedule.

Via some pack of creepy cultists:

The comments crack me up:

I’m so excited. As a former masturbator I plan to get every color. I want everyone to know power of Jesus is stronger than the devil’s urge to purge.