"BATTLE!"

(warrenellis.com is not safe for work. Conan! posts are not safe for your perception of 21st Century society.)

(Hello to anyone coming here from Observer Music Monthly. The post they were citing is very short and is here.)

(tip of the hat to Jordan at ModBlog, doing a fine job)

BioRequiem Etsy: selected oil paintings and prints. Many of you will have seen her line art in COILHOUSE. As Zo-bot itself says, once these are gone, they’re gone forever. And since she’s doing more and more gallery shows, you’re unlikely to see them this cheap again.

IT SAYS OBEY.

An exclusive first look at a forthcoming short series via Avatar Press.

(It’s not actually steampunk. And there’s not really a serial killer.)

In which Bruce Sterling beats the shit out of some people:

”

Oh god why am i awake

I WILL TELL YOU WHY! Because it is Friday, it’s just gone noon, and it’s FREAKANGELS, all for free!

Extracts from Anna Chen’s “illustrated personal journey through the life and crimes of Hollywood legend Anna May Wong“, as presented on May 26 2009.

At bleedingcool:

The next movie I write will be Jurassic Park 4: ADAMZOIC, in which a group of committed Creationists sneak onto a dinosaur-infested Island in an attempt to prove that humans and slavering proto-avian carnivores can live in harmony, as in Eden. The film will be 3 hours long; will feature multiple variations on the theme of Cute Naked People being disembowelled while trying to sing hymns; will include at least one incidence of punning, based on the words “pray” and “prey”; and will end when the sole survivor realises the error of her ways, embraces the Power Of Darwin, and spontaneously evolves a set of wings to escape.

Then gets shot down by Jeff Goldblum: Avenger Of Maths.

This is Warren Ellis Dot Com. Good morning.

(Lauren Semivan)

I’ve been so busy today that I’ve not had time to follow this huge story, and I guess it hasn’t broken internationally yet:

Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists’ repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures and to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.

According to English Russia, a store has started running a local newspaper on its shopping bags. Which is, I suppose, one way to sidestep the whole "newsprint is dying" thing.

Talking of horror masquerading as comedy. Grant Morrison played me the radio version of this piece in 1999 and it lived with me all day. This later TV version is just as warped. Written by the magnificent Chris Morris.

This just popped back up on YouTube (the BBC periodically sniff it out and issue a takedown). Before it goes away again, have a look. THE MIGHTY BOOSH was an almost painfully uneven show, and in general musical comedy gives me the burning shits. But this was a moment of brilliance on a par with the better LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN conceptions. LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN was a horror show that was sometimes funny, and this has the same kind of vibe. So I put this bit up here, in case you haven’t seen it before.

Suffused with young Cronenberg and Yuzna’s SOCIETY:

Internationally respected Siamese twin surgeon Dr. Josef Heiter has a demented vision for mankind’s future existence. He wants to remove human beings’ kneecaps so they have to exist on all fours and then surgically graft them mouth-to-anus to form a centipede chain. When two stranded female Americans arrive at his luxury home-cum-hospital looking for help, his long-gestating plan swiftly moves into chilling action with a shocking force. Kidnapping a third Japanese male tourist he begins the tissue matches, teeth removal and buttock moulding to create his triplet creature.

Clayton "Siege" Cubitt:

Clayton Cubitt: I think photography is moving towards seamlessness. The future of photography won’t be about capturing a decisive moment by timing a shot perfectly. Cameras will capture everything – thirty or sixty frames per second. Then you choose. Like a DVR for life.

Tokion Magazine: Doesn’t that sound like cheating?

Clayton Cubitt: If you think a photographer’s creativity comes from their shutter finger, then it’s cheating. But if you think the creativity comes from the setup, the perspective, from the editing and the craft, then I think it’s no big deal.

Just a really nice shot (by Allan Amato) of the editors of COILHOUSE magazine and blog. (Mer shouts at me when I call them the COILHOUSE Coven, so I don’t do that anymore. Mer shouts at me kind of a lot.) You read COILHOUSE, right?

In this photo, Nadya Lev is prone and being used as a prop by Meredith Yayanos (left) and Zoetica Ebb (right).

WASTELAND is the best post-apocalyptic comic being published today. And I say that as the author of a post-apocalyptic comic. It’s reached its 25th issue — which, as an indie comic, is no mean feat either. This 25th issue is double-sized and full colour. Here’s a tinyURL to a 13-page preview and related interview. It’s out today in North America, tomorrow in the UK and elsewhere. It’s very good. You want a copy.

Find your local comics shop through The Master List.

Me and Rachael Gray inside the Architecture Association’s summer pavilion, as captured by writer/editor Will Wiles. Good morning. This is Warren Ellis dot com. Good morning. I am going out for lunch now.

Brain is still fizzing from the night’s talking. Have some more Philip Jeck: two m3u playlist files from Touch Radio at the link.

G’night.

New column is live at bleedingcool:

Jack Kirby’s head repeats an interview response: “I felt that we ourselves were without a mythology. Even the Saxons had their own mythology, and I thought that there was a new mythology needed for our times.”