In which things get massively weirder.

My name is Warren Ellis. I’m a writer. And I’m just back from ten days on the road. Ten days that were much weird, much glorious, and much creative.

And I just saw this. Artist Eliza Gauger by artist Bethalynne Bajema.

This is Warren Ellis dot com, broadcasting from now until I die.

This happened:

I need to sleep off some jet travel. See you in the morning.

The collected edition of IGNITION CITY is out this week, I guess. FLASH GORDON via DEADWOOD, if you like. I had fun writing this.

* in comics, digital is the elephant in the room this year. By the end of the year there will be a small pile of new-gen tablet computers. And, if not Longbox, then probably two or three other places at minimum where you can buy comics in one way or another. And a handful of pirate sites that become tablet(s)-friendly. Digital comics sales are all about this simple question – the threat of cannibalising the bricks-and-mortar comics store network, against a digital system that can reach all the places where comics stores simply don’t exist.

* everyone I’ve spoken to this month has said essentially the same thing, no matter what medium they work in: “It’s the IP, stupid”

* I almost wish I were in the network TV business. When a medium chokes and stutters, all kinds of interesting opportunities emerge from the interstices.

* plaintext still wins.

Today I am 42. I am thousands of miles from home and far from loved ones. I start the day’s round of work meetings in an hour, and won’t finish for another twelve hours, at which point I will return to an empty hotel room.

But today I am warm, there is sunlight, I am more relaxed about things than I have been in years, all the aches and pains collected over the last several months have melted away, and life is good.

42? Not so bad.

Have a good day, people.

Any of you guys in the San Diego area?

Taking some recharge time. It’s going to be a hard weird run to summer, and I need a bit more in the tank than I’ve got. I feel almost like I should write a BERG-style Weeknote, since I’m engaged on Sekrit Missionz as well as sleeping half of every day. BERG do this lovely thing where they attach codenames to projects and work sequences — they were in Escalante condition, but are now in Scenario 4 condition, and it really gives you an insight into their eccentric science-fiction-reality work culture. (By “eccentric,” I do of course mean “quite mad” but the difference between eccentrics and lunatics is that eccentrics get paid.)

(Scenario 4 always makes me think of Alternative 3.)

I dunno. How would I describe the space from here to early summer? The world is more interesting than ever. I mean, every new day is intrinsically more interesting than the last, but I’m really feeling the spin of the planet lately.

Pretty picture by Cassandra:

There’s a degree of spin-up happening all over. Eric Rodenbeck;

I’ve been feeling for some time now that the data visualization space is about to go completely bananas

Talking about this, a live visualisation of Olympic-related Twitter chatter. Coincidental for me, because I just started following The Economist’s data-viz vodcast. And one of BERG’s current projects is all about data-viz. There’s some rattle and hum in a dozen weird little spaces like that right now. Last year felt like a holding pattern to me in many ways (not least in my work, after the disaster that the last half of 2008 turned into). This year might be good. Striking out for parts unknown.

At her store:

Happy Valentine’s Day to all. And to those who hate the day, I say this: Valentine’s Day is a Christian corruption of a pagan festival involving werewolves, blood and fucking. So wish people a happy Horny Werewolf Day and see what happens.

Matt Sheret wants your love:

It’s Valentines Day. The restaurants are booked, theatres are full and there’s nothing on at the cinema… it’s time for something different. On Sunday February 14th Notting Hill Arts Club plays host to two comic book themed events, brought to you by We Are Words + Pictures.
Drop In + Draw – illustration workshops and live art:

http://wearewordsandpictures.com/2010/01/19/february-14th-drop-in-draw/

Modern Romance, a club night featuring some music, live drawing and comedian Robin Ince compering the whole shebang:

http://wearewordsandpictures.com/2010/01/20/february-14th-modern-romance/

Down in Toronto. From the air, the city looks a bit like Oslo today: from the air, in winter, Oslo is a vast manic sketch done in faded black Indian ink on clean white paper. On the ground, there seems to be a lot of construction. My hotel room view, in fact, is of construction: yellow gating, plastic-wrapped columns, treated wooden boards gathering snow. A Korean couple in parkas peering up at the great black and white crane that seems to be turning around a lot without actually doing anything. Pointing up at it and laughing. Are there crane joyriders who just climb in and take them for a spin?

Now I need to catch up with the last nine hours of the world, and write a couple of columns.

• Robot to take starring roles in S.Korea plays
  A South Korean-developed robot that played to acclaim in "Robot Princess and the Seven Dwarfs" is set for more leading theatre roles this year, a scientist said Wednesday.
  (tags:none)
• Simon Reynolds / Hardly Baked
  "boredom now — it's a super-saturated, overloaded boredom i think."
  (tags:culture )
• Pocket Utopias
  There were two striking elements to this part of the story for me: first, that cities and urban life were thought to cause or exacerbate madness, and second the conscious utopianism of asylum design. The anti-urban taint to the philosphy behind the hospitals is interesting. And as the asylums are total environments ? in contrast to other 19th-century institutional buildings, such as prisons, schools and workhouses, they provide for every aspect and stage of a person's life ? there is unparalleled scope for turning them into little models of a perfect world, a ?pocket utopia?. With that in mind, it's possible to see in greater detail their appeal to 19th-century social reformers.
  (tags:architecture )

The essential connective tissue between a Sixties Stan Lee Everyone! Shouts! Like! This! comic and a 2010 Geoff Johns wall-to-wall evisceration corpseoramavision comic is hysteria. Yelling, shrieking, squirting hysteria. The latter has turned out to be the natural evolution of the former.

My day was actually similar to:

G’night.

(I have no credits for the shot. Please add them in comments if you know.)

• Keynote: Bruce Sterling (us) on Atemporality | transmediale
  "If progress is to go beyond the banal indulgences that give rise to a never-ending array of car shell designs then we need to analyse our present time with regard to its aesthetics and its media. The second conference session is being introduced with Bruce Sterling's Keynote on Atemporality."
  (tags:video )

Bit different, this week. I’m off on the road first thing Monday morning, beginning an intensive ten days of travel and meetings. So, a few changes, just for this offering:

1) We (Ariana and I, in our joint comedy guise as the International Electrophonic Unit) are offering this shirt for two weeks, rather than the usual one. Because, see above.

2) This shirt is returning by popular request, but in a different form. It was in fact Shirt #001, in a simple black-on-white.

3) And the request was that we offer it for Valentine’s shopping. Not that I have much truck with Valentine’s, or, as I prefer to think of it, Horny Werewolf Day. But lots and lots of people asked.

You may therefore now go to our store, and inspect LOVE (RED):

As you can see, it’s offered this time as red-on-white and red-on-black. Because we love you.

http://www.cafepress.com/electrophonic.

We also offer a couple of perennial items. Such as:

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

• The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer – Movies – New York Times
  "Mr. Mailer is almost always testing a hypothesis that the most hyperbolic presentation of the self will also be the most authentic. " "…Mr. Mailer describes what he is doing… as pursuing 'an attack on the nature of reality'…"
  (tags:culture social )