It’s so hot in south east England today that it’s fucking with my eyesight. I’m trying to put the last nail in Project F, which is an animated-series pilot for Unnamed Animation Studio, and my eyes just won’t stay focussed. I think eye jelly is expanding in the heat and squeezing the necessary eyeball machinery out of my head. Or something. Also it’s hard to keep my fingers on the keyboard.

A month ago there was frost on my lawn.

And I really need to finish this because I need to write three episodes of FREAKANGELS and some final X-Men comic pages this weekend too.

This all is really hard to type, by the way, but I’m hoping that forcing myself to do it will make something in my eyes or head start working.

Jones made me look at this. So I make you look at this.

In which something happens to Connor’s head.

Gorgeous photo work. Loving the idea of releasing it as postcards.

See these glorious little things? These are samples from the Isle Of Jura’s Boutique Barrels whisky collection, sent on to me by kind souls at Whyte & MacKay. If you’re reading, Craig and Jill, thank you so much. They are so beautiful I want to cry and treasure them. But instead I will pour them down my neck like the monster I truly am.

(way behind with these posts. house filling up with unprocessed stuff. books sneaking in through windows)

IEU:

Chip says: "Listen, I’m not going to lie to you. I really need some of this old-book-meets-whatever money."

One of the nicest pieces of straight-up psych rock I’ve heard in ages. The album COIL SEA by Coil Sea is out on Thrill Jockey on Aug 24.

NO SERIOUSLY IT’S HOVERING HOW IS IT HOVERING WHY IS THERE A FUCKING HOVERSHARK NOW

In which I discuss the wonders of modern cannibalism.

In medieval times, it was believed that memories were stored in the cerebrospinal fluid. Sadly, it seems that memory cannot be transferred biochemically — which is just as well, otherwise Stephen Hawking would have to get his wheelchair equipped with Ben-Hur-style spikes and a turbo option…

Which I’m just copypasting from Seat42F, actually, because I just woke up and I’m laaazy. What follows is the entirety of my SDCC 2010 schedule.

Thursday, July 22, 2010 – 2:15pm – 3:15pm – Hall H:

RED – Stars Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, and Mary Louise Parker join director Robert Schwentke and Red’s graphic novel writer Warren Ellis as they debut the final trailer exclusively to Comic-Con 2010, before it’s ever in theaters, and answer questions about bringing this well known D.C. Comics graphic novel to the big screen. Based on the graphic novel by Ellis, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren star in this explosive action-comedy in which former CIA top agents become the Agency’s top targets because of the secrets they know.

Yes, I said entirety. I’m being driven in from LA that morning, and being flown back to Britain after the panel.

(Phizz)

Yupik by antwerpmusic

Flickr account. And, chiefly, his Architectural Association projects page.

The project began with a study into the end of free water, which suggested the idea of a prosthesis as a human augmentation – a personal ’pet’ that filtered urine and improved the body’s efficiency to use and re-use water. Moving beyond the scale of the body I found a loophole in the way global water sources are managed – no one can own the water falling in a waterfall. What I propose is a structure that acts as a protest, inspired by the way Greenpeace intervenes in a specific location to draw attention to a political issue.

My floating monument to our dying freedoms billows over a glacial waterfall in Iceland, itself symbolic of our changing world. As the visitor clambers and climbs through the spaces in flux they are drawn into a never-before experienced relationship with the roaring cascade. The very act of inhabiting a space previously uninhabitable makes the visitor aware of the fragility of the resource – this project is a physical prosthesis for a global political issue.

I’m told that these exquisite objects are laser-cut paper – and that he makes the paper himself, so that he gets a material optimised for response to the laser.

BEACH from PERSONA LA AVE on Vimeo.

Speaking to Las Vegas in San Francisco: Femina Potens show, July 2010

This is sad. Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade Books always seemed like a decent bloke, but this stuff is fairly indefensible.

Night Shade has stolen the eBook rights to (book) The Mall of Cthulhu. They do not own them and are offering an electronic edition for sale through webscription.net…

We’ve had trouble with [Night Shade] not responding to my agent, not paying royalties, and they did the same thing with e-books to me, when they didn’t have e-rights…

My agent eventually got a response by calling from an unlisted number and has confirmed that this silence appears to have been a tactic of deliberate avoidance…

The last quote is from Liz Williams, who later posted that she’d gotten an emailed apology from Jeremy, apparently fully copping to her long list of complaints (including not only failing to provide royalty statements or any other kind of communication, but also failing to actually do transactions and sell the books). The other allegations, as the linked PW blog notes, are similar enough to appear genuine.

It’s a horrible mess, and, while I am sure there are mitigating circumstances, I think one would be a bit silly to either try to sell them a book right now, or to try and buy a book directly from them.

(Kev Levell)

The Augmented Reality Event: Bruce Sterling’s keynote from Ori Inbar on Vimeo.

The Space Bastard bumper sticker, among other things in the Unmentionables section of the IEU store:

It’s a sort of giant-sized Asimo, named after an ancient Persian warrior (notable for being executed by his king for being too popular) and "designed and developed to be used in sensitive and difficult jobs on behalf of a person or as help" and reportedly capable of lifting its own 99-pound weight.

Very busy. Also often very confused. Many things are in flux at the moment. I am therefore not doing much of the bloggery, which is something I should fix. Starting tomorrow. Maybe.

Most of the things I’ve been doing, I can’t actually talk much about. Which, yes, gets annoying.

Ariana and I just did a very limited t-shirt design for some partners of mine, but I can’t release details until I get the nod from them. (Said partners are generally pretty fucking awesome, so that shouldn’t be long.)

Note from another group of partners reads "PROJECT BLACKLIGHT IS GO – I REPEAT, PROJECT BLACKLIGHT IS GO." So at some point I have to go to London and get drunk meet with them and find out what’s what. Possibly not this month, though. But I don’t think I can mention why it possibly won’t be happening this month, yet, either. Aside from having to do lots of work.

I’m within a hair’s breadth of finishing the last of my current commitments to Marvel Comics (we’re working out something with NEWUNIVERSAL, as I lost the entirely of my scripts and notes on that book, as mentioned previously). My contract with them doesn’t run out until next year, however, so this week I’m putting together a couple of new ideas for consideration. My Marvel contract is Work-For-Hire-Exclusive, which means that if I do company-owned work-for-hire projects, I do them only for Marvel. Doesn’t stop me doing creator-owned work elsewhere. As I said earlier in the year, X-Men really broke my back, and I really haven’t recovered in terms of production speed or stamina, so I’m hoping to develop and place a couple of contained, low-impact projects that let me finish out on something close to a high note. I have a friend knocking up some sketches for one of them right now. (These would be for 2011 publication.)

And I think I puzzled out the bit of FELL #10 that was bugging me over the weekend, so I should have that ready for Ben just as he finished out CHOKER, which means the series will resume and possibly, hopefully conclude during 2011.

Also I am now going to bed I think.

Can’t even remember what the bloody thing was called. ULTIMATE COMICS IRON MAN ARMOR WARS maybe? Anyway, the first chapter of that four-chapter graphic novel is now available for free reading at Marvel Digital Comics. The book is kind of goofy, basically a YA-level action story as extended framework for a bunch of jokes, not a million miles away from the style I used for NEXTWAVE.

NEXTWAVE won awards, you know. How wrong is that?

(Matthew Sheret)