November 7th, 2009 | researchmaterial
I told you. I told you all. The Dog is the Enemy of the Human. But you wouldn’t believe me. Now look.
…dogs have a greater eco-footprint than gas-guzzling SUVs.
See? SEE?
November 6th, 2009 | brainjuice
November 6th, 2009 | photography
The self-portrait photographer/"caricature artist" Kristamas Klousch finally has a website up for her wonderful, ghostly and irreal work.
November 6th, 2009 | Work
I think we can all agree that I should have been given The South Bank Show after Melvyn Bragg retired from it. If nothing else, it is way past time that the serious arts media gave coverage to those elements of the Japanese film industry that produce such inventive, beautifully designed and thematically muscular works as The Octopus Invades the Vagina, The Fish That Has is Crunched And The Wound is Received [sic] and The Eel and Loach to Attack in Lasciviousness are Insane [sic].
You don’t really want to search those terms from work. Which is why one requires the piercing artistic gaze of a South Bank Show to discover and present such items for the engaged viewer’s consideration. Frankly, I’m the only real choice to replace Bragg when he retires…
November 6th, 2009 | photography
There’s something powerfully weird about this beautiful photoset by Marta Lamovsek, not least in this image, where the model really does look like an alien landed in eastern Europe.
November 5th, 2009 | researchmaterial
Wonderful. The first of three interviews, this one with Michael Butterworth, about the glorious and fraught history of what remains Britain’s most ambitious and most hated alternative publishing company, Savoy Books. I’m even delighted by the page scans that decorate the piece. I’m quoted in there somewhere, talking about the time they sent the co-publisher to prison…
November 5th, 2009 | brainjuice
November 5th, 2009 | brainjuice
Been in the work mines all week, and today isn’t looking any better. Catching up is becoming a full time job in itself.
So it’s been confirmed that the wonderful Helen Mirren — a good old Southend girl, don’t you know — has joined the cast of the film adaptation of me’n'Cully’s graphic novel RED. So the top of the cast is now Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren. Which is a little surreal. They’ve also set a release date, which I think is 2 November 2010. So we’re a year away from seeing it. Shooting starts in January, in Toronto and New Orleans, I believe.
And BLACK SUMMER is now in development, with Ryne Pearson writing the adaptation. He wrote the recent KNOWING, which I haven’t seen, but which I know made its money back. Pearson’s a novelist by trade, according to the internet. Also, according to the internet, a man of devout religious conviction. Just as well SUMMER doesn’t contain any of my usual atheist ravings. And no, I have no idea if the death of an American President will be retained in the script. It’s theirs to play with, no. I imagine I’ll be talking to them in the near future.
And next week I’m on the phone with Legendary to get GRAVEL moving.
PLANETARY Volume 4 now has a subtitle: SPACETIME ARCHAEOLOGY. I understand that ABSOLUTE PLANETARY Vol 2 is also being prepared right now.
(I should actually write a new work FAQ. There’s one on Whitechapel that hasn’t been updated in a month or so. So I’ll add here: FELL moves along slowly, DESOLATION JONES remains on hold for various reasons, NEWUNIVERSAL will get finished up next year once Steve and I are past ARMOR WARS, I have no idea what the state of the CASTLEVANIA animated property is, and, in general, assume that a prolific career of many projects contains several that have just run into trouble or stalled out because, guess what, shit happens. And no, I never got my dead computer back. That’s a tale in itself, which includes the guy who was trying to repair it dying on an operating table.)
November 5th, 2009 | brainjuice, people I know, photography
Wakey wakey.
Back to something like normal broadcasting today. But first, something to eat, and then to the pub.
(Image: Agent Redhead, photography by Beth Anderson)
November 4th, 2009 | Work, shivering sands
Today I release SHIVERING SANDS, a book containing a selection of essays, articles, columns, rambles and jabberings that were written in various places on the internet over the last seven years or so. I publish it, with trusty mechanic Ariana Osborne, as the International Electrophonic Unit through the print-on-demand house Lulu. Regular readers will know that I’ve been talking about POD for months, and I thought it was time to try it out. This work has not been collected in one place before, and I think pretty much none of it has ever been on paper.
SHIVERING SANDS is 176 pages long, and costs USD $15.54. Go to http://www.electrophonic.net and click on the book title to be taken to the order page. Or, hell, just click right through to the Lulu page. You’ll also find a book preview there, a dozen pages or so.
All books are sold through and mailed by Lulu. We touch nothing. This is the most useful thing about POD houses like Lulu: they handle everything once we upload the book file. So any questions about shipping will have to be handled through the Lulu FAQs. We can tell you that Ariana, in California, got her proof copy within five working days. We’re printing with an international standard size that means your copy will be printed as physically close to you as possible, rather than everything being shipped from the States.
Ariana — who designs much of my Avatar Press work, like AETHERIC MECHANICS — has outdone herself on the book. It’s beautiful. Even though making a collection like this beautiful is like being presented with a young and very well dressed mental patient.
Brief notes: no plans yet for a digital edition: no, it won’t be in bookstores: no, I can’t sell or send you a signed copy: I have no copies of the book, they’re all sold through Lulu: we don’t set shipping prices: no intent to sell it through Amazon. There. Thanks for your attention.
Blogging, reblogging and twittering is encouraged, if not openly begged for.
November 4th, 2009 | brainjuice, music
Too much to do, so I’m bailing out of warrenellis.com for the night. Tomorrow, we go live with SHIVERING SANDS.
I am being played off tonight by NEU! and the phenomenal "Fur Immer." Been dragging out, dusting off and re-playing all my Krautrock since watching a pretty good documentary on those days by the BBC. I shouldn’t call it Krautrock, mind you, they didn’t like that term…
G’night.
November 4th, 2009 | music
Spent the evening listening to this. Nadja, a well-known drone metal outfit from Toronto, and Pyramids, a postrocky noise band from Denton once described as like "someone disemboweling a Radiohead record." PYRAMIDS WITH NADJA is an immense collaborations, four long soundscapes that also bring in members of several other bands, including Khanate and The Cocteau Twins.
Fused together, they make a sound that approaches, particularly in the later tracks, a sort of Berserker Mushroom Viking Meditation. It flows like river water on the verge of freezing, under a sky that is very slowly exploding, and your heart is hammering but the drone of the world is still and all-emcompassing.
Should probably have been a Night Music entry.
November 3rd, 2009 | brainjuice
November 3rd, 2009 | brainjuice, comics talk
At my internet hovel today:
* The Starry Wisdom Of Warren 3nov09 - my daily notes on what I’m up to, and what (or if) I’m thinking about.
* REMAKE/REMODEL: Kardak The Mystic - this week’s challenge for artists, all are welcome to play
* The Self-Portrait Imagethread (Nov 2009)
* Netlabels - a rolling list of the ones we like. If you’re running a netlabel, feel free to stop in.
* Comics Shipping This Week (Nov 4) - the list
* NaNoWriMo 2009 - a support thread for the people participating this year.
November 3rd, 2009 | people I know
November 3rd, 2009 | Work
The GI JOE miniseries thing what I wrote is out on DVD in the USA today, apparently. This was serialised on the web (you can probably still find all the episodes on YouTube) and broadcast as a whole piece on Adult Swim over there. It’s a weird sort of telepod fusion of the cartoons and the comics, filtered through whatever I found interesting about the franchise. I altered a fair amount of stuff, including characters, to amuse myself and to meet the brief of producing a slightly more adult-oriented piece that used the franchise without being beholden to its other iterations (including the recent live-action film, completed and released after I finished writing this). Lots of people hated the changes I made, and many didn’t understand that I’d actually specifically made changes and moaned that I’d got the characters wrong. Hasbro, the client, have told me that they were very happy with RESOLUTE. So screw those other people. Heh.
November 3rd, 2009 | brainjuice
Yesterday got pretty much swallowed up. Today, I huddle here under the plastic roof in the pub smoking compound, as the weather shifts from torrential rain to sunlight and back again every five minutes. The workload’s pretty hairy today, but let’s see if we can’t do some embloggening in between the usual shouting and crying. Probably mostly linkblogging, as I fight to get my RSS reader under 1000 articles… but, as usual, probably also mostly about my friends and fellow-travellers. Jamais Cascio has a Cheeseburger Carbon Footprint t-shirt and tote that I should show you later. Matt Jones had dinner with Brian Eno last night and put all kinds of arcane knowledge into his notebook, some jabbering about a “minimal book” that I have to decode at some point… COILHOUSE turned 2 and I was too busy to notice, Cherie Priest’s BONESHAKER was made a book of the year by Publishers Weekly… and, in general, I’m not doing a good job of keeping up.
And SHIVERING SANDS goes live tomorrow.
(Also, I want to post more music, which will probably make most of you go “oh god no.”)
More in a bit. My fingers are freezing up out here.
November 2nd, 2009 | brainjuice
November 2nd, 2009 | music
Grouper’s DRAGGING A DEAD DEER UP THE HILL was a high point for 2008 for me, an album deeply stoned on its own doomed beauty. I’d like to be seeing Grouper (which is actually just Liz Harris) live this week, but I don’t have the time, and it’s pissing me off immensely. The only improvement on my mood has been discovering, just now, that a new EP is due this winter. And here’s a piece from it:
Grouper - Hold the Way from Weston Currie on Vimeo.
November 2nd, 2009 | Work
TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week in our joint guise as the International Electrophonic Unit. Basically, we take some of the stupider things I’ve said on Twitter and elsewhere, often in a state of extreme alcoholic refreshment or severe sleep deprivation, and put them on a t-shirt. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.
Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.
So, every Monday, I’ll post the new shirt here, and you can peer at it more at http://www.cafepress.com/electrophonic.
Anyway. I present to you T-Shirt Of The Week #002: HUMAN BACON:
We also offer a couple of perennial items. Mostly because I wanted one of these for myself:
(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)
Thank you for your kind attention.
THE CLOCK IS TICKING.
November 2nd, 2009 | Work, people I know, photography
I swear, these stories always break when I’m least ready for them. From Variety this morning:
Newly minted banner Vigilante Entertainment is launching operations by developing Warren Ellis’ comicbook series "Black Summer" with Ryne Pearson ("Knowing") tapped to adapt.
"Summer," published by Avatar Press in 2007, centers on superhero team the Seven Guns, a group of scientist-adventurers who modified their own bodies for street-fighting in order to take back their West Coast city from a corrupt police force, criminal local government and rapacious private security forces.
BLACK SUMMER remains available as a single graphic novel collection from better comics stores and, of course, Amazon.
November 2nd, 2009 | people I know, photography
1. Hween2, 2. Trick or Treat 1, 3. Halloween 2009, 4. Dr Who, 5. Happy Halloween, 6. Happy Halloween!
October 30th, 2009 | brainjuice
October 30th, 2009 | people I know
Did you read BONESHAKER yet? It’s probably my favourite "steampunky" novel, probably because it wears the steampunkiness so lightly, while genuinely having a touch of the punk to it (which, let’s face it, most steampunk doesn’t). It’s actually a fairly mental alternate-world story of mad scientists, outcasts, sealed cities, airships and, yes, zombies. And the whole melange works. More than works — it has a crazy prologue, a melancholy and foreboding beginning, and then about eighty pages in it starts stoking the furnace and rattles up to a glorious speed and doesn’t let up. It’s terrific fun. Also, Mike Mignola really liked it.
It’s just gone to a third printing, so all your decent bookstores and your Amazons will have it. I think that, in the US, Barnes & Noble are doing a special promotion with it for another week.
October 29th, 2009 | brainjuice
October 29th, 2009 | brainjuice, photography
Warren Ellis dot com. Back later: off to pub, and then to perform domestic tasks.
(photo by Cait Kittredge)
WARREN ELLIS
jwz - 07 Nov 09
Jean Snow - 06 Nov 09
I think it’s well worth reminding everyone that tonight (November 7) is Tokyo Art Beat’s 5th anniversary party at SuperDeluxe. The festivities kick off at 19:00, with a host of activities taking place — check the event page for more details, and print it out to get in for 1,000 yen.
jwz - 06 Nov 09
Bay Area Vampirism, Energy-work, and Otherkin Society (San Francisco, CA)
The Vampirism, Energy-work and Otherkin Society (VEOS) is a loosely-organized San Francisco based group. This group is open those identifying as vampire (sang or psy), donor, otherkin, and to those who wish to learn more about such topics. Other energy-workers are also welcome, so long as you have no problem with the vampiric side of energy work.This group is NOT open to role-players, recruiters of any type, or those seeking to promote any form of religion (discussion about religion is OK, preaching is not).
Kung Fu Monkey - 06 Nov 09
Coilhouse - 06 Nov 09
Another week comes to a close here at the catacombs. Once again on I am on 24 hour lock down as my lithe and mysterious superiors sequester themselves in the lower levels to commune with the Ogdru Jahad in preparation for the dissemination of horrible and blasphemous texts. This isn’t as much of an inconvenience as one might think, as my movements are usually kept to a mere three hours outside of my cell. The current situation just means that I have to call for a eunuch in order to send faxes or make copies. It’s really not that bad, though it does mean that I know longer have access to the aging and, admittedly understocked vending machines. This may be a good thing. It really depends on how you feel about consuming soda past it’s sell-by date I suppose.
Besides, I still have the internet to keep me company, entertain me when I’m bored, and distract me from the horrible chanting and voices from outside time and space emanating from caverns miles beneath me. To that end the Friday Afternoon Movie presents the BBC program David Icke: Was He Right?, detailing the history of the chief crusader against the alien lizard people who control the world, who previously had gone on television to declare he was the son of God, and looking at whether or not he may, in fact, be correct in his various, outlandish assertions about What Is Really Going On. Icke has made an appearance on the FAM before, but I think it’s well worth further exploring his theories, because they’re just so damn crazy. There’s almost a perfection to his insanity, as to ignore it is to let him carry on about alien lizard people controlling the world but to argue it is to acknowledge the idea of alien lizard people who control the world. Either way, David Icke has won. In that regard, the man is a genius. In every other, he is endlessly entertaining.
Post tags: Conspiracy theories, Crackpot Visionary, End of the World, Film, Madness, Serious Business
Open The Future - 06 Nov 09
Consider this something of an aside to the "basic futurism" series over at Fast Company.
As video becomes an increasingly important part of how organizations construct their internal and external narratives, those of us who work in the broad field of consulting will frequently find ourselves plopped down in front of a camera. One-on-one interviews have aspects of both formal presentations and casual conversations, but a few twisty elements all their own.
Much to my surprise, I've done quite a few on-camera, one-on-one interviews over the past few years. It's not something I sought out, but is very much a growing part of what consultants, writers, or other knowledge workers should expect as part of their jobs.
Here are some hard-learned tips for the novice interviewee, based on my own experiences -- I've broken all of these rules at one point or another, and learned quickly why they are worth following.
You're also much better off wearing something that buttons down the front, so that a small microphone can be attached to the placket and the wire dropped down inside your shirt and into a transmitter.
In addition, if you know that you're prone to shiny skin under bright lights (foreheads in particular are awful for this), see if you can get a light coating of pancake makeup applied. For those of us who don't wear makeup regularly, it can feel a bit odd at first, but makes a big difference in how you look.
Nine times out of ten, you'll be asked to not look at the camera, but instead to look at the interviewer seated near the camera (I once had an interview where the actual interview took place over the phone, so I had to look at an empty spot near the camera the whole time). The challenge will be to avoid glancing over at the camera while you speak. If you're in the habit of looking around the room while you talk, to make eye contact with the audience, you'll have to train yourself to avoid that when doing on-camera interviews.
When possible, speak in short sentences. Most video interviews get edited pretty heavily, so speaking in brief, pithy sentences makes the editor's job easier, and you're more likely to come out sounding like you know what you're talking about.
Put the question into the answer. In nearly every interview, the questions asked by the interviewer get cut out. It's up to you, then, to weave the question you've been asked into the structure of the answer, so that your quote can stand alone. If you're asked, for example, how the dinosaurs died out, "Current science says an asteroid impact" is less useful for an editor than "Currently, the most popular scientific theory says that the dinosaurs were killed off by an asteroid impact."
Don't be afraid to stop and start over. Unless your interview is being shown live, or completely uncut, you should feel free to stop in the middle of a convoluted or mangled phrase, pause for a beat, then restart, preferably at the beginning of your answer or a self-contained part of your answer. This also applies if you have a sudden burst of background noise, a sneeze, or any other brief interruption. You and the editor are both interested in you coming across as knowledgeable and clear.
This isn't a complete list, but these are the items that stood out in my mind when thinking over my last set of interviews. Please feel free to speak up in the comments if you have other tips to add.
Kung Fu Monkey - 06 Nov 09
Girl Farts - 06 Nov 09
