Fractionals

- Not only does k-punk make me wish that there was a North American release of Artemis 81, he provides an excellent succinct explanation of the force of a lot of things he and I both like (Sapphire and Steel chief among them):

As all the kids who watched Artemis 81 and who have never forgotten it will attest, there's an enjoyment to be had from being thrown into the middle of things which you cannot understand and being forced to make a kind of sense out of them.
...
I agree absolutely with Phillip Challinor when he writes that "Artemis 81 stands as a brilliant example of the way in which interesting pretentiousness can be a good deal more satisfactory than solid professionalism and good old-fashioned storytelling."

- Obligatory (and semi-related) Grant Morrison link. Best part? "We've already got the real world. Why would you want fiction to be like the real world? Fiction can do anything, so why do people always want to say, 'Let's ground this' or 'Let's make this realistic.' You can't make it realistic because it's not. So basically Batman is 75 years old, and Robin is 74 years old. They don't grow old because they're different from us. They're paper people."

- Todd VanDerWerff's excellent takedown of the really odious-sounding Plain Jane is well worth reading, and is both deeply laudable and awfully funny. If not for the damage to Todd's psyche, I'd hope that they cover it every week until they run it off the air.

- I haven't seen much of Gaspar Noe's work, and what I have seen I haven't always found easy to stomach, but this sounds incredible. The moral of the story: mushrooms for everybody!

- Killing the Buddha is basically the best web site about religion right now, and has been for a while. There's tons of good stuff over there, but I want to link to an essay that's slightly older, because it's so excellent. Whatever you think about the Five Percenters in general (and I have to admit, finding out a bit more gives me a whole new respect for the Wu-Tang Clan), Knight's point near the end about the proper use and function of religion in a person's life is a very crucial and well-stated one.

- This dude apparently ran the San Francisco half-marathon while drinking a beer a mile. His disregard for his own health is your entertainment!

- When I was reading Rolling Stone in high school, I didn't always like Rob Sheffield; sometimes he could be too jokey. But this interview is lovely (and hopefully not too inside baseball for non-critics), and it reminds me why I got into the form in the first place, and why I'd like to make more time for it again. I really need to read the copy of Love Is a Mix Tape I'm borrowing from a friend.

- Los Campesinos! have a new acoustic(ish?) EP out. If it sounds like this, then I'm happy.

- I think this is a really good/interesting idea on a couple of levels, although I don't care one way or another about Dear's music. If CDs and physical media in general are/are becoming obsolete, why not have your music collection, the parts you really care about, instantiated around your house as unique physical objects?

- My friend Erik pointed me towards this fairly amazing article. Multiple dinosaur species were actually different stages of one species! That's very cool, and 10-year-old-me is really excited right now.