new web ring@ning.com

http://77siliconstrip.ning.com/profile/MonsantoWestinghouse


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Today, Neil Gaiman posted in his online journal:
TRAJEN PRO
"And I am still posting links to things instead of writing interesting things in the blog, because I am still somewhere in the hell that's either Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 of THIS DAMNED BOOK which seems determined to be longer than it was meant to be. (You're not a novel, I tell it. You're not even a novella. You're a novelette. And you're due in on Monday. But the story merely laughs and stretches ominously and I have no idea what this bloody pool is doing in the middle of the forest.)"
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Oh, you silly man. You know better than that. You might as well face facts: that story is going to do as it damned well pleases, and evidently that means being bigger than you'd meant it to be.
Frutiger SAIN Bd v.1
Listen, everyone: Stories are capricious things. Slippery devils that tease you with all sorts of ideas, feed those ideas patiently, and then run off into an entirely unexpected direction, giggling at your gullible ass and waving a red flag in your eyes.
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You may start out believing that your main character is a redhead who loves babies and keeps Christmas, but before you're done she's gone and had a sex change, looks at children as disease-carriers and is a secular humanist thankyouverymuch. Or perhaps you really intended on hiding your MacGuffin in plain sight -- oh, so clever of you! -- but then it ends up in the villain's pocket, where the Judas sidekick stashed it after kicking the main character's dog. Your best bet at this point is to swallow manfully and make the necessary changes so it all makes sense, at least.
Ariel 11 Bold
What is that bloody pool doing where it's at? Never mind that. The story will take care of that. You just make sure it works and it reads pretty.


Your Circuit's Dead.
There's Something Wrong.

Smack, blam, crash. Wheels have come off in a big way today, been building all week, have totally lost the ability to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds, found myself asleep again at my desk again at work, needed red bull just to keep up a pretence of being conscious. Have spent the whole bloody week fighting sleep. Something is not right...
Tahoma 12 Bold
And somehow today, I have also become the guardian of a baby Giant African Land Snail. Called Brian. I may well have demanded it with menaces in the pub last night, as it appeared next to my keyboard when I arrived in the office this morning.

It's rather cute. It will live on my desk and I shall feed it lettuce.

Ugh. Kind of. It's slightly more complex, I go to bed obscenely early, go to sleep fine (usually) then my demon sinuses decide they're going to go haywire and wake me up. That or my daughter decides to start singing at 3am. Or the bastard car alarm across the road goes off. Or the RAF sends a flight of Chinooks over the house. Or some bastard machine comes and does unspeakably loud things to the railway. Or the dog next door gets in touch with its inner wolf and howls at the moon.

Because I work 2 hours away from home I have to get up really early, and occasionally have to be in the office at 7 which means being up at 4.15, so if I have one bad night at the start of the week that's me trashed until the weekend, there's no way of recovering, and the last few weeks at work have been like this.

Then there's the small matter of being on medication, which I've been on for 7 years, which I think is making me horribly lethargic any way - and it's just getting to the point where I'll have to acknowledge that something's got to break, I can't keep pretending that nothing's happening any more, which means talking to bosses and medical-type people. Which I'd tried bloody hard to avoid for a very long time, and was pretty pleased that I'd succeeded.

Fuck it. I has a snail, so why worry about anything else?

Wow. See, I never wanted to take meds for the rest of my life.
You're screwed, anyway, after your system very slowly turns toxic with all the meds. Taking very strong pills for the rest of your life is nuttier than being nuts, for some of us. I for instance, have been told I'm nuts. Normally, I'm not, but when I smoke pot or drink 12 beers, I can be different.

BAD SIGNAL

And I'm actually working today, too. Download continues:

* The contracts are about to be drawn up for my one US comics-convention
appearance next year. Thinking it's time to seriously consider the whole Army
Of Female Bodyguards thing. I mean, I had singing zombie girls last time.
Perhaps there should a t-shirt. Or a temp tattoo. Or maybe just a wooden
cudgel with a sticker on it. "Beware the Gnarled Oaken Knob Of Disapproval."
Yes. Send resumes.

* http://www.coilhouse.net/ celebrates Suzanne Gerber, the women who
(among other things) unwittingly coined the term Godzilla Bukkake, which
CROOKED LITTLE VEIN readers will instantly recognise.

* See, these people have the idea -- http://www.terminalstation.co.uk/ -- is
an audiovisual netlabel. Music, film and images, all free for download.

* If it were up to me, all my new books would look like Ghost Box releases:
http://www.ghostbox.co.uk .

* And yes, that's all building towards a bigger thought, I think.

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If you woke up in your past with every memory leading up to the present, would you make a new future?
THE FUTURE… A man attempts to save the woman he loves… and fails. The world ends, but his story doesn’t.
THE PAST… The man mysteriously wakes up as his 8-year old self, but with every memory leading up to his death.
THE PRESENT…The man arms himself with a broken ensemble of former friends, mentors, and even enemies from another once upon a time he knows will come to pass.
His mission? To kill the future before it kills him. And the clock is ticking.
This is a story of second chances.
This is the story of JOHNNY REPEAT.

MORE HERE:
CITIZEN PRESS
AMAZON
BARNES&NOBLE
Diamond Order Code: JUL063025

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Requiem for Warren Ellis 2007-2007

It's been a long trip, old buddy. Never thought I'd have to see it end. But the constraints of a civilized society and the demand for a regular life have conspired to do you in. I'm sad to see you go, old pal. Know that you'll always be missed and someday, maybe sooner than you think, I'll see you again.

Good night, sweet prince.
===============

My laptop is fairly well fucked. The keyboard doesn't work, except for the 'd' key which will often …
My laptop is fairly well fucked. The keyboard doesn't work, except for the 'd' key which will often just switch on and insert d's into what ever the hell I'm typing. I can make it stop for a while by pressing 'q' a few times on the in-bdiddudidlt dkdedybdodraddddddd.dddddddqqq

There it goes again. Normally I would then go and delete the crap but it's illustrative. I need to take the damn thing back to the shop and get it sent off for repairs but I'm not certain I'll be able to afford the excess on the insurance. Usually I would send it off then panic when I didn't have the money ddddddddddddddqq. Fucking Keyboard.

I hate you so much.

I've not been sleeping well. Staring at the wall until 3am, trying to read but being too tired to parse the words but still unable to sleep. The usually tricks don't work or just aren't available. No boyfriend means no one to stroke my skin until I can sleep and my prescription for codeine ran out and I don't want to appear to be a junkie trying to convince a "We do not prescribe addictive substances" doctor that he should give me sleeping pills and hard-core painkillers.

Housemate M has many, many pills but she doesn't want to risk fucking me up. She did find some painkillers when I had a migraine a few days ago and something else that she looked up on the interwebs and then
warned me to only take it if I got really desperate. It didn't reach that point but it might soon. Idt doesn't matter as much now. The weekend is here so if my sleeping patterns are still retarded then I'll just go out a lot, sleep whenever I can and worry about it later. I've made plans for Monday though, I recruited one of the boys to come over make sure I'm exhausted by 9:30 because friends help friends.

Wednesday was weekly coffee and I managed to get stuck facing the boy who really wants to be my boyfriend and next to the boy who really doesn't but likes taking my clothes off. One of them spends a lot of time naked in my room and the other doesn't. Can you guess which one is which? If you guessed the one who doesn't give me sad puppy eyes then you'd be right! I do not want a boyfriend right now. No, really. I do't want a boyfriend. I want dhappy fun nekkid time and hanging out with my friends. I want time to do the things I want. I want to get drunk on Wednesday and stoned on Sunday.

And why not? I had two long term relationships from the age of seventeen to twenty five. I think it's about time I got out there and did all the stupid things young people do.

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A Grandfather's War Stories

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15127337

Commentary

A Grandfather's War Stories

All Things Considered, October 9, 2007 · Commentator Kenneth Harbaugh grew up hearing tales of war from his grandfather who served in World War II.

When he was quite small, the stories seemed "fun, full of dark humor." It wasn't until he was older that his grandfather revealed the more realistic versions of his narratives.


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Quick Rambling on Love
Have you ever been in love with someone so much that it almost drives you crazy? Not that bad craziness that originates from too many nights at the Circus-Circus but the kind you get from being truly happy. All your friends think you took an extra dose of something but they're not sure what. Having been on that high for a couple of weeks now I can safely say I hope I never come down from it. The crash from something like that would make speed withdrawals seem like a mosquito bite. Hoho yes the crash from a love high has brought many a man (and woman to be fair) to their knees. It's what caused Hitler to commit genocide and Bush to invade Iraq you know. The gravity of such a drop in endorphines has taken better men than me. But I trust the girl that has the strings to my heart. That's another thing about love right? To take a risk and trust the person with your heart? Whether she's a lucky girl or not isn't for me to decide. She seems alright with it and has expressed similar feelings. Even if a little wary. Which is to be expected from an intelligent person, unless of course that person is me. I jumped in whole heartedly (no pun intended). But I'm not worried about my well being in this. No Bubba I'm more worried that I'll make her regret it. Which I hope I don't. That would be bad. Listening to: Scar Tissue by Red Hot Chili Peppers Reading: The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson Thinking: About that special girl in my life. And how my birthday is tomorrow.

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You can take the boy out of the office...
...but not the office out of the boy.

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Hardcore bitches. Finishing up Wormwood comic pages at connecting airport on my way to LA. If it has to get done, it *has to get done* really.

I'm out around the globe currently, partly for my art show, partly for a certain movie I had a little hand in and partly for a bunch of signings internationally that will bloody kill me.

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The first thing you should always do when you get to America, is go to a "Save-On" ( depressing retail store where old people go to die ) and look for anti-Urine products to mock at 1am. ( no, those are not my hands )

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Welcome to LA. Mural at 2am after food.

Posting will be sporadic for awhile, but updates when I can! I'll actually be guest blogging for Powells.com next week, so during that time, I'll just be posting links to what I'm up to over there, with it all reverting back here afterwards.

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Behind the Technological 8 Ball

How do you people keep up with all of this media technology? I feel a bit like I’m behind the curve in understanding all of this. Now that I’ve hit 40 I’m having a harder time keeping up the technological Jones’. In Warren Ellis’ Bad signal this morning he profiled something that was shiny, PDF-Mags. It reminded me of something I did as a kid. Remember Zines? Those one sheet hodge-podges of original poetry, writing or art or whatever slapped onto an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper and copied on a Xerox machine then dumped in various public places? Those who were really hard core had their own mimeograph machines.

I work for a major media company and I have the pleasure to work with some amazing creative and smart people who are using and thinking about how media is distributed to the audience. There seems to be more outlets than you can shake an MP3 at in getting content to the masses. I think it’s great that your ordinary Netizen can create whatever floats their boat and share it with Aunt Myrtle or the Editor of the New York Times. All of this is great but one thing that keeps sticking out like a sore thumb is the quality of the content. Or shall I say lack thereof.

In college I read a slim volume called Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman. He makes it clear that we should put the technological brakes on until we figure out how all of this new fangled poppycock is going to effect culture. I remember as a bright dewy-eyed young man thinking, what a kook, technology all speed ahead. Now I’m not so sure.

We are all bound by time. There are only so many hours in the day that we can consume media and if I have to wade through little Jessica’s YouTube recital or the latest volume of Jackass I am left jaded and despondent over the expression of art and culture in this time and in this place. I turned off regular broadcast television several years ago. I’m a big public radio nut but have turned off the news portion because it’s too depressing. I have a Netflix account and by talking to my friends I get to find out what I should be watching. This puts me about a year behind my other consumers. The tradeoff is I have the time to sit and think while the rest of this technological buzz continues at a deafening level. My colleague who’s an online producer says that any post of more than 450 words and you start to lose audience. I’m over that now so I’ll wrap with a question. How do you consume your media? What’s good or important to you? How do you wade through the dross?

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At 4:26pm on October 14th, 2007, Alfred E. Neuman said…
Welcome to the 21st Century.

Join us, won't you?

(Now, catch up.)
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Update

Loan funded. Whoot! More books are on the way. Book signings set up for Texas. I just got my time off for Florence approved. And the shippers are picking up the art at the end of next week. *gulp* It's really happening. *shrieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek* That is all.

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Personality Architect? A career for the age of aquarium?
Okay, a half-formed thought came to me last week... now that we're all wired and logged in and web 3.0 enabled 365 24/7 and fully digital and all that, how long will it be before someone starts calling themselves a 'personality architect' and charging to build online personas for people?

A quick swizz of Google suggests not yet, but it can't be far off. I'm not talking about people paying someone else to be them online, yeah I know that already happens for people who have already established 'personalities' in other spheres; I'm thinking more about Joe Ordinary thinking 'I'd really like to be popular on FaceSpaceBook or whatever, with tonnes of online friends who love me and think I am wonderful I have spare cash but no time and no charisma - therefore I shall hire my own Personality Architect to construct 'Me' and present 'Me' to the world.' The architect would quiz the client as to what sort of person they wanted to be and use some whizzy algorithms to create interests, vocabulary, books read and films seen, blog posts, the means to interact with the online world.

Or does that already happen, under another name? 'Personal Brand Consultant'? - ah, feck, that one's real...

As I said, a half formed thought. Hell, these augmented exo-personas could take on a life of their own, fall in love and then there'd be a real big shock when the meat-puppets met...


At 4:35pm on October 11th, 2007, muzikanka said…
It's not far off at all, I agree. I've seen people feign terminal illness for attn, just because they weren't interesting enough on their own. These social networks have become such a large part of the internet that I do believe lonely people lacking basic social skills would resort to persona-building in order to make friends or have their moment of internet-fame.

This, of course, just makes me lose faith in humanity a little bit more.

At 5:06pm on October 11th, 2007, Mark S. Jungmann said…
I can't tell you how many conversations we have around here at work that talk about branding. We're non-profit even. It feels vaguely.....unclean.

I must admit I have thought about how I express myself on various social platforms but not very deeply. Other than splashing a consistant "handle" across the interwubs and making sure I don't do any drunken posting I tend to keep personal items fairly private. I don't want my nephews to find out how crazy their uncle really is.

At 10:25pm on October 11th, 2007, Jonathan Carpenter said…
I certainly take much more care not to do anything too incriminating when my name and picture are next to what I'm typing. I think (hope) I exorcised the Internet Moron within a few years back when getting hideously drunk and winding up rednecks on Yahoo Voice Chat still seemed amusing.

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CHOKING ON GROWTH
In China, a Lake’s Champion Imperils Himself
By JOSEPH KAHN
Lake Tai, the center of China’s ancient “land of fish and rice,” succumbed this year to floods of man-made waste. By then, the activist who had been trying to save the lake was in jail.
AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

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"This is the first time in "Warren Ellis' Ning" history when only Mr. Ellis decides who can participate and who can’t. Mr. Ellis decides which person can exist and which member cannot."
VLADIMIR A. RYZHKOV, a Russian democracy advocate and member of Parliament whose user account has been banned.
====================================================================================================
Regrets Only . . .
By HENRY ALFORD
Published: October 14, 2007
I WANT to make it clear that everything you've heard and read is true.(1) I can also no longer deny to myself that there are issues I obviously need to examine within my own soul, and I've asked for help.(2) So if you're so thin-skinned that you took offense to a slip of the tongue that I had, then I offer my apology. I am, am sorry that you were offended.(3)
We admit that several members of our organization allowed an internal power struggle to cloud good judgment.(4) We should have done better.(5) I sincerely apologize and hope people realize that conversations can be easily manipulated in print.(6) And I don't care that he's black or green or purple or whatever.(7)
I failed.(8) I acknowledge that mistakes were made here.(9) I'm not a bad person. I'm a good person, but I said a bad thing.(10) I am not a bigot.(11) I never want to be portrayed as a guy who loses his cool.(12) That was a very intemperate remark made in the heat of the day yesterday in a very misguided attempt to defend my boss.(13) When I called him "Pruneface," it was campaign rhetoric.(14) I certainly would never intend to use the offensive word in its technical sense, and I would not and could not under any circumstances question the parentage of your son, our current governor.(15) Our trust has been broken, and only love can rebuild it.(16)
I probably should have waited a while before I scratch myself and spit.(17) I apologize, but I don't think I had the gay vote, anyway.(18) I certainly hope that no one was harmed or died.(19)
It is a shame that the metaphor I used was taken so radically out of context and slung about irresponsibly by the media.(20) I regret if my comment was misconstrued.(21) He didn't deserve to be whacked around like that, and I'll be the first to apologize to him for that. But he doesn't deserve to be a folk hero either.(22) If there were occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me.(23) Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling.(24) It is with a heavy heart that I apologize this morning to Aunt Jemima.(25)
I did not view it as racial.(26) It's not an ethnic slur. You don't make an ethnic slur before several hundred people.(27) I grew up side by side with black people. Many are my dear friends.(28) As a Latino, I myself am offended.(29)
I can flap my lips all I want. Talk is cheap.(30) If we are deemed responsible for the accidents, that is another matter. However, there are maybe outside causes that had caused the accidents.(31)
There were a lot of human factors.(32) I grew up in a different era, and people said things then that are not acceptable today.(33) I suffered from an illness and I was sick.(34) I wanted to win so bad for my kids and my family, and I apologize to anyone who was inconvenienced.(35) I've lived in a state of constant fear and anxiety.(36) Dealing with being gay, while continuing to meet my public obligations, created tremendous internal pressures.(37) My days are incredible, you know: work, politics, troubles, moving around, public exams that never end, a life under constant pressure.(38) I have become so numb to the horrific things that happen in this world that I sometimes forget that there are still people who feel.(39) I shouldn't have labeled Mike as a "gay prostitute" or "male prostitute."(40)
We're sorry if this joke, which got a lot of laughs, offended anyone.(41) We have listened.(42) As you all know, I'm a satirical person.(43) In the course of the show, split-second judgment is made over ad libs.(44) Unfortunately, the need to babble as often as I do sometimes leads to unintended and unfortunate results.(45) It's three in the morning and the caffeine gets to us.(46) We've never had any type of complaint.(47)
I apologize to whoever I need to apologize to.(48) I apologize that some people don't have a sense of humor like I do.(49) I was trying to be the bigger man, but he was acting childish.(50) I said I'm sorry. What else can I say? I've lied and I admitted it. Life goes on.(51) I'm sure that I'm supposed to act all sorry or sad or guilty now that I've accepted that I've done something wrong. But you see, I'm just not built that way.(52) What do you want me to do? Go over and kiss the camera? What do you want me to do?(53)
Henry Alford is the author of “Municipal Bondage” and “Big Kiss.”

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At an Army School for Officers, Blunt Talk About Iraq

By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: October 14, 2007

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — Here at the intellectual center of the United States Army, two elite officers were deep in debate at lunch on a recent day over who bore more responsibility for mistakes in Iraq — the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, or the generals who acquiesced to him.

Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the Leavenworth commander and the former top American military spokesman in Iraq.

“The secretary of defense is an easy target,” argued one of the officers, Maj. Kareem P. Montague, 34, a Harvard graduate and a commander in the Third Infantry Division, which was the first to reach Baghdad in the 2003 invasion. “It’s easy to pick on the political appointee.”

“But he’s the one that’s responsible,” retorted Maj. Michael J. Zinno, 40, a military planner who worked at the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the former American civilian administration in Iraq.

No, Major Montague shot back, it was more complicated: the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top commanders were part of the decision to send in a small invasion force and not enough troops for the occupation. Only Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who was sidelined after he told Congress that it would take several hundred thousand troops in Iraq, spoke up in public.

“You didn’t hear any of them at the time, other than General Shinseki, screaming, saying that this was untenable,” Major Montague said.

On one level, second-guessing is institutionalized at Leavenworth, home to the Combined Arms Center, a research center that includes the Command and General Staff College for midcareer officers, the School of Advanced Military Studies for the most elite and the Center for Army Lessons Learned, which collects and disseminates battlefield data.

But senior officers say that much of the professional second-guessing has become an emotional exercise for young officers.

Much of the debate at Leavenworth has centered on a scathing article, “A Failure in Generalship,” written last May for Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling

“How do you define what is truly illegal, immoral or unethical? At what point do you cross that threshold where this is no longer right, I need to raise my hand or resign or go to the media?”

. . . questioned whether Americans really wanted a four-star general to stand up publicly and say no to the president of a nation where civilians control the armed forces.

For the sake of argument, a question was posed: If enough four-star generals had done that, would it have stopped the war?

“Yeah, we’d call it a coup d’etat,” Colonel Fontenot said. “Do you want to have a coup d’etat? You kind of have to decide what you want. Do you like the Constitution, or are you so upset about the Iraq war that you’re willing to dismiss the Constitution in just this one instance and hopefully things will be O.K.? I don’t think so.”

Some of the young officers were unimpressed by retired officers who spoke up against Mr. Rumsfeld in April 2006. The retired generals had little to lose, they argued, and their words would have mattered more had they been on active duty. “Why didn’t you do that while you were still in uniform?” Maj. James Hardaway, 36, asked.

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Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is ‘a Nightmare’ (October 13, 2007)
Ed Zurga for The New York Times

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Hillary v. Obama

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At 7:02pm on October 12th, 2007, James Roden said…
You were right...Ning is quite impressive.

At 8:26pm on October 11th, 2007, Trinora said…
Just joined. I stalk you in most other places, figure I should here, too. I fell in love with you at my first reading of Black Gas.. After finishing it, I was crying tears of creeped out joy. Thanks!

At 4:30am on October 1st, 2007, Stephanie Wilson said…
My husband finally got off his hiney and joined The Club of Mars. I'll tell him to come by and say hello to you.

At 11:45am on September 30th, 2007, Michael Woods said…
Hey Warren...with you developing a possible new show for AMC, I was wondering if you have seen their first offering, Mad Men? If so, what did you think?

I think it's an amazing program. Prbably the best running on American television right now.

At 3:36am on September 19th, 2007, aldous huxley said…
I have inserted my penis into the mighty boar god and drank from his brain meat. Today i am no longer real. Now a state of the art fiction . why am i telling you this . fuck do i know.

At 10:57pm on September 7th, 2007, Rachael said…
Wherever you are, there I am, hm?

At 8:19pm on September 7th, 2007, scummboy said…
I have personally infected at least three people with my copy of CLV. Toronto will fall on schedule!

At 7:17pm on September 7th, 2007, Christina Speed said…
Hello!
I used to work at Atomic Comics, and I just wanted you to know, "They are not worthy!" :)