Christopher Hitchens’ article in Vanity Fair tells the true experience of being waterboarded. Not pleasant reading, but necessary.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808?printable=true¤tPage=all
It’s been a few years since I read Stephen Poole’s interesting (if a little pretentious) book about videogames, but given that he’s now giving it away as an e-book, it seems churlish not to mention Trigger Happy
Available now from Wayward Press.
The fourth issue of Market Movies, the free review of cheap DVDs. Except this month, it’s an all-VHS special edition.
Reviewed in this issue:
Batman: Sub-Zero, Beat Street, Goin’ Down To South Park, Saw, Live & Let Die, The Small Back Room, Dick Tracy, Slap Shot, The Office: Christmas Specials, Swordfish, When We Were Kings
The new issue of Market Movies, the free review of cheap DVDs is now available in PDF format (Adobe Acrobat Reader required).
Films reviewed in this issue:
Chopper/Eye of the Beholder/Taxi/Hurly Burly, The Superman Collection, Tape, His Girl Friday, Meet John Doe, Star Trek: First Contact, Modern Warriors, Comic Book Confidential.
I just got a copy of Brewer’s Rogues, Villains & Eccentrics: An A-Z of Roguish Britons Through the Ages, which I had given to my brother-in-law last Christmas and then wished I’d kept for myself. As the title suggests, it’s a directory of all sorts of weird and wonderful characters and makes an ideal book to dip into. Taking a page at random:
Elton, Gladys (1881-1970), pensioner. In September 1960 a male inmate died of a cardiac arrest and five more were treated for shock after 81-year-old Gladys Elton performed a striptease dance at the Haslemere Home for the Elderley in Great Yarmouth. The following year there were three more deaths after one of the patients, 87-year-old Harry Meadows, dressed up as the Grim Reaper and peered through the window at the other residents brandishing a scythe. This second incident caused the Haslemere to be closed down.
What I love about this book is that it feels like a proper reference work, rather than a cobbled-together collection of weirdos. With proper cross-referencing in place, it makes it possible to research themes and ideas for other stories. Categories like: penis, unusual feats achieved with a, lavatories used tactically in the course of robberies, thefts, etc. and ears, nailing to floor mean that Brewer’s Rogues is now sitting on my bookshelf as a legitimate work of reference. I may, however, have to get another copy to keep in the the toilet.
(You can get this book from Amazon.co.uk - check the new and used section to get a copy for as little as £1.99)
The Bony Fish is an occasional journal of pointless speculation. This first issue was published in January 2005 and outlines a somewhat dubious theory that the ‘Back To The Future’ trilogy is a hard-nosed piece of Reaganite propaganda, involving the Book of Revelations, the Iran-Contral scandal and the McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s.
It’s quite a long piece, but I feel I’ve got to put something on this blog.
You can read it by clicking on this link:
The Bony Fish, Issue One
The next issue of The Bony Fish is currently in its very earliest stages. God only knows when it’ll be published… BUT IT WILL BE PUBLISHED!!!
A lovely little magazine called Smoke: A London Peculiar is publishing an article of mine entitled ‘The Time Tunnel’, about the strange sense of retro-futurism one gets from a covered road in the City of London.
Smoke is a great little journal about London, and I recommend that you have a look at a copy. It’s available in most London bookshops, but for those outside the capital, copies can be ordered from their website here: http://home.btconnect.com/smoke/index.htm
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