Eroom Nala's Glob

2003-12-31T07:54:00.000+10:30

All entries for 2004 can be found here

The last film to be seen by me this year is Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West on DVD around about 4 am to 6.30 am or so and just before it I watched the documentary about it on the 2nd DVD. Watched the film with the commentary track on so I got to hear the likes of directors such as John Milius, Alex Cox and John Carpenter comment on the film and Bertolucci talk about his input to the script and Claudia Cardinale say how embarrassing and awkward it was to shoot her first scene with Henry Fonda at the Cinecitta studios with not only the production people but also journalists looking on as she did a pretty risque (for its time) love scene with the screen legend. No sound bytes or interviews with Charles Bronson but there were a few old video interviews with Leone and Fonda.
As for the film itself that was actually the first time I ever saw it . The Morricone score isn't as famous as say The Good the Bad and the Ugly but it was still quite good with each of the 4 main characters having their own theme including Jason Robards.
I don't even remember seeing it on TV ever although I do remember seeing the other 3 Clint Eastwood westerns on TV at various times.
Quite good with an epic quality to it but I don't think there's ever been an epic western to compare with say Quo Vadis or Ben Hur (as to the number of background characters with some story and crowd scenes, complications of plot, etc.) Most western can be reduced to a handful of people interacting in some way. In this case just 4 and even though Cardinale had a major part she was quite passive in it, about as passive as Charles Bronson who seemed to watch things from the side for most of the film.
Picked up a copy of the Sydney Festival program and it seems that Tom Stoppard is doing a talk on the 11th and it's only 35 bucks and a Sunday so as long as I'm not working I definitely plan to go to that as long as I can get a ticket.

In my local comics shop found copies of Gary Spencer Millidge's two Strangehaven books Arcadia and Brotherhood. Also lots of Cerebus to choose from (except for the first four) so I went for Melmoth (the Oscar Wilde issue)

2003-12-30T14:16:00.000+10:30

Xmas presents I forgot to mention included two book vouchers from sisters-in-law which came in quite handy. With one I bought Tragically I was an Only Twin: The Complete Peter Cook and with the other a DVD of Once Upon a Time in the West

Added some new entries to Wikipedia for John Coulthart, The Mindscape of Alan Moore and Shadowsnake Films

2003-12-29T07:58:00.000+10:30

"Sure all men are created equal
Here's a church, here's a steeple"
- REM

Alan Bates yet another sixties British cinema icon died on the 27th of December aged 69. Probably best known for film roles in Zorba the Greek, he also appeared in Hamlet, Royal Flash, The Go-Between, Women in Love, Georgy Girl,A Kind of Loving and Whistle Down the Wind as well as doing some memorable TV and theatre work and had recently received a knighthood in March this year.

2003-12-24T08:01:00.000+10:30

And so this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
A new one just begun
- John Lennon

"That's in all the contracts. That's what they call a sanity clause"
- Groucho
"You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause"
- Chico
In
A Night at the Opera

Volunteered to index the Alan Moore Interview on pgs. 207-239 for the Heroes and Monsters Index Project but probably won't get a chance to do it till early next year.
Hope Lange who played Mrs. Muir in the TV series of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir died a few days ago. She certainly was a beautiful woman. I remember Harry Nilsson once had an acting role in the series after which he said he fired his agent.
Bought my first issue of Dave Sim's Cerebus (Latter Days 32 or #297). Only 3 to go.
Xmas presents for the parents.
For my father Citizen Kane on DVD and for my mother Lillian Jackson Braun's The Private Life of the Cat Who...

Seen on a t-shirt worn by a teenage girl:

So many boys
So little time

2003-12-23T09:02:00.000+10:30

I don't care what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is I'm against it
- Groucho Marx in Horse Feathers

I meant to post before this and I actually did do a post a week or more ago but for some reason it didn't register.

Let's see what's happened in the last few weeks.

Films seen recently. LXG the movie seen on a pirated DVD copied form a South East Asian master complete with hilarious subtitles obviously done by someone who could speak English phonetically even if they didn't always know the meaning of the words.

Even worse than From Hell as an adaptation of an Alan Moore comic. I would say that less than 1% of the original comic made it into the finished film. OK on its' own terms but it could have been so much better. Also saw Master and Commander. Haven't seen a film that good in ages and because a friend wanted to go Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Joe Dante threw in a few reference to 50's SF films but for me the best part was Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck being pursued by Elmer Fudd through several painting in the Louvre including
Dali's Persistence of Memory
Munch's The Scream
Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon.... and
a Tolouse Lautrec poster.

Yesterday I finally made it half way through freezing the first 25 Promethea annotations pages. Up to #13 now. Behind schedule but I hope to have done all 25 by mid-January at the latest.

2003-12-09T13:29:00.000+10:30

2003-12-09T13:26:00.000+10:30

"God is dead, Fred
Fred is dead, God
- Graffiti seen many years ago

It didn't garner as much news coverage as the similar death of Oliver Reed but David Hemmings another icon of the 60's movie scene in Britain died recently. Best known for Blow Up he also had memorable roles in Barbarella, Camelot and The Charge of the Light Brigade plus a role so small that I missed it in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Finally caught up with this on the weekend on a pirated DVD copy made from South East Asia with subtitles obviously done by someone who could speak English phonetically but didn't know what the words meant.
To my eyes less than 1% of Alan and Kevin's original comic book made it into the film. Basically just the title, some character names, the fact that Jekyll becomes much bigger when he is Hyde and one minor character quoting the first line from Moby Dick. Disappointing to say the least. The bit I liked best was the 20th Century Fox logo at the start still appearing in the background after it fades and even that was a ripoff of the first Indiana Jones film.
Also on the weekend saw Master and Commander: The End of the World. Can't remember the last time I saw a film this good.
There was even a joke in it worse than Alan's Matter tau mind in Promethea about

The lesser of two weevils

2003-12-05T13:03:00.000+10:30

Managed to pick up a copy of The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases along with Promethea #28 on Wednesday. To learn more about the Guide check the Official Website
First rough annotations of #28 already done and visible here if the regular page is having too many hits.

The Lambshead Guide should be compulsory reading for all first year medical students

Pills. The Root of all medical evil
- Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead

Also bought the special edition of In Time: The Best of REM
I meant to buy it before but couldn't resist after reading Promethea #28
That Smee in the corner
Losing my religion

2003-12-03T13:20:00.000+10:30

If you have nothing to say, say it - Robert Benchley

Have frozen up to issue #6 of my first Promethea Notes & Annotations page, except that I still need to add some more quotes to Issue #5. So that's Book One almost completed. Only 3 more to go.

Also I managed to index another 10 pages (pgs. 91-100) of Jess Nevins Heroes and Monsters for Damian Gordon's Indexing Project. His League of Leagues page is a good complement to Jess' online annotations. All in all things are going well.

... and Promethea #28 finally comes out today so lots more annotating over the next few days for me.

Have also asked people for help in finding out more about Promethea outside the works of Alan Moore as well as asking if they have any questions they would like to ask of the people who help produce Promethea for my Guide Book.

Also thanks to smoky man managed to get in touch with the Spanish translator of Promethea whose name is Gonzalo Quesada. He actually lives in
Memphis, Tennesse
[wouldn't that be a good placename to use in a song lyric? :-)]
although he's going holidaying in Spain soon but hopefully after that he'll answer a whole lot of interview questions I've sent him. Still waiting to hear back from the German translator whom I sent a similar group of questions about a month ago now.

I notice that John Coulthart has some information about a new 2004 calendar available from his website. Check it out. Wouldn't you like to be looking at those 12 images over the next year. Put one up at your office at work and scare off your co-workers when they come to hassle you.
:-)
Also found out that you can buy his As Above, So Below (Tree of Life like the London Underground Railway system map) as a greeting card, postcard or a poster.
and you can also buy a poster of The Highbury Working CD cover with some extra imagery from Top Shelf.

2003-12-01T17:41:00.000+10:30

You don't want to make a Spoonerism from Huckleberry Finn - Anonymous

Just back from holidays today. I did actually get to a PC a couple of times just to read emails but that was all.
Spent 3 days at Narooma and amongst other things drover past but didn't stay at the Zane Grey Caravan Park in Bermagui.
A quote from a website I've forgotten

Renowned American writer Zane Grey captured, in Hemingwayesque fashion, the thrill of big-game fishing in Bermagui in two books, An American Angler in Australia and Wilderness Fresh.

Also went to see Matrix Revolutions by myself at the Narooma Theatre (9.30 pm till 11.00 screening) and I turned out to be the only one in the audience. First time I've been to a film theatre and been the only one watching the film. Closest I came was many years ago when a friend and I went to see Brian De Palma's Blow Out and there were about 12 people at most in the audience and again a couple of years ago at a local cinema where the same thing happened with The Fellowship of the Ring at a theatre that has since closed down. I told the cinema owner if he wanted to go home early he could just skip the screening but he still went ahead with it. I wonder if the cost of one ticket would have paid enough for the electricity.

Disappointing to say the least especially if like me you haven't actually seen the second film so you don't know why Neo wakes up in a completely white train station lying on the floor. The outdoor scenes weren't all that impressive to me as I know just about all the locations from having walked in them myself. (The film was shot in Sydney). and Bruce Spence seemed wasted in a role that basically reprises the type of character he played way back in Mad Max 2. Didn't particularly like all the gung-ho supermacho attitude to machine guns and robot bodies. Bits of the film seemed to be taken from Star Wars and others from the Alien films. I was so disinterested in who won the war that I wouldn't have cared if the robots won and all the human race were wiped out and the heroines death scene seemed to go on too long for me.

A couple of days later my wife went to see Intolerable Cruelty by herself at the same cinema. Lucikly there were about 6 people in the audience that time. The owner told me that their biggest success recently was Travelling Birds which had about 100 people in the audience for one screening.

Bought a copy of Alan Moore's Yuggoth Cultures #2 and also the Necro-Comicon preview mag. I wonder if that's how it happened to Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby?

2003-11-21T13:45:00.000+10:30

Happy Holidays for me

Off on holiday for 10 days as of tomorrow.

No PCs, no emails to read, no work to do. I haven't had a break this long since just after Rosanna was born and she's more than 17 months old now

My wife and I and our two lovely daughters will be travelling down the south coast of New South Wales and staying at cheap lodgings where we can find them, having teas and biscuits in little coffee shops and generally just seeing rural coastside Australia as much as we can.
I intend to soak up some sun and do a little bit of reading and just relax and forget about life for a while.

2003-11-20T14:23:00.000+10:30

"We could all feel safe, just like Sharon Tate"
- John Cale

At the library where I work I sent out a book entitled Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders on interlibrary loan. It got a very good blurb on the back cover by the author of Helter Skelter. Just before sending it out I browsed through the photos in it. Some nice ones of the beautiful Sharon, some of Charles Manson and of the three girls who did the murders smiling as they go into court and a very sad one of Sharon's corpse at the scene of the crime. When I told my wife about it she said it was nice that at least they put the unborn baby's name on Sharon's tombstone.

Yesterday I bought the Hardcover book of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume II. Worth the price just for the extras alone even if you already have all 6 individual issues of the series. I especially liked this little ditty from Alan:

A CAUTIONARY FABLE

This is the tale of Teddy Teague
who could not wait to read his "League",
With each new month he would complain
"Where's issue six? It's late again!"

Vexed and frustrated he would write
disgruntled letters filled with spite
That called the authors work-shy fops
and threatened them with riding crops.

Grown vain on cash from Tinsel Town,
the pair won't take this lying down
And, finding out where Teddy lives,
go round and do him in with shivs.

In summary, our tale makes clear
that Patience is a virtue dear.
So, gentle reader, know your place,
and don't get on our ****ing case.

other extras include the whole of the flying carpet seen on the first page with all of the carpet visible this time on the last page, a Christmas postcard, an amusing stick your fingers through these two holes to make Mina's legs saucy postcard, Dr. Moreau looking for his lost animal chums, wall carvings or drawings from Mars, how to make Nemo's Nautilus using a single sheet of paper, a colour and save page - remember to stay within the lines, all of the covers including the two compendiums and a reprint of the Game of Extraordinary Gentleman as a fold out, also loved the front and back cover of the New Travellers Almanac made to look like a very aged hardcover leather booklet complete with inkstained thumbprints. It's sitting on my bookshelf right now alongside Volume 1 and the Absolute Edition in the slipcase.

Started reading An HP Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Up to the letter "C".

Here's a good Encyclopaedic entry for Alan Moore and another one for Promethea

2003-11-18T15:16:00.000+10:30

A Half Century for the Magus from Northampton

Todas is Alan Moore's 50th birthday and his official retirement from writing mainstream comics day.

Here's my contribution to the celebration which was updated just today

Happy Birthday Alan Moore

and Ninth Art has created an Alan Moore Index which collects interviews and reviews about Alan and his works including the JH Williams III interview in which he first revealed that Promethea would end with issue #32.

I also finally just about finished the links and images that had to be added to an interview I did with John Coulthart

Finally smoky man has done a happy birthday page Buon Cumpleanno Alan Moore!!! with information about the new Italian translation of Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman

Happy Birthday Alan and may you have 50 more years of productive life with which to astound us.

2003-11-17T18:05:00.000+10:30

"...I hope we passed the audition..."

Been meaning to post something for the past few days but just never got around to it.

Today is the official release date of Let It Be...Naked

Bought a copy and listened to it once already. Hard to listen to Across the Universe and not hear the celestial choir in the background. Going to take quite a few listens before I can shut it out of my minds ear.
Will require several listens before I can appreciate it properly.

It was a good guess about smoky man a few entries ago. One of the reasons he uses small letters is that he likes ee cummings.
Stayed up late a few nights ago to watch a documentary about Dennis Franz of NYPD Blue fame.
I can still remember him from when he still had hair back in the days when he did character roles in Brian De Palma films. I remembered him in Dressed to Kill and Blow Out but forgot he was also in The Fury probably because he wasn't playing a detective behind a desk in that one. Interesting to note that he and Joe Mantegna were in the same theatre troupe in their younger days. I never knew he'd spent 11 months in Vietnam when he was 24.

Book progresses slowly but I've promised myself to spend all my free time reading, researching and writing it from now on. Unfortunately next week I'm off on holiday for about 9 days and won't have a chance to do much work then but once I'm back it's
"Damn the torpedoes full steam ahead".

2003-11-11T13:34:00.000+10:30

Unusual book titles

War and Peas
Finnegan's Funeral
Ten Little (politically correct names for black men & women or native Americans)
The Author Did It aka The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by A. Christie (just not THE A. Christie)
T is for Tantrum - a children's book

Back Cover Blurb

Here's a great quote I plan to use for the back cover blurb of the Promethea Guide book

"a visually stunning ongoing series that's something
like Buffy meets Harry Potter at the Bodhi Tree
Boosktore for an LSD afternoon"
- Jay Babcock

It comes from the LA Weekly article entitled The Rational Shaman

2003-11-10T16:58:00.000+10:30

The End of the Endless

Actually it's really more like the end of reading about the Endless (at least for me). Re-reading is different from reading and I'm sure I'll re-read Sandman in the future sometime.

Finished reading Sandman Vol X The Wake followed by Endless Nights both quite good even though The Wake came out in 1997 and Endless Nights just this year. A 6 year hiatus between major Sandman collections
Asked to sum up Sandman in 25 words or less Gaiman wrote

The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision

He managed it in just 15 words. Now that's a good writer for you.

When I was done with Sandman people asked if I would ever come back to those characters...
Sure I said One day.
This volume (Endless Nights)exists because there were artists I wanted to work with and stories I wanted to tell and because sometimes you look up and realize that one day is now

The days are short, and are too soon over

The nights, for good or bad, can seem endless

Writing these stories was like coming home

Sending and receiving quite a few emails mostly to do with the Promethea Guide Book. Some suggestions from readers and some me contacting a possible distributor for the book recommended to me by one of Alan Moore's friends. I'm really happy with how the book is shaping up even though I still haven't got around to writing a lot of it yet finding the best person to do the dustjacket and (hopefully) the right distributor makes it seem like I'm a whole lot closer to achieving my dream of finally publishing something (even if I am using a pseudonym and not my real name)

Apparently Smoky Man always uses small letters for his name just like ee cummings

also learnt about a small Alan Moore item called The Great Old Ones that I haven't read yet in
The Haunter in the Dark
and a new Alan Moore comic that hasn't been finished yet

"John Coulthart will be doing a decadent, partly computer-generated occult strip called "The Soul."
The Soul is an occult investigatress who operates in or around 1910 - but it's a very strange 1910, a very beautiful, art nouveaux world."

Sounds intriguing

2003-11-07T14:48:00.000+10:30

Metastory: or

The longest story ever told which contains the infinitude of all possible stories ever told or yet to be told within it

Once upon a time the Universe began. Eventually it will cease to exist

The End

I just contacted someone about doing a dustjacket for my Guide Book and he said yes. I won't say who right now but I can say that it is someone very special.

My mood: extremely happy
Listening to: The Highbury Working: A Beat Seance
Reading: just finished Sandman Volume IX The Kindly Ones

Want to feel small and insiginifcant
Read on
Voyager nears sounds of silence
November 7, 2003

After 26 years speeding through the void at 16 kilometres a second, the spacecraft Voyager 1 has boldly gone where no spacecraft has gone before - to the edge of the solar system.

NASA scientists said on Wednesday that the craft had buffeted into a region known as the termination shock, where the sun's wind slams into the radiation from distant stars.

Voyager 1 and its sistership Voyager 2, both launched in 1977, are heading for the far-off stars and both carry messages from Earth - a gold-plated disc carrying the calls of whales and the sound of rock'n'roll - to any extraterrestrial civilisations they might meet.

In the next few years, Voyager 1 will be the first to pass another invisible boundary called the heliopause, where the sun's influence wanes, and true interstellar space begins.

After the craft pass the heliopause, they will enter the region known as the Oort cloud. It could take them 20,000 years or more to get through this region but both will have fallen silent by 2020.

2003-11-06T08:16:00.000+10:30

The Man who Killed Monty Python

Bought a copy of The Pythons a Biography of the Pythons by the Pythons yesterday. I'll just keep it wrapped up and get my wife to give it to me as a Xmas present next month. Read little bits of it and looked at all the photos. Quite a lot I'd already seen in other books, magazines, etc but there are certainly a lot of candid snaps taken during filming script meetings etc. The saddes bit was the last part when you learn about all the problems they had after the Aspen reunion trying to agree with one another on whether to do another stage tour or maybe just one more movie. With Graham dead they could still get away with it. The idea being that they would play their characters from Holy Grail 30 plus years later and what they were up to mostly going on crusades and disagreeing with one another about what to do. It might have been an interesting film but John Cleese definitly did not want to do it which comes as a bit of a surprise when you see the sort of roles he accepts these days. James Bond and Charlie's Angels #2.
Anyway that idea bit the dust but I had a thought what about a film about some demented fan trying to kill them all so they could be reunited. Like that very bad taste Beatles joke after Lennon's death.

Q: What would it take to reunite the Beatles?
A: Three Bullets.

Sadly now the answer would be two bullets
Anyway what with their disrespect for death and other insititutions such as wakes ceremonies. JC became the first person to say the word f**k at Graham's memorial service they could have quite a bit of fun with a movie about someone murdering them off one by one just so that Monty Python could exist as an entity once again.
Anyway silly idea but reading all the problems they had trying to agree on something really makes you wonder how any group of 6 (now 5) people can possibly still stay together as a team even when they are tempted with vast amounts of money.

Also bought a 3 DVD collection of the Marx Bros which has 3 of their best early films:
Duck Soup, Horse Feathers and Animal Crakers.

Also the new Tom Strong #23 Moonday which is a bit reminiscent of two or three earlier Tom Strongs and has a couple of nice jokes but wasn't actually scripted by Alan. I think this is the first time someone other than Alan Moore has written a Tom Strong story (not counting the Terrific Tales ones).
Sadly even though the official publication date for Promethea #28 was yesterday there were no copies forthcoming from DC/Wildstorm/ABC and no reason given. I asked Mick Gray about it and he says the art was finished weeks ago so the problem isn't with the work not being done on time. Hopefully it will be out next week or soon after that.

Just found out that unfortunately an ISBN purchased in Australia only applies to books physically published in Australia so I'm going to have to buy some from overseas instead.
So now the search begins for the most reasonably priced Print On Deman Publisher that offers the best service. Porably the best place to start is Julie Duffy's website but ideally I want one with offices both in the US and Europe. I wonder if you need to publish separate ISBNs one for England and another for the US. Only one way to find out.

2003-11-04T16:32:00.000+10:30

3 Spoonerisms

Butterfly - Flutter By
Dogs Howling - Hogs Dowling
Fireworks - Wire Forks

Wrote first version of Eroom Nala interviews Eroom Nala about Eroom Nala for the book. Will try and get a slight bit of feedback from a few friends about it soon.
Gerlinde Althoff who does the German translations of Promethea for Speed Comics has agreed to do an interview about her translating tasks. Just emailed her the questions today.

Two different people have offered to host my Promethea pages to get rid of all the popup ads and bandwidth problems I've been experience using my free webpages at Bravepages and 0catch.com. Will take them up on it in the near future.

Not sure why Promethea #28 has already been recommended as a Hugo nomination by the Bay Area Weekly SF group when its only just been published tomorrow.

Although both Tom Strong #23 and Promethea are scheduled for publication tomorrow neither of them appears as a first look at milehigh comics and one of my local comic book shops sent me the list of titles that they will receive tomorrow and while Tom Strong #23 is on it Promethea #28 isn't so there might be a slight delay before the next issue arrives.

2003-11-03T19:44:00.000+10:30

Kill Bill questions

SPOILER SPACE

Don't read on if you haven't seen the film
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
All good children go to heaven" - The Beatles

If the bride went all the way to Japan and waited for a month to get that samurai sword made then took her revenge wouldn't the police have enough time to put out a search for Buck's Pussy Wagon? Wouldn't they be able to locate her if she keeps riding around in it?.
If you chopped someone's arm off like the Bride did with Lucy Liu's lawyer wouldn't they just bleed to death unless they managed to staunch the flow of blood?
If Bill was so upset with the Bride leaving the nest of Vipers to marry and have a child why wasn't he equally upset when Copperhead left to do the same thing 6 months later?
Also why the use of a split screen at the hospital when Daryl Hannah attempts to kill Uma Thurman. When DePalma does this sort of thing in his films there is usally a valid reason behind it but I couldn't see why it was necessary to use the split screen here. It just calls attention to itself. Ditto the change from color to b&w and then back again during the big fight scene. Why?

Interesting that Tarantino spent so much time on Lucy Liu's back story but gave us no background information on Copperhead.
A friend of mine commented that one of the main reasons why he had to use animation was the he couldn't have got away with depicting paedophilia with real actors.

It wasn't actually oceans of blood, more like rivers or torrents.
Anyway I still enjoyed the film. It was easy to see that you shouldn't take it too seriously when he starts off quoting an old Klingon proverb.
Loved the effect of the blood gushing out of the body's neck after Lucky Liu cut his head off. Reminded me a bit of Robert DeNiro bashing in someone's brains in with a baseball bat in The Untouchables at a table meeting of gangsters. Also liked the effect of the bamboo and water marking the passage of time as Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu are performing their duel. And all that music that was like something Ennio Morricone had contributed to one of those Epic Western soundtracks that he did was just the icing on the cake.

My contribution to Alan Moore's 50th Birthday can be found here

Watched a DVD about Terry Gilliam from the American Film Institute. Good interviews but unfortunately despite what it said on the label there was no footage of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and no Johnny Depp interview. Also the filmography had Good Omens as being released in 2000. Rather like an old Halliwell's Film Companion that has the last Sean Connery movie as being The Adventures of Baron Munchaussen. Shows that you should never print something until it actually happens.

2003-11-01T12:44:00.000+10:30

I completely forgot it was Halloween yesterday. Celebrating Halloween doesn't occur much in Australia yet although in future it might.

If I could read Spanish a bit better than I do I might consult Fabio Blanco's Blog a bit more often. His title translates as "I needed the money". Fabio is a fellow Alan Moore fan. There are plenty of them scattered all over the globe.

Reading a few good extracts from Michael Palin's Diary about filming Holy Grail and trying to prevent American TV from showing a truncated version of their 4th TV series reprinted from the new Python book in the Good Weekend of today's Sydney Morning Herald. Looks like it's published in Australia and distributed by Allen & Unwin on Monday and the price is $85 Australian

Shame that the actions of a few boorish individuals have resulted in Jess Nevins no longer doing annotations online in future.
Quoting from Jess himself

I've been getting a stream of very insulting e-mails. They suggest things to add to the Smax and 1602 annotations, but they do so in very insulting, condescending, and demeaning ways, to the point where the joy of annotating has been entirely destroyed for me. I just don't need daily suggestions that I'm not bright enough to do this or that annotation, that I'm not as smart or literate as the people e-mailing me, and that I'm not doing a very good job. Annotating comic books was a hobby for me, a pleasant diversion, and a substantial portion of online comic fandom has made it unpleasant and a black cloud for me.
I'm so disgusted with online comics fandom right now that I'm seriously considering retiring from it altogether. It's one thing to get insulting e-mail from people who feel I've insulted them directly; it's quite another to get daily e-mails from people who casually demean me.
I have a choice. I can spend time and effort on the annotations, with no physical reward and a constant stream of comments from people who think I'm not doing a very good job and am not qualified to do the job. Or I can spend time and effort writing my books, which will pay me and give me pleasant feedback. Right now I can't think of a single good reason why I should spend a second longer on the annotations.

Luckily someone has taken over the task of annotating Smax from Issue #3 onwards.

Jose Carlos Neves has just posted a good new interview with Gary Spencer Millidge although he forgot to include a link to my From Hell and Back Annotations

Off to see Kill Bill Vol. 1 tonight.
Probably not too much sex but I'm expecting plenty of ultra-violence and oceans of blood. I like the rating on the poster
"Strong bloody violence"

And they've just re-released Kinky Friedman's 1973 debut album Sold American. I'll have to see if I can find a copy somewhere.

Also I've finally gotten over 1,000 hits for the month of October on my first Promethea annotations page although it took two Octobers to do it (2002 & 2003)
Just click on the monthly link here

2003-10-31T09:23:00.000+10:30

If they don't understand, don't explain
- Joel Biroco

Finished Primary Bibliography for the book. Started compiling Secondary Bibliography.
Read Aethyrs 30-28 in The Vision and the Voice. Think I'll just read the whole thing straight through then go back and re-read it making notes.
Re-reading Alan's articles in Arthur Magazine Issues #4 and #5.

The other day someone was coming in to the library where I work to look at some old home movies shot by a famous Australian still photographer called Sam Hood (not to be confused with an American Civil War photographer with the same name) in 1952. This was the first time someone had actually asked to look at them since they were deposited n the library. It was a bit strange watching a few minutes of some old color film of 2 little kittens playing in a garden that must have been dead for more than 30 years now.

Have to rush off and put my tax form in now as today is the last day to get it done without being fined.

2003-10-30T14:07:00.000+10:30

"Anger is an energy"
- John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten

Listening to Public Image Ltd. The Greatest Hits, so Far.
I can still remember the first time I saw the video for Rise and how much I liked it.

Finished reading the Lesser Clavicle of Solomon the King also known as the Goetia. Basically a list of the 72 major demons with their sigils and attibutes. After that it's on to Crowley's The Vision and the Voice.

Found a copy of Bring on the Girls by PG Wodehouse and Guy Bolton. Can't remember if I've ever read this before as I must have read more than 80 of the 90 plus books that Wodehouse published in his lifetime. This one has some nice pictures of the likes of Florenz Ziegfeld, Marion Davies, Charlie Chaplin, Fred and Adele Astaire, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Noel Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Douglas Fairbanks and WC Fields.
I especially like the caption accompanying Wodehouse's picture

Critics have often commented on the sombre gloom which permeates all Wodehouse novels, like the smell of muddy shoes in a locker room

I'm on holiday the last week of November so I'll probably try to read it then.

Picked up a copy of the penultimate Terra Obscura #5

Started compiling a primary bibliography for my Promethea book which isn't too hard as it just consists of all the Promethea issues and Books, plus two Tom Strong issues and Little Margie in Misty Magic Land. The hardest part is making sure I get all the credits right. For instance Jeromy Cox only started coloring it from Issue #4 onwards and he had some help on Issue #5 too.

2003-10-29T15:29:00.000+10:30

Mortality

"It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years" - Tom Lehrer

Bothered by insomnia so I ended up finishing Sex and Rockets sometime between midnight and dawn.
Picked out one obvious mistake on pg. 169:
"On May 8, 1949, some months after the Abyss working - and possibly because of it, in Parsons' mind - he was hired by the Hughes Aircraft Company. At that time, he wrote Crowley..."
For one thing the Abyss working occured in 1946 and for another Aleister Crowley died in 1947 so I think the year meant is actually 1946. Hopefully this will be fixed in the new revised edition due out this month.
I've already outlived Jack Parsons, I've also outlived John Lennon and next year I will have outlived Elvis Presley.

I remember when I found out Douglas Adams had died how sad I felt especially as he left behind a very small daughter but then I thought of:
Douglas Adams (1952-2001)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
and the contrast between the last few years of each of their lives. At least Mr. Adams got to enjoy his last few years even if he did have writers block whilst poor Oscar suffered in jail and poverty dying in exile.

I met Mr. Adams in the flesh twice. Once when he was here for a Sydney Writers Festival and was up on stage talking and taking questions from the audience and also when I got him to sign my copy of the Starship Titanic CD-Rom game. I asked him if John Cleese was the uncredited voice of the bomb and he told me that no it was actually Jeremy Brett. In reality it was John Cleese

John Coulthart has now put up a larger sized image of the film poster for The Mindscape of Alan Moore on his website.

Thanks to this Alan Moore Fan Community Journal I just discovered I've just learnt that it looks like a new Harback edition of From Hell is going to be published by Top Shelf on the actual day that is my 42nd birthday. I suppose this is appropriate as From Hell was the first Alan Moore book I ever read.

Listening to Elvis Costello's Armed Forces

2003-10-28T15:15:00.000+10:30

A 3 Day Birthday Party and a new Film

Last Friday was my oldest daughter Amelia's third birthday so I had the day off work and took my two girls and someone else's little boy to a place called Mousetraps which is an indoor childrens play area while my wife got the house ready for the parties. Amelia asked me why it wasn't called Micetraps. Good question.
Saturday was the children's birthday party and Sunday a much smaller and quieter party for the older relatives. All in all it went quite well although it was a bit tiring.
She seemed quite happy with her major present (A trampoline)

I'm just up to the chapter on the Babalon working in the Jack Parsons biography. Probably would have finished it by now except that I've been reading Sandman Volume VIII Worlds End.

A new Alan Moore film just premiered at the San Francisco Film Festival a few days ago called the Mindscape of Alan Moore. The production company is called Shadowsnake Films. John Coulthart who designed the films' poster writes that

Shadowsnake (as it says on the site page) is the company behind the Alan Moore doc., 'The Mindscape of Alan Moore'. I've done the poster for the film. Idon't think they've had much chance to develop their site, they've been too busy finishing the film and approaching festivals about a screening.
People are going to be knocked out by the documentary, as it's the best thing that's been done to date about Alan and his work/life. A lot of the TV stuff he's been involved with has been cheap and amateurish, this is leagues beyond them all, with great sensitivity and intelligence shown towards his comics and his philosophies. Good music as well. And you get to hear how Rorshach speaks when Alan reads the opening lines from Watchmen at one point.
and also
Dez tells me there'll be a cinema release if they get distribution then, eventually, it'll be out on DVD.
Really looking forward to seeing this now.
Listening to Revolver which I still think is one of the Beatles best albums, even better than Sgt. Pepper.

2003-10-23T08:13:00.000+09:30

An Early Birthday Present for Alan Moore

Someone called Jean Rogers has come up with a great idea for fans of Alan to help contribute to his 50th birthday.

A Long Awaited Party

Basically just take one panel from any one of his comics and write what you can about it. I'm going to choose a Promethea panel of course but the problem is to decide which one from the 27 issues available so far.

Also stay tuned for yet another competition I'm going to run with 3 Alan Moore Prizes to be won. Basically I''ll be asking people for help and ideas about what they would like to see included in my

From the Radiant Heavenly City to the End of the World

book.

Including maybe a better title. I don't know whether to go for the long title or try and come up with a shorter one. Anybody have any opinions about a good title for

a Guide to Alan Moore and JH Williams III's Promethea (1999-2004)

which is the subtitle I've picked for it.
I'm also planning on calling my publishing firm

Epimetheus Books

and putting the publication date on the title page in Roman numerals because I think

MMIV

looks kind of cool.
Any opinions?

PS the front cover image, synopsis and publication date of Promethea #29 have recently been revealed. See Alan Moore Fansite for details.

Finished reading Sandman Volume VII Brief Lives which I bought yesterday.
Sad to see Morpheus having to kill his own son. Killing your father is patricide but what is killing your son called?

also bought a copy of American Splendor Bedtime Stories

2003-10-21T11:29:00.000+09:30

We don't live in a yellow submarine
We live in a purple aeroplane -
Spike Milligan

The Beatles: Gynaecology

Another item to add to my list of
Things I wish I could get for Xmas this year and which I want someone to buy for me as they are a bit expensive list is
The Pythons: Autobiography of the Pythons which is already out in the States and the UK but which I have yet to see in any of my local bookshops. Some nice reviews of it at Amazon.com
Another website that I look forward to reading is the new John Cleese website which should be up and running any day now when he's had a chance to make a cup of tea and put out the cat

Finally a copy of Sex and Rockets by John Carter which I asked to borrow from Western Australia (the only library in this country that has a copy) has arrived. But it has to be returned by 7th of November which only gives me a couple of weeks to finish it. Guess what I'll be reading on the train over the next few days. It's only 198 pgs long, has a foreword by Robert Anton Wilson and the pages look almost like photocopies instead of a proper book but nice to put a picture to the man known as Jack Parsons who was actually christened Marvel Whiteside Parsons and thought of himself as the antiChrist.

2003-10-17T12:38:00.000+09:30

Another Idea
for the book is a short essay about
Promethea outside the work of Alan Moore
All about other people who have used the word Promethea before, after or during the publication of Alan Moore's Promethea.
Listening to
Nick Drake's Bryter Layter
Remembering how much I enjoyed Michael Crichton when I first got into his books reading Sphere in bed late one night and not being able to put it down so that I ended up reading all night from midnight till dawn just to finish it. Also liked Jurassic Park (the book not the film), Eaters of the Dead and Rising Sun but whilst reading Timeline it felt a bit like the later James Bond films where you know that no matter how bad things look for him he's still gonna get out alive at the end of it all.
Suppose it's a bit like Stephen King. His early stuff like The Shining and The Stand is great but he started to repeat himself later on and I haven't read anything he's written in the last ten years or so now, although I might give his new Dark Tower novels a go when they finally get published.

2003-10-16T15:01:00.000+09:30

2003-10-16T12:47:00.000+09:30

This entry has no title

Yes it has

Bought a copy of the film tie in collection of American Splendor which collects American Splendor and More Amercian Splendor in one volume

At the moment I've got two ideas to use as introductions to my Promethea book which I won't elaborate on here except to entitle them
1) "Once upon a time...."
and
2) Eroom Nala interviews eroomnala about Eroom Nala
I'm just putting it down here to remind myself of when I thought of them

My schedule at the moment (which I probably won't be able to stick to) is to go back and revise Issues #1- #25 by mid to late December and try and finish a preliminary rough draft version of the book in time for my 42nd birthday in early April.
I'm going to start on the book itself proper as well a little bit after next weekend as it's my oldest daughter's 3rd birthday on the 24th (Friday) and we'll be having the big party for kids and parents on the Saturday followed by a smaller party for grandparents and one close aunt of my wifes on the Sunday which won't give me much of a chance to work on it until after the weekend.

For background reading almost finished re-reading and taking notes for Joel Biroco's Kaos #14. Next up is Crowley's The Vision and the Voice

And it looks like Promethea #28 wont be out until November 5th now.

2003-10-15T18:37:00.000+09:30

Wacky Races

Not just two but three Alan Moore titles picked up today.
Smax #3
Yuggoth Cultures #1
and the latest Tom Strong's Terrific Tales.
First story in Terrific Tales is Alan's take on the old Wacky Races cartoon TV series. One of my favourites when I was growing up. There's even an equivalent of Muttley as Saveen's sidekick. Also some great sendup of the typical Saturday morning TV ads that interrupt these sort of programs.

If you want the best seat in the house move the cat
- on a fridge magnet my wife bought.

and the T-shirt I wore to work today reads:

Thousands of years ago cats
were worshipped as gods

Cats have never forgotten this

2003-10-14T08:33:00.000+09:30

Catching Up

Been meaning to write another entry in the last few days but somehow never got around to it.
Finally caught up with Ghost World (the comic) by Daniel Clowes and American Splendor (the film). Both slightly sad and wistful one about two teenage girls growing up and the other about a public servant coming up to retirement.
Harvey Pekar even has his own webpage where he keeps a blog.
I still have to see Ghost World the movie and read American Splendor the comic book. The only bit of American Splendor I've seen apart from what was shown in the movie was one page drawn by Alan Moore in 1990 and reproduced on pg. 161 in the Extraordinary Works of AM.
Also catching up with Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Just finished Book VI Fables and Reflections and found a copy of a CD I'd bought called the Marx Bros Sing & Play which has all the music and some dialogue from all but their last two films.
Also got a preview of the first four pages of Smax #3 at Milehigh Comics. Top panel on page 4 looks especially interesting. That and the first issue of Yuggoth Cultures should be out tomorrow.

Finally also helped to index pgs. 51-60 of Jess Nevins Heroes and Monsters in the H & M Index Project started by Damian Gordon.
Good practice for when I plan to index my Promethea book.

Also finally posted online my annotations to Gary Spencer Millidge's From Hell and Back parody that appeared in Bart Simpsons Treehouse of Horror #9. You can view them on my site or else at Jess Nevins Annotations Page where I'm sure a lot more people will see them.
Our library has the first of five books of the Viz Comics adaptation of Miyazaki's Spirited Away. It's strange to read a book from right to left.
On the first page you turn to is a note
This book is printed and should be read in its original Japanese right-to-left format. Please turn it around to begin!

2003-10-09T07:10:00.000+09:30

"...I know nobody can do me no harm"
- Happiness is a Warm Gun

Had things worked out differently today would have been John Lennon's 63rd birthday.
Happy Birthday John wherever you are.
At least George is there for company along with Julia, Stu Sutcliffe and Brian Epstein.
We'll all be joining you before too long in any case. Just a blink in the cosmic eye.

2003-10-07T07:29:00.000+09:30

Don't overtake the Undertaker

On the train to work this morning listening to the Beatles Past Masters Vol. 2 on my Walkman. As Hey Jude was playing I looked out the window to see the power lines of the next train track in the sky looking slightly like a musical stave some with birds for notes and the swelling hymnal bit of the Na-na-na-nas filling my ears. Later on as I walked from the station to work the sun shone through a cloudy sky as the Let it Be chorus welled up in volume.
Apparently all us Beatles fans can get milked by the man once more come this Xmas or so when the original version of the Let it Be music is finally released on CD minus all the extra orchestration or as Lennon put it so memorably The Beatles with their pants down. This version will be called Let it Be...Naked and is due for release on Nov. 17th.

Here's a nice link about
How to be an obsessive Beatles fan
Have been transferring all my old Promethea Issues 26-32 files from the old address over to a new web address. Managed to finish all the text copying but still have to transfer some images across. Takes quite a while to do.
Put in an application for 12 month IT Help Desk Support Officer Job. Let's hope I get through to an interview this time.

2003-10-02T08:21:00.000+09:30

Recent Deaths
Robert Palmer, musician 26 September
Donald O'Connor, actor 27 September
Elia Kazan, director 28 September

As Kurt Vonnegut so eloquently put it in Slaughterhouse Five
So it goes

My 13 year old nephew has been down in Sydney for about a week so I've been showing him the touristy sites like the Zoo, The National Maritime Musuem, the Imax theatre where we saw Ghosts of the Titanic in 3-D which for some unknown reason in the USA is entitled Ghosts of the Abyss when it's about the Titanic and not the Abyss, the Sydney Observatory where we got to see the craters of the moon through the oldest telescope in Australia [it used to be the 2nd olcest but the previous oldest one was burnt in recent bushfires in Canberra last year] and finally the Sydney Aquarium plus as a treat for him the new Lara Croft movie the Cradle of Life. I would have preferred to see Pirates of the Caribbean but unfortunately he's already seen it and LXG the movie didn't actually start in Sydney until today. One reviewer has described it as 7 Characters in search of a plot and only gave it 2 stars out of five so I'm not really expecting much from this atrocious adaptation.

I've just added a listing of this blog to
The Pepys Project and
Volume of Interactions. I wonder if anyone will be bothered to rate it?

2003-09-24T12:15:00.000+09:30

"I'm full of dust and guitars"
- Syd Barrett

Just finished reading Madcap: The half-life of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's lost genius. A bit sad but somehow not as sad as I expected. He doesn't seem as mad or depressed as most of the media have made him out to be.

Three PC words
Pizzicato
Pussy Cat
Pizza Cutter
This is the sort of thing that goes on in your head when you read a lot of children's books.
Nice to get an interview from Leonardo Rizzi the Italian translator of Promethea yesterday. He took over a month to translate Issue #12.
Issue #27 is finally out today but I'm working till 6 pm. Luckily one comic book store stays open till 7 tonight so I'll pick up a copy after work and start annotating it on the train home.

2003-09-20T12:27:00.000+09:30

Death of an Australian Icon
Slim Dusty an Australian country singer who held an iconic status in the music field comparable to Johnny Cash in the US has just died at the age of 76.

It's ironic that I keep getting a pop up ad just after I bring up a webpage saying do I want to stop receiving pop-up ads.
I'm reminded of some Philip K Dick novels and stories where little robot ads just wouldn't leave the poor protagonist alone.

2003-09-19T09:42:00.000+09:30

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Arr ye scurvy landlubbers, it be international Talk Like a Pirate Day today

Ok that's about enought of that.
I still haven't got around to seeing Pirates of the Caribbean. Hopefully next week.

Nice letter from Michael Palin today. I haven't checked out his Palinstravels Page for a while but I did join his mailing list. He wrote this on Sept. 11th (2nd anniversary)

QUOTE
Though we spent some time on the Afghan border, where many Taliban and indeed Osama himself are reported to have sought refuge, we received wonderful hospitality and at no time sensed any direct hostility towards us.

The image of Pakistan is, sadly, linked in our Western press headlines with terrorism, and other bad news, which has resulted in an explicit advice against unnecessary travel from the British Foreign Office.

I felt that there is a danger of over-reaction here. There is barely a country in the world where you will be completely safe (certainly not in the UK or America), and Pakistan has many links with Britain, has many articulate and well-educated people and the Muslim tradition of hospitality remains strong. Taking reasonable precautions, you should find yourself safe in a country with modern communications and accommodation facilities and English widely spoken.

Unfortunately fear feeds on ignorance and the less we go to Pakistan the less we know about their country and the less they know about ours. This is an ideal situation for the fear-mongers on all sides to exploit.

Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won’t be made safer by creating barriers between people. Cries of “They’re evil, let’s get ‘em” or “The infidels must die” sound frightening, but they’re desperately empty of argument and understanding. They’re the rallying cries of prejudice, the call to arms of those who find it easier to hate than admit they might be not be right about everything.

Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.

ENDQUOTE

I think that was worth quoting in full.

Reading Kenneth Grant's Nightside of Eden on the train to work this morning.
He writes about Crowley
According to Liber 474 the universe has to be destroyed

but then goes on to explain that
by the Universe We man not that petty Universe which the mind of man con conceive, but that which is revealed to his soul (pg 34)

Milehighcomics first looks page only has Terra Obscura #4 and not Promethea #27 as coming out next week so it looks like there might be another weeks wait until we finally get to see it.

2003-09-18T14:29:00.000+09:30

"My karma ran over my dogma"

Some good advice from Joel Biroco to bring me back down to earth.

QUOTE
Someone asked Kingsley Amis: "What's the best way to get a book published?"

He answered: "Write one."

You are committing the sin of everyone who first wants to write a book: getting ahead of yourself.
ENDQUOTE

Very true. I'll stop making plans for what happens when it's published and just attempt to write it first.
Back to reality once again.

Just bought and read Alan Moore and Zander Cannons' Smax #2. Now we all know how Smax got that handmark on his chest. Quite a gruesome little episode.

2003-09-17T14:59:00.000+09:30

"Life is short.
Eat pudding first"

My brother-in-law used to quote that when he was cooking dinner for us whilst holidaying in Australia from Oxford with his family many months ago now.
I take it to mean that you never know when you're going to die so do the things you really want to now otherwise you might never get around to them.
If there aren't any publishers willing to take a risk on producing a guide to Promethea then I might as well just use a Pay On Demand (POD) printer such as Lightning Source.
Tentatively I'll try and knuckle down to it and start proper work on it this November giving myself 12 months to complete it so that by Nov. 2004 it should be finished & ready to be sent out to potential buyers. The actual time I finish it largely depends on when Issue #32 & then Book 5 are finally published but at the moment I'm guessing that they should be done by Nov. next year at the latest.
Anyway to start off with I'm going to do some research & get stuck into reading as much as I can about the Kabbalah, Austin Osman Spare, Kenneth Grant and Jack Parsons or if you prefer John W Parsons.
I've already read quite a bit of Crowley and Dee so I just have to re-read the relevant publications such as Magick, Book of Thoth, 777 and study the Frieda Harris/Crowley Tarot deck in detail.
Then come November i can get stuck into re-reading Promethea issues already published, making notes & seeing if I've missed anything in my annotations.
Wish me luck

FADE IN 1st movie caption
This is a true story
[Pause]
FADE IN 2nd caption
Only the facts have been changed

I don't know if this is just an urban myth or not but read in the paper today about 2 young boys who went to see Sense and Sensibility because they thought it was a sequel to Dumb and Dumber.
Also this from the same paper
"The US National Book Foundation has awarded horror writer Stephen King its 2003 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters"
and at the end of this article

"He is a man who writes what used to be called penny dreadfuls," Yale Professor Harold Bloom said. "That they could believe that there is any literary value there or any aesthetic accomplishment or signs of an inventive human intelligence is simply a testimony to their own idiocy."

Talk about literary snobbery. When they were first publshed stories/novels such as Jekyll & Hyde, Dracula and maybe even Sherlock Holmes were probably considered no more than Penny Dreadfuls but look at the status they hold now.
I haven't read any Stephen King for quite a few years now as I tend to see him repeating himself too often and the shock factor tends to wear off but his writing works at a gut level of emotional power not intellectual interest. I'm sure he deserved the award.

The Mad Sadist meets the Sad Masochist

For no particular reason I remembered an old Dave Allen joke about a sadist who ties up a masochist and the masochist asks him
"Are you going to hurt me?"
to which the sadist replies
"No" and then walks away.
Another one I like is about a man who goes to a psychiatrist because he thinks he's a dog. The doctor shows him in saying.
"Relax. Make yourself comfortable. Lie down on the couch"
to which the patient replies
"But I'm not allowed on the couch"

Sorry Joel

Looks like Joel Biroco took me too seriously when I was merely trying to be flippant.
QUOTE
Was asked a question by Eroom Nala:

Could you point out the quickest and safest way to immerse myself in the occult without relying on hard drugs, extreme sexual practices… and getting involved in personal vendettas against other magicians that you disagree with… Also without having to join any major cult (except maybe the Moon & Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels).
Basically, what you describe is immersing oneself in the occult. Anything else is reading books. As J J Hunsecker said in The Sweet Smell of Success: 'I love this dirty town.'

The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels does not actually exist, and so it doesn't have members. I am not a member. Alan Moore is not a member. Steve Moore isn't a member either. Nor is John Coulthart. Nor is…

ENDQUOTE

Sorry about that Joel. I didn't really mean it seriously, honestly. After all I've read all of KAOS 14 including the article where the two Moores (Alan & Steve) explain that
The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels doesn't actually exist in the conventional sense; or if it does, we don't belong to it"

What I really want to do is immerse myself in books about the occult so that I can write about it from an academic perspective without getting caught up in it. Just be an observer/absorber who reports on what he sees. I guess it's just not possible to do that. Even scientists conducting scientific experiments trying to be objective are somehow supposed to determine the outcome on a subquantum level.

2003-09-15T16:05:00.000+09:30

Magic Casements

was the name of the speculative fiction festival I attended on Saturday at the NSW Writers' Centre. There were 2 sessions going on concurrently throughout the day from 10 am till 4 pm but I could only attend half of them so I ended up going to
Oh for a Muse of Fire!: sources of inspiration
The main speakers were Caiseal Mor and Lousie Katz. Mr. Mor made a nice impression and seemed a little bit nervous but soon overcame it giving information about how he doesn't differentiate between dreams and reality and how overhearing his next door neighbours arguing at all sorts of odd hours whilst he was trying to write inspired him to use their words in the mouths of a pair of squabbling birds in the book he was writing. He took a photo of the audience which he promise to put up on his website in the near future. Louise Katz described how Salvador Dali tried to influence how he painted and also how if he got bored at a dinner party he would imagine an owl shitting on the party guests and let his mind go off on a tangent about it.
The art and craft of building imaginary worlds
had Terry Dowling, Richard Harland, Maxine McArthur and Fiona McIntosh giving us information on how the did exactly just that. Richard described how he went into meticulous encyclopadic details about the contents of his world even if he only every ended up using about 10% of that within the actual novels, Fiona shocked quite a few people by revealing that she never plans her plots but just lets the characters and the situations virtually write themselves. Also she has good proof readers who correct any major mistakes she happens to miss.
Not sure which of the two approaches appeals the most to me.
After a nice lunch in the afternoon I attended
A view from the Ivory Tower: Academics speak
There were three in all. Kim Selling, Susan Batho and Ruth Drobnak. The red wine I had for lunch and the nice restful afternoon probably put me in siesta mode so that I didn't fully attend to what everyone was saying but there were some good hints on academia and its relation to speculative fiction as well as debate on whether it was an influence for good or bad
The last and probably most enjoyable session of the day was
Shadows and Light: The horror and the humor
The main speakers were Simon Brown, Robert Hood, Richard Womack and Chuck McKenzie.
Robert made the best impression closely followed by Chuck. Mr. Hood explained how he has now somehow found himself referred to as a world authority on Zombie Movies and how when he was researching how many new ones had appeared since he last updated his review of them he was surprised that there were still so many being produced.
The day concluded with a flash fictions where you could pay $5 and read out a story of less than 500 words in 3 minutes to win one of 3 prizes. I was considering entering but I had neglected to print out my story and I didn't have $5 left at the end of the day and I would probably have been to gutless to stand up in front of people and read it aloud.
Anyway here is the story I would have read out if I had summoned up enough courage and money, etc.
I have to warn you that it's a very short story with a very bad punchline.
Any ideas on how to improve it, make it funnier, criticisms (eg. I could see that last line coming a mile off) can be sent to eroomnala@yahoo.com.au

THE WAGER

"Where did Noah keep his bees?"
"In the ark hive"
- Old Librarian's joke
We were playing our normal weekly round of golf when an idea struck me. Philip Sofanowski, Harold Starkey and I had been constant golfing companions for many years now. Our 3 handed matches always ended with the two losers buying all the drinks for the winner at the 19th hole. Since each one of us would drink much more than our usual share when someone else was paying, this exercise could prove quite expensive for the losers.
We had been friends long enough to know the limitations of the spare cash we each carried from week to week so no one had ever gone way overboard on the amount of drinks he forced the others to buy for him but there had been quite a few close calls along the way.
Unfortunately this particular week I was a bit strapped for cash and as the game progressed I tried to think of a way to escape embarassment should I prove to be one of the losers.
Luckily about halfway through the game I came up with an idea to help me save face.
"Hey guys" I said "just suppose that for the sake of variety and to make things a bit more interesting this time instead of the winner getting free drinks today we each wager the most valuable thing we have in our possession right now?"
They both thought about this for a split second and Philip spoke first.
"You mean including at home or…."
"No no" I explained "something that you've got on you right now at this very moment"
"And what would that be in your case?" Harold asked me slyly.
"Well there's this book I just finished reading. It's in my bag actually. Probably the most interesting and amusing book I've finished in the last 10 years. The author went from living in near poverty to extreme wealth once the book was finally published and all the royalties came in. Just read it and you too could have some idea of how to find/achieve untold wealth beyond your wildest dreams"
Neither of my companions were great readers so I knew they'd both be intrigued by this offer. It was now their turn to put up a similar wager if they were interested so I asked
"What's the most valuable thing you've got right now?"
"That's easy" said Harold. "This club my wife bought me for our anniversary last week. I may not have won many games with it yet but every time I use it the shot goes clean and straight and I always manage to sink the ball."
I turned to Philip
"And you?"
"I suppose it's the good luck charm I've got on the end of this keychain. A rock my uncle game for my 18th birthday. Whenever I start feeling down or depressed and my game isn't up to scratch I hold it in the palm of one hand and rub it between the thumb and forefinger of the other for good luck.
We all agreed that whoever won the game would get to keep the most valuable possession that the other two had.
We shook hand on it then and there. Friendship is a wonderful thing.
As Harold teed off Philip handed me one of the new business cards he'd just had printed up.
Philip O. Sofanowski
I.T. Consultant
His mobile number and email address were at the bottom.
In all the years I'd known him I was never aware that Phil had a middle name.
"What does the O stand for?" I asked him.
"Nothing" he shrugged.
We smiled silently at this quote from one of our favourite movies.
Over the years Phil had copped quite a few jokes about his surname which we normally shortened to Sofa. Whenever he was playing a good game we would come up with something like Sofa so good and he would groan softly as he lined up his next shot.
Luckily by the time we reached the last hole I was ahead of the others by too wide a margin. Harold took out the club he was wagering and managed to putt the ball into the hole with one shot but I still ended up winning. And that's how I came to own Harry's putter and Phil O. Sofa's stone.
Postscript
The punchline will probably be a bit clearer to UK and Australian reader rather then US ones where Philosopher was replaced by Sorceror.
I find it a bit annoying that US publishers think American children aren't sophisticated enough to have heard of the Philosopher's Stone or to not know what a philosopher is. Just as all publishers assume that books are less succesful if readers know it to be written by a woman instead of assuming it was written by a man. I suppose we have George Eliot and George Sand to thank for that.

Eroom Nala
Sydney, Australia
28th January 2002

Final PS
Johnny Cash died a couple of days ago aged 71.
Ironic that ABC TV broadcast a quite good documentary about him only a week ago and that the Sydney Morning Herald Computer Section known as Icon had a Sites X should have bookmarked section every week and on the day he died the X was Johnny Cash himself.

2003-09-12T10:44:00.000+09:30

On Having a Galaxy named after you

Strange to find a galaxy named after me at a page written by Lard Biscuit and even stranger still to have it instantly destroyed

In some far-flung corner of the universe, the Nala Eroom Galaxy and its eighteen trillion sentient lifeforms were instantly consumed by flame. The transgressor would pay

although to be honest Nala Eroom is not exactly the same as Eroom Nala and he might have thought up the name before I did or before he'd heard about me.

Monkey Brain isn't interested in publishing a Promethea book or at least not for a while.
Here's their answer.

Thanks for the submission, but I've done some research recently, and I'm not
sure that there'd be sufficient market interest in a Promethea companion at
this point. Perhaps further down the line, when the trades have generated a
larger audience, but at this point I think the readership of the book is too
small to support an ancillary project like this.

So now I've also asked a small Australian Publisher plus TwoMorrows and Abiogenesis Press.
If no one is interested I'll still go ahead and write it but instead of publishing on paper I'll simply post it on the net somewhere and if people want to read it like a book all they have to do is print it out.

2003-09-10T16:26:00.000+09:30

Hitler's Henchwoman Dies

I've almost finished reading a new biography of Aleister Crowley called Perdurabo and that's the sort of newspaper headline that comes to mind when reading today's obituaries.
Leni Riefenstahl died at the age of 101. In history's pages she will be known as the woman who helped popularize the Nazi party with Triumph of the Will and Aryan supremacy with Olympiad but how different it might have been had Germany ended up winning World War II. In that case directors such as John Ford and Frank Capra would have found themselves ostracized for the allied propaganda they produced during the war and never have made a film again whilst Leni would have gone on to make numerous films and maybe even win the Academy Award or at least Germany's equivalent of the same.
There was some mention in certain obituaries that she is now largely forgotten by people today but at the library where I work people are always borrowing or setting aside books about her. Maybe her films are on a lot of study lists for students. After all she is probably the best know Female Director of the 20th century.

On the radio this morning they were playing Light My Fire and when Amelia asked me what it was called I said
"C'mon baby light my fire" to which she replied "Babies can't light fires. That's dangerous"

Nice to see John Goodman in a nice meaty role on TV once again on the season finale of the West Wing as he takes over being President of the United States from Martin Sheen.

The wheels I set in motion a short while ago have started rolling properly now as I have started emailing people for advice on a book proposal I've put together for my guide to Promethea idea.

2003-09-09T08:29:00.000+09:30

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen

- Werewolves of London

Warren Zevon the singer-songwriter responsible for Werewolves of London died recently aged 56.
I still remember the first time I heard the song when Scorsese's Color of Money was first being promoted using a clip of Tom Cruise dancing and showing off around a pool table.

2003-09-08T10:17:00.000+09:30

"Cry havoc and let loose the Dogs of War"
- Shakespeare

"Be quiet and just watch the Cats of Peace"
- Holdfast

Day after Fathers' Day

Nice day yesterday off to the zoo with the wife and two girls. This is the second time I've been a father on father's day and now there's two little daughters instead of just one. I got three cards one from my wife, one from my girls and also a handmade one from my oldest girl. This year the cats didn't give me anything.
Presents included a fake fob watch. Instead of being wound with clockwork mechanism it has a battery but you wouldn't know it to look at it. On the cover is DAD, it's quartz and it's by ELITE. I feel like I should dress up in a top hat and costume myself like one of the characters in From Hell when I take it out.
Also got a 2 CD of the Essential George Gershwin which starts off with Gershwin himself playing the piano recorded the same year my parents were born.
Last night watched a documentary on Anderi Tarkovsky and also about the first half hour of his film Nostalghia. I never realized he was so young when he died.
If you're watching a Tarkovsky film you really should be wide awake and not holding a sleeping baby to your chest.
Saturday night saw a good old RKO film noir called The Narrow Margin, the week before that it was Macao with Robert Mitchum, William Bendix and Jane Russell. Funny seeing Jane Russell sing what was to become a standard for Sinatra from a female perspective. "One for my baby"

2003-09-05T15:50:00.000+09:30

"Born to Die"

The voice from the Vault on the Radio this morning was none other than an excerpt of Jack Kerouac doing a reading from On The Road. I knew it straight away as I used to have the 3CD collectionof Kerouac reading various things. Tried to ring up to claim a prize but 3 times the phone was engaged and when I finally got through to say who it was it turned out that someone had just beaten me to it. Oh well better luck next time.

Talked to someone else at work who got an interview for the job this morning. He told me one of the questions and I knew it straight away even though he didn't.
I missed out on getting an interview. Not sure why but no doubt I didn't lie well enough on my application and didn't meet one of the essentials.
Oh well it's their loss for not giving me an interview not mine. Just have to keep on applying whenever jobs come up. Never say die

The Concert

Lou Reed was great
I saw him about 3 years ago at the same venue when he was touring with his album Ecstasy and that concert was basically just that album with Rock'n'Roll thrown in as an encore at the end.
This time it was more of a greatest hits concert. No local band at the start so that he basically played a straight 2 hour set starting off with Sweet Jane which he dedicated to the cello player Jane Scarpantoni.
He even started off with a few jokes about basing a career on just 3 chords and then adding that actually it's more like 5 chords which is the difference between mediocrity and genius. Then he played Small Town and asked the audience if they thought Sydney was a small town. The gallery said yes but the ones in the more expensive seats said no.
Interesting choice of material from The Raven.
I rewrote some of the lyrics but Poe is dead so he can't do anything about it.
to The Day John Kennedy Died, Venus in Furs, Dirty Blvd, Street Hassle, The Bed, Men of Good Fortune, Sunday Morning, All Tomorrows Parties and finishing the main set with Set the Twilight Reeling.
For an encore he got the vocalist (just called Antony) to do Candy Says which Lou explained was a song he never sings himself but he loves hearing Antony singing it and the last song was Perfect Day.
Only one encore which was a bit disappointing but I think we all got our money's worth
He also had his Tai Chi teacher Master Ren Guang-Yi come out and do some movements on front of a few songs and instrumentals. I don't think anyone has ever done that at a rock concert before. He was wearing golden silk like pyjamas and did some great movements very graceful.

Some nice slow numbers intermixed with loud guitar songs. One solo with just him and the cello player only and him just singing no other instruments. Good lighting effects for that one. A very minimal background with just different colored lights as appropriate.
He changed some of the music from the recorded versions but the lyrics stayed the same. He tended to race throught the Raven as opposed to William Dafoes' version on the album.
He even let Fernando Saunders sing one of his own songs (probably to give himself a rest from singing) I didn't notice him drinking water or anything between songs which people like Tom Jones, Tony Bennet and Elvis Costello tend to do when they perform live. And he let the cello player have a solo of very discordant but impressive playing for the middle section of one song.

2003-09-04T15:56:00.000+09:30

Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star,
And everybody's in movies, it doesn't matter who you are.
There are stars in every city,
In every house and on every street,
And if you walk down Hollywood Boulevard
Their names are written in concrete!
- Ray Davies

Reading an article the other day about Lana Clarkson the blonde actress who was found shot through the face at Phil Spectors' house.
Just felt sad thinking about how small some peoples' ambitions are. All she wanted to do was make a good living as a film star and look how she wound up. But then I suppose some people wouldn't find the idea of being a published author to be the height of ambition either.

I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show,
A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes,
Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain
And celluloid heroes never really die.
- Ray Davies "Celluloid Heroes"

2003-09-03T17:34:00.000+09:30

"Never judge a bug by its' karma"
- Quote of the day by Anonymous

Nice if slightly discouraging feedback from Jess Nevins about my query re publishing a guide to Promethea. Have to wait and see if Hy Bender replies to me too now.
Tomorrow off to see Lou Reed. I thought he would be doing a best of to help promote the NYC Man collection this time but apparently he will be mostly just doing his latest album The Raven based on Edgar Allen Poe stories and poems. I enjoyed it as an album much more than I did Ecstasy which had a few good songs but didn't work as an album for me. Looking forward to it anyway. I'm wearing my The Blue Mask T-shirt today.

"You're still doing things that I gave up years ago"

"My week beats your year"

- two quotes from Mr. Grumpy himself.

I wonder if Lou Reed is ever happy. A bit like Toby in the West Wing In last nights' episode his ex-wife who is about to have his twins told him she didn't want to get back with him because he was too sad. Not just sad but sad and angry with a very negative view of the world that she didn't want her unborn children exposed to. And this after he'd bought her the dream house she'd always wanted. No pleasing some people I suppose.

And it looks like I didn't get even get a job interview this time. Cest la vie. I suppose I didn't meet all the essentials. That and they were cheesed off that I pointed out the State Library main web page has 27 errors on it despite having been created using web authoring tools.

2003-09-02T15:21:00.000+09:30

Setting the wheels in motion

A crazy idea that I've been nurturing for quite some time now is starting to move from the theoretical to the practical

The longest journey begins with but a single step
- damned if I know where this comes from but it sounds vaguely familiar

Following the leads set by Hy Bender with The Sandman Companion and Jess Nevins with Heroes and Monsters I've decided to see if I can manage to produce a companion to Alan Moore's Promethea.
At the moment the idea is just in the gestation stage
A suitable title might be
From the Radiant Heavenly City to ?????: A Guide to Alan Moore and JH Williams III's Promethea (1999-2004)

and I've sort of started the ball rolling by emailing both Jess and Mr. Bender for advice on how to find a publisher, get this sort of idea off the ground etc.
Don't know if anything will come off it but I thought I'd mark the start of taking action instead of just thinking about it so that I know that it starts today. One day after my fathers' 75th birthday.
Another important occasion today is the release of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life on DVD with an extra DVD full of new material and extras.
This will be the last DVD of new material from the Pythons unless someone decided to give that old chestnut And Now For Something Completely Different the same treatment.

2003-09-01T17:52:00.000+09:30

Today is my father's 75th Birthday. I haven't seen or rung him up today but I did catch up with him on Saturday when my wife and youngest daughter were involved in a bridal fair at our local church. Basically they dressed up with my wife in her bridal gown and our oldest daughter (not quite 3 yet) using a flowergirl dress that her neice wore at my wedding 5 years ago. It was a nice day and I got to give my dad his present Kenneth Brannagh's version of Hamlet on 2 videos plus a copy of Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life.
Just finished reading Michael Baigent's Ancient Mysteries: A History through evolution and magic also published as Ancient Traces. Interesting reading and it's given me an idea for a short story that I hope to write soon.
Baigent is the author of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail which I can still remember reading concurrently with Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man. If you want to shake your faith in Christ the historical figure just read these two books at the same time.
As Neitzsche wrote somewhere.
The Last Christain died upon the Cross
- Quote of the Day

Also started reading
Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley by Richard Kaczynsit, PH. D. (at least that's what it has on the front cover)
Interesting with someone who's obviously gone out of his way to hunt out every last thing Crowley ever published as well as anything published about him. He seems a lot less demonic the more you read about him but still doesn't seem like someone you would welcome as a friend. The chapter I'm up to now is called Aleister through the looking glass.
Also almost finished The Sandman Companion by Hy Bender which gives me ideas for a book on Promethea I would like to write one day.
We shall see as the miracle worker said to the blind man.

2003-08-22T13:49:00.000+09:30

Finally got feedback on where I went wrong with my application for Web Page job.
Mostly I misread it as only a one page application when there was no such restrictions and also didn't give any examples to prove I am capable of doing blah blah blah
Appears that most of the job will involve verifying if webpages are valid in HTML 4.01 which you can do at
W3C HTML validator page
I tried validating the main page of the library where I work and came up with 27 errors.
My Blog here only comes up with 2 errors.
Neither of them caused by me.
I still have until Monday to put the new application in but unfortunately I'm on a night-shift so will have to try and get in early to have it all done properly.

Someone at my Yahoo Group for Promethea came up with some interesting links for Glycon the snake god that Alan Moore worships.
the story of the glycon snake with coin pictures

a page at the top of which are links to excellent pics of a 2nd century bronze glycon statue

a 2nd century marble statue

not sure what's going on here
Seems like the last one is a French site.

Discovered that what looks like Enochian language in 1602 #1 on page 13 panel 3 is actually at least partly Latvian
Kron and Zeves are Latvian for Jupiter and Saturn so probably Aris is Mars.

Quote of the Day
"What are you going to do. Kill Me? Everybody dies" -
John Garfield about to be roughed up by some mobsters in an old movie whose name escapes me.

2003-08-19T13:08:00.000+09:30

The Voice from the Vault on the Radio today was none other than Groucho Marx whom I recognized straightaway as I had the LP his speech came from. I think it was live at Carnegie Hall (1974) or thereabouts. They played it today because today is Groucho Marx's deathday. Back in 1977 on this day Groucho Marx died at the grand old age of 86 almost 87. Not quite up there with Bob Hope's 100 but then I think Groucho was much funnier than Bob Hope.
They played a bit of "Hello I must be going" saying it was from Animal Crackers and misdating it as 1936 when it actually came out in 1930 as any good Marxist or member of Why A Duck? knows.
I tried to ring up to claim a prize but the phone was engaged. It took about 4 or 5 goes before someone guessed it correctly.
The Marx Bros were one of my first obsessions. I bought just about every book about them I could find and I memorized all their films and the dates they were released from The Coconuts (1929) to Love Happy (1949). The Story of Mankind from the 1950's doesn't actually count as they don't interact with one another being just reduced to solitary cameos with the best one being Harpo as Isaac Newton.
I guess the Marx Bros are largely responsible for my healty disrespect of authority.
After the Marxes I discovered Monty Python.
Woke up very early and finished Sandman Volume 1 Preludes & Nocturnes. On the train coming to work finished all but the last 3 chapters of Well of Lost Plots. Should finish it going home after work.
Dancing around with my 3 year old daughter this morning to a Blondie song on the radio and when she asked me who it was I said Blondie to which she replied That's not Aunt Elizabeth. Liz is blonde and we often refer to her as Blondie.
:-)

2003-08-16T14:46:00.000+09:30

Off to work this Saturday afternoon. On the way stopped off at comic books shop and bought the second volume of Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwrights adventures Heart of Empire. I asked but they didn't have the first one. I bought it anyway as I'm guessing it's a stand alone volume.

Getting well into Well of Lost Plots today and hope to have it finished by Monday then I can concentrate on reading Marquez and the comics I've just bought. Only the best in comics for me from now on.
Tom Strong #21 and Smax #1 are out next Wednesday which gives me a couple of new Moore items to look forward to.
Check out Zander Cannon's webpage for any news about Smax, etc.
Just joined up with the Jasper Fforde fan club and should be getting copies of their Newsletter Whatever Next from now on.

2003-08-15T08:53:00.000+09:30

Reading
Chapter 1 of Gabriel Garcia Marquez 100 Years of Solitude
Up to chapter 16 of The Well of Lost Plots
First two issues of Neil Gaiman's Sandman
Yesterday walking on my way to work in sort of semi-heavy traffic a nice female bus driver asked me if I was going to the train station and let me get on her totally empty bus for free and a 3 minute ride which would normally be a 20 minute walk so I managed to get to work a bit earlier than normal.
Have been leaving home a bit later than ususal this week as I have to record Angelina Ballerina for our oldest daughter. It's shown at about 8.10 am and goes for 15 or so minutes. Nice little show for kids her age. She just loves them and can watch the same 4 or 5 episodes hundreds of times over and even recites some of the dialogue as it is about to be spoken.
Saw Terminator 3 last night. First night out at the movies for ages. Not a bad flick. The images of nuclear weapons going off all around the world actually looked quite beautiful in an Armageddon is what we deserve anyway sort of way.
Relevant to todays political climate in many ways although I doubt that computers would be able to launch weapons (especially targeted at their own country) unless some human gets to punch a key or put in a code somewhere along the way. It's been done before Wargames and some other earlier 70s movie Colossus: The Forbin Project but it's still relevant to todays situation in more ways than one.
Charles Vess has agreed to do an interview about his A Faerie Romance Pages for Promethea #4 and someone sent in another essay comparing Promethea with Matrix 2 which I still haven't seen yet.

2003-08-13T17:41:00.000+09:30

I'm looking at this webpage using Mozilla rather than the usual Internet Explorer. Can't really tell any difference apart from the icons etc on top it looks pretty much the same.
Got a letter back about my last Web Support Officer Application saying that I was unsuccesful in getting an interview.
Great I manage to be only one of two people who got through to an interview for the previous job I applied for but I didn't even manage to pass muster to get interviewed for this much easier job that I feel I am more qualified for anyway.
Oh well them's the breaks. Will get feedback on what I omitted from my application form to see why I was rejected.
The readvertised version of this WSO job is almost the same as the original except that some essentials are now only desirable which means that a lot more people are going to apply so there'll be more competition. Maybe I was the only one to apply for this one and they didn't want to have to be forced to accept me.
Life goes on anyway.
The biggest disappointment for me has been how few people actually bothered to enter my Promethea Essay Competition.
So far it's only these 7 and the competition finished at the end of this month. I was hoping to at least reach double figures.
I'm actually thinking of sending in my own entry under a pseudonym (but not getting one of the top 3 prizes for it) in order to try and spark up some last minute additions.
Why aren't people interested in writing something as short as 1000 words to win a free prize but then I suppose I should talk. I didn't even bother entering the Voice of the Fire Competition mainly because I'd already pre-ordered a signed copy ot if. Still that one was only 500 words I wonder how many entries they got?
One other thing I'm really hanging out for is to finally get to see the cover for Promethea #27 which they seem to be leaving till the last minute. After all the cover for #28 is already up on the net. And the thing is I already know what's the cover is going to show.

2003-08-12T14:57:00.000+09:30

Just starting to read Jasper Fforde's third Thursday Next novel The Well of Lost Plots. On the train this morning I read all the quotes at the start of each chapter. Chapter 13 "Reservoir near the Church of St. Stephens" appears to be missing. The book goes from Chapter 12 straight to Chapter 14. Perhaps the characters are superstitious.
Downloaded a b&w skin for my internet explorer of Michelle Pfeiffer. Unfortunately the address field cuts across her mouth in both pictures of her giving it a rather strange fetishized look. A beautiful face without a mouth repeated twice.
Someone pointed out to me that the name of the world's first cloned horse is Prometea
An interesting link given out by the place where I work is Omniglot - a guide to writing systems covering everything from hieroglyphics to undeciphered languages including an invented undeciphered language as well as the famous Voynich manuscript
The last job I went for has been readvertised
"with minor changes to the selection criteria to attract a broader range of applicants"
In other words not enough people applied for it so they're making the qualifications necessary a bit easier hoping to get more people going for it. Trouble is now I have to resubmit my application once again. Bother.
Last job I went for only two people got as far as an interview and I was the one that didn't get it. Hopefully I'll have slightly better luck with this one
Web Support Officer in the Electronic Library Services section of the Enterprise Information Strategy Branch.
Now that's a mouthful.

2003-08-11T08:20:00.000+09:30

My wife went to see Blondie last night but by the time she came home the girls and I were asleep and I rushed off early to work this morning so I'll have to wait till I get back this evening to find out how it went.
Todd Klein finally answered my interview questions.
An old friend popped in for an hour or so on his way to a party.
My two little girls have been invited to another first birthday and that's about it for the weekend.
Saw a documentary on the Spanish artist Goya by the Aussie art critic Robert Hughes. Interesting painter although to my eyes his bizarre faces and images sometimes look slightly blurred but maybe that was the effect he was trying to achieve. He could paint photorealistically if he wanted to (especially his portraits of the upper classes and their servants etc but when he painted stuff from his nightmares and images of madmen and aged ugly people they are usually not as focused. I didn't know he went deaf for a large part of his life. Overall impressive as an exploration of a famous artist whose images I knew even if I didn't know much about him as a person. This is the sort of show that makes having a TV set worthwhile.

2003-08-04T13:47:00.000+09:30

Well I didn't end up getting the IT job I applied for but will be getting some feedback from the person who interviewed me tomorrow. Apparently I was only one of two people who got as far as doing the interview and the other person was more qualified than I am. At least it's heartening to know that I came off second and hopefully the feedback should help if I get to an interview for the second job I've applied for helping to maintain webpages for the library I work at.
In a fit of overspending after payday last week I got DVDs of
Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale and
Nicholas Meyer's Time after Time.
Malcolm McDowell as HG Wells pursues David Warner's Jack the Ripper to contemporary (1979) San Francisco.
Also 4 paperbacks each one only 5 dollars
Alexander Dumas 3 Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo,
Gaston Leroux The Phantom of the Opera and
Cervantes Don Quixote.
The only one I've read before (a long time ago) is Don Quixote. The other 3 I'm familiar with through movie adapatations.

Nice to get an email from Peter Hogan who has scripted Terra Obscura and chat back and forth for a little while via email

I've been doing some fill-in issues of Tom Strong - currently writing my third. After that, I'm hoping we'll get a green light for more Terra Obscura, but it all depends on sales figures. At least the reviews have been good ! Will happily do even more ABC stuff if Alan wants me to - the whole experience has been fantastic.

and

I got heartily sick of people calling me 'Paul' by accident for years on end. I even got called that on the cover of a Vertigo comic, but at least they were suitably contrite about it ...

Listening to the Beatles White Album and Elvis Costello's Cruel Smile

2003-07-30T12:12:00.000+09:30

Tried to see if Joel Biroco would do an interview about Promethea but as I expected the answer was no.
He did try to ask Steve Moore if he would do an interview about Little Margie in Misty Magic Land for me but it turns out that Steve is 10 times more reclusive than Alan when it comes to being interviewed. Actually probably more like a thousand times as Alan is quite fond of answering interview questions about Magick and comic books in general.

Oh well I'll try and see if I can interview Eric Shanower somehow instead.

Someone suggested Grant Morrisson's The Invisibles as a comic book that readers of Promethea might enjoy so I've added it to that list.

And finally someone sent me some tagalog translation to add to Issue #23 annotations

2003-07-29T08:40:00.000+09:30

Bob Hope dies aged 100.
A good innings as they say in cricket.
I wasn't a huge fan of Mr. Hope but I did enjoy some of his old movies. And it was good to have someone entertain troops in battle zones throughout numerous wars. I wonder what he would have made of the latest Iran conflict though. Not too much humor there as far as I can see.
A quote from John Steinbeck on his official website
John Steinbeck said of Hope, " This man drives himself and is driven. It is impossible to see how he can do so much, can cover so much ground, can work so hard and be so effective. There's a man. There is really a man."
Bob Hope Website
While the rapid-fire jokes had long ceased to fly from his lips, Hope kept his sense of humor, even about his impending demise.
Linda Hope recalled that when asked recently by his wife about where he wanted to be buried, her father answered: "Surprise me."

2003-07-28T16:03:00.000+09:30

Just added a new interview with Jose Villarubia to my
Promethea interviews page
Whenever I announce a new interview on various web sites I tend to get too many hits so that other people can't actually read the new interview so I also tend to duplicate the text at my
Promethea group on Yahoo

anyway I should hear about the interview by this Friday and in any case if I don't end up getting the job there is a brand new other 12 month Web Page Design job to apply for which closes this Friday so I'll start preparing an application for that one too. It's less pay so on the off chance that I do get the job I've already applied for I won't bother applying for the second job until Friday itself.
Weekend took the wife and girls out to a nice shopping mall out on the riverbank. A bit cold so mostly we just ate and looked at shops and did very minimal looking at the river outside.
On Saturday it was uncle-in-law's 70th wedding anniversary so we had lunch over at my mother in laws place and quite a nice chat afterwards. Very cold too and nice warm heater going so that the girls fell asleep after we chatted. Quite a nice weekend.
Reading Arturo Perez-Reverte's
The Dumas Club
and Joel Biroco's website journal
which was part of the inspiration for my starting up this Blog in the first place.
Listening to
Dark Side of the Moon
Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and the Travelling Wilburys
Cute things kids say
When I point out the moon in the night sky to my oldest girl Amelia her reaction is
Where's the cow?

2003-07-24T16:06:00.000+09:30

Well the job interview went all right. I should hear one way or the other by next week.
Not holding my breath on that one.
Got a ticket to see Lou Reed when he does his Sydney concert.
A bit expensive but the album he's promoting this time is NYC Man which is a best of career retrospective so it should be a good concert and the other album is The Raven based on Edgar Allan Poe stories. Last time he did a concert in Sydney it was just all songs from his latest album which wasn't one of his better ones and the only other song was Sweet Jane as an encore. This one should prove a bit more interesting.
Also I've ordered the two new Alan Moore books that Jose Villarubia has added illustrations for
Voice of the Fire and the Mirror of Love.
both signed by Alan and Jose.
Quite a few things to look forward to but Extraordinary Works of AM still hasn't been released

2003-07-21T18:54:00.000+09:30

My first entry and already I've made a typo
"see here" should obviously read "so here"
will have to recheck spelling etc before I post blogs in future.

2003-07-21T18:23:00.000+09:30

Originally I started up a blog at Angelfire but I'm quickly running out of room see here are the first few entries duplicated
Monday, 21 July 2003

Job Interview
Well I got through to an interview for the job I applied for on this Thursday July 24th at 10 am.
Wish me luck
The mail thing sorted itself out.
Getting lots of feedback from people interested in Promethea including a few more entries in the Essay competition.
Things are looking up

Posted by comics/eroomnala at 7:40 PM NZT |
Saturday, 12 July 2003

Yahoo email & job application
Don't know if it's Yahoo's fault or mine but I can't seem to read my Yahoo email at the moment which is a bit frustrating as I can still see that there are 4 new emails to catch up on and one of them might be important.
Also I'm applying for a job in IT at Ilanet I work at the State Library of NSW (www.sl.nsw.gov.au) which I doubt I will get but I'd like to just go for the interview practice and I've left it till the last minute to put my application in and am now panicking to get it done on time and not make too many typos and spelling mistakes.
Life goes on.
Got the latest republication of an old Alan Moore title. This time it's Supreme: The Return. Unfortunately he wrote at least two more scripts that have never been drawn or published so even though there are 10 chapters (or issues) in this title the conclusion is not 100 % conclusive.
Never mind still looking forward to getting
The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore which should come out next week.

Posted by comics/eroomnala at 3:45 PM NZT

Friday, 11 July 2003

Interviews with people who Produce Promethea
I've started interviewing people who help produce Promethea.
The completed ones can be seen at
http://eroomnala.bravepages.com/Interviews.html
So far I've done Mick Gray and Jeromy Cox. Next up I hope to have Todd Klein or Jose Villarubia. After that there's really only JH Williams III and possibly Charles Vess. If I could get Alan Moore I would but I don't know if he'd be interested and anyway I only have email and no fax machine. Maybe a phone interview but he might not want to be interviewed.
Preferably I'd like to update all the interviews when all 32 issues are published and even eventually write up a book length study of Promethea (if only to post it on the net somewhere). I doubt if anybody would be interested in publishing or reading it except for a few Prometheaphiles like myself. Anyway that's the plan.
Let's hope I can stick to it.

Posted by comics/eroomnala at 4:39 PM NZT |

Thursday, 10 July 2003

First glob
Why a glob well why not.
Life must be lived forward but can only be understood backwards.
Who said that.
Well I just did or rather I typed it up on the net here.
This is my first entry and there's really not all that much to say.
Anybody can write up a blog but I'm going to be writing my Glob and if you want to know what a glob is
A small drop; a globule.
A soft thick lump or mass: a glob of mashed potatoes; globs of red mud.
[Middle English globbe, large mass, from Latin globus, globular mass.]
definition taken from
www.dictionary.com
So this is going to be either a small drop or a thick lump or mass of words that I write up on a PC somewhere and you have the privelege of reading when you want to.

another definition from the same source for those who are more computer literate than I am:

/glob/, _not_ /glohb/ v.,n. [Unix; common] To expand
special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing (the
action is also called `globbing'). The Unix conventions for
filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many
hackers use some of them in written English, especially in email or
news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include the
following:

*
wildcard for any string (see also UN*X)

?
wildcard for any single character (generally read this way
only at the beginning or in the middle of a word)

[]
delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters

{}
alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus,
`foobaz,qux' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'

Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses ambiguity).
"I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the talk.politics subgroups
on Usenet). Other examples are given under the entry for {X}.
Note that glob patterns are similar, but not identical, to those
used in regexps.

Historical note: The jargon usage derives from `glob', the name
of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne
versions of the Unix shell.

Posted by comics/eroomnala at 10:52 AM NZT |