Wis[s]e Words

300

Kip at Long Story Short Pier says it all about Cerebus reaching its 300th issue. One of the great promises has been kept, the greatest project in (American) comics ever has come to an end --but unfortunately I can't celebrate much, since its creator, Dave Sim went crazy a long time ago...

So hail and farewell then Cerebus: you started life as a parody, but ultimately starred in some of the best comics ever published in English before your creator stepped into the abyss.

Rest us nothing but reread our copies of Cerebus, High Society and Church and State, part I and II and dream of what could've been.

Posted by Martin Wisse at 4:13PM PST [ Permalink] End of post.

Amsterdam's Red Light district is of course famous the world over and probably the most visited spot of Amsterdam, including the Rijksmuseum or Van Gogh Museum. Needless to say, various entrepreneurs offer guided tours through the area, pointing out places of outstanding beauty. Unfortunately, one group of people, the visual handicapped,has so far been excluded from these tours, for obvious reasons.

Happily, one particularly clever clogs has jumped on this opportunity and is now offering a "tactile tour" of the Red Light district...

That's going to be popular.

(As spotted on the local newschannel just now.)

Posted by Martin Wisse at 5:38PM PST [ Permalink] End of post.

Do the handicapped go to hell? Blunkett should...

Why? Because he is charging wrongfully imprisoned people for the years they spent behind bars while innocent:

On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £ 3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn't have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.

Blunkett's fight has been described as "outrageous", "morally repugnant" and the "sickest of sick jokes", but his spokesmen in the Home Office say it's a completely "reasonable course of action" as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren't in prison. The government deems the claw-back 'Saved Living Expenses'.

Paddy Hill was one of the Birmingham Six. He spent 16 years behind bars for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings by the IRA. Hill now lives on a farm with his wife and children near Beith in Scotland. He has been charged £ 50,000 for living expenses by the Home Office.

Blunkett really is an asshat, isn't he?

The title of this entry of course refers to South Park, Episode 410 to be precise, as well as to Blunkett being legally blind.

Posted by Martin Wisse at 4:12PM PST [ Permalink] End of post.

For Sandra:

• The Fall and Rise of the Magazine Cover?

Posted by Martin Wisse at 9:21AM PST [ Permalink] End of post.

Downingstreet Says

Mysociety, an e-democracy action group, has just launched downingstreetsays.com. This site collects the daily press briefings by the UK's Prime Minister's spoke person, strips them by subject and allows commenting and trackbacking on it. It is a very neat gift to any blogger wanting to keep abreast of UK politics.

It is also a concept so simple that you wonder why this was not done before and why it took mysociety to do it. Were I a libertarian, there would be a whole thesis hidden in this...

Posted by Martin Wisse at 9:15AM PST [ Permalink] End of post.

This should restore some sanity points, after the mindsquick of the previous link. Yes, these are "scientifically accurate toys based on the half-billion-year-old fossils of the Burgess Shale of British Columbia", as the website has it.

If somebody would like to buy me an early birthday or late Christmas present, these would not be rejected out of hand...

Posted by Martin Wisse at 5:37AM PST [ Permalink] End of post.

An entertaining link of sanity destroying, mind bending monstrosity

You can apparantely buy a CD recording of A Shoggoth on the Roof, a Lovecraftian reinterpretation of a certain musical. It features such songs as "If I were a Deep One", "Arkham Dunwich" and "Tentacles"...

Oh yes, there are MP3 samples...

Posted by Martin Wisse at 5:25AM PST [ Permalink] End of post.

Clipping Service

Some links of interest, on which I have not a lot to say.

• A series of quite interesting posts on Dorothy L. Sayers' mysteries, by one "truepenny". Not to be read if you're allergic to spoilers.
• Science fiction without the future, a somewhat outdated but still interesting essay by Judith Berman on what is wrong with science fiction at the moment, or at least US science fiction in 2001.

Posted by Martin Wisse at 2:23PM PST [ Permalink] End of post.

When do you get paid?

27th February is the day when the average UK worker who does unpaid overtime finishes the 40 unpaid days they do every year, and starts earning for themselves.

So says UK Trade Union Congress. You can see for yourself when you stop working for free and start getting paid through their unpaid overtime calculator

Posted by Martin Wisse at 11:55AM PST [ Permalink] End of post.

Some good news from the US for a change

SAN FRANCISCO - It was only his 12th day as mayor of San Francisco, but Gavin Newsom decided that night -- the very night he attended President Bush's State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. -- that he was going to defy California law.

[...]

The group also started talking details. The California Family Code states that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.

They decided to proceed on the grounds that denying marriage licenses to gays and lesbians violates their rights to equal protection under the California Constitution.

There was also talk about which couple they should ask to be the first to tie the knot. Kendell suggested Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, lesbian rights pioneers who celebrated their 51st anniversary on Valentine's Day.

[...]

Wednesday afternoon, Kendell called Lyon, 79, and Martin, 83, asking whether they wanted to get married. The answer came 10 minutes later: ``Yes.''

From The San Francisco Chronicle by way of the Miami Herald and Burning Bird

Posted by Martin Wisse at 7:02AM PST [ Permalink] End of post.