Saturday, 28th of October, 2000

One of my favourite comics writers/artists is Chris Ware, author of Fantagraphics' ACME Novelty Library. Recently Pantheon released a hardcover copy of the Jimmy Corrigan novel, and if you have a Flash plugin, I strongly recommend checking out the hilarious and twisted Map of Jimmy's family history at the Pantheon site, designed of course by Ware himself.

Thursday, 26th of October, 2000

Readers of this blog will be familiar, at least through me, with the work of the fantastic comics writer Eddie Campbell. As of last weekend, many more people will be familiar with him, as there was a glowing article on him on the first two-page spread of the Australian's Review section.

Well, in a bid to be the stupidest people in the world, Aussie Customs up in Perth, on that very day, decided to ban all copies of From Hell (the utterly brilliant graphic novel about the times and circumstances of the Jack the Ripper murders, by Alan Moore and illustrated by Eddie) from entering the country. The reason? There is one scene (one of few actually graphic scenes in the book, which is entirely black & white) in which a breast is cut off a (dead) woman's body. No matter that this is an established fact, nor that Moore & Campbell depict it as occuring during, basically, a doctor's autopsy.
Ah well, Australia eh? Wouldn't have thought, but then again… look who's in government.
Let's hope it all settles quickly enough and all Australians can have the opportunity of buying this truly great work of literature, in any medium, in the shops again.

Go to the Eddie Campbell Comics website to read the latest updates and send words of encouragement.

Wednesday, 25th of October, 2000

Danny Yee is an Aussie who's quite famous on the net for his prodigious number of online book reviews. He writes very well, and covers a lot of topics I'm interested in, so I enjoy checking out his site.

Most notably earlier today I found a review he did of a Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. He echoes pretty well my own views on postmodernism and cultural/critical theory… I think he goes too easy on Foucault and probably Edward Said, but he's got plenty of good arguments about what's wrong with critical theory as philosophy.
Ooooh, Petey's being contentious. Yeah well… I stand by my opinions. Write to me if you want to tell me what a political incorrect believer-in-an-objective-world I am!

Tuesday, 24th of October, 2000

Sydney band of the moment: Waikiki have just put out their debut EP Presents… – sweet guitar-pop with gorgeous female vocals… Strings on one track courtesy of Lara and me, although too late to credit us on the CD (the horror!)

They're launching it at the Hopetoun in Surry Hills (Sydney) on Saturday night, and Lara and I will be there, playing our parts ;) They're lovely and will go everywhere from gentle indie pop to raucous snarling guitars… Well worth dropping by for!

Sunday, 22nd of October, 2000

Today, you are commanded to go and read a very amusing and moving article by Michael Chabon, American comics writer. "Useful Expressions" it's called. You don't have to be Jewish, but it chyelps.

And here's Richard Dawkins on the supposed convergence of science and religion. Sure to be inflammatory. Needless to say, I agree with him entirely (even though I don't think his reasoning or expression is always as good as could be) – those who think that science and religion can be reconciled are talking bollocks.

Thursday, 19th of October, 2000

Science-fiction tends to be dominated by in fandom and in authoring by males. So today I'm featuring two first-rate science-fiction authors who happen to be female.
First is Kathleen Ann Goonan, who I rave about on other parts of this page… Her fiction is beautifully-written (perhaps more "literary" in style than much science-fiction) – in the nanotech series she describes a quite surreal (or hyperreal) world radically altered by nanotechnology; but as they proceed we discover that everything that might seem mysterious or even supernatural is unfailingly underpinned with a scientific basis (whether current science or extrapolations). So this is hard science-fiction.
The Bones of Time, a near-future novel not part of her nanotech world, also contains some mind-bending ideas, here about time-travel (she makes clever use of Roger Penrose's quantum-theory of consciousness, which is a great plot point even though I think Penrose's quantum consciousness stuff is bollocks), as well as a beautiful cross-centuries love story.
The website contains some great articles by Goonan, as well as links to some of her short fiction that can be found online.

The second author is Linda Nagata. I've read very little of Nagata's work as yet; again it's hard science-fiction, again well-written with many thought-provoking ideas about nanotech and consciousness… Unfortunately three of her four novels seem to be out of print, and all are very hard to find in Australia. The website is worth checking out at least.

Happy Birthday Mark! Mark, along with Kenny from Elefant Traks (fabbo Sydney electronica label) and some other mates of mine are having a multiple-25th-birthday party on Saturday – their fantastic web-based invitiation-website which Mark designed can be found here.

Mark also records innovative electronic music (computer-processing of his guitar sounds and other stuff) as Mysta – go check it out! He's yet another person working on a FourPlay remix.

Wednesday, 18th of October, 2000

Sad news – Aboriginal leader Charles Perkins died today, after a three-month illness.

Here is a highly amusing cutting from an overseas newspaper…

And FourPlay are still in the Association of Indendent Record Labels (AIR) charts – both Albums Released on Independent Labels and Albums Released on Independent Labels through an Independent Distributor. Good to see people are still buying our stuff! Thanks, cobbers.

Monday, 16th of October, 2000

Courtesy of my Melbourne friends over at Grouse!, we have Experimental Penguins. Certainly the silliest chat room concept ever, but strangely compelling. You waddle around in a Flash environment, chatting to the other penguins there. I'd like more objects in the environment, that one could perhaps interact with…
Still fails to keep me interested very long – I think I lost my interest in chat rooms after about 1/2 a year of IRC-ing back in 1992 when I started uni.

Once again I must exhort you all to look at some comics. This time there's heaps of them up on the web to browse through…
Please immediately point your browsers to Tony Millionaire's website. Click on "Weekly Maakies archive" and start making your way through some of the funniest comics currently being made! Then once you get through them all, you can go and buy his books – the Sock Monkey collection from Dark Horse and the Maakies collection from legendary comics publishers Fantagraphics.