Tuesday, 30th of October, 2001

Jack T Chick was one of the most bigoted Christians ever, and sadly made it his life's purpose to convert others to his particular form of that religion.
His "Chick Tracts" are famous the world over, and now it seems you can read them on the web! Go here for a complete list of English-language tracts.

For an introduction, we have the convert-a-Jew one, "Where's Rabbi Waxman?", and the heaven-is-for-God's-people-not-good-people one, "Flight 144"…
The latter is particularly revolting: However good you are in your life, if you're not a believer of just the right type, you go to hell! Observe:
(quite an amusing image really…)

If that doesn't make you an immediate atheist, well… oh well! I'm secure in my beliefs…

Thursday, 25th of October, 2001

At Keith Whitten (Hrvatski)'s pictures site, here's a not-particularly-flattering picture of me, at the Frigid gig where he did an excellent Hrvatski set.

Via Darrin Verhagen (of Dorobo records, and one of our most beautiful remixers), here's a highly amusing satirical piece: Baudrillard admits: "The Gulf War Did Take Place". Baudrillard is, all in all, one of the greatest charlatans of the whole Theory brigade.

Tuesday, 23rd of October, 2001

Well, the Election Chaser, on ABC-TV at 9:30 last night, was way funny in my opinion! If you missed it, sucked in! And watch it next week. Best satire around, reminiscent of the D-Generation (or the Late Show more to the point) at their best.

Monday, 22nd of October, 2001

Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell's From Hell is one of the greatest graphic novels ever written – a complex and multi-layered story (Alan Moore is one of the greatest comics writers ever after all) with wonderful artwork by Eddie.

Here's Salon's less-than-enthusiastic review of the new movie, very loosely based on From Hell, by the Hughes Brothers. As I suspected from the trailers, "loosely based" is putting it euphemistically! Oh well, one couldn't have really expected a movie to be that true to the original…

Saturday, 20th of October, 2001

In today's Sydney Morning Herald, John Casimir (with whom I very often find myself agreeing), writes a very perceptive review of Tori Amos' new album, Strange Little Girls.
I don't want to harp on too long, but although I don't mind it, I find her affectations generally annoying, and for all the covers of songs I know, I like the originals considerably better. The concept is interesting, but on the whole the interpretations just get annoying after about 1/2 a listen ;)

From this page, you can jump to the little mini-stories that the very wonderful Neil Gaiman wrote to go with each of the "characters". Enjoy!

Tuesday, 16th of October, 2001

From acb (with whom I spent an enjoyable evening of music and computer networking last night), here's an absolute gem from The Register, about WTC hoaxes. Debunking galore!

Melbourne rules! 'Nuff said. Check ya later.

Sunday, 14th of October, 2001

I'll have my trusty laptop Ravenous with me while I'm in Melbourne, so if we're lucky I might be sending blog posts in from the deep south! Not that I'll have a lot of spare time ;)

Melbourne's one of my favourite cities in the world, and the only one other than Sydney that I could imagine (very easily!) living in. As well as the incomparable Slow Glass Books is also on Swanston St, and then there's second-hand stores like Syber's (one on Chapel St Windsor, and one in St Kilda), and weird shit like PolyEster on Brunswick St, which also has a record store down the road of course)… There's a great cafe society, excellent food all around, and a live scene that makes me cry (well Sydney's not at all bad these days, all things considered).
And of course Melbourne has not one but TWO fantastic community radio stations: 3PBS and 3RRR.
Can't wait! *taptaptaptapjitterjitter*

Lucky acb got to see Hrvatski performing his processed-guitar stuff at my favourite record store Synaesthesia in Melbourne on Saturday. Oh well, I got to hang out with him a bit and see him do a few sets, not to mention jam with him (kinda), so I can't complain!

Anyway, _I_ shall be in Melbourne as of tomorrow, until Friday. We're supporting the Corrs down there at the enormous Rod Laver Arena (insane I know), and then doing our own lovely headline show at Revolver (Chapel St, Prahran) on Thursday night, with me DJing before, in between sets, and hopefully afterwards – fun!
Then on Friday, back to Sydney to play at the Metro (in the new Roma Room) with David Lane and the wonderful Jodi Phillis. Hurrah!

Would've been great to be in Melbourne last week though – not only was Keith Whitman (Hrvatski) down there, but so were Dose One, Sole and Jel of hip-hop beat poets Anticon. Had a wonderful live improv session with those guys at the Opera House (the one which Hrvatski also took part in), and tonight at Frigid they were there briefly, and Dose came and had a chat. Shame they're leaving tomorrow, but hopefully sometime I'll get to work with them more.

Thursday, 11th of October, 2001

For the love of Bob!
Follow that link to some great SubGenius stuff on the WTC attacks and other…

The latest edition of The Onion is rather back in form. As acb points out, Freedoms Curtailed In Defense of Liberty is wonderful satire… Classic quote:

"We live in a land governed by plurality of opinion in an open electorate, but we are now under siege by adherents of a fundamentalist, totalitarian belief system that tolerates no dissent," Attorney General John Ashcroft said." Our most basic American values are threatened by an enemy opposed to everything for which our flag stands. That is why I call upon all Americans to submit to wiretaps, e-mail monitoring, and racial profiling. Now is not the time to allow simplistic, romantic notions of 'civil liberties' and 'equal protection under the law' to get in the way of our battle with the enemies of freedom."

This is so close to the way things are really going in the US that it's quite uncomfortable…