I will be buying one of these tomorrow. You can read a preview of it here.

(image by Paul Greer)

For a while, I had a capture of my twitter feed running here. It ended up doing something weird to my API calls, stopping me from running my desktop client, so I killed it. Which is probably just as well, as I talk a lot of shit on Twitter. It’s basically mental slurry, the wet lumpy bits from a day spent at the keyboard vented off into a trap so the buildup doesn’t blow some crucial valve in my head. Look at these, from the last few months:

* If I can just fit my head inside this pig’s arse, my David Cameron halloween costume will be complete

* I’ve run out of Red Bull. MOVE TO COMS CHANNEL S ACTIVATE RESTON5

* busy gluing baby doll heads on to a lurex thong #halloweencostumes

* Damn. I’m gonna have to write another comic for Marvel now, just to try and out-crazy @BRIANMBENDIS ’s MOON KNIGHT.

* Send warm bodies. I must leech their essence to survive this new ice age.

* Buying the RED graphic novel is scientifically proven to make you more attractive to any and all mammals. And some fish.

* Am carefully coughing on all the tables in the pub. Fuck these people, with their health and snot-free heads.

* I’d like to write a Kindle Single next year, I think.

* @cully_hamner Fuck you. Toronto made it snow inside my testicles and you got a bit warm in lovely New Orleans. SNOW INSIDE MY TESTICLES

* It is so cold, rainy and vile out here that it could still be summer.

* Ed Miliband made Labour Party leader. Britain sinks deeper into its sofa, heartbeat slowing with raw excitement.

* I could quite fancy being a Baron. There’s a Baron Strange, you know. Suave.

* His full title is the Baron Strange of Knockin. Marginally less suave.

* Huh. I was nominated for a British Fantasy Award. This means I am one of the more fantasised-about people in Britain.

* Remember: if you ever watch an edition of X Factor, Satan gives Simon Cowell another ten years of life.

* Okay, who thought it was a good idea to have the Pope meet schoolboys on his Scottish visit? He has a white van, guys.

* I bet that with a just little biohacking, heroin could go from scary drug to low-carb superfood in no time

* Soaking brain in pool of whisky to see what blackened ideas float to the surface. No paddling.

* On September 11, 1940, George Stibitz operated the first computing machine ever used remotely over a phone line.

* I like to believe that he transmitted an ASCII image of a cat watching you wank.

* When my daughter is bad, I force her to watch "Jozin Z Bazin" as punishment. Am I infringing her human rights?

* I was hoping for a whole series of MACHETE films. MACHETE FOREVER. DRIVING MACHETE. ALL THAT MACHETE. CITIZEN MACHETE.

* Also THE FIRST MACHETE CLUB and THERE WILL BE MACHETE.

* Daughter snarkily amazed that I cooked a stirfry and didn’t kill her. In retrospect, and for different reasons, so am I.

* Neil Gaiman told me to be merciful to the weak & fearful. A prize to the first reader to mercy-kill and skin one of them for me.

* my brain is awake but i think my body died. dragging self to pub using only prehensile frontal lobe. could take a while.

Foggy morning from Veronika von Volkova on Vimeo.

“In the middle of the city, on that little hill that we affectionately call ‘the mountain’.”

I’ve decided that I caught this flu off Lenny Henry. I saw him for lunch with Hilary Bevan Jones at BAFTA the other week, and he insisted on hugging me. "Commit to the hug!" he bellowed, rubbing himself against me in ways I choose not to elaborate upon. I only found out later that he’d just gotten back from some heartbreaking tour of African death holes. Lenny is a large and hale man who can afford to pay other people to have his diseases for him. The likes of Biafran Poison Monkey Virus do not concern him. Me, on the other hand… not so much.

I did find out one fascinating thing from him that day. The BBC operates this section called something like BBC Hostiles — threat analysis and security for BBC employees in hotzones, red-line communications between the field and head office.

So Lenny Henry gave me a disgusting disease by forcing a committed man-hug upon me. But I did learn about the BBC black ops unit. So I suppose it evens out. Also, if you catch the death flu, you end up with hallucinatory terrordreams on the second night wherein Jeremy Paxman is M.

I am, finally, starting to feel better. But I’m still not going near Expo, and I’m still producing enough plumes of atomised muck to be infectious. Besides, the work’s piled up while I’ve been limp and crap. And on top of that, one of the girls’ rats has to go to the vet tomorrow morning for an operation to remove a tumour. (Which is a minor thing: rats are prone to tumours, and this one is small and mobile, they can just snip it out.) The name of the rat in question? Lenny. Wasn’t my idea, Lili named them. (She had lunch with him once and really liked him, I guess.)

Developing new comics ideas today, while I’ve got some mental clarity. Tomorrow and for the rest of the week, it’s back to finishing off outstanding comics jobs for various places. But today, because I’m feeling a bit better, I’m letting myself do the fun stuff: thinking of new things.

Yeeees. No, me neither. This person.

"You’ve made your bed, Toronto, and you’ve decided to not have me in it, writhing and screaming about gravy."

Looking forward to buying this:

(image by Shannon M)

Yesterday I managed to send out an episode of FREAKANGELS and a short foreword to a science book. Today I just want to lay down, hold my head and moan weakly until some kind soul gives me a lethal injection. But no. I actually have to come up with a couple of new comics projects, which means I have to scoop out all the muck that’s been festering in my head for the last few months and sieve it in the hope of finding some cohered lumps of story in there.

Am also looking forward to getting Charles Burns’ X’ED OUT in the post tomorrow. Fascinated at the idea of Burns riffing off, of all things, Tintin (with, I suspect, a bit of Yves Chaland mixed in there with the Herge and the Burroughs and the Manson).

I continue to be nothing but relieved at RED’s performance in the States. It’s at a cumulative USD $43.5M or thereabouts.

It appears that Zo is selling prints again, for a limited period:

links, images, sounds and filth can be transmitted to me at warrenellis@gmail.com [public "dump" account, gets checked a couple of times a day]

“emodancers never stop”

I cannot for the life of me get their website (or podcast) to play nicely for me lately, but this should work: new label Broken20 (whose podcast is fucking excellent, actually) have made their first release, and it looks to me like prime stuff.

The Village Orchestra presents an hour-long (and fully improvised) live album recording from The Hive Collective’s ‘Memories Are Brighter Than Our Digital Debris’ showcase, part of the Future Everything event in Manchester. Law took Hive’s title and ran with it, composing a meditation themed around the unstable, fragile nature of memory and recording. Occult, meandering and willfully fractious…

Extensive previews at the link.

Milky Words by ButterClock from S.B. Kids on Vimeo.

People keep asking, so: no, I’m not at the London MCM Expo this coming weekend. I’m still getting over this hideous flu bug, and the last thing I want to do to my immune system right now is expose it to thousands of coughing people. Conversely, the last thing they need is for me to be coughing Komodo Dragon Flu bits all over them. So I’m giving it a miss. Sad to be missing the drinking, especially sad to be missing my regular quiet evening dinner with Emma, Pud and Anna, which, funnily enough, is what I look forward to most at Expo.

Raise a pint of whisky for me on Saturday night, Brit-comics.

(image by Christopher Glenn)

Just got email telling me that the brilliant novelist Steve Aylett is doing a gig on Oct 29 2010 at Roxy Arts House, Edinburgh, wherein he will read, speak and probably worry the crap out of people. This will also be your chance to buy the insane mashup CATERER comic. I would also recommend the marvellous and mad LINT.

I’m listening to the first track right now. It starts like an outtake from "Fur Immer" (I’ve been listening to NEU! all afternoon, which made for a weird moment when I had to check if I was streaming audio or still in iTunes). And then it stops. And then they sort of go through a time-travel portal and put their other foot directly into 90s postrock while still strumming the motorik. At which point, yes, it’s total comfort food for old rockist tendencies, but by the time they start digging power chords out of their guitars with rusty screwdrivers, I’m off with the fairies. Thirsting Quench and the Captains of Industry, we salute you.

Templesmith:

Just heard from Bob Wayne at DC Comics, who’s discovered that the RED graphic novel IS now available from Diamond UK. The stoppage was apparently at the Titan Books end (Titan are DC’s licensee for UK book trade sales).

I got asked to write a thing for the Guardian film section about "the allure of the retired operative" in films. And they’ve put it online.

There is great emotional and dramatic power in the concept of the Hero Rising Again. Look at the recent Rambo film, variously titled Rambo and John Rambo. When we first meet Sylvester Stallone in that film, he frankly looks like a skinned heifer that someone left out in the rain for six weeks. He’s not Rambo. He’s "John", and he’s old, monosyllabic to the point of catatonia, defeated. Things have to get horrendous before he becomes Rambo again – much like the Bourne Persona asserting itself when Matt Damon is attacked by cops in The Bourne Identity – and the audience takes perverse joy in the retired man taking on that aspect of the demented Special Forces black-ops killer "asset" we know of old…

• Futuristic Judge Dredd smartguns issued to 101st Airborne
  "It's all go in the world of futuristic Judge Dredd style guns today. Reports suggest that a battalion of US airmobile* troops in Afghanistan are to be equipped with the XM-25 computing smart-rifle, able to strike enemies hiding round corners or in trenches. A successful "proof of concept" of a guided homing bullet for use in sniper rifles has also been announced."
  (tags:war tech want+one xmas thankyou )
• The Mire – Radio Art To Work By
  "Knut Aufermann, author of the Radio Art feature in The Wire 320 has compiled, in his own words ?a selection of radio streams to listen to whilst concentrating on other things, a kind of audible wallpaper that commercial radio aspires to, but much better.?"
  (tags:radio )
• Life on earth could be transformed by NASA space technology
  "For years, NASA has been developing technology to establish long-duration human presence in space. As part of this ongoing effort, NASA developed a closed-loop system that recycles urine and gray water into drinking water. In addition, recent research suggests that it also may be used to generate and store energy, which would not only benefit space habitats and travel, but may have application on Earth as well."
  (tags:space tech culture )

I’ve just heard, in the last ten minutes, from two retail locations in the UK – one a comics shop, one a bookstore — that it’s apparently impossible to order RED for their shelves.

NOT WHAT I WANT TO HEAR WHEN THE FILM OPENS HERE TOMORROW, DIAMOND COMICS DISTRIBUTORS UK.

Lili’s waiting somewhat impatiently for this. It’s not out in the UK until Guy Fawkes’ Night. But if you’re in the US, you can buy it now. If it’s even half as good as the first book set in the "Clockwork Century" space, it’s going to be the mad entertainment book of the autumn. Terrifying Steamwar Battle Trains, for god’s sake. Who doesn’t want one of those?

Whitechapel is my online community.

* Who Else Is Doing Longform Webcomics For Collection Like FREAKANGELS?

* FreakAngels Wiki Online!

* Online radio

* Lifehack: Small but Definite Changes

My friend the future doom strategist Jamais Cascio is spreading the word:

On Thursday, October 21, CBC TV will show Surviving the Future, an hour-long documentary on both the major challenges facing us over the next half-century and the amazing technologies and social shifts underway to meet those challenges… I’ve managed to pull out the bits in which I appear.

Surviving the Future: Jamais Cascio excerpts from Jamais Cascio on Vimeo.

I’m an absolute mark for post-MBV swoony drones. So, here, The Slaves have nailed me. Click through to buy the digital download for a lousy USD $5, or a CD-R in an eco-wallet thing for a mere $8.

Someone found this for me about three years back. And then I lost it when my computer died (also killing the old email archive, so I can’t even trace it back).

In 1985, Peter Blegvad released a couple of singles on Virgin. One was “Special Delivery.” This is NOT the version that turns up on later albums. The later version is very minimal. This version is not: from what I remember, it’s a full band and backing singers. It sounds a lot bigger than the later version (and a bit Eighties, obv.) It is specifically this single/12" version I’m looking for.

If anyone has an mp3 of this version, please email it to me at warrenellis@gmail.com. I would really like to hear it again.