Categories
Comics

The Alan Moore Chain Reaction thingie

Alan Moore was interviewed by Stewart Lee on BBC-4’s Chain Reaction; via Didi, I got to the Comics Reporter, which posts a link to the interview that works (the one on the main page gave me an error), as well as to a transcript at CBR.
Using esoteric techniques described in Ben Hammersley’s Radiopod script, I’ve used mplayer to download the interview and convert it to a WAV file, and then used lame to convert it to an MP3 (30 Mb, so a bit big, but I uploaded it anyway). Probably so I can listen to it on my MP3 player, I guess, but mostly just to see that it can be done.

Update: bonus for Genkin, the three out-takes from the BBC site, in MP3 format: Stewart Lee on playing a Cyberman, Moore on Superman and Mort Weisinger’s neuroses, Why Moore doesn’t like The Killing Joke.

Update II: The following week’s Chain Reaction show, where Alan Moore interviews Brian Eno, is also avaiable (MP3).

Categories
Roleplaying

Roleplaying links – Valherjar and Wushu

Valherjar: The Chosen Slain sounds horrifyingly like a roleplaying idea I thought of (and ran twice in cons).

Wushu Open is an updated version of Dan Bayn’s action roleplaying system, released under a creative commons license. I really liked the original version, and it looks like this version includes some improvements to make it clearer how exactly to play a game where the players determine what happens before anyone even rolls their dice…

Categories
Blather short

Suzie’s LJ

Look! Suzie writing in her LiveJournal! Check out (Hebrew).

Categories
Oddities

Project Grizzly

Found in the depths of boingboing, Project Grizzly is a Canadian film about an amateur inventor’s quest to build a Grizzly-proof suit. Project Grizzly Suit From the site:

Meet Troy James Hurtubise, a self-styled “close-quarter bear researcher,” who’s obsessed with going face-to-face with Canada’s most deadly land mammal, the grizzly bear.
Troy is the creator of what he hopes is a “grizzly-proof” suit of armour — an extraordinary fusion of high-tech materials and homespun ingenuity — and of his own hybrid mythology that is part Hollywood, part Canadian shield.

Although it looks pretty impressive, when you watch the clip you realize he’s basically wearing a huge metal can (with it’s own air-conditioning).
He could really use some servo-motors on that…

Categories
Oddities

Henry Darger

I was listening to Natalie Merchant’s album, Motherland, which in general I didn’t find too interesting *, when I came across a curious song called Henry Darger.
Turns out that Henry Darger was a solitary man, whose artwork and writings were discovered only after his death, when his landlord came to clean out his apartment.
Henry Darger art (detail)
Darger wrote and illustrated an epic fantasy story called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.. He’s considered a prime example of what is called “Outsider Art”.
The idea of someone obsessively writing and drawing a story meant only for himself reminds me of Robert Crumb’s brother in Terry Zwigoff’s film Crumb.


* – In most of the songs she sounds too much like Tracy Chapman or Joan Armatrading, which weren’t to my taste back when you couldn’t escape hearing them; Though I did enjoy the songs Golden Boy, St. Judas and This House Is On Fire (particularly the opening).