Categories
Resources Science Fiction and Fantasy

Link dump of free stuff

Via Warren Ellis, I found an interesting site called Ethnopoetic Soundings, which has assorted weird ethnic music in MP3 format.

(Because I use Firefox, and installed the Greasemonkey extension, and installed this cool inline MP3 player script from the script repository, I get a cool little flash button next to each mp3 link in a web page, which can stream and play the file when you click it. Very cool for browsing something like that. Or reading .)

Warren Ellis also points to Blind Shrike, a (free) novel by Richard Kadrey. From Kadrey’s introduction:

Back around 9/11, when I saw such disparate fantasies as Hellblazer and Preacher, American Gods and Carrie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Donnie Darko living together in happy harmony in friends’ homes, I thought it would be a swell idea to write a little fantasy novel in a modern American prose style.

Damn, was I wrong.

Talking of music and free stuff, there’s also an unpublished Fiona Apple album you can download. And also a Kleptones album which photomatt has mirrored. I like Revolverlution best, I think.

Categories
Resources

Changing Minds

Changing minds and persuasion — How we change what others think, believe, feel and do – this site is about mind control! Or rather, cheap salesman shticks, things like Feel, felt, found (I understand you feel about that. Many others have felt the same way. And what they have found is that….) (an example of Objection handling techniques).

I feel dirty just reading this.

Categories
Resources

EvilLyrics

This is pretty cool: EvilLyrics, a lyrics search tool; it picks up the name of whatever song is currently playing on your computer (it’s suppossedly for WinAmp, works with other media players – for instance, it works fine with foobar2000, the media player I’m using here), and searches for the Lyrics and shows them. It also checks if there’s a Karaoke version of the song, if you fancy singing them yourself…

[ link from Captain Internet. ]

Categories
Oddities Resources

Golliwogs

The Golliwog Caricature (article from the Jim Crow museum of racist memorabilia)
Cats and Golliwogs
The other day I thought of the Golliwogs, who figured very prominently in Enid Blyton’s Noddy books, which I recall vividly from my childhood.

The claim that Golliwogs are racist is supported by literary depictions by writers such as Enid Blyton. Unlike Florence Upton’s, Blyton’s Golliwogs were often rude, mischievous, elfin villains. In Blyton’s book, Here Comes Noddy Again, a Golliwog asks the hero for help, then steals his car.

Well Done Noddy Cover
Apparently, only in the 80’s were they systematically edited out of this material.

Categories
Comics Oddities Resources

Stupid Links of the day

Yes! After a while of no blog content, it’s pointless linkage time again!

  • A horrible quality trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Never has Johnny Depp looked more gay. Or make that Gay. G-A-Y, even. My instinctive, deep-seated hatred for that story, which I have never actually read, perhaps innoculated into me by my saintly mother, remains unabated.
  • Yadda yadda boingboing links to deleted sex scene from Team America (link round-up here). No sound, but marvel at how acrobatic those puppets can be. The only people degraded in the making of this were the puppetters and the members of the MPAA, who had to rate the movie.
  • Amendments to the Pub Crawl by Jason Roeder is a bit of a laugh:

    This might be a good time to mention the disco bus. As it turns out, the company doesn’t run it on Sundays. But I’ve got my Hyundai Accent. And my sister says she’ll try to lend me the strobe light her daughter had left over from last year’s Drama Club haunted house. I’m not sure if that’s the kind of thing I can plug into the cigarette lighter, though.

    We have a pro-vs.-con situation. On one hand, the Accent, unlike the bus, is equipped with side-impact airbags. But on the other hand, since I can’t fit more than five people in my car, the rest of you maniacs will have to cruise with my grandfather. He’s agreed to drive provided that you comport yourselves like ladies and gentlemen, and that you not go on and on about his snoring. He also has several meteorological phobias, one of which is good weather, the ominous atmospheric state that always immediately precedes bad weather.

  • A site devoted to the 1966 Batman TV show and movie, for all your Shark-Repellent Bat-Spray needs. From the movie synopsis: As Robin pulls the Batcopter back up, he sees Batman has a giant shark grasping onto his leg! Batman yells to his assistant for the Shark Repellent Bat-Spray over his Batradio, so Robin sets the copter on autopilot and brings it down the ladder to Batman. As the shark is sprayed with the repellent, it drops off his leg, back into the ocean, exploding on impact. They can’t believe what just occurred, so they go back to the Batcave to analyze a photo they had taken while flying over the “fake vessel.”