dogpoet

The .co.uk site still seems to be working at least.

Further investigation reveals it is a John Constantine project, with Constantine pitched as a pulp-fiction style private eye who happens to deal with supernatural clients.

Like that godawful Lovecraft film?

Yep, that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of. (I loved Hammet's line about the English locked room murder mystery being a joke, because that isn't how people get murdered and never has been...)

Come on, guys! You know as well as I do that if you really want a war--I mean REALLY want a war--sometimes you gotta crack some eggs, or smoke some crack with an eggwhore, or donate a cumstained dress to the Smithsonian. What I mean to say is: don't judge our reasons for going to war (they could be anything), just judge the end result and know that everything bad about the war is Bush's successor's fault because Bush will generously leave this mess to whichever Democrat gets the nomination.

Bush may well be bequeathing the mess to a lot more Presidents than whoever gets saddled with the ruin he's made of your country's finances and international standing: you were in Vietnam for quite a while as well...

But there are quite a few lesbian vampires in your book, aren't there? or...oooooh, he were bein' sort of an ironical, weren't he..?

I think he was saying there aren't enough lesbian vampires in Rankin's thrillers to suit me: one of those cheap dig things...

Wait, was he talking about Vertigo as a whole, or your book?

My book, I'd imagine.

Esoteric odd and unorthodox stuff, mostly. It's probably the reason I got into SF fantasy and horror fiction in the first place, and it came as a bit of a blow when the penny finally dropped about how homogenous and conformist the majority of fiction in all 3 genres is (unfortunately, this seems to be how genres are defined: it's nothing to do with the underlying tropes and concerns and more seems to be how much something resembles other exemplars of the genre in question).

I'm 5'2". What I am then?

 

Yeah, I was suspecting something like that.

 

 

By the way, where is that from?

The Oompa Loompas from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. (Couldn't find a decent munchkin picture on Google, annoyingly enough.)

She does draw nice horses!

 

Did you read the entire Guardian series? I couldn't stand the first three issues of Guardian, but I absolutely adored the final issue.

Zatanna was my favourite of the series.

Klarion was probably my second favourite.

No, there was only the first couple of issues in Guardian in this: the only one of them I've read all four issues is Zatanna, as that was the only one I bought when it came out as four comics rather than part of a bind up.

Simone Bianchi is a he.....

My mistake. Sort of an italian "Boy Named Sue" routine going on there then...

I'm 5'2". What I am then?

Is it?

It's pretty short, but it's not ruinously or indecently short.

I'm depressed. Even tough there was a listed date for the opening, they are not going to release A Scanner Darkly in movie theatres on my country after all.

 

In fact, I'm also pissed off.

Why should I have to pay for the fact the American (and general) audiences do not go for these types of films, and rather follow the brainless summer blockbusters?!!

 

argh.

Because the American (and general) audiences can't suffer arthouse intellectuals?

(Fredi, I can't speak for the Americans, but I definitely won't be watching Snakes On A Plane when it opens over here: with a title like that it should have Kurt Russell in it, not Samuel Jackson...)

I suppose it isn't as kinetic as it should (particularly in the violent scenes) but I can't see much wrong with the storytelling.

 

The best example I can recall off the top of my head would be the fight with the two policemen in the second issue - the whole sequence is a mess, with characters totally shifting position relative to each other between panels, guns flipping from upside-down to right-way-up without warning, and a few other basic errors. I liked the art more than a few people around here did, but it was still pretty patchy at times.

I actually quite liked that (it put me in mind of one of the cut to hell fight scenes in a few thrillers where you can't quite tell what's going on), but if it wasn't deliberate then it was a mess, true enough.

She draws good horses, though.

They didn't invade SA, but Kuwait. I dont' know what what Iraq's stated reasons were for that.

They were planning to go after Saudi Arabia next, I think.

On Aug. 16, U.S. president George W. Bush ruled out setting a date for the withdrawal of American troops, saying, "Leaving before we complete our mission would create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would be willing to use to extract economic pain from those of us who believe in freedom."

What the devil is all this crap about Iraq having huge oil reserves? I thought the main reason they invaded Saudi Arabia back in '91 was because they didn't have much in the way of oil reserves, and the Saudis did. I do like the unsaid part of the quotation above though "Leaving before we complete our mission" = "Leaving at all", particularly now there's a shi'ite government sort of in power.

He's big on Van Der Graaf Generator as well, but I still don't much like him as a writer.

Not enough lesbian vampires for your tastes, eh?

:icon_redface:

Agreed on Klarion, certainly (that, Zatanna and Frankenstein were far and away my favourites). It's a corking story, and I'd love to see an ongoing series based around the character (that's true of most of the Soldiers, actually, but Klarion would particularly appeal to me). I liked Shining Knight a lot, but it suffered slightly, to my eyes, from Bianchi's ropey story-telling. The art looked good, but the page layouts and panel-to-panel flow were desperately lacking in quite a few key sequences. Good story, though, and like you, I loved the swords-and-sorcery stuff.

I really liked Bianchi's artwork, to be honest, but that may well have been because she reminded me of Glenn Fabry, and I know you can't suffer his stuff. I suppose it isn't as kinetic as it should (particularly in the violent scenes) but I can't see much wrong with the storytelling.

I'd like to see a Klarion series myself (Zatanna series as well, but then I've always liked that character: I was very impressed by the way Morrison characterised her), the set up is very interesting indeed.

A penguin is driving through the Nevada desert, and his car's engine starts making an ominous knocking sound. He stops in the next town and finds a garage. "I'll have a look at the engine," the mechanic says. "Come back in half an hour and I'll have found the problem, hopefully."

The penguin thinks fair enough, and goes for a walk to kill the time. He finds the heat oppressive now he's out of his air conditioned SUV, so when he sees an ice cream parlour nearby he's drawn to this and buys himself a big bowl of vanilla. While he's a slightly messy eater, the icecream definitely hits the spot, so he decides that he fancies another before leaving to head back to the garage.

The mechanic's waiting for him when he gets back. "It looks like you've blown a seal," he says.

"No!" The penguin says. "This is just ice cream."

That's true.

He got his brains blown out though. Look what it did for Kurt Cobain.

I still can't even begin to wrap my mind around this "Camelot" idea....

I honestly think that if Kennedy had lived much longer he'd have taken the rest of the human race with him. The lad spent most of his term in office begging the soviet union to start something.

Did I use the wrong name?

Who did I mean?

One of the most famous sci-fi writers couldn't write a woman to save his life, which one was it?

A lot of SF writers from the '40s and '50s couldn't write a convincing female character to save their lives, but that didn't stop most of them from trying...

Maybe the insulin won't completely fix his current state of mind but hopefully getting his blood sugar under control will presumably make him at least somewhat more rational and hopefully a little better about self-preservation. Good luck to you and your family on this, Wolvy.

That's true, josh: having your blood sugars go out whack can cause mood swings and all sorts of erratic behaviour. Not quite as bad as the crap you come out with while hypoglaecemic, but still pretty bad.

Wolvy, I take it this is something the fellow's developed quite recently if he isn't taking it as seriously as he should?

He wrote the sleevenotes for the King Creosote CD.

They're GREAT !

He's big on Van Der Graaf Generator as well, but I still don't much like him as a writer.

That is how you spell diabetes, wolvy.

If he doesn't get his insulin he's going to be in a lot worse shape than just sitting and sulking.

Dragging the world to the brink of Armageddon really didn't help his cause.

Doesn't seem to have done Kennedy's reputation any harm, does it?

Also the most consistent and important character in the I, Robot stories was a woman.

Er that is Susan Calvin, unless I have her name wrong.

There's female protagonists in a couple of the Foundation books as well, and these are the proper early ones, not the crap later ones.