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A weblog by Christopher Miles
Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio
Farce: The Critical Idiom by Jessica Milner Davis
English Comedy: Its Role and Nature from Chaucer to the Present Day by Allan Edwin Rodway
The Alchemy of Laughter by Glen Cavaliero
The Nature of Narrative by Robert Scholes, James Phelan and Robert Kellogg
Siggy and Amber by Doug MacLeod
Air by Geoff Ryman
Mike Lynch at Nannygoat Hill offers an examination of Doctor Who, its central character and its enthusiasts in the form of a Ballardian short fiction-cum-psychiatric essay, as though the program itself were a series of ‘disaster reports’ detailing ever-increasing threats to humanity, the universe, and temporal reality itself; metaphors, as the essay suggests, “for some crisis of the mind’s ability to retain an integral image of itself over historical time”.
The Journal of Victorian Culture Online compares the recent Doctor Who Christmas special, ‘A Christmas Carol’, to Dickens’ original. Much is made of the Doctor’s active participation in the Scrooge figure’s past, present and future, in contrast to the ‘passive observation of the past leading to internal reflection’ in Dickens’ story. “What ensued,” notes the author, “was a deliberate manipulation of Dickens’ plot to suit both the hero and the show”.
Yesterday I spoke to ABC 666 Canberra about the death of Elisabeth Sladen, who played legendary companion Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who. You can hear the interview below. (Note: you may think you hear the presenter calling me ‘Chris Smith’ at the end, but you’d be wrong.)
Thought I’d found a spare, unused nappy on the floor! Now imagine the most extreme possible antonym for ‘unused’, and comprehend my horror.
Guillermo Del Toro, speaking to Rick Kleffel about his vampire novels The Strain and The Fall (co-written with Chuck Hogan), is worried about Godzilla dropping turds on Tokyo.
Oh, It’s Just an 8 x Life-size Colour Pencil Rendering of Page 1 of The New York Times, 11/09/2001. Luke Hand, pencil on paper, 2011
A selection of poetry by the so-called ‘Chaucer of Cheese’, James McIntyre. I suppose there are worse subjects — or less interesting dairy products, at least — toward which one could direct their poetic talent.
Incidentally, The Guardian recently reported that works by McIntyre and fellow curd-enthusiast William Topaz McGonagall will ‘soon be recited in public for the first time in more than 100 years, and maybe ever’.
Incredible LEGO® MOC of the Russell T. Davies era TARDIS console from Doctor Who. Be sure to check out some of Mr. Xenomurphy’s other LEGO® MOCs, including this LEGO® vignette featuring Lady Cassandra from the 2005 Doctor Who episode ‘The End of the World’.
As the Ninth Doctor himself might have said, “Give the man a medal”.
Jeremy Duns in The Independent reveals some details from the unfilmed adaptation of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, scripted by the so-called ‘Shakespeare of Hollywood’ Ben Hecht. The script was written in the early 1960s and had been sitting with Hecht’s papers in Chicago’s Newberry Library since 1979. Sounds like it would have made a cracking Bond flick.
David Tennant: not shy about his obsession with the Fifth Doctor. I’m starting to get a bit worried.
Who knew that Australia possesses the last surviving crop seeds of certain varieties of Lebanese chickpea? Sparing us the nightmare scenario of a future devoid of farting hippies, Australian farmer and scientist Dr Tony Gregson has preserved these and other seed samples in the Arctic environs of that mother-of-all spice racks, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.
But seeds? Snow? Doom? (Okay, doom in the sense of ‘doomsday, preparation for’, but still.)
Last.fm is refusing to acknowledge that at 12.14 on Friday night I listened to ‘Things That Make You Go Hmm’ by C+C Music Factory.
Nicely shot LEGO® recreation of certain scenes from the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski by Lennart Bendixen. The moustaches on LEGO® The Jesus’s compadre are a nice touch. (Thanks to Phil Sherry for the link.)
Is the ‘con’ in ‘chili con carne’ short for ‘consequences’?
Charming write-up by Tavis Allison at The Mule Abides on running a Dungeons & Dragons– themed birthday party for eight-to-nine year olds. I like the idea of every character starting out with a magic item of their choice, and letting the kids take home their chosen dice and player miniature is just brilliant.
Also: horse meat.
Home is where any reasonably accessible and comfortable horizontal surface is.
The southern African state of Malawi is undertaking a review of its penal code which, depending on the outcome of a legislative amendment being debated next week, may mean I have to strike it from my wishlist of travel destinations.
It emerged this week that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange “disguised himself as an old woman in order to evade US intelligence officers”. It’s important to note, however, that Assange is not the first renegade and computer boffin to dabble in drag.
A cool (if slightly over-dramatic) video detailing a reproduction of the Ancient Greek computing device known as the Antikythera Mechanism using plastic gears from a LEGO® Technic set.
The designer, Apple software engineer Andrew Carol, previously built a LEGO® Babbage Difference Engine.
Meanwhile, here’s a pink LEGO® house I built for my daughter.