Tony says it's business as usual and we ALWAYS do what Tony tells us so brace yourselves for a thick string of links.
'Blogosphere' is a horrible word. 'Blog' was bad enough, but like Sloth in The Goonies we overlook the ugliness and concentrate on the Superman shirt beneath. 'Blogosphere' however has no redeeming qualities. We've used it just the once to help name our weekly round up of London Blogs along with Blogorama and the subtly different Blogarama. This week we've decided on the more crowd-pleasing term Blog-Bukkake. So settle down in front of your monitor and we'll try not to get any bloggage in your eye. Promise!
Just to be awkward the first blog from our sack is based in Helsinki: Chris Heathcote's Anti Mega. We're letting this one in because a) Helsinki is very cool and b) he loves up both Patrick Keiller's London (which we mentioned back here) and Finisterre:
"filmed by Paul Kelly, Kieran Evans with music by Saint Etienne... It's a more romanticised view of London, obviously drawing inspiration from Keiller's work (a bit hamfistedly), but still a wonderful addition to the filmography of London"
Lot's of links on Chris' blog but we should also mention that there's a special screening of Finisterre at the ICA in August complete with Q&A.
Chris is also concerned about t shirts... we may be able to help him out there in the near future.
Brace yourself for more thick flying strings of blog matter after the jump.
Remember Everything in the Morning is based in London, but regular updates depend entirely on what Kelly has been dreaming about the night before. We have no idea what Kelly has been eating after midnight but we want some:
When I come back into the kitchen with my arms full of hot socks the man is out of his chair and running towards me with amazing speed, silent speed. His eyes are raging and he has a knife in his hand. He attacks and slices my stomach open. What the fuck! I shout, but he has picked me up over his head and is squeezing all the blood out of my stomach. Ouch.
That this stuff is usually accompanied by delightful little drawings is the icing on the cake.
Another Londonist blogstination (and you can blame that piece of wordfuckery on the New Yorker) is On An Overgrown Path which yesterday drew some comparisons between the recent bombings here and the RAF induced firestorm in Dresden. We're not entirely sure that the two events sit comfortably side by side because of the sheer difference in scale, but it's a grim reminder that when attacked we tend to have the last word:
On 13th February 1945 more than a thousand RAF bombers dropped over 4,500 tons of high explosives and incendiaries on the city, sparking a horrendous firestorm which swept through the centre. The two major RAF night raids were followed by smaller US daytime attacks. More than 25,000 inhabitants died in the bombing, and thirteen square miles of the centre were destroyed, together with priceless treasures and works of art.
The F Word Blog continues to bring us the latest feminist stories from around the world. This week they've reported on the industrial revolution of marriage, wife fattening farms, the possible effect of Bush nominating John Roberts on Roe vs. Wade, anti-terrorism via Islamic feminism and still find time to take The Guardian down a peg or two:
Ugh. It's infuriating that people feel the need to ascribe certain generic human characteristics to one gender or the other to explain success or failure. In this case, the not so subtle implication is that men as a class are naturally lazy, less sensible, less practical, less driven, less passionate, and just generally not as good as women are
Go Catherine! They also give the BNP a good kicking and you really can't get enough of that.
Almost as popular as the BNP are the plans to force us to carry ID cards (despite today's latest fireworks outbreak). Simon over on Life in the Jar points out that a staggering £17 million has already gone down the tubes on this with more to follow. He also mentions the latest Pledgebank news regarding the damn things and picks up the facts on the new biometric passports:
requirement is that the passport has a digital facial image of the passport bearer and that is it! No fingerprints, no registry, no nothing... I'll be renewing my passport in August, before the price goes up to £93
Sounds like good advice.
Another bit of good advice is to avoid Harry Potter night next year. Londonist was coming out of a Ramonas gig going on for 1am on Friday and the last thing we expected to bump into was a pack of tweenies dressed as wizards and witches. Even the nightbuses were filled with kids all risking serious head injuries as their need to read outweighed their sense of balance. Here's "And then he said..." in another part of London on the same evening:
Kingston was a madhouse - the pubs emptying boozed-up lads and short-skirted slappers out onto the street outside the bookshop, while inside gleaming-eyed parents tried to pretend they were only there for their face-painted offsprings' benefit. Endless trollies stacked with the two different versions of the book, the brightly-coloured children's cover and the sombre adult cover. A beaming Borders spokesman braying into a mobile phone about the success of the evening. Small girls in cloaks or Hogwarts uniforms looking tired and - as the night wore on - increasingly fractious. Bookshop staff dressed in wizard costumes that could surely only have been designed by someone who wished them ill. A queue downstairs that snaked away from the tills and then three times around the main body of the store. A queue upstairs that was less frantic, less claustrophobic, and considerably shorter - but far, far slower as there was only one till at the head of it rather than the half a dozen downstairs. And everywhere people clutching green-jacketed books, stopped in their tracks, standing and reading as if hypnotised into doing so.
Speaking of books we should also mention Bookslut because even though Jessa resides in Chicago her infamous blog (co-written with Michael Schaub) does make mention of the fact that Probably more kids would read if all libraries had names like "Filthy McNasty's." They're talking of course about this.
And that's that. But before you leave to towel off we always like to finish on a high note... here's a photo from Route 79 which gives a clue as to what will be flying before we allow people with exploding bags, backpacks or indeed fannypacks rule our lives:
