If the “description of Cybergypsies I gave earlier”:https://blog.org/archives/cat_arts_reviews.html#001171 piqued your curiosity there is an interview with the author of Cybergypsies, Indra Singha on “The Well”:http://well.com in a part of it that is open to the public – “inkwell”:http://engaged.well.com/engaged.cgi?c=inkwell.vue where lots of author interviews take place (his is number 52). It turns out that the promotional website he created for the book has been (incompletely) captured via the “Internet Archive”:http://web.archive.org/web/20010610025144/www.wiseserpent.com/cybergypsies/menu.html and what do you know – the multi-user dungeon he spent much of his time in is “still running”:http://games.world.co.uk/shades/!

I have always admired “John Frankenheimer”:http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001239/’s best work. Films like “The Manchurian Candidate”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056218/, “Seven Days in May”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058576/ and “French Connection II”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073018/ are well-known (at least among film buffs). I even liked “Ronin”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122690/ one of the last films he worked on before he died.

I just saw one of his early films (1966) that I feel was at least as good as his famous ones but has received less attention – Seconds. It’s a trenchant commentary on materialism and an emotionally gripping, imaginatively shot parable based on the (not particularly original) idea of faking your own death to have another chance to live your life. It isn’t hard to figure out from almost the beginning how it will end but I was consistently engaged throughout. If you can get ahold of it at your local cult video store do try (North Americans you can apparently get it on DVD or video “from Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005RDAJ/imdb-adbox/002-2907813-7514440).

P.S. I didn’t realise – “Jonathan Demme”:http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001129/ is producing “his own version of The Manchurian Candidate”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368008/ (the director is “interviewed on NPR”:http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgDate=29-Jul-2004&prgId=2).

The Cybergypsies : A True Tale of Lust, War, & Betrayal on the Electronic Frontier by Indra Sinha is yet another book about unusual experiences online but with several key points of interest. Many such books were written by over-excited US journalists who just dipped into that world. This was written by someone based in the UK who had a life outside the online world (a responsible job, wife and child) but who got very involved in online communities. It’s also of some historical interest because he was writing about the pre-Internet online world where being online 24/7 wouldn’t just cost you time but a considerable amount of money.

He gives an interesting, colourful and personal glimpse of what life online was like back then for some but though the book appears to be an autobiography it is written in a deliberately poetical/impressionistic style leaving the reader uncertain how much of what they’ve read they can believe.

If there is someone out there reading this blog who was around online in the UK back in the early to mid 90s, hung out on Shades or the Vortex, met ‘bear’ there and has read the book I would be interested in your comments (public or private). How was he seen in those communities after he published? I have a feeling I have met one or two people who were there…

Cleolinda Jones is one funny woman as “Troy in 15 Minutes”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/cleolinda/99710.html proves conclusively. If you have rather longer, rather than seeing “the movie”:http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/troy listen to “Prof Robert Rabel”:http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1901156 and read an English language translation of the original in a “free etext form”:http://www.gutenberg.net/etext02/iliab10.txt instead.

If you laughed at Troy in 15 Minutes why not check out Cleolinda’s version of “Van Helsing in Fifteen Minutes”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/cleolinda/93639.html too?

Obdisclaimer – I have not seen the film or (alas) read the book either in Greek or in English.
Thank you so much Reid for letting me know about Cleolinda!

I notice that Fictionwise, which sells ebooks, has a special promotion (top of its front page) on the ebooks of the movies of “Spider Man 2”:http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/ebook22112.htm and “Van Helsing”:http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/ebook22111.htm. I can’t imagine anyone going to these special effects extravaganzas and thinking, ‘I love this but I want to be able to read it in ebook form to really enjoy the subtlety of the plotting and characterisation.’

I recently decided to download Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville from “Project Gutenberg”:http://promo.net/pg/index.html to read on my Palm T3 in spare moments so I was intrigued to stumble across L’Amérique, Mon Amour – a summary of de Toqueville’s thought and life which reveals him to be a rather conservative democratic thinker (he opposed the extension of suffrage in France for example) and suggests that he is mainly popular in the US because he is so enamoured of the American way.

If you read this and have a) some money and b) the ability to get to Oakville, Ontario, Canada it might be worth your while to check out of the this exhibition of the works of “David Blackwood”:http://www.davidblackwood.com/. There was an exhibition of other Blackwood works I saw earlier this year and I found them curiously fascinating.

I note that the exhibition’s site features a few image scans that are large enough to serve as desktop images if you like the look of them.

1) “BBC Radio 7”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/ – the BBC’s digital speech radio channel which broadcasts classic comedy and drama – now has a Listen again feature (audio on demand in other words). It is still streaming audio like the rest of the BBC’s offerings but
2) Someone at the BBC has decided to allow the “Reith lectures”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2004/ to go out “as MP3s”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2004/mp3.shtml as well as streamed audio, just as one of the first and most popular campaigns on their “iCan campaign site”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican/G30 requested. It’s a pity they decided to record voice at 64Kbps only (so the file size is large). Even if you don’t want to listen to the Reith lectures visit the page where there is a form and register your support for MP3s!
3) The “News Quiz”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/newsquiz.shtml – a topical humorous discussion of the news similar to NPR’s “Wait Wait don’t tell Me”:http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/ – is back on the air.

In the spirit of Phil Gyford’s rendition of “Pepys Diary”:https://blog.org/archives/000604.html there are several other weblog-ified classic literary diaries that have started up. The classic Victorian diary spoof “Diary of a Nobody”:http://www.diaryofanobody.net/ is quite entertaining.

It is “Simon Cozens”:http://simon-cozens.org/’ (rather free) English translation of The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon Pillow Talk, however, that is to my mind the most successful adaptation yet. Why? Because in his rendition it seems exactly like the blog of a contemporary teenage girl, yet the reflections (of a woman in the court of the Japanese Emperor) are a thousand years old. Rarely does history seem to speak to us so directly.

Of course “some people”:http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/32554 think in making its relevance apparent Simon is barbarously mangling the poetry of the original text. Well, there’s nothing to prevent people who find it interesting from taking a look at the extracts translated by others that are “available online”:http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/shonagon.html, buying the ‘canonical’ paperback translation by Ivan Morris (Amazon UK) (Amazon US) or even the reading it “in the original”:http://www.wao.or.jp/naniuji/koten/makurano.htm. Besides, his is the most complete translation available online for free (that I am aware of).

I recently discovered maisonneuve, a Canadian magazine out of Quebec with an interesting editorial policy:

What does Maisonneuve publish? The sky’s the limit – hell, what’s in a sky? Poems about nothing? Love ’em. Got a cousin who writes long diatribes against houseflies? How about a really good vignette on the way people walk? Photocopies of your childhood collection of gum-wrappers. Audiofiles of people talking at the Jackson Pollack retrospective. Sonnets to your beloved–they better be good.

Sounds a bit like “McSweeney’s”:http://www.mcsweeneys.net/ that way. What makes it succeed of course is that they seem to attract and choose good stuff. It’s available in print and on the web – check it out!