The Null Device
2001/5/21
Could this be the next big thing after reality television? In Russia and Canada, two popular TV news programs feature strippers as news anchors, titiliating the audience with nudity as they recite breaking news stories. The shows are cheap to make and wildly popular, which may make them the Next Big Thing.
AP has an interesting article about urban explorer groups.
A writer, Julia Solis feeds her fiction with the odd artifacts and remnants of human history discovered in abandoned asylums. Photographs she's taken capture the eerie aura of their crumbling interiors.
Yeeng! Recording Racket heavies Vivendi Universal to swallow up mp3.com. Expect "mp3.com" to go the way of PolyGram (remember them?), and actual MP3 downloads to be replaced by Sony/Universal's locked-down Duet system; you can say goodbye to listening to unsigned artists on your untrusted Linux system. Or maybe not; MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson looks set get a seat at Vivendi CEO Messier's right hand as a technology guru; though how important open formats are to him remains to be seen.
Rebranding for the New Millennium: Since X-Day, and the arrival of the Xist Pleasure Saucers, the Church of the SubGenius' profile in the fringe cult marketplace has declined somewhat. To counter this, the Church has now selected a new logo.
Personally, I love it. It's very clique-ish, as it represents a secret society (us) where only the *true* SubGenii wiill recognize the logo. The Dobbshead is everywhere, and any moron can (and does) rip it off and use it for whatever. But the "Bob" Icon represents only one thing: SLACK.
Expect to see the new SubGenius Eikon scrawled cryptically in random places, next to muted posthorns, three-fish glyphs and "THIS IS A HEAVY PRODUCT" stickers. And praise "Bob".
Shortly before his death, Douglas Adams wrote about the circumstances that led to him writing the Hitchhiker's Guide, a work born of poverty and despair.
Is Pac-Man a carefully veiled piece of social commentary about race relations
in America? This guy
suggests that it is; meanwhile, the good burghers of Plastic have
their own
theories. And speaking of old arcade games, mame.dk is back. No banner ads this time, so they're depending on the
generosity of donors concerned about free gam3zpreserving classic arcade games for future generations.
The Continental Cafe has closed its doors for the last time; though there are reports of two new operators looking into reopening it. Then again, if the result is anything like what happened with the Valhalla Cinema (which used to play a lot of cult films and do a roaring trade with students and people with 3RRR stickers on their cars, until the landlords forced the owners out, took over, and reopened it as a rather blah suburban cinema which shows very few films, most of them either disnannies or Working Title britcoms), they may as well not bother and turn the place into yuppie apartments or clothing shops straight away.