Author: Tom Coates

Calling Mason Lang: Could the person who sent me three tremendously wonderful presents off my wishlist – all of which arrived this morning – but neglected to leave their name, please mail me so I can thank you in person. It’s started off a difficult week on a really cool note.

Hmmm. I find myself strangely missing Ralph – who’s not posting on the Underground as much as he used to, is hardly posting to his site either. And he’s never on AIM. Things seem oddly flat without someone to bounce off.

12 places talking about articles at barbelith.com: The Null Device, beautiful MIDNIGHT, If Then Else, Virulent Memes, As Above, qwertyuiop, Come Back, shrapnel.org, Devil or an Angel, Minor 9th, OutSider, Blogadoon.

Am I the only person in the world who thinks that Josh from Big Brother has slightly alarming sticky-out teeth? I probably am. What a ridiculous thing to focus on, Tom. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I’d rather have Brian. He’s just, you know, nice.

Literally about a year ago, I ran a headline competition, based upon illustrating some amusing headlines that I’d found somewhere on the net. During the process at some point I think I became suddenly horrified by how ridiculously geeky I had become, and so without even allowing the competition to run its course, I stopped putting up people’s entries onto the site. Well time passes, and what has horrified you in the past gradually becomes sickeningly mundane. So here are the final entrants, just under a year late.

“Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge” | outage.com

“NJ Judge Rules On Nude Beach” | outage.com

“Iraqi Head in Search of Arms” | www.baal.org.nz

Tremendous thanks are in order to Prol for finding me Peter Mandelson’s speech online. This is wonderful stuff – although I think it cuts out too soon – because I remember it taking an eternity for him to stop talking about himself and his ‘inner steel’. Dear god, man – who let the dogs out?

Delivered in the post this morning: American Beauty OST. Thanks so much to Ann for this. Here’s a sample that I’ve listened to over and over again with the windows open, looking out over the garden at the back of my flat – Mental Boy.

Frustration of the day: Contracts come and contracts go and you go through periods where you can’t get enough work and other periods where you can’t fit in the work that people want you to do. At the moment it’s just a question of wanting one particular contract above all others – it’s just much more interesting work. But I keep getting put off – delayed – and now the person who’s responsible for hiring for that position has gone on holiday. For another two weeks.

It’s amazing, astonishing even, what you can find when you wander through Haddock.org. Started off with a couple of self-searches for plasticbag and barbelith and ended up stumbling on this picture of Matt Interconnected. For … more … on Matt, visit his site – Interconnected.org.

Post-Napster, I find myself increasingly obsessed with filepile.org as a source of random mp3’s to experience.