plasticbag.org

My position on Would Atheism be a better solution to the problems of the world? [at Linklust]

Be there when the board opens to the world – Monday morning at 10am (UK time). In the meantime, if you go to the News section, you can see a highly embarrassing photo of your host (me). The buzz starts here… SPREAD THE WORD

Via The LinkMachine: “I mean, perform fellatio once and you’re a poet, twice and you’re a homosexual. I remember once I was being fisted by Sebastian Cabot- but here’s where the story gets interesting. He was lactose-intolerant. I once sat on a bus and tried to will myself a menstrual cycle. All I ended up with was a sense of failure and a mild neuralgia in my incisor teeth and perhaps a grudging respect for the weaker sex. I love toe cleavage. For the most part I distrust dogs. I slept in a horse once. It was quite roomy. On second thought, it was the Ritz.” [Who knows…]

Diary of a movie-goer: (2) Last night was Amelie night – and what a film. It’s strange, quirky, brilliantly put together, surprisingly quiet (the main characters don’t seem to talk much at all), occasionally manipulative, often ludicrous, and at heart – a well-intentioned beautiful and upsetting little film. You must see it immediately. Accidental blogmeet territory too – as co-worker Cal, friend Davo and I met up with occasional freelance employer Danny M-K for swift beer and movie.

Diary of a movie-goer: As Davo has reported, he and I went to see The Others on Thursday night, and I have to say that I was singularly impressed. The evening was a bit of a farce really. The director was supposed to present the movie, was half an hour late, walked in said something to the effect of “Hello, this is my film” in a kind of Balky-style accent and walked out. This extremely bouncy PR lady kept smiling at us and saying happy things in an Ab Fab kind of way and then the film began.

And essentially it was stunning. It wasn’t particularly revolutionary – there’s no plot element in there that hasn’t been done before – it’s a straight down-the-line haunted house story with a couple of quirks that keep it interesting – but it’s so well done. The thing is, there are only so many plots connected with haunted house stories, and only so many possible twists – and we’ve seen them all before. But the way the plot brings them up as possibilities, shuts them down, distracts you completely, leads you in one direction and then pushes you in another – and in such a completely plausible and terrifying fashion – well it’s completely worth watching. Four and half stars from our London correspondent…

Will the Weblogger User Group have the same triumphs, friendship-creation and back-biting components of UK weblogging? I can only hope so.

Movable Type launches on Monday, and I’ll be one of the first inline to download it and try out an installation of it. I’m really quite excited about this – partially because I’m interested in any system that allows me to import files from Blogger. It’s not that I would choose to leave them, but that the ability to do so protects nearly two years of writing from possible destruction. I would have a copy that I could back up in a way that would be accessible to other CMS’s. I’m also interested in it because I’m interested in Content Management Systems full-stop. Seems to me that the world needs a low-cost / free / multi-functional CMS and Movable Type could be it. [MT interviewed at WriteTheWeb]

I’m going to a press preview of The Others with Davo. I will, of course, let you know what it’s like.

Review time: In which Tom reviews The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My favourite part of this review is my taster for it: “Lo-fi, terrifying, remorseless horror with its tongue firmly not in cheek, but instead cut off with a power tool. Watch at your peril.”

Of course we all love Cal. He’s all clever and … technical. And his work is in the Guardian today – the astonishing Web Trumps has been mentioned once more. And I’m delighted to say that I appear on one of the cards. What a guy…