plasticbag.org

So tonight it’s the international blog IRC (Internet Relay Chat), which is held at such a time as to be nigh on impossible for anyone in the UK to attend (assuming they work of course). I’m going to try to attend tonight, at least for a while. In the meantime, I will appeal to the organisers of the weekly event to bring it forward an hour and a half so at least there is some possibility that the European contingent will not be coma-ridden the following day.

“It’s Wednesday, and you know what that means. Tonight bloggers will meet on IRC for our weekly night of chatting. Here’s where you can join us: Time 8:30 PM Eastern / 5:30 PM Pacific / 1:30 AM GMT. Server irc.turlyming.net at port 6667. Channel #BlogIRC” [quote from fairvue.com]

Do your duty: Blogger appeals for donations. You can get some stickers out of it, and it’s just possible that with speed might come a re-energised search facility… [Addendum: Is there any way that Blogger could treat donations as an investment rather than a contribution?]

Separated at birth? The stunning director of Magnolia, P T Anderson and Bryan – some bloke wearing a Weblog Wannabe t-shirt. [More on some bloke called Bryan]

Nikolai presents the first annual weblog awards, otherwise known as “The Bloggies”. Much as awards are a fairly dubious enterprise, this one seems to be very much in the spirit of the weblog, including categories such as “Best Meme” and “Best Article or Essay about Weblogs”. plasticbag.org is eligible for at least six categories in my opinion, and it would be nice if someone nominated me for something. But other places that you should certainly consider looking before you make up you mind include: prolific.org, notsosoft.com, riothero, interconnected.org, zeldman.com and kitschbitch.com.

12:01am: May I be the very first UK weblogger to welcome you to the New Year. For good or ill, we are now living in science fiction – it’s the 21st Century by anyone’s reckoning. A strange computer called Hal is about to become sentient and then go insane. Monoliths are being discovered even as we speak. Arthur C Clarke is feelish a bit sheepish generally, I would warrant. [2001]

There has never before been as much weight of fantasy placed upon a year – indeed upon a century. The world has never seen change as dramatic or as rapid. There has never been this many people to will a new vision of the planet from the ether. Reality and Fantasy are colliding, and for once I’m not entirely sure which one will win. May you live in interesting times.

[Happy Millennium from Jeffrey Zeldman]

It’s 11.30pm on New Year’s Eve, and I think for the first time in about ten years I am not the slightest bit frantic, worried, depressed or feeling inadequate. This is also the first time in ten years that I didn’t go out for New Year’s. After last year – all of the pressure to enjoy yourself, the frantic obsession with the new millennium appearing, the cold weather, the mud, the crowds – nothing appeals to me less than going out. So fuck it. I’m going to stay in and do stuff that I like doing: watch movies, eat pasta, read books.

Does anyone know anything about the technical underpinnings to hushmail? It has been suggested to me as a free, encrypted and relatively secure form of web-based POP3 e-mail.

I stumbled upon something completely astonishing today – something that I don’t really know what I think of. I think you’ll be able to gauge your own level of interest from the title alone: “ARTIFICIAL SYNCHRONICITY, language MANIPULATION, KUNDALINI AND THE CORNERS OF REALITY: HOW THEY’VE TURNED YOU INTO A MENTAL SLAVE & SOME TOOLS TO HELP YOU DECONSTRUCTING THIS BRAINWASHING AND GETTING FREE FROM THIS CIRCUS”. [Interested?]

The BBC does their review of the year’s films: “Hollywood’s year of nostalgia“. The only parts of the article that I disagree with heavily are the penultimate couple of paragraphs: “But the movie to cap 2000 has to be comedy Meet the Parents, starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller”.

What is the future of comic books? For many of you that question will seem laughably redundant. I mean – who cares about comic books? Well you should care – and not just because the rest of the world’s media feed off the disposable writing encased in these 24 page periodicals – but because comic books are direct taps into the heart and soul of pure imagination where nothing is limited by budgets, ideas can be germinated quickly and circulated faster, and where a man can just as easily fly as he can meet God.

So what is the future of comic books? Warren Ellis’ State of the Comic Book Nation.