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Excellent Alejandro Jodorowski interview on the Arthur blog. Here’s three chunks of quotage:

Hitchcock, in movies, is an ill person. Why? Because he has disguised himself as a genius of movies, but in reality, he’s making his movies in jail, because he’s saying, “That is a system that will make terror. This, the public will love. There, they will be anguished.” He’s directing your emotions; everything is done to hypnotize you in order to react in a certain way. In a healing picture, they don’t say you need to react like that. You will react as you react!

– –

MP: You’re 77 now. How are you coping with growing older?

AJ: It’s fantastic! I like it a lot. I don’t want to change myself. If you said, Do you want to be 40 years old [again] and I would say, maybe my body, but not my mind. It’s a nightmare, a social nightmare to get old – to get Parkinson’s, to become an idiot, but every day the brain is making new connections and is developing, like the universe. Your soul is getting better and better because you are losing what is not necessary. It’s fantastic to get old! It’s an incredible feeling of freedom, incredible!

Now, for example, to make love, sometimes I have erectile problems. Sometimes it’s not so easy. But it’s not [a problem] because I can use my hands, I can caress – you can satisfy a woman in an incredible way, as the lesbians do it! What is the problem? Even at 80 years old, you don’t have sexual problems! [Laughter]

– –

Civilization can come to an end. But I believe that if man was created, it’s not because man wanted to exist, it’s because the universe wants consciousness. And there are all these threads of the universe working for us in order to make a new mutation. We are creating a new brain. Because we have three brains, no? The Reptilian, the mammalian and the cerebral cortex. We will make a fourth brain.

Now go read the whole thing.

The Lumiere Manifesto for online video. In summary:

* 60 seconds max.
* Fixed camera
* No audio
* No zoom
* No edit
* No effects

Other than the “no audio” limitation (cut voice overs yes, but natural background sound?) I think this is all eminently sensible. via Wellis

[Later: Okay, having seen a few I get the silent thing now. Will have to have a go at this I think.]

Amazon launches mp3 download service. There’s a lot of noise about how this’ll hurt Apple but that’s not really the point. (I always considered the iTunes music store to be a stepping stone to a better future and not the final solution, and I think Apple know that too.) What’s interesting is they’re selling DRM-free MP3s of music by artists who are tied to major record labels. A couple of years ago that would have been considered unthinkable so we can say DRM is pretty much dead in the water. I guess the new debate is going to be over pricing - notable that Amazon is selling albums at a range of prices, something Apple are resisting. Of course this is currently US only but Amazon will surely roll it out internationally once out of beta. Signal and noise on TechCrunch while this comes via the Dubster.

Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies. He takes illustrated books and carves them. I’ve had this tab open for a few days now thinking I should have something to say about it but I can’t think of anything. Maybe that’s enough. Lovely. via Edface

Best Misty’s Big Adventure video evar! Mark Locke must be quaking in his boots. via themselves

Hockneyizer. Turns any image into a David Hockney-style Polaroid montage. I was very skeptical about this but the effect, while not as good as a real Polaroid montage, is still pretty darn cool. via Flickr

Simon Gane is selling Vapid T-Shirts

You need one of these. £10 post paid in the UK.

White Chalk. PJ Harvey has a new album out. That took me by surprise!

Abusing goodwill. A good solid post on Strange Attractor about the value of niceness in the online world and how some individuals and companies don’t understand this. Sparks off lots of thoughts about the value of morality in an environment where copyright is vague, where even if you’re doing everything right in the eyes of the law you can get it wrong.

Radioshift. Neat looking Mac app that Tivo-ifys your radio listening. (via the usual Mac blogs)

KHAAAN! Best lolcat I’ve seen in a while. Just when you think this meme is fading away it comes back fighting.

Social Networking is a feature, not a destination says Long Tail Chris. I agree with the general notion but I’m not sure how best to marry an inherently complex pattern (a social network) onto a necessarily simple website. I’m thinking this Social Graph thing, where you can take your network with you, might be the answer. To ponder…

Bear is walking over bridge, gets scared by cars, jumps over edge, catches itself on underside of bridge, hauls self up and sleeps overnight before being rescued. And it’s a fucking big bridge. Oh, and there are photos. via Torrez

US Navy to spend $600,000 rebuilding a barracks because it looks like a swastika from above. They realised this when it was built in the 60s but never figured on Google Earth revealing it to the world. Bit of a shame as it’s obviously a perfect shape for natural light and, of course, the swastika is not just a Nazi symbol, but you can understand why they’re changing it.

Jon Bounds reviews a Gwen Stefani gig:

Turns out she really had gone to the zoo, held a baby monkey and fed the elephants. She tells the crowd this and is a bit nonplussed that we don’t cheer the zoo (and all the staff she’s invited to concert) loudly. What she doesn’t realise is a lot of us are trying to work out which zoo she’s been to. Dudley Zoo, for a start doesn’t have any elephants.

I think I might do all my GDFAF reviews in this style…

Stephen Fry on fame. Another wonderfully long post to save for a rainy day or sleepless night. Chock full of quotable goodies but this early gem jumped out:

A good metaphor for fame is the magnifying glass. It makes larger (which is what magnify means) exposing flaws as well as qualities. The blackheads and dirty pores are there for all to see. Like a magnifying glass fame can distort, it can invert and it can (with the glare of publicity behind it) focus the light into a terrible heat that burns the subject until they shrivel into nothing.

Gavin Burrows, who for something like 20 years straddled the worlds of small press comics and radical politics like some kinda of colossus, has a weblog. Expect something like Andrew Rilstone* only completely and utterly different.

Earnest wingnut kids’ books or parody? Accordion Joey walks us through an animated kids book about the terrorist threat that’s must be a parody, right?

Six Apart on the Social Graph. I’m not sure what to make of this yet and I’ve been looking at it on and off for a week. Best to just post and hope it becomes clearer over time. I think it’s something I whole-heartedly approve of though.

Brief little interview with Jeffery Lewis about how he doesn’t use much new technology, on the Guardian’s Technology site. Particularly notable for the disturbingly sexy rockstar photo. Jeffrey, I hardly recognised ya. via Jenni

While catching up on some rather old posts in my neglected blog feeds listing a terrible realization dawns on me, so awful it takes a while to settle into a tangible notion. It would appear that Jez is buying a ukelele. I wonder if Nat knows?

Haughey defined “Clothundrum” as

When a person that orders witty, nerdy, and humorous t-shirts on the internet, enough to make them the “funny t-shirt guy” in their hometown, needs to travel to a function that will include other people that order witty, nerdy, and humorous t-shirts on the internet and is having trouble packing.

I must admit to something similar. One suffers a small death when one meets someone with the same Threadless t-shirt as oneself, especially if one doesn’t look up to said person or considers them in some way “normal”. It’s the clothing equivalent of some tedious bore buying a CD by that band you like from HMV. Don’t get into t-shirts, kids. It’s the start of a terrible spiral of terror and nonsense.

Similarly Matt and myself made Threadless orders at the same time and, on comparing order conformation emails, were relieved to discover we’d made completely different purchases. Phew!