Friday  the First of November, 2002

"The coming of the Second World War spelt the death knell of the old pier. The theatre was closed in late May 1940 and has never reopened. The neck of the pier was cut by explosive charges and the pier head was systematically booby trapped against the feared invasion. Eventually the booby traps were cleared and, in 1946, the pier was restored and reopened."
History of the West Pier; dramatically defended because Hitler had his eye on the Royal Pavilion. I thought, for some misinformative reason, that the West Pier had actually been bombed during the war, but it turns out that it was still in use as late as the sixties. The dereliction was just apathy, the local council refusing either to refurbish it or to demolish it when it started creaking towards disrepair.

21st century renovation seems to be moving onward, disappointingly, although more of the surrounding seafront than the pier itself. Fierce locals are rightly opposing the beaming in of glass-and-dayglo shops and restaurants. Doesn't seem to be anyone campaigning against actual restoration of the pier, though, of carefully maintaining its desolate, darkly-reflective austerity, and all that. Think of the starlings.


National Novel Writing Month starts today, wildly encouraging people to write 50,000 words for the sake of it. Personally, I'm declaring the next twelve months to be Solipsistic Proper-Novel Writing Year; a short story I was working on for Upsideclone would actually work much better as a full-length novel, on reflection. Having seen these glorious photos of Brighton's West Pier (via Bluejoh), its focal setting has crystallised, and the inspiration rises...

Passing Frenzies: Urban Letterboxing - Eraser Carving - The Smaller Picture Font (meta)


 Thursday  the Thirty-First of October

"I Liked The Sadness So Much, I Bought the Company!"


 Tuesday  the Twenty-Ninth

For possible future reference: FRELI is a simply-formatted dictionary file that notes, amongst other things, whether words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs or what have you. But are random sentence generators more inherently entertaining if just stocked with a couple of hundred good-sounding or potentially-amusing words? Should we throw away all other nouns and verbs and just use the word "duck"? [via Leonard]
"Example: Mantisman has Precognition, Tai-Chi and Big, Gnashy Claws. He has 70 Energy at the start of the round, and chooses to assign 20 Energy to his Tai-Chi Power (choosing Plastiqueman as its target), and 50 Energy to Attack and Defense (using Precognition, he can choose how many to assign to each later)."
The rules to Rumble have been rewritten in a spurious how-I-tend-to-explain-the-game-verbally way. I've been playing it again this week - good fun to improvise superheroic analogies in a simple gaming context, and see how they clash and interact with one another.
CVS as proud Spanish waiter: "cvs diff: I know nothing about index.html"
Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes - a gloriously subversive poster for London Transport's increased use of CCTV on buses. Always good to see an idea which someone probably proposed as a joke ("Let's go for government-knows-best wartime reassurance, with heavy Orwellian overtones!"), but was sufficiently lost on or quietly appreciated by the higher echelons for it to reach the streets. [via Dunx@MCiOS]


 Monday  the Twenty-Eighth

"If the snipers didn't have violence in their life, I don't think they'd be as violent as they are."
The world is dragged another step towards safety as sniper-tangential computer games are withdrawn from Walmart. They're also making it slightly more difficult to buy guns over the counter, astonishingly. You can always buy a splendid deer decoy via the Internet, instead.

Over on the other side of the computer-game/violence debate, a fund-raising thermometer is gathering dollars to buy President Bush a Playstation 2, along with some appropriate games and an extra controller for Cheney:-

"Without the catharsis that video games provide, Bush has no way of fulfilling his militaristic fantasies other than actually fighting wars."

"Only a drop has to force its way through, and before long, cracks are spreading like ants running from a nest. Each imperceptible hairline is squeezed open into a gash, a fracture, a chasm, and then everything bursts at once, and you're hit with a crumbling hail of... whatever it was that used to protect you, and then drowned by a terrible flood of... whatever it was that it used to protect you from."
A fantastic, frustratingly-delayed take on the Washington sniping, at Upsideclone - there was a mounting sense of godhood and light-headed copycatting and where it could possibly, possibly end; of death-by-sniper eventually becoming as dully statistical as a car crash. But it's all okay now, with the two suspects being shuffled off to whichever state can kill them most efficiently.

As Above

Brain children. Recent or noteworthy Web offspring.

Online cliques. Trespassers may be welcome.

In the bookpile. Powered by allconsuming.net.

Incidental music. Ohrwurmen or otherwise.

Other weblogs. The ones I make a point of returning to a lot.

Supporting cast. That have Web pages. In alphabetical order.

Weeks beginning. All having ended.
2002: 28.10 21.10 14.10 07.10 30.09 23.09 16.09 09.09 02.09 26.08 19.08 12.08 05.08 29.07 22.07 15.07 08.07 01.07 24.06 17.06 10.06 03.06 27.05 20.05 13.05 06.05 29.04 22.04 15.04 08.04 01.04 25.03 18.03 11.03 04.03 25.02 18.02 11.02 04.02 28.01 21.01 14.01 07.01

2001: 31.12 24.12 17.12 10.12 03.12 26.11 19.11 12.11 05.11 29.10 22.10 15.10 08.10 01.10 24.09 17.09 10.09 03.09 27.08 20.08 13.08 06.08 30.07 23.07 16.07 09.07 02.07 25.06 18.06 11.06 04.06 28.05 21.05 14.05 07.05 30.04 23.04 16.04 09.04 02.04 26.03 19.03 12.03 05.03 26.02 19.02 12.02 05.02 29.01 22.01 15.01 08.01 01.01

2000: 25.12 18.12 11.12 04.12 27.11 20.11


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