This just in - Warren Ellis, comics supremo, science fiction author, and roving gonzo journalist of the metaverse, is about to start writing a weekly column for the Suicide Girls website. Which is another reason for me to curse the fact that they don’t take debit cards or PayPal …

… er, the first reason being, ah, research. Yes, research … into, um, subcultures and social networking. Yes, that was it. Ahem. Carry on.

This is a little off-topic for VCTB, perhaps, but I feel I’m entitled to a bit of self-aggrandisement every once in a while.

So it is with great pride that I link you towards my (site-leader) interview with Bob Balch, guitarist of desert-rock veterans Fu Manchu, and my review of Fu Manchu playing Southampton’s Nexus with support from the excellent Valient Thorr.

Any VCTB regulars who read a lot of (or indeed any) music journalism, please give me some feedback - it’s hard to be objective sometimes, and my editor at that site is too busy to critique my work before publishing it …

… oooh, added bonus: my interview/review combo piece with Franz Triechler of Swiss industrial act The Young Gods is also available on teh intartoobs.

And I’m off to review Electric Six tomorrow night. Rock and roll, eh?

Time Magazine is no stranger to controversy as regards their ‘Person of the Year’ feature. Some folk have never forgiven them for once giving the dubious accolade to Adolf Hitler, but they have failed to realise that it’s not necessarily a valedictory honour - the Person of the Year is the one deemed to have been most influential on world events, for good or ill. Continue reading “My thoughts on being Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ 2006″

If you read this site regularly, you’ll know that I do tend to be a bit wide-eyed and ZOMG!!! about new technologies and gadgets. I also describe myself as a futurist, which is a word with a highly contentious set of meanings, but can be broadly described as a person who tries to peer ahead into the coming years to see not only where we are heading as a species, but hopefully what obstacles (or power-ups) lie around the next corner, too. Continue reading “Looking beyond the gadgets”

Well, here’s something I never knew before. Continue reading “Crichton gets petroleum pat-on-the-back”

Interesting snippet from PhysOrg.com. Seems that a journalist (from the UKs own ‘News of the World’, no less) is concerned that the internet diet of audio and video snippets could annihilate all literary culture and produce a society that revolves around mythology and folkloric symbolism… Continue reading “Towards an oral pseudo-medieval society…thanks to the internet”