The Null Device

2002/8/5

According to Angry Robot, US French-chick-fronted pop band Ivy's new record, due out in just over a month, will be entirely comprised of covers, including ony only The Go-Betweens' Streets of Your Town but also The Cure's Let's Go To Bed. The record will be titled Guestroom.

Ivy have apparently been dropped by Warner or Sony or whichever soulless behemoth had decided to refocus its declining revenues on cheaper-to-manufacture bubblegum pop and teen-angst skate-metal, and have been signed by an indieish label named Minty Fresh.

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Another reason not to smoke: because it affects your cat's health. (via Unknown News)

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Happy birthday to Jordana-Amalia, wherever you are.

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The Culture War strikes again. Evidence has emerged that, in early 2001, the Bush administration held up a plan to attack Al-Qaeda, because it was believed tainted with the Godless liberal politics of the Clinton administration. It got lost in the political sanitisation of the US public service, and put on the backburner while attention was diverted to a missile defense plan, crackdowns on pornography and the War On Drugs.

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Film Festival: Today I saw Carnivalesque: The short films of Jeunet and Caro. They were fairly interesting, though mixed. Foutaises (aka "Things I Like, Things I Don't Like"), was probably my favourite, and featured Jeunet/Caro mainstay Dominique Pinon (he was the clones in TCoLC and the hero in Delicatessen) reciting a list of things his character liked/disliked, with quirky, Amélie-esque visuals. Le bunker de la dernière rafale was a longer piece from 1981, featuring shaven-headed soldiers in greatcoats in a retrofuturistic post-apocalyptic bunker. One could see where some of the inspirations for The City of Lost Children came from, though the film in general seemed a bit random. KO Kid was an early computer-animated piece showing two elastic-bodied boxers fighting to an oddly wooden breakbeat techno soundtrack. The animation seemed a bit stiff and unsatisfying; though perhaps it would have been more impressive in 1993. There was also another film, Pas de repose pour Billy Brakko, which looked interesting, though it didn't have subtitles and my French wasn't quite up to understanding the dialogue.

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Will those Internet users who are using Windows to read their mail please stop it? I've received something like a dozen copies of the Klez virus this weekend alone. (It doesn't do anything to me other than clog up my mailbox as I use Mutt under UNIX, but clearing it out is still an annoyance.) If you can't use UNIX, then for the love of Ghod, buy a Macintosh or something. My mailbox will thank you.

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