HUPOMNEMATA

From a review by Dillon Font on animefringe:

“The tale goes as follows:
The turn of the millennium saw Earth’s first contact with an alien species, and fifteen years later, the world seems to have come back to normal. Well… sort of. Now schools, at the very least, are plagued with varying levels of alien infestation. Somehow only vaguely explained in the backstory, these schools are prone to having alien animals hanging around, some of which present a threat to the children attending school.

In order to have life continue on as necessary, the schools enlist three sixth-grade students, one from grade class, to be a part of the Alien Party. This Party involves giving these three students alien symbiotic beings that attach themselves to the heads of the students and, on rollerblades, the three students patrol the school building and deal with any alien outbreaks.”

Read the rest of the review here.

The complete story has already been published in Spain by Ivréa. (but now it’s in English I can even read AND understand it). Should definitely be part of our Barcelona library for Stitch and Split!

An interesting filmography listing everything fantasy and sf related with feminist elements in it. It contains some stuff I had completely forgotten about (like Tank Girl, does anyone remember what’s happening in Tank Girl?). Loads of info in the rest of the website too.

Sous ce titre racoleur, on parle de Godard, Christian, pas Jean-Luc (j’en imagine quelques uns déçus). Vous savez c’est le dessinateur et plus souvent scénariste de BD qui faisait Martin Milan et le Vagabond des Limbes et qui entre temps est devenu un vieux monsieur qui continue à faire de la BD. Il y a quelques pages étonnantes dans le dernier BoDoï, n°65 (un mensuel par ailleurs souvent assez nul mais qui sur le coup épate un peu) : une Chienne de Garde (son nom m’échappe, désolé) a droit à une bonne demi page pour écrire ce qu’elle pense de la dernière série de Godard (Une folie très ordinaire) et c’est pas piqué des vers. Quant à lui, le magazine lui donne l’occasion de se défendre, et il tresse la corde pour se pendre. Ses réponses sont si aigres qu’elles font mal au ventre. Il a 71 ans et on lui en donnerait bien 20 de plus, ça ne tourne vraiment plus rond.

This blog seems to be obsessed with seafood and plastic cows. Do you know what it’s about? I don’t but so much beauty is worth a visit.

Notre ami Harrisson s’est enfin lancé dans la production intensive sur son blog Die With a Smile où il raconte son long séjour à Berlin. Avec photos. Il s’y confirme qu’il est non seulement graphiste mais aussi poète quand il parle d’asperges à la flamande et de chutes à vélo. Pendant ce temps-là mes amis Julie et Luc partent à Toronto, déplacés par l’industrie du jeu vidéo. Bruxelles se vide. Vu hier, ‘Any way the wind blows’ de Tom Barman ne donne pas pour autant envie d’aller à Anvers.

I don’t really know who is Souther Salazar. He or she publishes comics and has an art gallery on his/her website.. There are those robots.

It’s been there for some times, but you should still go and read it if you’re even just a little bit interested in videogames (and if you’re not, it’s a good opportunity to see that it’s an arena where intelligent and articulated thinking is possible): this text on the Game Girl Advance website focus on gender in videogames. Here’s a short extract to give you an idea (I’m in the middle of the great Xenogenesis series by Octavia Butler, and, yes, there is a relation). The whole text is there.

“I would like to see more experimentation with genderless or gender-ambivalent characters in this area. In MUDs and MOOs, one can often create a third sex and invent a pronoun and refer to oneself always with that pronoun (and insist others do that same). In these science-fiction and fantasy-themed online worlds, it’s perfectly plausible that ungendered, ambiguously gendered, or bi-gendered races could exist. That would add a new dimension to gender play, one which I’d really like to explore. Some women have said that they feel uncomfortable playing as female in certain virtual worlds – I haven’t personally been insulted or offended as a female avatar, but I have certainly had some unwanted attention directed my way. And yet I feel not quite right playing as a male character, either. A third gender – or a third choice, whether gendered or not – might be an alternative, a way to explore sexual anonymity. I wonder if players would feel too uncomfortable? But the domain of games is unbounded by physical realities, including biology; why not take advantage of this?”

All this nice digital folk art about SARS is now compiled into an archive.

By the way, i’m still feeling sick (but it’s getting better). I spent the weekend in my bed reading the first two ‘Cheri Bibi’ books by Gaston Leroux (published in 1913). It’s cruel and bloody. And bloody funny too. Leroux has built for his ‘hero’ a fate worse than ‘Oedipus rex’, and very complicated, with changes of identity, doubles, crimes both real and fake, family bloodbaths,…

Cheri-Bibi drawn by Serge (aka Maurice Feaudiere or Feraudiere?) in 1929 (you can find another on this website about the history of the Cayenne prison). If anybody knows where i can find more info about Serge, I’m interested.

More info there.
It’s not much but that will have to do for today. Nothing interesting to tell : il spend a lot of time coughing and sneezing, with a little bit of fever, trying to read ‘the Golden Age’ by John C. Wright. Each time I try to read more than ten pages, I fall asleep. Seems to be a great book, though.

Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross just finished the collaborative online writing of Unwirer (first draft, the dead tree version should be shorter, they say). For some weeks, we could watch it progress on a very simple Movable Type blog (looking exactly like this one), seeing who wrote what, with additional comments from the authors and various readers. Very nice. Go and read it.