Rojak.

Review of Arcade Fire’s new album, The Suburbs. [via Obscure Sound] I just got my hands on it.

flickr has a new look, with bigger pictures. Look at mine. [via flickr] I like it so far.

A look into the J.G. Ballard archives. [via A Piece of Monologue]

‘I am not going to give one inch to the “you need to support yourself” argument. I had a student at the School of Visual Arts once. He came to class one week and didn’t have any work because his camera was stolen. I understood that. But the next week he came back and still didn’t have any work because he said he didn’t have enough money to buy a camera. I said, “I’m going to throw you out of the class.” I made him come up to the front of the class and I asked him to stick out his arm. He did. I grabbed his hand and said, “What is that?” He had a Tag Heuer watch. I said, “Sell that watch and buy a camera.” He said, “I can’t sell that watch, my grandmother gave it to me.” So I said, “Sell your grandmother into slavery and buy a camera.” I threw him out of the class. ‘

Talking to photographer Thomas Roma. [via The Days of Yore]

StarCraft II is the fastest selling strategy game of all time. [via Kotaku]

On Education, by Bertrand Russell. [via Wikisource]

Hi, David Bowie. Hi, George! [via Youtube]

d

Many Things And A VR Man

Study…

Started serious revision yesterday. Made me feel like a zombie. Funny how you tend to study less when it’s getting to the exams, unless you really slap yourself into doing it.

Nabokov

Nabokov’s last work, The Original Of Laura, is going to be published, says his son. [via The Telegraph]

R.I.P.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but in case you haven’t, J.G. Ballard passed away. [via The Book Bench] Rest in peace, sir, and condolences to the family.

Ideas, Ideas

So many ideas these days, almost as if my brain is (against my wishes) ramping it up before I dive into writing. For some reason I have plenty of strange-creature ideas, and I’m sure I won’t be using all of them, but a couple of them might prove handy once I get the headlights on and see where exactly I’m going. Yeah, that’s not much clearer, but hey, ideas are always fun, if not always helpful.

Two For Two

Watched Forest Of The Dead and then (yesterday) Midnight, and they’re without question two of the best episodes I’ve seen from the revived series. This is the stuff TV should be made of. Too bad we get so much trash.

A Little Bit Of Singapore

Speaking of TV… Here’s a little something that our local station either very proudly and stupidly or very tongue-in-cheekly (benefit of the doubt and all that) produced a long time ago. It’s called VR Man, starring James Lye as VR Man and Michelle Goh (who doesn’t appear in this clip) as the reporter girl, as I remember. This features VR Man and Lisa Ang starring as some character I don’t remember.

I couldn’t find an actual clip so here is something from The Noose, which was a satirical entertainment news programme that made fun of shows and the industry in general. I seem to recall that it had to produce some of its sketches, but… you know… some shows make fun of themselves.

“Maybe then I can win Singapore’s first Olympic gold medal.”

I’m still waiting on that, VR Man.