Author: Mr. McLaren

Just Read, To Read

by  on  in Books

The last book I read: Lye Street by Alan Campbell. I read Scar Night earlier this year during my Australian sojurn, and thought it was quite good, especially for a first novel. This is a prequel that focuses primarily on two storylines: one that highlights the madness of the angel Carnival, the other of which deals with the reconstruction of… Read more →

Explainers

by  on  in Books

That’s a sample page from a book I’m really enjoying reading at the moment: The Explainers by Jules Feiffer. (You can see some other sample pages at The Comics Reporter, or even cooler check out the slideshow on Flickr.) Here’s how the publisher describes the book: In 1956, a relatively unknown cartoonist by the name of Jules Feiffer started contributing… Read more →

And she’s still not conceding

by  on  in Political

Well, it’s about damn time. Now, let’s see if she will actually concede tomorrow, or if the DNC has to send someone over with a stake, a bag of garlic, and a shovel to put this thing in the ground. Now we’re going to see an interesting race though: if Obama doesn’t completely obliterate McCain, that’s going to tell us… Read more →

Robyn Tuesday

by  on  in Music

This post is in honour of my old pal Roach, a real fegManiac, and my pal EBOC“of the Shire” who is about to have his first Robyn Hitchcock experience. I’ve got about a half-dozen Hitchcock albums, mostly from the 80s and 90s. I think I might have had one or two before Roach started campaigning heavily in favour of Hitchcock,… Read more →

I’ve Got The Box

by  on  in Head-Explodes

Did you catch the snippet from (retired) General Sanchez’s new book that was in the WaPo earlier this week? As I was reading this bit: During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a “confused” pep talk: “Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to… Read more →

Canadians: Once More Unto the DMCA breach

by  on  in Political

By this point you know the drill. You might be interested in following up with one of the linked organizations, though. ——————————————— ORC News | June 3, 2008 | Issue 1.3 ——————————————— Write to your MP about the new copyright bill: http://www.onlinerights.ca/get_active/copyright_for_canadians/ Dear Online Rights Canada Supporter, We understand that the government will imminently introduce legislation to amend the Copyright… Read more →

This would not happen south of the border

by  on  in General

Most unexpectedly heartening moment: When I realized that of the twelve final selected jurors, all of whom were given the choice of swearing on a Bible or merely making an oath of affirmation, every last one of them chose the non-faith-based alternative. I did miss the usual irony of seeing people swearing to tell the truth on a book of… Read more →

Everything is OK

by  on  in Meta-blogging

Yes, we had a bit of a site outage today. All issues at the ISP: The web sites section of one of the hard drives on a shared hosting server is corrupted. We need to repair the files so that we can ensure your data is preserved. Estimated time is between 6-8 hours. Everything seems to be back to normal… Read more →

Officers, in offices, being official.

by  on  in Music

Look, if you know me, or you’ve read this blog for any length of time, it should come as no surprise that I am a huge Tom Waits fan. I dig Tom’s music of course–hell Hold On is probably my all time favourite song, and he’s probably got a dozen at least in the top hundred, but I also like… Read more →

Doubly Entertaining: Telectroscope

by  on  in One-and-done

Have you seen the Telectroscope? Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope has been installed at both ends which miraculously allows people to see right through the Earth from London… Read more →

Crazy Australians pretending to be crazy Italians

by  on  in General

Have you seen Italian Spiderman yet? The premise is that Italian Spiderman was a 1968 Italian action-adventure film made by Alrugo Entertainment, which was deemed “un-viewable” by Italian distributors and never released. The story has the only 35mm print of the film being lost at sea, but recovered in the present day, thereby allowing Alrugo Entertainment to release the film… Read more →

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.