Where are the Pandas?

Due to continuous improvements by Google, the capability of Blogger to bring in pictures from other websites no longer works for me. So no more panda pictures for you unless I type in all the HTML codey stuff myself, which I am not going to do as my life is depressing enough as it is.

Spring Cleaning

Like I promised I would, I have deleted almost all of my 2009 and 2011 Nanowrimo attempts from this blog. If you are some kind of weirdo and find the fragments so intriguing that you want to read the rest then contact me and I will send you the whole thing as a PDF.

An inuit panda production

Why Does A Just God Allow Such Misery To Exist In The World?

I am being greatly inconvenienced by Blogger's sudden inability to release scheduled posts.

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An inuit panda production

Do you have a blog?

In the long years in which I did not have working home internet access, I neglected your blogs. It turns out that many of you have done the same. So now I have deleted links here to blogs that have not been updated this year. I have added them to Google Reader, so if they spring back into life I will notice and re-link to them.

Are you writing a blog that I could link to? Maybe you could link to me and we could be blog friends.

Or maybe it is all over with blogs. If you know of any blogs that are worth reading, post the URL in a comment.

An inuit panda production

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"Get that shit off my blog"

Kerry Packer was a media tycoon in Australia. He had his own TV channel. One evening he was watching his own channel and was so appalled by the low quality of the programme* that he rang in to say "Get that shit of the air". The programme went to a commercial break and than an announcer revealed that for "technical reasons" they could not continue with the programme and were going to show an episode of Cheers instead.

I am taking a similar iron broom to Inuit Panda. One thing I am rather dissatisfied with is the appearance of my 2011 and 2009 NaNoWriMo attempts here. They do not fit in and I really should have posted them somewhere else, or not at all. So, I have deleted almost all of 2009's Furry Folk and will shortly do the same for Organisation Man.

Of course, if anyone for some unknown reason wants to read either of these, contact me and ask for a PDF copy.

*Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos

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An inuit panda production

Comics Meta

You may have noticed that I have not written anything about comics for a while. I have been feeling a bit dissatisfied with my comics writing. One obvious problem was that no one was really reading what I had to say on the subject (apart from comics creators googling their names). It only seems to be my friends and acquaintances who read Inuit Panda, and they have all either outgrown comics or never liked them in the first place.

Not having any readers is not an insurmountable problem, as writing about comics is still useful for me as a way of organising my thoughts. A bigger issue is that I was finding it difficult to say anything that was that interesting. I was attempting to review every issue of every comic I bought. On the face of it, this would seem like an ideal blog thing to do, as it provides a ready made continuous resource of things to write about. In practice, though, most issues do not work as self-contained things, and they are largely created as sections in an ongoing story. When an issue is chapter three in a five part story it is difficult to say anything interesting that is not basically a rehash of what was said about chapter two.

So, what I will do henceforth is write only about individual issues of comics when they are particularly noteworthy – in a good or bad way. I might also do overviews a title when a story finishes or perhaps try to sketch an image of where one is going from the opening issue. Hopefully this will be a bit more interesting.

I am also hoping to contribute material to a comics culture website that noted comics person Martin Skidmore is going to be producing. For that I will need to seriously up my game, as he has some heavy hitters signed up and I do not want to stand out too much as some subliterate bozo. When that gets going I will post a link to it.

An inuit panda production

Our astonishing world

Like many people, I have an account on popular social networking website Facebook. I have set my account there so it imports things I post here as "notes", so that my Facebook "friends" can "read" them.

One fascinating thing is that those imported notes attract there attract substantially more comments than the posts here do. I think this may illustrate some fundamental truth about the nature of the universe.

The music of the spheres

Here is an interesting article about Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon: Who is Neil Armstrong?

I was particularly struck by the music he chose to bring to the moon.

In other news - hello. One of the great polite fictions of blogwriting is the idea that people actually read what you have to say, so I have this delusional idea that several people out there have been feeling all puppy sad because I have not been posting. The lack of posts stems from the lack of Internet in the new Panda Mansions, but I have now discovered that my iBook can pick up the wifi at the local library. Winner. So stick around, I hope soon to have some amazing new posts here for you.

This is not a test

Actually it is.

What does this look like in LiveJournalLand? Is it what they call a "cut"?

After the cut

So, does anyone know if Blogger blogs have an easy way of doing those cut things that they love so much on Live Journal?

Attention Stalkers!

This is a post for my obsessive fans, the ones who want to follow me around everywhere I go over the next week. To make things easier for you, I thought I'd post my programme here.

Tomorrow evening (Friday the 14th) I am off to the Project, to see an adaptation for the theatre of Nikolai Gogol's The Nose. The poster has a little dog in it, so I have great expectations for this play.

On the evening of Saturday the 15th my itinerary takes me all the way to Sugar Club, where the US-Khmer sensations Dengue Fever are playing. Dengue Fever sound like the kind of exciting foreign band that never plays Dublin, so actually getting them here is very exciting. I'm hoping they have some of their records for sale (Dublin record shops seem to operate a No-Dengue-Fever policy) and that the place is full of real fans, not event people.

Sunday the 16th brings me to the IFI, for a Barbet Schroeder film being shown in the French film festival. It is called Inju, la Bête dans l'Ombre, and is an adaptation of a piace by the writer Edogawa Rampo. I've been interested in this Japanese fellow for some time. Apparently he writes in a tradition bearing some relationship to American Gothic, only set in Japan, and he was so inspired by Edgar Allan Poe that he adopted a Japanese version of his name. I'm curious as to whether this will turn out to be a piece of crazy extremism like Audition, only in French.

Monday the 17th brings me to my Spanish class.

Tuesday the 18th is thus far free in my diary, so my deranged stalker fans can take the night off.

On Wednesday the 19th I will be back in the IFI for more French film action. This film is called Capitaine Achab, and tells the life story of Captain Ahab from Moby Dick. Yarrr. Now that I think of it, it is maybe significant that Herman Melville does not give Ahab a back story in the book, but I am a sucker for The Sea.

On Thursday the 20th I will be popping into Trinity for a seminar to launch a book of papers I heard delivered at a conference on Palestinian stuff ages ago. See my other blog for a series of dull write-ups.

And that is as far into the future as I can see.

That's it...

I fear that I must stay away from the Internet for a while, as I really need to get to work on my own Ethiopian travelogue. There are a few shitey Frank's APA reprints queued up over the next few days, so you won't be completely without me.

Problem of conversation solved

Wow, Eircom seem to have turned on my home internet again.

Internet Hell

I have been suffering from Internet connectivity issues at home (Eircom turn off my access again? cheers guys), but now I am in Cafe Notto, mixing together free Internet and nom nom nom cake.

Where are the Pandas?

Sadly, internet connectivity problems continue to mean a lack of pandas here on a blog once characterised as all pandas, all the time. Feel free to post links to pictures of pandas in the comments.

It's an ill-wind that blows no good, and the lack of home internet means that last week I managed to READ A BOOK. It was by John Le Carré, was about spies, and had a sadface ending.

I'm not dead!

Just in case you were wondering. I have been having internet connectivity issues. No pandas this time, I am trying to get as much stuff up as quickly as possible before this café closes.

Update Your Blog!

I will shortly be deleting my links to inactive blogs.

Be afraid.

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Internet's Isolation From Me Ends

It is a tiresome story, but Eircom seem to have decided to allow me to connect to the Internet again.

In other news, the BBC reports that scientists have created a machine which can translate dog barks: Yap-lication unlocks canine moods. It is only slightly better than a human at deciphering dog barks, though it is not clear how this was judged.

The BBC article does not mention whether the machine can work in reverse.

Internet Down, oh no

The Internet is broken - hence lack of recent posts.

What is Oink?

In my day Oink was a comic for kids. Now I am old and writing what is in some sense meant to be a music blog, but over on Freaky Trigger Tom talks about something called Oink that has apparently busted in a manner significant for people who write music blogs. I have no idea what this Oink is. I am so out of the loop.