Ahh... You've got to grab the quiet times when you can. Hence the 4am start. All too soon the house will be filled with conscious people and I fear they have plans to drag me around a battleship today... Bugger. Mike is writing to absolutely nothing

Stupid Internet... Where the fuck is my copy of No Country for Old Men? Stupid backward island. Now everyone's read it. Bastards. Mike is writing to some Jane Austen crap in one ear and kids screaming in another ear and where the fuck are my headphones?

Looks. Deceiving... Looking at these two you'd think that the ape was the dangerous one: But you'd be wrong. Very very wrong... I was thinking later that if I had a party at my beach house and all my friends were invited (including Gilly) and we were all playing on the beach, and some poor kid looked up and saw that there was a very large tidal tsunami wave heading towards us, then we would all rush into the tsunami proof hut and lock Gilly out and watch her get battered against the window pain by the death inducing waterfall which crushed her bones while we were all safe inside. Arrgghhhhh.... Mike is writing to Shonen Knife

So while we're waiting... I remember when I was a kid that my favourite uncle had this killer watch. It was digital. This was before I had my first digital watch, but even more important the whole thing had a RED display. This was around 1977. The watch is what made him my favourite uncle. I don't even remember the guy ever really speaking to me, but he did let me play with the watch. It beeped and if you held the buttons down it lit up. Even had the DATE on it. High fucking tech. Then one evening he's sat with my parents and I'm on the floor fucking around with the watch that is still on his wrist and suddenly he's had enough - maybe he's finally cracked after a year or so of having his damn watch and wrist mauled by an annoying brat kid that he has to put up with each and every time his wife drags him to see her family - anyway that hand comes back down and slaps me right in the eye. That was the end of him being my favourite uncle. I think he was replaced by my dad's cousin - he was interesting because when he needed a new car he simply put his little finger into some rock pounding machine that he used at work (he was a miner) and hey presto instant compensation. You've got to admire the drive. I had an interesting extended family. And now I find myself in the role of 'Uncle Mike' to Jess' little cousins while the laptop, Clie, PS2, comic books and DVDs all morph into a gigantic red faced digital watch. Lot's of counting to ten. Apparently I am a 'cool' uncle/cousin/whatever the hell they want to call me. I suspect that is because I give in to them remarkably quickly compared to everyone else. That and my resemblance to Chewbacca (or maybe a tall Ewok). The other day after a particularly rowdy argument with their grandmother the kids compiled a list of their favourite people to show the old folks how far they had fallen in their estimation. I was number two with a bullet right behind Jess. Thinking back now all my favourite adults were the ones who didn't have kids of their own - well them and Columbo. So this week things online will be very hit and miss as I hand over the broadband to funnel games down or get roped into explaining how to kill hookers in GTA. What we really need to do is get them a laptop then I can get them blogging... Mike is writing because although he was ready to leave the house at 9 fucking am the rest of the tribe are as easy to organise as the kids in Thunderdome

Let's be bad guys... Three types of email this morning: 1. Man, Firely is cool and Serenity is going to kick arse. 2. Dude, what the hell is Firefly/Serenity? 3. That girl is cute, why I'd like to take her over my knee and... Enough. So to save me some time here are the types of response I would send out if I wasn't too busy juggling children and Johnny Cash: 1. Yes. Firefly is very cool and Serenity is going to kick so much arse that afterwards there will be an arse drought. People for generations will have to make do without them and legends will grow of how all arses were once kicked so hard that they disappeared over the horizon never to return. 2. Firefly is the murdered child of Joss BUFFY/ANGEL Whedon. It lives on in DVD format and if you don't own the boxset your life is nothing but an empty shell. Serenity is the upcoming movie that takes the show onto the big screen and spoils the insides of fanboys shorts for years to come. Either check out the IMDB, the movie website or jump into the wiki (don't make me explain wiki to you). Everyone should enjoy the new trailer. 3. She'd stab you in the heart before you could blink. That's if Mel didn't kick you through an engine first. Mike is writing to some insane Japanese bunny game...

All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun... Although a spaceship sometimes helps: Mike is writing in headphones to drown out the family as opposed to simply you know... drowning them

Clobberin' time... So it turns out that the poor fucker shot dead by police last week didn't jump the barriers at Stockwell and was wearing a pretty standard denim jacket. Colour me surprised. What was surprising was finding my mobile phone in the washing machine. Pretty sure it's kerfucked, but the chip seems ok. I'll try and pick up a new handset tomorrow but the number should stay the same. Until then it's the home number or Gmail - although Sharon and the kids arrive today so I may fall off the map for a time. Tomorrow we are doing the family shopping trip thing. Jess is taking Ellie girl-shopping while me and Jackie have fun in Forbidden Planet before buying up games and DVDs to keep them occupied for the rest of their stay. Jackie has been to the cinema ONCE. Ellie has NEVER BEEN. I've know these kids for six years and I only find this shit out now? I feel some Fantastic Four coming on - fuck whether it's any good or not. These kids need eye candy on a HUGE screen and surround sound ear damage. Stat. Mike is writing to Avail

What's in a name? I mentioned over on Londonist earlier today that the police operation including the current shoot to kill policy is named Kratos. I mention in the same post that it's not to be confused with the metal band of the same name. Well maybe actually that's an interesting coincidence to examine. Not the metal band themselves of course - I'd never heard of Kratos before today. I was just interested about the etymology of the word that the police had chosen. That both groups should decide to take the same name when they work in such different sections of society is the interesting part. Now many moons ago I used to be in a metal band (hardly a band � more an excuse to dick around with loud instruments and a plastic sword) and I remember how important finding a name was. I mean we didn't just stumble upon Iron Hell � that took some research. Kind of. Actually after an afternoon in the library looking in classical dictionaries we gave up and just picked something that sounded cool and had enough metal connotations to make us all nod sagely. Part of it was to be memorable to outsiders, but for the most part it had to say something to us. We had visions of still playing our anthem 'We're Going To Eat You' thirty years down the road so in the same way that it seemed Maiden and Priest would always be around we needed a name we could live with. Something that inspired us. Something that helped us live that dream every time we stepped into another arena in another far flung country and swept the rock chicks aside to get to our instruments and by that time gleaming REAL sword with microphone attachment (and maybe some buttons to trigger the robot dragon). Then we realised there was too much work involved and we split up. So what does this have to do with the police? Well it just makes me wonder who chose the name meaning power for this operation and why. It's only just been released to the public so it wasn't to instill a feeling of well being in us that these guys running around with guns have such a powerful name. So maybe it was named for the police officers themselves. Every meeting, every piece of paperwork and just about every work related conversation is peppered with the word they all know to mean POWER. And we wonder when they finally get the chance to go into action 'action' they can'�t restrain themselves from shooting an innocent man in the head. NOTE It could be of course that whoever thought the name up was simply a bit of a gaming fan. This is from the BBC review of 'God of War': Kratos is a thoroughly old-fashioned hero. His behaviour is unrelentingly violent and he has no qualms about bumping off innocent bystanders if it helps him progress. Mike is writing to a very vocal greedy bastard of a cat

All too true... Mike is writing to Dio

Una Persson said... Hey Una - I get annoyed trying to write lengthy responses in comments boxes so I'll reply to you here out in the open if that's ok. Of course we'll soon get confined again once the comments roll in (but I'm sure you've been in tighter spots with Jerry). Now let me tackle this point by point. A lot of people seem to be outraged that policing isn't a logical, binary and mathematical discipline of triaging out the psychos from the innocents. Not me. I expect the police to make A LOT of mistakes. That's exactly why they shouldn't be running around with weapons. Using hindsight we are all getting outraged that extreme force is now being used by the police and spewing out what the police should have, shouldna' have done at the moment of truth. I wasn't using hindsight when I first heard about the Stockwell incident. All I knew was that a single man had been brought down by police and that while he was already on the floor had been shot five times. Even before I knew they had the wrong guy I was shocked at what sounded like an execution. The moment of truth came (I hope) many hours later when the police realised they had fucked up. Now suddenly we are supposed to overlook that an innocent man was killed because he COULD have been carrying a bomb. That simply doesn't wash with me. A line has been crossed now in that locals, Brits, are doing suicide missions, and so how we respond to that risk needs serious quiet thought by us all before reflex outrage. I've been giving this serious quiet thought since the initial blasts and not once did it occur to me that the best way to deter future attacks was to arm the police and give them a shoot to kill policy. The threat is slight and does not justify that kind of response. I don't think Mike you can turn a blind eye and continue in a Jerry Cornelius like daze oscillating between work, rest and espresso blogging as if nothing has happened. Ohhh now I'm all horny for a dart-gun. Where is my blind eye again? Yes something happened - something very similar has happened in London MANY times. These attacks knock the bombings in London up around the 120 figure. I can carry on working, resting and blogging for the next ten years in London and the only way that this new wave of terror will affect me is by offering me plenty of fodder to write about. If we were looking at a constant wave of attacks like the poor bastards in Iraq then I'd probably be more afraid, but at the time of writing 8 easily lead fuckwits with crappy bombs are about as scary as Paris Hilton flavoured horror movies. Lord Stevens admitted last week in the NOTW that the police have taken training from Israel on new policing techniques, and that training played out at Stockwell. Only a matter of time before CAT heavy machinery arrives too no doubt. Well that's the fucked up thing. Israel should have been coming to us for advice on how to sort out its problems and not the other way around. All that Israeli training has led to is one dead guy from Brazil - sending the bulldozers into Leeds is on the same level as armed police swarming the tube. New York has not yet to cross this line as their enemy is foreign, their closest experience is the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, a loner with a bomb. Now we have Egyptians killing Egyptians, Brits killing Brits, and so on ... this new mindset hasn't been written in to the Eastenders and Corrie scripts yet. Oh give it time. I'm surprised no Americans have realised how easy it would be to blow up a bus or subway yet, but the fact that it hasn't happened only points to how SMALL the threat is. If there were really so much to worry about from homegrown terrorists there or here we'd be numb to this kind of thing by now. The FEAR far outweighs the numbers. So come on Mike, let's see you work the Londonist to debate and tap the vibe rather than falling back onto easy outrage and hindsighted judgements. Well it is easy outrage. I don't like the idea of my police force killing my citizens because they acted in a rash manner. With hindsight (which I HATE using because it's silly) we would NEVER have gone into Iraq in the first place and given these guys the motivation to come to London two weeks or so ago. I think you'll find the EASY option is simply to let the police and politicians do whatever the fuck they like. I hold the terrorists responsible for their actions, but I also hold the police responsible for theirs. Perhaps more so. The terrorists were doing their 'job' while the police were doing quite the opposite. I find it easier to live with terrorism because it's rare. I find it difficult to swallow extreme police measures because that kind of shit will be around long after the terrorists are gone. Regarding Londonist. well it's a group affair so I try not to 'work' it at all. My response to the recent bombings and shooting as written up on Londonist are as heartfelt as my film and gig reviews or anything that I write on Visible Monsters. The debate over there may change if my fellow Londonists decide to wade in depending on their own views because we don't always see eye to eye. The comments from readers also have more influence on the Londonist debate than I do. This is the place however if you want some serious arguing with a sprinkling of over the top swearing and the occasional flash of Molly Ringwald's underwear. Mike is writing to Dio

Shoot to kill policy - not a good idea shock... It used to be you had to at least carry a chair leg before the police shot you in London. Not any more. But hey, if it makes us safer from terrorism who am I to complain? Now let's see how quickly we can move to Scandinavia... Mike is writing to little Avril

Man shot dead - crumpets burned... I forgot about my crumpets while updating Londonist. Damn those terrorists. Damn them to hell. Mike is writing to BBC News 24

Straight to video terrorists... More explosions in London, but on an even lower rent scale. Sounds like the detonators went 'pop' without doing much damage. And yep we are both fine - as is everyone else. One injury at Warren St, but that may be simply someone falling in the rush to escape. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if it was tabloid journalists pulling their usual 'if we can do it brown people can do it' stunts. More later... Mike is writing to the news

A can't change the laws of physics. A've got to have thirty minutes... I've had my head elsewhere all day so I only just heard that James Doohan died. They don't make Scotsmen in Canada like that anymore... Doohan was wounded as an infantryman during the D-Day invasion of Normandy and returned to action later in the war as a fighter pilot... I never knew that. I hope space doesn't get too crowded with dead actors, but if anyone deserves to be up there it's Scotty. Mike is writing to Rainbow

Happy Birthday Alex... 21 Originally uploaded by alexandralee.

21 is a good age to be. Mike is writing to Avail

Happy on... The laptop is back. New case, new keyboard, new processor, rw DVD drive... Reformatted hard drive means a day or so of filling it back up with crap, but it's basically a new PC. Go buy Alienware. Those guys rock. Mike is writing to a good old fashioned American argument

Am I allowed to quote myself? Of course I am. It's my blog: "... or if you simply like the idea of Winona Ryder playing with anatomically correct rape dolls" Now what would be really pretentious is if I ever spoke about myself in the third person... Mike is writing to Mike Patton

Sieg muthafuckin' heil... Spent a hot afternoon watching even hotter people get gunned down like dogs. More about that tomorrow over on a nice place to share the pain (thanks to everyone who sent me that link - no I won't buy you chickens). Linda and Carol are in the Cotswolds at the moment - back tomorrow. We bought them a pile of British DVDs (Spaced needs to be seen don't you think?) and a couple of Moleskines. They fly out Wednesday morning. After worrying that Carol would be a madwoman (like so many of Jess' family) I was so happy to find her very very cool. The next time we fly out there we'll be doing the NYC, DC (hello Mike), SF thing I think... Gotta run, but keep an eye out for Punishment Park when it hits DVD. It's really good. Mike is writing to the realisation that yet more email nagging him to go see The Descent just landed in his gmail.

Quite a weekend already... More of that up on Flickr. Review of The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things will be up on Monday, but the short version is it was great. Much better than I had expected especially after being warned off a few days earlier by someone who had already seen it and hated it. Jess found it a little disturbing, but I thought it was great fun - you just have to watch it as an adventure movie - it's kind of like The Goonies, but with child abuse and a killer soundtrack. Ms Argento was very cool... not afraid to speak her mind about Hollywood pricks or show disgust at some of the dumb questions thrown her way. It's a small London world. Just that afternoon I'd been speaking to Alan Jones on the phone regarding something else and then I took my seat to find him introducing Asia and chairing the Q&A. We hung around for some of Asia's DJ set (and to steal a poster), but we had to get back onto Charring Cross for the Ramonas gig. And that was a blast. Not the best all-girl Ramones cover band in the world considering one of them had testicles, and they tripped over more than one song, but it's difficult not to like anyone playing some of the best songs ever written. The short 30 minute set gave ample time for them to play a few thousand songs and a good time was had by all. Always good to see kids half your age singing along. Gabba Gabba Hey Hey... Mike is writing on Saturday only for Blogger to throw the post up on Sunday

The whole Terrorist thing... I already wrote a few things about this over on Londonist, but I've been meaning to get a few thoughts down here (although a lot of what I would have written ended up in the comments to this post). That the guys who carried the bombs were British does not surprise me. That the British Government immediately dug out it's folder of bad ideas rather than face up to the fact that it's own citizens would rather kill and die than agree with their stance didn't surprise me either. Of course the bombers were fucked in the head, but they were no more EVIL than anyone else. They were manipulated by people even more fucked in the head than they were, but they were helped along the path to London last Thursday by this country's actions in Iraq. London hasn't changed much in the last week. I doubt even weekly bombing campaigns would change life here that much aside from there being less tourists. We're a fucking stubborn city. Do I feel scared? Not at all. I worry about Jess of course but then I worry about her walking under a car a lot more. The motorways are STILL a much more dangerous place to find yourself than London at the moment. Have I been back on the tube yet? Of course. It's still rickety and OLD and of course more fucked up than usual, but nothing will drive me off those trains. They're the closest thing we have to the travel tubes from Space: 1999. Buses? I'm not a big bus fan. In London we have the good sense not to talk to one another on the tubes and (at the moment) you can also escape other people on their mobiles. Buses seem to attract all the people that wind me up and they NEVER shut up. If the BBC showed footage of someone being blown from the top deck of the number 30 while still clutching their mobile and mouthing the words "I'm in the air right now" I wouldn't be surprised. In a perfect world I wouldn't be so idle and I'd just walk everywhere. I can reach out and almost touch most of the interesting parts of the city from the balcony anyway. Once the weather stops being so fucking annoying (rain would be nice) I'll be scouting around for lost parts of the city for... Oh hang on. I was supposed to be talking about terrorists right? See how easy it is to forget those fucks. Galloway probably chose the wrong time to start mouthing off about Blair and Bush, but it doesn't make him wrong. Sooner we get Brown in the better... just hope he takes a little longer to succumb to the fucked side of the force. And I'm done with this. More to follow over on Londonist I expect but the space here is reserved for IMPORTANT shit. Like Molly Ringwald's underwear. Mike is writing to Mr Manson

Frustrating week... The laptop is still in hospital and this heap is wheezing. Last week when bits of London were exploding my mouse gave up the ghost so most of that day's coverage over on Londonist was written with the aid of a lot of shouting. And although the thing will download crap just as fast it HATES playing anything back so I'm stockpiling TV. And fucking Battlestar: Galactica just started up again. Crap. But there is THIS to look forward to. Wednesday night was good - another semi-official Londonist meet-up at The George. I was supposed to be hooking up with Violet as well before she flew back but those goddamn terrorists (and a hurricane) got in the way. In fact there are a lot of people in town right now or just about to arrive... I need better time management skills. Carol from Brooklyn is a blast. Not a day goes by when she doesn't have me reeling from another story... Tonight is a LONG one. We are going to see this - followed by a Q&A with Asia Argento after which she'll be DJing in the bar. Bizarre. Normally that would be enough for a Friday night but Jess scored tickets and backstage passes to go see The Ramonas at some midnight show. Today is beginning to shape up - I have some article and interview proposals to write up and send off - and at last the heat is dropped off. I was looking forward to doing battle, but maybe that's not on the cards now the weather has broken. I'm behind on things because I'm wearing my tourist guide hat a lot and being stuck with one machine means mornings of shared Internet access. I'm not complaining - free beer and bagels buys a lot of Mike time. Next week (if we can pin down a date) I'll be meeting up with George Pendle who's book has already been covered on Boing Boing and Dark, But Shining. Looking forward to that as I've been hungry for that book since I first heard about it. Sounds wild. More stuff on the back burner is s l o w l y being brought to boil, but with Sharon and kids about to arrive as Carol and Linda head back for the States I really NEED to get that laptop back. So I can sit in the pub next door. And watch Starbuck shoot Cylons... Mike is writing to whatever crap is on TV right now...

Still here... Just very fucking busy - hence the 3am writing session. Tomorrow (later today) should see things get back to normal so I'll update here a couple of times and check in via email etc Doc - was I reading multimap right? Are you bang in the middle of a security cordon right now? Probably not a good time to be trying out any new roof climbing stunts... Mike is quietly tapping away to the sound of dreaming Americans...

CNN, Newsweek... a blogger cares not for these things... Turns out that I was quoted on CNN's Inside Politics again: And if you check in with some of the London bloggers, you'll find that the message is, this sympathy from overseas is very nice, but we're moving on. This is the londonist.com, a site that was really helping out fellow Londoners on Thursday with web updates and travel updates, hotlines, that kind of thing. Mike Atherton writing there says today that, "Thanks for the sympathy, but really, we're fine. We're moving on. We've been through this before." Highlighting the Omagh bombing back in '98 and the IRA bomb in '96, saying that, "You'll hear a lot about the stiff upper lip, but if you go to London right now, they'll probably just shrug and ask you to buy a round." So moving on there... They're talking about this post. Next time I want to be interviewed by Wolf Blitzer. The Newsweek interview I did was boiled down into this: Londonist.com, a normally snarky and cheeky pop-culture and politics blog, turned very serious when it found it had become a hub for surfers searching for information. "It became obvious very early on that people were coming to us not just for advice, but for news," says Londonist contributor Mike Atherton. Normally the fifth- or sixth-ranked blog by the British blog aggregator britblog.com, Londonist's traffic landed it in the second most-viewed slot yesterday (behind the always excellent Europhobia group blog). Yesterday's running post on the bombing drew more than 100 comments by readers offering condolences or additional information. Today'?s postings began with a personal account of commuting to work on the morning after, offering an intimate voice that is seldom heard in mainstream media: "Walking past all the shiny glass buildings on Euston Road, everyone'?s pace seemed to quicken. Not a good spot to linger. I popped into Euston Station ... All trains seemed to be running as normal and, apart from a few extra police officers, the scene could have been anytime." Normally snarky? Mike is writing to a little early morning Van Halen

Emphasis on 'mock'... So a certain website is mocking up t shirt designs and this is one of 'em: The only way to defeat terrorism is for you all to wear these... Mike is writing to babble

The Soldier...

Lots more pics from yesterday here. Mike is writing to too much sun

So tired... Jess has a run down. The highlight for me today though was eating genuine Brooklyn bagels in the comfort of my own home, washed down by Brooklyn Brown Ale... I need some sleep. Then again I may just watch Mad Max first... Mike is writing to Vroooooom ps Don't be fucking with Birmingham - I used to live there and it's my second favourite city on this crappy little island.

"When those bombs start falling..." So today has been a tad busy. Jess stayed home which turned into a godsend because my day has been non stop. Head over to Londonist for what I had to say about yesterday, but at some point over the weekend I'll have time to compose a more Visible Monsters centric response - you know... with more swearing and film references. I still haven't caught up with all my email, but I will have before I go to bed this evening. Thanks for all that. If you sent me a text message yesterday and I didn't reply then the odds are it fell between the cracks. It was only late last night that my voice mail kicked back in and I've replied to everyone who tried to get a hold of me via SMS. Our American guests arrived safe and sound this afternoon and it's a lot of fun having someone from Brooklyn to yak to about yesterday. I'm already stealing stories from her. The Londonist coverage we put together seems to have been well received. We got picked up in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and a few other odd out of the way newspapers. Haven't checked the site stats yet or the referrer logs, but we got a lot of attention over it and it's nice to think we helped some people out with all that information. Will was interviewed live for Canadian TV this morning and I just got off the phone with a guy from Newsweek so it seems the 'blogging angle' of the attacks is still deemed fresh enough to be newsworthy. There's some more of that kind of thing set up for next week too. Mostly though things are pretty much back to normal here. Seeing as we have guests we're going to eat out this evening and generally have a relaxing weekend. As usual I prescribe an open window and something by The Minutemen cranked up to 11. Does wonders for the soul. Mike is writing to the obvious

And here we are... So Jess is home. Thanks for all the email etc. You guys are sweet to worry. You should know by now that we cannot be killed... And I was pleased to see that with all this crap going on that at least one of you had the good sense to comment about Batgirl. I love you guys. Londonist has closed down for the evening seeing as most people are back home and glued to the TV. Looks like one of us will be talking to Canadian TV about the 'mood' in London tomorrow... I am going to open a bottle of wine and watch a horror movie. Then we'll probably fuck like bunnies just because we can. Mike is writing to Judge Judy - I shit you not

update Jess is still fine. I know there was mention of an 'incident' over at Canary Wharf on SKY news but I just spoke to her and nothing has happened from what she can see. We are well into the flying rumours stage now. At one point there was word of a suicide bomber being shot dead near her building but of course nothing came of it... Doesn't stop me going out on the balcony every five minutes to look at the cityscape though. Most people I know remain untouched by this. The Americans just rang from Heathrow and are staying in a hotel near Heathrow for this evening at least. If they can get a room. Kris was actually in a building above Aldgate that shook with one of the blasts. A lot of smoke, but he's ok. He saw some fucked up shit on the way out though. My mobile seems to be working again... The sirens are still pretty much continuous. More later

update... Nothing new. There's already a Flickr group. Jess will it seems be coming home via a boat down the Thames... And there are many reasons why I love Warren Ellis: Right now, it's looking like seven explosions, 150 injuries, two dead. The dead count is obviously going to go up -- the bus had its bomb on the top deck, and it butterflied it -- but they're still bringing live bodies out of the tube stations. Blair, standing with the G8 leaders as he made his statement, has of course been given a political gift. Those of you trying to contact London friends and family should be aware that the mobile phone system is still locked down in parts of the city. I'd remind my foreign readers that, although it's been a while, this sort of thing is not something we're unused to over here. There's not going to be a lot of freaking out from the generations that remember explosives in litterbins and bomb threat drills in office blocks. It was part of the fabric of life for a very long time. Oh, here we go; footage of Blair being lifted out of Gleneagles by a military chopper. See, if Paddy Ashdown had become Prime Minister, he'd be in camo gear, carrying a machine gun and clambering into an Apache, proclaiming that he was off to personally hunt down and kill Osama. I think the country really missed an opportunity there.

update This is from Der Spiegel: A previously unknown group supposedly linked to al Quaeda has claimed responsibility. No news on whether it's legit yet. Cheers to Colin for the link

Update Still trying to confirm if anything happened in Leicester Sq. Londonist just got its first badly photoshopped 'gag' about the bombings... No real news. Couple of helicopters over the building every now and again but apart from the sirens it all looks the same as ever from the balcony...

Update Reports from the London Ambulance Service of an explosion in Leicester Square.

Head over to Londonist We are posting news as it breaks over on Londonist. We are connected through a forum and from there to various parts of the city and news agencies so it seems we are providing a decent service for those who are frustrated with the slow info on the BBC and SKY. (The BBC website is running slow and the excellent Guardian news blog is also overloaded)

Update Still trying to get in touch with everyone I know in the city right now. So far everyone seems to be ok. A few people still to hear from. Lots of rumours flying around. I was in San Francisco over 9/11 and half of what I heard that morning turned out to be false. Be a while before things settle down. Security experts reckon they are almost certain it is Al Qaeda. The mobile phone system is fucked - probably intentionally to stop phones being used as triggers. That all adds to the confusion of course. Nothing but sirens here. I rang the airport but they were not taking messages for incoming flights so I can't let the Americans know what the score is until they ring here. I'll be advising them to grab a hotel room because nothing is moving into London. Blair is staying put in Scotland. Cunt. Only 2 confirmed dead. That'll change. Thanks for the phone calls, emails etc... Get back to you all when i get the chance.

London seems to be exploding... Tube blasts and at least one bus has exploded. Jess is fine, but Canary Wharf is bot the best place to be right now. Then again there's no way she'll be rushing to get a bus or tube home. Some deaths... watching the news now... could be 3 buses bombed.

More crap found on my old hard drive... Mike is writing to the slow hiss of stale tyre air slowly reinflating Supergirl's super lungs

2012? I was so disinterested in this bollocks that it was only after they read out the bad news that I realised all this crap is only going to happen in seven years time. I won't be living in London by then so it's not as depressing as I thought it'd be. Plenty of crap on the way for me to moan about though... although the law of averages states that at least some of the morons filling Trafalgar Square this afternoon will be dead before 2012. Every cloud... Mike is writing to Loveage

Captain Trips... Or maybe it was just a stomach bug. Whatever it was both Jess and I were FLOORED for a day or two... I'm bouncing back - Jess is wrapped up in front of bad TV after exhausting the Firefly DVD boxset - again. So I'm a day behind on things... bah. And hoping we manage to miss the Olympic bullet that is either gonna fuck this city or Paris within the next hour. I love Paris but I live here... Thanks to both Bookslut and Dark, But Shining for the shout outs... Normal service will be resumed once my coffee intake/puke output ratio has been stabilised. Mike is writing to some idiot with a French accent yapping on about how great sport is

Slow Down... don't rewind... This is the road safety advert that I mentioned in the last post. It may be on the TV all the time, but if it�s not a Seinfeld rerun then the box stays off so I hadn�t seen it before. It loses some of its charm on the small screen anyway. You need to have full on surround sound for when the little girl�s broken bones begin to uncrack. For some reason I�m reminded of the scene in the original Superman movie where the man in tights reverses time until Lois is breathing again. And now I�m off on a tangent. Temporal fudging of that sort in movies always leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Those scenes always overlook something significant to focus on the fact that everything is alright in the end. They overlook the death. Take the Superman scene. Lois is trapped in a car; the car is trapped in a crack in the ground. The crack closes and Lois is buried alive. She dies. She dies horribly actually. I still have the mental scars from that particular trip to the cinema. Anyway, Superman arrives too late, lets out an almighty wail and breaks all the fucking rules. So time is reversed, the soil looses itself from Lois� mouth, dirty tears become clean and hide back inside their ducts and before she knows it Lois is safe and sound again. Well that Lois is safe anyway. It doesn�t discount the pain, suffering and death that the other Lois suffered and just because this Lois never died it doesn�t discount that for a moment there there was a Lois Lane who died a horrible death because the hero fucked up. Same with Star Trek: Generations. Just because Kirk and Picard pull a last minute save it doesn�t make everything ok. There was still a time when every fucker aboard the Enterprise died. Troi still went flying through the air with the knowledge that she'd killed everyone going through her mind just before a shard of hull followed. Same with a bunch of movies... I hate the time travel rewind button. Just because the audience is the only witness to these people being snuffed out does not make the following actions anymore heroic. Back in the day of the old Republic serials Flash and Buck saved the day at the very last minute for a reason. They didn�t swing in through a window to find Dale or Wilma already dead but ripe for rewinding. I feel that if you have the guts to kill a character then you need to have the guts to leave them dead and deal with the consequences. Don�t bring them back because they�re just not ever the same� Am I the only person who remembers The Monkey�s Paw? Ha. All that from a safe driving campaign� I�ve had too much coffee this morning. Mike is writing to Fugazi

War of the Worlds (spoilers aplenty)... Hmmm. Not very good then. Had it's moments. The river of corpses was a nice touch (although the anti-speeding ad played before the movie in which a dead six year old uncracks her broken bones kind of stole some of the movie's thunder). No way Tom Cruise could take Tim Robbins either. That shovel would have found itself embedded in little Tom's head while Tim dug out an adjoining tunnel for his child bride ("Quit crying Dakota, the human race MUST continue...") Watching the scene when all the dead peoples clothes rained down I couldn't help thinking that if you were an underwear sniffer then this would be your kind of disaster. The main problem is that the Dawn of the Dead remake destroyed society in a much more interesting and intense way already and this movie, despite a few nice Spielberg trademarks, just wasn't able to get under the audience's skin like that fucker did. The CGI was a little distracting in places and boy am I bored with seeing cars being flung at people. There was a time when if you wanted a car to go through the air you got an actual car, an actual stuntman and an actual Burt Reynolds wig and then chucked them at the camera. Now every fucking movie has cars flying through the air. I haven't seen Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, but if you told me that Renee Zellweger throws a car at Hugh Grant around the 40 minute mark I'd believe you. And I didn't buy the American refugees for a second. It's not like Spielberg doesn't have access to footage of real refugees what with all the British and American bombs flying around the world since he made Jaws. They don't stop to hang up polaroids from the photograph albums they conveniently carry around with them ala 9-11. Two buildings falling down is not the same as being invaded and destroyed and being forced to flee for your lives. And they for sure don't run towards the enemy in the hope of seeing their soldiers kick some ass. Then again teenagers don't walk over a hill seconds before it is firebombed, dust themselves off, wander around between the death rays and stomping tripods and then make it back to Boston in time for supper with their grandparents. So not a patch on the original and about a million miles away from the novel. In the '53 version there's a real sense of horror when that single stalk raises from the atomic explosion because you know that the human race is fucked. Watching some jeeps explode just doesn't cut it. And the burning train sequence was done much better in Mars Attacks but with cows... Bah. Just go read 'The Leauge of Extraordinary Gentleman' again instead. Alan Moore knows the score... Tom and Steven don't. Mike is writing to nothing

Once Upon a Time in Mexico... Everyone who watched Robbie Williams gets a midnight visit from this guy: 028mex Originally uploaded by sizemore.

Mike is writing to Bruce Springsteen

My email dried up... You're all watching Live 8 aren't you? Sad fuckers. Mike is writing to John Zorn

When there's no room left in... I just cleaned out the office: The Office Originally uploaded by sizemore.

...to make room for our visitors, the first of who arrive on Monday I think... we won't see them for a couple of weeks as we are having Linda (Oakland) and her friend (NYC) staying here from Wednesday first. I think... I have a new friendly face for them... THE TRIDENT: Note to self: remember to clean the coke off the mirror before taking the next self portrait... Mike is writing to some guff on the TV

Warren's wavelength... Live 8 is on in the pub. I just saw white doves being released while U2 plays. I would pay real money for an airstrike on Hyde Park right now. via the Bad Signal Mike is writing to Mallrats - Jess would rather watch Jay & Silent Bob than help save the world. For shame...

Grim Prairie Tales... Mr Alex Cox: Grim Prairie Tales was made on a shoestring budget in the Mojave Desert in 1990. The writer/director, Wayne Coe, was an illustrator who designed the American campaigns for Out of Africa, Brazil and Back to the Future before deciding that he wanted to get involved behind the lens. He gives us an excellent example of why writer/directors shouldn't be allowed to talk about their aspirations or their films. To wit: "If I look back on my brief life at the age of 29, I've learned I don't want to be a star, nor be the richest guy on the block. I want to have fun with the process of making films, and hopefully entertain and provoke people through them. If I get applause when the curtain falls, so much the better." Oh dear. But wait! Pay no attention to these saccharine burblings. Grim Prairie Tales is actually good... thanks mainly to the presence of good camerawork and some fine actors, especially Brad Dourif and James Earl Jones. Brad Dourif, as we have observed before, is a really strong actor who seems doomed to a career in weirdo cultist Moviedrome-type films. James Earl Jones, here looking like a refugee from The Big Silence, is of course one of the best living American actors. He usually gets cast as 'The Voice of God'. Here they play two drifters who meet on a lonely prairie and proceed to tell weird tales around the camp fire. It's a portmanteau film, like Dead of Night, but in this instance the storytellers are so good that as Variety observed, you almost regret the interruption that the weird tales provide. Almost, but not quite. For these are good, weird stories too. It's almost a new genre in fact - the Gothic western, rather like Richard Brautigan's unsatisfying novel The Hawkline Monster or Cormac McCarthy's epic tome Blood Meridian. Coe's background as an illustrator serves him well when at one point Grim Prairie Tales turns from live action into a horror cartoon. It's years since I've seen this. It came up in conversation in the comments after my Open Range ramble so it seemed appropriate to dig out my old Moviedrome guides. That's something else I'll get around too in good time. The only thing I really remember about the movie is that some poor bastard gets swallowed by a cunt. Not a bad way to go I suppose. I have it on a dusty video tape around here somewhere... Interesting that Cox found Brautigan's novel unsatisfying. It's one of my favourites... Mike is writing to Mallrats

1920... Corran and Laura prepare to be the next Sapphire and Steel: Corran: There's a rip in time here. I can feel... Laura: I sense it too. Something animal like... yet majestic... a GORILLA! Elsewhere Kelly finds that Arran's nipples have magical properties: Gotta love these guys. Mike is writing to yet more Throwing Muses

I'm not just about the violence and bloodshed and zombies and... Honest. Check this out: Dear Mike, By way of a Google search for "Silas Flannery" this afternoon, I came across your article on Calvino, Auster, and Pynchon entitled "Intertextuality". Thank you for this enjoyable distraction from work and the upcoming Fourth of July weekend. In the unlikely event of any updates or expanded editions of the article -- in particular, the text leading up to and culminating in footnote 9 -- I thought you might appreciate a referral to the Spring 2003 edition of the Review of Contemporary Fiction: http://www.centerforbookculture.org/review/03_2.html If you care to send me your postal address, I'd be happy to send you a complimentary copy of this work... PS - I'd vote for the Ph.D., and against the calls about werewolves at 3 am. I hook up with the best people. Turns out that little piece of mine (that oddly enough I figured was lost) has been all over the Internet. I should really get around to sorting all that debris out. Mike is writing to some more Throwing Muses

It's a pretty day for making things right... Time for a long ramble... I just watched Open Range for the second time tonight and I'm kicking myself again for not taking the trouble to go see it at the cinema. I wasn't expecting much the first time I sat down to watch it and I certainly wasn't expecting something better than Unforgiven. Costner's film is head and shoulders above Eastwood's and I loved that film. So why don't people shout from the rooftops about this one? The easy answer is that people are stupid... and while on the whole that's true I don't really like easy answers (never mind the fact that I was stupid enough to let this one slip past me in the first place). Maybe it's because Westerns are constantly falling in and out of fashion - as soon as one critic declares the thing dead along comes another movie to add to the cinema's longest lasting genre. Maybe it's because the right wing find it easy to adopt Westerns and their heroes to underline their own causes, conveniently forgetting that they represent much of what the genre aims to pull down. The President may well be a cowboy but he's the kind that Jimmy Stewart would beat the everliving shit out of. Now excuse what follows because I'm building up to something here. Just using the space and you to bounce the ideas off of... yeah I know. I'll buy you a pint. Watching movies like Unforgiven and Open Range is a real pleasure and I actually feel a great debt of gratitude toward the people who make films like this. I was struck watching the opening scenes of tonight's movie by how lucky we are to be able to 'own' these works. I remember the unrealness my dad felt when we had our first video player - that you could not only own a movie like Point Blank, but you could also rewind and watch it all again or a single scene... it was mind blowing. I admit I have a passion for flawed movies too - I'd give cold hard cash to watch The Keep or Alligator right now - but sometimes you want to see someone get everything right. There isn't a single misfire (ahem) in Open Range. Watching Costner's film develop and unfold is a treat; a good meal to take your time over while the rest of the crowd run around the buffet. Take a movie like Sin City. Great movie, as close to the great series it was based on as possible, but it's still a very heartless affair. Rodriguez, and Tarantino for that matter, rarely spend time where they should. Tim Roth in the back of the car in Dogs nailed that movie for me and Jackie Brown (by far his best work) was Quentin doing a real day's work but you know what? Kevin Costner is better. Costner turned down the role of Bill in Kill Bill to do his own movie, he put up his own money to get it made and goddamn him if he didn't carry on shooting the thing even after his appendix burst. John Wayne was a pussy. Costner would have spat that cancer out and just carried on with the next shot. I'm not saying you have to almost die before your movie moves me, but you've got to know that it's worth fighting for. A lot of directors (maybe all of them since Peckinpah) find it easy to lose sight of the most important part of the art they are creating: The words. Not just the dialogue either, the story can be conveyed through a landscape or a silent glimpse across a room or through a piece of music... but all that comes from the script. The story. The heart. And aren't the simple stories the best? Costner and Robert Duvall (in maybe his finest role) set out to do what is right after their friends fall into harm's way through no fault of their own. It's a slow burn of a film that concentrates on character and a sense of setting that stops you from believing that Spearman and Charley are anything but real. The rest of the cast is impeccable (especially Annette Bening) but there's no escaping that this is Duvall and Costner's stage. Just before they set off for a confrontation they know they'll be lucky to survive Duvall's character gets an urge for something sweet: "My friend and me got a hankerin' for Switzerland chocolate and a good smoke" he tells the surprised store keeper while his partner furtively makes out his will in a stolen page from a catalogue. Doesn't get any better than that. But Open Range is a four word pitch: They. Kill. His. Dog. It sounds trite and there's more to the movie than that of course, but as much as he's angry over the death of his friend and the wrong done him and his, the single most important part of that two hours and twenty minutes is the few seconds in which he finds his dog's body. It's also the heart of a very different picture altogether in the form of Equilibrium. Forget about the 1984/Fahrenheit 451 stuff. That movie is ALL about the puppy. Anyway... This is just me throwing some thoughts around. I'm surprised that that old Forgiven piece of mine is still up - I guess having it linked up on the IMDB gave it a stay of execution as far as FreeUK where concerned. Odd to look back on a time before blogging too. Anyway... I'm trying to find the time to write more on film, a lot more, but I expect it'll take more of this sort of ramble before I get around to it. All in good time... I do want to write more on the contrasting themes of Unforgiven and Open Range, but I also want to talk about why Westerns are the ultimate punk movies and a little something on killer rabbit flicks... It's going to be a long summer. Mike is writing to Throwing Muses

This should bring Johnny to the surface... Back in the 1980s Paramount Pictures released a film version of THE KEEP written and directed by Michael Mann, "Wilson says in the IDW Publishing press release. "The result was a critical and commercial disaster. Why? Because Michael Mann's film resembles my novel in name only. When IDW offered me the chance to script a graphic adaptation of THE KEEP, I jumped at it. This mini-series will show both newcomers and longtime fans of the novel what could have been... what should have been." The five-issue miniseries, which kicks off in September, features art by Matthew Smith (Hellboy, The Path). Via the ever loving Dark, but shining Mike is writing to Quiet Riot

This bucket of bolts's never gonna get us past that blockade... Back in the old cockpit. Things are held together with a lot of tape and even more charm, but I'm still online. Plus this old keyboard makes a very satisfying CLACKETY CLACK noise... The Alienware box will be on its way back to the Emerald Isle sometime this afternoon. I'll be on emergency life support for at least a week, maybe two, until it comes back all new and sparkly. This machine isn't half as bad as I feared... a bit slow if I do too much, but the internet is still nice and fast. Plus I found like 3000+ songs that I forgot to burn the last time I mothballed the machine. Lots of old tunes to listen to while I import some of the crap from the laptop. Did you notice that Jess has a 'new' template. I've always been fond of my Calvin & Hobbes Blogger button, but it sucks compared to her new one. Make with the CLICK and go say hello: Mike is writing to Sinatra