Musings from the world of Alice.

Just get on with it!

2009-09-10T04:36:00.004Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 123: A random demotivational poster featuring some Tenniel artwork: http://www.motivatedphotos.com/?src=rss&id=32727

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 124: Ok, so it doesn't specifically mention Alice, but it mentions Lewis Carroll (and I doubt she'd be reading him The Hunting Of The Snark)! http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1601#comic

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 125: "I could be the Alice to your Wonderland" - A line from "Beasts" by Slow Moving Millie (Amelia Warner). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAPtp6AEgm0

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 126: A tin etched with some Tenniel art: http://www.flickr.com/photos/isitcrunchy/2099771364/in/set-72157603416203522/

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 127: "Through the geeking glass: Hanners in Con-derland" - http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1428

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 128: Tony Franklin's Twitter background: http://a1.twimg.com/profile_background_images/10196570/TF_Background.jpg

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 129: Tulgey Wood designs: http://tulgeywooddesigns.com/

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 130: "Brainless through the looking-glass" - http://notalwaysright.com/brainless-through-the-looking-glass/2299

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 131: "I'm at a bar dressed as the Cheshire Cat with the White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, one of the Tweedles, Alice in drag and the Queen of Hearts." - http://mydrunktexts.com/view/s/5117

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 132: @mollycrabapple Off to Alice in Wonderland Dr. Sketchy's at the Slipper Room

@mollycrabapple Damn did Trina Rose rock it today. Total send up of Alice in Wonderland

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 133: @qikipedia Happy 4th July! In 1862, Lewis Carroll told the original 'Alice in Wonderland' story to Alice Liddell on a boat in Oxford.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 134: @amandapalmer suggestions for artists for evelyn&evelyn's upcoming record? think: tenniel (alice in wonderland), gorey, emily strange, circus. send LINKS.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 135: @Theremina O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! A newborn named Tallulah. Beautiful, strong, with delicate limbs, just like her mama and papa.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 136: @jephjacques And with a final thrust, Nightcrawler BAMFED into Alice's rabbit hole.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 137: @mc_frontalot Galactus in Wonderland #futuredisneymarvelmovies

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 138: @amandapalmer back from the stunning through-the-looking-house of jonathan ross (@wossy), jane goldman (@ferretprincess) & their magic kids. rad people.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 139: And finally, the Zero Punctuation review of Mad World features this:

The mutant returns

2009-06-17T00:05:00.009Z

I'm really bad at this whole "motivation" malarkey. It's so often these days that I just can't be bothered to do things. I barely create any more. I've been too caught up in things like work and other people that have resulted in any spare time I have being wasted by inanity and such-like. This is not what I want. While I don't wish to abandon the new things in my life (though it may not be my choice when it comes to certain things), I don't want to lose what I used to do. I want to write again. I want to play music. I want to feel the satisfaction of doing something I'm proud of. I want to be myself again.

This blog is quite obviously one of those things I've neglected. There's been Alice references all over. Some I have forgotten about. Some I neglected to make a note of (I know there's one in American Gods by Neil Gaiman, but I didn't mark the page and it's an extremely long book to search through). This is what I have left.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 115: More stumbling brought me to a page full of art by Kurt Wenner. One being this piece featuring Alice and the white rabbit.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 116: Overheard in New York furnished me with this very odd conversation.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 117: This IRC quote features a username of "Haigha", which is the name the March Hare goes by in Through The Looking Glass.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 118: An arcade/trivia machine in a local Leicester pub offered this game of "Triple Towers Solitaire", which is obviously Alice-themed. Alice is looking exceptionally busty for a child. I also have no idea who the young guy is meant to be (possibly the Knave of Hearts).

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 119: I was watching the '80s TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy earlier and was reminded of the slogan for Milliways, "If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways—the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 120: Finally, another picture from Rachel. This time of a bookshop named "Through The Looking Glass".

Oh wait, a couple more from Twitter:

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 121: @wilw There's a perfect Cheshire Cat moon out right now, with just the faintest Earthshine in a darkening sky. So beautiful.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 122: @zoetica Best morning in weeks. Coffee status: hot, black. Z status: Cheshire grin.

Time runs differently here

2009-04-15T03:20:00.004Z

Oh look, it's been months since I updated this. This is what having a full-time job does to me.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 108: My friend Grace did a recent photography shoot with an Alice theme for a competition.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 109: A recent picture from I Can Has Cheezburger features the Disney version of the Cheshire cat.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 110: A recent blog by Amanda Palmer talks about her high school theatre experiences. One play was "Alice", "an original piece that married different versions of “alice in wonderland” together, including jan svankmeyers. it was basically a play about drugs and death."

And now, various Twitter posts:

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 111: @Zoetica:Escaping the sudden accidental rabbit hole for some proper Russian dining at Traktir. Mы пируем, суки.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 112: @MollyCrabapple: Drawing Alice in Wonderland pictures for the Box

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 113: @NeilHimself: RT O frabjous day calloo etc @mantene: @neilhimself The Graveyard Book won Audible.com's Tournament of Audiobooks! Congratulations!

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 114: @JephJacques: I'm at the Dirty Truth, tweeting about my characters drinking at the Horrific Revelation HOW DEEP DOES THE RABBIT HOLE GO

There's possibly a few more that I've missed/forgotten about. It just gets silly these days...

You should all follow Warren

2009-01-31T02:06:00.004Z

I'm failing a lot at blogging these days. I haven't added anything to my writing blog in ages. My gaming blog is sadly neglected, despite the fact I've played some awesome games recently. And the others are just as bad, but at least I don't feel like I have content for them.

This blog has also been neglected. Every now and then I've popped in and added the small collection of Alice references I've amassed, but nothing else. This is what working has done to me. While I do still have a fair bit of free time (much more than other people do), I still waste a fair bit of it. I fall into bad habits where I prefer to just wander the internet or watch TV rather than do things like read or write or create. I hardly even play games as that requires me to take an active role.

I need to change this. There's so much I can do that I just never get round to. I need to get shit done! I've no idea if this will happen. We'll just have to wait and see.

In other news, I have fallen in love with Twitter. While I've neglected my other web presences, my Twitter has become more active than ever. It's a constant source of quick little bits of amusement and I follow some awesome people. Maybe one day I'll work out a way to do something awesome with it. Something more than just talk about how tired I am or how I'm eating something nice. Whatever it gives me and whatever I do with it, I love it. Follow me.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 106: Speaking of Twitter, a well-known fetish model named Apnea began following me. The first thing I noticed when I checked her profile was her Alice profile picture.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 107: And again discovered via Twitter (but also via my RSS subscriptions). It was Lewis Carroll's birthday the other day. Zoetica made a blog post about it and linked to a Coilhouse post. She also tweeted this image:

I am the girl Anachronism

2009-01-12T19:04:00.002Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 104: Once again, Pyretta Blaze has been dressing up as Alice. This time she's done a shoot that also includes her as Alice and the Queen of Hearts.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 105: One I noticed a while back but completely forgot about is a Tom Waits album called "Alice". According to Wikipedia, "The album contains the majority of songs written for the play Alice, based on the forbidden love between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell".

So finely surpassed

2009-01-08T21:27:00.008Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 97: The lyrics to "Faerie Tale" by Venom feature the lines "In this wonderland called hell" and "The looking glass doth break".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 98: Another stumbling session unearthed this answer sheet for the "74 bands" picture. Alice is of course used to illustrate "Alice in Chains".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 99: A Facebook group, "I Stay Up Late and I Don't Do Anything Productive", features various images, most of them being internet-meme based. A few of them are Alice-themed.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 100: Thanks to an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks, I discovered that the video for Gwen Stefani's "What you waiting for?" is heavily Alice themed.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 101: Following some connections on Twitter, I discovered Theremina, who had recently tweeted; "Huge, low-slung Cheshire Cat grin of a moon. Sure enough, the night grows curioser and curioser."

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 102: Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis features the line "Down the goddamn rabbithole again." Everyone needs to read this book.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 103: Finally, another one from Rachel. This photo was taken on Brougham Street in Edinburgh. It's apparently for a mobile disco named "Mad Hat Man".

Creeping ever closer

2008-12-23T18:55:00.004Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 94: Another one from Rachel. This time it's an Alice calendar. No word on where she found it, but a quick Google search turns this up.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 95: Bizarre magazine have come up with a holiday gift guide full of strange and interesting things. One of which is a lovely Alice necklace from Temporary: Secretary.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 96: Finally, I was once again using the Stumbleupon toolbar and came across a page full of complex sand sculptures. I was about to navigate away from it, when I realised what the subject of one of the pictures was meant to be.

Eating only apples

2008-12-05T03:43:00.002Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 93: The summary for a recent Slashdot story about the Apple/Psystar conflict finished with "As Alice in Wonderland might put it, "It gets interestinger and interestinger."" (taken from the article itself).

The Scottish connection

2008-11-29T07:26:00.004Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 90: I'm currently following Stephen Fry on Twitter. One of his recent tweets made great use of the word "frabjous".

Also, it seems I'm now influencing other people into finding these sightings for me. Both of these were sent to me by my friend Rachel:

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 91: She first sent me a link to a pair of boots, among other links to various pairs she was lusting after.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 92: Then, the other day, she sent me a text containing this picture. I asked her where it was taken and she replied with "on the underpass at Potterrow Port, near Edinburgh uni".

Oh how time has passed...

2008-11-10T23:40:00.003Z

So, I've been away for a fair while and I've amassed a small collection of sightings. I've found myself actually getting annoyed with them now...

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 80: A while back I stumbled upon the "U.S National Debt Clock", which happens to be hosted on brillig.com (the homepage of some guy called Ed Hall).

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 81: A recent mass Turing test featured a bot named Jabberwacky (which I actually encountered back before my Alice obsession).

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 82: Due to my lack of internet, I hadn't been on DeviantArt in a fair while. I'd amassed a fair few deviations on my watch list. The first of which was the lovely FetishFreak dressed in an Alice costume.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 83: An advert that pops up a lot in my feed for icanhascheezburger.com is for some game named Wonderland. I'm starting to ignore the use of the word "wonderland" as it's too prevalent. This is probably how William Gibson feels when he hears the word "cyberspace".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 84: So, you all know how much I love Violet Blue. A recent post (NSFW material within) of hers features the line "This *somehow* came from an internet rabbit hole I went down when".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 85: Dene who I work with showed me this site which contains this video,"Quick and fun experiment done with Processing: the first 3,000 characters of "Alice in Wonderland", mapped to a cylindrical surface and rendered with varying radius and rotation properties."

Alice in Wonderland with Processing from zeh fernando on Vimeo.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 86: An advert for a new BBC programme on children's illustrations began with a quick shot of one of Tenniel's Alice illustrations.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 87: Volume 8 of Y: The Last Man features a piece of dialogue where Toyota refers to Dr. Allison Mann as "Allison Wonderland".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 88: Another DeviantArt one. I happened to find myself on the homepage and one of the recent deviations was an Alice picture.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 89: My band are playing a gig at the Shed on the 24th of this month. We're apparently supporting a band called The Junipers. They've apparently released a single called "Callooh Callay!".

Alices old and new

2008-10-10T12:59:00.009Z

So, my lovely friend Emma surprised me at work the other day with a random present. It was an old edition of Alice in Wonderland from 1943 (I think). The illustrations are by Rene Cloke, who is apparently quite collectible and most famous for illustrating some Enid Blyton books.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 79: Another one I forgot is that I was looking at music magazines in WHSmith a while ago and turned around to be faced with a new magazine named Wonderland.

Oh so many!

2008-10-01T12:48:00.004Z

A bumper crop of sightings now. They've been collecting up as I no longer have the internet at home...

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 76: "When I grow up" by Garbage, features the line "Floating out to Wonderland".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 77: Paul Kaye's intro to Being John Malkovich on Film Four features him making the Alice influence on the film explicit. Saying that when you enter the office in the film you "enter Wonderland".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 78: Another US episode of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" features a talk show skit based around Wonderland/Looking-glass. Including Ryan Stiles playing the part of the "man who sold her the mirror". He notes that he thought "it was just a mirror, otherwise I would have charged her more".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 79: In this weeks batch of PostSecrets, this card came up:

Also, today's XKCD is this:

Featuring the alternate text of "Except for anything by Lewis Carroll or Tolkien, you get five made-up words per story. I'm looking at you, Anathem."

One is far superior to the other

2008-08-28T22:45:00.002Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 74: Thanks to someone's msn name, I discovered that the McFly song, "Lies", contains the lyrics "And I'm just one drink away/And I'm back in Wonderland like it was yesterday". However, it doesn't feature on their second album, "Wonderland".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 75: Finding all that out jogged my memory that The Wildhearts have a song called "Geordie in Wonderland". They've also done a live album of the same name.

How about mint?

2008-08-26T00:24:00.002Z

I started wondering earlier, do we actually know what butter tastes like? It seems most of what we use is actually margarine (stuff like Flora being made of sunflower oil, or Bertolli being made of olive oil) simply masquerading as butter. So I started to wonder, after years of having butter decried as unhealthy and instead being offered "butter substitutes" that are apparently just as good, do we know the difference? If someone actually gave us some real butter, made from real milk, would we like it? Would we complain that it doesn't taste just like Flora (or any of its variants that do many different things to your body)?

I wonder if there are any other products like this that we might have lost the taste for.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 72: It seems I found this one a while ago and forgot about it. I discovered a link to this page in my bookmarks on a site called "Blabberwocky".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 73: Bash.org has been down for a while, so I've turned to qdb.us for my amusing IRC quote needs. The other day I discovered this little snippet.

I couldn't be bothered at first

2008-08-22T18:48:00.002Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 71: So, two recent episodes of the US version of "Whose line is it anyway?" have featured Alice references in the "props" round. The first was Colin turning his props into a large smile and Wayne calling for "Cheshire cat, party of two". Then today there was Wayne making his prop into a hookah and saying "Welcome, Alice, welcome". Way too much Alice in that show...

Attack of the Alice

2008-08-19T01:31:00.006Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 67: In a recent edition of Attack Of The Show's "The Loop" segment, Matt Schwartz describes part of his experience of researching into "trolling" as having "[fallen] down the rabbit hole of Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 68: Another AOTS segment, The Feed, recently reported on Tim Burton's work on an adaptation of the Wonderland story, with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 69: The last in a trio of references from Podcasts, a recent edition of Diggnation had Alex using the word "jibberwocky" as an example of a gibberish word.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 70: So this is a pretty exciting one for me. I've mentioned Rockabaret a couple of times before. This time, the entire night is going to be Alice themed! Their next night is on the 20th of September and is entitled "Rockabaret in Wonderland". I shall endeavour to go and take copius amounts of pictures, which I will of course post here.

Seriously, could someone make me one?

2008-07-21T03:24:00.005Z

So, here's Violet's video response to the Boing Boing debacle. It doesn't give much new information, but it serves as a nice overview of what's been going on and it amused me.

In other news, there's now an Open Words forum up and running. For more info about what's going on, you can check out the development blog. Feel free to join it and start posting whatever you like (within reason, obviously). I'm hoping to get a fair amount of activity on there, so feel free to invite friends or whatever!

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 65: Something Awful's most recent Comedy Goldmine article features sock monsters made by some of the forum members. One of them is a rather awesome Jabberwocky. I want one!

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 66: I picked up the deluxe edition of City of Heroes the other day. It came with various additions, including the first three expansions for the game. The first of these is entitled "Through the Looking Glass"

A little update. Still confused.

2008-07-12T14:35:00.003Z

So, yesterday I posted various bits, including stuff about the Violet Blue/Boing Boing situation. This morning I awoke to my RSS reader telling me that Violet had posted a couple of new things on her blog (which I only got around to adding to my subscriptions after posting about it on here). One of these is an update on the Boing Boing situation. There still doesn't seem to be any explanation of the goings on forthcoming (other than it could be something to do with Violet's relationship with Xeni Jardin). More interesting is the fact that more posts have been deleted, this time just being anything that has even mentioned Violet, some of them being quite important. Also, Boing Boing is apparently being very restrictive of the discussion of this issue, apparently deleting comments/questions from anyone who's (at least seemingly) pro-Violet.

Really, this issue isn't just about Violet and Boing Boing, it's about the ideas of freedom and transparency on the internet. It brings to light some important issues, such as that of who really controls/owns content on the web. It also shows how things can't be done "quietly", as there's eyes on everything online. Also, thanks to things like the wayback machine, deletion isn't the end. Even if you have no interest in what Violet or Boing Boing do, it's something to look into.

I've never been a reader of Boing Boing and I don't think I'm about to start.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 64: I just looked up the Siouxsie and the Banshees album, "Superstition", on Wikipedia and stumbled upon the fact that they also released a covers album entitled "Through the looking glass". I should've noticed this before, as I actually have their version of "The Passenger" that features on it.

Collaboration and erasure

2008-07-11T00:00:00.004Z

So, a few little things I fancied commenting on today.

First is the strange case of Boing Boing and Violet Blue (be warned, some stuff on Violet's blog is NSFW). To sum stuff up, Violet recently found out that Boing Boing deleted some posts she had made there. They don't seem to wish to tell her or anyone why exactly they've done this (which apparently happened a year ago). All they've said is that "Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her." and that they "were trying to do the right thing quietly and respectfully, without embarrassing the parties involved." Violet seems to be as in the dark about this as everyone else, stating that "I still have no idea what they’re talking about — except that it seems to be personal? — and really don’t understand why I’m being attacked, nor why they’re stating they kept it a secret (and are behaving this way) out of “kindness” toward me." There's lots to read about this and even I still haven't made my way through all of it. I'm a fan of Violet's work, so I'm on her side. I'll be interested to see if this ever gets solved.

Using Violet as a link, I'm jumping to NxE's Fifty Most Influential 'Female' Bloggers, where she appears as number 28. Also on the list (at number 41) is Cali Lewis from GeekBrief.tv, one of my favourite video podcasts. Looking through the list, I don't recognise many of the names, making me feel a tad "out of the loop". So, if anyone wants to point me to any good web stuff, whether it be blogs, podcasts or just anything along those lines, then feel free. I don't need any funny picture sites though, thanks.

Changing direction completely now, you might have seen the new Orange adverts. Their new slogan of "I am who I am because of everyone" is pretty much a translation of what Ubuntu means. I'm guessing it's meant to encourage people (at least in some abstract way) to communicate, rather than to collaborate and work together, the way Ubuntu does. I'm thinking it could be a bit too hopeful of me to start wondering if Orange might start producing phones running Ubuntu MID.

Sticking with ideas of collaboration, one of the newest TED talks is by Clay Shirky. In it he talks about institutions vs. collaboration and gives a great explanation of why stuff like open source software works and how he sees this as the future of technology.

Alice Pacino

2008-07-01T23:32:00.003Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 63: There's an advert on Dave currently for a film called "The Recruit" (as it's playing on one of the other UKTV channels soon). In it, they show a clip of Al Pacino talking to a group of (I'm guessing) recruits and telling them that they've "stepped through the looking-glass".

Going halfsies once more

2008-06-26T22:30:00.003Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 61: Another one found through Stumbleupon. Contrariwise is a site that showcases people's tattoos that feature quotes from "books, poetry, music, and other sources". Of course, one of the tattoos featured is the line that gave the site its name, "“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 62: This one was another random encounter, but not using Stumble this time. Instead a Google search led me to the Cheshire Cat car club a "Radio Control Car Racing in Congleton, Cheshire".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 62 ½: This one's not quite a sighting, but instead an acknowledgement of an influence. I recently got a chance to play Super Mario Galaxy. In a game set in an alternate reality, near the beginning of the game you find yourself waking up and having to chase white rabbits.

We're going even further out

2008-06-16T22:19:00.004Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 59: "Not always right" is a site where people post humorous stories about customer service. Once such story about strange requests for prizes is entitled "Tweedledee and Tweedledum".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 60:I've been following the Phoenix Mars lander on Twitter and it just posted this message: "Will continue to monitor the first dig site (AKA Dodo-Goldilocks) while I start a new test dig in "Wonderland." Still baking samples, too." Apparently, Wonderland is "part of the larger 'national park' area named 'Cheshire Cat'" Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything about why these places have been named as such.

And once again we pass the mark

2008-06-11T00:57:00.004Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 58: In the Kevin Smith film, Dogma, when we first meet the character of Loki, he is talking to a nun about his interpretation of the Walrus and the Carpenter as an indictment of organised religion.

In other Alice-related news, my friend Jess linked me to this video of a remix of music from the Disney version of Alice.

Please please please

2008-06-04T02:35:00.005Z

So, considering this is a blog about culture and how I often focus on the connections and references inherent in culture, a TED talk on memetics is something I just couldn't pass up. Susan Blackmore's talk is stunning and it will really make you think about culture and why exactly certain things have come about. When I think of a meme, I think about things that propagate the internet. I think of images and inside jokes and references that only a select few understand. But really, memes are all around us. Every culture is built on mimicry. No wonder I've managed to be so prolific at simply spotting these imitations!

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 57: In a scene in This is England where the gang take a football from some Asian kids, Combo refers to two of them as "Tweedledum and Tweedledee".

No rest for the obsessed

2008-05-18T21:18:00.002Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 56: At Rockabaret last night, they were showing various cartoons on a screen over the stage. Some were old cartoons, such as Felix the cat and a Betty Boop cartoon entitled "Betty in Blunderland".

LikeTelevision Embed Movies and TV Shows

I knew it the moment I picked it up

2008-05-15T11:46:00.005Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 53: Page 196 of "The Portable Door" by Tom Holt features the lines "Sophie raised her head and stared at him. She still looked as though she'd followed a large white rabbit with a pocket watch down a hole in the ground, but some colour was starting to return to her cheeks."

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 54: Danielle Horvat (the actress who plays Taylah Jordan in Neighbours) has a picture on her MySpace of her in an Alice costume. It appears to be the same costume as worn by Pyretta Blaze.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 55: The Screaming Trees album, "Buzz Factory", contains a song entitled "The looking glass cracked". While the lyrics don't refer to Alice specifically, they revolve around themes of altered reality and "going beyond". In looking them up, I also found that there's a Babyshambles song called "Through the looking glass". No doubt it's horrible.

Here's a causal link for you

2008-05-04T17:41:00.003Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 52: In episode 12 of the first series of The Big Bang Theory, after Raj, the third person he's tried to help with their research, tells him to go away, Sheldon mutters "curiouser and curiouser" as he's walking away from Raj's office.

Milestone reached and passed...

2008-05-03T13:20:00.002Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 50: I picked up a copy of issue 6 of "Wonderland" by Tommy Kovac and Sonny Liew. It apparently follows the adventures of the various Wonderland inhabitants after Alice has gone back through the looking-glass. I'm not completely sure what's going on though, as this is the last in the series. I shall have to pick up the collection sometime.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 51: In a "flash-forward" in the most recent episode of Lost, Jack is reading Alice in Wonderland to a child. He's reading the section where Alice contemplates her identity. I'll leave it at that, so as not to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen it yet...

Adventures with Google docs

2008-05-02T00:47:00.003Z

Last week I had a presentation to do on my proposal for my major project. My initial plan was to use the facilities in the IOCT to create a simple presentation. Due to using Linux, I don't have PowerPoint and I didn't want the hassle of making something using OpenOffice or KPresenter and either having it not work in PowerPoint, or having to bring my laptop to the IOCT. Unfortunately, the IOCT was busy for the whole day, so I made for the library. On the way there, I came up with the idea that of trying out Google Docs, as this would solve any future problems I might have along these lines.

I created a simple presentation and while it doesn't have any kind of fancy animations or effects, it does everything I want. You can find it on my major project development blog.

After this good experience, I decided to use Google docs once more. This time I used it for my research essay on moderation systems in online communities. I worked on it at home and then I was able to simply go into the IOCT and download my document. I then cleaned it up a bit in Word (double-line spacing, page numbers, etc) and printed it off.

The final problem that Google docs has allowed me to solve is that I wanted to put my essay I did for my Digital Cultures module on here. I didn't want to simply post it as a blog post, as that would be obscenely long. I also couldn't attach it as a file as Blogger doesn't offer that service. That left me with only the option of having it hosted somewhere else. Thanks to Google docs, I'm able to simply publish it to the web and provide a link.

While I don't plan to use Google docs for everything I do in the future, it's still a very useful tool and will hopefully only get better.

Bonus points if you can tell me how this connects to other sightings

2008-04-21T22:55:00.005Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 49: In Pulp Secret's coverage of New York Comic Con, Jeremy Love describes Bayou as "...a mixture between Alice in Wonderland and the Br'er rabbit stories...".

TED's been talking to me again

2008-04-17T23:21:00.002Z

So, once again I've been watching various TED talks and there's a couple I'd like to bring to your attention.

The first is Johnny Lee's "Wii remote hacks". While the possibilities he's realised for a (relatively) cheap piece of technology are astounding, what interests me most is the end of his speech, where he talks about how the web has enabled the sharing of his ideas. He mostly talks about online video distribution and YouTube, but it relates to other community/collaborative/web 2.0 technologies that allow for the sharing and development of ideas.

The second features Tod Machover, the creator of Guitar Hero. He talks about his various other projects that bring the ability to create music to anyone. These kinds of projects were something
that we somewhat touched on in my undergraduate music tech course, but taken much further. That part of the course was something that really interested me as it really fully went against the side of the course that encouraged convoluted approaches to music creation that I really didn't enjoy.

It's such a small world

2008-04-06T14:57:00.003Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 46: In the inside front cover of the "author's preferred text" of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, there's a quote from the Minneapolis Star Tribune that describes the book as "A dark contemporary ALICE IN WONDERLAND... Imaginative, well-crafted [and] highly visual".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 47: In his TED talk, back in February, about finding the true face of Leonardo Da Vinci, Siegried Woldhek shows portraits he's painted. He zooms in on three specific portraits, these are of Audrey Hepburn, Saddam Hussein, and Lewis Carroll. Carroll appears to be taking a picture of Alice Liddell.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 48: I was bored the other day and started stumbling. The first page I came to was two pieces of Alice inspired art by Eva Soulu, apparently for an album entitled "Wonderland" by The Penultimate Truth.

Writing about writing about writing...

2008-03-31T23:25:00.004Z

So, as some of you will know, I have a fair few blogs. One of these is documenting the development of my major project, currently code-named "Open Words". The idea behind my project is a website that allows users to post various pieces of creative writing and uses various web technologies in order to build and foster a helpful community. This community would allow users to help each other improve their writing.

As my programming/web design/etc. skills aren't very advanced, the project will be focusing on the creative side of things. This means I will mostly be working on designing the various elements rather than implementing them. For example, it will be much more important for me to design (at least conceptually) a set of tools and/or a system that would allow users to easily post and edit various pieces of writing and have other users comment on them, than it would be for me to build a database to store all the pieces/comments.

I came up with this idea after thinking about how I improved my writing. As a member of the Tabcrawler forums, I found the community of helpful users that existed in the Lyrics & Poetry section really helped me improve my pieces when I posted them. As the membership of the forums shrank, I found that the help offered on the forum dwindled (in quality as well as quantity). I also found that the forum, as well as other sites like DeviantArt, didn't work well when posting longer works (even a short piece of prose on DeviantArt is rather unwieldy).

Another thing is that on sites which cover a variety of creative work, I found that writing is often pushed to the back, as visual or audio art is more "immediate" or "accessible". There are some sites dedicated solely to creative writing, but I feel that these don't encourage enough discussion of a piece, or don't allow you to go into a lot of depth easily. Comments are stuck at the end of a piece, meaning that if you want to comment on specific lines, you either have to start referring to "line 33" or whatever, or you have to copy and paste chunks of the text into your comment. Another annoyance is edits of work. If you read a piece and then the writer updates it, how are you to know what they've done? You could be stuck reading it all again, when all they've done is added a full-stop.

Other than trying to create a site which addresses these issues, I'm hoping to build a community that values openness and collaboration. I'll attempt to create the site using open source tools and technologies and I'll encourage users to give their ideas on how to improve/enhance it (and even to help with the programming, if they're so inclined). I'll also encourage users to release their work under Creative Commons licenses. This means that not only can they give each other advice, but they can also share ideas and maybe even things like characters and whole worlds!

Further down the line, I could turn this site into some sort of business. Initially starting off making money via things like advertising and subscriptions, but then moving onto independent publishing of works (or collections of works) from the site. Sort of like a book version of CDbaby. There's probably various other directions it could go that I haven't even thought of yet.

So, if you want a more in-depth look into what I'm doing and how things are progressing, click the link over on the right. I've just started posting my initial ideas/notes on what I plan on doing. After I've finished all that, I'll start posting some of the design mock-ups I've come up with. This should be good. Fingers crossed it all goes to plan.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 45: The Devil's Panties is a comic by Jennie Breeden about various odd things that happen in her life. The comic for the 31st March depicts her sister, Summer, stating that she's "got rocket ships on [her] undies", to which Jennie replies "I've got the Cheshire cat, see?". Jennie then proceeds to accidentally give herself a wedgie.

Edgar Allen's search history

2008-03-30T22:17:00.003Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 44: Early today, I found an image (linked as it's pretty long) on Fukung (a site where people post random funny images) featuring the keyword suggestions given when beginnings of questions are put into Google's experimental search (such as "is it easy to...", "why am I...", and "aren't you..."). When "why is..." is entered, it comes up with "why is a raven like a writing desk?" (as shown in the picture).

It's a different book, I swear...

2008-03-29T01:42:00.003Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 43: I've mentioned before about the "Fables" series by Bill Willingham. I mentioned how various Alice characters are featured in the books, but not Alice herself. I discovered today that this is because she is resident in The Golden Boughs Retirement Village. I found this in Jack of Fables #21, where Alice features prominently as the object of Wicked John's advances. (if she has appeared before in the series, I haven't noticed)

She'll be my final word

2008-03-23T18:52:00.002Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 42: Once again we have a reference coming from the world of goth/alternative/fetish photography. This time, the model Pyretta Blaze in a picture for Devil Doll Photography can be seen dressed as Alice, holding a knife to a white rabbit.

Où est ma chatte?

2008-03-22T21:12:00.005Z

I visited Tours, in France, last weekend in order to see my step-sister. While I was there, I picked up a French version of both Alice books, "Les Aventures d'Alice au pays des merveilles" and "Ce qu'Alice trouva de l'autre côté du miroir". While I don't speak French, I can read it somewhat and so I can at least examine certain aspects of the book.

Most interesting is looking at the language jokes/references in the book. In the original, there's a few French references, which sort of don't work in a French version. Like where she wonders if the mouse is French and speaks to him in French, so they have to note that what she says is in French in the original. Or the part where she addresses her foot and refers to it as masculine, because it's a masculine noun in French. A joke that's obliterated in French as the foot has to be masculine anyway... Then there's parts like the line "curiouser and curiouser" which have to have footnotes detailing the original line and noting that it's bad English.

These language differences are of course most prominent in the translation of Jabberwocky.

Il était grilheure ; les slictueux toves
Gyraient sur l'alloinde et vriblaient :
Tout flivoreux allaient les borogoves ;
Les verchons fourgus bourniflaient.

" Prends garde au Jabberwock, mon fils !
À sa gueule qui mord, à ses griffes qui happent !
Gare l'oiseau Jubjube, et laisse
En paix le frumieux Bandersnatch !

Le jeune homme, ayant pris sa vorpaline épée,
Cherchait longtemps l'ennemi manxiquais...
Puis, arrivé prés de l'Arbe Tépé,
Pour réfléchir un instant s'arrêtait.

Or, comme il ruminait de suffêches pensées,
Le Jabberwock, l'œil flamboyant,
Ruginiflant par le bois touffeté,
Arrivait en barigoulant !

Une, deux ! Une, deux ! D'outre en outre,
Le glave vorpalin virevolte, flac-vlan !
Il terrasse le monstre, et, brandissant sa tête,
Il s'en retourne galomphant.

" Tu as donc tué le Jabberwock !
Dans mes bras, mon fils rayonnois !
Ô jour frabieux ! Callouh ! Callock ! "
Le vieux glouffait de joie.

Il était grilheure ; les slictueux toves
Gyraient sur l'alloinde et vriblaient :
Tout flivoreux allaient les borogoves ;
Les verchons fourgus bourniflaient.

Compare this with the original and even without being able to speak French, you can notice certain things. How certain nouns like "toves" and "borogoves" have just been carried over. How some of the words seem to have just been made "more French" ("frabjous" becomes "frabieux", etc). How the second stanza doesn't rhyme, or how the sixth inserts a rhyme where there's none in the original ("Callay" becomes "Callock" for no apparent reason). Of course, anyone who does speak French is free to point out certain things I may have missed.

Another poem that suffers from being translated is the final poem in "...Looking-glass". The translation means it loses its original acrostic nature and so no longer spells out "Alice Pleasance Liddell". This is again noted in the back of the book.

There's other differences that have nothing to do with the translation. Such as how the list of pieces is omitted from the beginning of "...Looking-glass". Or how the illustrations of Alice passing through the mirror are on adjacent pages, rather than on either side of the same page (intended so that you have the effect of Alice actually going through the page).

Aren't languages fun?

The jaws that bite...

2008-03-13T21:14:00.003Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 41: On my way to the bus station this afternoon, I walked down Church Gate and happened to pass a takeaway named "Jabberwocky".

Exactly why it's called this is unknown to me. Also, I am unsure whether the little character to the left of the name is meant to be the Jabberwocky...

Tweedledum and dumber

2008-03-06T19:26:00.009Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 38: Walking past Dominoes on Tuesday, I noticed a Dinosaur chess set in the window. Then I noticed that the set opposite it was an Alice one!

Upstairs I found the rest of the set as well as a plain "black & white" (or red and white) version.

Notice that the label calls it an "Alice in Wonderland" set, but the box just refers to it as "The Alice Chess Set". This is probably as it incorporates characters from Through the Looking-Glass (Queen Alice, the white king, the white knight, Tweedledum and Tweedledee) and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (white rabbit and the mad hatter). The box also features queen Alice and the queen of hearts.

Interestingly, there's a full list of pieces for both sides at the beginning of Through the Looking-Glass, but this doesn't include Alice. Likely the decision was made to have the set feature more well-known characters, such as the ones used in the Disney version (though the white knight is anomalous to that idea).

While finding information on the set, I also discovered the rules to Alice chess.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 39: In the Simpons episode, "The secret war of Lisa Simpson", just after the kids enter the "museum of crime", Chief Wiggum warns them they are about to go "through the looking-glass".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 40: Once again, on the Art of Neighbours group on Facebook; this picture of Mickey and Ben was posted by Sion Pennant-Williams and Rosie Hedger referred to them as "tweedle dum and tweedle dee".

Love-Lies-Bleeding

2008-03-03T20:04:00.007Z

I tried a little experiment this weekend. I banned myself from MySpace and Facebook.

After deciding that I spend far too much time on the internet which ultimately results in very little, I thought I should maybe do something about it. I noted that my most visited sites are MySpace, Facebook and various forums. I chose only the first two as while I may visit forums often and much of my time there is spent on various trivial matters, I don't waste time there quite as much as I do on MySpace or Facebook. On a forum, if there's no topics or replies to read and none to be made, then there's really not much to do (unless you fancy reading member profiles or re-reading old topics). On Facebook, there's applications to play with, groups to read, friends to be harassed in various ways. The same goes for MySpace, along with random urges you can have, such as the ones to check out some band you've vaguely heard of, or to completely redesign your profile and update the information on it.

So, how did it go? I banned myself from when I went to bed on Friday night, till when I got up this morning. I managed to last both days without going anywhere near either site (I even refrained from posting the Alice sightings at the end of this blog as it would require going to MySpace). I did have urges to go to both sites. Sometimes just because it felt natural to click the links in my Firefox toolbar, sometimes because I felt the need to see what people are doing...

I think I would definitely say the experiment was a success. I got various pieces of work done (some recording, some C++ coding), I found other forms of entertainment (reading the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book, as well as re-reading the first), and I didn't lose any kind of social life (I still met friends at the pub on Saturday night as usual). When I returned, I found I hadn't missed much. I'd been tagged in a photo, someone wrote on my wall, I'd been invited to things I didn't care about, the usual...

It makes me wonder if we're losing things by being so connected these days. Whether things like connecting with old friends or hearing from someone special are having less impact and meaning because it all happens so often. Maybe we're losing the element of spontaneity that comes when you don't know exactly what's going on. No one gets a random call asking if they'd like to go out tonight, they just get an invite on Facebook. No one runs into a friend they haven't seen in years and suddenly discovers how much they've changed, as they've observed the gradual journey through someone's MySpace photos.

I remember reading somewhere a while ago (it could've been on Jess' blog) that, since the advent of mobile phones, people no longer just turn up somewhere and run into people or possibly meet new people. When I'm in Leicester, I usually only turn up somewhere when it's definite people I know will be there. I go to the pub twice a week because that's when the rock society meet. I go to a club when other people suggest it. When I'm in Bristol, it's the opposite. Most of my old Bristol friends have moved away or I don't know well any more (despite what might happen on Facebook). So, instead I go out on my own and run into people and make new friends. I enjoy myself on my own terms (though, of course, this isn't to say I don't enjoy myself when I'm out in Leicester).

I'm not trying to say that social networking is a bad thing. More that it's not everything. Also, it wastes a lot of my time. I should really make an effort to stop wasting so much time. He says while writing a blog about not a lot in particular...

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 36: The Firebrand (featuring fellow DMU MTI alumnus, Sarah Collins) song, "Arabian Nights", features the line "Alice in her Wonderland's got nothing on me".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 37: There are multiple references to the Alice books in the various League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books. Most noticeably on the cover of the first book, where Alice appears alongside Henry Jekyll's refelction of Edward Hyde in a mirror. Another appearance is in the second book, where "The New Traveller's Almanac" talks about a "Miss A.L." and various incidences (these alluding to the events of the Alice books), including her subsequent death due to the positions of all her organs being reversed.

Special mention to Jess Nevins for his annotations on the various LoEG books.

Let's find the perfect blend

2008-02-25T18:35:00.004Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 34: Alice Loft posted this picture in the Facebook group, "The Art of Neighbours" and Vanessa Parr described it as "Ringo in Wonderland"

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 35: In a performance at TED back in 2007, Jill Sobule and Julia Sweeney performed a song about "imperfect heroes" that mentioned Lewis Carroll and Alice.

Back off my shoe box

2008-02-16T17:11:00.003Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 33: I recently bought the first two volumes of "Fables" by Bill Willingham. There's multiple Alice references in both books, though Alice is conspicuously absent from the entire series. In vol. 1, "Legends in Exile", Snow White is carrying a sword, which she notes "is the vorpal blade of Jabberwocky fame. Kills in one cut, snicker-snack and all that? Does all the fighting for you?"

Then in vol 2, "Animal Farm", some of the residents of "The Farm" are shown to be the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit (not to be confused with Br'er rabbit, who is depicted as white and wearing a waistcoat, the actual White Rabbit is dressed in his herald's uniform), and various playing cards. Also, a quote from Wizard on the back of the book states that the book "Tosses traditional fairy tales down the rabbit hole."

I wonder how many Alices there are in the world...

2008-02-15T12:34:00.002Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 32: I just caught a banner advert for a book called "Alice in Genderland" by Dr. Richard Novic. It tells the story of Novic's life as "Alice". I'll let you make your own connections to parts of my earlier posts...

Howard Rheingold at TED

2008-02-14T15:27:00.000Z

Comics don't make you dumb

2008-02-14T01:06:00.008Z

Last night I attended a talk at Leicester central lending library by Bryan Talbot. I initially attended simply to have him sign my copy of Alice in Sunderland but it turned out to be a very interesting talk.

He talked about various things to do with being a writer and artist of numerous comics/graphic novels. Most interesting was his talk about the subliminal side of comic book artwork. He pointed out how a lot of various elements affect the way you read a comic without you realising it. Things such as how the pages are laid out (including things like panel grids, etc) and things like colour choice (even that of the background of a page). He also talked about his work on "The Tale of One Bad Rat" and how he tried to make it accessible to a non-comic reading audience. A lot of what he said got me thinking about my Digital cultures sessions and things such as signs and signifiers and "readerly" and "writerly" approaches to reading a work. If only we could've had a session where we discussed graphic novels!

Of course, I did get a chance to have him sign my copy of Alice in Sunderland and it's now part of my collection of signed graphic novels, which includes Alan Moore's V for Vendetta and Karl Kopinski and Gordon Rennie's first Kal Jerico collection.

Keeping with the comics theme, I thought I might mention Doktor Sleepless:

Doktor Sleepless is a new ongoing series by Warren Ellis. While this is of course something interesting in itself (especially as Warren has compared it to Transmetropolitan), what makes it especially interesting is that it also has its own wiki (along with certain other sites). This isn't just a place that summarises what happens in the comic, this is the entire virtual world of the comics. They affect each other and grow out of each other.

Being in the IOCT and being around people like Jess Laccetti, Sue Thomas and Chris Joseph, I hear a lot about Transliteracy but I don't often see it action. While I spend pretty much every day reading a wide variety of media, but I don't often find the chance to do that with one specific thing (such as a piece of writing or film). Even more interesting is that this is a step into mainstream media (while comics may be a niche genre and Avatar may be an independent publisher, I can still walk into town and pick up a copy of Doktor Sleepless quite easily). Also, this is maybe a form of media (that of the comic/graphic novel) that wouldn't usually be included in talks about transliteracy, despite the fact that it's transliterate in nature (the fact you have to read images as well as words).

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 29: In the game "Batman Begins" for the Xbox; during your training for the League of Shadows you have to ring a bell with a shuriken. You are asked for a passphrase that you took off a ninja as part of your training. The passphrase is "Looking Glass". (The writers of Batman are rather obsessed with Alice, as we've seen before)

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 30: Virgil Griffith has put together a list of "Books that make you dumb", which correlates set texts against SAT scores. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland equates to scores around 1100.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 31: Quote #182779 on bash.org features a trivia question regarding the "eat me" cakes in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I was lying in bed when I read this, so I had to get up and make a note of it. That's dedication for you!

I am unable to think of a pun...

2008-02-09T17:57:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 28: In a recent edition of Pulp Secret's "The Stack", they review Detective Comics #841, which features "The Wonderland gang". This seems to consist of the Mad Hatter, Alice, and some short, stocky, bald guy with a gun. If you watch the whole episode, you should also recognise the name of the forum member they mention...

Congratulations and calculations

2008-02-08T21:24:00.000Z

First things first, congratulations to Jess for getting her Doctorate this morning and becoming Dr. Laccetti! (as well as still being the most famous human Jess on Google)

I was looking yesterday at how many posts I'd put up here and how many Alice sightings I've made, so I did some calculating. As of yesterday's post:

25 posts with 26 Alice sightings over 93 days. Making 0.27 posts per day, 0.28 sightings per day, and 1.04 sightings per post.

Aren't statistics fun?

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 27: In Mr. Goh comic #140, Mr. Goh mixes up two parts of the Wonderland story. That of the Caterpillar (and his mushroom) and the "drink me" bottles.

Scenes from a mad hatter

2008-02-08T02:47:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 26: Right now, I'm watching an old episode of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" on Dave. In the game "Authors", Jim Sweeney chose Lewis Carroll. He began a story about Alice and alluded to the various drug-orientated interpretations of the Alice books.

My insights into daily life, let me show you them

2008-02-06T03:25:00.000Z

You should know about this place already, I post enough images from it. If you don't, I don't think we can be friends any more...

Blood, Bunny, Larkhall

2008-02-05T01:52:00.000Z

In an age of digital media, almost anything can be distributed freely an easily. Information is reduced to 1s and 0s and can be copied infinitely. So, as a musician, a writer, an artist, a creator, how does this affect me? There's huge discussions about music sharing across the internet and the moralities behind it and what should be done about it.

I like music. I listen to a lot of it and I own a lot of CDs. I like having CDs. I like having the cases and the booklets and the artwork and all that. I like the fact that I have a back-up of all the music I own. But, the amount of music I like is far larger than the amount I can afford. Hell, I think it's unlikely I'll ever own all the music I "want".

So, what do I do about all this music I can't own? I download it. I take an active role in "liking" this music. I can't afford to buy the music, but I do whatever I can to support it. Whether this is something simple like recommending it to someone else, or something that costs money like going to a gig. Without the freedom that downloading affords me, I wouldn't have discovered or considered many of the artists I now consider favourites.

So, as a consumer, I'm pro-downloading. But what about as a creator? Currently I don't play gigs, so the most common avenue for people to discover my music is closed to me. So I've turned to the internet. Initially I only allowed people to stream my music and maybe download a few tracks. I later thought about the way I listen to music. Rarely will I repeatedly stream music. It's hard for an artist to grow on you and find a place in your heart when you can only listen to them in a certain way or in a certain place (I have many albums on vinyl I haven't "got into" as it's easier to listen to music on my computer). So, I decided to make all my music freely downloadable.

People can listen to my music as much as they want without me making any money. How can this be a good thing? Well, they've heard it. Someone hearing my music and disliking it is better than someone never hearing it. People are far more willing to try something for free. So, I reach a larger audience because of this willingness.

Admittedly I pay nothing to record my music (except in time), so there's nothing I need to make back in selling it. But I'd still like people to buy it. So, how do I do that? Well, using the same idea as Radiohead did with "In Rainbows", I give them something better than the free version. If you buy music from me, you get a CD in a case, with art and everything and you get higher quality audio than you do if you download it. I'd love to offer more, but I can't easily produce something more.

This brings me to my dissatisfaction with optical media and the way it's produced and packaged. I don't buy mp3s because I don't feel they're worth paying for the same way a CD is. They're lower quality and I don't get things like cover art or a booklet or a back-up for if my hard drive fails. But then, I still don't like CDs. I don't like the plastic casing (if I can, I buy digipak format albums). I don't like the fact a tiny scratch can render a CD unplayable. Though I'm not some "audiophile" who wants everything on vinyl (though I do love to have things on vinyl, not least for the fact that the large covers are so much better). I like things to be digital. I like that I can easily transfer all my CDs to my computer and then take whatever music I want wherever I go.

What I want is somewhere between CDs and mp3s. Full quality audio on durable media that offers something more than just music. One thing I miss about using a personal CD player is that I used to be able to buy a CD from a shop and listen to it on the way home. This brings me to things like flash memory.

I borrowed a Nintendo DS this week for my Gaming Technologies module. The games and their packaging is a good example of what I'm thinking of here. Imagine a standard SD card holding the tracks in an uncompressed format, with all the information about the tracks, etc. on there as well. This would be packaged in a Digipak style case. Then you just need an SD slot in your mp3 player (which many already have) and you can listen on your way home.

This is just an idea right now. I don't know if it's feasible or anything. I doubt any major record company would be interested in it as the fact that you can easily copy the music to any device (a great feature in my eyes) is something they'd hate (unless they slapped DRM all over it). Though I'm sure they'd love the chance to tell people to buy all their music all over again in the new format...

For now, I'll just keep downloading mp3s and buying CDs and making my music.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 25: In episode 9 of series D of QI, Stephen Fry notes that Dodos were almost completely forgotten until they were mentioned in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. By that time, they were very much extinct.

Such dirty business...

2008-01-22T20:22:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 24: The Londonist's review of Rockabaret's Fairy Tale Ball features the line "Tinkerbell's wings were all in disarray, Alice in Wonderland was not pretty anymore and Captain Hook and Smee were looking very worse for wear."

That's what I'm Tolkien about!

2008-01-21T14:00:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 23: When attempting to update my album cover collection on AmaroK, one of the covers suggested for Pantera's "Power Metal" was the cover of a DVD from Blind Guardian, entitled "Imaginations Through The Looking Glass".

I'll be finding them in my shoes next...

2008-01-15T16:48:00.000Z

I seem to be becoming a bit of an "Alice magnet". In preparation for the essay I'm writing for my Digital Cultures module on anonymity and identity on the internet, I picked up a few books from the library. Some of them I picked up randomly by going to the section where another book I wanted was and then looking around to see what else grabbed my attention. I started reading one of those books today. I looked at the contents and flipped to a chapter that seemed relevant and got this from the second paragraph:

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 22: In chapter 7 of Technoromanticism by Richard Coyne; "Schizophrenia and Suspicion", the second paragraph contains this:

"The mirror provides a potent metaphor in the surrealist concept of the image, featuring prominently in the absurd (Alice Through The Looking Glass) and surrealist iconography [...] For IT commentators such as Chaplin, Alice's looking glass is a precursor to cyberspace in which the fundamental laws of physics, logic and language are inverted."

Note: I have previously not included any texts I have read for Digital Cultures in these sightings. This was because those texts were prescribed for me to read, whereas as this book was simply a random one I picked off the shelf because I liked the title.

Alice was a Bond girl

2008-01-14T07:11:00.000Z

"HUMANS ARE SO INTERESTING THAT THEY HAVE EVEN INVENTED DULLNESS. QUITE ASTONISHING."
-Death, from Hogfather

I started thinking the other day about how awesome things are (and I'm using the original definition of awesome here). About how awesome simple day-to-day things are that we take no notice of, because, if we did, we wouldn't be able to stop. We'd wake up each morning and we'd spend an hour unable to move while we come to terms with our very existence. Even longer if we'd been dreaming.

It's our humanity that takes us to the top of Everest and makes us stand there and go "You know, I could murder a sandwich..."

As technology advances, we're being exposed to more and more awesome things and we're ignoring them more and more. Right now, I'm talking to a friend in Australia. I actually talk to him more than some of my friends who live in the same city as me. Let alone those in the same country. I take no notice of this and I'm more concerned with how my left speaker cuts out when I knock it because there's a wire loose somewhere.

I think we should all take any chance we can get to inject some more awe back into our lives. And who knows what awesome things the future might bring?

"Think about it; the quicktank is given a job most of us would laugh out of town. Build a sophisticated camera capable of full 3-D input and peripheral pickup, using only water and jelly.

Build an eye."
-Spider Jerusalem, from Transmetropolitan

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 21: I stumbled across this website earlier, which makes fun of various ridiculous situations in old comics. It features two issues that have Alice references. The first in a small reference to a back-up story about "The Girl From The Looking Glass!". The second is a full comic about Alice, with the cover featuring a picture of her being spanked by a rag doll.

They're coming thick and fast now

2008-01-09T02:04:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 20: In Freaky Friday, Tess Coleman's book is called "Through The Looking Glass: Senescence In Retrograde".

Interestingly, putting "Tess Coleman" into Wikipedia gives you this episode of Private Practice as the third result.

I am the girl Anachronism

2008-01-07T08:35:00.000Z

Kate and Leopold was on television last night. I caught a bit of the beginning, but it wasn't the film that grabbed me. What grabbed me was the main Character: Leopold, Duke of Albany. Having just read Alice in Sunderland, I realised that this was the same Leopold who is rumoured to have once courted Alice Lidell and who one of her sons was named after.

The film isn't exactly very faithful to ridiculous things such as "facts" when it comes to the character of Leopold. Just looking at Wikipedia will tell you this. Interestingly enough, in checking all this out, I found a mistake in Alice in Sunderland. Bryan Talbot says Leopolod died at the age of 28, whereas he was actually 30. It's not even a case of bad wording or him mixing people up, as Alice was a year older than Leopold.

Reading Alice in Sunderland, you begin to realise how much things can be connected in such little ways. I keep listing instances where the Alice books are referenced in popular culture, but I could go crazy and connect everything in popular culture straight back to Alice. As Bryan says near the beginning of AiS: "Alice lives in our collective imagination." You don't wanna know how many connections I could make to that phrase. I'll pick the first one that pops into my head: Jenny Quantum, a member of The Authority. She's the spirit of the 21st century. From here I can go any number of places. To comics again with something I just read in issue 3 of Doktor Sleepless by Warren Ellis (original writer of The Authority) about how there hasn't yet been a big cultural movement in the 21st century. Or I could go to one of my old A-level German textbooks that was called "Zeitgeist" (literally "time spirit").

And suddenly we're in a Rhizome. Everything's branching off and ultimately going nowhere. And now I've gone from part of a film I saw last night, to my Digital Cultures lectures without even trying. I didn't even get here by going straight down the Alice route! I always try to riddle this blog with links. Follow them. Then follow the links those pages give you. Then again. Then realise you've been sat there for five hours reading about Belgian shoes. And now I've just connected us to an xkcd comic.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 19: A Suicide Girl named Quinne has done a photoshoot with herself dressed as Alice. Suddenly I'm wondering if this is high or low art? It's a pornstar (maybe, some people are iffy about the "porn" status of SG) dressed as a character from a piece of nonsense literature. And suddenly I'm thinking of how there's history here, with photos of Alice and of young girls and of the question of what is pornography?

I've got the full set if you want it, by the way...

3000 words or more

2008-01-05T17:09:00.000Z

Yesterday I bought Bryan Talbot's graphic novel, "Alice in Sunderland". I'm sure I'll have lots to talk about on here when I've read it.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 17: A while ago, my friend Becka got the Cheshire cat from American McGee's Alice tattooed on her left arm.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 18: I went to the Bierkeller last night and there was a girl there dressed as Alice. I think there was another girl dressed as the Queen of hearts, but I wasn't sure and I didn't get a picture of her.

What I did on my holidays

2008-01-03T18:14:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 15: In Tony Wilson's novelization of 24 Hour Party People, he references Alice in Wonderland twice. First on page 67: "Wilson perched, half-cross-legged, on a bar stool, holding court like the caterpillar on the mushroom", and then on page 78: "He just retreated till there was less even than the smile of a Lewis Carroll cat."

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 16: I've been reading through some of my old comics and found that District X number 12 (written by David Hine and Illustrated by Lan Medina) ends with an epilogue where Ismael Ortega finds Mikhail Smerdyakov reading Alice in Wonderland to his uncle Gregor who has now fully taken root in one of the tunnels underground. Mikhail notes "Uncle Gregor says the proper title is Alice's Adventures Underground." (The title of the original, much shorter, book Carroll wrote for Alice Liddell).

Serendipity

2007-12-12T03:30:00.000Z

"1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident
2. good fortune; luck: the serendipity of getting the first job she applied for."

"Receiving sexual gratification from having all orifices filled.
Jane is into serendipity."

This is something Erin McKean touched on. Serendipity is a wonderful thing. Things like StumbleUpon have not only relieved my boredom, but have helped me discover whole worlds of new ideas/experiences. I've used it before when deciding which beer to have in the pub (don't ask what they're like, just go for the one with the best label and see what you get) or for choosing a dish in a Chinese restaurant (names like "Singapore chow mein" or "Chicken in Peking sauce" don't tell you much about how they taste). In fact, this blog is largely powered by serendipity (all the Alice sightings are entirely serendipitous, anything I've been told to read that has included a reference has been excluded).

In the world of web 2.0, the serendipitous possibilities are growing exponentially. With things being tagged and shared all over the place, aimless wandering is becoming almost compulsory. Why not try it right now? Hit the "next blog" link up at the top and see what you find.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 14: I bought the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland on DVD yesterday and discovered a random saying I use every so often ("Button? Button? Who's got the button?") is taken from when Alice meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee (note that their names are actual words according to Firefox).

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 14 ½: So, this doesn't quite count as a sighting, more of a connection. I noticed today that the soles of Paul's shoes are covered in white rabbits:

Alice is Alice

2007-12-10T14:37:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 13: This image of Longcat features a playing card painting roses on part of Longcat's body towards the end as Alice watches. They are modeled on the Disney version.

A quickie

2007-12-08T19:02:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 12: In issue 3 of Omega: The unknown by Jonathan Lethem, Alex is given the nickname "Alex in Wonderland" by some of the other students.

It was an accident, I swear...

2007-12-03T21:18:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 11: The new Spice Girls single, Headlines (Friendship Never Ends) Opens with this verse:

"The time is now or never, to fit the missing piece
To take this on together, you make me feel complete
We fall into the future, and through the looking glass
The light shines over our heads, and so it comes to pass"

A contradiction in terms

2007-12-03T10:42:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 10: Interesting Times, the 17th Discworld novel, by Terry Pratchett, features this passage on page 36:

'Curiouser and curiouser', said the Senior Wrangler. [...] 'You must mean "curious and more curious", surely? And even then it doesn't make much sense-'

This is especially interesting as Pratchett has openly expressed his hatred of the Alice books...

Also interesting is the fact that "curiouser" is accepted by the Firefox dictionary. As are "wonderland", "chortle", "galumph" and "burble"...

Grammar, spelling and proof-reading.

2007-12-01T03:26:00.000Z

"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).

-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

So, I've been called a "Grammar Nazi" in the past, and all kinds of variations on that tired old theme. I like people to be readable. I have no qualms about people writing in different idioms and using contracted and evolved words (I regularly use words like "wanna" and "kinda" and "mo"). I positively encourage people to use "made-up" words (I love the Urban Dictionary). What I do not like is bad practice that confuses meaning and confounds expression. "ur" is not an evolution of language. "i" is very much bad practice.

The beauty of language is that you can use it to mean exactly what you want and that said meaning can be multiple. The decoding of language should not be focused on what you are saying, but on what you mean.

The internet is (mostly) a text-based medium and so you would think that people would take care to make sure it is known exactly what they are saying and what they might mean. Unfortunately, this is most often not the case. I will often chastise people about errors and encourage them to proof-read their work. I do this, not only because it encourages good practice, but because the way you write online sets the tone of how people will perceive what you are saying. In the same way that I am writing this in a somewhat formal style (without words like "gonna"), CAPITALS OVERTLY EMPHASISE THINGS, and things like (possibly intentional) spelling or punctuation errors result in the intelligence level you present dropping.

My problem is not that people aren't speaking correct English, it's that they aren't making clear what they are saying.

One thing that majorly gets to me is a lack of proof-reading. One or two errors in a piece of writing is understandable, but constant errors suggest you haven't read through what you've written. If you don't care enough to read what you've said, why should I care about what you have to say? Also, proof-reading is not only for catching mistakes. It should be used to work on how well you convey your meaning. If you don't proof-read, how do you know how your writing works as a whole? A piece of writing relies on the interpretation of the reader. If you're not a reader yourself, how can you know what that interpretation could be?

To finish this off, I'll leave you with a talk by Erin McKean. If you've read Ubuntu Music, then you should know of TED Talks. This talk is most definitely my favourite talk they have on offer. Not just because it's fun and entertaining, but because Erin has some brilliant views on the evolution and use of words.

Think of words as children. Allow them to grow and evolve and do exciting and interesting things with them. But, please, for the love of God, don't abuse them.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 8: On tonight's "Friday night with Jonathon Ross", Noel Fielding (of The Mighty Boosh) talked about Bruce Forsyth and mentioned that "Play Your Cards Right" had big playing cards "like Alice in Wonderland".

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 9: On Channel 5 tonight, a show called "Valley of the Sex Dolls" featured someone (I didn't catch her name) from S.I.R. Video Productions who had a tattoo of the Cheshire Cat (the Disney version) on her upper right arm.

-Alice

Alice is Quite Interesting

2007-11-27T19:21:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 7: Episode 11 of QI ("Endings", shown on BBC4 on Friday, to be repeated on BBC2 this coming Friday), finishes with a quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The King of Hearts to the White Rabbit: "Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

I'm Batman

2007-11-24T15:33:00.000Z

From Slashdot:

"Online Nicknames Google better than Real?"

I know mine certainly do. Well, obviously other than Alice, as that's rather common. It definitely doesn't help that there's a footballer with my name, as well as a character from family affairs. Hell, there's at least two people with the same name as me in Leicester, alone, according to Facebook...

I'm definitely nowhere near as high as Jess.

Another one...

2007-11-23T15:51:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 6: From a Zendweller post on the Tabcrawler forums, talking about Tom Petty (and The Heartbreakers): "I recall a kind of freaky alice in wonderland theme to "Dont come around here no more" when I was little."

Rule 15

2007-11-19T22:29:00.000Z

"There are NO girls on the internet"

This is rule 15 (though this may change, it was rule 16 last time I checked). A simple statement intended to express the (seemingly) male-dominated nature of the internet. However, the internet is not "male-dominated", not in the slightest. While the majority of internet users may be male (I apologise for the lack of statistics to back this up), female users, being (or at least considered) a rarity, will often be put upon some sort of pedestal (refer to my first link for examples).

Of course, this is most often seen in places that make up a sort of "low" internet. Communities where things like codes of conduct are irrelevant (at its most extreme, somewhere like /b/).

On the internet, everyone is reduced to text. The ultimate in a death of context. While certain signifiers will be available (avatars, signatures, personal profiles, etc), these are subject to the whims of the user and can be manipulated and mis-represented. Also, how you appear on the internet, is largely reliant on how a reader interprets these signifiers. Ergo, your identity on the internet is very different from your "real life" identity (it is also very definitely multiple). This relates back to my look into the different names I use.

This then brings up the question of gender. Of course, gender and sex are different. Sex is binary and a "real life" constraint, while gender can be seen as a nuanced spectrum relating to various things and that can be viewed very differently with regards to context, etc. For an example, take a look at The Gender Genie, which attempts to "guess" the gender of the writer of a certain piece of text. Most of my writing comes out as female.

This means that gender becomes an individual trait on the internet. Something dependent on both writer and reader. It depends on the writer's manipulation of the signifiers they use and the reader's interpretation of the signifiers they encounter. A "male" writer could be interpreted as "female" and vice versa. Writing without signifiers becomes androgynous. If all writing is androgynous and all users are reduced to text, then all users are androgynous. With a lack of signifiers, things other than gender can also be disregarded (age, race, etc).

When there are signifiers, what they are is unimportant. Whether they relate to the sex of the writer or the "culture" of where their writing is encountered (compare /b/ to Harmony Central), it still comes down to the writer and the reader. This is a culture of two. A discourse between individuals and should be treated as such. This creates a culture of individuals, judged on individual attributes.

These individuals can of course be multiple individuals on the internet, while being singular in "real life" (referring once again to "Who am I?"). This multiplicity obviously becomes more complicated when you bring in the different interpretations of readers. The internet is a meritocracy populated with anonymous and androgynous individuals, defined by signifiers as understood by other individuals. How do you be a feminist without females?

Upon reading Luce Irigaray and Rosi Braidotti, the theme that struck me was not the empowerment of women or the de-powering of men, but the definition of identity and the individual. I decided to take these ideas and apply my own experiences with regards to interaction as part of a digital or "cyber" culture. With the internet, we have the opportunity to be whoever we wish to be, male, female, androgyne, or otherwise. This opportunity gives us the ability to really be individuals and to create our own (new) cultures (more on that at a later date). This also gives the chance for equality. Not "true" equality, as individuals are different, but a sort of "pure" equality.

"I'm sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh, she knows such a very little! Besides, she's she, and I'm I"

-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 5: There is one hiding right here in the Blogger software! If you click the little "help" icon next to where you turn comment moderation on or off, one of the example pictures is this:

-Alice

Penguin-wrapper philosophy

2007-11-17T02:45:00.000Z

4 years ago, while commenting on The Matrix: Reloaded, I made this comment: "Random Bible references and penguin-wrapper philosophy do not a good movie make". I then proceeded to define it on Urban Dictionary as "Philosophical phrases that everyone knows and groans whenever they hear it. Much like the jokes on penguin wrappers".

I was reminded of this phrase earlier when I read a piece called "The Paradox Of Our Time". It was credited to George Carlin. Leaving aside the mis-credit, I want to look at what it says.

"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints."

These are not paradoxes. Having tall buildings does not contradict people having short tempers and the same goes for wide freeways and narrow minds. Also these are not facts. These are generalisations without frames of reference. I know of many short buildings and patient people and the same goes for narrow roads and open-minds.

Of course, this is all intended as artistic license and metaphor for saying that while we have made progress in things like science, we haven't made progress in being good people. Bullshit. You're trying to say that the foundation of charitable organisations isn't progress? The demolition of the Berlin wall wasn't progress? But then, whether I agree with these statements and generalisations is not the point.

This is what people do. They write some puns and hang them on the frame of their own moral agenda. They send it out in an e-mail and people read it and think for a second and maybe feel bad about themselves enough that they actually do something (though actually most will probably decide they've already "done something", they're a "good person"). This is a manifesto in an "Ironic" style.

This is penguin-wrapper philosophy and I'm aware that calling it such is itself a penguin-wrapper statement.

-Alice

A quick note

2007-11-16T22:49:00.000Z

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 4: I'm watching the "50 greatest comedy sketches" on channel 4. David Walliams just compared Vic and Bob's MasterChef sketch to Alice in Wonderland. He was probably talking about the Disney version as he mentioned it being disturbing and "all going wrong in the end", which doesn't quite happen in the original novel.

Who am I?

2007-11-16T19:57:00.000Z

So either I don't have any "self," or else I have a multitude of "selves" appropriated by them, for them, according to their needs or desires.

- Luce Irigaray, "The Looking Glass, from the Other Side"

I use a lot of different names on the internet. I expect most people do. I wonder if they all mean something? Or if any lack of meaning they all have may have some (meta-)meaning to it. Looking at my own names, I know the stories behind them and what I use them for and discern the individual personality traits of the members of this family of names that make-up my internet existence.

Let's begin with what could be considered the head of the family. The name that I use as often as possible and is the oldest that is of any significance. Shen-an-doah. Taken from a Pitchshifter song (the only variation with hyphens), it apparently has several different meanings. Often shortened to "Shen". This is the name that can be added to all the others, my "family" name (literally in some cases, such as Shen Fayray or Shen Alice (Shen is a Chinese name, so it goes first)).

Then came Doll. Originally a character created out of whimsy and a desire to "fuck with people" and see their reactions. An eternally 16 year-old girl, unsure of her sexuality. The reveal spawned Susan Dalle, who has a more concrete existence. Doll is no longer a name for me, but is used to describe an unnamed object of my affection.

Bruitist is an anomaly. Taken from a Refused song, it's a back-up name. Disconnected and without any real usage or derivatives like the others. I'm still the top result on Google though.

Finally, there's Alice. The latest and my current favourite. Given to me by my friend Kienan as "It's a female name that happens to fit you, I'm not really sure why. It's better than Susan, I know that." As with all names, it is subject to changes and derivatives such as Allison or Shen Alice/Shenalice. It has currently taken over from Shen, which may change or it may not...

That's it for now. Maybe I'll make a proper family tree one day and include all the names that have fallen by the wayside (Jerusalem, Clockwork man, and many more than have been transient and possibly forgotten) and all the derivatives of my common names. I could even include non-internet names, as some of these have crossed over and been used in place of my given name in certain situations.

The implied and the actual gender of these names is a subject for a later date.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 2: In this month's issue of "Marvel comics presents", the story about Hellcat ("The Girl Who Could Be You") features Patsy Walker referring to one of the personalities that has split from her as "Alice in Wonderland". Presumably referring to the fact that she is wearing a blue dress and hairband similar in style to Alice's. Also possibly due to this being the polite and "proper" side of Patsy.

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 3: Today's Diesel Sweeties strip has Indie Rock Pete mentioning "Alice's looking glass" as an example of a strange alternate reality.

-Alice

First post!

2007-11-15T16:19:00.000Z

I had a dream last night. I won't go into the specifics of the dream as that's for somewhere that isn't here. The important part is that I woke up while my brain was in mid-tirade about bits in bread. You know the stuff I'm talking about, like Mighty White (which, according to Yahoo answers, does still exist). It was a tirade on how it's an affront to all the effort that has been put into the development of the milling process that produces fine flour without leftover husks and other assorted bits of crap that would otherwise make the bread unpalatable. Who the hell was having a slice of bread and thought to themselves "This would be so much better if it was full of hamster food that could get stuck in my teeth"?

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 1: In the episode of the Simpsons that was aired on Channel 4 last night (A hunka hunka Burns in love), Mr Burns uses words from the poem "Jabberwocky" twice. Check the Wikipedia link for more details.

-Alice