So finely surpassed

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".

Tweedledum and dumber

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

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

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.

I'm Batman

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.