I am unable to think of a pun...

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

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

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

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

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...

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!

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...

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

"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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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...

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

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.

"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

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."