Before I do, I should mention that the LiveJournal Officialgaiman feed seems to be taking longer and longer to check its feeds, which means that probably when it does start working again I'll get all manner of grumbles from people that I'm spamming their friends list once more. Consider this an early apology.
Hi Neil,I was on Amazon about to buy the 'The Neil Gaiman Audio Collection' when I read a review from a customer. This was what it said..."Though the content of this CD is great, beware if you plan to listen to it on your computer or your IPOD. This disk contains one of the "copy protection" kludges that have become popular, and cannot be played on many computer CD drives. There are ways around it, but it's a royal pain not to be able just to use the CD."Is this true? I was planning to buy it so I could listen to it on my iPod. But if it can't be downloaded, then it pretty much defeats the purpose of the purchase.Thanks,Chan
No, it's nonsense. I'd assume that he just got a defective CD. Mine ripped just fine, anyway, and as far as I can tell, there aren't any copy protection things on it, or any evil little backdoorware programs either. Just me reading children's stories and a poem and, at the end, Maddy interviewing me. (The list is up at http://www.neilgaiman.com/books/audio_collection.asp).
(Which reminds me -- we meant to put the whole of the Maddy interview up here at some point. Maybe that could be the first podcast...?)
Hi, Neil. Longtime obsessive craven fan, first time writing. Obligatory worship bit: I just read the whole Sandman series end to end for the first time (finally obtained the last books) and you're even more of a genius than first appeared. Anyway, enough sucking up and on with the content...
Just a quick response to your mention of the Auckland Santas - unfortunately the story you linked (the CNN one) was a major example of misreporting. The New Zealand Santacon was largely peaceful with a couple of bad apples making trouble, but the damage done was reported way out of proportion. I'm a participant in the London arm of Santacon, and I'd love for you to see the good time we all have (it's happening all over the world, baby!) getting extremely drunk in santa suits. My photos of this years London event (about 400 santas present) are up at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44851550@N00/sets/1606862/
(thought you might also be amused that I went as Cthulhu Claus),
and other peoples photos are up at:
http://www.santacon.co.uk/
Headquarters of Santacon worldwide are at
http://www.santarchy.com
where you can also get the full story on the New Zealand incident...
Merry Christmas!
No! Don't tell me that the news media isn't perfectly and indefatigably honest about all things. Next you'll tell me that twelve year olds aren't really successfully printing and passing their own money (http://www.wftv.com/irresistible/5575631/detail.html), or that the General Public is not, to a man, woman and child, utterly disgusted and up in arms with the slaughtered red-nosed-reindeer done in lights hanging from a tree in Orlando (http://www.wftv.com/news/5540774/detail.html) (watch the little video clip for a desperate attempt to make a news story out of nothing much).
I should have realised that this was Santacon -- which I first learned about, as I learn so much, from Making Light -- http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005916.html ...
Hi Neil, Just ran across this and thought you might want to give it a plug...
"From the darkest depths of the cartoon vaults comes the Cartoon Art Museum's (http://www.cartoonart.org/)latest exhibition, Gross, Gruesome and Gothic. This horrifying display features over 50 original cartoons from a wide array of artists and comics, from spine-tinglers to rib-ticklers and everything in between.
Exhibition highlights include:
The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: Neil Gaiman's Sandman One of the most popular and acclaimed comic book series of the past 20 years, Neil Gaiman's Sandman tales from DC Comics set new standards in excellence for fantasy and horror. Featured artists include Chris Bachalo, Duncan Eagleson, Marc Hempel, Kent Williams and series cover artist Dave McKean."
The perfect family holiday outing...
~ Sarah
Consider it plugged.
And Holly gets back from Italy today, which means that, for the first time in many months, I'll have a complete set of offspring here.