This made me smile. Lots.

Long time no show.

Apart from getting ready to leave Cambridge and become a hobo, I seem to have spent a lot of the past few days squeeing over steampunk. There’s Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age on the one hand, and Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky on the other.

I adore the almost Heath Robinson aesthetic of massive machines patched together from scraps of metal. It makes everything seem functional, compared to the gleaming, polished steel of most futurism.

The thing that bugs me is: where on earth does the ‘punk’ come in. Cyberpunk as a genre stripped out all of the politics and most of the rebellion, but there was at least a glimmer of connection between the cyber and the punk. But what politics there is in steampunk is a hearkening-back to empire, occasionally scattered with a bit of affection for the people being destroyed by it. Steampunk made with real punk: there’s something I’d enjoy reading.

This is one of the best justifications I’ve seen for naming a blog. I love posts like this, picking apart the history of a phrase you’d otherwise barely notice – from rap back to the Black Panthers and then to black activist Marcus Garvey

I had been planning to spend this weekend at the Climate Camp in the hope that through surrounding myself with idealistic political hippie types, at least a bit of it would rub off on me. elise, feanelwa, rachelfmb, innocent_irony: this is the thing Josh has spent most of the past year planning for, and part of the attraction was seeing him in his element, surrounded by the Real Friends he’s been spending all his time with.

Dan finally realises that Tantric cults were Kashmiri Freemasons

Right. My last day at Jagex will be a week on Friday, and after that I’ll be clearing off…somewhere. I think I’ll be spending at least a couple of weeks travelling, because in the past 2 years I’ve not left England, and now for a brief moment I can move about without worrying about rent and days off work.