| Thursday, January 31, 2002 |
 | Well, what did you expect? Wil Wheaton (whose weblog I refuse to read for any reason other than the investigative until he learns to spell Will) is the closest thing weblogging has to a celebrity. By which I mean he's the only person with any public profile whatsoever outside perhaps the least useful application to hit the Internet yet. Wil Wheaton might just about be able to leverage the last dying embers of his quasi-celebrity into getting a table near the kitchen at a not-very-hot hot restaurant. The other heroes of weblogging wouldn't get past the front door. Of their own homes. Because they had a new webcam and wanted to wire it up to deliver the greatest possible value to their audience.
And, however strange it may be, people in their own flipper-clapping special way do care about the Wheatster. A cursory examination reveals that his comments pages rapidly ascend into triple figures, which is in the way of things pretty good going as far as I can tell. And a good few of those don't follow the "Dude! I eat bread too! Crazy!" paradigm. Well, some of them.
Just live with the defeat, kittens. As webloggers, our natural constituency is bored technogeeks. Wheaton can appeal to bored geeks of every flavour.
Meanwhile, I've been put forward as a nominee for "Most Bitchy" at the low-fi GBloggies. If I win I will use my award to help children in need and advance peaceful solutions in the Middle East.
I've wanted to be Miss World ever since I was molested.
(0) comments
| |
| Wednesday, January 30, 2002 |
| Right. Apparently Enron would be due a tax rebate of $254 million, despite having dodged four of the last five years of corporate tax, according to W.'s proposed tax plans.
Still, got to do it. What with that famous "evil axis" of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. For cruntly fuck's sake...
(0) comments
| |
|
| Corps blimey. W. wants to set up a "Freedom Corps", to do the work of the Peace Corps, but in America. Thus, where the Peace Corps brings the peace, the Freedom Corps takes the peace. To America. Obviously. What did you think I meant?
Not sure what sets my teeth on edge slightly about this; possibly that the name suggests that it should be led by Nick Fury, Agent of Shield. Possibly because I can't shake the feeling that W. really wants everyone to volunteer not to mention Enron right now, and is looking for anything from a volunteer corps to an act of war against Iraq as a distraction tactic. Possibly it's just that everything the First Special Boy says worries me, either because it has an ulterior motive or, often worse yet, it doesn't.
Bush 43 has a terrific speechwriter in Mike Gerson, who has been able to infuse his boss's lack of pretense with a sense of grace and decency. But I've been disappointed by the president's reluctance to ask anything of us beyond the clarion call to go shopping.
Be careful what you wish for...
(0) comments
| |
|
| Evolution, as Mr Darwin almost said, makes gods of us all. We hold the best hand of cards in the genetic game of poker; we are adapted for everything. We are elevated into positions of mental and physical glorious superiority that raise us high, high above our knuckle-dragging brick-browed ancestors. Anything that they did, we can do better. Imagine prehistoric apes trying to bake a cake, or a young caveman putting up a flat-packed bookcase. They couldn't do it, could they? But you can. Even your gran can't remember all the names of the former members of Take That. But you can, and that makes you special.
Every time George feels wonderful, I feel bad. Possibly because I'm not covered in spunk gunk, on the UpsideClown.
(0) comments
| |
| Tuesday, January 29, 2002 |
| After a week, the stuff on my fingers where my skin used to be is looking pretty much like skin, which I figure is a positive sign. Chitinous red skin, which cracks when I make a fist, but the blood that trickles out is healthy and red, not the nasty whitish serum of previous days. In general, I'm feeling in pretty good shape. Sort of wish it would stop hurting, but no system of living is entirely without fault, eh. nihil ab omne parte beatum est, or words to that effect.
On reflection, it might have been wise to have had it looked at before now, but there hardly seems to be much point at this stage. Besides, they're pretty small as burns go. Just annoying.
And if I hadn't done it I would never have learned a) that Acriflex, the soothing cream for burns that looks, smells and feels unusually like Narwhal jism, shares a name with a DIY sealant - with hilarious consequences.
(0) comments
| |
|
| On the other hand, checking your referrer log can also be a very bad idea, as it will cost you your faith in humanity.
"Bony schoolgirls anal".
Niiiiice.
(0) comments
| |
|
| Sometimes it's good to check your referrer log. First up, you find out who has very kindly linked to you, and get to cultivate them, exploit their weaknesses and ultimately drive them, naked and screaming out of contention for the Bloggies.
Second up, in amongst "footballers with their cocks out", "dwarf porn" and, perhaps most terrifying of all, "Sexy Janet Ellis", you occasionally find a gem. Like this list of Colourbox samples.
Oh, makes me want to slam "Just give 'em Whisky" into the hi-fi right now and go insane. Niiiice.
(0) comments
| |
|
| Speaking of human cocks, and thus the cockery that makes up human existence, I have just finally succumbed and checked out the Bloggies.
Possibly the most tedious forty-five seconds of my life. Terrible design. Row upon row of pictures of Wil Wheaton. Much as I love the boy, there's only so much of his engagingly look-I'm-not-spamhead-Crusher-anymore tufty tufty hair that a man can take at a single sitting. And all these tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little lives laid out for speculation. Is there anything quite like seeing another taking weblogging seriously to fill ones soul with lead shot?
Still, best of British to all my friends up for nomination.
(0) comments
| |
|
| Speaking of Paul...he discovered the Human Clock. So who's gonna take it to the next level? Who will be....the Human Cock?
Anyone?
Beuller?
(0) comments
| |
|
| No fucking way am I taking the rap for this one.
I admit that once -once - I happened to comment on the irony of dear Digitaltrickery bemoaning the tyranny of the Plebeian mass while miscuing "Plebeian". Because it was funny. But I object to being painted as some kind of dry-mouthed grammatistos.
Besides, they are not "aberrations". A miswriting style can be as distinctive as a writing style. In the post the comment above refers to, for example, a nitpicker might identify a handful of "errors". But these "errors" give us a portrait of the artist. Didge is a go-getter. He posts hard and fast, and doesn't re-edit. Once it's on the page, that's it. He has faith in his abilities. Maybe, as a result of this, sentences occasionally miss main verbs or particles get mislaid, but blogging is Hell, soldier. And if you can't work it out for yourself, you have no place in this man's army.
Compare and contrast dear old er33t, who here delivers a slew of typos and grammatical errors, yet inexplicably gets "paedophile" dead on first time. Most peculiar. But again, highly distinctive. Style is as distinctive as a fingerprint, or more precisely a game of Guess Who.
Does he fail to put the "h" into "whet your appetite"?
Yes
Click. Click. Click.
You've spunked my battleship.
(0) comments
| |
|
| Luke tips me off that these people believe themselves to be the 801 as well. It goes without saying that they aren't; they're just a bunch of pointy heads.
So how can we decide who the real 801 is?
By wrestling. Like men.
Natch.
(0) comments
| |
| Monday, January 28, 2002 |
| Oh dear. Two posts about TV in a row. This is not good.
Must.....reassert....intellectual...credentials.
And what better way to do it than with the aid of autopomo?
(0) comments
| |
|
| The scary thing about Lego, except for the fact that Lego heads have vertical symmetry, which is just *not supposed to happen*, is those decerebrated smiles. Put your lego men in whatever situations, be they painful, sexually degrading or just plain wrong, and they smile through it all like a jaundiced special boy.
I think that's what makes Lego Death extra wrong.
(0) comments
| |
| Friday, January 25, 2002 |
| So, farewell, Daria Morgendorfer. We hardly knew you. Actually, we did hardly know you, since Channel 5 bought one season and played it again and again and again, which tended to make you doubt a) your sanity and b) whether you had in fact dreamed the last two months.
(0) comments
| |
|
| No, he does. He's just shy.
Or possibly.....shycotic.
(0) comments
| |
|
| The American Taliban thing I find a little weird. As in, we are of course all familiar with the concept "America - Love it or Leave It". Well, he did. And now America seems to be utterly bewildered as to whether he should be considered worse than all the other Taliban (because treacherous) or better (because, well, American, wealthy and white). Certainly he seems to have avoided those secret military tribunals with no witnesses and the power of life and death that Mr. Ashcroft seems so keen on.
But yes. Very odd. Odd that this is a war, as we know, for freedom, and yet every so often there are flashes of pure Tailgunner Joe - so called presumably due to his love of anal sex rather than his distinguished military service.
Also very odd that "American Taliban" always reminds me of the shit straight-to-video schlockfest "American Ninja" - which scores extra points for having an accredited cast member described as "Head Hijacker". Which is always likely to cause confusion, especially given the surprising ease with which he was apprehended.
Also also very odd that he is not being referred to as the American Talib. Are there several of him? Enquiring minds want to know. Is he in fact the Hanafi Multiple Man? 'Cause, you know, I could understand the threat he posed in those circumstances. Definitely.
(0) comments
| |
|
| You can't tell me David Nasaw didn't choke on a few throbbing Johnsons to win the prize for his Hearst biography. I mean, how else could such sloppy, uninspired prose on such a painfully obvious subject win? Please. And Philip D. Morgan? There's no question in my mind that he boarded the dick-smoking train to Bancroft Prizeville, a ticket he paid for with gallons of Tijuana toothpaste.
It's not like I didn't try to play the game a little bit. I sent out holiday cards to every member of the committee along with a complimentary copy of Taft. Maybe if I'd also attached a note reading "Good for one free blow job," I'd have gotten somewhere.
Will somebody please explain to me why I even bothered putting 84 months into this book when instead I could have scrawled "Taft was awesome" on a scrap of paper and then spent a few hours deep-throating the committee chair?
Just who do I have to blow to win the Bancroft Prize in American History?
(0) comments
| |
|
| Ah, yes. The excuse. The excuse was that a) I was knackered, b) I was meant to be entertaining (well, I'm always meant to be entertaining, but that's not quite the point) and I had to meet some people for a drink. Well, I didn't have to, but it seemed quite a useful and interesting thing to do. Especially as also present was somebody I had not seen for some years, having parted on not exactly the best of terms.
And it was...all right. Really very pleasant, in fact. In many ways not at all just like old times, which I think is for the best. Since that may well have made me hit a cat. With a baseball bat. I play primarily to lose.
On a tangent, what do you have planned for Valentine's. I am still quietly giggling over the weblogger who proposed a blogmeet on February the 14th, in true "Holy shit, guys! We just played Dungeons and Dragons throughout our entire High School Prom!" style. Bless.
I was pondering investing in some "Bittersweets", but their curious similarity to a sweet first mooted on BreakupGirl.com (life sucks when Oprah Winfrey has eaten your soul) just makes me think of decay.
And, since a boiling water/human flesh buddy-movie moment has left me in no mood to raise my body temperature yet further, it's time to get all Bosola on this, the most discriminatory of Saint's Days.
(0) comments
| |
| Monday, January 21, 2002 |
| They Fight Crime. Which coincidentally was the title of the short film I failed utterly to help Ben and co. make over the weekend, for the 23:59 competition. I'll let thems as was there fill you in on the whole gory story.
Besides, I had an excuse, of which more later.
Meanwhile, blogdom has yet to grasp the idea that believing oneself to be oppressed by armies of idiots does not in fact preclude one from being among their number. You know, like Zee in Antz except without the spark of self-awareness. He may not like being an ant, but at the end of the day he has six legs and a segmented thorax. Go figure.
Not so dear justaddbrains, still sticky with amnion, whose mission it is to offer up examples of idiocy that could have been avoided if only people were clever like what he is. Seeing a pattern here?
But this is grandeur of a separate stamp. Aristotle and later Uncle Friedrich identified the great-souled man as one who manages to get through two whole posts before expressing the combination of surprise and perplexity occasioned by interacting with the stooopid by the conjunction of question mark and exclamation point. And he who holds off for another post before succumbing to the triple exclamation mark as expression of undue surprise at the stupid, stupid masses? A rope between man and superman.
I am so glad weblogging exists, Otherwise I would never have these oh-so-populous windows into the lonely lives of the intellectual elite to peer through and model myself upon.
(0) comments
| |
| Friday, January 18, 2002 |
| Pondering a legal question at present - perhaps more later.
(0) comments
| |
|
| My father, who before his untimely death was one of the greatest creators of institutional architecture these isles have ever been blessed with, sadly did not have many opportunities to pass on his wisdom, or at least not to me. In what I wish I had known were his final years, I was occupied with a fairly heroic cocaine habit that left me personally bankrupt and with a Kirlian aura as tiny and black as a charred rat's cock.
I've been remiss about Upsideclown of late. Sorry. Read them all. They are good. And read Upsideclone as well. But like me better.
(0) comments
| |
| Thursday, January 10, 2002 |
| MInd you, they have clearly been hitting the effluvium of Christ a bit hard over at Capalert - and yes, I know that taking the piss out of Capalert is like kicking a sloth, but it has to be done sometimes. Apparently, there is no homosexuality in the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.
What? I mean, what? So Frodo and Sam are "just good friends", eh? And tell me that Legolas and Aragorn haven't been at it like knives while Boromir looks on in envy and Gimli prepares a takeover bid. Go on. I dare you.
(0) comments
| |
|
| So, Neo is Christ. Morpheus is God the father, Trinity is the Holy Spirit and referent of the triune nature of God, and the Matrix is the technological society from which mankind must be delivered. This much is clear, or clear-ish. Except to those hard-working boys at Capalert. They would prefer to concentrate on the "coaching to avoid fair authority" (what? Coaching in how to avoid fair authority, or the use of coaching in order to avoid fair authority? Mother?) and "calling real that which is bizarre" (Keanu Reeve's career as an actor, presumably).
(0) comments
| |
|
| An unscheduled weekend break from blogging was called for basically because I had nothing interesting to write about.
Fuck me. Self-awareness hits er33t. But not for long.
(0) comments
| |
| Monday, January 07, 2002 |
| We live in a world of cruelty and horror. For proof beyond refutation of this, one has only to imagine how many duvet covers displaying the likeness of Luke Chadwick get sold. His poor mother must be crying her eyes out.
Speaking of offence, who has upset Meg this time? Come on, own up. It's not big, it's not clever, and it's damn hard to keep track of.
(0) comments
| |
|
| Bad news for the editor of the Portadown News. Although crude and tasteless, the News can be very funny and keenly aware of the desperation it is mocking. It deserves better than acts o' hounding. But then maybe I would say that.
(0) comments
| |
| Sunday, January 06, 2002 |
| Somebody out there makes a living like this.
(0) comments
| |
| Wednesday, January 02, 2002 |
| Happy New Year. Although you should probably have realised by now that it won't be.
Last night was damn salubrious - a quiet drinks thing at Ben and Anna's. Which also gave me the opportunity - for Ben is a god among men, and more importantly a god among men with a high-speed connection, to see the Buffy musical episode - "Once More with Feeling", title fans. There's a spoiler-ridden synopsis here.
And it's just heartbreaking, as only the greatest pop culture can be. Everybody is so lovely, and so sad, and Spike remains the best thing ever, as evinced by his also spoiler-laden song. Bless him. Bless all my imaginary friends.
Oh yes, and my real ones.
(0) comments
| |
| |
|
Venusberg.org finds Blogger very attractive...
|
|
|
elsewhere:
Interconnected
Plasticbag
Oh Skylab
Barcablog
Orbyn
moreover:
Brainsluice
Mo Morgan
Mothninja
Tajmahal
Wherever y'are
Prandial Post
thereafter:
Toby Kay
McCargow
Blogadoon
LinkMachineGo
Methylsalicylate
Hammersley
Joeblog
Grayblog
the Collective
Nick Jordan
Kooky Mojo
Betty Woo
Moth
Mr. Thomas G
the author:
danATvenusberg.org
and finally...
the archives
|
