Category: Random

So I missed another day. Perhaps I’m not really committed….

Since I started working at Time Out full-time, I no longer seem to read a newspaper or keep up with the daily news. I no longer have any idea what is going on in the world. I can’t even be bothered to read The Onion.

Being newsfree for a while makes you feel lighter – it’s almost as good as not wearing a watch (which I didn’t do for two years). I wonder how long it will last.

So tonight I have been invited to watch a football match in Finsbury Park (the pub’s called the Fulback on Perth Road if anyone fancies joining us). I don’t care about football in the slightest. It is not an affectation – I just don’t enjoy it. However there are a large number of people who are going to be there that I like. What does one do? Drink oneself to death while all around burn David Beckham into their collective retinae? I fear I may be bored…

Decisions, decisions. Participation in the Day Without Art is much more my kind of thing. I can’t decide whether I should participate though. I’ll follow the instructions of the first person who e-mails me.

Evil, subversive site of the day must go to the tremendous disobey.com. Ghost sites is a laugh, netslaves cuts a little close to the bone for my liking, and the disobey news network will keep you bogged down with information for a few hours. Not that I read it.

Announcing the first ever Nexus Online Poetry Slam! All the details are in the Core. I went to see Fight Club yesterday evening. Then I came home and wrote a long, complicated and detailed epinion about it. And then my computer crashed. Epinion lost. Today I have been visiting Pippa in Highgate. She is an old flatmate of mine who has moved into a flat with another old flatmate of mine purely for the purposes of making me neurotic with flat in-jokes and knowing looks. I’m kidding of course… Under the instruction of megnut, I went to find out my Wu-Tang Clan name. I was less than thrilled to find out it was “Dizzy Cow”. Here’s a few of my other friends. (If you don’t believe me – check it for yourself!)

Nick Cornwell – Furtive Ventriloquist
Chris Bell – Ol` Filthy, Sweaty Bastard
Max Prutzel-Thomas – Temporary Spastic
Kate Myers – The Nation`s Favourite Galoot
Toby Stone – The Littlest Vandal
Pippa Sturt – Sweaty Butcher
Melanie Goldblatt – Tha Ever So Weary Assistant

Some things get me very unhappy. One of them is being completely crushed by someone else’s pure design superiority. I am in awe of saturn.org.

I remember a time when being at University meant savage and unwelcome censorship of web-space. Apparently this is no longer the case. Look at the wonderfully offensive things that MIT allows nowadays…

Missed yesterday’s entry, which felt a little odd. It was my younger brother’s birthday (he’s fourteen now). He’s been packed off to boarding school by parents eager to inculcate in him the ways of the uber-class. I bought him a copy of Day of the Triffids and some sweets from Muji. We will see (in years to come) whether or not he thinks I was a good brother.

Kinky Friedman was amazing. Classic songs like “They don’t make Jews like Jesus any more” and “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed”. There can’t be many people more subversive than a Jewish Texan Country Singer / Detective Novelist.

There are some weird epinions things going on around the net. People seem to be becoming affiliates (glassdog, peterme), although quite why escapes me. I suppose there must be some point to it.

Speaking of personal sites – I have just stumbled upon jezebel.com. Frankly the world can do with more “impudent, shameless, or morally unrestrained” people.

Now I must go to the gym so I can contemplate the overt body facism of western capitalism…

Before I get going, get this – someone is trying to build an Assembler!

I blew off two separate groups of friends last night so I could hide at home after work and watch bad TV. I walk in my door only to discover that Will is still there – sitting on my bed munching on bread and humous. My hopes for a piece of complete downtime dashed, I become moody and irritable.

This evening I am going to see Kinky Friedman in Camden with a group of friends. I’ve only vaguely understood the allure, so tonight should be an interesting experience.

Epinions has changed the format of their pages again, clumping up the loves and hates lists. Ick. Still, I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

I’m Assistant Editor of timeout.com, which is nice. I also get paid at the end of the month. All questions answered to my satisfaction.

The Wax has a wonderful regular poll – “Am I Normal?”. Do you have complete conversations with yourself?

My friend Will does. He decided to come and stay at my place last night and flirt with my favourite barman, and then launched into a huge rant about how he has scary premonitions. This morning his new rant was about how when money becomes more electronic “they” will be able to control it more easily. Not the most detailed or fully-worked-out conspiracy theories ever, I have to say.

If you are after a detailed conspiracy theory to accessorise your daily rebellion, then why not try the Montauk project? There are thousands of damn sites about it.

I am a real fan of the design at hoggorm.com/ although for the life of me I can’t be bothered to find out what it’s about.

I survived my first day in the new job. I can’t say that it was exactly what I had in mind, but it could have considerable potential. I’ll let you know in a few days. The quest to find out what my job title is and when I get paid begins today. Wish me luck.

A little quote from the official British government’s Millennial survival guide: “What is the Millennium Bug? It’s not a virus and you certainly can’t catch it.” I have decided to pretend that it is not the most facile comment ever made and instead make believe that they are simply lying, and that the Millenium Bug is the first computer problem to jump species.

I found this wonderful story at The Onion the other day. You go girls.

I went to the launch party for the new Neonlit book, where my friend Rhonda won £500 which she has to spend in two weeks with nothing to show for it. Turns out part of my job at Time Out is to help run the Neonlit site. I think it could be time to talk to Derek and Shauna at the fray and ember.org – two of my favourite online writing sites.

Today I start work at timeout.com. More information on what I am up to when I have it. In the meantime, any suggestions on how to improve the site? *spark online is an interesting site which explores the frontiers of thought on technology. Get involved in their electronic consciousness. The propoganda section of Infinite Race has some wonderful nuggets of resistance. Abuse of power comes as no surprise. Holodeck 73 describes itself as an inspirational launchpad. Good design and a thousand interesting links. Read my epinion of Cube.

British television at the moment is dripping with advertisements that parody or exploit the ethics of revolutionaries or non-capitalist states. There is something extremely unsettling about a Chinese gentlemen with a dodgy accent in Communist uniform stating that a brand of Chinese food represents “a Chinese Revolution”. An advert for Twix recently claimed that the Russian cosmonaut in the advert had “less spine than this capitalist snack”. But the most bizarre of all has to be the new Financial Times advert which has Lenin talking about share portfolios and “not Karl Marx, but Deutschmarks”.

I feel slightly as if anti-capitalist memes are being raped in front of me – is it the equivalent of Roman soldiers sodomising their enemies after military victories? Fight back. Pollute the advertising meme-stream with adbusters.

The Bomb has been given a wonderfully flattering review by Comics International.

Read my epinion on Chasing Amy.

Britain’s Millennium Map – is it a historic achievement or an infringement of our privacy?