Category: Random

So today I received a packaged from Amazon which I thought was my Christmas shopping arriving, but it wasn’t. It was a gift for me from my wishlist. I haven’t opened it yet, but I don’t think it’s my Secret Santa because it looks quite big and expensive. Which makes me wonder, who was it? Did you send me a gift? If so let me know who you are (either now or after Christmas Day) so I can thank you. In the meantime, I hope everyone’s having a lovely run-up to Christmas…

So I’ve submitted two proposals for ETCON 2003 – one on ‘Personal and Mainstream Publishing’ and one on ‘The Despotism of Social Software’. I have no idea whether or not they’ll be even vaguely interesting to the parties concerned, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough…

When I decided to put a new picture of myself up on the Mirror Project I decided to write a little text to accompany it. The text is stunningly anodyne:

My daily trip to work involves me getting the number six bus from Elgin Avenue. The bus travels down towards Warwick Avenue and the around towards Edgware Road.

Being on the bus is peaceful and productive – normally it’s the only time when I’m away from computers and keyboards. I tend to take the opportunity – like so many other Londoners – to read a book and listen to some music…

On this morning, the air was clear and fresh and the light was bright. I sat right at the front of the bus, and found myself looking at myself clear as day in the reflection. Behind the glass – a black screen. Behind the screen – the driver… Behind me you can see other people on their way to work… You can see other buses too…

For an automated service that does little more than aggregate a few useful tools – most of which were already present in sites like Blogdex – Technorati is surprisingly clunky and weirdly formed. I mean, for a start it has somehow managed to come to the conclusion that my site hasn’t been updated for the last ten days. That doesn’t seem entirely likely to me… If only Mr Morgan would pull his finger out…

Oh for god’s sake. There isn’t a Santa Claus. It’s your parents. They do it all. Ok? I mean, come on… How thick are you people?

So it’s coming up to Christmas and all over blogdom people’s sites are juddering a bit as they try to balance work, Christmas shopping, party-season-stuff and seeing their families. Personally I’m planning to go at least partially offline for a couple of weeks, catch up with my reading and try and assemble some coherent writing out of some of the ideas I’ve been having recently. This having been said, I imagine that posting to this site will probably slow down considerably in the short-term, but everything will be back to normal and bright and sparky early in the New Year… Assuming – of course – that I ever recover from seeing Greg Dyke dancing to Dee-lite’s Groove is in the Heart at a Christmas party a few days ago…

While I’m doing the gay thing, and more to remind myself than anyone else, here are a few of the stories that I got this morning when I did a search for ‘gay’ on Google News – just to show the battles are not yet won and that there is still a weight of prejudice and misinformation that must continually be fought…

• Three plead innocent in slaying of transgender Newark teen
  Remember this is a world in which murdering gay people can be considered to be a problem that the murderer has rather than a crime – cf. homosexual panic.

• A Church seeks healing
  In which this statement is made: “Liberals are pushing the notion that the Catholic clergy should be opened to women, or married men, while conservatives are suggesting the priesthood be closed to gay men.” This is despite the fact that the vast majority of child sexual-abuse happens inside families and is perpetrated by straight men against young female relatives.

• This Rawhide Kid rubs me the wrong way
  And I quote, ” Tamara and I were sitting at home on a Friday night about a month ago. I clicked on pay-per-view by time and got a list of movies. Then I scrolled up to previews and clicked. The last thing I expected (or wanted) to see was two shirtless males in a passionate love embrace, groping and playing tonsil hockey. It was as close to keeling over as I’ve ever come. Even closer than the morning I opened the paper and spied the headline “Men kissing men makes me sick” on one of my columns. I’m not saying everyone’s viewing habits have to be the same. But is it really necessary to make scenes like this available to 12-year-olds?” And I ask – if heterosexual scenes like that are not made available to twelve-year-olds either then you might have a point… Otherwise you’re just a member of that prejudiced group of nutters that can no longer say proudly that they think gay people are disgusting without getting pelting with fruits…

• Besieged Suisun City Chief says he’s gay
  And because it is still somehow acceptable to stereotype gay people as feckless nancies, it’s ok to write this: “It is a distinction that will almost surely focus more attention on the relatively tiny, 28-officer department to see what happens in the macho bastion of law enforcement when a gay man is leading the way.”

Right. It’s done. Finally. The wait is over. Almost eighteen months after I first swore that I’d sell my soul if someone would give me an iBook, I’ve finally snapped (like a twig in a blender) and actually gone and bought one. So I’m now typing this weblog entry on the keyboard of a 12″ 800Mhz G3 iBook with 640Mb of RAM and a 32Mb Video card. Bow down in jealous awe.

A link without an origin, I found this explanation and background to Keynesian economic analysis a few days ago, but couldn’t think of enough commentary on it to make it worthwhile. In the end I retreat to the anecdotal. I did Economics A-level at school. I was quite bad at it, and the teacher told my mother than I was bone-idle. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for that. I have a picture somewhere of Ben and Julian standing by the window with teenage hair and school-uniforms. And even if I lost the photo, the image would stick in my head regardless.

So in the dream, my mother is putting powder-blue mascara onto my eye-lashes. But it’s all clumpy and grotesque – like water thickly mixed with blue flour. She’s convinced it’s a really good idea. I’m not horrified by the concept, but I’m also relatively unconvinced it’s going to work.