Category: Random

Oh shit! I completely forgot to write about this, so I’m going to do it now, while I’m all full of blog-love. On Tuesday I came home after work to change for a dinner thing, except when I got home I couldn’t get in. The gas board had come around, broken into my flat, taken the gas meter, changed the locks and left! The last tenant hadn’t paid their bills and information about me hadn’t got to them yet. So for quite a lot of last week I was washing in kettle-boiled water out of a really big saucepan that I don’t think I’ll use for entertaining any more. Plus no heating or cooking facilities either. I really should get that sorted out!

I kind of can’t stop writing. Everything’s all smooshie. It’s all daze and blurry soft-focus. Not drunk soft-focus, but kind of happy internal trashy soft-focus. Like a bad novel’s cover. I’ve got all these little pictures in my head – sunsets, Pimms, cartwheeling friends, Cossacks, kebabs, candy floss, boating irishmen, big bearded men with scrambled egg, handfulls of goat-feed. And when I think about them everything just feels really kind of warm and wonderful. And I know it’s a feeling that’s not going to last, because I can feel some edges already. But god I had a wonderful time.

I got two e-mails about my birthday that were important to me this year. One from someone I didn’t expect to hear from, another from someone I really hoped I’d hear from. So one of them is really cheery – and you have to wonder why. And the other was really sober and you think, should it have been? I think maybe people are like songs. Some songs have a huge impact on you – they make you happy, they make you sad, they make you shake your head around so hard that I think maybe your brain gets all small like balled-up white bread bouncing around your skull. But you never know whether a song you used to love will make you dance or leave you cold – or just make you think of something dumb you once did which makes you smile. Some people only listen to dumb songs . I wonder – do you choose your taste in music or does it choose you?

I think my superpowers are my friends, who are lovely
and wonderful and make me able to do all kinds of cool
things that I couldn’t do by myself.

Awesome thanks to Denise for baking me this tiny pixel cake!

I’m rather overwhelmed by what’s been happening over the weekend, so I’ll just start by saying how happy I am, what wonderful friends I have and link to Meg’s account of Saturday night.

Omigod, I’ve just turned thirty.

Do you think the weblogging competition is kind of tacky? Have you said so on your site? mail me and I’ll link to the post!

• Life as it happens
• Metafilter
• NotSoSoft.com
• Mo Morgan
• kevan.org
• troubled-diva
• iamcal.com
• Copydesk.co.uk
• Grayblog
• TajMahal

The news of the day is that the Guardian are running a Best British Weblogger award, which I’m going to link to with the words ‘a bloody stupid idea‘ because then maybe that’ll get onto the front page of Blogdex.

Things to consider:
Would a weblog called ‘Everything the Guardian gets wrong’ be likely to win? Or how about one that wasn’t really a weblog at all, like b3ta? How about one that was completely made up – utter, complete lies? And what would happen if webloggia simply refused to take part (which is my secret hope)? There don’t seem to be any criteria for these things… More likely in time, each and every bloody site would turn into fellatetheguardian.com. And for the purposes of those of you who came in late What if you held a really big weblogging competition and nobody came?

Bigs news of the day has to be Steve Job’s Keynote speech. A world of monkish zealots turns New York-wards for two hours of self-congratulation and wonder. The chips they put in our heads are working better each year. Soon Steve will be able to talk to all of us through naught but mental telepathy.

There’s a hell of a lot to talk about in what he came up with today – some of which I’ll be talking about as the evening progresses. But to give you a flavour of my thoughts on the day – and to give you a laugh – the first thing I’ll do is put up a transcript of a keynote-paralleled AIM conversation held in real time over the two hours of the speech between four people with significant interest in our lords and saviours, Apple. More entertaining perhaps than strictly useful… [watch this space]