Category: Random

Up until five in the morning talking with Ralph. I’m completely exhausted today. It’s nearly four in the afternoon and I’m not even vaguely ready for the world.

Matt is currently obsessed by flash movies. Completely obsessed. The latest one he’s found (and posted to Haddock is Thatcher, fish and bunny dominated. Entertaining, but odd.

Derek has a new book out. You should go buy yourself a copy of this book. And when you have done with the ‘buying-yourself-a-copy’ thing, you should go and buy me a copy. Then you can relax. But not until then. You understand?

Another example of the complete moral bankrupcy of politicians. Despite being vehemently opposed to abortion, Bush OKs Stem Cell Funding. Presumably abortion doesn’t have the potential for profit that stem-cell research does.

Spread the word: “life is the mayonnaise through which we squirt“.

And now to answer the call to action. Jason coincidentally put up a post about pre-web writings on the same day I stumbled upon a confessional diary of my teenage years. A few selections purely for the purposes of self-abasement follow:

Sunday 15th April 1990 “The problem with most people is that they are fixated with sex. Of course, I miss the ability to fit in with other people’s sexuality, but even homosexuals seem to categorise themselves solely by orientation. Going to gay bars seems to me to be a self-defeating idea. We will never be fully accepted if we always isolate ourselves in this way. With homosexuals, I suppose this is almost acceptable. I mean, our sexuality is repressed and constrained most of our adolescence and sometimes all our life. When released, sex could easily become the only thing on our minds. I vow now that this will never happen to me.”

Monday 16th April 1990 “Someone ought to tell my parents that having kids is more important than just having someone small and cuddly to look sweet when clean.”

Thursday 26th April 1990 “This day has been horrific. About 2 hours ago, I crashed and totally wrecked my car. God, I am depressed.”

Friday 27th April “The entire incident happened so quickly. I just popped out for a drive in my little car, thinking I could go and get some petrol. I got the petrol, and on the way back, I put on some music. I swerved to avoid something, skidded right over to the other side of the road, tried to regain control of the car, turned the car over and crashed into a wall and a tree. I found that I couldn’t get out of the doors and had to struggle out of the boot. The car is a total write-off. I went into a nearby house and called grandad and had a cup of tea and then the police arrived and the breakdown truck et al. God! I had a breathalizer test, but I haven’t had a drink since Saturday, so there was absolutely no reaction. Eventually got home feeling tired and shaken. I needed to tell someone so I rang up Tony and talked to him for about an hour. Eventually got to bed, but found it difficult to sleep. Still worrying about what mum will say.”

Wednesday 2nd May “Really interesting day. I’ll tell you about it after Dallas.”

Buffy spoilers via the astonishing prolific.org: Ain’t it Cool News 1 and 2. They include a wonderful response to the question, “How much faith does Herc put in these spoilers?”. The reply? “Tremendous faith. And more than a little kendra.” Geddit?

How much does it cost to have a hit single? The BBC investigates. The interesting thing about this article is how people are finally beginning to think that the age of the single might be over – and that radioplay might become the next criteria for the UK charts – much as it has done in America. Which of course means that more power than ever lies in the hands of the companies that are trying to get the music played and on the radio stations to decide what we should be hearing. I’m not entirely comfortable with this. It’s just a shame that downloads count for so little – actual downloads by real people might be a much more interesting model for chart action.

The one thousandth link in the top links of all time section of Blogdex is gap.com. I make no comments about this. I merely found it interesting.

What happens when you plug Jeremy Paxman into Google. [via Katy KitschBItch]

Derek Powazek‘s book site ‘Design for Community‘ has relaunched and is pretty fine, although not as intuitive as one might like. It’s got more heavily integrated discussion and ‘weblog-like’ characteristics than I’ve seen before, and appears to be a substantial step forward (in the community arena) from using software like Greymatter. The software is provided by Brand Ben Brown of Iloveben brown.com.