Category: Random

8pm and I’m still at work – pondering life and trying to think through stuff that needs to be thought through. I should probably go and see a film or something – try and clear my head of all the crap that has infested it again.

I went to Bristol on the weekend and I don’t think I have been so relaxed in months. London is a bit of a killer sometimes – it’s like it just doesn’t know when to let up. Bristol was open and lovely and clear and it made me feel … satisfyingly empty, I guess.

I stayed with Rachel in Cliftonwood, overlooking Hotwells, and on Saturday (after a leisurely morning) Pippa and Chris arrived as well. We went out for a lovely lunch with too many cocktails at a place called SevernShed overlooking the river. And we went out for another meal in the evening. It felt like such a complete abandonment of everything that has been getting me down. I loved it.

On Sunday we all met up with Rhys and went for a rather unsatisfying Sunday Roast. But the company was excellent and the environment was pleasant enough. It made me really think about what I’m doing in London and whether it is the city for me. It’s like the size is right but the atmosphere isn’t. I need a little more peace. After all, it only took me two days to feel tense again…

So I went into Sainsbury’s on Tottenham Court Road to get myself a doughnut. Except they didn’t have any – they only had donuts.

British and American variants on the confection are both spelt different and taste different, with American types being more imaginative, but tasting more processed than their rather less adventurous (but more wholesome) English variants. The latter are uniform in shape and come in frosted varieties with innumerable toppings and different fillings. The English equivalents are doughy, are either ringed or filled with jam (US: “jelly), and come dusted with caster sugar.

I wouldn’t mind this change of sugary goodness if it were not for another change. The sweets in question are now supplied and branded as part of a large American corporation. The traditional English doughnut has been edged out of the Supermarket, to be replaced by what would be termed by the less charitable as its increasingly ubiquitous glossy bastardisation.

Global homogenisation steps itself up one more notch. All we can hope for now is that a future multi-national might decide to rebrand the English Doughnut and relaunch it, repackaged and labelled as a novelty or speciality good. Even food is now a theme-park.

Anyone who reads Warren Ellis’ Planetary series is, at the moment, overwhelmed by the need to see the current storyline come to some kind of resolution. I’ve found a couple of odds and ends of new that might help stir up even more excitement (over at John Cassaday’s site), including details on the next two issues of the series, the Planetary / Batman cover and a detailed cover grab of issue 13.

An interesting article on the BBC discusses the future of the Big Brother contestants [Big Brother stars face the future]. There are a couple of particularly choice suggestions:

“Speculation that [Darren] will soon be back on TV screens as frontman to an advertising campaign for instant chicken sauce Chicken Tonight – for a six-figure sum – should come as no surprise.”

What Blogstart really needs to do in order to be a useful directory, is to ask a series of questions categorising the site over several trajectories. If the submission page was organised so that you were asked to specify an age range and a location and a type of log (personal, commentary, links, links and commentary etc) anda type of subject (mixed, film, news etc) plus things like gender, sexual preference etc etc. [With the proviso of course that you can leave any section blank], then the one-by-one category search could be replaced by more specific searches – ie. I really want to find a London-based, gay male weblogger who has some personal content on his site etc.etc.

This is probably the direction in which the site is developing anyway, but it bears comment, I think.

Thank god, today I feel almost human, and have returned to work. The rest of yesterday passed in a bit of a blur. I vaguely remember my flatmates wandering into my bedroom and checking their e-mail on my computer. And I vaguely remember playing The Sims for a while. And listening to music. But what I remember most is sleeping and having a couple of really bizarre dreams involving ex-lovers, ex-love interests, bunk beds and huge distended jointed genitals with hands on the end. My mind, on occasion, worries me.

Time Out’s new Shopping Site is written up in the Media Guardian. A few interesting / weird quotes, particularly this one with it’s rather suspicious nature:

“The site claims to receive more than 3m page impressions per month with 180,000 unique users.” (My emphasis)

Now that plasticbag.org has been up for a while, I’d like to get some honest opinions about the design of the site. Please humour me on this one by taking part in this poll: “Do you like the design of plasticbag.org?”. If you have any specific comments to make, then e-mail me on tom@plasticbag.org.

You’d be surprised how many of my female friends get into a strop when I try to argue (completely without foundation until today) this point: “Women are promiscuous, naturally“.

Praise the Lord. One of the few irritating aspects of owning a Mac is finally resolved. All praise the almighty upcoming presence of Mac OS X: [MacWEEK: Application unexpectedly quit]