Category: Random

As I was walking home this evening, a little girl was riding her bike in the middle of the street. She still had the training wheels on as she wobbled and struggled to peddle. It reminded me of when I was little and how badly I wanted a bicycle but couldn’t get one. My parents wouldn’t let me have a bike until I was 12; my mom was too afraid I’d hurt myself. I’d pass the bike section in the store and just look, having given up asking my parents about it long ago. I eventually did get one after much pleading and begging. Amazingly, getting my driver’s license at 16 and the subsequent borrowing of the family car passed without incident.

PHEW: Managed to save Mark‘s recent blogs from the abyss. Thanks to everyone concerned!

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CRISIS: Everyone who hasn’t been to riothero yet today must follow these instructions IMMEDIATELY. I posted a note to the site (Katy and I still have access). Anyway – for some reason it erased the last weeks posts completely. Absolute horror on my part. Complete and utter horror (how/why could this have happened?). You people have to help me fix this crisis:

1. Immediately go OFFLINE. If you are using IE then go to FILE, and select WORK OFFLINE.
2. Go to www.riothero.com – if you can get to it without going online, then this is a CACHED copy.
3. You should be able to see posts from between Sunday and Friday.
4. Copy and paste these days and e-mail them to me immediately on tom@no-spam-please-barbelith.com.
5. Then I can put them back on the site where they belong. This is SO important. PLEASE GOD, SOMEONE HELP!

I’m surprised by the response I’m getting to the megnut/kottke pairing that I alluded to earlier. Seems that there is quite an undercurrent of gossip in the weblogging community, and that everyone wants in on the action. Quotes from an unnamed source:

“I too noticed the “Perfect Storm” reference from both Meg and Jason. But did you notice these?

Meg – “Only one to-do scheduled on the whole day stretching before me: bake a blueberry pie”
Jason – “Jason’s 4th of July wrap-up: made blueberry pie”

Meg – “… parties and tete-a-tetes-a-tetes and tours and tastings”
Jason – “Went wine tasting yesterday”

Meg – “The Right Stuff is one of my favorite movies of all time”
Jason – “recent movie viewings: the Right Stuff …”

… and then of course there is their appearance together in Jezebel‘s Mirror…”

So, I missed seeing Mark and Vance last night because I had to work late and because I left my mobile phone at home, which meant that neither of them could get in touch with me all day. Absolute disaster all around really, as Katy had too much work to do and had to hide at home as well. I have sent Mark a tremendously apologetic e-mail and hopefully we’ll all think of something cool to do this evening.

Sam turned up out of the blue(-ish) last night as well. He’d left his rolling tobacco on our TV. He watched Ally McBitch with me and my flatmates and seemed completely unable to grasp who it is just about OK to like (Ling, Biscuit) and who must die in unending torment (Ally, Nell etc). I still contend that it is a Nazi TV series. Anyway, at some point in the evening, when I was chasing Kate around the flat trying to blow a raspberry on her stomach, I got clocked by his huge metal watch on his arm. Last night I had a black-eye, and I’m too scared to look this morning. Mella says it makes me look macho, but she’d say anything, frankly…

OK. I think it’s time certain people came clean. Megnut and Kottke go and see The Perfect Storm on exactly the same day and have pretty much exactly the same reaction to it. Question de jour: did they see it together?

Mark says:

In London, from what I can tell (people screaming and such), people love the Internet. They are willing to pay these ridicules prices to play for a just few minutes…

Load of bollocks. Go to an Easy Everything net café and you’ll be able to get around an hour of net time for £1 ($1.40) – if you go in the middle of the night they’ll even give you up to six hours for the same price…

Quotes from recent Salon article about the Patriot and my increasing frustration with Hollywood film-making:

The prizewinning historian and biographer Andrew Roberts called the film Patriot “racist” in the Daily Express, and pointed out that it was only the latest in a series of films like “Titanic,” “Michael Collins” and “The Jungle Book” remake that have depicted the British as “treacherous, cowardly, evil [and] sadistic.” Roberts had a theory: “With their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their historical guilt onto someone else.”

• Pullquote: The Evil English

Now I don’t like the Daily Express, and I’m not claiming for one moment that the British haven’t been culpable for some pretty bastardly things in the past (but no more so than the Dutch, the Spanish, the French – in fact every other major Old World Country). But you know – I can’t help thinking the guy above has a point. The British have been the bad-guys too long – there is simply no need for this characterisation by Hollywood. No need at all. We’re either effeminate fops (Hugh Grant), Nazis or we are dirty people who live in mud huts without electricity and speak in “impenetrable” regional accents. Any visitor to these shores would see that it just ain’t so.

Yowser. Had a great laugh with Mark, Vance and Katy last night. Katy and I scrambled for hours across the Wastelands of the Westway, emerging damp and confused between Paddington and Bayswater. Having finally found the hotel residence of our young associates, we met each other, looked a bit nervous (especially Mark) and tried to work out what to do next.

At which point, Mark’s mother introduced herself, which meant that I immediately had to make a joke about getting her son drunk and dumping him in a strip joint in Soho, which went down remarkably well considering, but I probably wouldn’t make again if put in the same situation.

So Katy and I dragged them off to find a restaurant so we could soothe our cravings for food. We found this appalling tapas place, which cost far too much and really wasn’t very nice and chatted and made bad jokes and swapped stories of other webloggers, and heard all about Mark’s experiences at SXSW, and which bloggers were tall, which were short and which were great big spotty geeks.

Basically, much fun was had by all – and hopefully we will be meeting up again either tonight or tomorrow night – depending on when they are leaving for the next stage of their trip. One last thing though – MARK! I FORGOT TO BRING MY PHONE TO WORK! E-MAIL ME OR RING UP KATY!

Guess who Katy and I are off to meet in about fifty minutes. That’s right – the young riothero himself – currently staying in a hotel in Paddington. It’s a pity the weather is so bad at the moment, though – he’s really going to get the wrong idea about the UK. Anyway – let’s see what he thinks of London so far?

“Harrumph! The English has no consideration for the 4th of July!”

<snarkiness follows>

I don’t think we really need to go into too much detail about why that is a pretty weird thing to say. I mean, much as it would be cool to celebrate the UK finally disposing of it’s wayward nephew [Rupture agrees], it is after all the celebration of America’s independance from this “old country”. Actually I got into another mood with America after watching Chicken Run and U-571 and realising that American media is all about self-congratulation, while UK media is all about self-deprecation, and that some Americans don’t get that our media is no more representing the truth of our country than theirs represents the truth of the good ole USA.

</snarkiness ends>

Actually really looking forward to seeing Mark. I’m a bit concerned that I have a stomping headache and am all stinky and smelly and that he’s going to look at me as if I fell from Planet Kak. Still, we shall see what we shall see… Oh, and apparently Vance will be there as well!