plasticbag.org

Finally, proof (if proof were needed) that the new iMac is modelled on the Pixar desklamp.

Question: Is it better to launch something unfinished or to wait an indeterminable amount of time and launch it when it’s complete (and when you’re thoroughly sick of it)? Answers on a postcard.

Searches on Google that lead people to plasticbag.org: “Huw Edwards short arse”, “tom strop”, “my first is in chicken”, “chaos magick minidisc”, “cunt kicking clubs”, “Melanie Hill I was in love with her Andy Big Brother”, “comic rebecca adult housewives”, “kpmg evil”, “lucid dreaming sex story review”.

Mentioned today in the Guardian‘s “The Editor” supplement, the Bloggies, Blogger, metafilter.com, Looby Lu, plasticbag.org and Disturbing Search Requests.

The supplement also included a list of the top 25 words searched for on Cambridge Dictionaries Online over the last year. Amusingly at the bottom they say, “One word (18th) had to be censored from the list”. Anyone want to guess what that word was?

Use Photoshop? Is there something that you’ve always thought they should add? Then tell Photoshop Wishlist.

Brief words about the Rushkoff lecture: 1) If you are the astonishingly beautiful young man wearing a dark blue jumper with a pale blue and white bullseye on the front, with a tendency to get flushed in the face, then my e-mail address is tom%40plasticbag.org. 2) Before the lecture, Davo was treated to an impromptu performance from my glove puppy and glove bunny. 3) I asked two questions – one about establishing where we look to for definitive information regarding matters that we have no immediate experience of (in essence, “Who should we trust?”), and another about the relationship between individual, community and state. 4) I embarrassed myself in front of Douglas Rushkoff himself by talking loudly about “The Most Important Thing In The World” as we past him after the lecture, and being asked by him what I was talking about, and having to confess that I was talking about cigarettes.

When I was a teenager, one of my closest friends was called Glyn. He got married last year and I was invited and it was one of the strangest and most wonderful experiences of my life. One of the things that he used to talk about a lot was the size of the moon. In fantasy art, the big breasted woman riding the massive lizard is always framed by a huge glowing orb – a vast moon, shining down on all of us. He felt let down by the world, I think. He felt that the real moon seemed so small in comparison. He wondered to me once whether there was anywhere on the planet that the moon really could appear that large. Perhaps in polar regions. Maybe on top of a mountain.

When I visited my family for Christmas, I saw one of the most astonishing sights of my life. Around the moon was a huge corona – a vast circle of light surrounded it – like a massive, pale-blue version of the effect that you get when you squint at a street light. I stayed outside in the code for several minutes. It was amazing.

A couple of weeks ago I had a dream – most of which I don’t remember very clearly. But one thing I do remember is turning around at one point and seeing the moon directly in front of me. As if in a movie I then saw myself – a point-of-view shot slowly backing away from my face. I was clearly amazed by what I’d seen – a vast moon, just above the horizon – so clear it felt like I could reach out and touch it with my fingertips. I remember a huge intake of breath. I felt elated.

This afternoon I’ve been watching The Dish – an Australian film about the people who worked at the Parkes radio telescope. These people were responsible for receiving the television broadcast of the first moonwalk, which would then be sent around the world to many hundreds of millions of people across the world.

Like all people of my generation, I’ve grown up with the idea that man has walked on the moon. It’s become a fact – dry and dusty. Impressive like the steam engine or the first flight – but not awe-inspiring. Watching this film I started for the first time, I think, to get a sense of the scale of this wonder that was accomplished, about the incredible utopian energies that this one act released. And I looked out of my sitting-room window and in the sky above me was a sharp disc of light. The moon has never seemed larger to me.

A long list of great weblogs compiled purely for my own benefit and with no ulterior motives whatsoever, and certainly nothing to do with stealing ideas for the plasticbag.org redesign or doing a kind of ‘state of the weblog nation’ thing:

1. kottke.org
2. evhead.com
3. jish.nu
4. littleyellowdifferent.com
5. usr/bin/girl
6. harrumph.com
7. camworld.com
8. megnut.com
9. wilwheaton.net
10. zeldman.com
11. rebeccablood.net
12. plasticbag.org
13. robotwisdom.com
14. opinebovine.com
    – née swallowingtacks.com

15. textism.com
16. bluishorange.com
17. obscurestore.com
18. a.wholelottanothing.org
19. caterina.net
20. davezilla.com
21. notsosoft.com/blog
22. doc.weblogs.com
23. dollarshort.org
24. wannabegirl.org
25. rupaul.com

I’ll go into greater detail about the talk with Douglas Rushkoff later in the day. But in the meantime, one of the things he suggested was that Attention Deficit Disorder was a disease that gained vast prominence in the US as corporations responded to the threat to advertising revenue that the internet, interactive technology and remote controls posed. Interestingly, I stumbled upon an article this morning in Scientific American that goes directly against this assertion – and which goes to show that it is possible still for people to argue effectively and scientifically against the devices which are funded by paid-for meme propogation and cultural programming. That is – it is still possible for people to fight against television.

If you’re a London-based web-savvy individual with an interest in contemporary cyberculture then be sure to be in Soho’s Golden Square this evening to hear Douglas Rushkoff talk. It should be interesting.