plasticbag.org

So I’ve been watching Ultraviolet on DVD today in between spats of job-finding. And I’ve been loving it. And then I hit the fourth episode – one on paedophilia. And it happened again – as I watched it I became gradually more concerned about where the line was being drawn between gay people and paedophiles. Firstly, it was male-male paedophilia, which always alarms me, since sexual abuse is most often male-female and within families. Secondly, two men walking around in a park is used as an indication that it might be an area attended by paedophiles – as opposed to a cruising ground for a particular kind of exhibitionist or closeted queer. Thirdly, one of the paedophiles is shown disposing of an adult gay porn mag – adult male on male as well. Finally, the two main paedophiles are camp mincers – lip pursing bitches with high voices and limp wrists – semiotic indicators of gay men. A structuralist critic would no doubt have a lot to say about the grouping together of ‘unattractive’ and ‘unaccepted’ sexualities – I just saw a clumsy and insulting episode that was (possibly unintentionally) homophobic. It’s discoloured my whole view of the series.

A brief theory of Fraggle Rock: “Doozers were capitalist over-consumption. Fraggles were the utopian hippies who enjoyed life at their expense. The dog was existential terror. Humans were dark, inscrutable Gods.”

So I run a big message board, right? And there’s a job for a big Producer job involving running message boards, right? And I think I could do it pretty well, right? But I’m concerned that people in the web industry, more often than not, view extra-curricular web work as a hindrance rather than a boon to employment. When I went for a job a couple of years ago at a web publishing company, I said that I ran several successful personal websites. And the woman who interviewed me said “you won’t be able to build them while you are at work, you know”. And I kind of looked at her and said, after a pause, “I know”. Which kind of meant, “Duh”. So the question is, “IS BARBELITH A POSITIVE THING TO PUT ON A CV OR NOT?”

For those of you who might have got concerned, I do not have a gun, nor did I view my last BBC job interview as the end of the known world: thanks for caring though…

Interesting article on Big Brother in the Guardian [link] includes this paragraph, “The E4 transmission is on a 10-minute delay in order to prevent swear words and libels reaching daytime viewers. On an average day, Andrew Newman, director of programmes on E4, estimates that the housemates say “fuck” at least 1,300 times, “slightly less now that Bubble has been evicted”. On several occasions they’ve had to cut the volume when the housemates didn’t so much speculate as know that a major Hollywood actor is gay.”

Two sites that I worked on (HTML-building) while getting fill-in work at Arehaus a couple of months ago have now launched: eB-21 and cabe.org.uk. Which means I can finally link to this page and ask the very serious question – is Robert Bargery the hottest bitch you have seen in your life, or what?

Very exciting: The Breeders are back.

I had one of those night’s sleep last night in which you put on some soothing music to ease you into unconsciousness, and then forty minutes later with your eyes wide open, you turn over in bed, reach out and press play again.

Could the wonderful person who went out and bought me Ultraviolet on DVD please make themselves known? I’d like to say thank you, and you didn’t include your name. [mail me]

Lines & Splines is a weblog for people who are obsessed with Typography. It’s fascinating reading if you have a professional or casual interest in the subject, and its use of CSS makes it a tremendously good example of web typography in action. The only thing that doesn’t sit right with me is the title image of the page. But hey.