plasticbag.org

“Image is everything; life is one long party; and saving the world is just a pain in the arse! Meet Zenith—everything a good super-being shouldn’t be! Out of print since 1990.” [They’re reprinting Zenith]

Dear Santa, This year to celebrate the fifth month after Christmas I would like you to find some way for me to get a small Blogger T-shirt without me paying $25 for shipping across the Atlantic, and the Buffy Season 2 DVD boxset off my wishlist which I just can’t afford and it’s killing me.

Virulent Memes posts a screen cap of an article on blogging that mentions the Kaycee debacle, cites a post on Metafilter and says nice things about NotSoSoft. This is why we like the media. Because it’s good to us.

Eight hours sleep later and I’m sitting in my duvet looking out of my back window thinking of all the things I should be getting done today, trying to find a mantra to run through my head.

Threw my bad fortune
off the top of
a tall building.
I’d rather done it with you.
[amazon]

I spoke to Ralph last night on AIM and he’s having trouble getting everything sorted out before coming to the UK and Europe. I didn’t really know what to suggest. I spoke to Evil Michael too. Apparently we are the cognescenti. We get the privilege of being smug because at least we understand what’s going on around us, even if we don’t like it much. I didn’t really know what to say. My cannister of Tsarin gas overfloweth. Thank the lord for prevailing winds. This early morning stream of consciousness missive will be my last word on the subject. My neck hurts again.

Now here’s an interesting insight into the problems of reviewing movies. BBC film got three different reviewers to examine the three Scream movies. And the three present fairly conflicting views of the the 90s leading horror franchise.

Almar Haflidason reviewed Scream, and found it lacklustre, giving it three stars. Now, I would personally disagree with that opinion. But that’s not really relevant. What is relevant is that a different reviewer (Neil Smith) then reviews the significantly inferior Scream 2 and similarly gives that movie three stars. There’s no explicit comparison between the films in the review which is a shame, because I think it would have demonstrated a radical disjuncture between the two reviewers’ opinions of the first film. Now in I come, with my review of Scream 3, which I believe to be inferior to the first movie, but a substantial improvement upon the second. I want to give it three and a half stars, but as I can’t, I give it four, declaring it an average film that nonetheless caps the trilogy admirably. If the same reviewer had covered all of the films, then there would be consistency and a way of comparing their quality. But then again, the single reviewer would necessarily have their own opinion which a reading audience would not necessarily have agreed with. Is it better to have three opinions or one set of comparable ones?

Which brings me to another point of interest. Each film carries with it a ‘rate this film’ box – which is a new addition for the BBC and will provide another way for the reader to determine whether the film is actually any good or not. I’d like everyone on this site to go and vote on each of the three films, and in a couple of days I’ll check back and see which of us was closest to the consensus opinion. I suspect it will be Neil.

In a way it’s weird. I seem to have written and talked about the Kaycee issue more than anything else, yet none of this conversation has been for plasticbag.org. For me the issue is about the different expectations of truth on the web as opposed to print. There are fabrications, distortions and misrepresentations presented every day in the newspapers – most of which aren’t even consciously perpetrated. But we don’t seem to notice them any more. Stick it on the web – in an environment where connection is instantaneous and there’s immediate possibilities for interaction – and suddenly everyone wants to know exactly where they stand. Fascinating.

Webcam: Bored of watching Tom get dressed in the morning? Well for a while only, you can now see the world outside my window. When I’m at home at my desk, this is what I see all day. If you spot anything interesting happening in the windows opposite, let me know.

This has nothing to do with me.

Question of the moment: Do you want to know which one of these things was a lie? How about these things?

1) I’ve delivered academic papers at international conferences.
2) I haven’t seen my father since I was five.
3) My parents go to Conservative club barbeques.
4) I lived in nine different houses by the age of six.
5) I smoke thirty cigarettes a day.

I’m posting crap today. I can feel it rising within me. A great “What the fuck am I doing?” is running through me. Too many things to think about (bloody Barbelith). I’m just going to run with it though. After all, the only other things I have to do today are pay in cheques, clean the bathroom, apply for three jobs, send out CVs to web design companies looking for freelance work, ring up a thousand film distributors, pay two bills, go to the gym, sunbathe for a bit and get in town by eight to get drunk.

Which reminds me. Can anyone figure out what’s wrong with my permalinks? I can’t be bothered to sort it out for myself.