Another addition to the list of technical things I need to learn about. HTML I have down pat. Mostly. CSS also mostly there with. DHTML and Javascript I can fudge my way through other people’s scripts just about. The list of languages that I was planning on knowing after HTML included Perl, but until now did not include SMIL – which weirdly looks to be one of the more interesting, and easiest, of the lot.
I spent a good four hours of yesterday walking around London in a suit. Not because I had a job interview or anything, but instead because I hadn’t worn one in about a year and a half. I thought it might be nice to look glamorous for a change. I felt great in it – really sharp – except that I appear to have been gradually swelling over the past three years. At times it felt like I was wearing a corset.
In what may or may not be the last Big related post of the evening, Tom confesses to his adoring fans that he has failed in his attempt to withhold reciprocal contact (after phone call yesterday morning) and caved in and sent an e-mail this evening at 7.20pm on March 14th, this year of our Lord, 2001. Tom would like to add that this is only fifteen hours prior to schedule. That’s not too bad. Right? [helpful advice]
Much television is anodyne, unimaginative and without redeeming characters or plots. Even those which are imaginative and intelligently put together are often morally dubious. Take Ally McBeal for one. This is an imaginatively made TV series which celebrates and indulges the lunacies and inadequacies of a thirty-something lawyer, when if the world were even the slightest bit sane, Ally would be ritually humiliated every week before being put into the army to sort herself out and the series would be renamed “Thing”.
It is for this reason that we celebrate those who identify ‘inappropriately’ – those who don’t think that Carol and Doug were always right and that actually Kerry should have slapped them around with her cane until they were a bloody pulp for being so self-importantly dramatic all the while (‘Oh my tortured romance’) rather than just getting on with the bloody job – those who wish Gunther would pull out an Uzi and pump hot metal death into those parasites who clog up his coffee bar – those who pine for the day when Mulder and Scully pop off for a shag, leaving the Lone Gunmen … Oh hang on a minute …
It is for this reason that I recommend you ignore Meg’s appeal to not go and do the Bridget Jones quiz. Because it has declared me The Anti Bridget – and cutting past the bullshit description [“You’re nothing like Bridget, but you’re very much like her bossy, happily engaged, real-estate-shopping officemate Perpetua – perpetually organized, perpetually on top of things, perpetually a pain in the arse.”] – I have declared myself Arch Nemesis of Jones The Hag. Schlurp your chianti while you still can, woman. We’re here to bitch-slap you from the face of the planet…
In a classic example of poor quality interactive design, the BBC’s Oscars 2001 microsite allows you to vote on the winners of the major categories, but will not reveal the results of the poll until the day before the event itself. There’s no place for people to subsequently investigate further after voting, nor is there any way of alerting people to the fact that the results have come out. More than likely, people will stumble upon the site, vote and then leave – never to return and never to recommend it to anyone else.
I spent a certain amount of last night compiling a minidisc compilation for my little brother (15) who is at boarding school. I don’t exactly know that I got the balance right, but I’ve been playing it to myself over and over again all night, so it can’t be that bad. Track listing (with links to Napster) follows:
Freaky Beatnik:
1) America (Simon & Garfunkel)
2) Simple Man (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
3) Dirge (Death in Vegas)
4) Shallow End (Morcheeba)
5) Momentum (Aimee Mann)
6) Theme from Narc (Pixies)
7) Unreal (Unkle)
8) Like Dylan in the Movies (Belle & Sebastian)
9) American Dream (Jakatta)
10) Morning Theft (Jeff Buckley)
11) Da Funk (Daft Punk)
12) The Wind (Cat Stevens)
13) Bohemian Like You (Dandy Warhols)
14) New World (Bjork)
In which, suddenly fascinated by the term “nostalgia particles”, Tom decides to do a search on Google, and is most entertained by a link to a Ulysses 31 site.
Best comments about Big so far:
“Try not to salivate down your chin. And have fun.”
“Always remember the quote: ‘It is a far, far better thing to be a whore like me, than the wife of a fascist like you…’ J V Martin.”
Mr. Big rears his head once more. After much deliberation, and with a guessed e-mail address, I decided that I should drop a ‘thank you’ note for an entertaining evening. In the e-mail, I thought to myself, I would explicate my apparent teenage gawkiness from the previous day as the consequence of being mortifyingly embarrassed and hapless. It occurred to me that I would probably be more able to present myself through the written word. As I wrote it I found myself smiling – I was striking an elegant balance between professionalism and lust, between being aloof and being a prat. As I finally sent the e-mail, I felt finally satisfied. For good or ill it was over.
Twenty minutes later the phone rang. When I picked up the phone I didn’t know the number on caller-id. Just a vague number that looked vaguely corporate. A voice leapt in with ‘Hello’, but didn’t say a name – just a firmly worded, confident, ‘how are you’. For a moment I thought it was Will, who I had lost contact with a while back (semi-purposefully) after a particularly annoying weekend. My voice steeled itself for a moment, before suddenly recognising that I was completely off track. Big had rung.
Oh my god. He wasn’t supposed to do that. Caught offguard, I reached back into the depths of wit and opened my mouth, only for nothing to emerge. Words pounce from the phone, “What are you doing today? I’m blowing off work today to go for lunch and hang around.” My replies, in turn, stumble from my mouth as if unfamiliar with walking, shielding their eyes from the harsh light of day. Some crap excuse or other: “I’ve got a list. Things to do. Learn SMIL. Have a haircut. I can’t do anything but those things. That would be … er … bad.” There’s some kind of distraction at the end of the phone. He’s trying to make conversation, but I’m behaving like a chimp trapped in a cage. Noises emerge but they make no sense. Ten minutes. We agree to a vague drink sometime next week and the phone goes dead. I sit in absolute silence for five minutes, drool oozing from a corner of my mouth. Then I howl with glee. Then my eyes widen and I have to have a lie down. What the fuck have I done…