This is a weblog: Sometimes I forget completely that this is a weblog. In order compensate for this, here are some ‘links’. Interesting meme possibilities: Weblog playlists? Napster to charge for membership as of June. Yet another reason to be depressed about SXSW: Fray Café. I’ve been saying for months that e-books will catch on for reference works (although I still maintain that travel books and city guides are going to be the first really successful market).
So my epic scheme for getting to SXSW originally went as follows: 1) Buy something off Jeff Bezos’s wishlist, 2) mention my craving to go to SXSW and 3) let nature takes its course. Except of course that I immediately realised that that was horribly, horribly corrupt and that I was a bad person. At which point I actually looked at his wishlist, realised that the man is obsessed with some of the weirdest shit on the planet, decided that I should buy him something anyway and then have a cool story to tell people down the pub. Which is what I’ve done. Jeff should be receiving (any day now) the Trivial Pursuit Star Wars Trilogy Edition.
[Speaking of wishlists (and being horribly corrupt), if you really wanted to, you could buy me something off mine. Think of all the stories you would be able to tell your grandchildren and how much they’d love you for it…]
This morning’s job involved updating timeout.com‘s page of Moscow links. All in all a pretty thankless task, as the state of the art in Russian media-websites seems to be somewhere pre-school. This is surely not a reflection of the country, but much more a reflection of the lack of money in Russian media companies.
One site that did stand out with Pravda‘s English-language website, which gives an astonishing insight into the mind-set of the people who used to live behind the Iron Curtain. Amongst stunning headlines appear a few absolute corkers, complete with astonishing introductory paragraphs:
NATO SITE ON INTERNET: A TISSUE OF LIES FROM BEGINNING TO END NATO PROVIDES DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE FOR ITS OWN INDICTMENT
“The NATO site on the Internet is at best a shame and a disgrace and at worst the confirmation that the rest of the world is unfortunately forced to come to terms with: the benevolent air of the perpetrators of the new world order is buried beneath sham, lies, irresponsibility, racism, jingoism and basically, the worst elements of post-fascist western decadence in the last half century.”
AIDS CASES GROW IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
“Young people all over Europe seem to have the mistaken idea that by avoiding the issue of protected or unprotected sexual relations by adopting oral sexual practices is safe, but they could not be more wrong.”
My plan to do a version of The Onion based upon a stereotypical 50’s Russian Propogandist take on the news now seems rather unnecessary…
I can’t be the only one uncomfortable seeing that in a poll of the Top Ten Film Heroes there is only room for one woman – and in a fairly masculine role at that. Apparently, only overtly penis-based heroism counts for anything with the movie-making and movie-going public.
So I’ve been working on what hopefully will be the only redesign of plasticbag.org for this half of the year, and I’m going for a more expandable design, and one that hopefully will give me scope to inject more personality into the pages, and I’m busy testing out something when Blogger seizes up and collapses on me, leaving me for several minutes convinced that over a year’s work has been lost in an instant.
That makes two Sundays in a row that I have been stood up for a movie by the same friend, last week she felt ‘ill’, this week she ‘didn’t think we had an arrangement’ and had already organised to go and see a movie with her flatmate who had ‘a bad foot so can’t go far’.
It begins. The full on green with jealous-rage fest has started to consume me as webloggers start to talk about SXSW: “Speaking of SXSW, they put up a listing of this year’s panels for the Interactive Festival. Among the more interesting ones for me are the interview with Scott McCloud, Interface, Weblogs… Unfortunately, three of those panels have a time conflict with each other, and two more of them take place at the same time as the Microcontent: Beyond the Web Page panel I’m moderating. Dammit!”
As February approaches, and I have just over a month to find myself a new, satisfying and well-paid job to occupy my time, my mind is increasingly turning to SXSW. I’m desperately pining to attend – I don’t know that I can cope with everyone writing about what a laugh it was – but I just can’t see how I could do it. The cost is just too severe – there’s airfare for a start, which alone I could probably manage, but then there’s transport to Austin, hotels for three or four nights, the cost of the conference itself, and that’s before I’ve even started drinking. It seems bizarre to me that I can afford to go and visit Kerry and Sean in LA next month (flight only) for a week, but I can’t scrape together the money for Austin (which is nearer) for three days.
• (to David Gentle): I don’t think you come across as a dork in e-mail at all, although you sure do send a lot of it! And the reason that Waterstones don’t have a proper comics selection seems clear to me – the image of the shop is built around popularising reading as a cultural rather than purely entertaining activity, and as ever with people with pretensions, they are unable to tell the difference between what they find interesting and thrilling and what they think they should find interesting and thrilling.
• (to Zenith): Christ alone knows why you find the Underground so intoxicating, old chap, but it’s happened to a lot of other apparently intelligent and creative people, something that I feel tremendously happy about.
• (to Darren Shrubsole): Yes, on occasion I have been heartily pissed off with weblogging. These things ebb and flow – when you are writing stuff that you find entertaining or important or interesting then it all seems instinctive and satisfying. At other times it seems like a grinding drag – fighting to find words to say. It’s worth sticking at, though, because it’s become such a staple part of my life that I can’t imagine being without it. As to your other question, my plans for barbelith.com seldom get implemented because of time restraints, but at the moment it goes something like this – a webzine on the front which integrates completely with the discussion forum with attached weblogging columnists. From that stage, an anti-advertising server (joint project with Matt, and then free web-mail with barbelith.net addresses. Or something like that.
Next!