plasticbag.org

I’ve run out of friends, I think. Toby’s away doing god-parent things, Nick’s in Oxford or Cambridge (doing god knows what with god knows who – although I’ll bet it involves women), Rhonda’s in Sussex, Kate and Mella have gone out for breakfast with Tara, Katy is on her way back to Manchester, Evil Nick’s in Harrow, etc etc etc… Meg and Luke aren’t even on AIM. I don’t understand.

Conversations in my head:

• Loyal Reader: Tom? What did you and Katy do last night?
• Tom: We went to see The Sound of Music at the Prince Charles Cinema, Loyal Reader.
• LR: You did what? Why would you do that? I don’t understand!
• Tom: We went to see The Sound of Music. Sheesh – it’s not that hard to understand.
• LR: Let me get this straight. You and Katy went to the cinema to see an absurdly long Julie Andrews musical that you can see on TV every single Bank Holiday, Easter and Christmas. And you went on a Friday night?
• Tom: I can see how you might think that was slightly strange – but really – this was a special screening of the movie. At this screening, they put subtitles on for all the songs and you are supposed to sing along, and people get dressed up in fancy dress (and there’s a competition for the best Nun) and there are props (just like when you go to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show). And there’s an intermission and popcorn and coke and it’s four hours long and there’s Austria and Nazis and “High on a Hill was a…” and “Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes…”. It’s COOL, OK?!
• LR: Fuck this, I’m off to kottke.org
• Tom: Hello? Hello? Is there anyone there?

OK. There’s this writer called Grant Morrison, right? And he’s, like, absurdly talented and witty, and has been written about in academic tomes on postmodernity. His work sells in the hundreds of thousands of copies a month, and he may or may not have been the creative force behind The Matrix, depending on who you believe. He mainly writes comic books – pretty fucked-up comic books if the truth be told – about freakish superheroes, the nature of reality, anarchy, evolution, revolution and bald men, who wear leather and fight the establishment.

Way back in the mists of time, he also created this little character called Flex Mentallo, a character who literally leapt off the page. He was a poor skinny little boy, who had sand kicked in his face on the beach. His girlfriend thought he was pathetic and went off with the bully. He studied muscle building arts, and then his girlfriend wanted him back.

Any of this sound familiar? Charles Atlas Ltd. thought so (and rightly, since the comic strip follows almost exactly the Atlas comic strips of the seventies and eighties) and swiftly sued. And why did they sue? [“Sand Kicked in the Face of Charles Atlas”]

Because in Morrison’s version, “Mac” doesn’t just write off for some guides to muscle-building. Instead, he meets a strange man down a dark-alley who has a television instead of a forehead, whose arms trail cans of some kind and who is continually smoking three cigarettes. The man offers Mac the knowledge to make him a master of the arts of Muscle Mystery – and thus to be able to cloud men’s minds, look into other dimensions and generate a “Hero Halo” which hovers above him, saying “Hero of the Beach”. But above and beyond all this, what really pissed off Charles Atlas Ltd, was that when the cooing girlfriend turns around to Mac and says: “Oh Mac! You are a real man after all!”, he replies (while pushing her off him), “That’s right. I am a real man and I don’t need a tramp like you anymore!” (before wandering off into the sunset in his swimming trunks – Hero Halo a-blazing.”

Ceci n’est-ce pas une meme. In fact, if you ask me, it’s a bloody con. If you must, look deeper.

Hmmm. I can’t even remember if I mentioned this one, so I will now. Yet another little design project for timeout.com – the Budweiser: The Bigger Picture Offers page. If you’re interested, you should sign up. I might be there…

One side of a conversation with Katy last night between the restaurant and the tube station:

• “I do not get boring when you’re out of the city.”
• “No, I have had no sex for the last three weeks.”
• “If you really need a snog then snog one of these people. They look like they need it.”
• “Really? Since 2pm you say…?”
• “It’s raining. Can we talk about this somewhere dry?”
• “Are you sure you can walk?”
• “The text message said, ‘Have succumbed to desire for junk food’, Katy, and I was there when you received it.”
• “Yes, I know you spent the afternoon with Evil Nick – that was who the text message was from.”
• “Yes, I do remember what the text message said.”
• “Yes I know you’ve been drinking since 2pm.”
• “In Corny’s flat you say?”
• “Can I borrow your mobile to text message Corny and Evil Nick?”
• “Why are you spending all your time with my friends?”
• “No I didn’t text message them saying that you wanted to shag them.”
• “No I did not say, “Why are you shagging all my friends’.”
• “Are you shagging all my friends?”
• “Drinking since 2pm? Really? I didn’t know that…”
• “Are you really sure you can walk?”

I’ve scanned the Evening Standard article and put it up on the site. You can link to it directly here: http://www.plasticbag.org/images/extra/standard_article.gif. And before you ask, the journalist who wrote the article, Debbie Barham (who came to the UK webloggers meeting last night) apologised for the headline. We must remember, my friends, that headlines are the territory of Editors and Sub-Editors, not Journalists themselves. And you know how we all hate Editors.

The evening was pretty cool, all things considered – we all met up outside Ben and Jerry’s on Leicester Square at 7pm (except Katy, already drunk, rolled up ten minutes later). From there we wandered off to a Japanese restaurant where people took photos, made bad jokes, referenced each others lives and talked about weblogging. At around 10 – Katy and I rolled off home – but more about the trip from the restaurant to the tube later in the day…

There’s a London meeting tonight of webloggers this evening, with many luminaries of the UK geek scene lurking in and around Leicester Square. I’m quite looking forward to it – particularly as I get to see Katy. If it gets dull, after all, she and I can duck off and go catch a movie.

“Blog on for an ego trip”: So there was an article on weblogs in London’s Evening Standard a few days ago, based around interviews with Katy of kitschbitch.com, Meg of notsosoft.com and myself. I knew that it was upcoming, but it has been being delayed for weeks while various editors have been on holiday. I only found out about it when a couple of people e-mailed me referencing it – and when a work colleague mentioned it to me in the pub.

The article takes the form of an introduction or promo of the weblog format, and so is necessarily quite superficial, but it includes a good selection of “starter-blogs”, including The Breast Chronicles. Mark is going to be pissed off though – he’s mentioned, but there’s no URL:

“Recently, the pair [Katy and Tom] met up with Mark Olynciw, a 15-year old blogger from Connecticut, and chronicled the experience from three different perspectives. So what does Mark’s mother think about his obsession? Oh, she’s cool about it. Because she’s got her own blog: at launch.nu/momblog.”

I’ll try and scan it and get it up on the site shortly (assuming no one else beats me to it).

All I can say is thank god this month is nearly over. I ran out of money weeks ago and finally get paid tomorrow. Which means I probably have enough money to eat, and to get cable television.