Recently in etc. Category

Accidentally created by Paul, in an IM conversation:

blonk (v.)

To blog without notable creativity, inspiration or merit; covering the same ground trod by countless others in the echo chamber; blogging as an alternative to thinking.
"I was going to write a considered piece about climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, but I've just been blonking pictures of my cat."

(Not deliberately invoking the Mornington Crescent exclamation, but not totally unrelated either, if one considers the infinite space in which we play this game as a giant board, with 80% of the players continually shunting into each other on the Just Quoting an A-Lister square. Or, for that matter, on the Making Up New Words about Blogging square.)

We're deeply grateful, if occasionally mystified, by the huge outpouring of emotion you've sent our way. Now, if you could redirect some of that emotion towards stringing idiots like this up by their testicles, we'd be even more grateful. Live8 happened because, believe it or not, there are more important issues in this world than terrorism. If you really do care about us, we'd appreciate it if your media would actually listen to what we have to say, and not merely use this as an excuse to put your government's stupid, pointless crusade back on the agenda. Having now had a brief local reminder of what war can be, we don't like it very much, and we'd like it to stop. All of it. Ta very.

... and rather late, due to wedding prep taking up most of my spare time. (Was finally prompted by Doc.) The summary: I'm fine, Bob's fine, everyone I know is fine, several hundred people in my city are not fine, and at least 37 of them are dead. But, compared to New York and Madrid, we got off pretty lightly. Personally, I slept through it all, just like I did on September 11th (I was in Oregon at the time) - Bob woke me up at 11 and told me what was going on. And, once I'd done the phoning and emailing and watched my various networks of friends go through their internal diagnostic routines to satisfaction, we went shopping. (The LJ is where most of my personal rambling will be appearing from now on - I needed a place where I felt more freedom to talk complete bollocks. Oh, you know what I mean.)

This was not our September 11th. This was something we've dealt with before, repeatedly, with the various IRA campaigns and the nail bomber. The typical Londoner's response to an explosion was best summarised by Eddie Izzard: "What? A bomb? Where? Victoria? Shit! No, wait... if I change onto the Metropolitan Line, take the 130 from King's Cross..." That doesn't make it less horrific, but nor does it radically change things like 9-11 did. And god, I hope it doesn't. The American reaction to terrorism was to shout about the freedom and liberties that the enemy was trying to take away, followed by the US Government taking many of those freedoms away instead. (Along with chucking tons of cash at utterly useless countermeasures - Schneier's message of support is particularly noteworthy) If this gives the government's stupid and irrelevant ID card campaign a boost, that would be a great way for the terrorists to have fucked our lives over.

The attack today wasn't about body count - if they'd just wanted to kill people, there are almost certainly more effective routes that could have been taken. It was about infrastructure: immobilisation, inconvenience, massive economic damage. It was about bringing a city to a standstill, making it another blaring distress beacon heard around the world. Fortunately - thanks entirely to the astonishing efforts of the emergency services and those who keep London running - things will be mostly back to normal tomorrow.

Maybe I'm being too flippantly insensitive about what's happened today. I know I'm not sufficiently communicating the shock that I feel, and I've never been good at that. But if we really want to hit back at those who did this to us, one of the best ways is just not to give them the satisfaction of turning our lives upside-down, making their tactics as pointless as possible. We should care, and not try to pretend that we don't - but we shouldn't let that change things for the worse. We bury our dead, we fix the damage, we donate some blood, and we go about our business as free and as loud as ever.

Rebranding: always a pain. Throwing huge amounts of cash at pretentious design consultancies with interminable meetings about "core values", endless iterations with focus groups, worries about brand recognition... then one department folds its arms and refuses to budge, and you have to start all over again. Plus, there's all the effort you have to put into protection of the trademark and prosecution of infringement - because, for a brand to work, it has to have meaning.

It's slightly harder when the brand in question is literally designed to save lives.

Oh, that Rod Begbie! Distracting me so! (Tries to hide gleeful hand-rubbing.) This is one of those pass-it-on blog memes, I'm afraid, and it's all about books.

The long-awaited, breathlessly-anticipated, much-debated Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy arrives on UK screens today, with the USA following tomorrow.

I recommend that you go see it. After you have done so, please let me know what you think of it.

Despite there having been several positive reviews of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie before his, MJ Simpson's vitriolic slamming has been getting more linkage than all the rest combined. This is mainly because, as someone who wrote a book about Douglas Adams, it's generally considered that he should know what he's talking about. (Oh, and also because it fulfils all the "I knew they'd screw it up!" paranoia which so many fans seem to treasure.)

To redress the balance somewhat from the only negative review that's appeared, here are some slightly-more-positive ones:

Yoz: let me see if I've got this straight in my head
Yoz: The company that made Tomb Raider has been bought by a company named after a song written for the Tomb Raider movie by the guy who's on the board of said company
Yoz: have I got it?
Tim: oh, I don't know
Tim: all I know is
Tim: it's annoying because it looks like it's annoying because it's yoz.
Yoz: Thim.
Tim: Npoz.

For those of you who haven't yet heard (forgive me, I've been really disorganised and somewhat relying on network effects): The shortest audioblog post evar. (200k mp3)

Date: Fri Oct 29 13:45:53 2004 PDT
From: ?
To: *Short Attention Span Theater (#75504)

First they came for the Jews and I said nothing because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the homosexuals and I said nothing because I was not a homosexual.
Then I realized that there would never be anything good on television ever again.