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Daily Blah for... Monday, August 26, 2002
Burn, Baby, Burn
What a week it's been -- and what a week it's about to be. I'm on my way to the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada for the annual Burning Man festival (my fourth) with my friends Bill and Dave (their first). They flew in from New York on Friday, and we spent the weekend arguing every topic under the sun, as is our wont, and making hugely expensive trips to camping supply shops and thrift stores and supermarkets for all our survival and costume and power bar needs. Bill and Dave are Burning Man virgins, but they've taken to the Burning Man ideal of surreal performance art fun like a duck to dihydrous monoxide. Already they feel like citizens of Black Rock City. Our excitement and anticipation though sometimes clouded by exhaustion, is palpable. But the car is packed, the water is drawn, and in an hour or so now, we'll be on our way.
Joy of joys -- an e-mail arrives from my friend Aaron, already on the Black Rock playa constructing his art project, which unfortunately I have been asked not to tell you about yet but which is very cool. He's sending the e-mail from the playa itself. They have an 802.11b wi-fi network out there this year! Good thing Apple just sent me an extra wireless-ready laptop (loaded with the cool new operating system, Jaguar). This means, of course, that even though I am going to be in one of the most remote and harsh environments in America, I will still be able to check my e-mail and write blog entries. You haven't heard much from me last week. You'll hear a lot more next week, given how much of the day (as opposed to the riotous night) is spent sitting around escaping the sun. Expect a lot more exhausted, excitable missives like this one.
Daily Blah for... Monday, August 19, 2002
Green Machines
For those of you keeping tabs, I also wrote a little piece for this week's cover package on How to Save the Earth. It's about ten environmentally-friendly technologies of the coming century.
Apple's Hardcore Strikes Again
I knew my Time column this week -- "The Little Penguin that Could" -- would irk the Macintosh faithful. That's because it's all about Linux as a viable alternative to Windows, and mentions MacOS but once. A heresy of the first order, of course, and one Machead has already chided me for "trashing Apple." Quite right. Not talking about Apple more than once = trashing Apple. I understand that equation. Another asks why I don't write about OS X instead. Naturally I already have, but the result is not likely to be to his taste.
Brand X Does Blogging
It had to happen eventually: Dear old Newsweek has finally discovered the existence of blogs. Six months after I set up Daily Blah and wrote about how to try your hand at creating a blog in Time, Steven Levy produces one himself. Clever fella! Unfortunately, it's not a real blog. It's a pastiche of one for the benefit of Brand X's print edition. Funny, that, to set oneself up as a blogging expert -- with video interview, no less -- and yet produce nothing more in the genre than a week's worth of cursory entries under the ham-handed title "a blog about writing about blogs." Not to mentioning promising what he doesn't deliver: in the entry on Waking Life (which, by curious coincidence, I also wrote about in the Blah many months ago), there is a link to "my favorite 100 movies". Has Levy taken the time to sit down and compile such a list for our edification? That would be impressive. Alas, no, the link merely takes us to the Internet Movie Database's homepage. No doubt the IMDB does contain Levy's top 100 movies, but it might have been helpful if he'd given us a clue as to how to sift out the other 100,000 or so.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see Levy really get involved in the world of blogging. I'd love to see if he's up to the challenge of producing something on a semi-regular basis, unpaid, unheralded, for nothing but the love of the written word. C'mon, Steven. If I can do it, so can you.
Start Spreading the New New York
I knew my former hometown was in an apocalyptic mood, but I never expected to see The Village Voice do a big take on how to clone the whole of New York in the event of nuclear annihilation -- and in a not-so-jocular tone, too.
Nonetheless, I think any kind of insurance against the unimaginable is a good idea. I remember my silent fear in Times Square on New Year's Eve 1999, as the seconds ticked down towards midnight and I stood on the roof of the MTV studios helping to shower confetti into the canyon below, that the next (and last) thing I would see would be a vast white flash of vaporizing light as some millennium midnight bomb was detonated by some terrorist in the crowd below. The loss of friends and self would obviously have been a bummer, but mostly I remember thinking what a pity it would be that pretty much everything I'd ever written would be vaporized along with me. It was then that I resolved to start to get more of my writing online, where words can (theoretically) live forever even if cities start disappearing.
Et voila.
Daily Blah for... Saturday, August 17, 2002
One Born Every Minute
Funny that I should get so wound up by a badly-written Reuters story today. Yesterday I had to assure a friend, an intelligent and well-educated friend, that the following e-mail spoof she received was not a real Reuters story:
Bush OK's Summary Executions Of Some Designated As Terrorists
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a surprise move sure to raise outcries from
foreign governments, civil liberties groups and others, The White House
today announced with little fanfare that effective immediately, certain
individuals whom President Bush or other high-level Administration
members have designated as terrorists are subject to summary execution
by either Homeland Security operatives, U.S. intelligence operatives,
and in some cases by U.S. military personnel.
The presidential directive applies to both U.S. and foreign citizens,
both within and outside the United States territory.
The White House gave notice of the new policy in as quiet a way as
possible, making the announcement late Sunday evening from Crawford,
Texas. The unprecedented move is thought certain to generate a firestorm
of protest from numerous quarters.
Part of my reasoning for why it was obviously fake, apart from the utterly ludicrous suggestion that the White House could keep a policy like that quiet by releasing it late Sunday, was the poor reporting and the poor wording. "They didn't quote anyone," I said. "And the writing is practically illiterate. I mean, 'numerous quarters?' 'Sure to raise outcries?'" I should have held my tongue. Evidently, the Appleson piece is life's way of showing me that a real Reuters story can be every bit as badly done as a fake one.
The hoax story made me curious, though. Who put it out there, and to what purpose? I mean, I'm no friend of Bush or the near-dictatorial arrogance of his administration, but spreading bullshit stories about executions is no way to fight it. It's not even a particularly amusing way to satirize it. All it does is cry wolf, and make the real crimes -- the detainment of thousands of unnamed citizens, the bid to light the Middle East tinderbox by attacking Iraq -- seem mild by comparison. If I was the conspiracy theory type, I might suggest the e-mail itself emanated from Crawford. Good thing I'm not the conspiracy theory type, eh?
The Day the Music Died (Part 94)
Who the hell is Gail Appleson? Why is she working for Reuters? This wire story, which bears her byline but might as well have been written by the Recording Industry Association of America, is one of the worst excuses for journalism I've seen in my life (and believe me, I've seen some pretty bad excuses for journalism). It's about a suit that the usual RIAA suspects -- yes, the same folks that brought Napster to its knees -- brought against the companies who provide the backbone of the Internet. The suit says (to use the three words that Appleson uses at the beginning of each bleedin' paragraph) that people like AT&T, UUNet and Cable & Wireless are responsible for letting us unsuspecting Netizens view a site called Listen4ever.com, based out of China. Why is the RIAA so worried about Listen4ever? You guessed it -- because it offers free music. Since they can't go after a Chinese website, the big labels decided to sue, in effect, the whole goddamned Internet itself.
It's one of the most ludicrous tilting-at-windmills of our times. How can the backbone of the network be held responsible for what we see on it? Should UUNet be sued because neo-Nazi websites exist? Is AT&T a purveyor of child porn? No, I say, and no again. We, the creators and readers of the Internet, are the only ones responsible for its content under law. The backbone is just this big dumb thing we use to get our stuff over. It has no moral culpability. If a mobster orders a murder using a cellphone, we don't sue the cellphone provider. If a wife stabs her husband with a kitchen knife, we don't haul the cutlery company into court.
The music industry is getting desperate to stop the free movement of MP3s. It is running out of ideas. The scene in the boardrooms of Sony, Vivendi et al must be starting to look like the last days of Hitler's bunker, with increasingly insane demands for fantastical counterattacks being issued: "I've got it! Let's sue the Internet!"
But will you get even the slightest scintilla of a hint of a suggestion that this lawsuit might possibly be frivolous from Appleson's reporting? No, you will not. Did she bother to call a single human being to talk about the story? No again. Did she, in fact, do anything but paraphrase the lawsuit and mangle the English language ("The labels have blamed file-sharing on weak sales and lower profits" -- sorry, dear, it's the other way around)? No thrice. I sincerely hope Ms. Appleson is a summer intern who got her big break late one Friday afternoon when no one else was left in the office. If she's actually an employee of Reuters, I fear for the future of that once-noble wire service. If this is what passes for journalism these days, God help my industry.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, August 15, 2002
Lost in Space
Oh, for crying out loud. NASA has lost touch with another spacecraft?
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, August 14, 2002
We're Number 206!
Good news for U.S. soccer fans: At last, America has squeaked into the top ten of FIFA's arcane ranking system, level with almighty Italy and only two spaces behind my beloved England. Meantime, it turns out that the world's worst football team is officially Montserrat, ranked 206 out of 206. Montserrat doesn't even exist on my office's Michelin map of the world (so much for Michelin), but is, according to its website, "the emerald jewel of the Carribean." Methinks it's time to take out a classified ad: eleven soccer-playing volunteers wanted to form own nation, take trip to West Indies. Must be able to play way out of paper bag, defeat world's worst national team. Recognition negotiation skills at United Nations a plus. Follow-up trips to Caicos Islands and American Samoa possible. No time-wasters, unless you're talking about juggling the ball in the corner when the clock's at 90 minutes and we're 1-0 up.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, August 13, 2002
The Pringles Payoff
About six weeks ago, you may recall, I penned a Time column called The Pringles Solution, all about driving around looking for free wireless Internet networks, and how this can be enhanced by using an antenna made out of a Pringles can. About a week ago, I received an e-mail from Proctor and Gamble -- owner of Pringles -- saying they'd like to send me some product, and could I send them my address. I duly did so (people are sending me review products all the time) and thought nothing more of it. This morning, a FedEx package containing six twin-packs of Pringles -- three regular, three sour cream and onion -- showed up on my doorstep. My reactions, in chronological order:
1) I think the Pringles guy is going bald. Or maybe he's having one of my patented bad hairline days.
2) Hey, wait a minute. Is this supposed to be some sort of payoff? Is this my "thank you" for mentioning Pringles in Time? Is there, floating unseen in this package, a nudge and a wink?
3) If so, don't you think I deserve more? What kind of payoff do you call this? Can the soul of a journalist be that easily bought, for three twin-packs of regular and three of sour cream and onion?
4) Mmmmmmm. Sour cream and onion.
5) Mmmmm. Mmmmmmm. Mmmmmm.
6) Mmmmmmmmmmmm! Mmmmmmmm!
7) Oh God. There goes the Zone diet.
8) Sign on the dotted line, Mr. Beelzebub? Why, certainly.
God of War a Bore
The poor old Mars Society, for which I have much sympathy, spent its annual conference battling widespread indifference about our need to go pay a manned visit to the Red planet. If this world is tearing itself apart, reasons the man in the street, why bother setting up shop on the next one? Personally, I think it's time to set up shop on the next one precisely because we're screwing this one up so royally. It's good to have an insurance policy for the human race, no?
NASA and those self-serving short-termists in Congress may not agree. But we don't need them: apparently an interplanetary jaunt sponsored by the private sector will cost a mere $10 billion! Perhaps the MS folks should have shown their impassioned Power Point presentations at the home of that other MS guy, for whom $10 billion is chump change.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, August 11, 2002
Sleepy in Seattle
Our plans shifted somewhat, and Dan, Kathleen and I found ourselves spending Sunday on the other side of the border, hiking it a hundred miles south of Vancouver earlier than anticipated. We're here at the suburban Seattle home of Kathleen's best friend and maid of honor (did I mention those two crazy kids are getting married?), Mikelann.
It wasn't that we weren't enjoying Vancouver. We loved the city -- did I mention the beauty of man-made lights in the mountains all around the north side of the city, which in the dark cloak of night look like some sort of heaven, hanging there in Jackson Pollock patterns in the sky? It was that our initial attempts to make contact with a Burning Man veterans, a global community of which the three of us are part, did not meet with much success. Probably our fault -- we left it late in the day to meet up, to fulfill the obligations of "just drop by anytime", and got stuck in the traffic and roadblocks attending a three-country fireworks contest downtown after dark. But what we found, after a brief and disturbing drive through the grim, heroin-addled underbelly of Hastings street to the suburbs on the eastern side, was a Marie Celeste house.
The lights were on, the door was open and a shower was running somewhere. Nobody answered our calls but two large dogs, who had an enjoyable barking session and stood on the front stoop daring us to venture further. Dan, who is not at all fazed by large dogs, did so, and announced that there was probably someone in the shower. Kathleen stood level with the dogs, holding our ground. I stood paralyzed halfway up the front steps, trying to remember whether you were or were not supposed to make eye contact with large dogs that are in a defending-territory mood.
As if on cue, the dogs stopped and wandered back inside, wagging tails, flush with the excitement of it all. There followed an awkward interview with a newly-showered woman in a towel, in which it was established that the person we had contacted, Patrick, was not at the residence. No further information was volunteered, but presumably she knew who we were talking about. At least, she didn't say "who's Patrick?" The situation was probably as weird for her as for us.
A little shaken up by the barking and the sense of intrusion, Dan and Kathleen and I repaired to Commercial Street for tequila, tapas and a herkin' big piece of New York steak. We discussed their wedding and my role in it (being an attendant, and hosting the after-party). We could have gone to the next location offered by the local community, where a party was apparently in full swing. But it was late, and we were all rather tempted to head across the border to the comfort of Mikelann's. We are, in other words, getting old. A long night of partying would no doubt have been fun, but we would have paid a heavy price in losing most of Sunday. Why not spend a full day in Seattle before my flight back to San Francisco on Monday morning? Why not beat the rush and long lines at the border that were bound to come at the end of a weekend? Two-and-a-half hours on the road was all it would take.
Heh.
At about 6am, in the misty Washington morning, I was jogged awake just as we were pulling up at Mikelann's door. The border crossing had taken longer than we'd expected -- so long that we were able to watch a good portion of my Survivor DVD in the car in the queue. What is it, guys, are we looking extra-hard for terrorists tonight? And ever since the border, the poor Westfalia had been trying to alert us to something by blinking a red light, unfailingly, four minutes after we'd stopped the last time. We stopped and checked the oil and stopped and changed the oil and stopped and opened up the engine and looked for tubes that were doing things they oughtn't. But nothing seemed to satisfy that blinking red light, the automobile equivalent of a baby crying. And we were like frazzled parents sitting at the crib. We let the poor thing limp along at 45mph, watched the rising temperature gauge like a baby thermometer, debated earnestly whether we were pushing it too far. It had turned out to be quite a night of adventure after all.
Should we have stayed in Vancouver? Would it have been even harder to push the Westy on that trip during the daytime? Was the point of it all that we ended up having a well-earned, slap-up breakfast of salmon omeletes and mocha milkshakes at Seattle's amazing Mae's Cafe? Who knows. But I try not to regret missed parties. Sometimes the road more or less traveled makes all the difference.
Glass Act
The one book about Vancouver I wanted to buy, before I balked at the $25 asking price -- City of Glass, by that quirky stylist and self-appointed Gen X guru, Douglas Coupland. Everything someone of my age would want to know about living here, about the way it feels, in esoteric A-Z listings. If only he hadn't included a bunch of faux-photocopied pages taken from Life After God, which is thus even more slapdash than the first time it was published, I would have gone for it. Click here for a review.
Daily Blah for... Saturday, August 10, 2002
Vancouver Vacation
Again, I find myself having to apologize for not posting for so long. Sorry, folks. It's been a hectic week. But here I am in a drugstore Internet cafe in fabulous Vancouver, B.C. (that's British Columbia, rather than Before Christ, although come to think of it, I probably did make it here before Him). I'm here for several reasons:
1) My friends Dan and Kathleen, who took off from San Francisco for an extensive six-month trip up and down the West coast in their Westfalia, wanted to hook up for the weekend. So did I. It's been too long.
2) I've always wanted to see the city. Some of my favorite authors (Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Douglas Coupland, Spider Robinson) live in these parts, and there's got to be something to that gathering of great minds.
3) When I was about five or six or so, and dreaming of where I would live when I grew up (still waiting for that last part), I spun my child's globe and stuck my finger on the American west coast. I liked the idea of living next to the world's largest ocean. But the United States was, at the time, too scary a prospect; synonymous in my mind with guns and crime and all the other craziness we saw on the roughly 50% of British TV that came syndicated from the U.S. So I looked north, slightly across the border. Vancouver. It seemed as good a place as any. Since then, it seems, I haven't stopped hearing about it out of the corner of my ear. It's a cleaner, milder version of San Francisco, they say.
And now I'm here? First impressions are positive. Dan and Kathleen and I took a walk this afternoon through some delightful suburbs with lazy houses and large windows looking down onto a fabulous beach where the mussel shells crunch underfoot and blackberry bushes hang by the side of the wall and you can walk clear through to the tower blocks downtown along the beach if you want to. What a commute that would be. Vancouverites are unerringly friendly, as far as we have seen. Tonight we find out more. Tonight we party.
Daily Blah for... Friday, August 02, 2002
Lego Latest
Here at Daily Blah I'm always proud to bring you the latest fad in amusing, time-wasting amateur web fare. Today's 15 minutes of fame goes to: the guy who got Lego people to build his computer.
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