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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
Oh My God, the RSS Feed Actually Works!
Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
"The Blah is becoming a daily destination for me." - Richard Marsh, Playwright
"I like it, and I don't." - Fiona Hogg, Teacher
"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
Friends, Bloggers, Countrymen ... lend your ears to these people. I come not to bury them, but praise them.
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Dan
Cole
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Mac
Robin
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Souris
Mr. West
My TIME articles
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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Letter To George
Dear President Bush,
I just got a letter this morning from Mercer Reynolds, your finance chairman. "Dear friend," it began, erroneously enough, "can I count on your support?" Reynolds went on to say that you yourself had told him what a great friend I'd been to you over the last several years. Now some might say this is just another lie in a long list of whoppers you've told, but I figured it was an easy mistake to make. After all, you just had that nasty bicycle accident. And your brain probably got jostled about a bit that time you got throttled by a pretzel. Besides, you've admitted you don't read the media, and all of the people you're allowed to meet have so much praise for you that it's easy to believe the rest of the country feels the same way. Perhaps you like to imagine the two of us out on the deck of the Oval Office one night, smoking cigars, playing chess (yes, the game with the horsies) and laughing into the wee hours at all your amusing nicknames.
Far be it from me to dash anyone's dreams, George, but I'm not your friend. Your party does not owe me a "debt of gratitude for the sacrifices you've made." And no, I'm not entirely grateful that you want to fingerprint me every time I cross the border. So alas, my answer to the question "can I count on your support?" is "no, I'd rather poke my eyes out with a large stick stolen from a medical laboratory where they put cancer cells on the end of large sticks."
Did the San Francisco address not tip you off? What possible connection could anything I've done have to the Republican cause? Is it because I did not send back my tax cut in protest? Was my face not scanned and filed at the antiwar rallies? I have to say, if your party is wasting its time and resources sending out mailings to people like me, it's no wonder your massive war chest isn't making a dent on Kerry's increasing lead. Hmmm, come to think of it ... sign me up for a truckload of brochures! I'll take 'em all.
My Milkshake Bringeth ...
Seems I'm not the only netizen obsessed with creating alternate lyrics for the milkshake song. Someone has gone to the trouble of creating a medieval tapestry version. More, please.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, May 23, 2004
Mini Me
Now here's an interesting screenshot:
That would be me as an avatar in the E3 demo of "Playboy: the Mansion." About a month before the show, the PR guys for the game asked me for a picture and a release form so they could make me a character in the game -- at least, in the E3 version of the game. Sure, I said. Does that mean you want a shot of me from head to toe? No, they said, just the head will do. "There are only two body types in the game," said the lead Playboy PR guy. "Slim and athletic." Fine by me ...
So hectic was the show that I only got to the Playboy booth on the last day, Friday. (There was the party at the Playboy Mansion, of course, but the only person getting a demo that night was Hef. I wasn't in much of a state to fix my attention on a computer screen, which is saying something.) The booth guy took Dan and myself through the game. There was my character, in the virtual Hef's black book. I was a little surprised to discover I'd been transformed into an Aries when in reality I'm a Scorpitarius. As you can probably tell, I was never really one for astrology, and a misplaced star sign mattered less than the fact that my physique and charm could not match the level of my intellect. And none of them were exactly off the charts. What the hell. We all have our crosses to bear. Plus I got a slim/athletic body out of the deal.
So virtual Hef, controlled by the booth guy, throws a party. He invites a dozen guests, including me. We show up at the door and mingle. Hef introduces me to a bunny. And I am surprised, not to say a little concerned, about virtual me's attempts to flirt with her. Here's a sample:
Yes, when I should have been trying to wow her with my relatively superior intellect, there I am displaying my biceps. More embarrasment was to come when I started hugging the bunny. Luckily Dan did not take a picture of this. Even more luckily, P was not with us, and I had some time to work on my excuses. "It was just a hug! She wasn't even a real bunny! It wasn't even the real me!"
Daily Blah for... Saturday, May 22, 2004
Quote of the Month
"Everything on the Internet is interesting -- for about a minute."
-- Anonymous friend of friend. If you can identify the original speaker, please ask them to step forward. First of all, they were channeling Warhol at the time. Secondly, I think this will become the defining geek culture phrase of the 00's the way "on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog" was in the 90's.
Daily Blah for... Friday, May 21, 2004
Truth Status: Not Handling It
Love David Wong's description of The Ultimate War Sim. I want to play that too. Why not make a war game that more accurately reflects the hopeless incompetence of modern warfare? Scroll down to the bottom for the excellent riff on Jack Nicholson's seminal scene in A Few Good Men.
Sing Song
Here it is: the complete song list for Karaoke Revolution 2, the sequel to the videogame I tapped as Time's top pick of 2003. It's due out in July, and I can't wait (rumor has it the game comes with a new duet feature). I'm downloading these titles as we speak. Anyone who comes round our place had better get their singing voices ready (actually, this game helped me discover I know an inordinate amount of people with good pipes). I especially can't wait to make my male friends discover their inner Britney Spears. But why only one Sinatra hit?
Baby One More Time Jesse’s Girl
Born To Be Wild Lady Marmalade
Cry Let’s Get It On
Drift Away Miss You
Every Breath You Take My Girl
Friends In Low Places Papa Don’t Preach
Genie in a Bottle Perfect
Heartbreak Hotel Rich Girl
Here Without You Rock and Roll All Night
Hot Stuff Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay
I Believe in a Thing Called Love Sweet Home Alabama
I Hate Everything About You The First Cut is the Deepest
I Will Survive The Joker
I’ll Make Love to You Toxic
I’m With You Virtual Insanity
Irresistible We Are Family
It’s My Life White Flag
I’ve Got You Under My Skin
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Letter From America
Since I've been obsessively turning my tapes into MP3s, as I mentioned before, I've been constantly stunned by the kinds of things I now have access to on my iPod -- and since I tend to play it on random, the kind of things that start to crop up by pure chance. For instance, I now have about 20 Alistair Cooke talks on the thing. Cooke is the late, veteran BBC radio broadcaster best known on this side of the pond for hosting Masterpiece Theater (and what a good idea that was, getting a Brit to introduce Brit dramas). But back where I came from, he was better identified as the velvet voice that came on Radio 4 on weekend mornings, slowly reading the rich reportage known as Letter From America, as warm and familiar as toast with marmalade and tea. More importantly, he was a good teller of stories with a magnificent ear for languages.
The picture Cooke painted of America is at least partly responsible for my being here today. Which is not to say I can remember, as a child, knowing precisely what he was talking about. But I do have a lasting impression of being completely enraptured by stories of a country as bizarre as any imaginary fairyland. And here I am today, in one of America's many magical kingdoms.
I also have a strong aural memory of his lilt, his pitch, his timing. If I were to flatter myself, I would imagine that some of it has unconsciously seeped into my writing style. He could make any of the craziest goings-on in this fantasyland seem quite benign. His tone was often one of faint bemusment, but also calm, learned, gentlemanly. You got a sense of someone whose inner peace would not be disturbed by Armageddon. If we were lucky, his would be the last voice we heard on the radio as the bombs dropped: "Good morning. By now, you're probably aware of the impending end of the world brought about by last week's slight disagreement between the American President and the Russian Premier. This reminds me in a rather amusing way of something that happened during the Watergate scandal ..." Boom.
Cube Bot
You know what takes too much time out of modern life? Solving the rubik's cube. If only there were a robot built out of Legos that could do it for you. Oh wait! There is!
Divine Investment
Overheard yesterday at Trader Joes: a woman passing by on her cellphone saying "I paid it off, thanks to the Lord."
My first thought was: Gosh, you don't hear that name bandied about very often in San Francisco.
My second thought was: Has God gone into the money-lending business? It wouldn't be such a bad move. He's got a strong brand identity. He's already trusted by a majority of consumers. And you really don't want to default on your loan payments to that guy. Talk about your equity being at risk.
Swap Shop
Got a Gmail account? Want a postcard of turtles humping? Then head over to Gmailswap.com, where people are prepared to offer all sorts of random stuff (from "really good cookies" to "being your virtual sex slave") in exchange for the still-exclusive email service. Somewhere in Mountain View, Larry and Sergey are laughing their asses off.
For myself, I don't much use my Gmail account. And I have no compunction about trying to get the highest price for it. But really, who's going to want to use ctaylor@gmail.com except another C. Taylor?
Thanks, Dan!
Daily Blah for... Thursday, May 13, 2004
E3 Excuse
This week I haven't been posting because ... because I've been caught up in LA's annual festival of sound and fury (signifying? Nothing), the E3 convention.
Some quick impressions:
The crowds are insane. Next year they'll be issuing the booth babes with cattle prods.
There is an immense profusion of games featuring zombies. Killing zombies with guns. Running over zombies with cars. One company told me they were very proud of their "progressive dismemberment system," which allowed you to hack off undead extremities limb by limb. It's like the Red Scare of the 50's sparking the popularity of aliens in science fiction. This anti-Al Qaeda societal psychosis is brought to you by ... zombies!
So why do I come here? I come here for the non-zombie games, the games whose booths do not have to annihilate your eardrums to get your attention. Games like the Sims 2, which is perhaps the most in-depth work of art about life and aging I've ever seen. Like the Movies and Black and White 2 and every other God game Peter Molyneaux puts his understated, witty British imprimatur on. Like Rome: Total War, which is so damn realistic the BBC and the History Channel have both started documentaries simulating historical battles using the game.
Then there are the parties. Of course. That's why I come. The Playboy party, on Tuesday night, with Hef, up at the Playboy Mansion ... nah, that's going to require a whole other post.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, May 06, 2004
Really? You Don't Say Dept.
This just in: States with higher average IQs vote Democrat. Plus every state above the national IQ average of 100, except for New Hampshire, went for Gore. I'd be rather interested in hearing a conservative response to this. How would they account for it? Skewed statistics, perhaps? Was the 2000 election a one-off? Maybe they would twist themselves into philosophical pretzels arguing the progressive position that IQ tests are an unfair gage of intelligence. Or perhaps they'd simply come clean and admit they've built a vast voting bloc of politically naive rural folk -- the kind of voter that respond well to simple messages of fear, greed and self-righteousness. Just perhaps.
Mendocino and Meds
Where's he gone, I hear you cry? It's been a whole damn week.
Well, I got sick. P and I spent a long weekend in Mendocino. It was gorgeous up there, all sunshine and secluded forest and rivers and fresh ocean breezes. My favorite environment: trees and water in close collaboration. We had a tiny cottage with a fireplace and a private garden adjacent to a B&B, and fed ourselves almost exclusively with a big box of Peasant Pies and my new favorite kitchen gadget, the Panini Press. It was all very twee, not to mention inspirational. I got a lot of writing done and that alone was worth all the nastiness that followed.
On the last night I caught a chill. God knows how -- spending too long in the sun not drinking enough water? Like a mild sunstroke? Can that give you a chill once the night sets in? All I knew is a dozen blankets and a roaring fire couldn't halt the shivers. P kept the fire going most of the night. By the morning I felt slow-roasted: crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. (Mmmm ... Peking duck ...)
So we drove back, and I slept the day, and woke in the evening to find I had the same damn leg infection/fever thingie that hospitalized me back in October 2002. Once again, my left leg below the knee swelled up like a beet, which is a very inconsiderate thing to do without notifying me in advance. We had at least learned a few things from the previous trauma. P swung into action, grabbed a Sharpie and drew lines around the swelling (so we could tell if it was spreading; sure enough, after a couple of hours, it was coloring outside the lines). She also insisted on driving me into UCSF's emergency room for immediate after-hours treatment.
Now UCSF has a reputation as one of the best hospitals in the world, but you wouldn't guess that from the state of its ER this week. They've built a new wing, but because the rooms for critical patients aren't ready yet, they're not letting any patients in -- a classic piece of bureaucratic thinking. Meanwhile all the electrics in the old ER rooms had been ripped out, with the upshot that everyone was being treated on gurneys in the corridors. Welcome to the third world.
Treatment proceeded at a glacial pace. We had to endure six hours of flourescent-lit gurney-bound boredom punctuated by the occasional X-ray, clipboard questionaire about my religion or lack therof, and a ditzy blonde nurse from LA who had a very hard time figuring how to get blood out of me. My fever spiked to 102 while I was in there, and I'm sure it had something to do with me being boiling mad. And the end result? At 2 in the morning, they promised to let me go as soon as the nurse came with my antibiotics prescription. At 3 in the morning, she finally arrived. Thanks, guys. Another great advertisement for western medicine.
A good couple of days with my leg up at home, which was probably all I needed all along, has done me the world of good. Fortunately my copy of the House of Cards DVD trilogy arrived at much the same time, so I'm steadily gorging my way through that. And I have some wonderful people in my life who came and cooked for me as soon as my appetite returns. Friends: always the best medicine. (How's that for an ending as twee as a B&B?)
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