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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.
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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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Daily Blah for... Friday, August 26, 2005
Burning Hiatus
Q: Mr. Taylor, you've just edited an entire freakin' magazine cover story in the space of a week. What are you going to do now?
A: I'm going to Burningland! I mean, Man. Any similarity between That Thing in the Desert and a garish theme park are entirely coincidental.
Adios for now, amigos. Your Blah will be back on Labor Day.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, August 24, 2005
The Grey and the Blue
So I think I may have found a solution to the puzzling question posed a couple of posts ago: why do some people think the avenues are foggy year round, while others insist the fog is gone for months at a time? It all depends, I believe, on your definition of a foggy day.
On Sunday, while I was unpacking the last of my boxes (hurrah! Now I only have to put stuff in places ...) a strange thing started happening to the windows of my new house. They started getting brighter. It reminded me of the fears I'd have during the nuclear paranoia phase of my childhood, every time the clouds parted, that this light was no sun, that it would keep on getting brighter and brighter, too fast, until it annihilated us all. Thankfully, those days are far behind me, and so my reaction was not to cower in fear but run for my jacket. Sunshine in the avenues in August. Who knew how long it would last?
Most of the rest of Sunday, as it turned out. I walked up to Land's End, the most gorgeous hiking ground in San Francisco, where the cliffs slope off to the Pacific in one direction and up to tree-covered hills in the other. The fog kept whisping past, threatening to coalesce, occasionally blocking out the sun, never quite getting it together.
Now to a Californian, or a Southwesterner, this may not have counted as a sunny day. You need uninterrupted access to the sun from dawn till dusk for that. But to a Brit like me, any appearance of blue sky means it's summer. We learn to take our sunny days when we can get them, we appreciate the heck out of them, and we're not fussy about how long they last. So if this is what life is going to be like in the avenues -- occasional patches of blue that send me running into the streets, running gleefully and appreciatively all the way to the edge of the western world -- well, I think I can survive.
Daily Blah for... Friday, August 19, 2005
Manhole Explodes. Snooze at 11.
There was an explosion in downtown San Francisco, not ten minutes' walk from where I work, and the first I heard about it was on Google News. Most people seem to be responding to it with a slightly interested shrug, while the national news media makes all the noise. Chill, people, chill: chances are it was just a faulty electrical transformer. Damn transformations.
Funny that I should just be talking about resilience. San Franciscans are a pretty resilient bunch, aren't we? At least, we don't cry global terrorism every time a manhole cover explodes in a pedestrian's face, unlike some U.S. cities I could mention.
Fogtown
Outside my office window right now is the first patch of blue sky I think I've seen since Sunday -- and I only saw that because I went to Oakland.
It's a dismal, grey time, the worst San Francisco summer I've yet seen. The fog descended on us like a suffocating blanket -- so thick and so close that on many days this week, even in the normally sunny Financial district, the condensation looks and feels like rain. Rain in August. Many people I know are sick, or sickening, or just plain depressed, and it's not hard to see why. Fog and depression are not just metaphorically intertwined. For me, the worst of it is that my lovely new house is in what is affectionately known as the fog belt. Is this what it's going to be like all the time for me now? I've solicited opinions from residents and former residents, and received wildly varying answers. Some say we'll get up to 200 days of blue sky a year. Some say none. None whatsoever. I've no idea who to believe, but the thought of a year of unrelenting greyness -- of the sun never, ever gazing munificently on my home -- has got me pretty damn down.
A line from a book review I read last week keeps coming back to me. The opposite of depression, it said, is not happiness. The opposite of depression is resilience. The quiet assurance that you have what it takes to climb out of this hole, however dismal it may seem at this moment. I'm feeling pretty resilient, and I hope you are too. Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of Fogtown ...
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Return of the Presbyterians
There's no better way to start your day than with a virtuous workout (yes, I finally did the California-express-to-gym-thing) followed by a really good, hearty laugh. Today's laugh is brought to you by a Star Wars Episode III DVD bootlegged in China -- with subtitles translated back into English by the lingually-challenged bootleggers. Bad translation is always fun, of course, but this is no ordinary bad translation. This is the Palme d'Or of bad translation. "Jedi Council" becomes "Presbyterian Church"; Obi-Wan is dismissed by Palpatine as "big in nothing, but important in good elephant" and even the title of the movie changes from "Revenge of the Sith" to "Backstroke of the West." Enjoy.
Thanks, Emily!
Daily Blah for... Monday, August 15, 2005
One More Time
The wheels of Time grind slowly, and so it is that my farewell story for the magazine (as its San Francisco correspondent, at least) appears in this week's issue, two weeks after I officially left. And as part of a cover package, no less. Here it is -- a short-but-sweet profile of the short-but-sweet Sara Martinez-Tucker, the highly professional head of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and (thus spake us) one of the 25 most influential Hispanics in America.
And so it's Time to go. The end of Time. Closing Time. Time for a change. I'll miss you, dear stately old magazine. Not least because there are very, very few puns one can make on the name "Business 2.0".
Daily Blah for... Friday, August 12, 2005
Hymn to the 1 California
What is the hardest thing to get used to when working in an office for the first time in five years? Not the workplace itself, which is very cushy (I have my own office, three computers and a view of the Bay). Not the people, whom I adore -- a merry band of smart, sardonic rebels who bring out my own inner smart sardonic rebel. Not the hours -- I don't need to be in before 10am most days. Not the pace, which at a monthly magazine is about four times more chill than that of a weekly like Time, which in turn is five times more relaxed than a daily newspaper. The hardest thing? Say it with me now: it's the commute, stupid.
I didn't think it was going to be such a problem. Then again, before last week, I'd never taken the 1 California. On paper, it seemed ideal. At its downtown end, California is one of the most romantic and well-photographed streets of San Francisco. You pass sweeping hills, trundling cable cars, world-famous hotels and Grace Cathedral. My new workplace is at the very end of California street, and my new house is one block from California street. Thus I would be taking the 1 California to One California, which is a direction even my pre-caffeinated brain can really get to grips with. I'd be leaving the fog belt and entering the sunshine every day, which is as good an incentive as any to go to work. I pictured a speedy steed full (but not too full) of spiffy-looking worker bees who could barely contain their smiles as the sun approached and maybe, just maybe, would break out in song.
At the climax of Lucky Jim, in one of the funniest scenes in literature, Kingsley Amis' hero has a matter of minutes to get to the train station and stop his girlfriend leaving for London -- and he ends up on history's slowest bus. The driver's dawdling behavior and the meditative shuffle of the old dears who amble aboard are described in excruciating detail. I've no idea if he ever visited San Francisco, but the elder Amis could have had no better inspiration than the 1 California.
By the time I get on, the bus is already filled to the brim with the creakiest and crankiest-looking Asian seniors I've ever seen. It makes me want to play Pulp's "Help the Aged" on the iPod every time I board. The morning voyage generally follows this pattern:
1) An interminably long stop while the mechanical steps lower and yet more seniors take tentative steps on or off, as if trying to decide which location suits them better. Oak trees have been known to take root faster. Then, just when the 1 California has lulled you into thinking it is a roadside retirement home rather than a vehicle ...
2) There is a sudden and dramatic lurch. Open containers of liquid go flying. Heads press against the back window. This, you think, is what it must be like to be aboard the Space Shuttle at launch. We must really be going someplace. The queasiness of my flattened stomach will be worth it, because I shall be dispatched to my destination in next to no time. Alas ...
3) Ten seconds later, on the next block, there is an equally dramatic deceleration. The whole sardine can of seniors slides forward, then has to shuffle back from the entrance as we start over again at 1).
Eventually comes the final wound -- just as the bus gets close to the really nice downtown bit of California, it takes a detour. Of course! There are too many lanes to the street at this stage; we're in danger of an on-time arrival. Instead, we take a gentle inch-by-inch tour of the most narrow streets of Chinatown, taking great pains not to scare the pigeons.
In iPod time (which, I'm now convinced, is the best measure for travel) the whole morning commute takes ten songs. Ten songs! I can get from here to San Jose in ten songs. The one day this week I drove and paid exorbitant downtown parking fees, it took three songs.
The other option, apart from slowly going insane, is to get out the door at a shockingly early 8am, take the last 1 California Express (which claims to take about four songs), go directly to the swanky downtown Equinox gym I joined yesterday, and start my day feeling really trim and virtuous.
Then again, is insanity really that bad an option?
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Moving Day
The Herculean task of packing is over. Pat Ryan's boys are carting boxes out of the place while I sit here on my deck one last time on a misty Noe Valley morning. It feels strange in a large number of ways, not least because I get to sit back and watch while someone else does all the work. My muscles seem to scream: shouldn't we be doing something? All the adrenaline I've pumped up over the last week is slowly draining away. Still, there's enough of it left that I wonder why the movers are not moving in a more caffeinated fashion or carrying more stuff in a single load. If Pat himself were here, as he was when I moved in, they probably would be. He's quite the bundle of Irish energy.
So a familiar place is empty. Shouldn't I be feeling sad for all the happy memories associated with it? No -- that grief has been leaking out for weeks. I'm just numb and exhausted and looking forward to the moment when I can lay my head down in a house that isn't going anywhere any time soon. When I get there, of course, I'll probably appreciate the sheer stability for a couple of weeks or so -- and then promptly forget I felt any other way. The line between the securely housed and the not-so-securely housed is as hard to breach as the line between the sick and the not-sick. We express empathy when friends get sick, but few of us ever truly recall the full head-aching, gut-busting agony of it.
Which is probably for the best. Who would willingly carry that cloud around over their heads the whole time? Remember well, though, O securely housed future-me: the urge to nest runs so deep in our primal brains that the knowledge of losing one -- even just not being familiar with our future nest -- can shake the ground beneath our feet harder than San Andreas.
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