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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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Mr. West
My TIME articles
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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.
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