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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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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.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
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.
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Daily Blah for... Monday, October 28, 2002
Maui Wowie
Just this minute returned from what, according to Conde Nast Traveler readers, is not only the best island but also the best travel destination in the world. (That same survey lauded San Francisco as the top U.S. city and second only to Paris in the urban world at large, so Conde Nast Traveler readers clearly have their heads screwed on). But yes, Maui exceeded all expectations. It's more than the munificent weather and the god-like bookend volcanic slopes and the out-of-control Birds of Paradise. There's something palpably magical about the place, something you breath in the air, something you catch in the way sunlight plays with ripples on the surf, something you feel coming round all those switchbacks on the road to Hana, but most of all something you see on the faces of anyone who's been there longer than a couple of days. The Aloha spirit: friendly, trusting and very, very relaxed.
Perhaps a little too relaxed, as it turned out. Maui county is way too laid back to get caught up in Daylight Savings; that whole hour-forward, hour-back thing twice a year is just so tiresome. Uninformed of this fact, and believing all through Sunday that we were playing with an extra hour (as the rest of Hawaii was), we missed our flight back to San Francisco. Not too big a deal: a credit card here and there, a brief sojourn in LAX, and we returned about five hours later than intended. The greatest problem was the fact that we were buying one-way tickets on the same day of travel, which apparently puts us at high risk for hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings, and gave every airport flunkey in Maui and L.A. the right to dig through our bags, which they did with gusto. Pretty soon we figured out it was the checkerboard pattern on our tickets that marked us out as the potential terrorist Taylor family. It didn't take a rocket scientist, much less a brain surgeon, to spot that one. So why do they think the real terrorists won't? Excuse me, Mr. FAA: If you're going to screen baggage, you have to do it randomly. Make anyone who wants to do harm have to beat the odds, not beat a system.
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