|
|
Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
RSS feed coming soon!
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 always write every day?
I am trying harder. I promise. Please don't hurt me.
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.
Arik
Bill
Dan
Cherry
Cole
Emily B
Emily G
Helena
Jee
Jewelz
Kaila
Kathryn
Mac
Nina
Persimmon
Robin
Slim
Souris
Wonkette
My TIME articles
All magazine articles (subscription required for older stories)
Online column index
|
|
|
|
Daily Blah for... Friday, February 08, 2002
Introducing the latest heir of the dancing baby: Move it!
Daily Blah for... Thursday, February 07, 2002
I'M NOT NUMBER ONE! I'M NOT NUMBER ONE!
All things must pass, as a certain ex-Beatle sang. My dizzying moment at the top of the pops was just a little more fleeting than his; a day later, back in San Francisco in a torrential downpour, I find my article has slipped to number two (behind the Google programming contest) and dailyblah.com has slipped to number 42 (behind the "what font are you?" quiz). Bugger. Time to do what all mainstream media types must do when ratings plunge. Celebrity nudes, anyone?
By the way, it seems this site thinks I'm being satirical. Who, me? No, really, they seem to believe everything in my blog (eg. the "I'm number one!" stuff) is a subtle and clever satire on the sort of crap that usually pervades such personal websites. I'm shocked, shocked to find satire is going on here!
(your ratings, monsieur. Ah, thank you very much.)
Oh, and it turns out I'm Times New Roman. Shame. I much prefer Bodoni, or at least Palatino ...
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, February 06, 2002
I'M NUMBER ONE! I'M NUMBER ONE!
Sorry, I do apologize for that terribly gauche display of self-satisfaction. But you see, I'M NUMBER ONE! on Blogdex. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, that's not strictly true. The article I wrote is number one, the most linked-to Blog link in the world; DailyBlah.com itself hovers at a respectable number 39 (I'm also up in the dizzying heights of fame on a rival Blog list, daypop). More conceited prancing to follow; I'm in Orange County on assignment and I can't really talk right now. But in the meantime, I just want to say to all those bloggers who have expressed envious feelings about my pole-vault to the top: don't hate me because I'm a mainstream journalist. Hate me because I'M NUMBER ONE!
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, February 05, 2002
A note to all the pedants: yes, I'm aware my archives page is still 404. I'm working on it.
No sooner do I mention Jonno than Jonno writes to me:
"Just a note to let you know that (1) i claim no influence or responsibility
regarding how certain of my minions might be comparing your blog to that of
mine and others, (2) the whole concept of blog popularity contests gives me
the heebies too, and (3) i enjoyed your article. so there."
What an incestuous little world this Blogging business is. It reminds me of a reading technique supposedly employed by politicians and other masters of vanity, dubbed "Washington fast-reading". To wit: you don't read the latest hot gossipy inside-the-beltway bestseller, you simply pick it up in a bookstore, flick straight to the index and look up your own name. By informing us the moment someone links to us, Blogdex has turned us all into Washington fast-readers.
Bloggers, evidently, have lives, but you've got to wonder how much time they spend in them.
I wake up to news via e-mail from Emily that I'm number 124 on the MIT media lab's revered Blogdex. By the time I check it out myself, I'm number 107. Woo-hoo! At this rate, I'll be in pole position by the end of the day. "Be afraid, be very afraid if you get on the front page," she says -- not a phrase journalists are used to hearing, as a rule -- "cos then you really will be inundated. When you find yourself click on sources and you can find out what people are saying about you."
What she should have said was:
"Be afraid, be very afraid. You can find out what people are saying about you."
This, as anyone who has read Alice in Wonderland knows, is more of a curse than a blessing. Right now, six other bloggers are saying things about me, and their comments vary from the snide to the envious to the neutral. James Arnett writes:
"An interesting proposition: see how an actual Time Magazine journalist compares to more impromptu webjournalists like say,Michele and Jonno."
Fair enough, I think. But then he adds:
"For my money, I'd vote for Jonno and Michele."
Not realizing the obvious (that he knows these people and he doesn't know me; that I'm a faceless corporate goon to him, of course he's going to side with the little guys) I furiously click on Jonno and Michele's links and immediately look for faults to pick with them. Finding the odd spelling mistake and embarrassing recitation of song lyrics, I smile. Then I check myself. What am I doing? This isn't a popularity contest. I'm not running for class President. Who am I, Tracy Flick?
Meanwhile, Molly notes in her blog: "It's nice to see that a real-life journalist has just as much mundane stuff going on as the rest of us." You'd better believe it, Molly. Right now I'm battling off PR flacks on the phone, wondering what to have for breakfast and whether I should go grocery shopping before I fly to Orange County tonight.
And Daniel Taylor, a.k.a. The Dreaded Purple Master (nice to see that love of purple runs in the Taylor genes -- I'm obsessed with that color too), opines wistfully: "Boy, I wish I could advertise my blog in Time magazine." Be careful what you wish for, Daniel. I'm getting showered in mail (including some helpful soul who pointed out, in answer to my last post, that my hosting company will only handle 100,000 hits a month). This thing is getting too big. I never intended it to compete with anything -- heck, look at how minimalist this page is -- but now my competitive urge is coming to the fore. I feel like I need to preemptively hire a manager, a publicist and a team of writers.
And I still haven't had breakfast.
Very strange. A couple of readers report that my blog has gone 404 (file not found), yet now at 2am -- and don't ask me what I'm doing up at that time -- Daily Blah is loading smooth as ever. I can only conclude that my hosting service was ill-prepared to meet the deluge of curious surfers after eighteen months of inactivity and a few weeks of -- what, maybe five or six hits a day? What really worries me (yeah, like I'm really worried by all this attention) is that four million or so subscribers have yet to get hold of the magazine. Since it's got the Olympics on the cover, they might even read it. Can my hosting company cope? Have they spotted the sudden flurry of activity and recalibrated their whatchamacallits to deal with it? It's all up to you, NoMonthlyFees.com. Don't let me down or I'll burn your ass in print.
Daily Blah for... Monday, February 04, 2002
Debbie Russell writes to ask: where are some of the best places to get news stories from around the world? Good question, Debbie. Or rather, it's one I can easily answer by cutting and pasting a few of my bookmarks and adding a pithy comment to each. Let's go.
BBC News. This is my new homepage, edging out CNN since September 11th when my corporate bretheren in Atlanta got just a wee bit too patriotic and unquestioning for my news tastes. Besides, it loads fast, there's a wonderful news ticker at the top of the page, they pack an extraordinary amount of world news and weird news on one screen, and there has seldom been an occassion where I've fired up my browser to do something else and haven't been distracted by a BBC story.
Ananova. She started out as a gimmick, but the green-haired virtual newsreader is turning into the best source by far for quirky and underreported stories. About half of the e-mail forwards I get from my friends started life as Ananova reports. Besides, she's rather sexy. It's not exactly Naked News, but you can still get lost in those peepers.
Wired News, Slashdot and NTK are my favorite sources for tech news.
A quick plug for Time.com. It's more than just the weekly magazine, folks. There's up-to-the-minute news analysis from a very smart bunch of cookies, too.
And finally, let us not forget Drudge. Sure, you have to take his massive headlines with a pinch of salt, and his conservative leanings pepper the page. But he's a great one-stop resource for just about everything news related: wire services, columnists, local papers, the mainstream news sites. Ultimately the man is a news junkie, and as such, his heart's in the right place.
The e-mails on my blog column are starting to pour in. The first eagle-eyed readers -- the ones who are so eager to read my words of wisdom that they check it out online on a Sunday night, when the magazine doesn't even hit newstands until Monday -- write to point out I have broken links. Sheesh. Well spotted, guys. I've fixed 'em.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, February 03, 2002
I should mention I'm starting an entirely new blog at a different location: FutureDaze. The subject of this blog: anything and everything I can gather on original, up-to-the-minute and exciting visions of the future. See, ever since the release of Blade Runner it has become apparent that our vision of the years ahead is largely bankrupt. Even now, we tend to imagine dystopias rather than utopias (something which has only been heightened by post-September 11th fears and paranoias). Quite simply, the future needs to become fun again -- because if we can't picture the way we want things to be, how can we ever make sure we're on the right road to get there? FutureDaze is an exercise in creating a collaborative future. I want as many people as possible to contribute forward-looking dreams. Everything goes, and the more specific the better: if you have a hunch we're all going to be driving around in flying cars by the year 2070, or if you think the first manned Mars landing will take place before 2030, let me know. Send your optimistic future snippets to cdt@well.com; I'll post them on the blog, and we'll get a dialogue going.
|
|
|
|
