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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 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
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Daily Blah for... Thursday, March 07, 2002
Evil Porn Clowns
A fabulous article on privacy by my friend Dan, featuring my other friends Ouchy the Clown and iKandi, who just last Friday night was trying to pitch me a story on evil porn clowns. What do you think, mainstream America?
Bunch of Grapes
Ack! I'm sick as the proverbial dog. I think I've got one of those 24-hour bubonic plagues. You know, the one where you get pus-filled bubos under your armpits, you start smelling apples, and then your limbs fall off. No, really, I'm okay, thanks to the twin gods of DayQuil and NyQuil. Amazing -- I can be lying there hacking my guts out one second, all sweaty and aching like the lovelorn, emerging from some feverish night-long dream about helping Ghandi through a maze, then I mainline DayQuil and I'm suddenly able to write two articles. I wonder what they put in that stuff? Is it the polyethelene glycol? Or maybe the propylene glycol? Hell, man, just give me glycol. That's obviously the good stuff. Jam it in my veins, that's the ticket.
You know, say what you like about the great divisions of human society -- man and woman, rich and poor, black and white -- there is no greater lack of understanding than between the sick and the not-sick. Oh, sure, we offer our sympathies, sometimes a bunch of grapes, maybe a bowl of soup. But we don't really understand until we're there in the sickbed feeling like death in a microwave. We feel like the world should be offering us some special concessions: a parking spot here and there, maybe, or a promise to not talk quite so loud. Then things improve, the mucus packed in our ears clears like clouds after a storm, walking to the store for some OJ suddenly becomes less of a Herculean task, and we willingly forget. We join the ranks of the not-sick. And if our best friends or family members catch the same bug immediately after, we look at them as if to say: "I understand what you're saying, but I still have no idea how you could possibly be unable to play volleyball."
One suspects it's the same with a country in recession and a country not in recession. So now that Dr. Greenspan has pronounced us fit and well, does that mean we'll be able to throw our broad, healthy shoulders back and laugh heartily once more, offering our best sympathies to Germany and a bunch of grapes to Japan?
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, March 05, 2002
Primary Day
All day they've been traipsing past my window in pitifully small numbers, the voters of San Francisco. I work at home, and while there are many advantages and disadvantages to that (plus: doing interviews in my boxer shorts. Minus: no water-cooler gossip), one thing it affords me every election day is a view of democracy at work. My neighbor across the tiny private street I live on turns her garage, normally filled with BMW motorbikes, into a polling station. This is an unusual thing for me. Back where I come from, polling usually takes place in schools, which get the day off. The poll workers get better shelter and facilities, too. It's pouring with rain and dark as hell tonight, but they're still there with their mini-heaters and picnic tables. And, it has to be said, there would be more voters than this. My neighbor, the one on the other side who works for the Canadian consulate, says it's possibly the lowest turn out in city history. It is, after all, only a primary, and most of the Democratic contests are decided, and there are only a few propositions, none of them very exciting.
I can't vote, being a foreign national, so I sit and spend much of the evening watching Ghandi -- you can flay me for this, but it's the first time I've seen it -- and wonder why it takes a force like oppression to make people care about their liberty. Take away the impression of tyranny and nobody much cares who the district attorney is or whether to vote yes or no on the clean water or safe neighborhood parks act. Yet tyranny and oppression come in different and subtle forms. Look at how Enron bought its way into government and effectively dictated energy policy (or did it? Prove me wrong, Mr. Cheney). The size of the turnouts in this country have stunned me ever since I arrived here six years ago. You simply can't rely on a minority of voters to make the right decision. That slow-walking collection of shivering San Franciscans outside my window is simply not enough to safeguard the true liberty and freedom of all the citizenry.
If it's primary day where you are, for crying out loud, go out and vote. I don't care how wet or cold it is. It's what I'd do if I had the chance. And it's what the Mahatma would have wanted.
Daily Blah for... Monday, March 04, 2002
You are Television Incarnate, Mr. Eisner
Every time I watch Network, number three in my personal all-time top ten movies list (right behind Citizen Kane and Casablanca), it seems to bear more relevance to the mainstream media world around me. This weekend's viewing was no exception. All of a sudden Howard Beale bears a remarkable similarity to Ted Koppel, another once-great anchorman now in danger of becoming a casualty in the ratings war.
The flap over Nightline, which ABC and its owner, Disney, desperately want to replace by tempting David Letterman away from CBS, lays bare all the entertainment-driven instincts that Paddy Chayefsky so effectively satirized and that give this industry a bad name. Television isn't the truth, as Beale said, but Koppel's show is the closest commercial television news has got to it. You can rely on Nightline not to deliver hype or puff pieces or soft focus-grouped stories on health and families. And yet Disney is concerned that Koppel doesn't attract enough 18-34 year olds, the population segment advertizers love because they have lots of disposable income and haven't yet formed loyalties to one brand or another.
Well, guess what, Michael Eisner. I'm an 18-34 year old, and I don't know a single 18-34 year old who isn't concerned about what's going on in the world today and doesn't benefit from knowing more about it. Letterman is all well and cool, but what the hell are you doing thinking of replacing Koppel at a time like this? In case you haven't noticed, we're at war. American G.I.s are dying out there. If I were you, I'd be promoting the hell out of Nightline right now. But hey, Mike, it's your call. If you want to replace Peter Jennings with Donald Duck or your entire news division with Leo DiCaprio, be my guest. Go mad. Which is, perhaps, what Koppel should do. Start ranting like a latter-day prophet against the hypocricies of our times. He'd get a 50 share, easy.
By the way, here's how to contact Disney or ABC news, if you feel like venting Beale-style. I want you to get up out of your chairs! I want you to drive to the Western Union office! I want you to send Disney a telegram! I want them to be wading knee-deep in telegrams!
See your Doctor for Details
Disturbed by the long list of side effects you see on TV drug commercials? Take Perplexa.
Blah on Blah
Imagine my surprise when Emily tells me that Daily Blah has been discovered by the (London) Sunday Times. Out of 947 new sites cropping up on Yahoo in a particular day, they picked their ten favorites, and Daily Blah was among the ten. This is interesting for two reasons. First of all I worked for the Sunday Times for one unhappy week in 1995, right out of college, and the experience was only notable for the fact that the Queen of the Living Dead appeared to be masquerading as my editor. Secondly, the Times' writer Robbie Hudson says "it is fun to track the author’s navel-gazing joy as his young site raced to the top of the weblog chart." A curious statement; I never thought of gazing at someone gazing at their navel as being fun (although the current rash of bestselling memoir writers called David -- that is, Eggers and Sedaris -- would seem to suggest so). If this is the case, then is gazing at someone gazing at someone gazing at their navel twice as fun? How about gazing at someone across the Atlantic gazing at me gazing at my navel, which is evidently what I'm doing now?
If self-obsession is going to get the Blah picked up in national newspapers, however, I'm more than happy to keep it going. Did I mention I was the number one search result when you type "Daily Blah" into Google and Yahoo? Not surprising, you might think. But now -- horror of horrors -- this site has taken the Google crown from me! How could it happen? I'll have to ask my pals Larry and Sergey, the most fun-loving geeks I know (I keep thinking about the time I saw them at Burning Man painted blue and green respectively) and Google's co-founders. All I remember from the Google story I wrote back in 2000 is that sites are rated according to how many other people are linking to them across the web. Which would mean either somone has removed links to me, or this Richard Taunt fellow has taken time off from making tacky PowerPoint pictures to campaign for extra links to his page. Well, I'm not taking it lying down. I ask you, gentle reader, which Blah would you rather see at the top of the Google result? If you want to help restore me to my rightful position, all you have to do is link to me from your website. No site is too small as far as Google is concerned. Every connection counts. (Pssst! Mac! Want to make a cool-looking Daily Blah link button for people to download?)
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