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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
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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Oh, Canada
Now that Toronto is no longer the world capital of SARS, Conan O'Brien joked recently, the city's number one cause of death "is, once again, crushing boredom." Well, not for me. I just spent the weekend in the Ontarian capital, and there was not a dull moment to be found there. This is partly because the place was fritzing my geographical recognition circuits. I'd look at the houses and think I was in the UK, then I'd look at the streets -- or the towering skyline -- and think I was in the US. From long experience, it seems, my brain expects itself to be located in one country or another. It wasn't prepared for the Canadian mish-mash. I'd see a lovely nineteenth century brick home with a garden that made me feel all Oxford, but then there would be a hot-dog vendor standing in front of it. I felt profoundly disoriented, like a computer crashing while trying to load two rival operating systems at the same time.
This, I soon learned from the natives, is the same identity crisis Canada itself has been dealing with for the last two hundred years -- caught between the mother country and that overbearing giant to the south. They still haven't figured out how best to blend the two, which is somewhat depressing to someone like me; someone who is just seven years into that process and still believes, perhaps foolishly, that British and American culture can produce a seamless blend. The same blend that Churchill, half-American himself, with a similar naivete, used to call "a union of the English-speaking peoples." I guess he hadn't read enough George Bernard Shaw. That common language of ours is getting more divisive all the time.
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