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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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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... Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Riddle of the Missing Clothes
During a There session last Saturday, Purple Platypus and I were inside the tower of Tyr when we ran into this avatar in his underwear. I mean, he was wearing naught but what I would call a vest (which I believe you Americans call an undershirt?) and heart-covered boxer shorts for pants (underpants to you). We started a conversation, and he said something vague about having his clothes stolen by some unidentified robbers. It sounded fishy. PP, who has logged many more hours of There-play than just about anyone on the planet at this point, told me a lot of avatars have been hitting him up for clothes and Therebucks -- offering nothing in return, just blatant begging situations. Was this a slightly more elaborate ruse along those lines? Was this guy out looking for sympathetic suckers? I think PP and I both imagined so. We wished him luck, bid a hasty retreat out of the tower and went buggy racing.
Imagine my horror when I logged in yesterday and found my avatar in nothing but undershirt and heart-covered boxer shorts. My carefully-coiffed spiky purple hair was gone, replaced by the Ayran blond 'do that is the default There hair. My virtual closet was bare. Even my trusty Lightning hoverboard and -- gasp! -- my dog, Pookie Pup, were missing (poor Pookie Pup -- I'd mistreated him badly the other day by summoning him into the world several times while skydiving, just so I could watch him repeatedly plummet like a yapping stone). I'd been robbed! Was this revenge, karmaic or otherwise, for not believing the guy we met in the Tyr tower? Or some possession-grabbing There virus he'd unwittingly passed on? Now, of course, I had to do my own running around telling other avatars of my woe.
"Do you know anything about people losing their clothes?" I asked one guy in the first crowd of strangers I came across.
"You can't blame me," he responded. "I didn't do it because I don't have any extra clothes."
Purple Platypus pulled me away. "Come on, CT," he said. "These aren't the right people to ask."
"What was that?" I fumed. "A meeting of the paranoic's society?" Or perhaps, I later mused, he'd simply had the same reaction I'd had the previous day: why is this nearly naked guy talking to me about having had his clothes stolen?
Eventually, with help from a helpful Helper, the answer became clear. A few days back I'd asked There to provide me with a new avatar name (they'd rather hastily dubbed me "ChrisTay" after discovering that their initial plan to use my first name followed by the first letter of my last name might cause some offense. As a replacement, I came up with the slightly more anonymizing "N Famous.") So this was what ChrisTay looked like with his wardrobe stripped bare; everything, including my board and pup, was now in N Famous' possession. Nice of them to tell me. I logged back in as my new avatar, then Pookie Pup and I had a nice, relaxing and fully-cloathed soak with some new friends in a virtual hot tub.
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