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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:
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Daily Blah for... Friday, December 19, 2003
Hail to the King
Last night I surrendered unconditionally to the overwhelming force of Peter Jackson. It took three movies, but the Kiwi director has finally shocked and awed me into submission. Yes, I enjoyed Fellowship and adored Two Towers, but there was always some nagging reaction in my critical brain that prevented me from calling them masterpieces. A smidgen too much CGI, perhaps, or a preponderance of heavy metal hair, or Howard Shore's half-baked melange of musical cliches -- softly serious strings, cod-Celtic pipes, and way too many apocalyptic-sounding choirs. Choirs should be the nuclear button of sci-fi and fantasy films, to be used only as a last resort; this became clear after John Williams overused them in Phantom Menace. When a choir heralds the start of a drag race, for crying out loud, what are you going to do when the entire galaxy is under threat?
Anyway, with Return of the King, it all just clicks. The music, the CGI, everything. P and I watched the extended DVD version of Two Towers before heading to the theater, which is highly recommended -- it substantially enhances your appreciation of the characters, and of what is about to happen. Suffice it to say that what you may have read in other reviews is true; the battle for Minas Tirith is even more jaw-droppingly good than the defense of Helm's Deep in Two Towers. In fact, your jaw hits the ground near the start of the movie, and it's as well that Jackson adds a lengthy coda (as Tolkein did) so that you have time to retrieve it before the cleaners do. As one of my seatmates said, with only a touch of hyperbole, "they should cancel the Academy Awards this year, and just show that." Why not? At three hours twenty minutes, it would probably clock in a little shorter.
Liberties have, of course, been taken with the sacred text. A glance at the original upon our return confirmed that Jackson has conflated about a half-dozen other battles into one big Minas Tirith confrontation. The professor, who got irked even by radio adaptations of his work, would probably not approve. But why should we care about angering that old goat? According to the excellent Humphrey Carpenter biography of Tolkein, he was basically embarrassed about letting loose the fruits of a lifetime's imagination upon the world and never quite understood the world's madly positive reaction. The neatest detail in the Carpenter book, to my mind, is that Tolkein seems to have spent more time devising and playing games of Patience during the eighteen years or so it took him to write Rings than sitting down with the manuscript itself; there were whole months, even years, when he didn't add a single word. There's hope for all of us frustrated sci-fi/fantasy epic writers yet.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, December 17, 2003
More Milkshake
The longer that song plays on a tape-loop in my brain, the more I see a disturbing edge it. This could, in fact, be my first post-30 "the younger generation is going to hell" moment. Let's take a look at the main refrain:
My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
And they're like, it's better than yours
Damn right, it's better than yours
I could teach you, but I'd have to charge
Now, presumably the song is being addressed to some female rival for the milkshake-starved affections of the "boys." Leaving aside grammatical doubts (is that supposed to be a direct quote from the boys? Why not put it in the third person -- "it's better than hers"?), what we are left with is a rather hollow celebration of cattiness and capitalism. The singer -- let's call her Girl A -- is overjoyed at the validation she receives from the boys, and throws it in the face of Girl B. Does she not think for a moment that this might be exactly what the boys intended: to spark a competition between the girls, in which the boys can be the only winners? What happened to sisterhood? Is feminism dead? Is it all about pleasing the boys now? As much would certainly be suggested by the song's bridge:
La la la la la
Warm it up
La la la la la
The boys are waiting
So Girl A's only empowerment comes from running what is effectively a capitalist enterprise. She's got the milkshake; the boys are milkshake consumers; more consumers means better business. And if Girl B wants to muscle in on Girl A's business, she'll either run her out of town with aggressive advertizing or make a profit out of teaching her secrets. Change the wording a little, and the song could be a company's annual report:
Our nonfat emulsified dairy beverage product attracts an overwhelming plurality of the adolescent male market to our open-air operational headquarters
This market segment enthusiastically endorsed the product over a leading rival brand
We agree wholeheartedly
A recipe licensing agreement with said rival would significantly enhance our pretax gross margin earnings
Sexy? I don't think so. Annoying? Certainly. Clinging to the inside of my cranium? Yes, and if anyone has any tips on how to extract it, now would be the time.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Pina Coladas and Milkshakes
Another week, another tech column. This is one of the most lightly edited pieces I've done in a while, with only one exception: the song quote at the end of paragraph four. My original version was "faster than you can say 'pina coladas and getting caught in the rain,'" in homage to that cheesy 70's classic, "Escape (the Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes, and as a private nod to P, who loves the song. When my editor substituted "my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard," I had, I'm afraid to admit, no idea what he was talking about. One Google search and an iTunes download later, I was listening to "Milkshake," by some songstress called Kelis. It is a maddeningly addictive track. Almost as addictive as the Pina Colada song, in fact. Anyway, here's the column.
Can You Hurry Love?
Here's what you get when you marry online dating and instant messaging
By CHRIS TAYLOR
Online romance may have shed its stigma over the past couple of years, but until now the electronic process has been only a little bit faster than its off-line counterpart. Finding out whether your latest suitor is a loser could take days, if not weeks, when you're merely bouncing e-mail back and forth. What if you want to sort the wheat from the chaff right this minute? Isn't the Internet supposed to be about instant gratification?
Enter Love.com, a new service launched last week by America Online (which, like this magazine, is owned by Time Warner). Not to be confused with love@aol.com, which is run by Match.com for AOL subscribers only, Love.com is the first dating site to use the free software known as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). More than 50 million people use AIM regularly to chat with friends and co-workers. Many have it open on their desktop the entire time they're online.
Like Salon.com, the New York Times and a lot of other popular websites, Love.com uses a personal-ad system created by a company called Spring Street Networks. Spring Street ads tend to be more cerebral than their equivalents on Match.com or Yahoo Personals because they ask questions like "What was the last book you read?" and "What was the worst lie you ever told?"
When you've located a personal ad you like, Love.com tells you whether its creator is online and using AIM at the moment. Click once, and the object of your attention will be sent a request for an instant message (which he or she can safely refuse, since Love.com masks your real AIM user name). The two of you could be virtual-speed-dating faster than you can say, "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard."
Love.com is free only through Valentine's Day. After that, AOL says, posting an ad will still be free, but if you want to IM someone, you'll be asked to pay a monthly subscription fee. The amount hasn't been determined yet, but it's likely to be comparable to Match.com's $25 a month or $100 a year. Regular Spring Street sites charge you just $1 anytime you want to initiate an e-mail correspondence. Since Love.com trusts users to verify that they are 18 or older and AIM is officially available to anyone 13 or older, parents of teenagers may want to be extra vigilant.
Whether the additional cost is worth it depends on your view of dating. If you prefer to go slowly with one potential paramour at a time, you're probably better off on another Spring Street Networks website. But if you like playing the numbers game — and if the idea of being instant-messaged by strangers at random moments in your workday doesn't put you off — then it might make sense to take advantage of Cupid's AIM.
From the Dec. 22, 2003 issue of TIME magazine
Daily Blah for... Monday, December 15, 2003
It's That Beard Again
It was the first morning in a long time that the front of every newspaper looked almost exactly the same. Since the big news broke slowly somewhere in the middle of the weekend, evidently too late for the traditionally lazy Sunday editions, it feels weird to be opening up a paper on Monday morning and staring at exactly the same strangely-bearded guy. Haven't we got over his capture already? Wasn't that yesterday's story? Time got the story on its cover, and we usually put the magazine to bed on Saturday night. You get the sense the world has moved on.
Here's my question: Saddam managed to arm himself, withdrew enough cash from his personal account to have a pretty good weekend in Vegas, and he couldn't find a pair of scissors anywhere? Didn't he think about what a visual cliche he'd make if he got caught? He looked exactly like the protagonist in about a billion New Yorker cartoons set on desert islands. And what happened to his beard once they shaved it off? Inevitably, I suppose, we'll see it cropping up on eBay.
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