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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
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"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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Daily Blah for... Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Goodbye to Old Friends
Just finished the last West Wing episode from the syndicated Bravo reruns I had piled up on TiVo -- that is, the last Aaron Sorkin-penned West Wing I hadn't already seen. (For the record, it was the one where the Surgeon General suggests decriminalizing marijuana). There are still a whole bunch of unwatched post-Sorkin West Wings from last season on my machine, but I'm hardly optimistic about them; they got bad reviews, and I'm thinking of ditching them on principle. And out of solidarity with Sorkin, who seems to have a lot of the same instincts as me -- a love of wordy dialog, a keen eye for the absurdity of politics -- though he is a lot more infatuated, blindly at times, with the bells and whistles of authority.
Such supposedly patriotic moments make me marvel anew at how autocratic the Presidency is compared with, say, a parliamentary system. Yes, there are checks and balances, but without, not within. There are very few checks within the executive branch, and all of them come from unelected officials. Perhaps we need to elect all the other players separately, the Leos and the Joshs and the Tobys; perhaps the answer is uberdemocracy. Perhaps I wouldn't be so concerned about the US system not working if I didn't live in a world where the GOP dominates all branches of government. Please tell me that's going to end soon? Please tell me Kerry is going to help the Dems acquire a backbone? When will the real-life Leos realize that their endless strategizing does not come without cost, that it shines through their words so painfully, so obviously; that voters know when they're being spun? That they want to hear the best arguments, the most passionately-felt arguments, and not necessarily the most palatable ones?
Anyway, I felt strangely sad deleting this episode from TiVo. The moment reminded me of what my mother said about finishing Lord of the Rings for the first time: "It was like saying goodbye to old friends." How bizarre that we make such an emotional connection with entirely fictional characters -- and how comforting to know it's not something we suddenly started doing with the arrival of TV, much less TiVo. We've been doing it since the dawn of entertainment.
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