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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:
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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... Thursday, May 06, 2004
Mendocino and Meds
Where's he gone, I hear you cry? It's been a whole damn week.
Well, I got sick. P and I spent a long weekend in Mendocino. It was gorgeous up there, all sunshine and secluded forest and rivers and fresh ocean breezes. My favorite environment: trees and water in close collaboration. We had a tiny cottage with a fireplace and a private garden adjacent to a B&B, and fed ourselves almost exclusively with a big box of Peasant Pies and my new favorite kitchen gadget, the Panini Press. It was all very twee, not to mention inspirational. I got a lot of writing done and that alone was worth all the nastiness that followed.
On the last night I caught a chill. God knows how -- spending too long in the sun not drinking enough water? Like a mild sunstroke? Can that give you a chill once the night sets in? All I knew is a dozen blankets and a roaring fire couldn't halt the shivers. P kept the fire going most of the night. By the morning I felt slow-roasted: crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. (Mmmm ... Peking duck ...)
So we drove back, and I slept the day, and woke in the evening to find I had the same damn leg infection/fever thingie that hospitalized me back in October 2002. Once again, my left leg below the knee swelled up like a beet, which is a very inconsiderate thing to do without notifying me in advance. We had at least learned a few things from the previous trauma. P swung into action, grabbed a Sharpie and drew lines around the swelling (so we could tell if it was spreading; sure enough, after a couple of hours, it was coloring outside the lines). She also insisted on driving me into UCSF's emergency room for immediate after-hours treatment.
Now UCSF has a reputation as one of the best hospitals in the world, but you wouldn't guess that from the state of its ER this week. They've built a new wing, but because the rooms for critical patients aren't ready yet, they're not letting any patients in -- a classic piece of bureaucratic thinking. Meanwhile all the electrics in the old ER rooms had been ripped out, with the upshot that everyone was being treated on gurneys in the corridors. Welcome to the third world.
Treatment proceeded at a glacial pace. We had to endure six hours of flourescent-lit gurney-bound boredom punctuated by the occasional X-ray, clipboard questionaire about my religion or lack therof, and a ditzy blonde nurse from LA who had a very hard time figuring how to get blood out of me. My fever spiked to 102 while I was in there, and I'm sure it had something to do with me being boiling mad. And the end result? At 2 in the morning, they promised to let me go as soon as the nurse came with my antibiotics prescription. At 3 in the morning, she finally arrived. Thanks, guys. Another great advertisement for western medicine.
A good couple of days with my leg up at home, which was probably all I needed all along, has done me the world of good. Fortunately my copy of the House of Cards DVD trilogy arrived at much the same time, so I'm steadily gorging my way through that. And I have some wonderful people in my life who came and cooked for me as soon as my appetite returns. Friends: always the best medicine. (How's that for an ending as twee as a B&B?)
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