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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... Wednesday, August 24, 2005
The Grey and the Blue
So I think I may have found a solution to the puzzling question posed a couple of posts ago: why do some people think the avenues are foggy year round, while others insist the fog is gone for months at a time? It all depends, I believe, on your definition of a foggy day.
On Sunday, while I was unpacking the last of my boxes (hurrah! Now I only have to put stuff in places ...) a strange thing started happening to the windows of my new house. They started getting brighter. It reminded me of the fears I'd have during the nuclear paranoia phase of my childhood, every time the clouds parted, that this light was no sun, that it would keep on getting brighter and brighter, too fast, until it annihilated us all. Thankfully, those days are far behind me, and so my reaction was not to cower in fear but run for my jacket. Sunshine in the avenues in August. Who knew how long it would last?
Most of the rest of Sunday, as it turned out. I walked up to Land's End, the most gorgeous hiking ground in San Francisco, where the cliffs slope off to the Pacific in one direction and up to tree-covered hills in the other. The fog kept whisping past, threatening to coalesce, occasionally blocking out the sun, never quite getting it together.
Now to a Californian, or a Southwesterner, this may not have counted as a sunny day. You need uninterrupted access to the sun from dawn till dusk for that. But to a Brit like me, any appearance of blue sky means it's summer. We learn to take our sunny days when we can get them, we appreciate the heck out of them, and we're not fussy about how long they last. So if this is what life is going to be like in the avenues -- occasional patches of blue that send me running into the streets, running gleefully and appreciatively all the way to the edge of the western world -- well, I think I can survive.
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