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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... Friday, September 16, 2005
The Child in Charge
Future historians -- a group of people I think about a lot, and would really like to meet someday -- will wonder why we weren't all guffawing our behinds off today. They'll look at the note the President was caught writing at the UN, asking Condi if he could go to the bathroom, and insist it must have gotten the biggest laughs at that institution since Kruschev decided to bang his shoe on the desk. Then they'll study Bush's New Orleans speech and note, as some eagle-eyed bloggers did, that he had his shirt buttoned up the wrong way. How could we fail to be rolling in the aisles?
The answer is, O future historians with the benefit of hindsight, that it's just too damn scary to live in a free world led by a man who can't even make an executive decision to pee or do his shirt up properly on the most important night of his life. Especially when disaster seems to stalk his presidency. If the third one turns out to be the avian flu epidemic we're utterly unprepared for, and if Bush is as bewildered and slow off the mark as he was on 9/11 and during Katrina's first week, the death toll could make those other two events little more than historical footnotes.
I really, really hope I'm around to meet those future historians.
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