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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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"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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Daily Blah for... Friday, September 01, 2006
Pen vs. Sword: Latest Results
SATURDAY, 2006
All day the newbies have been streaming into the Smoochdome. At the beginning of the week, people would take a number from the Take a Number machine, accept our instructions to wait, and smirk in silent acknowledgment of the joke. The joke, of course, being that this is a city of 30,000 improv artists instantly creating their own absurd reality, and your job is to play along. For example, we have a payphone set up a little ways down the street from the Smoochdome, which, when people pick it up, goes straight through to our phone on one of the tables inside the dome. "Can someone get that?" we yell in a tone of annoyance. It never gets old. Similarly, Jess and I were walking to Costco yesterday, having a theological discussion about God's supposed responsibility for human actions, when we came across a phone that claimed to connect you with God. "Well," I said, "let's ask him." To my great delight, God came down on my side of the debate. "I'm so glad," I said, "that we're wholly at fault for our own screw-ups, instead of blaming it all on some guy with a big white beard."
"Well, actually," said God, "my beard isn't white. I'm not that old. It's a common misconception."
But now the Yahoo invasion is in full effect, and people in baseball caps and T-shirts and shorts and too-clean skin take a number from the Take a Number machine and ask "hey, man, if I take this number, will I get to smooch someone?" And we roll our eyes and can't even begin to tell them how far they are from smooching someone with that attitude. Usually they walk off in disgust when nothing happens, but today we had one particularly persistent newbie who clung to his seat in the hopes of being given someone to smooch. So when a guy came into the dome looking like Conan, with fuzzy boots, leather straps, and a giant sword, we immediately suggested he fight the newbie. But the newbie wasn't biting, and so our minds raced away in search of some other Dadaist prey.
"I know," said Doctor Odd. "Why don't we find out if the pen really is mightier than the sword?"
And so the two writers in the dome, myself and Tinker Bill, were issued with small plastic pens to face the barbarian and his giant sword. The idea was that we would tag-team this one, and Bill was eating, conveniently enough, so I was first in the ring. Of course, this was no real fight, but it still had more than an air of high school to it. For one thing, Jess was watching, and I wanted to impress her. I had to find an intellectually satisfactory, appropriately surreal conclusion to what purported to be a physical clash. I made a big show of warming up by stretching each finger on my pen hand. Then the fight began, and I could barely hold on to my pen as the giant barbaric sword swatted at it. How was I going to get out of this?
"You're a journalist, Chris," shouted Bill from the sidelines. "Aim low."
That was the inspiration I needed. Quickly, I ducked under the sword and grabbed hold of Conan's exposed thigh. "To Be or Not to Be," I scrawled on it, and simultaneously shouted it out.
Uproar. Applause. The fight was declared over. The gods of improv had been satisfied. The pen had taken its rightful place in the mightiness rankings. Jess, smiling, started calling me "Mr. Pen." And the newbie just looked bewildered. Maybe one day he'll think back on what he saw, the penny will drop, and next time he takes a number from a Take a Number machine at Burning Man, he'll decide for himself what it's for.
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