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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
Friends, Bloggers, Countrymen ... lend your ears to these people. I come not to bury them, but praise them.
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My TIME articles
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Online column index
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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Start Writing Purple For Me Now
It's beginning to look a lot like my birthday. And should anyone be interested, I was recently pointed to a site called The Purple Store, where many of my obsessively purple needs are met.
From whence comes my deep abiding love for all things twixt red and blue, you say? From the Gogol Bordello song, Start Wearing Purple For Me Now? From the Jenny Joseph poem? No, from somewhere in the depths of my college days, when I started writing in purple ink in purple notebooks, and found I couldn't stop. There's something so soothingly authoritative about cursive script scrawled in imperial purple. Whoever came up with the derogatory phrase "purple prose" to describe overly florid fiction owes this particular part of the spectrum an apology.
Ah. Well,according to Wikipedia, it was Horace, as in one of those Roman geezers so venerable as to not need a last name, a practice not revived until the arrival of Cher. Horace was critiquing a pupil's poem, I assume: "Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy purple patches." That is, of the kind that Rome's wannabe hipsters had sewn into their robes to create the appearance of wealth.
But hang on a minute. Purple patches sewn on robes? That would have so obviously fake that I find it hard to imagine they weren't worn with a sense of irony. Nor is it easy to imagine that some of the most florid examples of purple prose in literature -- such as the one everyone knows, the "it was a dark and stormy night" opening of Baron Lyton's novel -- were not written a little bit knowingly. It is time to reclaim the phrase "purple prose" -- therefore I declare my birthday, November 22, to be Purple Prose Day. On that day, I call on every Daily Blah reader to write something they would have written anyway -- an email to a functionary, a letter to a bank manager, a note to the milkman -- in a deliberately over-the-top style, with as many unnecessary syllables and adjectives as you can manage. Take that, Horace!
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