Jack Rosenthal died yesterday.

Rod Hall murdered.

I'd like more people to read my New For Old piece.

[weird webshit] the Guardian gets the full story on a Manchester boy who plotted his own murder online... "Skilled writers of fiction would struggle to conjure up a plot such as that which arises here. It's staggering to be dealing with a case that arises out of a 14-year-old boy's invention of false personalities, false relationships and events arranged for his own killing at the hands of a 16-year-old boy who he had met via an internet chatroom."

Businessweek just found out about wikis and social software.

Related: Ward Cunningham, wiki inventor.

Coming soon: The Alexander Walker Bequest at the British Museum, and The 24 Hour Plays at the Old Vic.

Here's the web-weird story of the week - and with a Manchester twist. An Altrincham boy planned his own murder with another boy he met online.

Like the judge said, you couldn't make this stuff up. Scary world.

The Arab Israeli Cookbook - a new play at The Gate Theatre .

Call Centre Update

So I'm on hold for five minutes while he finds out of my protected no claims covered a claim I had two years ago, and if it affects my insurance. When he comes back, he says, "F*****, that's a familiar name. Do you know..."

And of course as soon has he says do you know, I know. Code. I ask him if he goes to Yeshurun (my parents shul) - his mum and dad do. He's twenty years old, so I probably haven't hung out with him that much. We laugh and he says he'll ask his dad if he knows my dad. I say I'll see him at Rosh Hashannah. Both our days are outrageously improved by actual personal contact.

So I'm renewing my car insurance, and I'm on the phone to my insurer, who runs a large call centre out of Leeds. I'm talking to Mark, and I'm thinking that he has a wonderful, home-laden cadence to his accent. I ask him if he's in Leeds - he says he is. I say I'm from Manchester, he says he is originally - he was at Uni in Leeds, and stayed on for that most rewarding of graduate jobs, working in a call centre. We chat some more, to cut a long story short, he's from Cheadle. Well, Gatley. Delamere Road. His parents still live there.

Talk about a small world. I resist asking him if they go to the same shul as my parents.

Thanks to Michael for pointing me in the right direction for this - Screwdriver. They do all the DIY you won't. Web design is not their strong suit, clearly. But then hey, I can't make Ikea furniture not wobble.

How Can Nick Denton Sex Up This Blog Business? Now, that's the question we're all asking.

I can't help thinking they know where I am. So this morning, after two - wonderful - days off, I'm at my computer at 7.4. I have received 102 emails I need to deal with before I can do anything else. Does Outlook/IMAP want to play? Does it bugger. I still have that stupid fetching headers message and I've called my excellent technical support hotline (aka a mate) and it still doesn't work. I am frustrated. It's not good for my skin.

This morning, I got twelve pieces of direct mail from a relatively well regarded training institution. Twelve. Really. Luckily, I'm not working today, so I can't get too stressed about it.

Transit of Venus. My brother's birthday.

I may have serious cheesecake overload. But hey, it's only once a year. Last night, I was at dinner, and the "grown ups" were discussing a guy who's an economist. My hosts' nine year old son pipes up "a communist?" Kids, eh?

I've been a Malcolm Gladwell fan since 1999, when I read the Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg, and about four friends called up and told me I was the person they knew all their friends through.

The whole world is going to blog this, but it's a great piece from the MITX Fireside Chat with "Tipping Point" author Malcolm Gladwell by Dan Bricklin.

So, chag same'ach. Hope you didn't have too late a night.

New For Old

We are the New Jews. We are out and loud and proud. We are upfront. We are in your face. We talk loud and we don’t care. We’re the hello-I’m-Jewish-generation.

Old Jews speak of their Jewish identity in the hushed tones generally reserved for discussing terminal illness. Old Jews spend their time point-scoring on who’s Jewish – they so want Roman Abramovich to be Jewish, even if it’s just because of the money – whereas New Jews either don’t care, or, if desperate, consult Jewhoo.com.

Old Jew mindset: Jew-centric. Who’s Jewish? Is it good for the Jews? Are they – indeed, at last – out to get us? New Jews are entering into Jewish-Buddhist dialogue, saving the last synagogue in Calcutta and cycling for any cause necessary.

Old Jew mindset: when your (Jewish) boss whispers under his breath as you arrive at every meeting, unzerer. Of course, occasionally he has to whisper nisht unzerer.

New Jew mindset: Jewish is never in brackets.

It’s an attitude, not just an age thing. So you might be fourth generation, or have just – figuratively – got off the boat, but if you’re a New Jew, you don’t have a problem saying who you are or being who you say. There’s nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, and you don’t care.

It’s an Englisher thing, exclusively. While all Americans are New Jews, Anglo New Jews are reclaiming their visitor status and saying we are upbeat. We are positive. We no longer walk the middle of the road, knowing we’ll get run over.

Old Jews say: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat. New Jews say: we are the post-anti-semitism generation. We don’t want to predicate our identity on taking our collective mind off our tsures by having something to eat, on an if-you-don’t-laugh-you’ll cry basis. Would you like to sponsor my yogathon raising money for a new cross-denominational Jewish project?

New Jews read the Guardian. Old Jews read the Times. No-one reads the Telegraph. Rootsy Old Jews crave a fat-laden Blooms-fest; New Jews wanting culturally-relevant comfort food get bagels at 2am. Old Jews live in a cul de sac in Stanmore or Hampstead Garden Suburb (because we all know that dead-ends with no through traffic say low-key. Old Jews’ religion is being low-key). New Jews live in Cricklewood, Brondesbury, Islington and Kentish Town. New Jews are urban and out there, reclaiming the inner city areas the Old Jews forsook for suburbia.

Old Jews holiday almost exclusively in Israel, and – occasionally – Marbella. New Jews don’t care where they spend their leisure time, but it’s just as likely to be a boutique hotel in the Dead Sea as a shul crawl in Morocco. Old Jews visit Poland, and pay their respects at Auschwitz. New Jews go to Cracow, and play the violin. New Jews will do sports that require additional insurance cover.

Jonathan Freedland? New Jew. Melanie Philips? New Jew, albeit a slightly hysterical one. Isaiah Berlin? Dead Jew, but New, nonetheless. Norman Lebrecht? Old Jew. Jonathan Sacks? Old Jew, desperately seeking New Jew funkiness, flirting with modernity, and secretly attending Old Jews Anonymous. Where he can’t get past the First Step (to paraphrase: “we admitted we were powerless over anti-semitism, fear, fear of risk, risk in general —that our lives had become unmanageable”).

New Jews don’t mind the word “Jews”, while Old Jews are only Jewish, and some of them only quarterly. Old Jews run around trying to make Google stop being anti-semitic. As if you could stop the whole internet from being anything. And New Jews don’t care: we have the strength of purpose and identity to know that other kids in the playground might not like us. But that’s OK.

Old Jews revel in the security of defending themselves. In the inward-facing look-after-our-own mentality. If we don’t, who will? If not now, when? Old Jews ask questions. New Jews have answers.

If only it was that straightforward – everyone has hues of blue, shades of Old, shades of New. Sure, this is a taxonomy, but I’m both. So I was Old Jew, when I name-checked Daniel Pearl in Pakistan long before I heard him say “My name is Daniel Pearl... I am a Jew“, and it hurt. More. But last week I went to see Oi Va Voi in concert (as much Cultural Jew as New Jew, but that’s a whole separate conversation). Perhaps we’re all a delicate, provocative cocktail of Old and New on any given day.

If you’re a New Jew, you know you have five thousand years of Jewish history resting on your shoulders, but you’re not going let it, like, depress you. You’re going to take everything that’s good from your heritage and turn it into something that responds to the new world. That’s the New Jew.

How's this for service? I don't want to book a flight, or anything, merely to make a business call to a member of the senior management team:

"You have reached Easyjet's reception, we cannot take your call at the moment, please call again."

The Latest North London Must-Have

Jewish Father Syndrome (JFS). Just about to go abseiling with your son? "Careful. Don't forget, Jonny, you're frightened of heights."

So, like, stupid question, but does sour cream go off?

I wish it to be known that I don't so much have a bun in the oven as six cheesecakes. OK, four, my oven's not that big. Two are going in in the second round.

Yep, it's come round quick: it's cheesecake festival timetime again (aka Shavuot), starting tomorrow night.

Last year, I concentrated my cheesecake on the hallowed N2/N3 postcode area; this year, I've turned my attentions to the NW2/NW6 area. So that's three cakes for my Yom Tov hosts (one each, obviously), and two (one each) for some friendly rabonim. Which leaves one.

For me? Question is, what does an urban girlie on a no-wheat/no-dairy regime (cake has a biscuit base, obviously), do with a cheesecake? If I had better willpower, I could leave it in my fridge for my flatmate/friends. I do, apparently, make superlative cheesecake. I even had special requests, this year. See, I'm crossover: I'm balabosta meets twenty first century ridiculous eating habits. What to do? Answers on a postcard, please...

Listen to Brad Pitt's Radio 3 programmeLost Boy: In Search of Nick Drake.

The complete Nick Drake lyrics, album by album, with some unreleased songs too.

I'm sorry, but I'm just having a Nick Drake kinda day. And because I don't really believe in going back and doing serious edits on my blog - think of me as a work in progress - I'm just going to say now what I should have said this morning.

Great news that Nick has finally got a top forty record, but let's face it, it's thirty years too late. If this had happened in the seventies, he'd probably still be here, right? But then if he was still here, he'd be an ageing folkie, and he'd have to be on ridiculous celebrity cookery shows in the jungle and given that he wasn't that sociable, he'd be a terrible comeback celebrity.

But it still really touches me that he couldn't really handle that people didn't "get" his art, and now that we do, he's not here to enjoy it.

I have my musical advice on outsourced contract. My consultant tells me the triumvirate (aka Holy Trinity) of English folkies is - Nick Drake, John Martyn and Richard Thompson (of Fairport Convention fame). There are peripheral English folkies; Sandy Denny (also in Fairport Convention), the Watersons and Pentangle.

Slushfactory.com: A Pop Culture Extravaganza

So Nick Drake's making a comeback. I was in tears this morning, listening to the Today programme piece.

[food] Jay Rayner in yesterday's Observer Magazine on food, criticism, his new novel and his family ... "I once joked that I was a Jew only by food, that I worshipped at my mother's fridge, and it's true that there was no room at the Rayner house for ritual or faith. The Jewish god was far too picky an eater to be given space at our table. Forgo sausages and bacon? Reject shellfish and cheeseburgers, all in the name of mumbo jumbo? Don't be ridiculous."

There was a time when only Holly Hobbie could make me happy.

Wanna go shopping? ...dress with care...

From Celebrity Bodies, to Celebrity Living. Because the world needs another celebrity magazine. I give it fifteen minutes.

See? Now I'm number three for Google Search: "uptown girl snood".

Did I say that I am utterly in love with Oi Va Voi's debut alubum, Laughter Through Tears? I can't recommend it highly enough.

However, just read a review on the BBC music site:

There will be those who will tell you: 'Don't go there - the music's too difficult'. Ignore them. Cook some heimische, crack a good bottle of Palwin's, increase volume, close eyes, and all will become clear.


Someone needs to tell John Armstrong that heimische is an adjective. Some heimische borsht. Some heimische chicken soup. Some heimische what, John?

emel - the Muslim lifestyle magazine.

I feel I should tell you that I'm feeling a little under the weather, under pressure, and all other manner of under-type things that don't come into my brain right now, as it's a little addled. Drugs. Gah.

I know this is really outrageously retro. But. I can't help printing things out. I know it's dead tree, and a waste of the earth's precious resources. And then I have nowhere to file those things.

Bugger. Just when I thought it was ok to praise IMAP, and everything was sorted, and my inbox was fine. I've been up since 7.30, and IMAP still doesn't work. I'm back to the old folder locking scenario. I have work to do. Lots. And lots. And lots.

So Cory is in love with 1920s desk accessories, too.

Check out Memoir, Mourning and Biography, a talk at the British Library in June. It's all about the memory.

Taking the national ID card debate one step further.

Sushi Etiquette.

I know just the job for you: Wanted: personal social network coordinator.

HIM'LLFIXIT. Dontcha wish you'd come up with that name?

It's people who come round and do easyish DIY for forty quid an hour, like build flatpack furniture and stuff. I'm really sure I've seen this business before... someone who put together a consortium of retired handymen/DIYers, and they even had a price on their site for each individual piece of Ikea furniture. Screwdriver? Can't remember. Should have had a linklog then. Anyone?

Great/healthy lunch. If it were a book, it would be described as "compellingly low carb". Salad: rocket, low-fat cottage cheese, rasberries, orginal five-seed mix, balsamic vinegar.

Mock Mashed Potatoes. See, everyone else knows about that cauliflower thing.

CarbWire - Low carb news . Because, there is on the netwebinterdoodar, something for everyone. And this guy/gal owns their niche.
[via Cory]

The Good Protein Chart.

Living and traveling in the UK. Great if you're coming from overseas, and especially if you're going to Scotland.

The Truth About Now

Modernity is all about the art of information retrieval. It's no longer about actually knowing something, it's about knowing a man who can. We are the librarians (sorry) information scientists of our own lives. Like I have 3,000 people in my Outlook contacts, and 2,500 posts on my 260,000 word weblog. I have hundreds and thousands of word and excel documents that I have to use a search facility to find anything.

And today I made a linklog. I gave up on bookmarks a while ago, and for a while it’s just been a random collection of explorer history files, drafts in blogger and my head. That’s never good. (Blogger user aside: since the redesign, I realised you can’t see more than 300 draft posts (and I have way more, I’m guessing), and you can’t see the date anyway. I feel like it’s in beta, frankly).

The best thing you can learn in the twenty-first century is (1) how to categorise sensibly, (2) how to pack a small bag, (3) how to talk to anyone, (4) how to write a list. Everything else is so much commentary, white noise, ephemera. Do those four things, and you can do anything.

Zannah, (#!/usr/bin/girl) is indeed a digital anime persona. Always the last to find out, me.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

There may be 613 commandments, but there are 714 things to be cynical about.

It's a book. No, it's a film: the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

What do anorexics running IMAP with Outlook really get off on?

I don't know, what do blah blah blah.

Purging their deleted messages.

I'm here all night. Well, I should be, I live here.

Man, dontcha wish you were in New York? Busy week on the storytelling circuit, I'll tellya. Tonight, you're missing The Wysiwig Talent Show at PS122. Thursday, you're missing the Heeb Storytelling at ... somewhere in Manhattan. With Mike Daisey, even.

What do we have (Londoners, I mean)? Queer Storytelling at the Drill Hall - I hear Shaun Levin is really something.

Here's my idea - I'd love to see an urban/edgily Jewish/other minority style reading/performancey thing, preferably in one of those murkily hip Shoreditch bars. Waddya reckon? Mail me.

You've heard of don't drink and drive. This is don't drive and text. Like you have to be warned?

Orange Labyrinth: a writing community open to everyone.

Orange Labyrinth: a writing community open to everyone.

Welcome back, Spitting Image.

'Conspiracy Theories' and Clandestine Politics. There's a lot of nutters out there.

That sheitel thing is getting out of hand: check this joke eBay auction.

How lucky are you? The Luck Project.

Well, here's a thing.

Say you woke up this morning filled with the joys of spring and with a desperate urge to google on uptown girl snood factory. Go on, you know you want to.

What happens? Number two on google is my mate Mike at Troubled Diva... I'm guessing his eighties decade music piece covered Uptown Girl (the song), Factory Records and Nik Kershaw's snood.

Now, confused frummers all over Brooklyn will come across Mike's sardonic deconstruction of contemporary culture, with a Eurovision twist, when what they really want is a wig.

Priceless.

The story is that some Rabonim have banned the use of Asian hair for wigs (orthodox Jewish women cover their hair for modesty: only their husband sees it) because it may have been used in a pantheistic Hindu ceremony. The New York Times have an OK piece on it (login: sashablog/sashablog).

This is what's truly fabulous about the intwebhighway: the random collection of diffuse words, connected only through their tangential use creates more - meta - stories. Like now, I'll probably end up above the line on google for the same hit, and the whole of the frum world will think snoods have something to do with weblogging.

A word on dead tree publishing, arising like a phoenix out of the ashes of Piers Morgan's career: "The thing is whoever is editor is managing a dying medium."

Had the most fantastic weekend, holed up in somewhere-shire, topped by a top evening Saturday night. I am a new convert to the joys of Eurovision. Ruslana Warrior Princess - it's the eastern European equivalant of Adam and the Ants. Kiev, here I come. Especially now we all know what the Ukranian national dress looks like.

"I have become so numb to the horrific things that happen in this world that I sometimes forget there are still people who feel."

Chocolate & Zucchini: Cranberry Banana Bread. This, I'll definitely be making, when I find some fresh cranberries.

I don't really believe in the LiveJournal-esque "how I'm feeling today" doodar. But.

Today I'm feeling: scared for the world. Would they hide me from Nazis? Just another refugee.

Henri Matisse and the Fauves.

Man, am I glad I'm not fourteen. Great piece by Douglas Rushkoff on the merchants of cool: I mean, I'm not even in the psychographic. Thank the gods.

Related news: schoolteacher gets suspended for showing children the Merchants of Cool documentary aired originally on PBS.

My Sony Vaio returned from its little jaunt to wherever-its-been at 8am this morning. It's fine. It seems to have lost three days on its clock, but apart from that, has a good suntan. Great.

Emily the Strange. Because evil needs candy foo.

Calgel need to do better marketing. Turns out I am the number one google search for calgel head office. That can't be right.

I can't be bothered to find a rather dull tale I wrote a year or so ago about how I got fake nails (not Calgel, as it turned out, to my chagrin), and it took ages to get them off, and they damaged my nailbed and everything. Don't do it, girls. Vanity, vanity, everything is vanity.

Special thanks to DJ for pointing out that Madonna's new tour poster - - and she has reinvented herself, for a change - the "beard of arich anpin" (the kabalist diagram that shows the crown of emanation, also ripped off by Zadie Smith in the Autograph Man), coming out of her breasts.

My wireless network was a little obstreperous, so when I looked at the pic the first time, the rest of it wouldn't download, so it just looked like the top of the Eiffel Tower.

These things are sent to amuse us, no?

RE5ULT - any info, any time any place. I do this for my friends for nothing, not even a premium rate call/text.

Wow. Mindblown. Just got back from Oi Va Voi at the Jazz Café, Camden with Z. They're like a deranged Hasidic wedding on acid. Six/seven/eight piece band, playing crossover klezmer/ladino/drum n bass to a packed, appreciative crowd.

It's like Jewish musical tradition is some kind of open source property, and they've taken it and turned it into something that's truly their own. It looks back, it looks forward. It reflects the here and now and the past. They have a Shoreditch/Lower East Side vibe, possibly stretching as far as Williamsburg.

Why recreate words: here's what they say on their website:

"They are forging a new, true identity, which both draws on their roots and celebrates the cultural pluralism that surrounds us all. OI VA VOI's music speaks of the 'here and now' but knows of the 'way back when'. OI VA VOI has the intelligence to understand that identity springs from many places, from everything we've seen and heard and felt. Like the tastes of the best contemporary fusion cookery, the images of cutting edge art or the prose of postmodern urban writers such as Zadie Smith, OI VA VOI create something new through mixing and matching ingredients that they know, love and understand."

I've been having a lengthy, dislocated debate with N this week, about the nature of Jewish identity in the twenty-first century. I think these guys are really doing it: taking the best of our tradition (the chazzonus on Od Yeshoma is as good as the real thing, and it's not sampled), and turning it into something creative, new, exciting.

And afterwards, the DJ played Tradition from Fiddler On The Roof, and everyone danced in a cool, funky way.

Say you're frightened of the dentist. Say you want to grow-your-own teeth, instead of getting false ones. No, really.

Tuesday, I saw probably the second-worst most-laughable film ever, with S, my erstwhile postcode-sharer/cinema companion. The Laws of Attraction doesn't really merit any kinda review at all. The plot is no more fleshed out than an elevator pitch. You've seen all the characters before, and they all only have one personality trait anyway. You can't imagine what possessed Julianne Moore and Pierce Brosnan to participate in this straight to Korean-DVD market disaster. And I like rom-coms.

Wednesday (AKA last night) I went to the London Bloggers get together at the International. I saw old faces and new (demographic change: more women, more older people), mingled, talked. Whatever. I mean, who wants to read a write-up of a party? Good fun had by all.

Tonight Oi Va Voi in concert in Camden. Just opposite the Camden, Odeon Town (hello, Mark). In concert is a little grand: it's a gig.

Sony European Support Portal. Because you might have a time when your Sony dies, too.

My friend, X, sent me this:

...this is what I'd say about the first day I left R at nursery;

It feels like when you have a very radical new haircut and you walk the streets thinking I've had a radical haircut I wonder if anybody can tell? It certainly feels peculiar. I wonder if this lady notices how strange I look because my hair is so utterly different. perhaps I'll ask her about her hair and then we can strike up a conversation about how odd it feels to have a radical new haircut until you start to get used to it. She'll sympathise and tell me my hair is fine and I'll feel good for 30 seconds and then start to think: I've had a radical new haircut I wonder if people can tell.

Naturally after a couple of hours of this kind of thinking (which all runs simultaneously with normal thoughts like what shall I have for lunch? do I want to buy this t-shirt? and is it safe to cross the road?) I felt like a total headcase.

Can you believe, I'm above the line for a google search on sony vaio powers down failure.

It's the old hardware/software conundrum: can you believe that after shipping my laptop all the way to Birmingham/Brussels/Bangalore (you choose), my friendly Sony insider tells me the machine boots fine, and I have a software problem. I say that the machine had no power at all. He says it does. I say it didn't have. He says it's an intermittent fault. I say that's no good to me.

Gah.

Microsoft Xbox and Electronic Arts agree to get into bed together. Whew. That's me sleeping easy, then.

And they have a Chief Xbox Officer.

In cyberspace, can anyone hear you pray?

I just heard someone say "it's very bohoco, darling." As in bohemian-rococo, I'm guessing. Very New York, I'm thinking.

I have just wasted three minutes of my life listening to the most absurd "debate" between columnist Zoe Williams and Patrick Gratton of the Third Age Employment Network, about when middle age starts. Or middle life, as Patrick calls it.

It's all so much pedantry. I mean, who cares? (apart from old people). I'm significantly more worried that in innocently surfing the net I'm going to come across images of a man being beheaded in Iraq. Or see more detailed pictures of "man's inhumanity to man" when it comes to prisoners.

I know I mostly talk about nail varnish and other cultural ephemera, but I want you to know that I'm disturbed. By the news, rather than in general.

Maybe the world has always been like this, and I didn't know. Maybe everyone in a war (that's either regular war, or the one against terror) behaves this way, and I've never read those stories. I'm not that great with violence in movies (still not seen either Kill Bill), when it's real? I can't handle it.

Just before the item about age, George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury was speaking about the people of Iraq. How much he respects them. Agreeing that it's basically an American war. Where's the human side out there, though? Do soliders get there and leave their humanity and morality at home?

I guess I'm rambling because I'm speechless - for once. I'm just going about my life, doing my thang. On hold at numerous call centres. And unspeakable evil is happening - sometimes at the behest of people who hold British passports - the other side of the world.

Too big to think about.

The lecture list. For when you, you know, want to go to a lecture.

That whole absinthe, 1920's thang: piece on Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald in Sunday's Independent, timed to co-incide with Beautiful and Damned at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Not sure it's had great reviews, but I feel like I should revise my usual no-musical rule. Yerthink?

OMG. I have just found the perfect job/career. I never even knew it. I am an information broker.

Wired on Dropping the Bomb on Google - that story that's run and run on how some anti-semitic site (Jewwatch) cam up top in a google search. I say, you can't make the whole world agree with you. There'll always be someone out there who hates you. But then I'm a libertine...

Crown Ducal Shapes (numbered).

A friend of mine appeared to be experiencing Spim (that's IM spam) yesterday.

Reminded me of a conversation I had over shabbes lunch: at least three of the adults there couldn't differentiate between IM and email. I feel like I live in a venn diagram with about twelve overlapping circles and I'm the only person who's bang in the middle.

Do you not think that in some kind of meta way, it's like eating your own children when you use Google news to search on what people think of the blogger redesign? There's 382 hits, and counting...

Complaints

So a few people have said that I've not written anything interesting here for a while. It's not personal enough. It's not juicy enough.

Here's what I say. I love to blog. I like emptying my mind of all the stuff that's inside, on a regular basis. A friend calls my weblog "the backchannel to my brain", and in a way, it is. So you see that I've checked out a new laptop, or been eBay surfing, or whatever. But I think the thing is, I'm doing it for me, not for you.

That's not to say that I don't like readers: I love'em. While I'm no longer addicted to watching my stats, I love it when I come back here and there are comments. Because the web is, basically, iterative. I write, you comment, I comment back... it's a process. It's a conversation. Hey, maybe I'm the first person today to say "the web's a conversation."

So while I don't believe I owe you an explanation, I will tell you - if you haven't already guessed - that I have a lot on. Apart from persistent technology failure (PSF) which is time consuming in itself. I have two big projects to complete by the end of May, and articles to write (one just finished yesterday, I'm dead pleased with it)and a... big personal project I'm trying to juggle the time for.

So, busy.

Also, I like it when you comment. I come over all iterative (second use of same word, get me an editor forthwith), and it's just - frankly - nice to know someone's reading it.

In true outrageously busy fashion, I spent last night dispacement-activity-ly tidying my study and threw away three black bin bags of old client files and other crap. I spent most of my last year at school colour-coding my revision timetable, so don't worry, I have a history of this.

Right, must get on with it. Have a nice day. Write me.

And now my desktop is making strange disk access sounds. I can't take any more...

Me? A drama queen? Nah...

A friend of mine took the right royal piss yesterday when I told him my Vaio has suffered sudden laptop death syndrome (SLDS). "This is the second Vaio that's happened to," he exclaimed. I said the last time was two laptops ago, and was in 1998. He said he'd never buy the product again if it let him down. I said that my friend does technical support and that laptops are 40% likely to fail and need to go back to base. He said he's thinking about buying a BenQ Joybook (which does seriously sound like some kind of poorly mis-spelled newly enlarged East European porn (do you have a Bonk Joyw*nk?).

I said that despite it's imperfections, I am commited to Vaiohood, not least because when I got onto a nice guy in the UK head office and explained my predicament with his script-laden, inflexible call centre, he said don't worry, I'll take it out of the queue and get it sorted pronto. If I can't get it back Friday, I can have a loan machine (I may have said this already, but I'm just terribly impressed). See, there are responsive, friendly customer-oriented people out there, working for consumer firms. They're just never in call centres. The whole call centre reports to him, it turns out.

Bad things/tech failures come in threes: now I just have to work out how to get my mobile to stop being crackly all the time. It's only six months old, so I can't do the upgrade trick, and I think I refused to pay for "care" at £5 a month, as once you've spent your sixty quid, you could have bought a new phone anyway.

I'll keep you posted.

Cooking holiday in Italy - one of the world's best responsible & ecotourism holidays. Apparently. Although you still fly there and go on trips in cars.

Sex, Lies, and Lawsuits. Sadly, you have to pay to read the rest. But he wrote the book on how to run your company. Hmmm.

So in a bid to have a working laptop for this weekend, I've got calls in all over the shop to anyone who can make Sony even call me back.

I've also dug out my old Vaio (now about six years old, so technically obsolete), that I rebuilt last year. All looks OK, and then I realise that my work is on my other machine, and I can put it on my DISGO or JumpDrive, but because it's running Windows98 (not even second edition), I have to give it some drives. And I don't have internet access on it. So I have to find them from somewhere else and...

Gah. Technology. Modernity. We all spend time doing things our grandparents didn't even know from. My friend M just spent this morning killing a worm and it wasn't even gardening.

And did I say that my Dyson died on Friday about two hours before I had twelve people coming for dinner? Serves me right for only hoovering once a week.

I've had my Dyson coming up for four years. Two years ago something happened and it needed a new motor. It was out of warranty and was supposed to cost eighty quid to fix. Through sheer force of personality I managed to persuade some hapless supervisor that the "adverts speak very highly of it" lifetime style guarantee should last longer than two years. This time, I doubt I can pull the same trick. So if it's eighty quid to repair every two years, then I'm better off buying a cheaper hoover-esque doodar.

Also, just realised that I really need my laptop for the weekend, so am on hold to the Sony Customer Unservice Centre for my twenty-eighth minute to see if they can expedite my call. I suspect not, juding by my experience so far.

Wanted: You. To write. Fee? $18.

My Sony Vaio died. I have 2,000 words of my great opus on it (yes, I know I should back up, but it died with no notice thirty minutes after my inspiration). No power, no light, no anything-at-all.

Sony are coming to collect it, and it will take 7 to 10 working days (otherwise known as two weeks) to return to me. And no, they can't guarantee that (a) my words'll still be there, or (b) that their support engineers won't read them.

I feel I should say something about the Blogger redesign.

Something.

No categories, then?

Brief weekend update: S's batmitzvah on Shabbat (the first batmitzvah where the celebrant/parents are my real friends, rather than relatives) - it was truly fabulous to see the shul bursting at the seams, and I was genuinely moved to tears during the dvar torah (as were most of the women). Friday night I made a moroccan feast for M&C and their three kids (who were staying with me - we were something of a full house), and M&S and E (who weren't too sure about my calling them S&M last time I mentioned them). M brought Indian mangoes: gorgeous.

Feels like a non-stop party weekend: lunch at S&K's for about twenty plus people, and then ... well, let's just say busy.

Today, a lie-in, and then E's dressy-uppy party and S's partyparty for the batmitzvah - dress code as yet undecided.

I am a party animal. My friends are party people. I'm loving celebrating it all.

Here's a thing. Forget counselling and hitting cushions - pay to vent your anger.

It's Friday, and it's five to five...

Oh, this is fabulous. Today's Front Pages on a Map. How great is that? Thanks to Yoz... I just surf his bookmarks, now. We hardly need to real-life interface anymore. We're just on the same email lists, and read each others blogs/bookmarks. It's virtual. It's so now, daahling. Hi, Yoz.

Europe's greatest working auteur? Educating Pedro from today's Guardian.

From Zeek I hear America bling-blinging by Jay Michaelson.

Christmas Humphreys. And his siblings Easter and Lent. And his cousin Twelve Stations of the Cross.

On your marks, get set, search ... in today's Guardian. Personally, I use a mixture of all three.

The sweet, sickly, viscous pink shot.
A shot of hot pouty pink icy pepper.
It's flappers dancing the Charleston with abandon.
It's emancipation.
It's early onset women's liberation.
It's a muzzy rose warmth covering me like a childhood duvet.

Smilies - love 'em or hate 'em...

See, the wonder of the webnetthang: I couldn't make it to NY Monday, but I can read all about it. Bloggers in New York.

You know the thing about calling BT? They never seem to answer the phone.

In the attention economy, what we all need is a little attention management. So... obvious.

Why am I sitting here earning a living in the old-fashioned way? (OK, not old fashioned. I sit at my PC overlooking the garden, wearing NSFW clothing. I rarely see my clients face to face. In fact, I have about two meetings a week. I rarely see anyone I talk to. I can go to the gym anytime I want. I can rustle up middle eastern food and do my washing anytime I want. I spend a lot of time online, clearly. Nothing about this set-up is old fashioned. I am modernity, through and through. I am a servitor of the powers of wirelessness and homeworking. But you get my point).

I should be making up stupid words, getting myself a consulting gig at a big name firm and peddling my wares like an Armani-clad rag and bone man.

Esther Dyson is weak - her thoughts on Gmail.

Today's question: what is synarchism?

I'm sitting in my study... it looks out over the garden, and up to the roof. The weather's been a little: biblical. Rain, hail, shine. There's steam comming off the roof. Is that like a sign from G!d, or an indicator that we need better installation? The tropics, this ain't.

Roll up, roll up.... the Guardian Hay Festival.

This is sold out - Lifegame at the National Theatre. Sadly.

The Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia.

I'm only on the second page for that well known google search "Evesham crap." But maybe this post'll give me the google juice I need here.

And I've just remembered that last August an Evesham representative was going to call me back that week with what they were going to do to make me feel better. Oh well.

More on the Kabbalah Centre (remember when I was Madonna obsessed a coupla years back?)

And in parallel news, Britney has a nonsense Hebrew tattoo.

Last year, I was at a party, and some goth/occult types who knew I knew a thing or two about Kaballah (even if I can't spell it), showed me their tattoos. Obviously, they have better kaballist/typography advisors than Britney, because they had matching his'n'hers "TOHU VA VOHU" tattoos accross their upper backs. They're chaos magick types, too, I expect, so it all seamlessly fits together.

I'm going to bed now, I'm starting to ramble. An early night - the first for weeks - calls.

My newly invented word of the day: timewasterly. It's wasting time, but with a masterful twist. Turning it into an artform, if you will.

The Squished Penny Museum

I'm posting this - Bad Scrabble Hands - entirely for my Mum who is official best Scrabble player in the world, and can doubtless do something with all of these, as soon as she gets back from Spain.

[via Cory]

From Wired: Prepping for the IPO Aftermath. The article where I found out about the Money, Meaning and Choices Institute, which counsels the newly rich. Only in America, as they say.

Culture begins across the channel? Tonight.

Silver Mt. Zion founded by Efrim from godspeed you black emperor!

Moroccan Aromatic Dried Fruit Salad

Well, as you know, I've been all over the shop looking for Momo's dried fruit salad recipe.

I finally snapped this morning. I called the restuarant, and asked someone to read me the ingredients over the phone. Which they very kindly did.

Here's my (slightly amended) version:

the main salad
stoned prunes
dried apricots
dried figs
dried sweetened cranberries
sultanas
grated lemon zest (small amount)

the syrup
some water
orange blossom water
rose water
brown granulated sugar
cloves
cinnamon sticks
grated nutmeg
some lime juice

for decoration
blanched almonds
sesame seeds, toasted

Make the syrup by heating up all the syrup ingredients, and cooking slowly. Strain. Pour over the cut up dried fruit. Decorate with the cinnamon sticks, and if you fancy, almonds and sesame seeds. Make it at least a day before, so the fruits can stew.

If using, sprinke with seeds/nuts just before serving. It's that easy.

Fabulous. ShaBot 6000: Affix the Mezuzah. A cartoonist to watch.

Remember when the Y2K thing was bending everyone's mind? A friend of mine bought Y6k.com or some such site, convinced the Hebrew calendar millennium was going to present similar problems. Could be.

More bad news on the postal front:Royal Mail 'loses 14.4m items' a year. Brings a whole new meaning to the prhase going postal, yeah?

Can you believe the postal services watchdog is called PostWatch? How lame. If they'd asked me, I could've come up with...

PostDog

MailDog

OfPost

OfDeliver

NoPost

GetEmail

... or something.

Blink Magazine launches today. it's FHM and then some?

Futurismic: Fiction. Love it....

Knock knock...

As ever, great Economist piece on the Google IPO.

Martha Lane Fox hurt in road accident.

Give us our daily bread - the Chorleywood Bread Process, and what it means today.

It's just so London: the Blue Plaque Project.

Did you know that both Terence Trent D'Arby (now known as Sananda Maitreya) and Jeanette Winterson were brought up by Pentecostalists? (more on Pentecostalism).

Google blog?

Is a Do-Gooder Company a Good Thing? - more on the power of Google. It's true, in a micro way: in November, my google hits for "sashinka" went down from 21,000 to 3,000. For no good reason, as far as I can tell. If I was a business, I'd probably be upset.

[cult of the writer] If you want a bestseller, read her lips -- daytime TV and book clubs are changing how we read books. '...authors really are the new rock 'n' roll'.

foodster, the recipe sharing network. Hasn't got the Momo moroccan fruit salad, though. Has anyone got the recipe?

Google's sale is for US only. Bugger. Still have my NY accommodation address....

Here's a thing: remember when, on Friday, I was listening to the Scissor Sisters? And I remembered what it was like being thirteen/fourteen - that eighties hit, hit me hard? I wrote about a bunch of people I've probably not seen or thought of in pushing twenty years.

I wrote this:
"Jonnie C is wearing makeup, and we all think he's got something to tell us. He turns out to be the MD of an investment bank."

When I wrote that, I knew that Jonnie C wasn't in banking, because he got in touch with me off Friends Reunitied a year or so ago, ann we exchanged a few reminiscatory emails. He lived round the corner, now as then, although our corners have moved two hundred miles. I just thought, give the guy a little anonymity, if I say exactly what he does, it might be a bit identifying, and he might come across it and not like it. Not that there's any reason I could have offended him, I figured.

I thought about him, fondly, for a few minutes. Wondered what he's up to. if he sorted out [something person he told me when he emailed].

This morning my sister called me and told me he died. On Friday. Cancer.

I think I'm in shock. I hate it when young people die. And also, I think, I didn't think about him for years, decades even, and then the moment I think about him, this. Sheesh. So, I still think fondly of him, and wish his family long life. Funeral's today, apparently.

NY BLOGGERS: MONDAY MAY 3 @ 6PM @ APPLE STORE SOHO

There was a moment on Friday when I was listening to Mike's I'm sick, honest, listen to my voice recording with special musical accompaniment MP3 work of art/genius/boredom (his, not mine, delete where applicable), and I thought if I called him up on the phone, I'd have him in stereo. Well, stereo plus 5.1. Whatever you call that - 7.1? Anyway.

Two Britons among dead in Saudi.

Commercial Breaks and Beats :: The UK TV Advert Music Database.

Russell Stover low carb candies - that's what I had at A&R's the other week.

Letterboxing in America - the outdoor treasure hunting pastime.

City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris.