I'm going away (admittedly to East Finchley). I may be gone some time.

Just heard Tony Hawks judging some Radio 4 competition for the best (ironic) title for an autobiography. The two winners were:

To Be Or Not To Be: Both Answers Are Right
by Estelle Morris

and

Geezers of Nazareth
the collective autobiography of Jesus' disciples

So the WMD dossier is 55 pages long.

In my mind a dossier was the kind of document you might prepare for your boss; an executive summary of sorts. Webster says "a bundle containing the papers in reference to some matter." Does a PDF count as a bundle? A virtual bundle. A vundle?

Rejection
Just got a letter for a job interview I had about three weeks ago:


Dear Sasha,
Thank you so much for your application for Head of Marketing. After serious consideration, I have decided not to invite you back for second interview. Even though I was very impressed with you I however, do not feel this position will be appropriate.

I wish you all the success in the future.


It's not a typo: he did start a sentence with 'even though', and put a comma after however. Perhaps he'll hire a grammar consultant instead.

I didn't win the competition - or even get close - but I did discover some great new blogs: Plenty of Taste a weblog mostly about fonts. I love those kind of blogs, and through him, fontscape. People have been linking to greenfairy for a week or so now, and it's great, scaryduck who's a great writer, but already having bandwidth problems on his main (writing) site - which I won't exacerbate by linking to. And congrats to Fraser and Darren. Now we can all get back to regular life.

So I'm off out to dinner with a rather erudite crowd: I've just realised we are about four phds out of eight people. In order to appear intelligent, witty and well-read I've just printed off the leaders from all today's broadsheets.

Hope they watched White Teeth.

Thought I'd have a relaxing bath before I go out - after a heady morning of investigative journalism - and ran a bath with:

Radox Herbal Bath Original
Proven to RELAX
(with Juniper)
to relax aching muscles and unwind tired minds
- secret blend of herbs and minerals

but then, I realised I'd run out soap, and resorted to using my shower gel:
Radox Showerfresh
Refresh! hair and body gel
- with herbal extracts

I'm worried they might cancel each other out; proven to relax on the one hand, and refreshing (read perk-you-up) on the other.

Still grappling with the how-much-and-what-to-write-on-your-blog-dilemma. But there's still the last bastion: the comments box confessional. The one place they (google) can't get you. Though any day soon we'll probably all wake up to the good news that google have negotiated a joint-venture with Yaccs, BlogBack and a host of other comments system providers and it'll be like the wayback machine all over again.

Until then: confess ye sins in the comments boxes of others, my children.

White Teeth Update: Talking with Mike, he thought maybe some Willesden Chalfen's had made some kind of claim against Zadie Smith. Two micro-seconds later, I know there are only six Chalfens in the whole of London, interestingly spread between NW3 and N8 (all the best herbal tea drinking micro-republics, then) and none of them are called Joyce, Marcus or anything close. They are called good middle-class couple-combo names, but I'll leave them to their privacy.

I was just asking Mike if he thought I should email George Faber to get a response to the piece I wrote this morning, when he bowled me over with the fact that George's co-executive producer, Charlie Pattinson was the year below Mike in school, and they starred together in Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle. Though apparently Charlie starred and Mike basked in his reflected glory.

But: still no answers.

I am - inexplicably - listening to CAN, Future Days.

So is it cool or uncool to blog your dreams?

  Same Spider, Different Day
Or is it getting bigger? (I realise you have no context, so you can't tell). Where's it been hiding? Where do spiders go when you're asleep?

The web is a democratiser. Whatever I think of savekaryn, savelinda, savemydeadcat, the net is the ultimate leveller. You/me/the punter get to choose who we give our money to, and ye olde junke maile days are gone. You puts your page up, you takes your gamble. It probably costs nothing.

So I have utmost respect for Brad at Backpack Nation for his idea. I wonder how long it'll take before the web gets charity-gift fatigue, like old-fashioned direct mail. In the meantime, if you have, give. I guess.

Make your own Bush speech.

[kinda, via Fraser]

Type "go to hell" into google and see what happens. Someone's had fun, eh?

Mad, Bad or Dangerous to Know?
Was just talking to a friend about a former colleague who's "a bit of a nutter" as people say.

My brother often calls people "mad as cheese." And you say: "cheese?" And he says: "exactly, mad."

Stop messing around with the characters, ferchrissakes
I genuinely do have better things to do, but I got a real bee in my bonnet about the Chalfen/Malfen dilemma in last night's White Teeth. To save you scrolling down, the Chalfen family (white, middle class, Marcus and Joyce, son Josh) were introduced in last night's second episode, and they've morphed into the Malfens. I'm outraged: how did this happen?

I discussed this with Z (and for the record, that's not Zadie) this morning, and she was equally perturbed. Fictional characters, while being - obviously - fictional, do take on a life of their own. You never see a TV adaptation of Emma where she's called Natasha because it's more contemporary, or any other such playing around with fictional reality. And as someone who has changed her name herself, I know how confusing/perturbing/disturbing it can be to onlookers, and I'm not a fictional character. As far as I know.

So Z thought maybe there was someone called Chalfen in the production company or something. Maybe, but there may well have been someone with the family name Iqbal too, and that name hasn't been changed. Why would someone do that? What's the point? What does it acheive?

So I'm lying in bed, enjoying the fast-paced drama, the perfect period detail and the fabulous casting, and suddenly, at the PTA meeting, it's the Malfens who congratulate Samad on his harvest festival win. I jump out of bed. Malfens! Malfens? Who are they? Are they the Chalfens in some parallel, dyslexic universe? I started disbelieving all the other elements of the programme. What next? London's too expensive, let's film it in Leeds. It's really about the seventies, yeah? Let's turn it into one of those "I remember 1973" saturday night shows.

This morning, I thought I'd find out. I call Channel 4, where they only put you through to an enquiry helpline, who clearly had no idea what I was talking about, and said "the producers had good reasons for doing it." I'm sure they do, I just want to know what they are. No, they can't give me the production company's phone number. They gave me their (incorrect) name and (incorrect) address, and eventually I find Company Pictures, not Productions, through a helpful bloke at PACT. Through some judicious googling, I know all the executives names.

So I call up Company - aside: it's a bit like being at University College, Oxford, or living on the road called Belsize Park - and speak to a charmingly well-educated media-stylee bloke, whose name I didn't get. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I explain my question and ask to speak to George Faber, the executive producer. He says George is very busy, and talks to me some more. He wasn't aware the name had been changed. No, he doesn't know why. There's a tube strike today. I agree; there clearly is a tube strike (but I'm OK, I have a bus stop outside my house). He asks me who I am, and I describe myself as an "independent writer" and the journalist alarm goes off in his head, and he tells me to talk to Channel 4 publicity. I explain that Channel 4 had suggested I contact them, and he tells me that they're all crazy because of the tube strike and George is too busy to talk to me. I am halfway through saying that surely a tube strike means there are less people to talk to on the phone, as no-one else can get to their office either, when he hangs up on me.

Optionless, I call Channel 4 press and publicity, and get through to a nice woman called Audix, who seems to work in most big companies nowadays. She takes my message, but I'm pretty sure no-one'll call me back.

So: no answer. No resolution. Should I try again with George or just try and sell this story to a real newspaper?

HTML comments help. See, I do have secrets, J.

Anyone else notice that in White Teeth last night, the Chalfens, seem to have morphed into the Malfens? I have no idea why TV people would presume to change the name of fictional characters, but it really upset me. It doesn't have to be totally faithful to the original, the director has their own vision, blah blah blah, but some things must be sacrosanct, surely?

Just saw Matthew Parris on breakfast TV talking about how when he was Maggie Thatcher's letter writer, he once caught her in the cabinet office, in her stockinged feet, running her hand along the top of the pictures. "It's the only way a woman can tell if it's been cleaned properly," she told him.

More in the savekaryn memetic trail of bandwaggon jumpers: savelinda.

I'm concerned that the Stop the War Coalition campaign and associated demonstration on Sunday has two, twin messages. Don't Attack Iraq (with which I agree) and Freedom for Palestine (with which I also agree, but (a) don't quite see why it is intrinsically linked, and (b) has the message on the MAB website to "condemn 'Israeli' aggression"). And I really don't get why Israeli is in quotes.

Deco links: art deco societyof New York, radio mania - vintage collectibles, decopix, art deco world congress (no, I didn't know there was one, either), virtual Derby deco tour, vitriolite specialist, Paris' museum of the thirties, 20th century decorative arts.

DIY Question Time
This is such a daytime TV question, I know, but I need help. I am a woman who shares her place with a woman who knows even less about household fixery than I do.

So, what do you do when a radiator makes a constant gurgling sound when the heat is on? And if the answer is "bleed it" how do you do that?

I have so much technology in my house, that when I hear an intermittent, faint beeping sound, I have no idea if it's (1) my smoke alarm (just put new battery in), (2) carbon monoxide alarm (ditto), (3) some alarm from a long forgotten el-cheapo digital watch sequestered in the back of a drawer somewhere, (4) ditto travel radio, (5) oven? microwave? who the hell knows?

Samspade may be broken, but geektools rules. As does LMG who told me the good news.

 Art Deco Nirvana
More on the V&A art deco exhibition from the BBC.

And - fyi as people annoyingly sometimes say - I purloined this picture from the Guardian, after a lengthy AIM conversation about what bloggers without picture libraries do. If you think I should take it down, tell me. But I think I'm just promoting the exhibition, so it's hardly an offence.

To the person who surfed in her asking "can fourteen year olds die from Slim Fast products?" the answer is I don't know. But frankly, it's unlikely. But then I guess it depends how much you consume: anything in un-moderation can kill you.

And for the record, I've never discussed the product. Though obviously I may have used the words "slim" and "fast" at various times.

Prudential are giving their staff an extra day's holiday (tr = vacation) to sort out their personal finances. Apparently, people spend half-an-hour a week sorting out their personal finance stuff at work. Is that all? And will you get an extra days holiday for all the cigarette breaks you have at work?

And presumably they're not all going to have Prudential Day at the same time: " thanks for calling, your call is important to us. But all our advisors are busy today sorting out their own financial affairs. So, sorry, but call tomorrow."

Today on Language. Language on Today.
Just heard Andrew Gilligan on the Today programme talk about whether Saddam was weaponised or not.

It's all in the long-awaited Government dossier on WDM. Which they also said. Sounds like a club in Camden.

I want to go to bed, but I'm scared that spider's waiting for me.

Freaky or what? Just a called a friend, and he was reading my weblog as he answered the phone. Me, in stereo? How sinister is that?

OK folks, off to Sopranoland. You know you want to.

Coupling on BBC2 is the palest imitation of Friends I've ever seen. Having a read reviews of how it's so good it shouldn't even be on BBC2, I couldn't agree less. Just saw the first episode of the third series - primarily because I had a mutual blowing out of arrangements with A - and it's crap. It's faux Friends for the sense of humour challenged - when I taught in Sunday school, one kid used to spell it sensifumere - but then I never got Men Behaving Badly either. It's old gags - 1471 audit trails, the difference between men and women - done in a hackneyed way. That split screen trick is all over the fucking shop nowadays.

It's not Steve Moffat's fault. All the best US sitcoms - Friends, Frasier, Will & Grace, Sex & the City - have teams of writers, who get time to both work the gags and work with the cast, and it shows. US production companies invest serious time and money into their craft, and it makes great TV. We try and get by with one writer, and a cast who don't appear to have the greatest comedy timing, and expect to make great TV. It's shit. It needs to be worked at. Honed. And can the canned laughter, p-u-lease. UK TV companies seem to think if you have a skinny girl and a famous girl, everything else'll be OK. Untrue.

And when the blonde woman has her lip waxed? It's completely the wrong shape of wax-paper, and would have no discernable effect at all.

Verdict: could do better. A lot better.

Know what I hate? People who have call waiting and don't pick up. So you get "the person you are calling blah blah blah." And then you get "the person you are calling would rather talk to someone else. Bugger off."

Not good for those with delicate self-esteem.

Please try later.

Forensic evidence of reincarnation? I'm fifty-fifty on all that Doris Stokes stuff: part of me thinks there must be some truth in it, all sorts of witch-like experiences have happened to people in my extended social circle. And half of me - the empirical half - says nowayever. And now this.

One in an occasional series:
The book that should have been written: no 1

You’re probably not familiar with that important work: The Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism (Talushkin and Prager 1986), a seminal work that covers complex philosophical questions ranging from can one doubt God's existence and still be a good Jew to why do we need organised religion?

All well and good, but I have in mind a companion volume, entitled: Nine Questions that Jews Ask. And, without further ado, here they are:

1 We're not happy with this room/table/life, can we have an upgrade?
2 Can you tell me where the toilet is?
3 Are you related to the Lighting Levy's from Stanmore?
4 This is ridiculous service/food, get me the manager immediately?
5 How much do you think their house is worth?
6 That's a lovely coat, tell me, did you get it in the sale at John Lewis? How much was it?
7 Tell me, he's successful in business?
8 You have a son? Is he single?
9 Divorced? Who gets the house?

It was tough work, sifting out the nine most meaningful questions, I can tell you. And then, transposing them into that strange translated-from-Yiddish idiom. Soon, I'll have to sit down for coffee and cake.

Web-karaoke: brings a whole new meaning to slightly out of tune in a [one of those fake-piano geeky toys from the seventies] way. There's nothing like nostalgia.

[via stuart]

So you can get censored for having a weblog. Seems a badly thought out policy to me.

The Friday Five is one today. Let's get a contract out on it. It deserves to die. I sincerely hope it doesn't reach its second birthday.

Noise Pollution
I know I live in zone two and it's not exactly suburban, but it's getting very noisy. We've had helicopters overhead for a while (apparently a Police initiative to overcome burglary), and although I've lived the same three streets away from the trainline for the whole time I've been in this flat (and show me anyone in inner-London who isn't three streets from a trainline) I never used to be able to hear them. Now, a couple of trains an hour seem to hoot (or whatever trains do) as they pass near my house. I think if they're going to move nuclear waste from one place to another, they should at least do it quietly.

And now, there are definitely more planes. I'm sure I'm not on the heathrow flightpath, but I keep talking to people on the phone who think there's interference on my phone technology, when it's a plane. While I wrote this, a plane and two trains went by. Now I grew up on the flightpath at Ringway (as it is affectionately known from its small-airport days: Manchester) and find it therapeutic in some way. Over the weekend, a friend of mine's mother said that her theory is that "they're moving the troops out, that's why there's so many extra planes." But if you were a military officer, would you send your troops on a mission from a commercial airport? Would they queue at security in terminal three?

Aggregate all this with police sirens coming to take people away, and soon, buses drawing up outside my house, and it's getting crazy. All I can say is, it's like Planes, Trains and Automobiles but with very bad sound effects.

Scary, scary stuff. I don't like internal US flights at the best of times (even before 9/11 - I've always felt I'm on a very cheap coach but it happens to be in the air). Least I look mainstream, though.

  Arachnophobia
There's a huge fuck-off spider in my bathroom, and I can't sleep. I realise that it looks utterly insy-winsy in this picture, but that's because I don't have a zoom.

It's huge, honest.

Despite years of personal development
she still turned into her mother

My mum just sent me this card: is it (a) a witty, ironic joke she couldn't resist, or (b) something more sinister?

BlogBore?
I had a lengthy talk to today with J about the nature of blogdom - he's a regular reader - and self-disclosure and how he basically thinks I'm not that personal anymore. He wants the full monty - and he'd even pay for it. It could, of course, be that I have a less interesting life than I used to all those... months ago (see, internet time again). I guess there are lots of emotional voyeurs out there, and I'm as much one as the rest of us, but J is disappointed my mention of books and cinema and theatre, seems just about OK about little vignettes about people I meet, but wants the hardcore juicy stuff.

Not sure there is any. But if there was, why should I tell you?

But the question really hangs on the issue why do people blog. I'd be a liar if I said "just for myself", but I would say mostly for myself. That's why I blog my favourite makeup foundation when it's running out, and books I want to read and shows I want to see. And sometimes, I have a lot of crap in my head and just getting it down on (virtual) paper frees my mind from the voices. The voices: there are about 450 conversations going on in my head at any one time. And I have a terrible memory: this way, I don't have stupid post-it notes stuck to my whole life; this is part notebook, part outboard brain, part braindump, part writing experience. I do feel like I can write more fluently now I do it every day. Sure, I'm aware of the audience, but I don't do it for the audience. At the risk of sounding scarily new-agey and hippyish, finding blogger was like coming home: at last, all the little stories, observations, crap, links, ideas that are in my head, have a home. I was hard-wired to write down all my crap in a totally unstructured way.

J thinks I should make it up: fires, murders, passionate threeway sexual liaisons. But then it'll just be like a soap opera. And while my life is fairly interesting - to me, anyhow - it's patently not a soap opera.

I'd really like to know what people think: am I getting boring?

Parents Can Be Thooo Embarassing
So I was walking home from shul (synagogue) - it's the first day of Succot, Tabernacles - and a friend's pre-teen daughter was in a bit of a strop. "You know how it is," he said to me, "everything's boring. You're boring. Parent's are just embarassing."

While I don't think that anymore, let me relate a story from my own experience. (Aside: don't you hate it when you want someone to listen to you, and they interrupt and say "I had a similar experience in my own life" and start telling it over your story. But then blogs are only interactive to a certain degree. And no one's commented here forever (OK, a day. But this is internet time)). Bugger: too many brackets.

So I'm seventeen, in the lower sixth form at an all girl's school in Manchester (which has all those words in its name) and at parents evening, my Dad gets talking to Mr Blagdon, our economics teacher, about how he'd done a Monopolies and Mergers Commission reference. Mr B immediately invited him in to do a talk to my Economics set.

I was so worried he was going to embarass me, in the way teenagers worry about these things. On the day, I picked out his least embarassing tie (looking back, none of his ties were especially embarassing, in fact they were rather stylish - my Mother is very good at shopping) and we drove off to school. It was first period.

Timetable aside: I never really got why lessons were called periods. Particuarly in a girls school. There's lots of pre- and post- pubescent young women running around talking about what they've got this period, and what they do to avoid boredom in a double period. It can't be good for them.

Anyway, there's about sixteen girls sitting in the sixth form library (no, I still don't know why we had our own library, the books weren't any better), sniggering quietly because it's my Dad. We would have sniggered for anyone's dad, I'm sure.

My Dad starts. "So you all know how a public company works?"

Blank looks all round. Mr Blagdon is eyes to the floor.

"No problem, " my ever-resourceful father says, turning to the blackboard, to draw a diagram.

He writes PUBLIC COMPANY on the board.

Only he misses out the L (I had put him under a lot of performance pressure): P U B I C COMPANY was how it read.

I didn't hear the end of that one for a long, long time.

It's savekaryn all over again: helpmeleavemyhusband. No, not mine, stupid.

Deco Delight
Just about to sit down to eat, but had to post this: two great stories about the art deco foyer of the Strand Palace Hotel coming out of storage to front an Art Deco exhibition at the V&A next year.

All I can find out is that Anna Jackson is working on it, curatorally, and that Carol Hobgen was the brains behind saving the interior intially. But she saved it pre-google (1969) so there's not a lot of information out there.

I had been looking at a picture in (one of my many) art deco books of the Strand Palace foyer for about fifteen years, and always felt angry that no-one had the foresight to save it, or indeed, that they wanted to "modernise" it in the first place. I can't believe that I'm going to get to see it for real. In fact, I think I'm going to email the V&A monday and find out if I can be a volunteer.

It's the Brighton Comedy Festival soon:I've not seen JohnHegley perform for about ten years.

Chicken 'n egg? Blog 'n journo?
Hard to know which came first. Read this great italian coffin porn story on SwishCottage on Wednesday, and now it's made Reuters. Check out the comments (which I can't link to, for some reason) as there's a lively debate on the who-came-first thing.

Bus Shelter Crapness
So I talked to my friendly barrister, who said that I had to show some kind of diminution to have any reasonable sway in arguing the point with the council planning officer. My concerns are (a) safety and hassle and (b) I can't help feeling, should I ever move, that it has a negative effect on value.

I called my local estate agent, had a chat, and asked her the current value of my flat (she's seen it a couple of times, as I think I'm going to move every couple of years and then can't bear to leave zone two).

"And," I ask her, "say there was a bus shelter outside the house?"

"That would be very convenient," she replies.

"Would it have any effect on the value?"

"What, like increasing it because you're well connected to local travel routes?"

So it's like, a good thing. Though I suspect that estate agents are hard-wired to put a good spin on everything. I still don't like not being consulted, and would have prefered a stop to a shelter, but over the last 36 hours, I have grown to love my bus shelter, in some way.

Got email from Anittah about dinnergrrls and felt completely at one with her words: "more entrepreneurial than your average bear, and tends to be a little edgy. But
can be polished when the situation comes for it." That's me, that is.

Just had a deeply strange journey home: saw The Bourne Identity with D (prefaced by some Lebanese soul food at Maroush) which was total boy-action but entertaining. The people behind me were utterly enthralled by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's portrayal of Wombosi. D pointed out that it has an identical plot to The Long Kiss Goodbye, but then Julie Burchill says there's only five basic film plots, so that's cool.

Anyway, got a number 16 bus home from Marble Arch (I am deeply bus-enabled now I have my own personal bus stop) which is supposed to go all the way up the Edgware Road till it gets to Kilburn. It went down the Harrow Road and then to Baker Street and Marylebone Road, temporarily became a 189 and then turned back into a 16 in lower Kilburn. All the people on the bus behaved as if aliens had landed. Got me there in the end, though.

I can't believe I'm so parochial as to write about a bus journey ferchirssakes. Stop me, someone. Please.

A Girl's Gotta Do....
What a girl's gotta do, right? So I went clubbing a few weeks back and lost my favourite Hard Candy lip andcheek stain (I know, I shouldn't carry it around; but it's like a security blanket). For about three weeks, everytime I was in town, I checked in stores but they always said it was coming in tomorrow. Today, I finally got a number from someone in Selfridges. No UK distributor as far as I can tell, website down, so I called. Bizarrely, on my calling card it's cheaper to call the US than it is to call Manchester (2p a minute).

Talked to Ted, and he'll email me Monday with UK distributor's details. Talk about service. It's a global village.

I'm just in time to talk like a pirate. Shiver me timbers. I have no idea what else pirates say.

A friend just called me - he runs his own business - and told me he'd spent the afternoon in a meeting with a PR company where they said things like "we can deliver a multi-layered, fresh-angled approach to your PR". Jargon. He just couldn't unpack what they were saying, y'know?

Tired. Maybe not emotional, but tired anyhow
I'm reading 21 Dog Years - the insider book on amazon.com - and although it's very well written; dense, funny and insightful, I'm just a little sick and tired of the whole sassy, irreverent geek-lite thing that's going on. I write like that. Everyone I read online writes like that. Books I like are like that. Most conversation is with equally yay-partAY people and - gah. Just a bad day. A combination of bus shelter passive-aggression and my head being filled with bull and bear markets (work, I shouldn't complain).

Another scam email thingy, like the one I mentioned Tuesday. They get around (cue Beach Boys stylee music).

Modest needs. Amazing.

Since catching a glimpse of Geri Halliwell judging Pop Idol at the weekend I think there should be a new fashion rule: women over thirty should never wear their hair in bunches. It's not big and it's not clever (reassuringly for Geri, I can't find online photographic evidence of this fashion faux pas). She's got an old woman's face on a teenager's body - Pippi Longstocking meets Cruella DeVille - and she just looked very, very scary.

Really Bad Day
I'm having a bad day, and it's not a bad hair day. I won't bore you with the details, but I was corresponding last year with the London Transport Authority about a proposed bus shelter outside my house. Doesn't sound bad, I know, and it'll at least be convenient. But me and my neighbours were concerned about safety, broken glass and a host of other things. I'm not a NIMFY - I hope - and understand Transport for London is trying to solve our infrastructure problem, and that apparently bus stops closer together make people use buses more. Go figure. I have no desire to stand in the way of the needs of the community, but I do want my concerns adressed. Anyway, I heard nothing since January, saw a new bus stop go up not twenty yards away and presumed London Buses had agreed with me.

This morning, I awake to drills and neighbours banging on my door; men are erecting a huge fuck-off bus shelter outside my house as I write. For most of the time I was corresponding with London Buses, they had planning permission already. I feel utterly, utterly disenfranchised.

One day I'll want the code that does loads of pics merged together. So I nicked Mike's. You can't see it, it's in the source code, but it's not that interesting anyhow. Apart from to me.

just nicking Mike's code cos he did the pics really cool.

Fascinating article by Eric Olsen about the smoke-and-mirrors contract scenario for Pop Idol and American Idol.

Just realised that iCal and iamcal are not related.

Allconsuming - a new bookwatch meets blog endeavour. Or perhaps not so new, and just caught up with me.

[via Luke]

British Gas: Nil. Me: One
So Muddi, the (a) supervisor finally called me at 1748. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing where he couldn't tell me what had gone wrong, and I couldn't be bothered to argue for very long, I got him to give me a £20 credit against my bill. This is my usual methodology: Look, your service is lousy. I know it isn't your fault, but I'm not happy with [field one]. Why don't you just give me a discretionary credit now and I'll go away? So he's writing to guarantee how everything works and to set up my (discounted) direct debit. I wonder what a job that does this kind of thing is called?

Oh, I just remembered. Wife. That's what I need.

Search Stat Silliness
I am number two for bored muslim pacifist. I'm sure that says something, I just don't know what.

How dirty, exactly?
Can't help wondering how appropriate is the sountrack to the Charmin toilet paper advert? It's Susan Sarandon singing Touch-a Touch Me from the Rocky Horror Show.

Remember the lyrics?

.... because I want to be dirty.

Mmmm. Completely tangential thought: I sat next to a toilet paper executive at a friend's wedding last year, and he told me that the UK has the most varied market in Europe: on the continent, there's just one kind of toilet paper. No colours, no padding, no luxury, no basic. Just toilet paper.


[orginal thought from emily]

The British Gas Years - Part II
You may remember this tale of service woe I told in April. Listen to this, then.

I'm sitting at my desk, filling my brain with information about elogistics (don't even ask; it's for a client) when the buzzer goes, and a British Gas man comes to my door. "Am I expecting you?" I ask, given that they never come when you want them, but this guy is smarter dressed than an engineer-type.

"No", he replies. "You haven't paid your bill." Now I know that I paid it by phone in the summer sometime, but am not very good at filing and the like. Life's too short. I go back to my study, and rifle around my desk, and find a list of bills I gave to my flatmate at the end of July. There, writ large, is "gas bill - £76.87" (it was winter). See, "I paid it some time in July", I tell him.

He waved a disconnection notice at me, although in a very affable and friendly manner - I imagine those skills are rapidly developed on-the-job to stop you from getting your head kicked in. "Well, I'll leave you the phone number of the helpline to sort it out."

I call my bank, and they don't have a record of a payment for that sum. I rifle through my desk some more, and find this post-it note:

british gas bill £76.87 paid
7pm thurs 11/7, claire ext 38723

I am impressed by my accidental efficiency: I never have the date/time/extension number/inside leg measurement when I need it, and armed with this information, call Hannah (on extension 454436). She tells me yes, she can see that I spoke to Claire on the 11th July and made a payment, but the payment hasn't gone through. I ask what that means. Well, she tells me, if there was an error in the details, it would be returned to us, and we would write to you, but it hasn't been. I confirm that I haven't received a letter.

I press Hannah further as to what it means. "It can only be that the person who took the payment wrote it down on a piece of paper but didn't put it in the system."

But that's a core competency of the job: putting the payments through. Gah. I know working in a call centre is shit, but really. It's not nice having unscary British Gas men come round to your house unannounced waving disconnection notices in your face, however politely.

I asked to speak to a supervisor. They only make outgoing calls, apparently. So I booked a call at 2.42pm, and they'll get back to me within a four hour time slot. Hannah promised me. And those British Gas people are always to be trusted.

I so loved the whoisreport search engine, and now it's broken. Everything is available; that can't be right.

Celebrity tattoos: does what it says on the tin.

Open Source Noo York
If you live in NY, signup now for Douglas Rushkoff's talk at the JCC on his new book, Nothing Sacred, published in the Spring.

BlogLibel?
Wondered about this for a while: one of the benefits of the traditional publishing process is that other people get to glance over your worthy words before they get put out there, and if you say anything defamatory there's an inbuilt gatekeeper process delivered by an additional pair of eyes. (I will refrain from saying eyeballs.)

So blogroots has a fascinating post about Father Johansen, a Catholic priest who criticised Michael Rose's book on the Catholic Clergy. Blogroots links a whole bunch of useful resources, so I won't bother relinking, but the NRO article is a gem.

Johansen's blog is called an "Internet blogsite" which displays a unique lack of familarity with the lingua franca of the web. As does spelling Internet with a capital "I". Like it's brand spanking new: so new, we capitalise. But the best bit is where a blog is described as "a sort of running public diary published on the Internet". An accurate description, sure, but belies a how-do-I-write-about-this-stuff sensibility that had me questioning the rest of the article.

I don't have a problem with people making money out of blogging - but how do I choose between all these books? Blog On by Todd Stauffer, Blogging by Biz Stone and We Blog by the Bausch/Haughey/Hourihan triumvirate. OK, triumpersonate.

I know: I won't read any of them.

Tomorrow is talk like a pirate day.

Did you know that Moby has a blogalike?

Tables Turned
So now men are having staid stay-at-home bachelor (English people, read: stag) parties, while women are going wild. Apparently.

I'm really sick of everything being a trend. So, maybe some women do party more and men less, but who actually cares? Turning everything into a new-research-latest-poll science paper pisses me off. Can't we just be?

Game Theory
Virtual om is probably better if you've had a lot of drugs. Or have a hangover. Or just a very dodgy headcold.

Office warning: there is music. And don't forget to mouseover stuff to find the pacmen. Nostalgia, eh?

Apparently....
[conspiratorial beauty whisper] Madonna swears by Gentle Exfoliating Facial Scrub from Alive (£40 from Liberty, London, but strangely $42 on their website), because it contains Kabbalah water, which is allegedly reknowned for its rejuvenating properties. Like, yeah, that's what the Baal Shem Tov was all about.

Quoth those folks at Alive:
Using the purest spring water available on the market treated with ancient scientific wisdom culled from the kabbalistic text, the Zohar, in combination with modern technological advances, ordinary spring water is transformed into dynamic "living" water. Kabbalah Water is characterized by a highly organized structure, crystalline formations and a fractal design. Because of this crystalline fractal structure, this water has low entropy and high energy.

The water has been treated with wisdom? Ancient scientific wisdom? It's a copywriter's living nightmare.

And check this out: at the Kabbalah centre in South Florida - which I guess I walked past on my trip - they "drink bottles of allegedly curative Kabbalah Mountain Spring Water blessed by the group's founder, Rav Berg".

It's a strange, strange world out there, kids.

When I made my, er, onanistic gag last night, I came across this. You ever worried about getting RSI from, er, self-love? I know, I know, I can't beleive I'm so shy about this. Just feels like everyone's watching. And I don't want 1.3 million googlers turning up here and then getting disappointed.

White Teeth: last night, Channel 4
It's not often I worship at the square godess in the corner of the living room, but I - gah. Bugger. Argh. Other cartoon statements. I have a shit memory: I can't remember what I wrote five minutes ago. It goes straight from my head to my fingers and it's gone. It's the complete opposite of filling up a car with petrol. But it was great and I liked it and it's gone. I know we live in a throwaway society, but I didn't want to throw it away yet. I'm so angry I might use exclamation marks soon and that's a serious no-no.

I read somewhere that Channel 4 had spent £3.5 million on the adaptation (but that could mostly be on tube ads and bound-in inserts in Sunday supplements), and it showed. High production values, I think they call it. Although I can't help thinking that Clara and Irie look like sisters in the promotional material, rather than mother and daughter, but that's messing around with the space-time-continuum for you.

Inevitably with an adaptation where you've read the book- and who in the country hasn't? - your vision doesn't always quite match up with the producers': I thought the curry house would be tackier (more like a real one on Cricklewood Broadway) and Clara was uglier/more gauche in the book. But these are little niggles. I loved it. The book's biblical proportions had me desperate for the next bit of plot action, but the TV adaptation - inevitably, in squeezing a mammoth book into four one-hour episodes - has a pace and urgency that was missing in the original, and I loved it. Perfectly cast, wittily observed of the nuances of 70s life (my parents' sheets, for example), it covered all the issues of multiculturalism, racism, ethnicity (the contrast of the two weddings was magical) and, er, teeth.

Maybe a little heavy on the orthodontic metaphors for my liking. But I know what I'm doing next Tuesday night, so don't call me. And I love the soundtrack. I want.

I hate that - I just posted a perfect review of last night's White Teeth, and blogger lost it. Bugger.

Sometimes I'm a bit slow on the uptake, so I've just worked out the end to this gag (cue appropriate drumroll): brings a whole new meaning to the wanking wounded.

Nighthawks at the Diner
A friend recently told me that he'd had a sheltered childhood, but everything you do as a teenager he'd made up for by listening to Tom Waits albums.

Don't know if I'm blogweary, or just post-fast tired (it was a fast day yesterday. Though it's about concentrating on thinking rather than actively not eating). Been blown out by two separate friends to get curry in Cricklewood tonight, which I thought was the perfect precursor to an evening with White Teeth. Not least because the opening's set a large stones throw from my front door, and Samad allegedly/fictionally works in a Cricklewood Broadway curry house.

No matter. I'm making do with a large glass of rather mellow Cabernet Sauvignon and some very yummy soup my flatmate has made out of everything in our fridge.

I love it when you go on those crazy little web journeys: the Republic of Stupidstan, the 1984 Newspeak Dictionary, and discovering that the national (US) average life expectancy of a gang member is 24. There weren't a lot of gangs in Cheadle.

Mike Butcher - a former colleague and all round newshound - comments on the nature of "the frontpage" for online publications, and covers some interesting storagage/archiving issues, which inevitably lead to intellectual property questions.

Fly By Day
I keep hearing seagulls. In Kilburn. It's not exactly Brigthon, is it? (I know this, because Julie Burchill is not my neighbour). Global warming? Or have we done something to upset the birds?

I just found out, through some judicious googling, that seagulls live in cities. Where's the sea bit, then?

I love flowcharts and graphs and all manner of diagramatic representations - for a long time, I thought the world was just one big venn diagram - and now Brooke's found me this: a flowchart of possibilities resulting frm an Iraq invasion. Fabulous.

I don't know if it's a meme or just one of those synchronicity things, but I've read more than one story about someone "debugging" Nigerian fraudsters. Internationally known as the 419 fraud, I guess it's just a numbers game: mail enough people, and someone's bound to fall for it. Fear or greed, right?

No Logo? Pro Logo?
If I lived in New York I'd definitely be going to this debate between Naomi Klein (No Logo queen) and Sameena Ahmad, Economist Business Correspondent, who penned a fierce editorial refutation to Klein's book, "Pro Logo: Why Brands Are Good for You", moderated by WNYC Radio's Brian Lehrer.

Angry aside: I know commercially companies need to make money from their websites (although I do this for 100% love, no money), but you have to pay a minimum of $2.95 just to read the one Economist article. Why is it that some papers (largely the Guardian, but also the Chicago Tribune and others) continue to offer all their content for free - although some require a minimal sign-up, which I have no problem with - whilst the Economist, New York TImes and the FT are going down the if-you-don't-pay-you-can't-read-it route?

Partly because the web, in its earliest days, was about borderless worlds and free acess to information, we have a sometimes naive expectation of total free content. And it's hard to shake that off. I don't have a problem with people earning a living, but I do have a problem with people taking the piss. Mircropayments? Online credits? Pay-per-view? Ad revenue downturn? Answers on a postcard.

Voicemail Nirvana? I don't think so
Here's something I never understand: when you call people up at work and their voicemail says "hi, it's Mandy, I'm not here right now, leave a message after the tone", don't you always get confused and think you've called them at home and then forget what message you wanted to leave them? Or a voicemail that says "I'm away from my desk, leave a message". Don't you always want more information? Don't you wish they'd been straightforward and transparent?

When you get those "I'm not here right now" messages, you never know if they've just nipped to the bathroom, or taken a well-earned six week trip to Barbados. Another bugbear: "I'm out of the office today." Which day? Today? Yesterday?

A technology that was designed to enhance our already communication-heavy lives now serves to obfuscate it (and there's a word you don't get to use every day). Remember that old-fashioned piece of technology that told you the other party was busy on the phone and you should call back later? The engaged tone. I'm not a Luddite; I'm not suggesting we unplug all our phones and resort to carrier pigeons (not least because they'd all die from getting caught in telecoms wires or buzzed to death by mobile phone masts) but I am saying this: if we've got the technology, let's use it wisely. Let's make it genuinely enhance our (working) lives rather than create piles of unanswered, unclear voicemail messages that just make me feel "shit, how do I have time to work when I've got seventeen messages just from going to the toilet, and a hundred and twenty three emails whilst I recorded my voicemail."

About four jobs ago, I had an additional responsibility in a small plc for being the voicemail police: I wrote a policy, a couple of suggested outgoing messages, and got people training on how to use the system. After six months, we were efficient enough to have one less receptionist on the main switchboard. I know, I know, it's hardly a job-creation scheme in these troubled employment times, but it was a result. Of sorts.

So here's my suggestion: the eight new guidelines to acheiving voicemail heaven:

1 Change your voicemail everyday. I know you think it "takes ages" but it's worth the extra three minutes so all your callers know your availability
2 If you don't like to think on the hoof, write out your message, in as few words as meaningfully possible, and pin it to your noticeboard
3 Change your message first thing. Or even as you leave the office for the next morning. Time-lag voicemails are not as attractive as time-lag photography
4 Say the date, and even the time. If you're in a meeting all day, say that too. "It's Tuesday 17th September, and I'm out of the office till 2pm."
5 Obvious: say your name. And say it in a relatively business-like way. "You've reached Tony Blair at Number Ten"; that way it sounds like an office, not a ten-person flatshare
6 Avoid voicemail tag: if you leave a message for someone else, say what it's about. "Tony, I'm calling about the bew budget figures, and you can get me at my desk between 2 and 3" is way better than "Tony it's Gordon". This way, even if you don't reach each other, you can start getting an agenda/timing together
7 Return messages quickly. Even if it's just to say got your message, can we talk about it tomorrow?
8 If there's a way to bypass the rest of the message say so: those extra seconds can be vital to a busy executive: press hash to skip this message

English people need to err on the side of caution; if you follow all these rules to the letter, you can come out sounding like an American gospel-trained salesperson: "Well, hello, you've reached the office of Edar J Greenberg III at Landfill Securities. Service is our gospel. It's Tuesday 17th September and I'm serving other clients right now, but I'd be delighted to know you called, so please leave a detailed message after the tone, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Have a good day, now, y'all." This is not a good look: be moderate.

And if you're reading this in an office right now: check your message. And follow the three rules of voicemail good practice: daily (change), date (today) and delete (edit: use as few words as possible in your outgoing message while retaining sense). Go to it, folks.

Using self-love to end conflict. Brings a whole new meaning to [masturbatory joke of your choice].

[via blogjam]

What is the difference between a party and a partAY? (And don't say twenty years and some drugs).

What was that you said?
A few years ago, I was running a small conference team for a large publishing company. Events were usually planned about three months ahead, so June time, we were just putting the finishing touches to Medicine for Lawyers, a fascinating series of medico-legal talks, the brochure was going to print, we had one speaker left to secure. Deadline city. R, my colleague working on that event was jubilant when she had the whole thing sewn up, and it was just going on the presses when she got a voicemail from Professor X, saying he couldn't make it after all.

I got a garbled message from her that it was "Intonement, and his wife would kill him if he missed it" and we spent a merry few hours trying to work out what Intonement was. Judicious googling taught us nothing, and we figured it must be some kind of University pomp and circumstancery. I was as baffled as everyone else. When R finally got hold of him - we'd already got a replacement, as the printers were holding the job for us - we got the full story: he was coming down from Scotland and wouldn't get back in time for the Day of Atonement.

Right. Ever felt foolish?

Anyway, I'm here so no travelling required. I'm off to the holy postcode (N2) for spiritual soul food. Back late Monday. Don't do anything I wouldn't do (that leaves a lot of leeway).

The Beauty Myth?
Men and boys: read no further. You don't even want to know.

I know in the scheme of life the universe and everything these things are not important, but I've had a beauty disaster. Although Yom Kippur is decidedly not about dressing up - I guess it's much more about being humble before the universe - I figured, there's no harm in looking my best. So I went out this morning to get my legs waxed, and get a manicure and a host of other girly things. Why not, right?

So two mishaps; well, one mishap, one disaster. Having finally got all my nails the same length - no mean feat when you have weak nails - she managed to break most of them and make the rest some kind of art deco shape that is definitely not no-nonsense-straight-across. I can live with that. However she has managed to overpluck my eyebrows to a state where they practically don't exist. They look like a cross between whatever the Chinese word for permanently surprised is and some kind of anime artwork. I have discussed this with Z on the phone, and we are both sure it's not as bad as I think (however, she hasn't seen them) but it's not good. And I'm banking on the people I know who I will see later being (a) too busy to read my weblog today, or (b) know that I am self-conscious about this and refrain from pointing and staring.

I know, I know, there are way more meaningful things in life: world peace, war in Iraq, starving millions. But give me a moment to feel my own personal pain.

Leftfield I Know: Sock Dilemma?
Crazy bunch of thoughts running around my head this morning. Men, generally, have that problem, if they wear grown-up clothes, of having pairs of socks and getting them all to match when they are only ever-so-slightly different in the first place. I don't have enough socks of the same colour to have that worry, but I do notice that whenever I do washing there is just one lone sock left over.

Here's the solution: go to Marks & Spencers (while they are still in business) - or the sock retailer of your choice - and buy six pairs of identical socks. Never pair them. They all match. Brilliant, innit? The lifetime value of time saved is surely enough to read War and Peace? At the very least.

Tonight is Kol Nidre, the beginning service of Yom Kippur, the most important day in the Jewish Year. Which is on Monday, but all Jewish festivals/observances start the night before.

It's Your Early Morning Call
There's nothing like planning a nice, long lie-in on a Sunday morning, and then getting woken up by People With Children at 9am. PWCs (and they're not a consulting firm) think 9am is the middle of the day, and I'm sure I would if I had some. Don't get me wrong; some of my best friends bah blah blah, but I had that a-rest'll-do-me-good feel and I don't think I can go back to sleep now.

Good thing is, I was in the middle of the strangest dream: a former colleague, who I've not seen for six years, was organising a cocktail party in my bathroom and kept telling me that I was "doing it in my own time" which I thought meant she was bringing fifty It-girls and PR babes over to my bijoux bathroom, pocketing a hefty fee and leaving me with the clearing up, but didn't have the guts to argue with her. She was just talking about redecorating the bathroom in the client's theme colours, when the phone rang.

Perhaps because of my (admitedly third generation) refugee roots, I find it hard to let go of physical things. I don't actually think you might have to leave the country, hang on to it while you can, but I think deep down there's an element of that. Books, especially, I hoard, and now I'm running out of space; I have a pile of books in the hall from two friends who left London and offloaded some great reads on me, a pile of chick-lit in my study (that I don't want mingle with my real books) and a two growing stacks of recently published urban novels by my bed.

And now this: bookcrossing. Free, free, set them free, in the words of the song.

Y'know, I was so busy getting depressed about 9/11, I never noticed that yesterday was Friday 13th. I mean, not that I'm superstitous.

Ouch
I think I have mobile phone tarriff inertia: I know it's costing me... well, whatever it's costing me. Too much, anyhow. But price comparisons are purposefully obtuse and leave me thinking "ugh?" and doing what I always do in such circumstances: nothing.

Dontcha Just Love Direct Mail ?
Even the email kind. Look:

Dear Sasha Friezg,

The days are shorter, the nights are colder and the films are getting better. It's nearly Autumn! Here at Odeon we can't wait for some of the fantastic films due to be released over the next month including The Road to Perdition, My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Swimfan. You can book tickets to see any films on show at ODEON using any of the links below and look out for some competitions to win film merchandise, exclusive to anyone who books using these links.


The minute someone spells my name wrong - and how the hell do you pronounce FRIEZG anyway? - I stop believing them. So the films may be fantastic, but if they can't read my writing, I can't read their sales copy.

And people say I don’t talk about technology on my blog; but I do just in my everyday life. Right now this very minute I covered online writing styles, AIM upgrades and java runtime errors before we even got to the juicy stuff. Look:

Mark: hi - LOVED your blog today....!
Mark: the link between para 1 and 2 of the restaurant thingy was brilliant!
Mark: your writing is so cool
Mark: how many people would dare to start a paragraph with a 4 word sentence!
Sasha: thank you:-)
Sasha: you are my only fan
Mark: me and the Saginaw Valley State University!
Sasha: that is just bizarre, don’t you think
Mark: ok - on a pedantic note, I notice that when people send out emails to a huge list by bcc: they put 1 name in the To: field (normally their own). Why do you/they do this?
Sasha: i don’t know
Sasha: i just thought one should
Mark: what do you mean "should" I can't think of any technical or etiquettal reason why...
Mark: OK - new topic: What version of AIM are you using?
Sasha: i know., i should upgrade
Sasha: i have upgrade inertia
Mark: yes - the new features are only available if both parties are on 5.0.2938
Mark: UPGARDE NOW!!! (pls)
Sasha: maybe. i'll think about it. what's in it for me?
Mark: erm - improved IM functionality?
Sasha: great. i can sleep easy at night now
Mark: OK - new (old) topic: I still get a Runtime Error on your blog
Sasha: its a java error from one of my stats scripts, but i cant update right now, blogger is sick
Mark: ok - are you IMing with LGM right now...?
[conversation ensued about other less-tech more.. something else topics]
Mark: ta
Mark: l8er

IMing with LMG, I just found out that we were neighbours for two and a half years, and he left the hallowed NW6 postcode area three years ago. Small world? Six degrees of blogeration?

Talk about privatisation: you can even have your own, personal trip to the moon.

[via Barbelith]

Daaaahling
Last night, went to a pre-restaurant opening - Cru, in Hoxton; Brendan et al (ex-Winchester Hotel du Vin sommelier Vincent Gasnier and ex-Home chef Eamon Fullalove) were guinea-pigging the whole experience on their friends before the real opening. The whole thing felt rather Sex in the City (just wrong city) not least because a friend had called me "like that Carrie Bradshaw woman" earlier, and I'd said, "yeah, but like two Carrie Bradshaws and with my roots showing slightly." Rob described me as "not so much dressed to kill as dressed to massacre" and I have to say my outfit was fabulous.

So was the restaurant. There's a vine leaf motif to the decor to tie in with the wine-not-beer theme, and a menu that's central-European based, but looking to bring us back to the dishes' original roots. Aperitivi (tapas style bar food) include marinated green olives with chilli, arrocina bean and garlic confit dip with pitta bread (humous-alike, but delicious) and sage, oregano and spinach frittata with golden cross cheese. T spoke very highly of the pork rillette with grilled whole wheat bread.

The deep-fried Jerusalem artichoke spoke to us all as a starter, and was certainly unusual, although I wasn't convinced it went with the smoked mozazarella; but then it could just be that I have bad childhood memories of smoked cheese. Main courses: the organic steak was apparently cooked to perfection. The crispy cabbage was out of this world, and we all went crazy over the roast balsamic red onion side dish and I dreamed about the lemon and chilli roast potatoes. Looking at next week's menu, I'm rather excited about the smoked aubergine and pinenut turnovers with mint yoghurt, and the dark chocolate mousse with maraschino cherries. Oh, and perfect coffee; always the test of a good restaurant.

Our brief was to be critical and enjoy a complimentary meal, and given that I was with four gay men, the bitchy comments flew. Everyone was very taken with the attractive waiting staff, especially the Chelsea Clinton lookey-likey, but I suspect we took our ciritcism too far with comments like “the West is dead” (ie the whole of West/Central London; those Hoxton/Shoreditch/Bethnal Green boys) or when one of our number started a critique of the actual layout: the bar and the private dining area are separated by tall cellar-style cupboards, to showcase the wine - which I think works pretty well - but J (not that J, the other one) kept entertaining us with comments like "the wine caskets block the feng shui something chronic". Although I thought the bar area, with it's huge windows open to the street, unusual lighting, upmarket ambience and attentive staff was just the kind of place I could imagine hanging out with all my stylish friends (OK, both of them) on a laid-back afternoon.

Bottom line: Cru's an exciting addition to the Hoxton dining experience, with a modern-fusion menu, a truly impressive 120-strong wine-list and a deli for either a picnic lunch in the square or recreating your tastebud experience back home.

Do I get to be a food writer, yet?

Cru, 2-4 Rufus Street (just off Hoxton Square) London N1 6PE, 020 8765 2342 opens Saturday. Starters £4.50 - £6, mains £10 - £14. Say hi to Brendan.

Home and Bunker
Great piece in the Chicago Tribune about my friends' uber-cool downtown New York loft (I don't think they ever go above 14th Street). A mutual friend once described their apartment as "Cheadle meets Gordon Gekko," and it certainly is fearsomely a la mode in a post-suburban way. Do I get to be an interiors writer yet?

So I'm having one of those lost-mojo what-am-I-doing why-am-I-here days. Had another interview where the guy kept me waiting for thirty minutes, and then told me I was overqualified and would get bored. It's like I have to pretend to be less motivated and more stupid. Least the freelance work is picking up.

I was just talking on the phone to a friend who's training to be a therapist, and he said this:

"I'm sick of self-disclosure."

He'll go far.

Well there's an interesting thing: I'm number 18 for a yahoo search on Jew bitch.

Remember that saying "may you live in interesting times"? For the first time in my life, I do feel less inclined to tell people I'm Jewish; it's different here, where I realise I mention it a fair amount - but then, it is the season of repentance and reflection - but I can't help wondering if at some time in the future I'll look back and think, "it was like Germany in the thirties."

BlogPunditry v2.3
If I wasn't staying in next Tuesday to watch the first White Teeth, I'd definitely be nipping over to Berkeley to find out if Weblogs are Challenging Mass Media and Society. And I'd sure have lots of questions to pose to Rebecca/Meg/Dan/JD/Scott/all the usual suspects, then.

Like is this really a global phenomenon, or just something people do? How much money do they make from books/punditry/speaking? Are they creating the movement to support their careers?

Whither Interfaith Dialogue?
Just spent a fascinating, thoughtful evening at my synagogue. A panel made up of Telegraph editor Charles Moore, "traditional maverick" Yakar Rabbi Jeremy Rosen, and Arabic TV channel Al Mustakillah founder and director Dr Mohammed Hamdi speaking about their perspectives on 9/11 and its impact on the world, after a brief service of memorial and hope, including the reading of Psalm 121 by Charles Moore.

Charles Moore commented that writers' reactions to the event is not as important as the event itself - which immediately made me want to go home and edit this morning's self-indulgent piece - and talked powerfully about how the concepts of church and state are not mutually exclusive in the US (which I think is based on their history; it's certainly not the case in most European countries), and his own perspective on Christian bishops views on confronting evil. He also compared the statistic that 91% of Americans prayed on 9/11 with the likelihood that 91% of Afghanis and Saudis probably pray every day.

Jeremy Rosen spoke about how the machinery of statehood has been involved in the expression of hatred in the last hundred years - which I'm not sure I agree with. Statehood is a post-enlightenment concept, and in previous generations, expressions of hatred were merely made in the name of religions. His message was that individuals have a responsibility to make the world a better place, because our leaders don't seem to be doing it.

Dr Hamdi talked movingly on a personal basis at first, about his son's name. When he chose Osama, twelve years ago, it was just a name meaning roaring lion. When his son started a new school this year, the family democratically decided to change his name, "because he cannot live with a name that has been hijacked."

Dr Hamdi made five points from a moderate, Muslim perspective: (1) only moslem terrorists are cited by their religion - what religion was Timothy McVeigh? (2) Moslems are now potential terrorists until proven innocent. (3) Muslims who have been involved in interfaith work are suffering; 9/11 created a climate of hatred and an unbridgeable gap between the West and Muslim world. (4) 9/11 was a huge setback for democrats and reformists in the Arab world, based on Arab perspectives on US mistreatment of presumed terrorists, and western disinterest in anything other than the war against terror. (5) 9/11 showed how much the world is paying for the bad state of Jewish/Islamic relations. The questions ended with him calling for the setting up of a Muslim-Jewish Congress.

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg chaired the panel and questions, which were - typically for such gatherings - largely statements by members of the audience who were not on the panel because they didn't have anything interesting to say. There was one interesting question about whether the world is now divided on the basis of who respects human life and who doesn't, rather than by religious groupings, and Dr Hamdi responded that media and education are two modern tools with which we can reform our society. Charles Moore commented that whilst he and Jeremy Rosen didn't have anything to lose by speaking at such a gathering, Dr Hamdi is clearly going out on a limb when so many of his co-religoinists would not agree with his sharing a platform or speaking in a synagogue.

But I'm not so sure if society is so easy to reform: I was itching to ask the panel about interfaith work. It seems to me that the accepted liberal wisdom is that interfaith dialogue is the way of the future; if I understand my enemy, there's no hatred, we'll sit down together and eat felafel. I'm keen to know if there are concrete, significant scale examples of interfaith dialogue work having any impact. It seems terribly straightforward for the liberal, educated dinner-party-erati to be commited to cross-cultural understanding, but I don't see it happening on any kind of mass basis, and that's what counts.

Fame?
So the Saginaw Valley State University - stick with this, it's brilliant - teaches a course on Introduction to Information Design, and has a handout on weblogs, as a background to students setting up their own. Listed under five broad headings (personal blogs, public issues, including warblogs, tech issues, humour and satire, and collective blogs), I fall into the first category: "perhaps the largest category numerically, if not very influential as a category. Emphasis on what the author did . . . "

Now I'm delighted to be mentioned, because it's kinda cool to be in the handout for a minor part of a course somewhere in Minesota (I think; geography's not my strong point) and even cooler that I am like an interactive handout and can comment back to the students.

But I take issue with my categorisation: sure, I talk about what I did. I also talk about public issues (community, politics, shy aware from TWAT), tech (privacy, xcom2002, mobile phones), I like to think I'm both humorous and ocassionally satirical. So Tom/plasticbag.com gets to be a tech blog, when he covers a similar range of subjects to me, although is clearly a better coder. And lots of people I would think of as must-includes aren't there: Ben Hammersley as a tech blog, kuro5hin as a collective blog, B3ta as a collective/humour blog.

I think what it proves is that the very nature of keeping a personal website defies categorisation. That's the point. If I had an editor, I'd have to do what they told me, but while I don't, I'll make hay/coffee/as I want. See. And I don't like being put in a box.

New Columnar Activity
I've written a new column, but I can't update my template for some reason. Go read it. It's timely (though a little late in the day).

This is not supposed to be a day themed on war, terror and other associated ideas. Honestly. But whilst I'm at it, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the war against terrorism is abbreviated to TWAT.

"One of the other students revealed adopting the Brace Position during airplane emergencies does not improve your chances of surviving an impact. What it does do is preserve the location of your teeth in proximity to your mortal remains in order to aid forensic odontologists in corpse identification."

[stolen completely from Methysalicylate]

Sadam Hussein looks remarkably like someone my parents met on holiday in Spain in the early seventies. Unfortunately, I do not have documentary evidence, you'll just have to believe me.

Gblogs is broken too? What's the internet coming to?

It's not an anniversary, it's a yahrzeit
I've tried really hard not to read the papers in the last week or so; I find it too upsetting. I'm not sure the world is "changed" as many people say. I just think that it's hard to get my head round the enormity of evil that kills so many innocents. Even though many more innocents are killed in natural disasters or wars in places I've never been too.

I got a cab home from the station Monday, and the cab driver asked me where I'd been, and I said Manchester for Jewish New Year. For some - possibly disturbing - reason, he started talking immediately about fundamentalists:

Cabbie: Them Muslims, they're fanatics
Me: Well, they're not all fanatics. I'm sure it's just a vocal minority
Cabbie: Nahh, they're all nutters
Me: :face implying I don't know how to respond and hoping there's no traffic and I'll be home soon:
Cabbie: How many do you think they're are, then?
Me: Well, I know there are a lot of them, I don't know
Cabbie: Billions, billions. Nutters, all of them
Me: Well -
Cabbie: I had to get a cab home from town, no black cabs, so had to get a private hire vehicle. Never get them, they're not licensed. Anyway, he was an Asian, Muslim. I asked him if he was English first or Muslim first, and he said Muslim and I said "stop the cab right here" and I paid him his money and walked the hour home

I don't know what this says - except that the cabbie must like exercise. But I'm worried about being in a world that has so much hatred; on all sides. God; not only am I a vegetarian, I'm turning into some sort of pacifist.

Oh, and this isn't the piece I'm writing. This is just a random idea that floated into my head during the Today Programme coverage.

I'm in the middle of writing something 9/11-ish, which I'll post later. In the meantime, one of the conversations we had over my parents Yom Tov dinner table was about what weapons of mass destruction were called before they were called weapons of mass destruction.

How To Shop: The Eleven Commandments
1 Know exactly what you are looking for
2 Conversely, just browse till you fall in love with something expensive and inappropriate
3 If you are unsure, leave the store. If the potential purchase calls to you from the shop, then you know
4 Always work out the cost per wear: £200 boots you'll wear everyday: way cheaper than a Starbucks
5 In fact, so cheap, if you really like them, you should get two pairs
6 Always buy two of something you really like; it just won't be there when you go back. But make sure it's timeless, otherwise you're buggered
7 Contrary to popular magazine advice, never buy timeless classics in the sales: look for something kooky and eccentric you'd never usually contemplate
8 If you eat two chocolate digestive biscuits, they cancel each other out. Whoops, wrong list
9 Never "think" about something for too long: most stores have about four sub-seasons per season, and there's very little chance of the same thing being there in your size when you want it
10 Know what suits you: don't succumb to strange unsightly trends because some over-hyped it-girl is wearing a pelmet skirt. If you have fat legs, wear black trousers
11 Don't wear black trousers every day, or people will realise you have fat legs and are following rule ten

Stephen Pollard on Tory anti-semitism. And some of the my best friends...

Has anyone any idea how much this BBC job pays?

The Beret the Belt and the Boots

 
The desperate urge to accessorise has been with me since my teens: my family used to tease me that I had matching beret/belt/boots for every outfit (but it was the eighties. They were all suede and highwayish. If only I had them now).

So today I was in Covent Garden for a couple of meetings, and the urge to shop took hold. Bad. Results: A beautiful pair of brown velvet zebra-pattern boots, and a great little handbag from Edson at Suitcase. You can't see it very well, but he makes bags of all sizes out of old suits; this one has the suit sleeve as the bag's clasp, and a measuring tape as the handle. They are truly fabulous; he's at Covent Garden Tuesdays and Fridays and week two at Chelsea Crafts Fair in October.

All I need to do now is to do the work - I did get some this morning - to pay for them.

Oh, and I say - trend-bucker, me - brown is the new black.

Flatpacks: hate don't just them you
This was a cute story - about a computer chip that will banish the Ikea/flatpack blues - in Thursday's Guardian; but I wonder how it got on the front page? Slow news day? At least one cutesy/light chuckle story on page one? They don't usually do that. I wonder.

Stupid question, maybe, but is daypop broken?

Where is Mrs Beeton when you need her?
What's the difference between a standard and an oxford pillowcase, then?

Read a couple of stories I can't find now (Evening Standard? Guardian? Times) about the rejig of BBC newsreaders. The only thing I can remember is that the men were all on £250k, and the women were on between £120k and £175k. Whatever happened to equal pay (she shouts in old-style, feminist stylee)? And women have to pay for tights and hair highlighting - although I guess they're tax deductible if you're a newsreader.

Zetafax placed quite a good story in yesterday's Guardian's WPM section about inefficient faxing and how they can help you. Only problem is, when you google on the phrase, zetafax don't come up. Whoops.