It's Sex in the City meets Witness. Gah. Stop: stop making more and more TV shows that are increasingly outrageous because what used to be interesting isn't because we saw that last week. Get out more. Please.

From Friday's Guardian: Centaur windfalls 'unfair' to journalists.

Dr Who with, er, a comedy twist?

Belleville Rendezvous: Spirited Away meets Finding Nemo, with a Django Reinhardt soundtrack. "Cameo's" from Josephine Baker, John Malkovitch, and others...

Oh, and - belatedly - Purim Same'ach. Kinda passed me by this year: more when I land.

But driving through Golders Green tonight, I was surprised by the surreal sight of grown hasidim in fancy dress. That's fancy dress other than the traditional eighteenth century Polish nobleman's garb. Just the weirdness of jesters and Ali G's crossing the street, shiker. It's a strange, strange world...

Can't really process any more information: Jewish Book Week, Jonny Freedland, The Fab Four. More, later. Maybe.

So I came back from Manchester on the M6 Toll road; it's like a parallel universe. It's got the barren landscape of True Stories or any other American road movie, and it has tolls (like malls) and a toll plaza and all manner of Americana. The Toll Operative even exhorted me to have a nice day. And it has no speed cameras. When you pay your toll and all the lanes merge I felt for all the world like I was coming out of JFK.

Why do we keep appropriating americanisms? Why does Tony think he's El Presidente? What's happening to the NHS and free tertiary education? OK, OK, it's just a motorway....

Stephen Pollard says everything I want to say about anti-semitism on the Left, but better.

Everything that was good about my Big Fat Greek Wedding has been stripped out of Suzie Gold and given to East is East. That's what I think and I've not even seen the movie.

I have tickets for Jewish Book week on Sunday - Jonny Freedland reading from his new, unpublished novel, and the Fab Four about bright young thing writer-types. I think I'll still be in Manchester, and it'll be too much of a faff to try and get my ten quid back. If anyone wants them, email me, or - if you actually know me - calll me, and I'll arrange for you to get them.

Long story, but I'm in Manchester (Cheadle branch).

He had whiskers on his chin again

For those of you even slightly concerned about my bus stop - I cooled off since the summer when they said they would take down the advertising panel on the shelter, so we could see and not knock people down when we drove out of the path. I waited. Months.

Along came the wind and blew them in again

Then I sent an email every so often to everyone involved. No reply. Then I cc'd my local councillor (whom I have met a number of times over this matter). Yesterday she replied - turns out everyone involved in this at London Buses and Camden has moved on. Start again again.

Poor old Michael Finnegan....Begin again.

Turns out Pure and Simple is neither pure nor simple [thanks, Courtenay].

So, fortuitously, on the way to a meeting in Camden, I saw a mobile phone shop that sells wire things. So I spent twenty quid on a generic piece of wire for my 7250i (120 pictures and climbing). I've installed the "software", so it recognises me, but I can't find the "software" to transfer the pics with. The Readme files has these helpful hints:

"The best step of using the USB Cable is to plug in USB Cable firstly, then to plug in Mobile Phone and work the software.
The sequence is opposite while closing. You have to close the software firstly, then pull out USB Cable . Otherwise, the
computer won??t be work normally or will be cut off.

The operation is probably different because the different model of Mobile Phone has different software to support. Moreover
, the software of different model which can support the functions and has the greatest difference. You will be clear the
detailed information if you check the assistant file of software. "

So, none the wiser, then. I do have a (new?) programme in my programme list called PL-2303 USB Serial Driver, which could be it, but the only option is to uninstall. Duh.

When did life get this hard?

I'm having "coffee" with so many people today that I feel like a cross between an insurance salesperson and Chief Marketing Officer for Costbucks.

I think it should be known that I made superlative butternut squash and sage rissotto last night. I'll post the recipe as soon as I get a chance, but I think the secret is (a) in the nutmeg, (b) cooking the squash in vegetable stock and then using that as the liquid for the rice (with some nice wine, of course), and (c) good company.

Why is no-one else worried about parabens in shampoos and hair products? Say something, please.

Some say baigel (bay-gull), some say beigel (buy-gull) - the capital's vanishing beigel trail (which I am convinced they're spelling wrong. Call me a Litvak, if you must.)

Nextbook.org - a gateway to Jewish literature, culture and ideas.

From yesterday's FT (and courtesy of my Dad) - Business logs on to blogging. I mean, enterprise blogging, isn't that just a shared network drive?

"Along with other potentially disruptive technologies, weblogs or "blogs" have come a long way in a very short time. Now some believe this new form of web-based publishing is poised to enter the corporate mainstream.

While some workplace weblogs are being set up by "rogue" employees, with or without official sanction, a growing number of organisations in both the public and private sector are recognising the potential of weblog technology to streamline communications, reduce e-mail overload and improve co-operation.

"We see this as an enormous potential market," says Greg Lloyd, president and co-founder of Providence, Rhode Island-based Traction Software, one of the emerging market leaders in the enterprise weblog tools market.

"Blogs provide the ability for individuals to be able to write directly to the web using simple Office tools techniques, no more complicated than e-mail, to basically have an archive of their thoughts and conversations automatically maintained in time order," he says.

"This has just enormous implications for how people handle working communications and business processes and we are really at the beginning of that."

Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research, the US-based IT consultancy, agrees that weblogging has caught the attention of business, but he cautions that it is still early days. "Enterprise weblogging is attracting a lot of corporate interest as a way of streamlining communications," he says."

Sadly, you have to have a subscription, so there's not a whole point in my even linking. Sorry.

I'm never sure if your pronounce B3TA as Bee-tuh or bee-three-tee-ay. You know, like C3PO.

How retro. Clearly from the pre-suicide bomber era (remember the IRA on the mainland? How there were always evacuations? Five minute warnings? Don't you just wish for that now...) - French railways search for their threatened bombs on foot.

What do KMS HairPlay, Redken Soft Ends, KMS Curl Up, Modern Elixirs Styling Serum, Big Sexy Hair Conditioner,
and even the organic stylee Phytomist have in common?

They all have parabens listed as an ingredient. 100% of them. Sheesh.

A series of good hair days.

OK. Consistent, mild low-level panic all the time. Three unfinished projects? Great idea and no time to write? Time of the month? Slight sore throat, but could just be too many late nights? Mmmm.

Time To Move On?

I know there are geeks out there. Some of them might even swing by here ocassionally (I once had a boss who was always swinging by my office. I felt like Tarzan. Or Jane). Anyway, I need to move on from Micr$s$ft Outlook - it's terrible with IMAP, and it's upsetting me. I need something that looks nice, synchronises with a palm PDA, and does IMAP without breaking twice a day. Ideas?

So just yesterday I set my blog to email me everytime I post. Which is cool; I always think that I must make a proper backup. But now I - randomly - get the post when I post it, then about twelve hours later, and then sometimes some other time too. Gah?

Because you've probably always wanted to read my blog in Russian. At least, I'm guessing it's Russian.

Update: I guessed wrong. Shit happens. It's Greek, apparently (as in it's all Greek to me). Thanks M.

Autism: except I can't help wondering if Simon Baron-Cohen is Ali G's brother.

Milion Writers Award for Fiction.

the Blogosphere?a land where the smart get smarter, the connected connect to one another, and the losers go home: blogging on blogging again. At the Village Voice.

24-hour museum.

Is it mozzarella? Is it challah? No, it's a treccia.

Word Count
I've just done something... slightly scary. Partly in terms of a backup, partly just because, I've copied my entire blog into word, unformatted text. And counted. Since January 2002? 213,000 words. Sheesh. Now about ten percent of that is blog guff, date headers and the like. So let's say it's more like 191,000 words. Then, let's say only about 30% of it is interesting. That's still 57,000 words. A novella.

Everyone has a sock fairy, I'm guessing, but I seem to have a black-clothes-fairy. In recent months, these items have whisked themsleves away for better climes:

black camisole that matches a pair of knickers

a pair of black stretch wool trousers which were my comfy-yet-smart kegs of choice

a black t-shirt that matched a skirt. Serves me right for buying things that match

my new, black bubeleh t-shirt I bought in New York

Most upset about my new t-shirt. I mean, where can it have gone? One day, I left it folded on the chair in my bedroom - the next day, v-a-r-nished.

Are you bipolar?

"As much as depression was the illness of nineties, mild bipolarity has become the new diagnosis for a slice of society that includes hard-to-treat depressives and some with a personal disposition that perhaps hedges into ordinary moodiness."

I have a butternut squash and some sage. What would I have done before the internet? Looked in recipe book indexes?

On a separate, but recipular note, I'm pretty sure A&A made this Delia bread and butter pudding on Sunday, and it was fabulous, dahling.

Google in Yiddish. I've arrived.

Chicks with Dicks. Dick Lit. Please.

From The Postbag: Two

[these are real, btw, I'm not making them up]

Sasha,

I write, as a Jewish reader of your blog, extremely concerned about your lengthy discourse, on a historically and geographically centric event which you attended. Unfortunately, this repetition, of a highly intellectual theological debate, together with a bit of local gossip, has absolutely no relevance to the majority of people who read your blog. In the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury "TOO JEWISH"!

I and many like me, are concerned, that you do not lose sight of the rule of blogdom, which centres around an opportunity to read, the rants and musings of those who do not attend anything of intellectual substance, but sit in a flat, looking for anything to write about by watching television, reading print media and looking out of the window.

This well established creative approach to blogdom, reflects those who read your blog. I went out to the shops sometime in September 2000, but thereafter realised (on installation of one of the first high speed connections), that there was never any need to venture out again.

I receive all intellectual and sexual sustenance from reading from my computer screen. I receive all food from takeaways, I receive all basic provisions from delivery shopping.

I recently purchased a car on the internet without needing to step outside my door. This last purchase was particularly interesting, because I realised on delivery, that I actually didn't need it (although I did need the process of buying it). I also discovered that my desired part exchange had been stolen. On ringing the police and being asked to confirm when I had last seen the damn thing, the response to my reply of September 2000 revealed, (as I am concerned your recent blog entry does) a fundamental misunderstanding of blog culture.

With this in mind, I hope you will reconsider the aforementioned lengthy entry on your blog, and ensure that standards do not diminish by use of an over-developed intellect.

Yours,

Blogwatch (presently bored and unemployed)

New phrase I just invented: mezuzah surfing. It's when ober frumers knock on your door asking you to give tzedaka (charity) soley because they saw your mezuzah and figured you're Jewish.

Years ago, I looked at a house in Hendon (it was the cheapest house there was, because it was at FiveWays Corner, and you could only go one way when you came out of the house, because of the traffic, and it invariably wasn't the way you wanted to go), and they had lots of old, overpainted mezuzahs. I asked the woman about them, and she told me: "I think they're something Jewish? They were here when we moved in, and they feel like they're part of the history of the house, so we felt we couldn't really remove them."

Cute, eh?

Reminds me. When I lived in Singapore, I was in a rented apartment, and tacked my mezuzah up on the doorframe. The thing about Singapore is that every comes from some religious tradition or another: Buddhist, animist, moslem. The phrase you hear people say all the time is "it's my custom" - it's a catch all for whatever their thang is. Went away for the weekend, came back, mezuzah gone. Varnished. Covered in clear coating of polyeurothane (Alexei Sayle reference for the 0.001% of the world who get it). I called the doorman, and we couldn't actually communicated, and got into advanced charades, where I'm pointing at my door and he's thinking I'm a nutter. I ask him to call the maintenance guy to see if he knows where it is.

The maintenance guy calls me on the phone, and isn't that interested. It's Sunday night, long weekend, he's tired. Can't it wait till Monday? Suddenly, the phrase comes to me: "it's my custom," I tell him, "I can't sleep without it on my door." Oh, I should have said. He rushes straight round, and finds it, and refixes it, because, after all, it's my custom.

Kids oriented, but a great resources: parties in North West London.

Here's a question: is someone a friend or a friendster?

I think doing the Atkins diet is like being in a cult.

Apricot kernels are supposed to be good for you.

Not my problem, but interesting - when journalists blog, editors get nervous.

Is it just me, or is Bloglines buggered? I'm now - technically - reading 43 sites, and I can see the updates, but I can't click and read the feeds. I've opened and closed to my hearts content. Now what?

So I mind parabens in deodorant, and I've thrown them all away, and bought new, expensive, crystal ones. This morning in the shower, I read the back of my (Redken/Loreal) shampoos. They have parabens, too. Do I mind? I'm thinking, probably I do...

Have you noticed how the world revolves around smaller and smaller specialisms and interests? This isn't chick-lit - it's Irish Chick Lit. Funny how Jewish chick-lit has all the Jewish taken out of it; reading as an insider, you know that forty eight recipes books, North London and a propensity to phone in a passive aggressive manner every day is Jewish. Other people probably just think it's an interesting characterisation (I'm talking about one of Anna Maxted's books here - don't know which one, they're all the same.)

Not Only Is It Emes, It's A Fact

Just got back from hearing "The Boundaries of Heresy" panel at Jewish Book Week (or, as we like to call it, Book Week. To go with The Embassy, The Chronicle and The Quarterly. Because when the whole world's Jewish, who needs a signigifier?). The panel was Louis Jacobs, Geoffrey Alderman, David-Hillel Ruben and Clive Lawton, chaired by Joshua Rozenberg.

Without a doubt, the best thing about Louis Jacobs is that despite decades of being away from the Greater Suburban Northwest, he's lost neither his Manchester accent nor northern sensibility, and he's a great racconteur. He's also pushing eighty five, and while totally on the ball, surely not as sharp as he was in 1957. Anglo-Jewry likes nothing more than old men who are well-past scary.

Joshua opened the evening with a short history of the Jacobs Affairs (1961 and 1964), and then posed a series of questions Louis Jacobs; what's his view on Torah min hashamayim (the concept of the five books being straight from heaven - effectively divine revelation), given the chance to look back on the Jacobs Affair, does he now beleive the Israel Salanter view that "not everything that is thought should be expressed, not everything that is expressed verbally should be written, and not everything that is written should be published." Not the question will we have Jewish grandchildren, which Louis Jacobs already has, but will we have the office of the Chief Rabbi in the future, some room for personal reflection, we may or may not get onto the current chief Rabbi, and the future of Anglo-Jewry. Short-order, then.

[Anglo-Jewish history lesson: short form. Louis Jacobs was on track to be Chief Rabbi, he published We Have Reason To Believe in 1957. In 1959, for a host of probably politcal reasons, people read it, and discovered that he wasn't commited to Torah min hashamayim, and beleived in a divinely inspired text. He never made it to Chief Rabbi, head of Jews College, or even back to his original pulpit. This one ran and ran. Two Jews, three opinions? Not even close. Lesson over.]

Geoffrey Alderman, who's a historian and the author of Modern British Jewry, talked us through the pre-history, the history, and the post-history. But it was Jacobs who came out with the gem that about the Maurice Joseph affair at Dennington Park Road, where he was apparently denied a pulpit for admiting that he couldn't honestly pray for the restoration of sacrifices. And this from a shul with a mixed choir. Struck me that Alderman's not so much a professor of Jewish history as a professor of Jewish gossip: while fascinating, his stories took on the timbre of a North London Friday night dinner table and the broiguses that includes. Kinda Suzie Gold with balls and politics.

I was only very slightly surprised that there were probably 700 people in the room, five men on the panel, and of the ten or so questions from the audience, only one from a woman. Quel surprise that that woman was me. I was interested to know what Rabbi Jacobs thought about a post-denominational future for Anglo Jewry (he mentioned in passing the idea of having a "foreman for all the Jews", which I was keen for him to expand on). He took it as an opportunity to "tell tales out of school" with his unique mix of boyish charm and northern humour. Edited highlights:

Isaac Woolfson (then president of the United Synagogue) said to him: "they tell me your aim is to bring the intellectuals nearer to the synagogue. First, you'll never succeed. Secondly, who wants them?"

Talking about Chief Rabbi Adler during the "Joseph Affair" at Dennington Park Road, he said that Adler "inhibited Joseph from serving as minister in an orthodox shul.". "Where did Adler get his inhibitions?" Jacobs asks. "The same place he got his gaiters - from the Anglican church."

"Who am I?" he continued. "My zaide came from Telz in Lithuania. My first community in Manchester was thoroughly heimish, I taught a blatt gemorah in Yiddish. When I came to London, it was different. Ango-Jewry used the word frum, but added meshuggah. Meshuggah frum - gone too far. But a very high level of piety, all the Lords and Ladies and Knights, kneeling on the floor on Yom Kippur. I believe very strongly in minhag Anglia, but that's nothing to do with my theology."

And theology is what still turns Louis Jacobs on. He was much more excited about debating the philosophical nuances than in community politics, or he was tonight. I have no idea what he was like as a thrusting your Rabbi in the early sixties. All I do know is that sometimes, the people of the book turn into the people of the argument, and no-one wins. Clive Lawton said that the tragedy was that we'd trapped Louis Jacobs in a time-warp talking about his first book, and in doing so, had lost out on all the other great work and works he might have produced if things had been otherwise.

Also, we might have had a chief Rabbi from Manchester, and that could have been no bad thing.

Apparently, G!d hates shrimp.

It's Jewish Book Week.

Ever Seen Them in the Same Room?
Surely I can't be the only person who's noticed that Martin Sorrell and Captain James T Kirk share a certain something?

Mean Girls: Tina Fey's debut movie, based on this New York Times article, and the book by Rosalind Wiseman.

Apparently, film companies can option a non-fiction work as a source. Interesting, huh?

All my partnered/married friends say basically the same thing: you're not looking for someone to go out with, you're looking for someone to stay in with.

... [sings] Letter From The Postman [/sings] ...
So, lovely-surprise (as they say in the Great Suburban Northwest... of anywhere) yesterday: Word Spy from Amazon, courtesy of a reader. Thanks, Sam:) (Note: I never do smileys. That's how happy I am with this unexpected gift.)

At a batmitzvah kiddush-lunch yesterday, which was shpraunzy beyond belief, on the way to the deserts, I overhead a guy say rather too loudly: "this is like Jews on heat." Which is either the title of my novel, or my forthcoming recipe collection.

Ridiculous (TV) news story - which thankfully hasn't made it to the web - about how the Skipping Initiative in schools is linked to citizenship and personal social responsibility. Like yeah, and you can do that without a breast-reduction op? [link might not be safe for work].

Talking on the phone to a friend last night, I heard a slight tap-tap-tap on the line. What d'you reckon?

New word - via S - nomadicity.

Facing History and Ourselves.

My new friends A and R told me about WebFlix and LoveFilm (who are more recommended).

Boutros Boutros Ghali. Peri Peri Chicken Chicken. Tiger Tiger. Kofi Kofi Annan. I sense a theme emerging.

My wireless router has become tempermental. Do you think if I do a hard reset I can reset the password? Hoping so.

Ze Chermans, And How I Feel

Back in the mid-nineties, I had a job in the marketing department of a B2B services player, a big one. I was all negotiating with printers, buying envelopes by the million and buying media direct without agency commission.

A few months later, I got involved in a start-up project in Israel. Weird from the get-go: Mr Big who owned the company insisted that the product marketing cycle be over Jewish New Year, on the basis that all countries had to fall in with his British mode of business, despite my telling him that no-one would be even working then. And the team was made up of me, a JAP from New York, and a German guy whose father was a priest who'd been involved in all the reparations stuff after the war, and had guilt tattooed in indellible ink across his forehead. The A Team, we weren't.

And weirdest of all, the project was run as a subsidiary of our German office. I tried to tell Mr Big that most businesses in Israel probably wouldn't want to sign a contract with a German company - because of the war - but he wasn't having any of it. Efficiency, that's what counts. Everyone else is marching out of step (to coin a war analogy).

So I'm in Israel, setting up a pilot project with my colleagues, and we're like the comedy Three Musketeers. Sample JAP: gee, is there no Zagat's guide to Tel Aviv? Er, no, sister, it's mostly felafel stalls. Sample guilty German to Yael Dayan, who we had rented an apartment from: Yael. You sound like a man. It is all the cigarettes you smoke. People were also a little scared because he answered the phone by barking "Eichart!", which left most Israelis quaking in their sandals. Sample me: I just can't negotiate the way I can at home. Everyone here's got chutzpah.

So Wolfram, the General Manager from Germany, is coming out to check up on us half-way through the project.

History: Wolfram had trained in the London office, and we'd got off to a bad footing, because he was working on a TV/radio project, and gave me the complete runaround. His media plan included a publication called Broadcast News. I talked to the world and her lover trying to track it down. He was senior. Eventually, in a meeting, I said to him "are you sure you don't mean Broadcast? Not Broadcast News?" As I said Broadcast News, I did that thing with my hands like I was a film cameraman - charades - to indicate a film. I also tried to do a Holly Hunter impression, but that's hard when you don't have dark hair and you're from Eastern European peasant stock.

"Not Broadcast," he replied, firmly, losing face, "Broadcast News". I resisted the temptation to do the charades thing that indicates it's a book.

But the damage was done: his star was on the ascendant, on account of his magic with a spreadsheet, and general efficiency, and I got black marks from him for enfooling him in a meeting. So I had to push really hard to get on the Israel project, because he didn't want me. Which was odd, because there weren't a huge number of people queuing up to go to a war-torn country in the Middle East - we all had some previous.

Another piece of history: after London and before Israel, I worked on a global project for Mr Big, going round each of the offices and standardising their key technology. Most people rolled out the red carpet: I came straight from Head Office, they'd get whatever I needed, Ma'am.

Not Germany. Apart from the fact that I got the culture all wrong and kept calling people by their first name, Wolfram had power. So I do my whole little presentation to the management team of what we're looking for from them (code for what they have to give us), and whereas everyone else kowtowed and ran out and got it, he said, looking at my list "von, two unt sree, ve vill give you. Four, ve vill not. Five, you vill tell us vot ze other offices are doing." He said this as he shone the bright light in my face. I felt a little uncomfortable.

He offered me lunch. Now the British bombed most of Frankfurt during the war - don't mention the war - so the office was in a new shiny high-rise in the burosdadt, and he took me in the glass elevator, down to the basement where the restaurant was. Cool marble floors. As he got out of the lift, I realised he had those clicky things on his shoes, toes tapping against the granite as he walked. Suddenly, I didn't feel hungry. Over lunch, he told me about his right wing politics while I tried not to think about the war.

So back to the plot. I'm in a pokey rented office in downtown Tel Aviv with the Guilty German and the JAP, and Wolfram rolls into town. Books himself into the Hilton; no appartment rental for him, he's all luxury and service-enabled. Comes into the office, tells us he had a hard time at security in the airport, and goes to the beach for two weeks.

Two weeks later, he's back in the office with a permatan to die for.

"Sasha, I am leafing zis ufternoon. You vill write me a letter for ze security."

So I take our headed paper, and write out, in the most grammatical Ivrit I can muster, the following:

"Herr Doktor Schmidt was in town to help us with our business endeavours. He was not quite as helpful as we would have liked."

Wolfram proudly puts the letter in his breast pocket, day dreaming of the duty free and air hostesses and whatever else floats his boat.

I heard that he spent hours in airport security. Hours.

I can't help wondering if Mel Gibson's The Passion will encourage all manner of crucifixion chic.

I'm one of only three people who've come up with the word goydar, apparently.

I love signing up to mailing lists as Daffy Duck, Disney Corporation (when I ran a commercial mailing list, about 20% of our subsribers were either Tony Blair or fictional characters), and I love it even more when I get email addressed thus:

"Dear Daffy,

SAVE up to ?100.00 by registering your place on:

BEST PRACTICE STRATEGIES FOR FUND MANAGEMENT
25TH & 26TH MAY 2004
PARK LANE HILTON, LONDON

Hurry! ? Early-booking DISCOUNT ends 26th March 2004!"

Books are the new black. At last.

In the words of Wilde: "to lose the whip once is unfortunate, twice looks like carelessness."

I just thought I head someone say - ironically, or so I thought - ridership on the Today programme. Turns out its a real transport sector buzz word. Bingo, anyone?

What to look for in an agent. Because you never know when you might get a book deal.

Not Only But Also
Not only am I still the number one search for Anna Friel advert, but the BBC has written a great ironic dig at the economics of such a generic brand-building campaign.

106 people on google have a stationery fetish. And only 26 have a stationary one.

Today's word? Mysticalia.

The Passion
Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe, on Mel Gibson's The Passion.

Update: and, via Yoz, David Denby in the New Yorker. And some press views garnered by the beeb. And Gawker.

All I can find out about North by Northwest script development workshops.

There's an.... extremely small chance I may get to meet A B Yehoshua.

A promised me chocolate vodka shots on Monday, and we had to make do with B55s.

Cleanpolitix? Turns out my old boss is in the top ten donors to the Conservative Party. I like think that in some ironic way, I've paid for that. Not.

A PR girlie just told me to "take care" at the end of our phonecall, like we were at college together and knew each other well. I just know she has straightened blonde hair, perfect teeth and wears LK Bennet Shoes.

And, like, she cares.

I have just had a seventeeen minute conversation covering everything from how the CEO's office works (which I didn't need to know), to the board's holiday plans (which I didn't need to know), to the homeworking arrangements (which I didn't need to know), with someone's secretary who has been sending messages back to me via the switchboard for a week that she's sorry she can't take my call, she's too busy.

Busy talking crap. Send that woman on a time management course, ferchrisakes.

The Germans are still in my head, oddly, since the weekend.

N told me this: working in Israel, a German client flew in, and she had to take him out to dinner. Loudly, in the restaurant, he exclaimed:

"Vhat is it viss the Chews? Surely it is not just the Chermans who hate the Chews?"

Mourning Sickness and Conspicuous Compassion

Civitas have got a new report out on Conspicuous Compassion, that's garnered a lot of press attention.

"Britons are feeding their own egos by indulging in "recreational grief" for murdered children and dead celebrities they have never met."

All well and good.

But I'm having a certain sense of deja vu. It's Frank Furedi and his ilk all over again: it's the libertarian right (or left; they meet round the back, sometimes) getting it's knickers in a twist about the senitimentalisation of society. And a bunch of them said all that in Faking It in 1998. And it's full of all those sheitgeist phrases like compassion inflation, and it doubtless drones on and on in quite a whingy way about victim culture, and how terribly unfair it is. Poor sods, it's them I feel sorry for.

Truth time: we all - probably myself included - have far too much free time/brainspace to consider every aspect of every aspect of modern life. It's deconstruction gone Zebedee, boinging up and down on a bit of trip desparately hoping that some idea'll stick/have stickiness so that they get their late-night righteous-debate TV show. So then, they can retire to the posh bit of Norfolk with all the other failed celebrities and faded academics.

See, I feel sad even writing this. I feel an emptiness about how we've analysis paralysis about every little item of culture or even everydayness in the modern world. How there's a label for everything. How we need to slag off more and more people and ideas to feel we've made our mark. How even me writing this now is contributing to the over-informed whatever that is the doodar that we might not like. See, it's gone to my head. The words, the words....

The Insitute of Ideas on Teen Fiction. Judy Blume, anyone?

Can't get into medidation? Try this for mesmeric.

Wish You'd Bought Those Weather Derivatives?

-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.

-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made unfarmable by drought.

-- "catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.

Lucky I've still got my thirty litres of water, then. No mule, though.

Blogging about blogging about....

So, when I was in New York on February 8th, I linked a great piece about virus writers from the New York Times. Which you can't read now, because the week of free information is up.

Luckily, two weeks later, the Observer printed the identical piece in its supplement. And the Guardian/Scott Trust are all open-source/commited to their accesible archive, so I'll be able to read it whenever I want.

Which proves my comment about the ever shrinking information village: in 1995, how would I ever have known that? Oh, wait. I would: I'd have got back from my trip and read the papers in London. Difference is, I couldn't prove it.

See, in the olden days (before about 1995), if you wanted to find something out, you had to really want to find something out. I see it in the work I do... in the early nineties, just knowing something was enough to make a research project fly. Now, everyone who's google-enabled knows everything, it's the analysis, the value-add (buzzword bingo, sorry) that makes the difference.

And it releases the stalker-within. Like in 1995, if you met someone at a party who said they were a writer, you'd have to go down to the library and look up their books on the microfiche. If you could be bothered. Now, twenty seconds online, you know what they wrote, what their Amazon rating is, what the critics said, where they live (if you have a 192.com subscription), and what they had for breakfast (if they have a blog).

All I'm saying is, it's easy to find things out, now. Especially if there are clues.

Michael Chabon has an August Van Zorn page. Weird?

Weird Short Story prize at McSweeneys. I think they mean weird as in occultesque, rather than everyday weirdshit.

It's snowing. Not a biblical amount, but snow nonetheless.

Via Cory, Elmore Leonard's ten rules of writing.

Got home last night to catch the tail end of Homeless to Harvard, the true story of Liz Murray who put herself through an accelerated High School programme in New York, and won a New York Times prize to pay for Harvard, while homeless.

Liz doesn't seem to have a blog, but Crystal Evans does, and of course so does the Homeless Guy. Sure made me reconsider/perspectivize (watch google go crazy with that one) quite how annoying I find our managing agents.

Oh, What A Night

For a Monday, especially. Couple of nibbles in the Shoreditch Shish - because let's face it, I'm a creature of habit, and if I leave North London for East, I like to eat in the same place. New menu; fabulous feta and roasted onion wrapped in vine leaves, although, strangely, served as a side-dish.

We got there - Cargo - half-way through the support - Big Strides - but Jonny and the guys were the main deal. Serious collection of witty and club-style t-shirts. No question. Great gig, and I also found out that D could breakdance (later), that the doorman liked my hat, and that all my friends (K, A and D in this case), got on with each other. And there was free toast. And a boogie (which obviously I didn't blame anything on). What more could you want from an evening?

There was something of a desert standstorm in Hamsptead and Highgate, as I got home last night. No, really. And they say we haven't upset the planet, whoever they are.

The Ikea catalogue has a bigger print run than the Bible? Naaah.

UK TV listings.

[via Darren, via Mo....]

Is there a watchdog for watchdogs?