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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Esther Dyson is weak - her thoughts on Gmail.

Today's question: what is synarchism?

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

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

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

The Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Squished Penny Museum

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

[via Cory]

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

Culture begins across the channel? Tonight.

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

Moroccan Aromatic Dried Fruit Salad

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

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

Here's my (slightly amended) version:

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

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

for decoration
blanched almonds
sesame seeds, toasted

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

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

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

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

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

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

PostDog

MailDog

OfPost

OfDeliver

NoPost

GetEmail

... or something.

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

Futurismic: Fiction. Love it....

Knock knock...

As ever, great Economist piece on the Google IPO.

Martha Lane Fox hurt in road accident.

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

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

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

Google blog?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Britons among dead in Saudi.

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

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

Letterboxing in America - the outdoor treasure hunting pastime.

City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris.

China Miéville: one of the new weird?

Like I said yesterday, the postal service is not all it's cracked up to be.

Britain's domestic intelligence service MI5 has launched a new website on Friday with actual security advice.

Here it is. And here's the top ten security guidelines.

Like everyone on the internet is going to blog this. Google announces its IPO.

Just discovered Arabesque: Modern Middle Eastern Food by Greg Malouf. I suspect I won't be able to sleep till I have this book.

Dennis Severs' house - 18 Folgate Street, London: I'm really getting into that whole East End/old house thang. Any more for any more?

On the first Tuesday evening of each month, from 6-9pm parts of the Sir John Soane's Museum are lit with candles. Anyone for next Tuesday?

Keep Starbucks out of downtown Manhattan. You have coffee? Give it to them.

So, I like to be last to the party, in a Sasha-come-lately somewhat disorganised way.

I have just listened to the Scissor Sisters album for the first time.

I am blown away. I am at a barmitzvah disco in the early eighties. I am Elton John and Billy Joel and all sorts of other uncool people, really. It's all a bit of a blur. I may or may not be wearing velvet pantaloons (which frankly never suited me). I may or may not be into Adam and Ants, too. I am either cool or uncool, it's so hard to tell when you're young. It's dark. People are trying to smoke, but they're not good at it, yet. Jonnie C is wearing makeup, and we all think he's got something to tell us. He turns out to be the MD of an investment bank. The one bloke who's a mod, G, wandering round in a daze, runs a box at Lloyds now. That girl who snogged everyone? She's married with two kids and runs an international advertising agency. There's a fazy, hazy eighties feel about the whole thing. I think I am wearing black platform shoes.

iWire: Reflections on the Emerging Technology Conference.

So when people (clients) tell me the "cheque's in the post", it really is. Truly scary story about how practically nothing ever arrives any more.

I got paid, you know that (other) client I was chasing? Today. Thank the lord.

You in Manchester? Then get yourself down to the Contact Theatre, to see The Bloggers:

"Eight people have been living virtually within www.michaelmayhew.com. For 4 months they have been communicating with the world via the creation of blog sites, a web diary of ideas, of hopes and dreams exploring what matters by mapping journeys that have evolved from the shores of Bangkok to the depths od Devon, to the bedroom of a woman who is 104 years old. The exhibition translates the virtual material and invites you to enter their world and make these ideas happen, by working with us to interpret these ideas into a performance event created for the foyers of Contact Theatre in the Autumn of 2004."

Sounds interesting, although I can't help wondering what "blog sites" are, as opposed to weblogs. Call me a cynic.

[thanks to M, my ever intrepid theatre correspondent]

The Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia.

Today's self-employed (aka own kitchen) lunch: steamed broccoli, alfalfa sprouts, pumpkins seeds, with a sweet soy sauce and sesame oil (tiny amount) dressing. Yours?

In other, tangential, news, the Slow Food Movement started in Italy, and seems to be about green tree-hugginess, cooking good food well, and enjoying a slower quality of life. A little Timeless Simplicity, then? They also started the Slow Cities movement, also mostly in Italy. The website seems mostly about the organisational structure of the "movement" and less about

Y'know, I'm gonna start a "movement" or a cult, and get a website and everything.

Oh, just remembered, I already did.

Because I so rarely have anything good to say about any call centre, CSR, or other such modern endevours, I feel I should say a wonderful word about the Alliance & Leicester. I had to make a business call to them, and the person I want to reach, as well as their secretary, are at lunch. The switchboard takes my name, and then I get through to someone who says:

"Hi, is that Sasha? X and Y are at lunch right now (although presumably not together. she didn't say that), but we're taking calls for them. Can I take a message?"

So turns out that A&L have secretarial services, AKA real people who take calls when you're at lunch. How cool is that? And they're friendly, and nice. When I tried to clarify is she was X's assistant, she said "Oh, I'm nobody." I said I'm sure she isn't, and we had a little, momentary, connection.

We were on the phone, and we were human. So rare, in modernity.

I am slowly getting used to the idea that I may never get a chance to visit Angkor Wat. I suspect that I will be tied to my desk, calling IT Directors for the rest of my working life.

New York street art. I love the downtown adaptation... Although of course it should be an iPod.

All Change

I could have sworn that at 7am this morning, this Guardian news story was spelling Gadafy Gadaffi.

At first glance, I thought it said gadfly. Now, there's a thing: "a persistent irritating critic; a nuisance."

And there's only 3,300 people (on google of course) who spell it with a Y. The other 26,000 spell it Gadaffi. Probably a transliteration thing. But at what point does someone on a newsdesk say "from now on, folks, we spell World Leader A like this?"

It reminds me of the time when I lived at home, and a friend of mine came over for Friday night dinner (chicken, obviously), and when he said to my Mum he was a vegetarian, she said "but you weren't when you came for dinner last week." And he said, "you've got to start somewhere."

So, if you want to respell your name, now's your chance.

Local boy Stephen Moran has written the London Silence.

The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida, of the Richard Florida Creativity Group. There's a sub page on Europe - how topical/timely - and even a newsletter. The Memphis Manifesto.

Aside: personally, I've never seen Richard Florida and Captain James T Kirk in the same room.

I love this: at 09:18 this morning, I had no idea about any of these. Now I've looked all over the webnetdoodar, skim read, and have top-line-only on how the creative class are taking over the world. Although the City Index doesn't have any European cities.

It's a veritable cult.

New York? Ish? You want NewYorkish.

It's a little know fact that I have a degree in Comparative Religion. Useful, you're thinking.

In the second and third years, I took courses on Islam and Contemporary Islam - this was a while ago, before this information was considered particularly useful. A family friend had done my degree about fifteen years earlier, and very kindly gave me two pieces of information: (a) lots of past exam papers, and (b) the knowledge that the professor had a limited exam-setting imagination, and alternated questions on Macolm X/The Black Muslims and ... another topic, I forget. He'd been doing this for nigh on two decades, and I was confident in realising that my year was a Malcolm X year.

I read every book and article I could on him. I was a veritable Malcolm X information machine - it was one of those papers with one long essay, to show off yer booklearnin' - and none of my coursemates would believe me when I pointed this out to them. Too big a risk. The reason I don't know anything about contemporary Islamic issues is that I only learned Malcolm X, and I was right. That's the value of a broad-based tertiary education, right? Although now, I can't help thinking it would have been better to, y'know, know more, more widely.

Can't sleep - and boy, I want to. So I'm watching Shariah TV.

Front Cover: Great Book Jacket and Cover Design

Thoughtcrime Exhibition and Tramshed photos. From those fold at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. [thanks, D].

Orange Prize for Fiction announced today.

Gah. A mate has spare tickets for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at Clapham, with a chat with Charlie later. But I have three Limmud meetings.

What's your BATNA? and Getting To Yes.

The QCs are revolting.

Things I've done recently, and never got round to writing here:

Walked out of Starksy and Hutch because neither of us could bear the post-ironic script and preferred to remember the real thing

Told an eleven year old kid that he's like a thirty-five year old trapped in the body of a thirty-five year old. His parents aren't happy with me

Went to shul, a few times. It was nice. Nicer than nice.

Lunch Saturday at G&C - impromptu chick pea, palm heart and fennel salad

A Very Naughty Boy at the Soho Theatre, good, but not as great as real Python, although I did learn a lot about Graham Chapman

Discovered a new, as yet untried, recipe for baked figs with honey and... some alcohol, can't remember

Discovered frangelico, the "original hazelnut liqueur" (I'm a sucker for those sweet, girly, drinks)

Running low on Lanique Rose Petal vodka.

Dinner at the Union Café, on Marylebone Lane. It's like New York, but here, bistro-stylee.

Spent a lot of time on Limmud stuff

Hung out in the Blue Posts, albeit briefly, in Fitzrovia, I tell ya

Storm Damage is on at the Tricycle on Sunday afternoon, with a discussion with writer Lennie James afterwards.

ID cards - £2,500 civil financial penalty. Great. So much for human rights, privacy et al.

I am replete with destructive feelings towards all customer service operatives, customer centres, helpdesks and anyone else who professes to give assistance, but is actually obstructive.

So I'm phoning my 175th IT Director of the month - don't even ask, OK - and there's a couple of big companies, where if you ask for the IT Director, even by name, they put you through to some poxy "customer centre" where they'll take a message, and he - invariably male - will call you back.

Just now, someone said to me "and would you like to offer your services to [large multinational corporation] today?"

Er, no, I just want to invite him to give a keynote address at a conference.

"So, what is the nature of your service, ma'am?"

I don't have a service, I just want to speak to him. Can I have the switchboard number (unavailable all over the internet, hence stupid customer call)?

"No, we don't make the switchboard number available. We're happy to help you through the customer centre, here today. What is the nature of your call?"

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeez. Sheeesh. In the future, we'll probably all talk like this: sellotaped together snippits of sentences that once meant something, but now are the meaningless white noise of doing business in the twenty-first century.

Actually, not even doing business. You just want to get a new phone line, and you have to jump through seventeen hoops of calls.

I want to be like that bloke who doesn't have a phone, and if you want to reach him, you have to fax his mother.

Lawrence Lessig is in town, but I will be eating cheesecake. Sadly.

Call me old fashioned, but I think canal phones are bad for you. I wear a headset all day when I'm on heavy phone work, and at the end of the day, my ears hurt.

I think I'm a victim of mobile phone data-scam.

I get a call from Debbie at Communicate, asking me if I want to upgrade my [telecomms supplier] phone. I say where did she get my number. She says it's randomly generated by The Computer. I ask her where the computer gets it from. She can't tell me, she's new. (I can't help betting she's new every time she gets a customer like me). I ask her if [telecomms supplier] have sold Communicate my data. She says no. I ask for the switchboard number for Communicate, and she doesn't have it to hand.

I ask her to remove me from their database, and she asks me for my postcode. I say that I don't want to give them any more data than they're already got.

She eventually agrees to remove my data, and gives me the phone number - it's a Stoke number. When I call it back, it's got a generic BT Callminder message. The number she called me on (flashed up on my mobile screen) is permanently engaged.

If I was less busy, I'd be more angry.

Oh; I really want. Cool Retro Purple Big Ben Repeater Clock.

Self-employed lunch: Israeli couscous with za'atar and chick peas.

Which, considering I was supposed to be going easy on the carbs this week, is bad. Otherwise, delicious.

Just what you've always wanted: celebrity mailing addresses and Contact Any Celebrity.

I'm sick of sleb culture. Did I mention that I saw Helena Bonham Carter in Hampstead on Sunday afternoon? I'm sick of how if you're famous for like wearing a lipstick or something, then you go to lots of parties with other people who may also have not done anything. Did I mention my East Enders connection? I'm sick of how you can even be a celebrity trainer or celebrity manicurist, which means you double your prices, and that I, the recipient of your services, am supposed to feel one step closer to sleb nirvana merely by paying you money. Did I mention that I once sat next to Marie Helvin in the theatre?

See how confusing this all is?

19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields - a museum of immigration, is open every Sunday in May. It's not open very often, because they don't have much money, I think, so go.

IMAP Update: I have just discovered the edit - purge deleted messages command in Outlook 2000. It's fab. Because the worst thing about IMAP is you can see greyed out versions of all your deleted/moved messages, and it's confusing. Also, there's something very cleansing about purging.

My technical support is excellent.

Synchronicity, or just a coincidence?

So yesterday M called me to ask whether I wanted to share 2.5 kilos of organic alfalfa (unsprouted). I said that (a) sounded like a lifetime's supply, and (b) I hadn't sprouted since last summer, when I was very into it.

I put down the phone, got out my seeds, rinsed them twice, and left them on the windowsill to sprout. Three days.

This morning, I collect my organic box from my doorstep (poetic licence: I live in Kilburn. The one time they did leave it on my doorstep, it got nicked. Now we have a hiding place) and top of the box? A punnet of sprouted alfalfa.

See.

Estée Lauder, Last Independent Titan of Cosmetics, Dies at 97. Least her sons are worth a fortune.

I think the new biometric ID cards are sounding a little too Philip K Dick, for my liking.

Tuesday night, went to dinner at some new friends who live in a fab apartment on the site of the old Globe Theatre. They are so urban, so zone one. If I had a job at the FT, I'd definitely want to live there.

A and R (and no, they're not in the music business) made me a low carb feast, which was an exact replica of a meal they had at the North London Tavern. This is what I think is a seedy pub down the road from me, but they say is now an inexpensive gastropub. Creamed cauliflower is exactly like mashed potatoes. They also introduced me to some no-carb American chocolate, I've forgotten the name of, and we made a little spreadsheet of a business they might get into, and surfed the web, drank great wine, talked and talked.

I love how this happens: A's mum was on old boss of mine, and ultimately my career mentor, who went back to the US a few years ago. We stayed in touch. She emailed me and said her son and his wife were coming to London for a couple of years, and we should hang out, because we'd get on really well.

I think, sometimes people say that kind of thing, but it was completely true. They came round for dinner a couple of months ago, with some other friends of mine, and it felt like we'd all known each other for years.

I like meeting cool new people. Especially if they live outside of the hallowed N* and NW* postcodes.

South Devon Chilli Farm online shop for mail order fresh chiles, dried chillies, chilli sauces and chilli jelly. That's what the internet's for: niche businesses.

I gather that Muslim women are exempt from ID card photos. Do you think I can get an exception on the basis that I'm just not photogenic? I'd love to have a "constructive discussion" with David Blunkett on the basis of (a) bad lighting in photobooths, (b) body dysmorphia, and (c) er, privacy.

Just the links: veggie restaurants. Woodlands. Terre a terre in Brighton.

We are the google generation. We are the people who can find things out. Anything. Watch us discover where you live and work and what you thought about Outlook 98 in a long forgotten newsgroup. More scarily, watch us find out your "fun and pleasure" MSN ID and see what chatrooms you go to. Watch us deconstruct the headers in your email, watch us see if you're registered on the electoral roll. Watch us see who you're linked to, and who you hang out with, and what you think.

Watch us and weep. You can't hide. And you can't even run, now.

Yell.com have withdrawn their Film Finder service. Any suggestions?

Does anyone have the Momo recipe book? I'm not sure I want to buy it, because it's full of meat things I don't eat, but I want to make the dried fruit salad that I kinda recreated a few weeks ago, and don't entirely remember it.