Wait until next year

Putting off what could be done tomorrow, today

Tag: blogging

A few notes on last year, this year

This week feels like a limbo week. I’m used to feeling that way in the days between Christmas and New Year, but those feelings have persisted. I’m sure it is just a trick of the calendar. As there have been just two working days between the New Year bank holiday and the weekend it seems like the vast majority of people have stayed off of work. Read the rest of this entry »

I remember when this was all fields

Computer-generated images of man on phone, talking, at desk

Jonathan Franzen is telling us what he thinks is wrong with the modern world. Rebecca Solnit sees the changes to our world post-internet as profound and troubling. These are two recent examples of the personal essay as a wail against life today, particularly life with technology, the internet, etc. Both these articles, at least to some extent, look back to supposedly halcyon days and see technology etc as the destroyers of an idyllic past.
Read the rest of this entry »

There is nothing to be gained by trying to get away

Image/diagram from the early eighties of nuclear bunkers in Germany

Here’s something interesting for you – the BBC transcript to be used in the event of a nuclear attack, that would have most likely been used if the bomb had been dropped on Britain in the seventies or eighties. It is chilling stuff, but also pretty sensible advice. I guess clarity, authority and calm would be of utmost importance, in the circumstances. Read the rest of this entry »

Pay The Writer? Don’t Pay The Writer?

What with being around five years behind the rest of the internet, I only recently watched this video from the writer Harlan Ellison, ranting at expectations that writers need not be paid for their work. It is a pretty funny rant, but pretty flawed. I found it kind of funny that the keeps using the word “essay” rather than the correct phrase “filmed interview about a TV programme” to make a point about being paid for his work, as if his every utterance is on a par with a carefully constructed and argued piece of writing. I have no problem with him wanting paying for everything and anything he does, that’s up to him, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves – talking about Babylon Five is hardly on a par with the finest literature. Read the rest of this entry »

Creeping up the food chain

Man and woman sat at a desk. It is the 1920s. They don't look too happy.

After any sort of blogging absence it feels kind of obligatory to explain what brought on said absence. Unless a blog is built around particularly sporadic posts and is self-consciously produced in such a way, it would seem pretty odd to not at least acknowledge a period of blogging silence. Yet, posting up a bunch of excuses for not posting isn’t, in itself, particularly interesting either. People who are new to the site really won’t care that Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms Blogger has been busy/uninspired/taking an internet sabbatical/etc. If anything it will probably put them off ever returning (Bye New Visitors!). Read the rest of this entry »