Pat - I’m finalising what it is i’m actually writing about next week, so will fire off a few questions as soon as I stop trying to include everything but the wirelessly enabled database driven kitchen sink…

Hullo, young filly McGill —- and fuksake, there’s some bad circular karma with student journo awards… career change, sure: away you and write Eggers/Moody zeit-fiction with details filled in from all those stony-faced Woodlands-Road derives I see you doing from the 44 bus.. while thinking about how cool it would be to be Pauline Kael in 1974.

And Donna: so I’m physiologically a pub singer. Haw: ta. And here I am listening to my Verve Remix record, trying to figure out the right soundscape for my dark-timbred voice… I will not be discouraged.

Incidentally: deepest Indo-European root for play is -dlegh: meaning, to engage the world. Ain’t-that-cool-news?

Apologies for (unfair) comparisons, but you did ask, like…

Anyway do please keep fighting with Jack. He needs stimulation, or he gets jaded and fidgety.

I must admit I’m basing my, um, considered analysis of the play ethic on a hungover reading of the Observer piece when it came out, and I partly snipe because I’m a practicing play ethicist and have enough work ethic residue to feel guilty about it… It’s not so much that I doubt the socio-economic viability of a play ethic future, and I’m all for a Scandinavian model being applied to Scotland (my vote went to the SSP today), but right now, the play ethic seems a step too far as a practical plan, in that it’s utopian in the neverland sense - we aren’t anywhere near the point when the play ethic could become a reality for the majority, even in a nice first world place like this - hence ‘a kick in the teeth’ for those who don’t have a work ethic so much as a pressing need to work.

‘innovation commons’ - now that sounds right up my social software street, so I’ll ‘try… to create new associations’ by emailing you a few questions relating to a piece I’m doing on, um, technology-enabled artistic collaboration and new modes of social linking for Product magazine. Come to think of it, this little discussion here is in itself a prime example of what I’m wanting to say about the easy discovery of people with like interests/useful skills with technologies like FOAF, or the Lazyweb…

On tongue down throat singing: could you give me some comparisons please, so I know who else has the same affliction? Incidentally, if you have enough individuality to know you don’t like work, you should be talented enough to find a life outside of work: that’s the play-ethical challenge, folks! Question is: can freelancers stop bitching pointlessly about each other on weblogs, and try instead to create new associations and mutuals that can support their “cheery flitting from job to job”?

[tumbleweed, high winds, clang of lonely church bell]

No…I guess not.

As little as I know about Mr Kane, I never thought I’d agree with a man who used to sing with his tongue halfway down his throat. For the past year or so I’ve been well and truly fed up with my lot, but also feeling powerless to change it. Drained by my work, but tied to it. I don’t have a “work ethic” but I have become a worker and it’s a horrific place to be.

Save me, Pat!

And, it must be said, Mr. Kane posts damn good links to the ‘Filter.