Miscellany

Well, that was a longer hiatus than intended. Hello again. I trust everyone had a suitably indulgent Christmas and New Year.

Here’s a list of things I might have posted about, had I been posting about things:

1. Congratulations are in order for Sian and Larry, now known as Mr. & Mrs. Kilgannon. Their wedding was a beautiful one, as lovely as a wedding can possibly be. I hope they have an utterly fabulous life together, and I’m sure they will.
2. Congratulations are also in order for Leon, who snagged himself a hip new job on the Review section of the Sunday Herald, the best Sunday broadsheet in Scotland, bar none. Well done that man.
3. Babies. Aren’t they quite the thing? My old friend Lindsay has one, a wee girl called Ella, and she’s a super little crawling machine about to break into some serious toddling. My sister’s niece is another ultra-cutie, she’s called Hope, already toddling like crazy, and affixing Winne The Pooh stickers to anyone within a 5 metre radius. My mission this year is to encourage all my female friends to breed, so that I can play with more of these amusing creatures. And buy them tiny jumpers. And stuff like that.
4. Weblog recognition horror. Until recently, when meeting new people, they’d say, ‘Oh, I read your review of such and such. You were very wrong. Fool.’ or, prior to last year, ‘Oh, you drunkenly stamped on my foot at Optimo. I hate you.’ Thus far in 2004, five people, upon meeting me have said, ‘Oh, I read your website. Why haven’t you updated it in so long?’ Peculiar.
5. A redesign. Very occasional Submit Response poster Hannah McGill, upon learning that a redesign is planned for this website suggested that it should look less like ‘a fucking till receipt.’ I took this as a compliment, but am unsure as to whether it was meant as such. My other mission for this year is to make the site look more like a till receipt, if at all possible. And make it easier to read for my Dad, who uses some sort of steam-powered computer from the 1830s.
6. The mooted manned missions into space. Fuck off. Yes, the urge to explore is a laudable human trait, and, yes, the technological spin-offs from the space programme have benefited humankind in untold ways. (Imagine a world without non-stick frying pans. They never would’ve been invented otherwise. Oh no.) But, last time I looked, the world is in an absolute fucking mess. So, just maybe, flying to the moon isn’t a big priority compared to, say, AIDS. Or restructuring the countries the US and her allies have been smashing up lately.
7. Grime. Or Eski, or whatever it’s called. Okay, so Wiley made the cover of the Guardian’s Friday Review, which means I must be hopelessly behind the curve these days, but in 2003 I only scratched the surface of the post-garage skronky noises coming straight outta Bow. And got very excited indeed about the idea of drumless dance music.
8. Music weblogs. My subscription list is heavily skewed toward techy, web design and academic weblogs. I’ve no idea why I don’t keep up with music in the same way, so I’m on the lookout for decent music weblogs, along the lines of Woebot, the only consistently readable one covering my kind of music (i.e. all kinds of music) that I’ve found. Suggested reading?
9. The iPod Mini. I’m such an Apple-licker that I want one, even though it is quite clear that they are ridiculously expensive and come in the vilest of colourways.

I’m sure there were other things worth mentioning, but my Herculean intake of Sambucas at the aforementioned nuptials seems to have had a deleterious effect on my memory. And no, I don’t know why we were drinking Sambuca either.

Posted at 4pm on 12/01/04 by Jack Mottram to the misc. category.
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