I was looking for a sleeve for my 17″ Macbook Pro – something that isnt as bulky as a whole bag / backpack for when I go to meetings – and the folks at Haul sent me one of theirs. Haul are pretty cool – all of their sleeves and bags are made from recycled billboards! Mine is apparently an old AMEX billboard. They make other things as well from truck inner-tubes, number plates, printing blankets and aluminium cans.
And you can chat with them on Twitter.
I’m amused and bemused this morning by the reports all of the Aussie news services are running about how much twitter bashing Gretel Killeen copped while hosting the Logies last night. BTW, The Logies, for international readers, is a totally lame annual Australian television industry awards ceremony. Personally, I would rather eat my own underwear than watch it. But apparently some Aussies did and they expressed their disappointment in the show, not by turning it off and reading a frakking book, but by bashing the hostess on Twitter. However the news services running that story this morning (most of whom seem to have just republished the AAP story – hey, who needs journalists when you can use AAP?) seem to be reluctant to mention that names of the people bashing Gretel and just refer to them as “one user said” – unless, of course, the Twitterer was a celebrity, such as Wil Anderson or the Chaser guys. Then they get name checked, but no link to their tweets.
What do you think this means? If you’re an ordinary citizen, it’s alright to quote you but not to mention who you are? Or link to your tweets? Is it because the news services think writing something like
@khushee said: “Gretel mentions Twitter – if only she knew what was being said!”
or
@amileegrant said “Bedtime. I’m over this sad attempt at an awards show. Yawn. Hope gretel gets drunk and falls over and her dress rips off on stage.”
would be too confusing to the non-Twittering public? Or just because they news services don’t think it matters who the non-celebrity Twitterers are?
Celebrity culture – I frakking hate it.
Someone today pointed out to me that the username “Jesus” hadn’t been taken on Twitter – when you go to twitter.com/jesus it’s blank – and suggested I take the username. I was sure someone would have already grabbed, so I went to check out what would happen if I tried to register it. Sure enough, Twitter says the username is already taken:
Although this is obviously not true.
My question is – what if Jesus comes back, tries to reach his followers via Twitter and finds out it’s already taken?! Is this religious discrimination by Twitter?
Ajaccio. 06/07/08 6.35pm.
The somnolence of a Sunday in Ajaccio. A heavy drowsiness permeates your bones, muscles, brain, willing you to sleep, sleep.
Now, in the evening, a breeze blows in from the sea, and people come alive again, the ‘second’ wind. The heat pushes you to stop in the afternoon, but relents at dusk and invites you back out to play. People rejoice in the reprieve like death-row pardonees.
The buildings are age worn, peeling paint in faint shades of dirty white, sad yellow, betrayed pink, dying pale green. All with shutters of canary-egg blue.
I’m sitting at “Le 1er Consul”, 2 Rue Bonaparte, drinking a Pietra, a Corsican beer. I can hear the fountains, cars honking, motorcycles, the drifting voices in French, tumbling over each other like waves on the shore. Pigeon’s wings flapping behind me, cooing.
The sky is completely cloudless and blue to match the window shutters.
I love listening to people speak French. They always sound like they are sulking about something. It sounds French if you pout and say any string of noises with the vowel sounds “oo” and “oh” and “on”. “Foo on coh soo”. And the “monsieur” at the end, the drawn out “ssss” always sounds like an insult. “Foo on coh soo too mo boo, mohsssssyoooor.”
The cheese I bought at the market today was hard and crumbly and oily and eating it felt like committing an act of child rape, something of the utmost carnality and sordidness. It was heavy and indolent and arrogant in its almost lack of flavour. It almost dared you to enjoy it. It was a 20-year life sentence in a closet-sized cell that tasted of urine and stale blood. It was a peasant’s cheese, a cheese to eat out of desperation when the cupboard was bare and your ribs were poking out and you had already eaten the scraps out of the garbage. It was the last straw cheese, the end of the world cheese, the back against the wall cornered rat cheese. A cheese you wouldn’t bring home to mother, a cheese that had spent its life inside a tomb, no light or air for 10,000 years, a cheese that contained all of the curses of all of the mummies, the mold behind the closet in the house that the old, old, impossibly old woman died in six months ago and they only found her when the neighbours noticed the smell cheese.
And I loved it. Tomorrow I’ll go back for more.
Tomorrow night on the live show I will have Steve McDonald ( @stevemc1) as my guest. Steve runs a company called Transendence which specializes in using the techniques of Spiral Dynamics to create organisational and social change. I was introduced to Spiral Dynamics and to the work done by Steve by @rosshill when he was staying with me a couple of weeks ago. I’m still trying to get my head around it and Steve will be coming on to explain it to us.
As usual, I’ll be pulling out the old guitar and playing some songs before and after the show. Plan to stick around for the after party, where I’ll also be talking about:
– Why I Believe Women Run The World
– I’ll talk a bit about the interview I did with Kalle Lasn this morning and why the Internet is bad for you
– My plan for the TPN 500
– Why Ashton Kutcher is a douche… or maybe the greatest genius of our time
Oh and this week I have a sponsor for my scotch!
Find out the details of how to listen and participate LIVE in the show here.
Famous music producer Phil Spector – the genius who brought us Let It Be, River Deep Mountain High, You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’, Unchained Melody, Happy Xmas (War Is Over), Leonard Cohen’s Death of a Ladies’ Man, The Ramones Rock ‘n’ Roll High School – has been found guilty of second-degree murder.
Footage of his first day in jail has been leaked to G’Day World:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flgZyibqv3g&hl=en&fs=1]