Friday, June 03, 2005
banzai!
Ah, internet, we've had an uneasy alliance. You have frustrated me, failed to satisfy me, bored me rigid. But! today I am inclined to whisper rude things in your giant ear, you wonder of the modern age, you.
1) Found it! Shield stuff. And on Slate, too. Praise the Lawd. (Actually there's only the briefest mention of the real-life events in there but it's a start, and I'll turn my attention to that nerdery later.)
2) Via the er, perpetually blue-in-the-face Mark Morford, also on Slate; classic catnip for snickering lefties.
3) And, last night, I went to this and from thence here and then here which led to me discovering someone clever and funny with the same name as me.
Admittedly this is not difficult. I have one of those cute ubiquitous names. At the First Magazine I used to get called someone else's name all the fucking time, thanks to people getting muddled up by a Radio 1 DJ who had my last name (only not quite) and my colleague's first name and worked in more or less the same field, and an underwear model with the same name as that DJ and another damn DJ with almost my name. This always resulted in the same wrongness which irritated me greatly and far too often. People would hesitantly shout it across a room and I knew they meant me but I would turn my unsuitably-cropped head and ignore them. Humph.
Anyway, I've 'been' an interviewee on some raving pro-gun 'satire' site (note: this still pisses me off but good), an accounting instructor, a trembling little teen goth girl and even a racing greyhound in Dorset. Without getting too Dave Gorman about it, I'd love to find as many Bees as there are. I did find a few relatives in Wyoming under my old name. There aren't many of them. In fact I only found them because one of them had died and got mentioned in local paper. Apparently all the other remaining Oldnames are in France. Don't know what they're doing there. The name is not remotely French. Nor is it at all Italian - probably eastern-European or something - but I still harbour the stubborn fantasy that Italy is where the American side of my family originated. There's definitely some organised crime genes in there.
Thassa nica donut.
So, it's a nice way to get slightly sucked into what I refuse to refer to as the 'blogosphere', finding a namesake. Reclusive and future-jeopardisingly-picky as I am, I see no reason to be any more promiscuous with my friendship online than I am in real life. However, having made at least two - three - actual real friends via the net in the last couple of years, I should perhaps think about blurring the boundaries a bit. Are you reading this? Are you a really nice person beneath that sardonic and aloof facade? Not an idiot? Interested in Stuff? It's notoriousbee at gmail dot com. Come on. I have no fear. Well, not much.
Did you see that anti-gun-control site, though? Using cigarette-control as a heh, heh, metaphor. Every time my mind wanders back to the question of whether or not I'd be eligible for a dual passport, it's things like that which stop me. It'd have to be San Francisco. They have dog parks there and only a residual terror of large dogs due to the incident with the Presa Canarios and the perverted lawyers and their adoptive neo-Nazi son-slash-sex-toy. (I bet you clicked on that one.) There aren't many children there now either. Hmmm.
Oh, and that Woman, who is now "convinced that liberalism is a mental disorder" - wouldn't want to share a continent with her either. I'm going to stop talking about her, because otherwise it'll start to look like I'm looking to start some kind of beef, which would imply that I'm into the idea of the blogosphere and that would never do.
1) Found it! Shield stuff. And on Slate, too. Praise the Lawd. (Actually there's only the briefest mention of the real-life events in there but it's a start, and I'll turn my attention to that nerdery later.)
2) Via the er, perpetually blue-in-the-face Mark Morford, also on Slate; classic catnip for snickering lefties.
3) And, last night, I went to this and from thence here and then here which led to me discovering someone clever and funny with the same name as me.
Admittedly this is not difficult. I have one of those cute ubiquitous names. At the First Magazine I used to get called someone else's name all the fucking time, thanks to people getting muddled up by a Radio 1 DJ who had my last name (only not quite) and my colleague's first name and worked in more or less the same field, and an underwear model with the same name as that DJ and another damn DJ with almost my name. This always resulted in the same wrongness which irritated me greatly and far too often. People would hesitantly shout it across a room and I knew they meant me but I would turn my unsuitably-cropped head and ignore them. Humph.
Anyway, I've 'been' an interviewee on some raving pro-gun 'satire' site (note: this still pisses me off but good), an accounting instructor, a trembling little teen goth girl and even a racing greyhound in Dorset. Without getting too Dave Gorman about it, I'd love to find as many Bees as there are. I did find a few relatives in Wyoming under my old name. There aren't many of them. In fact I only found them because one of them had died and got mentioned in local paper. Apparently all the other remaining Oldnames are in France. Don't know what they're doing there. The name is not remotely French. Nor is it at all Italian - probably eastern-European or something - but I still harbour the stubborn fantasy that Italy is where the American side of my family originated. There's definitely some organised crime genes in there.
Thassa nica donut.
So, it's a nice way to get slightly sucked into what I refuse to refer to as the 'blogosphere', finding a namesake. Reclusive and future-jeopardisingly-picky as I am, I see no reason to be any more promiscuous with my friendship online than I am in real life. However, having made at least two - three - actual real friends via the net in the last couple of years, I should perhaps think about blurring the boundaries a bit. Are you reading this? Are you a really nice person beneath that sardonic and aloof facade? Not an idiot? Interested in Stuff? It's notoriousbee at gmail dot com. Come on. I have no fear. Well, not much.
Did you see that anti-gun-control site, though? Using cigarette-control as a heh, heh, metaphor. Every time my mind wanders back to the question of whether or not I'd be eligible for a dual passport, it's things like that which stop me. It'd have to be San Francisco. They have dog parks there and only a residual terror of large dogs due to the incident with the Presa Canarios and the perverted lawyers and their adoptive neo-Nazi son-slash-sex-toy. (I bet you clicked on that one.) There aren't many children there now either. Hmmm.
Oh, and that Woman, who is now "convinced that liberalism is a mental disorder" - wouldn't want to share a continent with her either. I'm going to stop talking about her, because otherwise it'll start to look like I'm looking to start some kind of beef, which would imply that I'm into the idea of the blogosphere and that would never do.
