Hey Marketing Guys

Yes, when people are posting your trailer all over the interwebs, that is a copyright violation, and it probably throws a spanner in the works of your carefully planned schedule for drip feeding information to risk-averse press outlets desperate for content.

But remember how you're also spending loads of money on social networking and stooges to generate hype and maybe even "go viral"? Well this is how hype is generated and virals are gone. This is the public doing the job for you, organically, in a way that others will listen to rather than distrust. This is you on the cusp of explosive, exponential growth, and the last thing it needs is you stamping on the embers.

And, oh yeah, the best trailer in the world is worth absolutely nothing if I can't bloody see it before I forget it even exists.

No April Fools' Post This Year

Image source

Sorry guys, no April Fools' post this year. I am currently the subject of a nationwide manhunt, and have been advised by my solicitor to turn myself in to the police.

It is my firm belief that slapping David Cameron across the face with an Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrhynchus oxyrinchus, pictured above) is a legitimate act of political protest. Nevertheless, I did so fully aware that I would likely suffer consequences. I can only ask for your patience, and assure you that I will produce a belated April Fools' post at such a time as I am released on bail.

I would also like to stress that I performed this act with the full and informed consent of the fish in question. I was not, at the time, aware that the Atlantic sturgeon is listed as an endangered species.

Juxtapose

The neutrality of this blog post is disputed.

References
1 ^Nagware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Winter

I have started wearing my scarf.

Don't ask me for directions.

Seriously, why do people do it?

Look, the important thing is: I gave them directions to a restaurant. It was just one in completely the opposite direction from the restaurant they asked me about.

They both have glass fronts. I walk past both of them on the way to work. They're pretty much the same restaurant except one's a pub chain and the other's overpriced sea food.

And they can't have wanted greater accuracy than that, otherwise they'd have known not to ask me.

I need a new phone

The one I have is four years old; a telecommunications fossil.

Also, one of the keys came off, due to an incident.

Consumption

Okay pile of stuff I have left to read, watch and play! This is the week! This week, your number is up!

Because this is the week that I continue chipping away at you in my spare time, just as usual!

Um... It feels good to say this to myself every so often.

Power to the People

Power was out when I got home. Just my block. Streetlights and all.

Lit some candles, put the cat on my lap to keep warm, and then the lights flickered unhappily back on.

Drama over; civilisation reactivated.

There are snows EVERYWHERE

The last lot of snow that I complained about thawed before Christmas, but it started snowing again Tuesday night and it's kept snowing every so often since. Everything's white and covered in snow and ice.

It's very unbecoming. Whatever happened to good old rain?

Saturnalia

Just got time to wish all you Internet folks a happy holiday season.

Give lots of presents, eat lots of reindeer cakes, climb to the top of that evergreen tree and become a fairy... Or whatever it is that we do this time of year.

:-)

NOBODY PANIC

But I am writing out my Christmas cards and I looked out the window and it is snowing and there is snow on everything.

I saw a Google Street View car today. I'm not sure if that means I'll be on Google Street View or if the car was just driving to somewhere more notable.

A Biplane

The British SE5a. Kind of the Sopwith Camel's steadier, less showy cousin.

One Rule to Break the Camel's Back

I went from George Lucas to Tim Burton in just two weeks by following this one easy diet rule!

Okay, I've had it. For how many months has this been the only ad on the Internet? Googling it, I can find people complaining about it in January. January! Do you remember when there used to be adverts about punching monkeys and asking Jeeves? If only we'd known what halcyon days we were living in!

You know, it's not surprising to do a little research and find out that it's a scam. What is surprising is just how fucking saturated the entire world wide web has become with this ONE single bloody advert and its ever-so-slightly modified knock-offs. How did it come to this?

And, dear fuck, what's next?

But did they earn them?

Image Credit: Jens Buurgaard Nielsen
Some rights reserved

The winged ants were taking flight when I walked home from work, swarms of them fluttering around for the last ten minutes of my journey. Hopefully they weren't trying to express resentment at my depiction of their culture in Dead Like Ants.

Not Another April Fool's Post

I am aware that for the past two April Fool's days that this blog has seen, I have posted fabulous, obviously spurious claims about its imminent end.

I now find myself in the position of the boy who cried wolf, for this morning, in an event unprecedented throughout all suburbia, my home was swallowed whole by a giant land shark. (I suspect that it was a giant land basking shark, as it did not chew.)

As you might expect, web access inside a shark is severely limited, so I have saved this blog post onto a memory stick and am mailing it by carrier remora to the Internet's postal address.

I would like to take this last opportunity to thank you all and bid you a fond farewell.

Thought for the Day

Do you think you could inflate an octopus into a hot air balloon, so as you floated through the sky it could grab hold of clouds?

I guess the octopus might not like it.

Also, today I scanned a page from my diary/notebook.

29th

Only a few days left before the new year. I suppose I should start coming up with some kind of top list of the media I consumed, like I did last year.

I'm really too tired to do anything other than dither just this moment, though. Judging by the roads, I'm about the only person in the world who's going into work between Christmas and the New Year. Instead, I think I'll entertain myself by cutting out some pictures to stick on my new diary. No, you can't watch.

Saturnalia Wishes

This is a frustrating season for my cat, involving setting up the ultimate cat toy (or 'Christmas Tree' as they're known colloquially) and then getting angry at him whenever he tries to play with it.

Yes, it is almost time for Santa to defrost the reindeer, and certainly time for this rocketship to sign off for the next few days. Hopefully we will emerge on the other side of the grey Christmas we have been promised by the weather people (snow is grey, right? I haven't seen any in a while) and the huge flu outbreak that I was apparently caught up in myself.

All of you: have a very pleasant set of festivities - involving merriment, uh, festivities, and, you know, more merriment.

:-)

Reference

A GENTLEMAN OFFERS HIS ARM

To an old lady or to an invalid a gentleman offers his arm if either of them wants his support. Otherwise a lady no longer leans upon a gentleman in the daytime, unless to cross a very crowded thoroughfare, or to be helped over a rough piece of road, or under other impeding circumstances. In accompanying a lady anywhere at night, whether down the steps of a house, or from one building to another, or when walking a distance, a gentleman always offers his arm. The reason is that in her thin high-heeled slippers, and when it is too dark to see her foothold clearly, she is likely to trip.

Under any of these circumstances when he proffers his assistance, he might say: “Don’t you think you had better take my arm? You might trip.” Or—“Wouldn’t it be easier if you took my arm along here? The going is pretty bad.” Otherwise the only occasions on which a gentleman offers his arm to a lady are in taking her in at a formal dinner, or taking her in to supper at a ball, or when he is an usher at a wedding. Even in walking across a ballroom, except at a public ball in the grand march, it is the present fashion for the younger generation to walk side by side, never arm in arm. This, however, is merely an instance where etiquette and the custom of the moment differ. Old-fashioned gentlemen still offer their arm, and it is, and long will be, in accordance with etiquette to do so. But etiquette does not permit a gentleman to take a lady’s arm!

From Etiquette, by Emily Post