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shaggy blog stories · shared items · twitter · village blog · you're not the only one Saturday, August 02, 2003
100 x 100. 100: THE FINAL POST. Start at #58 and work upwards.
you got ‘em!
And now we’re into the final post of this accursed “Project”, which I have been working on solidly for the past two hours, when I could have been outside in the PDMG, undertaking vital acts of garden maintenance. But no. I have chosen blogging over hoeing, and I am entirely happy with that choice. Freedom beckons: freedom from the tyranny of the word count. The Fat Elvis period is drawing to a close. Through this process of purging, this blood-letting ceremony if you will, Troubled Diva is about to be reborn. In just six words’ time. TA-DAAAAAA!!!!!
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100 x 100. 99: Start at #58 and work upwards.
at least not in the classic, James Joyce-esque definition of the term. When I was a pretentious teenager, I used to fill pages and pages of notebooks with “automatic writing”, in which I would imagine a sheet of printed paper in my mind’s eye and simply write down exactly what I saw. I should try that again some time. In fact, if I wasn’t so close to the end, then I’d do it now. On the other hand, maybe you’ve all suffered enough. This is what it feels like to be inside my head, you know. You want Internal Monologues,
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100 x 100. 98: Start at #58 and work upwards.
that I have ABSOLUTELY NO DESIRE to pick the thing up and get stuck in. It feels like Work – a drearily “self-improving” chore that will somehow be “good for me”. That’s a baaaad attitude, isn’t it? And me with an arts degree and all. WHAT WENT WRONG?
Oh, f**k it, who cares about all of that right now? There are less than 300 words to go now, meaning that, let’s see, that since yesterday at 16:58 p.m. I will have written no less than FOUR THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED WORDS of unmediated, spontaneously spewed out stream-of-consciousness verbiage. Well, not exactly stream-of-consciousness,
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100 x 100. 97: Start at #58 and work upwards.
FOUR THOUSAND WORDS ago, about hating leaving things unfinished? Well, you can therefore imagine what a tortured relationship I have with fiction. I think it’s my lack of concentration which causes most of the problems. I’m fine with newspapers, magazines, web pages and, of course, blogs – indeed I devour them constantly and voraciously. But maybe they’ve corrupted my ability to deal with longer pieces of writing without getting bored and restless. Hmmm. Well, we shall see. Trouble is: I see a big fat volume sitting there, looking at me sternly, like some sort of massive homework assignment, and I find
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100 x 100. 96: Start at #58 and work upwards.
the osmotic (is that a word?) Buzz that has been surrounding it. “The new White Teeth”, or some such hyped-up nonsense. Which, now I come to think about it, means that I’ve probably made a completely daft choice, as I didn’t get on with White Teeth at all and gave up about three-quarters of the way through (with all due apologies to Gordon of Snowgoon, who recommended it in the first place). I’m a bugger for not finishing novels – I got bogged down halfway through Carter Beats The Devil, and ended up admitting defeat. Remember what I said, ooh, about
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100 x 100. 95: Start at #58 and work upwards.
matters.
Holiday reading. I am determined to read at least ONE book over the next fortnight, having only managed to successfully complete two books so far this year: the Matthew Parris autobiography (Chance Witness) and, um, Alan Cumming’s wafer-thin debut novel (Tommy’s Tale), which kept me company in Paris the time before last. It’s a pathetically embarrassing track record, isn’t it? And so I have brought with me a hardback copy of Monica Ali’s “Brick Lane”, because, despite never reading book reviews (or film reviews for that matter, but we’ll deal with that another time), I’ve somehow picked up on
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100 x 100. 94: Start at #58 and work upwards.
always made me feel like I was suffering from de-hydration.)
(There again: I personally know of other people who have taken SJW for an extended period of time (two or three years or so), and have stopped with absolutely no adverse side-effects whatsoever – so the reaction clearly differs from person to person. In retrospect, what I should have done – obviously – was to steadily reduce the dosage.) But let us not linger any longer over past trials. I’m in the middle of post #94, and the home stretch is in sight. Let us turn our minds once again to more cheerful
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100 x 100. 93: Start at #58 and work upwards.
the emotional crutch that SJW provided – although don’t get me wrong, it was necessary at the time, it played its part, and I knew when it was time to stop. It’s strange though – I feel almost as if a background fuzz has been lifted, that I hadn’t known was there. It’s rather like when the air-conditioning is turned off in the office at the end of the day and the sudden silence shocks you, because you thought the room had been silent all along, except it hadn’t.
(The other aspect of SJW that I don’t miss: the dry mouth, which
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100 x 100. 92: Start at #58 and work upwards.
or the very depth, of all of this nonsense. Vodka helped. Oh, and the outstanding quality of the music, of course, hahaha.
I suppose the one saving grace throughout all of this was that I never lost sight of the fact that the anxiety and paranoia were EXTERNAL, artificial, baseless, merely the product of chemical reactions inside my head. By hanging onto that knowledge, I was able to steer my way through the mire, without taking it all too personally. And now I’m through the other side, and feeling normal again, and so glad that I’m no longer relying on
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100 x 100. 91: Start at #58 and work upwards.
Saint John’s Wort Cold Turkey, which hit me quite hard. Just as Peter-ex-of-Naked-Blog warned me, the chief characteristics of the withdrawal symptoms were anxiety and paranoia – emotions that would attach themselves, limpet-like to any situation that I happened to find myself in. I didn’t know who to be or how to act – I found myself retro-analysing everything I said or did – and I kept getting myself tied up in vicious circles of spiralling social pressures: self-invented, self-obsessed and, worst of all, self-subordinating. This didn’t make Eurovision Weekend a particularly easy time, as I was by then at the very height,
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100 x 100. 90: Start at #58 and work upwards.
/ Lynda Snell one minute, overgrown teenager the next minute (yes, Buni and I were BACK on that podium at NG1 on Wednesday night, jiggling our bits around to their weekly r&b session – Wayne Wonder segueing into that fantastic Lumidee single – DIWALI RIDDIM IN DA HOUSE!), corporate office drone the next, thwarted Brancusi-phile the next, oh, and the list goes on and on. It led to a bit of an Identity Crisis earlier in the year, although I didn’t really broadcast the fact – but then it was an altogether weird time, as I was also dealing with the stresses of
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100 x 100. 89: Start at #58 and work upwards.
the tiny little tits, the hands demurely folded in the lap, and the surprisingly full and curvy calves. I don’t think people round here were quite expecting us, of all people, to install a Naked Lady. I think it could be viewed as something of a curveball. But c’mon, do we look like the sort of tasteless queens who are going to plonk down ghastly pseudo-classical male torsos in white marble? What do you mean, that’s just the sort of people we look like? Pah, I say.
This weird, split existence that I lead. Juggling multiple personalities. Hyacinth Bucket /
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100 x 100. 88: Start at #58 and work upwards.
seated posture, cast in dark stone and resin – not the sort of piece we thought we wanted for the space at all, but it works superbly well. It fits in to the overall composition, without noisily shrieking of its existence (“look at me, I’m a great big f***k-off statue”) – it’s a part of a whole, in other words. It also looks great at night, as there are two spotlights on the ground in front of it which illuminate it in just the right way, the light glinting off the top of the rounded, featureless head, the bony, sticky-out shoulder blades,
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100 x 100. 87: Start at #58 and work upwards.
In Real Time aspirations. That’ll learn me to be “experimental”, won’t it?
Ach, “experimentation” – that hoary old beast. Let’s be done with it for a while, shall we? Let’s get back to Troubled Diva Classique. My Fat Elvis / Be Here Now / Tin Machine / will-this-do / buggered-if-I-care period needs to draw to a close (you were going to say “now” there, weren’t you – well, DON’T). What else is new? The “focal point” statue has been installed outside in the PDMG – it’s an elongated female nude, tall and extremely skinny, of Giacometti/Modigliani-esque dimensions, about six feet high, in a
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100 x 100. 86: Start at #58 and work upwards.
was AGONY to re-read some of the stuff I came out with. “Ancient regime” indeed – oh, how I LONG to go back and knock off that misplaced t in “ancien”. And what’s with the constant peppering of my prose with the word “now”? We KNOW it’s Now. When else could it possibly be? Can we just take it as given from henceforth that a state of Nowness is implied in everything I write, unless there are specific instructions to the contrary?
Oh, and I see that Blogger’s up the spout again, thus putting paid once more to my Doing It
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100 x 100. 85: Start at #58 and work upwards.
written.
Wow. Did you see what happened there? I stopped off for an approximate word count, and discovered that I had just written exactly 101 words. So if nothing else, this exercise will have taught me how to instinctively recognise blocks of 100 words. Which isn’t exactly a Major Life Skill, but it’s SOMETHING, right? I shouldn’t have re-read what I wrote yesterday, though. You know how I promised that there would be no revisions, no corrections, no re-writes (that’s right Mike: pile on the lists of synonyms, they’ll get you there quicker)? Well, can I just say that it
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100 x 100. 84: Start at #58 and work upwards.
And good morning to you. And my, what a BEAUTIFUL morning it is here in South-West Derbyshire. A perfect morning for a leisurely al fresco breakfast in the Princess Diana Memorial Garden – but not so perfect that I’m not prepared to haul my ass back inside in order to SET MYSELF FREE from the HORRORS of the 100 x 100 Project. You join me here at the kitchen table, battling away on the shitty little laptop keyboard and the 56k dial-up connection, blogging in REAL TIME – I’ll be posting every fresh 100 word batch just as soon as it is
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Friday, August 01, 2003
100 x 100. 83: Start at #58 and work upwards.
little laptop and the minging little 56k dial-up connection (‘ark at ‘er, one year of BT Openworld and she’s become quite the proper little Bandwidth Queen, no better than she should be mind, and I remember where she came from, OH yes, and I could tell you a thing or two that would – hang on, where the F**K has this persona come from? If you’re starting to talk in Multiple Voices, then you really should unhook yourself right about – NOW.)
(Except that you just need twenty more words to get to the end of this particular piece. There. That’s it.)
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100 x 100. 82: Start at #58 and work upwards.
Lonely No-Mates Tourist With The Wandering Eyes And The Slightly Unnerving Haunted Look a “compensating attraction”. But that’s another post entirely, and I’m not about to jump ahead.
Oh, enough for now. I wanted this to be an exciting, Real Time, Watch Mike Write His Way Back Out Of Blogger’s Block Interactive Experience, where you’d all be egging me on with cries of “Come on Mike, you can do it, only another TWO THOUSAND WORDS TO GO, sucker, hahaha, we’re with you all the way!” So maybe I’ll resume tomorrow morning, after breakfast, over at the cottage, on the shitty
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100 x 100. 81: Start at #58 and work upwards.
flight from East Midlands International Airport (that just doesn’t SOUND right, does it?) was delayed by nearly two hours, meaning that I came out of the metro station just 20 minutes before the place was due to shut. Never mind – I was still slap bang in the middle of the Marais, where all the gayers hang out. Compensating attractions and all that. If you can call sitting on your own in a strange city with a beer in your hand and nothing to read, trying to maintain your keen interest in “people-watching” after an hour-plus of feeling like the conspicuous
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100 x 100. 80: Start at #58 and work upwards.
Piece. I’ve got loads of ideas to hang off it. If I do decide to write something longer during the holiday, then it will most likely be an extended Paris-based piece.
Oh yes. I almost forgot to mark the occasion. I’M ON HOLIDAY! WOO! YEAH! SKOOLZ OUT 4 EVAH! I’ll say this, though. There seems to be a cosmic conspiracy which is preventing me from visiting the Atelier Brancusi, ever since I read about it on Frizzy Logic and decided I had to visit. The first time, I got sick and had to cancel the trip. The second time, the
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100 x 100. 79: Start at #58 and work upwards.
This Site, Mr.D., who has just announced a Commenting Hiatus – now THAT’S what I call entering into the spirit of the genre.
And then there are the commenters who eventually yield to The Force, and start up blogs of their own: step forward Nigel R (The London One), now known as Invisible Stranger. It’s all gone Meta again, hasn’t it? And I was so determined not to let that happen. But then, nobody’s still reading this, right? So it doesn’t matter much. I should really be writing about Paris, but I’d quite like to save that up for a Proper
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100 x 100. 78: Start at #58 and work upwards.
Blog would eventually be receiving visitors that were only interested in reading the Parasite Blog. I was rather taken with the idea. But then he disappeared. Regular commenters without sites of their own often do that. There used to be someone called The Mekon, who left GREAT comments in half the sites I was reading at the time, and then one day he just vanished. And now that I think about it, whatever happened to The Girl With The Patent Leather Face? Is she still around? Still, there’s always A Reader and his caustic, near-the-knuckle wit, and Extra-Special Friend Of
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100 x 100. 77: Start at #58 and work upwards.
rockstars.
Um, yes. Reached a full-stop with that train of thought now. Have you noticed what’s been going on in my comments box recently? Someone has popped up called blogwithinablog, and he/she is doing just that – blogging within this blog. I wonder whether this is the same commenter who used to come here right back in the early days, when hardly anybody was reading – because this particular commenter outlined a whole theory of something he called Parasite Blogging: that someone could construct an entire separate blog in the comments boxes of the Host Blog, to the point where the Host
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100 x 100. 76: Start at #58 and work upwards.
as well as visiting the Bridget Riley & Wolfgang Tillmanns exhibitions at Tate Britain. Riley, because She Is A Goddess – seemingly nothing much to look at for the first minute or so, but then longer you look, the harder it becomes to tear your eyes away, as the images start to dance before you and your whole perception of what you thought the image was about starts warping – joyous stuff. And Tillmanns, because Michael Stipe said we should all go, when we saw him at the Brixton Academy a couple of months ago. Because obviously, you should ALWAYS obey your
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100 x 100. 75: Start at #58 and work upwards.
little 100 word articles, running satisfyingly all the way down the page? It’s the SHAPE of the words, not their actual meanings, which count here. You know, like that painter that’s in the Saatchi collection, who paints all those wordy pieces which you don’t actually have to read if you don’t want to, because it’s the look of the words which is more important? What’s his name? It’s a Him, I do know that. Anybody? Well, no matter. Wonder if his stuff is in the new Saatchi Gallery at County Hall. We’ll be paying our first visit there next Friday,
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100 x 100. 74: Start at #58 and work upwards.
has taken this PRECISE moment to start stuffing up on me, throwing me into some sort of hideous Low-Fi mode and crapping out with Internal Server Errors all over the place. Just as I FINALLY get my mojo back, as well).
Goodness, you’re not actually READING this stuff, are you? It’s pure verbal slurry, you know – straight from brain to fingers, designed merely to fill the 100 x 100 quota. No need to actually read it if you don’t want to. Why not treat it as a conceptual piece instead? Why not enjoy the look of all those neatly segmented
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100 x 100. 73: Start at #58 and work upwards.
to the old desperation, which was more artfully concealed – y’know, so that we could almost pretend that they were actually cool with the whole thing? Tarts with Hearts, and all that sentimental nonsense? I think I’ve spent too long in this little bubble of Gracious Living, in this Exclusive Residential Area Of Outstanding Architectural Importance, this little piece of Hampstead in the heart of Nottingham which we call THE Park. Maybe I actually NEED to walk past a few more crack-whores.
(Oh, and that comment at post #70 that said “well, that didn’t take too long” – utterly meaningless, as Blogger
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100 x 100. 72: Start at #58 and work upwards.
crack (quite the wrong drug demographic, darlings - Christ, even the drugs are demographically segmented these days - but I digress), but somehow, I absolutely KNOW. Must have watched too many documentaries about it, I suppose. There's a kind of ANGULARITY to people on crack - angular features, gestures, speech patterns. And a specific kind of bony gauntness, and sallowness of skin, which somehow looks different to Old Skool Smack Chic.
But why does the fact that they're CRACK-whores bother me more than if they were Olde Englishe Ladyes Of Easye Virtuye? Is it because the desperation is more clearly writ? As opposed
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100 x 100. 71: Start at #58 and work upwards.
exchanging my peaceful stroll through The Park (that’s what we call it here - it’s not A Park, it’s THE Park - if you know Nottingham, then you’ll understand the implicit statement of superiority concealed within that all-important Definite Article, f**k, where was I?) for a commute that will be mostly about dodging the crack-whores on the Woodborough Road. You can still walk it, but it’s twice the distance and there’s one hell of an uphill slope on the way back. Plus the crack-whores. How do I even know that they’re on crack? It’s not like I’ve ever been around people on
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100 x 100. 70: Start at #58 and work upwards.
And we’re back home now. Didn’t take long, did it? (‘Cos obviously, I’m now under the delusion that you’re all sitting there, hitting Refresh every few minutes, following this stunt in Real Time: coo, doesn’t he write FAST?)
That’s one of the good things about living where we do – I can walk to and from work in about 10 minutes flat. In fact, the “journey” to work is one of my favourite parts of the day, and how many people can say that? But it will all come to an end when we move into the new place – I’ll be
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100 x 100. 69: Start at #58 and work upwards.
a fortnight. Excuse me while I wend my way home. More later, no doubt.
11 down, and 32 to go, is it? Bloody Nora. This like one of those Blogathon thingies, isn’t it? (Speaking of the Blogathon – I decided to sponsor my former guest blogger, Faustus MD of The Search For Love In Manhattan (see sidebar for link), who duly produced no less than 48 gay dating haikus over the space of 48 hours, every one of them excellent. Well work taking a look at. And congrats to Pinky & Gordon, two other readers who blogathonned, magnificently.) Going home now.
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100 x 100. 68: Start at #58 and work upwards.
them. I’ll knock them off their self-satisfied perches. Just watch me.”
Which is, of course, EXACTLY the way things should be. Y’know, dialectical and cyclical and stuff. But on the other hand, I’ve always been slightly too fond of viewing the world in hierarchical terms – which frequently works against me. An ingrained habit, that is. And a habit that is just MADE for the World Of Blog. But enough of the self-referential meta-blogging bollocks. Too much of that sort of thing already. It’s Friday, and I’m about to log off, shut down, and get out of this place for a
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100 x 100. 67: Start at #58 and work upwards.
fairly thoroughly round the UK blogosphere. But not now. And I can no longer pretend to be the thrusting young enfant terrible any more. With still less than two years of work behind me, I nevertheless feel firmly part of the “ancient regime” now. Why, I bet that there are legions of uppity young whippersnappers reading these very words right now, and snorting: “God knows why so many sites link to him. He’s nothing special. Bloody cliquey bunch of self-congratulating backslappers, all bloody linking to each other the whole time, like THEY are the UK blogging community. Well, I’ll show
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100 x 100. 66: Start at #58 and work upwards.
how he felt like one of the dinosaurs by comparison. I can partially relate to this. There certainly seems to be an explosion in the number of good new blogs that I keep discovering these days. Quite frequently, I’ll find a good new site, scan the blogroll, and not recognise a single name on it. Compare and contrast with this time even a year ago, when the UK weblog scene still somehow felt like one big community of sorts. Well, maybe that’s overstating it, but I nevertheless had the illusion (if that’s all it was) that I knew my way
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100 x 100. 65: Start at #58 and work upwards.
of Peter – I’m missing his Naked Blog already. It all went a bit fractious towards the end though, didn’t it? I think it’s dangerous to set too much store by the number of comments that one receives. From my own experience, the pieces which I’m happiest with are often the pieces which get the fewest numbers of comments. There’s no correlation. They’re no good as an index of appreciation – no good at all.
Peter said something else before he stomped off into the shadows: he talked about the vast new numbers of good new blogs that kept springing up, and
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100 x 100. 64: Start at #58 and work upwards.
yet. One of the limiting factors: we’ll be spending almost the entire two weeks lounging about at the cottage, where the only Net access is via a laptop and a 56k dial-up modem. And I don’t like the fiddly little keyboard that comes with the laptop. Because typing on it is basically one long exercise in backspacing and correcting accidental misspellings. On the other hand: in Easter 2002, I managed to write over 6000 words of fiction for Peter’s “Naked Novel” collaborative fiction project. So where there’s a will, basically? But IS there a will? Well, we shall see.
Speaking
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100 x 100. 63: Start at #58 and work upwards.
with more ideas for lengthy, complex pieces than I’ve had in weeks and weeks. Ideas which have slowly atrophied over time – ‘cos you have to blog while the ideas are still hot, don’t you?
But maybe I’ll try and work some of the ideas into future posts – they’re all written down on a scrap of paper somewhere. Which brings me on to the next dilemma: with two weeks’ holiday coming up, shall I go on hiatus, or shall I use the time to work on some longer, more considered pieces? I haven’t made my mind up about that one just
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100 x 100. 62: Start at #58 and work upwards.
plot-driven fiction, where every sentence advances the story in some way, whereas I’m just burbling on. What did Meg call blogging today? Making mud pies and showing them off. She didn’t mean it meanly, either – it’s a fair simile. I’d link, but there isn’t time. meish.org.)
And of course, being the contrarian that I am, as soon as I tried to focus on short sharp & snappy (the other idea behind the project being an attempt to revert to informal little hit and run pieces, rather than great long bloody treatises the whole time), my mind immediately started coming up
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100 x 100. 61: Start at #58 and work upwards.
100 was a useful little exercise in editing – something which most bloggers would never dream of doing – what it really taught me is that I’m WORDY. Short sharp and snappy is not my style. I LIKE the digressions, the overuse of adverbs, the off-topic ramblings. In fact, a lot of my Favourite Bits are the bits which a sub-editor would probably chop out immediately.
(In this, I stand in sharp contrast to my author mate Dymbel, who says that he LOVES editing. In fact, it’s one of his favourite parts of the whole writing process. But then, he’s honing taut,
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100 x 100. 60: Start at #58 and work upwards.
AN OPTION. I might be a slow starter (procrastination being my middle name), but once I’ve started something, then I simply can’t bear leaving it unfinished.
So I’m just going to keep randomly burbling away until I’ve completed 100 posts. Y’know – freestyling, if we’re going to dignify it with a cool expression. Which means: no revisions, no links, no fancy stuff – just raw untreated verbal sewage, until we reach one hundred posts. Which means: once again, I can be as verbose and discursive as I like. Which means: I can get back to being MYSELF again. For although the 100 x
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100 x 100. 59: Start at #58 and work upwards.
capable of such astonishing levels of speed and efficiency) – but also partly due to having this stupid self-imposed “exactly 100 words per post” millstone hanging around my neck. Stunts like that need time and attention if they are to work. Which would have been all fine and dandy earlier in the year, when I had time in abundance – but not now, oh dear me, not now.
So what to do about it? Well, I think the best thing is to get the whole stunt over and done with as quickly as possible. Because giving up and walking away is NOT
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100 x 100. 58: Start here.
Damn. I promised you a “splodge of words”, didn’t I? And yet the splodgeness is not abounding. (There was a sad old punk rock joke in that last sentence, which younger readers won’t have picked up on.)
In fact, the whole act of writing ANYTHING AT ALL on this blog feels rather strange and alien to me now. Because I’ve been so lax in the past week and a half. Which is partly due to being unusually busy (preparing to go away on holiday for a fortnight, my work rate has increased exponentially – in fact, I didn’t know I was
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Tuesday, July 29, 2003
I know, I know, shocking isn't it?
Six days between posts? That's not like him, is it? Wonder if everything's OK?
Yes, everything's fine. But busy. Trying to sell the house. Preparing for a fortnight's holiday (starting next week, not going anywhere much, mostly hanging out in the Princess Diana Memorial Garden, might even READ SOME BOOKS for once). Getting work all tidied up before the break. Flying to Paris this afternoon: Atelier Brancusi here we come, and maybe it's time I cruised the Marais bars. For, y'know, research purposes. (Cox, Open & Quetzal, innit?) Shamelessly misbehaving, non-bloggably. Pseudo-networking with our fair city's Business Elite, also non-bloggably. Spending time with the Old Crowd (the Broadway-and-Lord-Roberts-late-80s-early-90s gang). Having the cottage photographed for a feature in Peri0d Living magazine (well, la-di-da). Waiting for the cab to the airport. No time to do the stupid 100 words edit thing for now. Big splodge of words on Thursday or Friday, promise. Shut down, log off, back in a couple of days.
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25 favourite posts 2007: the year in blog 2007: the year in mike 25 things to do: before i die 25 things to do: before you die accommodating: the f-word all time: fave singles ambushed: by unexpected emotion apotheosis of blog: 1a / 1b / 1c / 2 / 3 arbeit: macht frei archbishop: sex shop scandal are you: a proper blogger? astrology: hmm (1) (2) autographs: the collection bands which: left me cold battle: of the band aids big nights out: what changed? blending: with the english blogging tips: for newcomers best music: 07 / 06 / 05 / 04 / 03 / 02 / 01 / 00 blogmeets: popular myths dispelled bobbly fruit & pillows: for whom? bob dylan: suggested coping strategies book review: 2005 blogged boutique hotels: never again boutique shag: squint squint squint bridget riley: & wolfgang tillmanns bt vision: diary of horror carnet: parisien celebrity angst: what to do? chino latino: get shum bongo clapped out has been: yes or no? conkers: bonkers! conversation: with an 11 year old cottaging: fond memories crisp sharp edges: k's guest blog cross butts: the aga was a godsend cumberland hotel: i want my apples! daddy: what's sex? dancing the hard house: on beer do ya: think i'm sexy? dreams: of returning duckie: hula hoops & hoo-hahs easter holiday: in numbers emotional tailspin: inner retreat fashion: sexy no-no's famous people: i could be fave albums: of the 1970s flush: of shame future dream: shopping scheme gay partnership rights: blah gay up: me duck general election 2005: 1 / 2 god-man: in the airport grandad's on: the guest list happy happy happy: splurge hi i'm ken: gayest moment ever hiking: to the gate how much: do you WHAT? if wishes: were horses... ...beggars: would ride i have bought: a pedometer!!! if wishes: were horses... inland empire: oh, the agony iPods: feel the love iPods: feel the pain it's time: the tale was told john peel: and the "noble savage" jongleurs: nottingham latvian baywatch interlude: beaver patrol! lit crit: bitch sesh longnor nights: ronnie corbett ramble magisterial: coruscations membrillo: cottage style me, dear 1: local media calleth me, dear 2: good morning nottingham memories: of the cerne giant michael's big day: with "the creatives" motoring: with mike and k my desk: exhaustively annotated my mummy: the movie star my mummy: the vogue model my week: barcelona business wonkery naked diva: port in a storm (parody) new dawn fades: failed space-age nicholas hellen: the new serenata flowers one night in: amsterdam on this day: 1966/76/86/96 orange mivvis: wrong message? petite anglaise: book review philip pullman: the vignette phuket nights: before the flood political mike: what happened? poofs & lezzers: in pop popbitch: worst records racist ducks: by request recitatively yours: in beeston regarding: regards reiki: balancing me chakras, like remove power: and we have nothing resolution watch: happy endings rvt: a diva perspective sambuca drinking game: just DON'T should gay men: give blood? sky mirror: a sudden profusion social smoking: who said oxymoron? soft furnishings: a social history songs: containing lists spiked: a cautionary tale statement: of jadedness successes: and unknowns sunshine, balance: and lurrve swanky do: playing the game tacky stab: celeb status ta-dah: rough tasting notes tales from: amsterdam: 1 / 2 / 3 tatchell/humphries: today howler thatchenfreude: stuff of nightmares the secret: gay signal the thespian life: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 the world won't end: 9/12 the year in blog: 2003 too many people: multiple mikes through bad times: and good trams: so this is hucknall? trashy pop: a justification trentbeat: the nottingham sound tufts: and chuffs unlikely: new interest up for grabs: in both senses vinyl countdown: re-learning the rituals what i did: on saturday when good cliques: go bad whither: the political blog? whore to culture: why opera bores me why i like: queenie working in paris: 5 stages you lattay: i lartay return to sidebar menu we freelanced... ADULT., battant agnostic mountain gospel choir, congregation alison moyet amp fiddler amy winehouse, mr. hudson & the library ...and you will know us by the trail of dead andy williams the automatic, mumm-ra barry adamson the beat, neville staple beyoncé black kids, team waterpolo black mountain bonnie "prince" billy boy george breeders british sea power, make model bucks fizz, brotherhood of man buena vista social club bugz in the attic cardiacs cocorosie david essex delays diana ross donny osmond drive-by truckers duffy duke special duran duran dv8 physical theatre erasure euros childs evan dando fallout trust, computerman the feeling feist fionn regan foals from the jam (may 2007) from the jam (dec 2007) the futureheads gary numan: replicas tour get cape. wear cape. fly. girls aloud glasvegas the gossip greg dulli & the twilight singers guillemots, joan as police woman hard-fi, the rumble strips here and now tour 2008 hidden cameras hope of the states i'm from barcelona imogen heap joe lean & the jing jang jong john barrowman journey south juana molina ken dodd laura veirs liza minnelli lorna luft los campesinos! low manu chao maria mckee the musical box: selling england... nouvelle vague, gabriella cilmi nuru kane & bayefall gnawa the orb the osmonds palladium pam ann piney gir pink prince public enemy puppini sisters rachel unthank & the winterset the rascals richmond fontaine rihanna rodrigo y gabriela (2006) rodrigo y gabriela (2007) ryan adams & the cardinals scissor sisters secret machines seth lakeman the sugababes system 7 twilight sad the verve, reverend & the makers victorian english gentlemens club, das wanderlust westlife white denim the x factor live yazoo young knives, ungdomskulen slate magazine: america, meet the eurovision song contest agnostic mountain gospel choir: ten thousand ali farka touré: savane athlete: beyond the neighbourhood brett anderson: brett anderson british sea power: do you like rock music? bucks fizz: the very best of datsuns: smoke & mirrors defected presents: charles webster duke special: songs from the deep forest erasure: light at the end of the world george michael: twenty five golden afrique vol.3 hard-fi: once upon a time in the west hidden cameras: awoo kevin ayers: the unfairground lady sovereign: public warning lcd soundsystem: sound of silver marc almond: stardom road mountain goats: get lonely mr. hudson & the library: a tale of two cities queer noises 1961-1978: from the closet to the charts rufus wainwright: does judy at carnegie hall rufus wainwright: does judy! judy! judy! (dvd) rufus wainwright: release the stars sean lennon: friendly fire the rascals: rascalize |