That’s what it’s all about

If anybody still doesn’t quite get the hang of Twitter, apparently this is what I’ve been doing for the past year:


And you thought it was all about overturning injunctions and dissing homophobic journalists and bring democracy to Iran, didn’t you?

(Go here if you want one for yourself.) On second thoughts, don’t. Apparently you’d be laying yourself open to hackers. Sorry.

PS: Or maybe not. Sorry, this is just too complicated for me.

Cohen for a song

Review of the Lenny book in Q magazine. (Does horizontal hand wobble thing.)

Wooh, hello Paddington!

If you happen to be in the vicinity of London’s Frontline Club this coming Wednesday, do feel free to pop in and chuck a bread roll or two while I discuss the past decade. More details here.

Flighty

I’ve been topping up my karmic footprint in the past few days, indulging in what Alan Whicker would have dubbed a jet-set lifestyle. And as the recycled, H1N1-drenched air slowly poisoned my brain, a few thoughts seeped through:

1.) I simply don’t comprehend the prevailing neurosis about unflattering passport photos. Surely it’s the flattering ones that should cause the most distress? My own picture dates from 2004, a point at which I could muster respectably pointy cheekbones and enough hair to concoct a pompadour that might offer Little Richard a run for his money. In fact, I look pretty cute in it, if I say so myself. As a result, whenever I present it at immigration, the polyester-swathed lackey’s eyes brim with pity, as if to say “You poor sod, what ungodly trauma blighted your once-carefree life over the past five years?”

2.) Talking of those grounded denizens of the airport, why do they insist on saying “Have a nice flight”? My tongue-jerk reaction is to say “You too”, which rather rubs in the fact that I’m about to fly off somewhere potentially interesting, while they’re just going to spend the next six hours looking at passports, checking in luggage, selling bottles of duty-free Scotch and the like. Must stop doing it.

3.) I understand that, when it comes to picking in-flight entertainment, airlines tend to avoid movies that include scenes of air crashes, hostage situations and the like. Surely it would also be tactful to avoid exposing economy-class travellers to films such as Julie and Julia, which is essentially about the joy to be had from the preparation and consumption of delicious food. I mean, that’s just cruel.

4.) Between flights, my sleep cycle is inevitably buggered up. I find myself leaping fully awake at about 4 in the morning, then crashing out again shortly after lunch. All well and good, except that this would only make sense if I’d been flying from Trinidad, or possibly Tasmania. Which I wasn’t. Jet lag I can deal with, but I’ve never before suffered from someone else’s jet lag.

Hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary

The good news that Gil Scott-Heron is back on the scene has got me thinking. As he suggested, the revolution will not be televised; but that’s because by the time we get round to organising the revolution, television as we know it will be dead and gone.

Sticks, stones and tweets

Stephen Fry, discussing his on/off infatuation with all things Twittery, reckons that “it is a bit much that somehow people almost feel they have a right to be heard in their insulting of me.” Well, assuming they have the right to say it, I suppose that entails the right for it/them to be heard. Otherwise, Twitter (and by extension, pretty much the whole of Web 2.0) develops into a whole new strain of the Bishop Berkeley conundrum: if Stephen Fry is insulted on Twitter and nobody reads the tweet, is he still entitled to be upset?

But on a more general point, we’re back to the situation in which people who have multiple pulpits, many of them well remunerated, from which to say stuff to a wide audience, slap down those for whom blogs, Twitter, Comment is Free and so on are the only means of being heard. Talking of which, our blogchum Fat Roland gets a mention in CiF, and some of the comments are a bit unpleasant, but I think he’s fine with that. Take note, Mr Fry.

Print’s charming

Maybe I’m just benevolently disposed towards The Word at the moment, seeing as how they gave my book so much coverage, but I was impressed by an article that David Hepworth wrote in the current article, suggesting that the Kindle and the Reader and such like won’t present much of a challenge to the dominance of the conventional book. His is not just a fogeyish argument that books have lasted 500 years so they ought to last for at least another 500; rather, it’s a highly modern observation about how we express our identities today:

...a lot of books and nearly all magazines are read on public transport. In the act of reading something with the cover pointing outwards we advertise ourselves and our attitudes. It’s the most complex and powerful sign language we know. An attractive woman makes herself twice as attractive when she is seen reading an interesting book. How can a brushed metal blank or a piece of nice smooth plastic begin to cope with that? We live in a culture of display, where people pay more for a ringtone than for a record. It’s the worst time in history to be hiding what you’re reading.

That said, here’s another view, from Freek Bijl. (Thanks to Ian Hocking for alerting me to this one.)