Out and About

We are going to the Magritte Exhibition

Heffalump's Footsteps

Walking to work last week in the low, dazzling September exalting in the cool, milky autumn air; I was juggling my mp3 player, my newspaper, my blackberry, my phone and my old-man glasses when the phone rang.

Parallel Worlds by alicepopkorn ( in and out )

Glancing at the display I was nonplussed to see who was calling for there on the screen was flashing  Alibert Botogol [Work]

Now, I've seen an episode or two of Dr Who in my time, so I knew pretty much what to expect: most likely my alter ego from a parallel universe was taking advantage of a tiny wormhole in the space-time continuum to place a call to summon my assistance with a problem that was threatening the security of the entire multiverse.

Either that or someone was burgling my office, had found my address book, and was having a laugh at my expense.

Not sure which prospect was the more frightening and full of curiosity but not without hesitation, and somewhat gingerly, I took the call.

"Hello, Alibert Botogol speaking?", I said just as the person at the other end said exactly the same thing. "Hello? Hello?" we both continued,  talking over each other, until, spooked, I fell silent. So did the other guy.... I waited, coolly....

...until a tiny squeal from my pocket distracted me and I fished out of my jacket... my blackberry. I must have forgotten to lock the keys when I stuffed it away for it seemed to be making a phone call.....

What's in a Name?

The Colour of Money by penguincakes

Don't underestimate the importance of science and art of naming¹ for our name controls our destiny.

So, many years ago, when I wanted a domain name of my own I thought long and hard of what the name might be, what the name should signify, what it would mean and it tickled me immensely when I hit on a memorable phrase that was designed explicitly to be meaningless.

Someone had already registered it, of course, and I had to buy it for an amount I have never disclosed to Mrs Botogol, but then registered it, and made a site and it was my very own.

And if I tell you that it was some years before it occurred to me that "green ideas" had environmental connotations it will tell you both about how long ago this was, and also about how quickly our language changes for  a meaning had risen to fit my meaningless name.

And now, in 2009, I find I could sell my name - for people are interested  - and everything has a price, doesn't it? It would be feel like selling a little part of myself, so my price is a large one. Of course it is.

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¹ so why is there no name for it?

Plinth Happy

I am SO going to spend an hour on that plinth
The cutest thing might be simply to sit there with a placard:

This. Is. Not. Art

Now, would that be a protest?
Well, it would certainly wasting a once in a lifetime opportunity to show-off...

Introducing The Extraordinary Spectacle of Botogol-On-The-Plinth

Timetable of Events
(to be displayed on a large placard on the edge of the plinth)

• 10:00 Arrival of Botogol
• 10:02 The setting up of video cameras for the purposes of YouTube
  
• 10:05 Impersonation: Nelson On His Column
• 10:10 Moonwalking Demonstration
• 10:15 The Best of Botogol - Selected Readings from Green Ideas
• 10:16 Impersation: A Lion at the base of a Column
  
• 10:20 Short Extract from Paradise Lost, Book One
• 10:25 If you look closely you can see his ears wiggling
• 10:30 Repeated Bellowing Of "It's no fun" to a bewildered Crowd
• 10:35 Juggling Display (I can you know)
• 10:40 Ventilation of the Arm-Pits
  
• 10:42 Recitation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
• 10:45 A sit down for a nice cup of tea and a biscuit
• 10:50 Q&A
• 10:58 Farewell and Last Words
• 10:59 Bows to Tumultuous Applause
• 11:00 Refusal to Dismount from the Plinth
• 11:02 A Confrontation with Security Guard with ensuing
  
• 11:04 Comedy Chase-round-and-round-the-edge-of-plinth
• 11:05 Dramatic Fall on to Safety-Net
• 11:10 Humiliating Rescue from Same
• 11:15 Autograph Signing and DVD Sales

What's not to enjoy? If you would enjoy seeing the Botogol show vote, vote for Antony Gormley

Gormley's idea is clearly streets ahead of the others. (Yesterday I actually heard people talking about in the lift and, well, meercats, really...) Sadly though, I don't think he will win for the idea is just too scarily democratic - "I mean they could do anything".

My prediction: they'll turn it down on fabricated health and safety grounds and go for the conventional, low risk (and seriously, seriously dull) anti-Iraq War option instead.

Mind you, if they are looking for a good car..

All on the spectrum now

Last Monday I took some time out from the Triathlon Training that is increasingly dominating my days, my nights, my waking thoughts and - worst of all - my blog, to go to a lecture.

It was two hours, I calculated, lost for training. In that time I could have:

• swum 7 x 100m off 3 minutes, and
  
• run the 5.5km treadmill programme at level 4 (level 5 if they would only keep the bleeding gym at the 19° that they are supposed to) and
  
• had another attempt at the tantalising 1 hour barrier for the bike home (PB 1h05)

Ah well. The event was Autism Nation - a panel discussion on autism at the ICA. The star of the show was the clever, intellectual and urbane Simon Baron Cohen, but stealer of the show was the fierce, opinionated professional talker-of-down-to-earth-common-sense Dr Michael Fitzpatrick. Alt-views were provided by the intensively unautistic Marti Leimbach while the genuine real-life autist Kamran Nazeer loomed impassively from the edge, carefully refraining from eye contact with the rest of the panel who, quite naturally, ignored him.

The panel waxed lyrical all evening, and on my note pad I jotted down a page of their original thoughts; thinking back on it over the week since one thought in particular struck me - in terms of sociability and ability to communicate our tolerant, inclusive modern society has quite raised the bar in terms of what is considered normal: Nowadays children in quite ordinary schools are expected to participate in drama, hold and attend parties, talk about sex and sexuality in the classroom (talk in the classroom, I mean, of course, not talk about sex in the.... you know what I mean!) they are expected to be able to engage meaningfully with people of astonishly diverse backgrounds and avoid any scarily intensive hobbies, all in order to be considered normal. Behaviours that would have been considered quite usual in 1957 are, in 2007, plotted carefully on the all-embracing, all encompassing autistic spectrum.

What is autism? Simon Baron Cohen identified four traits
- difficulty socialising
- lack of empathy/interest in others
- intense interest in a narrow range subject
- repetition


It was an interesting evening, and exactly a week later I was still thinking on it as I splashed out my life-threatening 500m in the pool and pounded out a tedious 5km on the treadmill.

Between the two, I practised transition: I got out of the pool and took out my racing top [super-wicking, dry-quick, ultra light; no armpit holes £84.99] from my locker and laid it out carefully on the floor in front of me, flat and untangled, just as it will be in the race, with the back rolled up just a little bit. Then I stood up straight and stared at it for a moment, and visualised.

Water dripped slowly from my arms to the floor, I could quite distinctly hear the hum of the air conditioner and I could smell the sweat of the changing room and the chlorine on my skin.

Slowly and deliberately I counted to three and then - to the astonishment of my neighbours - I burst into life and hauled the top over my head and, writhing desperately, managed to haul the tightly rolled fabric down my damp back. Immediately it was on, I dropped on ground, toggled up my trainers, then leapt to my feet and put my cycling helmet on. And stoppped my watch.

A sudden hush had descended on the changing room.

"Blenheim Palace?"asked my neighbour?
"Thames Turbo, said I,
"Word of advice", he said, not unkindly, "Put an arm in first, before it goes over your head. Much faster that way"

Chekhov on Blogging

I read all of Chekhov's short stories in a single lonely weekend during my first term at university. That was almost twenty-five years ago and I have since remained an avid fan, although naturally I have forgotten every word. I do remember a Kiss.

I have been a fan of Christopher Hampton, mind, even longer: ever since I adored Mrs Botogol (as she wasn't then) bring the house down with a perfect performance as Araminta in the Philanthropist. That was very probably in 1981.

So all in all I was excited on Friday to go to The Seagull at the Royal Court [well, silly, because it's a play by Chekhov... in a new version by Hampton] But not excited enough to stay awake during all of the second half, mind, but in my defence I have to point out that the play was two hours and fifty minutes long. That's too long. But the first half was excellent and one bit really caught my attention; so much so, I sadly bought a script, so that I could copy it out in my blog.

Background: Trigorin is a famous blogger, who has recently got a book deal, and Nina accuses him of having a wonderful life. He replies

I don't see what's so special about it [...] All right then, let's talk, let's talk about my wonderful glittering life... (he thinks for a moment)

There's such a thing as obsession, when for example a man thinks all day and night about nothing but the moon, and I have my own moon. All day and all night I am haunted by a single obsessive thought: I have to blog, I have to blog, I have to blog.... No sooner have I finished one post when for some reason or another I have to write a second post, and then a third, and, after the third, a fourth.... I write non-stop at breakneck speed, and I can't seem to do it any other way. Now what's so wonderful and glittering about that, may I ask? Ach... it's a preposterous life! I'm here with you getting steamed up, but at the same time I can't forget for a moment that there's an post saved as draft waiting for me.

There's a cloud, see? which looks like a grand piano. I think to myself: must fit in to my blog somewhere that a cloud floated by. looking like a grand piano [...] I keep fixing on every phrase, on every word that you an I utter, and I can't wait to add all these phrases and words as soon as I can to my literary stockpile: never know when they might come in handy.

And I am sitting there, in Row K of the stalls, (just behind that scottish bloke from Sea of Souls, actually) in the heart of metropolitan London, watching Chekhov, in a version by Hampton, and I am thinking to myself:

• that's good, I could blog that
  
• it reminds me of a post by Wife in The North
• I haven't posted anything on my blog for three days. I'm not a real blogger

We bought the script in the interval, and when we had finished our obligatory glass of theatre-Pinot-Grigio we went back to our seats. While I waited for the play to resume I tried to look up the quote, but in the dim light I couldn't read it and I had forgotten my brand-new old-man glasses.

New Year's Resolutions / How To Work Better

Spotted by a friend at Tate Modern (and photographed by him, and uploaded by myself in flagrant disregard for copyright)

11. QUIT TINKERING WITH
THAT BLOODY BLOG

Credits
Perhaps I can assuage my copyright-conscience a little by adding that it's by Peter Fischli & David Weiss and you can see the exhibition until 16 January

What makes a good blog (and why this isn't one)

Forget permalinks, track-backs and mutual blogrolls; Worry not about short paragraphs, understatement and whether-to-use the personal pronoun: none of these are criteria for being a great blog.

On the other hand, there are five components that are needed to make a great blog. These are:

The Five Components...

1. Theme: There must be one. What's the blog about? What's the point of it?
   
2. Things: (to write about) A good blog needs a natural, reliable source of original incidents / anecdotes / examples / news that fit the theme. (a blog that relies on having a good idea every week, won't last)
   
3. Tone of voice: sarcastic, cheerful, critical, suicidal, wry, it doesn't matter, but a blog needs a personality (note - this the only one of the five that has anything to do with the ability to write)
   
4. Timeline: A good blog needs developing personal narrative. A good blog is rarely (never?) about its author, but all the same, the author must be present. This is one of the things that makes it a blog, not a newspaper column. The author needs to have a story.
   
5. Tempo: A good blog needs regular updates. Contrary to much advice it doesn't have to be daily. But it does have to be regular. Daily, weekly, twice a week. Stick to it.

Some Examples...

Armed with these five criteria, you will often be able to spot examples of blogs that are not a great blog...

• My Random Thoughts on Assorted Things I Read in the Papers isn't a great blog
• Hi everyone, gosh its ages since I blogged, sorry is never going to be a great blog
• Now I've gone part-time look after Harry, I've finally got time for a blog isn't a theme
• although Part-Time Fireman, part time Dad might be theme. And
• Inept government policy is killing our part-time firemen .....now you're talking
  

..and it will be easy to understand why something like Coppersblog is a great blog

• Theme - 90% of police work is a waste of time
• Things - life as a policeman is never running out of material
• Tone - wry, amused, surrounded by idiots
• Timeline - anonymity, cult blog, famous blog, book-deal, fame, pursuit, discovery, new life
• Tempo - Dave, you're slipping mate...

The mandatory link..

Everyone knows that an expected feature of all good blogs, is links to other blogs, writing on the same subject: Every post should have one.

Bloggers love to receive incoming links, but don't often get them on their very first post so, hopefully excorpus, also writing self-referentially about what makes a good blog should be agreeably startled :-)

Lastly

I'll leave my thousands of readers to work out for themselves why, sadly, green ideas isn't a great blog (..but never fear... I have an idea for a new project....)

change of name?

There is no such thing as a meme. Tell your friends

The next sentence is there to wish you a happy christmas, but this sentence isn't

The previous sentence is there to wish you a happy christmas, but this sentence isn't.

• more on the botogol christmas

Extras - what Gervais is really doing

The second series of the hyper-clever, self-referential Extras finished last week. It's a comedy series for Hofstadter fans, with enticing self-referential layers deposited weekly - here's a good discussion of what went on.

But if the series is as clever as that, why the increasing use of childish dirty jokes (viz the not-really-very funny masturbation scenes in Episode 6?) Why is Gervais sometimes like the four-year-old shouting 'bum' for comic effect?

Here's why... Gervais is having a laugh at us (Having a laugh? Is he having ... etc etc)

How's that? Well, one of the exquisite pleasures of Extras is marvelling at the things he persuades the celeb guests to do... the 'How on earth did he get him to say that??' moments, as guest stars are carried along by the tsunami of Gervais's own celebrity into portaying themselves as racist, or sex mad or just plain unpleasant.

Well, guess what? Gervais is doing the same with us, the audience (..and also the critics!).
Watch the last episode again, but this time have in mind the thought 'How on earth did he get me to laugh at that?'

Feel a bit silly now?

Getting Started

There are two sorts of 'first posts' that people make to their blogs:
- postings that self-consciously refer to themselves as being a 'first post'
- and postings that don't.

It would be intersting to create a list of all first-posts that don't refer to themelves.