The Bitterest Pill

Royal Mail Success - This Letter Reached the Right Person, Neil Boyd, 2009

I've been working at Royal Mail for nearly three years now, but I've never really written about the job. I could swear like a sailor about management and the way RM is being intentionally driven into the ground, but I really like the job and wouldn't want to risk it over a bunch of rants - hard to believe this is from the man who wrote this at school and deliberately got suspended twice.

Actually, when I say I like the job what I mean is my walk, and the reason I'm writing this is because I've been moved off that delivery after 21 months and today was my last day on it. If I sound bitter it's not only because of my reputed early finishes (during the summer! Was I the only one who had a lull during the summer?), but because I had actually got to know a lot of people in the area. I greet the same faces each morning, residents say hi to me in the streets, one lady gives me an apple and a mars bar every Saturday, I see Mrs ABC nearly everyday for her sign-for packets, and so on. In fact, so long was I on that walk that I became less focused on finishing as early as possible and began to chat with Granny Smith.

Where Do I Start, Where Do I Begin?

Part One of Three.

The Flag of The Polity of Star City

Since I last wrote about NationStates four years ago, I've noticed that the governments of many regions ceased to function and slid into informal gerontocracy as the numbers of residents declined. Well, as I write this on January 30th, my nation Star City is just over seven years old. When this is published my home region The Proletariat Coalition will also be seven years old - though the exact date in March is long-forgotten, it was contemporary with the invasion of Iraq; as such I tend to set the anniversary on the 20th. To mark this, I'm republishing my memoirs from five years ago. You can read the currently outdated history of TPC at NSwiki.

Magic Window

Parabola tree, am4ndas, 2009

Having suffered through a three year long mild writing-block, I've suddenly found myself back on a roll. Maybe it was my brief experiment with Twitter that did it: that whilst you can throw any old combination of 140 characters together on Twitter, there's a satisfaction that comes from turning your thoughts and ideas into actual sentences and paragraphs that communicate those concepts. Also I'm a contrarian.

Rejuvenated, I've got through a number of long standing drafts that were featured in a filler-piece from two years ago. So here's another filler telling you what ended up where:

Computerwelt

Lego Technic 2/2, MiikaS, 2008

The "mainstream-media" is always producing these pieces about internet addiction and challenging people to live without the internet for X amount of time. At no point have I seen the media challenge people to live without writing or the wheel - the preceding most important technical revolutions in history.

The greatest danger is viewing an innovation as a toy. The Classical Greeks had steam turbines, but elected to power spinning-tops instead of factories, or at least viewed it as a curiosity. The wheel was absent from the pre-Columbian Americas except for stone proto-wheels on children's toys. Despite how the internet/web has demonstrably revolutionised the dissemination of information, old media treats it like an amusing sideshow. Which is why they continue to flounder in the post-scarcity digital world, railing against progress and demanding someone stop the children.

[The web] is a full-duplex, two-way medium, more like the telephone than the television. Entertainment is experienced as doing, not just watching. Old Media types might think that the Web is filled with empty eyes and empty heads [...] There is no audience anymore: the Web's eyes are active and in search of actuality
-Steve Baldwin

[200]

Cries and Whispers

Fire Under Centralia (2 of 4), Cartographer, 2006

Eight years ago on Friday I bought Metal Gear Solid 2 which came with a bonus DVD that also included trailers of other forthcoming Konami releases. Amongst them was the E3 2001 trailer for Silent Hill 2, which was a work of art in itself.

Regrettably, I put off buying it for a long time because survival horror is not my thing (though, speaking of which, I did play halfway through the The Thing game), and it took three years since putting it on my Amazon wishlist for me to summon the courage to play it.

Alone in the Town

(Untitled), Prij, 25/12/05

It's happened again. Whenever I've got time off work I quickly slip into nocturnal mode. A while back I slept through three consecutive days of daylight, which is probably why I can't remember how long ago it was. It must have been during Winter, my curtains were never opened.

There's nothing like the solitude of the night. An extended run of quiet hours, you and the words, the music, or the film uninterrupted - a closeness that cannot be achieved in the light and air of the day, but after a while you must come up to breathe. The intimacy of the night can also smother you. The only colour in the dark is the infernal monochrome of the street lamp, like dead stars too weak to shine. It's often during these nights I sit and think, sometimes deliberate.

There is nothing to avoid in the night but sleep, for in my dreams I have fought backwards and see the old faces but speak new words. Accept the past or spend every sleeping moment trying to change it. It was once her face, then another's, and yet more from memory. Did I even know any of them? All I really want is someone else to catch this drift. Otherwise, I might have to consider I'm the only extant.

[224]

Turn On, Turn On, Turn On The News

Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997

For the past few months Rupert Murdoch has been tilting at Google accusing them of stealing his 'content' - that is, linking to it. One gets the impression he hasn't a clue about the interwebs, which has become increasingly apparent since buying MySpace in 2006.

If you look to the Financial Times, it's true that readers will pay for real quality content. Murdoch's best-selling "newspaper", on the other hand, relies on jingoism (Gotcha!), xenophobia (Swan Bake), outright lies (Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster) and tits. If the dead-tree version is worth only 10p to the masses, who are you going to find willing to cross a paywall to access this moronic bullshit online?