ever present risk of blogger envy

For reasons related to trying to find a copy of the Liverpool Echo, I found myself standing in a taxi blackspot tonight. There are places which are too far away from a bus and also nowhere near the route that cabs take back into town. Five minutes pass. Ten. I get a phone call asking where I am. But I know if I move that a taxi will arrive and I'll be just too far away by then to double back. So I wait.

Red tape could kill live comedy
I'm beginning to wonder if that's what's happened to my whole life. Again. I'm stuck in my ways, doing what I'm doing, actually too shy or scared to move an inch in case I get myself into an even worse position. I know what I want to do, but I don't want to risk it. I know that risk is part of life and all the other platitudes you'd find on a tv movie on Five Life, but as ever I'm under the impression that life is passing me by.

Destruction Of Bloglines Now Complete; Founder Prepares To Switch To Google Reader
Writing this blog and reading others has offered all kinds of opportunities, but there's also the ever present risk of blogger envy, of finding out about other people's fabulous lives in which they're doing what they want and are enjoying it, yet the most exciting thing which happened to me tonight was not being able to get a taxi.

On the Ultimate Time Waster
I know what I want to do. I like to write, but I also seem to have a facility for research. Clearly I want to be a journalist. Who writes about the arts. Mostly film.

The 18 Things You Need for Your Computer
I know this, and yet I don't even know where to begin. Put together a portfolio and send that off? Is it that simple? Do I actually need to have studied journalism specifically, or does reading other people's writing and having a basic idea of structure and writing for different audiences count? Is that enough?

status updates
So many questions. And believe me, I've been asking them to myself over and over. As Jill Sobule asks "Where do I begin?"

Celebrity author Salman Rushdie suns. He mingles. He tries to sell books.
Is that an obscure reference? I'm not sure. This article's worth reading by the way, even if you haven't forgiven Rushdie for his bizarre cameo in Bridget Jones. Apparently he was offered Dancing With Stars (the US version of Strictly Come Dancing). Well, Germaine Greer did appear on Celebrity Big Brother.

read it and weep
100,000 in St. Louis, MO: "All I can say is, wow."
I suspect some of this probably just wistfulness as I look across the Atlantic at this massive human endeavour -- and wishing I could bring my four years of call centre experience online to canvas for the man who'll be the first Black President. I'd love to get into to politics, except the British scene is generally boring and there's not one single inspiring candidate. Well, alright, one or two but neither of them are in parties that I could condone.

BBC Election '97 website. [via]
It's still there. '97 was probably the last exciting election. I remember the mood in the country; it was the first time I worked as poll clerk simply so that I could be there when the winds changed. I voted for the Lib Dems as usual, but that didn't stop me from cheering through the night whenever another of the old blue faces we'd had to endure disappeared into the shadows. So yes, I was up for Portillo. Little did we know they'd simply be replaced by a cascade of equally irritating red faces and as my old journalism night school tutor suggested, nothing very much would actually change. Ooh -- we're back to journalism again.

Ambitious £6m restaurant revamp of Theatre Museum proposed
It's the way of things I suppose, very nice restaurants or cafes with a museum attached. Still if it puts the collection back on public access. There do seem to be more jobs in theatre lately than film. But it also occurs to me that theatre education is given priority in school than film, because of its traditional connection to literature.

Dreadful Accident: the great London beer flood of 1814
Considering that film and television are mass media, they're not taught seriously in schools are they? I know there are A-Level standard courses in film, but why not teach it at an even younger age, have kids looking over film critically before hitting them in the face with Gerard Manley Hopkins? As I discovered, the disciplines aren't that different. Hamlet tells much the same story as Star Wars if you think about it, though I'm not sure who Gertrude would be. Lando?

Greatest Hits - Christina Aguilera
Much like this album cover I wasn't sure where I was going with all of this, except that it's a Thursday, that I never could get the hang of Thursdays and that actually for once I'm writing about how I feel on here. Example: I like Christina Aguilera. Secretly always have, the music at least and some of the videos. Her last album Back To Basics was a triumph. But what's going on with this album cover? She's an astronaut and a cross eyed one at that. She once posed naked with a guitar on the cover of the Rolling Stone. What happened with this here?

Free TV! Works!
Random Roles: Matthew Modine
Only A Game?
Anyway, I've been typing for longer than expected, so I'll leave you with these three. The first seems to be about a positive flytipping scheme, the second features some soul searching from Modine about the psychological state he was in on completing Full Metal Jacket, and the third is a Gilliamesque animation which greets visitors to a new exhibition in Liverpool about the beautiful game that isn't netball. And if you skipped over this link above go back now. It's unmissable.