Journal Entries
Opener
Posted Nov 19, 2007
You read this?
F113808?thread=4797077
If you haven't, you should. Jodan will make you think.
The Guide I dream of is pretty simple really. The Edited Guide would admit quality writing of every kind. Although there would still be Peer Review, everyone would recognise that the writing is the important thing. Criticism would be offered with humility. The Guidelines would be treated as guidelines.
I'm some way further out than dear old Jodes on a lot of this. For instance, I can't see why people think the Edited Guide (at least the one we've created) is h2g2's central project. It can't be. None of the site's best Entries are in it, or even could be in it. The fact thing is nonsense too. Who exactly is relying on h2g2 for accuracy? What kind of disaster will befall us if somebody makes things up?
It should be fun, this place. There shouldn't be any whining, self-pitying underachievers. There shouldn't be pedants and there shouldn't be bullies. We don't really want people like that telling us how to write, know what I mean?
Can I write? Sure. Going back more than six years now, I've contributed a great deal to hootoo, probably around a hundred pieces of high quality, maybe twenty or thirty that stand comparison with anything on the site. I don't see any reason to be modest. I'm one of the best writers hootoo has seen.
Not that there are many bad writers around here. Few people can write badly without a lot of practice. Getting the grammar and spelling all wrong is fairly easy, of course, but if that's all you do, then your efforts will never be truly execrable.
The only really effective way to write complete rubbish is to forget why anyone might want to read it. A minority of people can do this spontaneously, by virtue of their psychological abnormalities. More usually, though, contempt for the reader has to be learned. One proven method is to pretend that all the writing is being carried out for some kind of rule-bound mythical encyclopedia.
If the pedants carry such tendencies too far, of course, there'd be a real risk that the encyclopedia would be driven to extinction by their dead-handed criticism. But at least they'd come away from it all with transferrable skills. They might even discover fulfilment as traffic wardens.
Can I criticise? That too. But I don't do it as well as I write, of course. Nobody does. Criticism and editorship are sub-categories of writing, inherently parasitic, limited in creativity, implicitly negative. Nice work for the would-be traffic wardens though.
Jodan invites us to put something challenging into PR. I think I might review a few Entries that really ought to be in the Edited Guide, but for the pedants.
See you around. And don't worry: I don't think you're one of them. Unless I've already told you so, of course.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Nov 19, 2007
Cracks in the Foundations
Posted Oct 13, 2007
You can rationalise a lot; we all do. Doesn't alter the fact that huge chunks of our personal philosophy don't meet up seamlessly, though.
The thing that troubles me most came up again this week. I deplore intolerance. Does that make me intolerant?
I know a lot of Muslims. A couple I've got close enough to count as friends. In both cases (one past, one present) it was/is a limited friendship because we count(ed) very different things as recreation. Close enough for curiosity and confidences, though. Close enough to discuss sensitive issues without offence.
With the present friend, we got onto terrorism this week. He told me that 9/11 saddened him (his verb), but that he understood the underlying resentment well enough to sympathise with the perpetrators too. I was torn as a listener. One part of me acknowledged the articulate expression of an intelligent opinion. The other part was horrified by the implacable anger of a citizen in our midst.
It occurred to me that the past friend was like that too. Then I began to assess acquaintances and began to get the uncomfortable feeling that the most Westernised were also the most disenchanted. As a guy said in the pub once (and I hated him for it), the hotheads all have perfect local accents. Now I find myself wondering if he was onto something.
But most of all, I'm confused about what I should think. I don't think I've ever learned the true difference between decency and denial when it comes to civilsed morality.
Discuss this Journal entry [35]
Latest reply: Oct 13, 2007
Gunson Revisited
Posted Jun 25, 2007
Today, Sheffield has seen its worst flooding in well over a century.
By coincidence, I was alongside the Don about 4 hours before it burst its banks. I was in an industrial paintshop on Mowbray Street, straight across the water from Kelham Island Museum. The proprietor opened a shutter door onto the river and we watched it hurtling past, six feet higher than usual.
I think his premises will probably have been flooded (and so, I fear, will the Engine hall opposite). I hope the wrought steel bench we left for painting is out of harm's way, because a lot of work's gone into it. People have said that galvanising was unnecessarily cautious, but it certainly seems like a good move now.
I work about a mile from Brightside Lane, the area that's getting the blanket TV treatment. The first half mile of the homeward drive this evening took me an hour. There's water everywhere on the east side of town, spraying out from under drain covers. Fortunately my home's off to the south of the centre, set high and in the area which seems to be least afflicted by the flooding.
It's strange seeing places you know very well on the news, and even stranger seeing them with a torrent that shouldn't be there flowing through. It's surreal seeing the footage of Lady's Bridge, with the water lapping at the parapet. That's the scene that Harrison described in 1864 and that I tried to imagine for the Gunson piece, now played out for real.
This is going to cost millions to sort. There's a lot of very special manufacturing assets in the Lower Don Valley, and a fair proportion will have been damaged today.
For now, though, all we can do is gaze in disbelief.
Discuss this Journal entry [41]
Latest reply: Jun 25, 2007
Perfect Season?
Posted May 1, 2007
We've already got :
- Scunny as League One champions
- Leeds ignominiously relegated
We could be looking at :
- Three London teams down from the Premiership
- Leeds bankrupt to boot
and best of all :
- Chelsea winning zip, unless you count the girl-fight in the Non-Cup Final
- The Sullen One finally off to scowl and whine in somebody else's league
It only needs McLaren to fall under a bus.
Discuss this Journal entry [24]
Latest reply: May 1, 2007
Dud Denial
Posted Apr 13, 2007
I do not look like Dudley Moore. Particularly not since he died.
But ts this Trout guy, right, and he's persecuted me ever since, well, quite time ago, just because there was this picture on the internet, and he thought I looked a bit Dud-ish. And yes, OK, a bit on the short side, possibly.
It's gone now. Hah
Only there's another one
. I didn't know it was there till today, when I said to this guy who was my friend till earlier this evening; I said:
"So, who do I look more like, then, Robert de Niro or Dudey Moore?"
and he said :
"Dudley Moore, obviously. And as for the picture that your salmonid nemesis thought was Dud-like, well, he should have seen THIS one..."No-o-o-o-o-o-o
I'm just so relieved that none of you will ever find it. Particularly not that fish-git.
Discuss this Journal entry [16]
Latest reply: Apr 13, 2007
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