Archive for January, 2001

Items you’ll never find on eBay, volume 436. (extremely pornographic content via chez lubacov)

I’ve lived in London for over fifteen years, and until I settled in Kilburn in 1997 ago I moved to a new location pretty much annually – more than anything else to keep myself one step ahead of the law. Now a new map of the London Underground has been drawn up which casts a whole new light on all those places I’ve found myself. According to this document, I’ve lived in Peel & Polish, East Hell, Hell Central, West Hell, Homosexual, Satan’s Bumgut, Lucifer, Cumbucket Town, Cuntish Town, West Meat Noises, Toni Braxton and finally at my current place of residence, Killed. (via linkmachinego).

Blogger needs your help. It what is an undoubtably unusual yet somehow refreshing move from a dot.com, Blogger is asking for donations from its users to help them build much needed server space. I generally blog when I’ve finished work, and as I live in London this co-incides with California going online in the morning. As a result, blogging can be an extremely frustrating, not to say time consuming business. Filled with the spirit of the season I decided to donate $100 to the cause – if raising money from it’s users leads to a more efficient system, then I’m happy to contribute. Sadly, despite Blogger’s conviction that the method they’re using to collect money (PayPal) is “international”, it’s impossible to insert the required information if you live outside the good ol’ US of A. So they’ll just have to wait.

Today’s Open Letters reports on a real downside to the dot.com coin. The piece starts “The writing has been on the wall for about six weeks now. In about two more weeks, the writing on the wall will come to an end”, and signs off by saying “I think it’s easiest if I just blame computers. I fucking hate computers.” The author, Scott, is refreshing in that he refuses to blame the failure of his company on the boom and bust nature of the digital market, or a sudden reticence on the part of his backers, and instead applies the responsibilty fairly and squarely to his own shoulders. “I’m twenty-eight years old. I don’t belong at the helm of a company, and it’s clear to me now that that’s one of the major reasons our business plan met with such little success.”

A strange way to see in the new year. The evening was organised at the last moment to offer a home away from home for the stragglers amongst our friends who hadn’t got round to arranging anything themselves. Midnight saw us congregated on the roof our our flat looking out across the London fireworks, but within five minutes a number of folks could be found on their mobile phones wishing a Happy New Year the people they’d obviously much rather have been spending the moment with. 3am saw us joined by a Swedish guy from the flat downstairs (none of us had met him before) who proceeded to steal lots of food from our kitchen. A slightly odd choice of crime considering we know where he lives…