Archive for December, 2004
Food for thought
When I moved to Glasgow a couple of years ago, I was struck by the same thought again and again: my dinner tastes like crap. Or rather, it didn’t taste of anything. Thick sirloin steaks didn’t really taste of steak, no matter how I cooked them; tomatoes were cold, but didn’t really have any flavour; even cheese - my great weakness - was bland and lifeless.
At first I wondered if I’d left my tastebuds back in Ayrshire, but when I started looking into the food I was eating I spotted one key difference. Before I moved to Glasgow most of the food I ate was local, so for example almost all of the meat I ate came from a local farm. When I moved to Glasgow, most of the food I ate came from supermarkets.
So I started looking at the labels of the food I was buying, and discovered that in many cases I was buying something that looked like food, but which was largely a collection of preservatives, colourings and water. Fruit and veg had been picked long before it was ripe and transported halfway around the world, which explained why it didn’t go off for a week but also explained why it didn’t taste right. I started reading up on the food industry and the supermarket industry, and learned what terms such as “reformed” and “mechanically recovered” meant; I read a few articles about the pesticides and chemicals in foodstuffs, the micro-organisms in milk and the regular health scares about factory farming. So I went organic.
There are three things you need to know about organic food. First, it’s much more expensive than supermarket “value” ranges. Secondly, it takes a lot more effort (so a weekly shop isn’t enough). And thirdly, it usually looks awful and tastes fantastic.
The first time I tried organic fruit, I ended up covered in juice - not because I have particularly sloppy eating habits, but because I was used to fruit that wasn’t particularly juicy or tasty. I had to learn how to cook bacon again, because I was used to chucking bacon into the pan, waiting for it to shrink and chucking more in. Organic bacon isn’t full of water, so it doesn’t shrink. I had to get used to shopping several times a week, because organic fruit and veg is ripe and therefore goes to mush in a couple of days. And I rediscovered my tastebuds, which had been largely unused for several months.
There’s another benefit to organic food, which is that by choosing organic you’re generally supporting smaller, local farms and shops instead of giving yet more cash to the supermarket chains. Don’t get me wrong, I still buy stuff from supermarkets - wine, toiletries, bread, the odd packet of crisps - but their power (and their effect on small shopkeepers) worries me. If you want a good scare, the non-fiction book “shopped” is worth reading.
I’m convinced that to future generations, our eating habits will seem insane - and I suspect that the health consequences of cheap (ie. adulterated) food will come back to haunt us.
The Rebel Sell
Fight Club. Adbusters magazine. American Beauty. No Logo. Each one a rallying cry against consumerism, a wake-up call to alert us from our advertising-induced slumbers. Right?
Not according to The Rebel Sell. The article - an excerpt from a new book - posits that Naomi Klein’s anger at yuppies in her local area is driven by irritation at her loss of social “distinction”, that American Beauty is about cool, not anti-consumerism, and that Adbusters is just another magazine that you buy in a newsagent.
How can we all denounce consumerism, and yet still find ourselves living in a consumer society?
The answer is simple. What we see in films like American Beauty and Fight Club is not actually a critique of consumerism; it’s merely a restatement of the “critique of mass society” that has been around since the 1950s. The two are not the same. In fact, the critique of mass society has been one of the most powerful forces driving consumerism for more than 40 years.
It’s interesting and inflammatory stuff. I might track down the book.
Actimel, Blunkett and the surveillance society
I love it when writers go on wild tangents, and this piece by Ben Marshall (no relation) is a good example. Although Marshall is supposed to be slagging off the yoghurt drink Actimel, within two paragraphs he’s ranting about CCTV and David Blunkett. Excellent stuff.
Please excuse the dust
…but I’ve finally got round to updating the blog template and in typical blogger style, republishing the entire weblog isn’t working properly. There’ll also be some display weirdness on older blog posts, particularly ones with inline images (the new template uses slightly different column widths than before).
Lack of linking
A quick apology to the folks who have linked to me and haven’t been linked back yet - I’ll do it soon, honest.
Tired, unhappy
“Make sure you’re sitting down before you open this.” Not the subject line you want to see on an email from your accountant; it turns out that I’ve made a complete and utter arse of some tax stuff and as a result, I’ve got until 31st January to find a sum of money that’s even bigger than the sum of money I reckoned I had no chance of raising by then. Maybe I should become a celebrity blogger:
Liberals are wusses! Saddam is evil! Pay with PayPal!
Hmmm. Maybe not.
I think I’ll have to classify this week as a write-off: not only have I landed in deep tax trauma, but I’ve got a bloody sore back, I managed to stab my tongue with a toothbrush while half-awake the other morning, I’ve got writer’s block and there’s the beginning of The Biggest Spot of All Time on my chin.
On a brighter note, I’ve discovered that Java is the crack cocaine of the coffee world. Tasty, too.
Keep laptops away from your lap
Men, beware of laptops: according to Reuters, laptops can seriously damage your little soldiers. A study at the State University of New York has found that due to their high operating temperatures, laptops heat up your bits and could seriously ruin your chance of having kids. Oh, and don’t forget that laptops can also toast your tackle.
Guns don’t kill people, audience members do
Terrifying news from Ohio, where an audience member opened fire on Pantera spin-off Damageplan. The death toll currently stands at five, with a further two people seriously injured.
Via No Rock ‘N’ Roll Fun
Current reading
I keep meaning to blog about books and then forget all about it, but I’ll try and do this on a reasonably regular basis. Here’s s quick round-up of stuff I’ve read recently:
The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Mitch Alborn
If you liked The Lovely Bones but hated the ending, this will be right up your street. It’s a bit folksy but it’s a nice (and sad) little story.
Tuesdays With Morrie, Mitch Alborn
Alborn’s first book was a non-fiction memoir covering the time he spent with a dying professor. A blatant tear-jerker but that’s never a bad thing.
Love All The People, Bill Hicks
A collection of Hicks’ stand-up routines, letters, interviews and so on. It’s fairly repetitive - especially the routines - and there’s little here you won’t find online, but it’s still a good compendium for Hicks completists.
The Plot Against America, Philip Roth
An excellent what-if book: what if the US had turned to Fascism in the 30s? Told from the perspective of a Jewish family, it’s particularly unsettling because the landscape - Washington, diners, main street USA - is so familiar.
Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo
A state of the nation novel that takes place in a single day, as a tycoon tries to get across the city for a haircut. One of those books you feel you should read, but that leaves you with an “is that it?” feeling on completion.
Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language And Music (And why we should, like, care), John McWhorter
More than an Eats Shoots And Leaves rant about grammar, McWhorter’s book argues that we’ve lost something special from our language and from pop music. Good argument fuel for language geeks.
We The Media, Dan Gillmor
An in-depth look at the blogging phenomenon and its implications for the future. Probably not a good Xmas present for your Gran.
Blogging and the underpant gnomes
One of my favourite South Park episodes features the Underpant Gnomes, who have a plan for world domination:
Step 1: collect underpants
Step 2: ?
Step 3: profit
I’m reminded of them any time I browse the various journalism jobs sites, where you’ll invariably spot jobs that aren’t jobs, all of which have been posted by the internet equivalent of the Underpant Gnomes.
Jobs that aren’t jobs? Underpant gnomes?
A job is something you do for money. Jobs that aren’t jobs are those job listings that look like job ads, read like job ads, have the same requirements as job ads, but have one key difference from job ads: there’s no cash involved. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. Instead, you’ll be offered “exposure” and, if you’re lucky, an unspecified share of the unspecified profits that will result from an unspecified level of success at an unspecified point of time.
This, then, is what they’re offering would-be writers:
Step 1: write stuff for us
Step 2: ?
Step 3: profit
And this is their business plan:
Step 1: get people to write stuff
Step 2: ?
Step 3: profit
As I said, they’re underpant gnomes. But the explosion of blogging has given them a new lease of life, and the same old ads are starting to reappear - but this time they’re headed “bloggers wanted” rather than “writers wanted”.
The reason for the resurgence in such adverts is that the people behind them have looked at weblogs and thought “hey! People write for free! That means they’ll write for free, for me!”
What amazes me about the write-for-free crowd is that their ads wouldn’t be acceptable in any other industry. For example, some people like tinkering with cars. Can you imagine if a garage placed ads looking for mechanics, charged its customers for any work carried out, but expected the mechanics to work for free? Some people like doing DIY. Would a firm of painters and decorators hire new employees on the understanding that they wouldn’t get a penny for their efforts (Work experience aside)? Yet when it comes to writing, there’s this assumption that businessmen and women - which is what the people behind these ads believe themselves to be - should pay for every aspect of their business except for the important bit: their site content.
Think I’m exaggerating? I saw one ad a few weeks back (can’t remember the URL, sorry) looking for bloggers, whose content would be syndicated across 17 different web sites. The pay? Zero. The promise? Exposure. The employer? A large chain of local newspapers - that is, a perfectly profitable business that pays its existing writers, but expects people to provide its online content for free. Meanwhile the firm will sell ad space on its sites, and the blogs would drive traffic to those advertisers - and the bloggers wouldn’t get a single penny. You can bet that the firm asked its existing writers first, and those writers said “sure, at the usual rates” - so the newspaper publisher thought “aha! Bloggers!” Is it me, or is that taking the piss?
Journalists have some experience of this - and we’re pretty good at spotting the scams. For example, about a year ago I was approached by a music site who wanted to re-run an article I’d already stuck on the web. We talked for a bit and it turned out the site was strictly non-profit, designed as a resource for musicians. Great, I said. Go ahead, reprint away. And then a month later I visited the site and discovered that my article was being used to sell advertising, the profits of which were being kept by the site owners. Underpant gnomes. Cue some very irate emails and the article being removed from the site (it’s still online, ad-free, on my own music site). Writing for free? Sure. Writing for free so that someone else can make money from my work? No chance.
It’s important to point out that the internet underpant gnomes aren’t hobbyists, or charities. They’re people who have decided that there’s gold in them thar interwebs, and that the way to get that gold is to get lots of people to provide content for nothing. That’s the online equivalent of opening a shop and expecting Nike or Armani to give you all your stock for nothing, with no cut of any sales.
Of course, bloggers write for free - but free of charge doesn’t mean free from benefits. You might run an amazon wish list, or google ads. You might blog because you want to flex your writing muscles, or because you’re obsessed with a particular firm, film star or technology, or because you’ve found that blogging is a much easier way of communicating than posting on spam-filled newsgroups or avoiding flame wars on messageboards. Or you might blog because you’re a journalist who wants to mouth off about any old crap (raises hand). There are almost as many reasons for blogging as there are bloggers, and they’re all valid.
Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not suggesting that people shouldn’t blog for others at all. For example, like-minded bloggers could and do get together to create multi-author blogs for no financial reward, and that’s great. However, far too many of the “writers wanted” (and now, “bloggers wanted”) ads are something very different: someone that intends to set up a business and wants people to help them do that for nothing.
In most cases those “businesses” are doomed from the start: let’s start a gadget weblog! Yeah, that’s a great idea, because Engadget and Gizmodo don’t exist. Let’s start a Republican blog! Aye, because there aren’t any of them on the web. A music weblog! Yeah, that’ll sell lots of ads. In most cases these sites will disappear in a fairly short time without generating a single penny, and the time and effort you’ve put into such sites would have been much better spent on your own weblog. If you’re not being paid, any benefits that derive from your writing should go to you.