And I’m not reading anyone elses’ right now. I’ve got bigger problems, having been evicted from my bunker. About a year ago I thought I had me a nice, stable life in Melbourne and was happily settled in a large, crumbling house in the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-Brunswick end of North Fitzroy. Thanks to perfidious landlords and some bad business decisions I am about to move for the fourth time in the past 12 months, one of those times being a midnight dash to the other end of the earth.
At least I’ve found me a new bunker, which is considerably bigger and cheaper than my present abode.
It may, however, be a while until I have regular internet access. I move Friday. Postings to resume soonish.
Filed under: Self-promotion, The Bunker by Ben.H
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“I’m quite surprised that things written in personal blogs might not be so true after all.”
Wednesday 10 August 2005
Please forgive me for ignoring an unsolicited email sent to my blog’s email account some time ago, from people claiming they were taking a survey about bloggers. You can understand my suspicion that they were not serious. What’s more, they were from Singapore, where I thought surfing websites was a capital offence.
The survey purported to address the burning issue of “blogging and ethics“. I expected their idea of ethics might boil down to “Don’t say anything that might offend Lee Kwan Yu,” but it’s slightly more expansive than that. Their idea of blogs seems limited to the diary or the news digest, and they don’t seem to realise that they have become the self-storage units of the internet, where you can dump any old crap.
They also didn’t seem to notice their own Blogger log-in page which has been encouraging people for the last few months to post novels on their blogs. I don’t know how that would square with their ethical principle of truthfulness (see the comment left by one survey reader in the above title*.)
Who knows what they would make of blogs like this, this, or this. Their heads might explode, if the government-approved proxy filters let them see it.
Naturally enough, they conclude by wanting to establish a code of ethics for blogging, because what’s the point of living in Singapore if you can’t regulate something?
Bloggers currently do not see a strong need for a blogging code of ethics.
No surprises there: most people in the real world, particularly those who have had to access services through some type of computer interface, have grave doubts as to whether it is necessary or desirable to have any further aspects of their lives organised by the type of computer nerds who can sustain an argument for several months over whether or not a certain Star Trek novelisation is canonical. This goes double when said nerds have been brought up in a country where it is mandatory to have your TV switched to MSNBC at all times.
* Everything on this blog is 100% true.
Filed under: Journalism, Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Pausing for reflection… zzzz…
Friday 15 July 2005
Living conditions in the bunker have been spartan, but are slowly improving. I am not sure this is entirely a good thing. The monastic lifestyle has allowed me to focus my life on more spiritual matters, but moreover it helps to deter kibitzing houseguests. The instant you get digs in London, every unexpatriated Australian – and even some particularly shameless New Zealanders – will suddenly claim an eternal bond of Mateship. Before you know it, your peaceful sanctuary starts to resemble throwing out time at the Walkabout Pub.
The last visitors to the bunker were a couple of girls from Guernsey. I had entertained notions of showing them around the Tate Modern or the stuffed corpse of Jeremy Bentham, but it turned out that their idea of a hot time in London was going to Pizza Hut and then riding the escalators at the tube station – all the big city things they can’t get at home. Worse still, they’d look to me to bail them out when shopkeepers refused to accept their dinky little local £1 notes with cows and pictures of Bergerac on them.
On the up side, I have been able to take advantage of other people’s hospitality on weekend trips out of London. I’ve been meaning to share with you all some of the highlights, but my internet service has been spotty lately and won’t be sorted out until sometime next week. So you’ll have to wait until then, when I’m back from my jaunt to Bristol and I get my interminable series of holiday snaps uploaded onto Flickr.
This seems a good time to mention that this blog is one year old. Sure, the first post is dated sometime in August, but I actually set it up in July last year and then couldn’t be arsed posting anything to it for a few weeks; and so the tone was set for the twelve months’ since of haltingly updated posts about mundane trivialities.
Coming soon: I’ll finally get around to catching up on that played-out music meme. Maybe I’ll also update the links section so you’ll have something good to read.
Filed under: London, Self-promotion, The Bunker by Ben.H
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Not quite narcissistic enough yet
Thursday 19 May 2005
Six months since its inception, a freshly updated and expanded list of People Or Things I Have Been Mistaken For, Or Allegedly Physically Resemble, In Increasing Order Of Ridiculousness.
- Don Watson
- Dylan Moran
- Jim O’Rourke
- Neil Pye (Guess which one. Hint: not this one.)
- A Girl
- Lou Barlow
- Harry Potter
- Russell Crowe
- Ben Lee
- The MMM-FM Fugitive
- Shit
- Terence Trent D’Arby
Filed under: Self-promotion, Stupidity by Ben.H
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Let’s get this over with
Saturday 14 May 2005
I hope you have all enjoyed my month’s holiday as much as I have. Just joking! Of course, I don’t take holidays. Ever. In fact, I’ve been hard at work parlaying my modest investments into some serious capital, so I cd spin this thriving internet concern into one those hateful yet lucrative insta-bookoids that clog up the shelves by the cash registers at Dymocks. The perfect gift for an infrequently-visited relative or workmate you have no real connection with. A show on Foxtel, too, was not out of the question.
Unfortunately, I had a “misunderstanding” with my “business partners” over some supposedly “misappropriated” funds in “brown paper bags” and a “racehorse”. Like any bold, forward-looking Australian entrepreneur I have fled the country and moved to London. To be precise, a cosy and modestly-priced bunker in the small, sleepy suburb of Robson Green, NW2.
Within these walls my empire shall rise from the ashes.
Within these walls my empire shall rise from the ashes.
Bookworms: the Penguin on my night-table is Milne’s Mr Pim Passes By. The bookmark is a small, creased photograph of Julie Dawn Kemp.
Filed under: London, Self-promotion, The Bunker by Ben.H
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We Are All Winners
Thursday 14 April 2005
This is a great day. Boring Like a Drill is now the Number One Google result for the terms “Austrian Flame” and “Julie Dawn Kemp.” To celebrate this momentous occasion, I have awarded myself several prestigious internet awards for web excellence.
Thanks to NetGuide, Excite and Magellan for the 4-star ratings, and especially to Point for listing me amongst the top 5% of all web sites – what an honour! Without your poorly-conceived business models sending you tits-up during the dot-com boom I would have had to make up my own meaningless awards graphics.
But most of all, I’d like to thank you. Not ‘you’ the readers; firstly because, in all frankness, without you I still would have conquered this search engine summit; and secondly because I seriously doubt I have any readers, and suspect that comments left here were actually written by me when drunk. Rather, I mean the people who set up and run the Google bots and Blogger, because otherwise I’d have to communicate this important information in the old-fashioned way: by pissing it in large, crudely-formed block letters against a wall or other similarly flat surface.
Which reminds me: BLAD is also the Number One Google result for “Peter Phelps is Fat.”
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Entropy
Monday 7 March 2005
I’ve been tinkering with the site a little bit, so there’s not quite so many italics to read, a few more links on the side, and some other minor tweaks.
Blogger has finally fixed the comments section so you can put a name to your messages without having to register. Also, in case you don’t know about it already, the links on the side of the page now include Bugmenot, a useful site if you land on a website that expects you to register before you can read anything. (According to The Age, my name is rewt.) If Bugmenot doesn’t work and you have to register, tell them your email address is something at real.com and pretend you’re teaching them a lesson about making bloated, intrusive media players.
Some of the tweaks on this page don’t work exactly right all the time, for reasons I have not yet figured out. In all likelihood I will never figure them out. You probably won’t notice the broken bits, but they’re there and will never get fixed. Every time I attempt to improve this thing it will get a little more broken until it disintegrates into an unusable wreckage of lousy code, but hopefully I’ll get bored and stop updating before that happens.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Got it live if ya want it! Hello? Hello?
Wednesday 23 February 2005
Experimental + interstate music: With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it often takes religion presents…
Ewe bleats harshly after lamb / Grows the seed and blows the mead
Thusday [sic] 24th Feb 8pm – 12am
impromptu lons – hi god people – barrage – meatwave – scraps – grey skulls -night crash – das butcher – rory brown / dennis rappoport – old timey dj -an unknown film – plus guests from queensland
Sweatshop Warehouse, 140 Barkly St (off Sydney Rd.) Brunswick
(near the Brotherhood of St Lawrence)
Donation for entry (money please)
This is in Melbourne, don’t go to your nearest Brunswick expecting to find it if you are in another city. I don’t write this stuff myself, it’s all dictated by higher beings.
I’m plugging this because I’m playing that night as a “guest” (even though I’m not from Queensland – brr!). Expect to find me lurking in the background messing with some bits of balky electronic gear with one hand, nursing a beer with the other and clumsily propositioning girls.
Filed under: Music, Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Since you asked: yes, this site runs on self-indulgence and stale jokes
Tuesday 11 January 2005
Just in: an addition to the list of people or things I have been mistaken for, or allegedly physically resemble, in increasing order of ridiculousness. Russell Crowe is the new entry, but I wd welcome your input about whether he shd go above Ben Lee (but below Harry Potter) or below Ben Lee (but above shit). I’m pretty sure Ben Lee represents some line of truth.
In other news, I got a digital camera. It was a gift: I think the donor was trading up and wanted to get rid of his old one. It may not work at all. Otherwise I haven’t figured out how to use it, because all my shots so far look like this:
Filed under: Self-promotion, Stupidity by Ben.H
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What I did on my summer break
Tuesday 4 January 2005
I guess you had to be there.
Before resuming this timewaster properly for the new year, I have to note that I don’t remember writing that last post at all.
Oh, and don’t I feel foolish now for mocking that tsunami warning I received last month? Well, no I don’t because it missed me entirely.
Filed under: Self-promotion, Stupidity by Ben.H
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People or things I have been mistaken for, or allegedly physically resemble, in increasing order of ridiculousness
Wednesday 17 November 2004
Filed under: Self-promotion, Stupidity by Ben.H
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Next, counting the paperclips
Thursday 11 November 2004
Like a teenager with an essay due who suddenly takes an interest in ironing, I have added some more links on this –> side of the screen. Also, the background colour is now a slightly off shade of white. Please enjoy these new features for your enhanced interactive web experience.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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How I went to Newcastle full of dreams and returned a broken shell of a man with nothing to show for it but some new enemies and my host’s house keys
Sunday 10 October 2004
You may have inferred, correctly, from the previous post that I’m back home. The jaunt to Newcastle was a mixture of good and bad: foremost in the latter category is this case of killer flu I picked up in the filthy weather they had up there for the first few days, and which is now lingering into its second week.
Expect a detailed description over the next day or two, but for now I’d like to thank the Electrofringe people for having me up there, and especially Aaron and his housemates for putting me up in such comfort and style during my stay, and letting me walk off with the key to their front door. God bless you all.
Filed under: Music, Self-promotion by Ben.H
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A new low in self-referentiality
Sunday 29 August 2004
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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“Lurkers support me in email.” The tenth posting anniversary
Tuesday 24 August 2004
In an amazing feat of persistence and stamina I have kept this blog going for one week and ten posts. And the accolades just keep rolling in!
The following endorsements are from genuine unsolicited emails. Names have been removed for the sake of privacy.
“The letters are so small… I can’t read it.” Ms X, Melbourne.
“I… ended up throwing up half an hour later, in the Myers toilets, repeatedly.” Ms Y, Noosa.
“i have been searching for a liable person who can help us secure my father’s wealth deposited in Europe in a security out fit. Our only hope now is in you.” Prince Z, Nigeria.
“Add inches to your penis! hologram obviate” An anonymous wellwisher from China.
It’s underserved praise like this that keeps me going. God bless you all.
