Not Dead Yet
Thank-you for your comments, you lot. I got back, late on Monday, from a golden, memorable, wonderful trip to the Yorkshire wedding of an old friend. But I returned to a number of situations that have kept me from PCB for a few days. With luck, I’ll have some time tomorrow to respond properly to comments and maybe get a wee post in too.
It kinda makes you think about blogger-mortality, though. And the gaping electronic jaws of blog-death. And also the cold hard realities of the online life. Oh, and it makes you think ‘what’s it all about, Alfie?’ too. And that old ‘if a tree falls in the woods with nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?’ chestnut. It makes you think all these things and less.
A blogger might die and none of their blog-pals would know. There wouldn’t even be a holding test-pattern to look at. Just an eerie Last Post with bits of half-eaten toast lying around; a ‘hurriedly departed’-type scene for archaeological forensic e-teams of the future to poke through. Who’s to say I’m not now blogging from beyond the veil in a spooky, floaty, see-through way? I mean the internet medium probably already falls under the rubric of “Ethereal”. Noo-nee-noo-nee, noo-nee-noo-nee, ululate etc. None of us, in Blogland may, in fact, exist at all. It could be the existentially electronic equivalent of the phenomenon of turning round quickly enought to find that there is nothing and noone there. It might be an experiment by ETs. (Shiver).
But of course it’s not. I’ve just been to Yorkshire.
Anyway, what I mean to say is, new post’s a-comin’ and thanks for hanging with me these last silent and blipless days.
Update – April 28th – A Wee Hour.
For anyone cursing my lazy-blogger ways, I have posted replies to your comments in the comment-box of my last post. I hate to be a blog-churl when you have all taken the time to visit and comment but now I have returned the favour in my usual lengthy blahblah way and so have left myself no time for an actual post. I’m spent and sleepy and a cozy bed awaits. So with the taste of Yorkshire pudding still on my tongue and the sound of Yorkshire voices still in my ears, I’ll bid you an “Ay oop chuck, there’s nowt lak folk” and be off with me to dream of giant NATO golf-balls on the moor and the true tale of “How We Dognapped A Yorkshire Terrier And What’s More Got Away With It (Or We Fought The Law And (Badoom) We Won!)”
April 27th, 2006 at 8:43 am
I AM A ROBOT. I USED TO BE A PERSON. NOW I AM A ROBOT. MY LIFE IS VERY INT-ER-ES-TING.
By the time we all die all our personalities will have been downloaded onto computer anyway, I reckon.
April 27th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Perhaps it’s all a figment of some computer’s musings. Hey, interesting idea, there are those computer programs that you talk to and try to figure out if they’re computers or people. Maybe I could come up with one that blogs. Or maybe somebody already did.
April 27th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
If I get trampled to death by a buffalo, I have given Gorilla Kumquat permission to continue my blog. He’s quite keen on using fart noises as a form of communication.
April 28th, 2006 at 3:36 am
Gorilla:What is a buffalo doing in the jungle?!?
Sam:Well, there you are. I knew you’d be back. Yorkshire is a place I’ve heard about once.
April 28th, 2006 at 5:07 am
So Blogland is the Matrix? Wow, now that you mention it, it doesall make sense…
(Don’t be suprised if PCB goes missing again guys – no doubt the walls have eyes and they are currently plotting what to do with her now that she’s tumbled “the truth”…)
April 28th, 2006 at 8:09 am
Individual replies to the previous post, now lurk in the comment-box of the self-same previous post. Buggrit – nobody will know they’re there and I want people nice enough to comment to know I don’t take their comments for granted and that I get a wee thrill from each and every one. I’m going to stick an update bit on this post to catch your eye, maybe, p’rhaps.
April 28th, 2006 at 8:39 am
Face, you’re right. Personality is being reduced to a series of 1s and 0s in our Digital Age, but dammit if I don’t love it!
Hey Joe, that’s a thought-provoking idea. If you could build a ‘puter which could convince other blog-readers that it was a human which not only posts but can also respond to is elicited comments with appropriately thoughtful/amusing/emotional retorts, then you’d make the cover of Time Magazine. Have a wee look at SafeTinspector’s site for a great fictional glimpse at near-future Michigan the cyborgs who people it. Or robot it. Or cyborg it. Anyhow, it’s a great story – worth a read.
Mr. Nanas, is Gorilla Kumquat, in fact, an orangutang as it’s rusty-sounding coat suggests?
SafeT, yep, back on (sweetcorn) my kitchen chair, (sweetcorn) vomitting out brain matter with inexplicable bits of sweetcorn in it, despite my not (sweetcorn) having even thought about sweetcorn for weeks (sweetcorn).
Claire, I’m way too stupid to fully apprehend an overarching sinister truth all by myself. I’m quite happy to sit back until the masses see the whole picture and then stampede in a panic with the rest of ‘em as our electronic masters poke us with the cattle-prods of certain woe. They might well deprive us of our ability for rational discussion using Their henchman, The Media, and in so doing also prevent an organised, coherent response from us. But isn’t that a wee bitty similar to the situation our respective governments have got us in now? Maybe not – maybe I’m just trying to be figuratively tidy. Don’t know. Too sleepy now. Off to bed.
April 28th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Well, I can’t speak for “your” Government and Media over there, but over here, The Media are having a field day and “New” Labour have been caught well and truly with their trousers down…
The Deputy PM’s been knocking his secretary for nigh on 2 years, the Home Secretary has given the green light to over a thousand foreign paedo’s, rapists, murderers, druggo’s because apparently no-one could be arsed to keep up with the paperwork to deport them. (But no doubt the Department of Work and Pensions will diligently be beavering away to make sure they can all claim housing and income benefit and the Citizen’s Advice Bureau will be dishing out crib sheets on how to slither their way to the top if the Council Housing list under a new alias…Cynical, me? Never!) Elsewhere, the Health Secretary has been living under a rock (the only explanation for the “Crisis? What NHS Crisis?” saga) and New Labour apparently forked out over 7 and a half grand on the Wicked Witch’s (Cherie Blair to all those “un-knowing”) barnet during the last General Election campaign – and all this just days from the next Local Election!
Not bad for a week, is it?
Mind you, with a week like that, we’d better bleedin’ hope we’re in the friggin’ Matrix and that all this is just an illusion… Can you imagine what would happen if it really was real??
April 28th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Welcome back missus, I for one am very glad you’re not dead and writing this from ‘the other side’.
April 28th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Don’t die! Don’t die! The blog world needs you and yours.
Welcomem back.
April 28th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Do we, in fact, exist to blog, or blog to exist?
April 29th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Yeah well, even if you do die the fuckers won’t leave you alone
April 29th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
Yeah, it is nice that you’re back. Anyway, I think that it’s probably–wait, why am I getting so hungry for sweetcorn now?
April 29th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
You raise a fascinating issue! To expand upon it slightly…how do we know that the people we are conversing with through bloggery are actually human? Think about it for a moment, if you were an alien from another planet what better way to learn the intricate details of “human” existence…the whispered secrets and admissions…the fantasies and wishes…than the blogosphere? It’s anonymous so you don’t have to reveal the alien nature of your existence (those two heads or slithery long tenacles can be a dead giveaway)…you have time to translate your answers into klingon or whatever. It’s perfect I tell you! And, let’s face it…haven’t you more than once wondered what planet some of our blogger brethern and sisters were from anyway? I know I have. And those MEMEs…tell me that’s not an alien invention? It’s all becoming clear to me now.
April 30th, 2006 at 9:44 am
rungkoola badau koorpth urw…..shit, I’ve given my alieness away. That wasn’t Plutonian speech, honest. I’m totally 100% earthling. Really.
Mmm, sweetcorn
See, we… I mean they don’t eat sweetcorn on Pluto. Not that I would know. Just a wild guess….never even been to Pluto, me…….
April 30th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
Now then chuck.
Ey oop but it’s reet gradely ter see yer back. Oh aye.