Monday 21 August 2006

Heart of Darkness, or L'Arroseur Arrose

Dorian got a Boingboing link and it destroyed his site. Killed it stone dead. Nice one, tsunami of internet lemmings. Now he's in the next room saying things like "Cory Doctorow, who the f*k is that?" and "I'll email them, they can host it themselves."

It was Dorian's birthday last week and he got the most awesome presents ever: a) hnadknitted socks b) russian dolls with Elvis on them c) Saddam Hussein roll-on deodorant (smells of synthetic patchouli and two-stroke). And a box of sultanas.

I thought you would also like to hear of the two highlights of my day:
1) I parked in the car park at uni this morning and thought 'I'll just listen to the rest of this conversation on the radio before I get out of the car' and then i fell asleep and stayed asleep for about an hour. When I woke up there was a sort of knitting texture pressed into the side of my face where I'd been leaning on the scarf round my neck.
2) was even better if that's possible: sitting in my office which is on the fifth floor I heard a sound coming from the open window that was either crackling flames or running water. So I stuck my head out to see what was going on, and there was a man down on the ground with a hose attached to the longest stick ever and he was using it to wash windows. Try to imagine a stick / hose long enough to reach four floors up and you'll get a small taste of how excited I felt. Shortly after that I fell asleep again, this time in the union cafeteria while reading The Libation Bearers, which, if you'll excuse me, beckons.

Basil is well and sends his love.

19 comments:

Ampersand Duck said...

My heart is breaking for Dorian. That's a dark place to be. And many happy returns, I hope smelling like Saddam gives him the strength to fight back.

I hope you've gone to bed early!

jac said...

Ah. I see my email bought tears. Surely he knew? Don't they email you and tell you out of courtesy? Maybe not.
Moving on, I am glad Basil is well. How are his heatlamp treatments going?

ThirdCat said...

I just got the opposite of bazlotto which is something I have never got before (I do not like to call it anti-bazlotto because I am very pro-bazlotto).

And because I am an extremely observant person, I note a little thing in this comments box which says beta.blogger.com...has this always been beta? Don't answer if that question is too ridiculously trivial.

Sweet dreams.

peacay said...

The best defence to an out of the blue attack from the likes of Boingo is to be on a free, open, unworried, carefree, giant-piped hosting service like blogger. (Fark is much worse actually, numbers-wise)

I daresay one could beat off a substantial number of them with a 4-storey stick however.

More on blogger-beta here.

Ben.H said...

Blogger-beta also puts the Google icon in your browser's adress bar.

I still regret not buying a Joseph Stalin Russian doll in Riga.

elaine said...

I have magnetic dress-up Lenin on my fridge. He came with the catch-phrase he had a magnetic personality and now you can dress him to match. genius.

GS said...

Did you get bitten by a Tsetse fly last time you went somewhere exotic (Mildura?).

worldpeace and a speedboat said...

speaking of socks, a friend of mine just stumbled across this

http://yarn-monkey.blogspot.com/2006/07/are-you-ready-for-sock-wars-2006.html

cool! but you've prob'ly alreay seen it...

get some sleep. in your bed!

worldpeace and a speedboat said...

bum... link too long. brain not working!

rest of link goes like this -

ck-wars-2006.html


sigh.

Anonymous said...

Hand-knitted socks are indeed a wonderful gift, though the dictatorial b.o. basher is a tad worrying.

I am sad about that, because I have been enjoying Dorian's site immensely of late.

Phantom Scribbler said...

Well, it really was a most excellent mashup. My condolences on his site's untimely demise.

hc said...

I got socks from my kids for my 50th birthday. Life lost all meaning.

lucy tartan said...

Whoever he emailed at boingboing came back with some incredibly easy, helpful, practical fix which also dealt with the ongoing bandwidth issues the site has been having. It's funny that the internet is all over anyone who tries to hotlink a picture, but nobody seems to feel ashamed to hotlink an mp3, and they do, and the bandwidth consumption is scary.

The socks really are fine - they look especially good with trousers tucked into the top - sort of a 'mountaineering in the Pennines' effect.


Ben I am so going to Riga....

Arty said...

Just for the record, Cory Doctorow did answer my email and very nicely pointed me in the direction of the Coral Content Distribution Network which means if any of the mega-blogs link to me everything still runs normally. So the site lives, it will actually be faster from now on, and I don't have to pay for the more-expensive-than-$4-a-month hosting I almost signed up for.

The sultanas are good too.

lucy tartan said...

And everyone reading this had better click on Ben's link.

lucy tartan said...

Dorian's clever mum Betty made the socks.

Anonymous said...

A friend had Russian Communist leader Babushka dolls, which went inside each other in cronological order from Lenin to Gorby. You can get democratic types as well, we used to have a Nelson Mandela dressup fridge magnet - Mandela in a suit, Mandela in soccer gear, Mandela does casual etc. Sadly I didn't win that in the share house break up lottery.

Val said...

Was it carpark 7? My favorite, so bucolic.

Suse said...

A two-nap day is A Good Day.

Am quietly cacking myself laughing at Trailer Park Baz over there on the flickery right.