I hope I’m not overextending myself with the number of blogs I’m now writing or contributing to. I do have a day job, after all. But the idea behind this one has been percolating for a while, and I didn’t want to fill Glad All Over with rants about dieting (after all, a diet is nothing to be glad about), so I’ve made a new place for them. Do pop over and visit All Stewed Up if you feel inclined. It won’t be of any interest at all to some people, which is another reason to give it its own home. For those people, I fully intend to continue posting links to songs and desirable furniture, as well as the odd review.
Category: Internet
Xylophone
Via Journal du Geek (in French), here’s a lovely ad for a new Japanese (of course) mobile phone with a wooden back. It’s worth watching, I promise you:
It’s the “Regards, Dad x” that makes it
Via the reliably brilliant Lamebook:
What does a product manager do?
People quite often ask me what my job involves. This is the best explanation I’ve found yet.
Friday videos
These are my two favourite videos this week. The first is long but worth it; the second is just a song I like a lot.
(Working at a radio station has forced me to listen to music I didn’t choose, and it turns out some of it’s really good!)
Close Calls
Via David Schneider comes this extraordinary collection of potentially fatal encounters averted at the last minute:
It’s thrilling to see the speed at which people can react when threatened with sudden danger, and how calm they can be whilst making a split-second life or death decision.
(Less edifying are the nutters who throw themselves out of the paths of oncoming trains, apparently for fun. Bad enough for their families; even worse – and unforgivable, whatever the outcome – for the poor train drivers.)
Twit and wisdom
On Twitter, Friday is the day when you recommend some of the people you follow to the people who follow you, in the hope that they will start to follow them too, and the tweeting goodness will be spread still wider.
The problem with this is the 140 character limit. In the day-to-day run of things it’s fun and interesting to compose whichever thought you want to convey in such a way that it will fit into a single tweet, but it’s almost impossible to persuade someone to follow someone they’ve never heard of in the same amount of space.
So here, extended for as many characters as I need to explain them, are my Follow Friday recommendations for today. The only thing they have in common is that they’re all prolific tweeters: it’s no good being hilarious and insighful if you only do it once a month.
If you’re on Twitter, follow these people immediately, and if you’re not you can sign up here.
Richard Madely has only been on Twitter for a couple of months, but has already posted more times than I have. And every post is so boundlessly, enthusiastically, Tiggerishly Richard that it’s a constant charm. He is genuinely interested in everything!
Sample tweet:
Newsflash (now THAT takes some of us back) – Soy Sauce in gravy works! Big time! Makes it more savoury with nice backtaste. Just a teaspoon.
I don’t really know who Sali Hughes is, except that she’s a writer, and I can’t remember how I found her, but she’s witty and self-deprecating, and was very funny about her family Christmas. She also chats a lot, so she’s a good way of finding even more people to follow.
Sample tweet:
I’ve just noticed someone’s put me on a twitter list entitled CARBS. I didn’t come here to be insulted. *puts down baked potato sandwich*
Richard Wiseman is a psychologist and magician who uses Twitter more creatively and ingeniously than anyone else I’ve come across. He uses his audience as a giant research panel, constantly asking questions and setting challenges and suggesting things for people to try and report back to him on. He also sets a weekly logic puzzle, and for that alone he makes the list.
Sample tweet:
Starting new book today. Will open with the best sentence submitted on Twitter.
Julia Irving is a Geordie mother of two who enjoys food, reality TV and travel. She also has a terminal cancer diagnosis, but you’d rarely know that from her tweets. She is relentlessly upbeat, has a good word for everyone (even Heather Mills!) and finds joy in the smallest of things. If I ever start to feel weedy and sorry for myself, a healthy dose of Jools brings me back to my senses.
Sample tweet:
OMG this new dessert I have made for tonight is just WOW FABBY DELISH :o) Its honeycomb and chocolate mouse pots YUMMMMYYYYYYY
Finally, I am giving a joint spot to Adam Kay and Suman Biswas, the singing doctors of London Underground fame, because their funniest tweets are often to each other. Pleasingly, the element of “he didn’t really just say that, did he?” which is so prevalent in their songs is also present in their tweets, though I’ve deliberately chosen mild examples here to put you off your guard.
Sample tweet (Adam):
Ever since Alistair Cooke stopped presenting Letter from America and died I’m nervous when he’s mooted to captain England.
Sample tweet (Suman):
Am teaching my cat about Communism. (I assume he wants to learn, he’s always asking about Mao).
And really truly finally, I wouldn’t give them a Follow Friday mention because there can’t be anyone left on Twitter who doesn’t already, but if you’re new to it then you must make sure to follow David Schneider, Mrs Stephen Fry, Samuel Johnson, Derren Brown, Phillip Schofield and shitmydadsays; especially that last one.
Also
A small piece of shameless self-promotion: if you haven’t already, do take a look at A long succession of thin evenings, the latest addition to my ever-expanding publishing empire. It’s a place for reviews of live music, theatre and comedy in London, and it’s an experiment in collaborative blogging. If you’d like to submit a review for publication there, let me know.
“I didn’t get where I am today…”
I have just had the following exchange with my boss:
Him: Can I borrow a pen?
Me: What kind?
Him: A biro
I hand him a biro. Pause.
Him: Thanks. Can I keep it for…an hour?”
Me: You can keep it forever. There’s a whole stationery cupboard full of them just there. (I indicate the stationery cupboard.)
Him: Wow, really? Great!
I don’t know whether he’s never had to use a pen before, or has always used the same one which has just run out, or if he brings them from home, but I’m glad to have been the source of new and useful information.
All of which is a perfect way to introduce you, if you don’t know it already, to Good After-Morning!, as witty and terrifying a testament to the experience of working for someone very stupid as you’re ever likely to read. Since I’ve had a proper job I’ve been lucky enough to have uniformly kind and competent bosses, but in the dim and dark days of my early twenties I worked for someone who, whilst nothing like as awful as The Boss described therein, bore some striking similarities to her, so my sympathy is fully extented to the Silent Koala (but I do hope he keeps working for her and blogging about it).
LOLz
Why has nobody told me about Lamebook? It involves pointing and laughing at real people so at best could be described as a guilty pleasure, but I’ve been giggling helplessly for an hour looking through its archive. I think this is my favourite so far (click to embiggen):
If you need cheering up, which I didn’t, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Glad All Over 