What a total Konte

I found this card on the windscreen of my car one day and have kept it on me ever since, for no apparent reason.



Is it the karmic implication of throwing away a card from a man who can tell me what my problems are without me even telling him?

Is it the fact that my problems may involve black magic or voodoo, and I didn't even know that I could ever be affected by anything so exotic as black magic or voodoo?

Is it the lingering suspicion that maybe I DO in fact have unknown diseases, and that only this man will be able to tell me?

Nope. It's because I like mispronouncing his name.

The great big Konte.

Teh internets: virtual compulsive hoarding?

Something occurred to me. Turns out the internet is not a huge repository for the sum of all human knowledge. It is in fact the final frontier for a world that has been taken over by compulsive hoarders.

From Wikipedia (which may be the ultimate compulsive hoarder):

While there is no definition of compulsive hoarding in accepted diagnostic criteria... Frost and Hartl (1996) provide the following defining features:

the acquisition of, and failure to discard, a large number of possessions that appear to be useless or of limited value. [Ed's note: see everything on the internet ever]

living spaces sufficiently cluttered so as to preclude activities for which those spaces were designed. [Ed's note: see every web page ever]

significant distress or impairment in functioning caused by the hoarding. [Ed's note: see flame wars]

Reluctance or inability to return borrowed items. As boundaries blur, impulsive acquisitiveness could sometimes lead to kleptomania or stealing. [Ed's note: see all discussions relating to "copyfighting", pace Cory Doctorow]

The hoarder may mistakenly believe that the hoarded items are very valuable, or the hoarder may know that they are useless. A hoarder of the first kind may show off a cutlery set claiming it to be made of silver and mother-of-pearl, disregarding the fact that the packaging clearly states the cutlery is made of steel and plastic. A hoarder of the second type may have a fridge filled with food items that expired months ago without ever eating them, but would vehemently resist any attempts from relatives to dispose of the unusable food items.

So, basically, that covers more or less everything from blogs to rickrolling.

Does it matter? Not really. But if anyone finds a copy of Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966) where the Silver Surfer first appears, it's totally mine dude.







The pic with the blue bag is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 - License; the one with the chartreuse phone is from http://www.messiemother.com/ via Wikimedia Commons and is by Thomas Haemmerli; the top one is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.

The human condition as metaphor: "Desire Lines"

"A desire path, or desire line, is a path developed by erosion caused by animal or human footfall. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. The width and amount of erosion of the line represents the amount of demand. The term was coined by Gaston Bachelard in his book The Poetics of Space. Desire paths can usually be found as shortcuts in places where constructed pathways take a circuitous route."
- Wikipedia


A desire line is a path that's been created by people who want to get from one place to another and don't want to waste time with things like convention, rules, boundaries etc. Which is both the best and the worst thing about people.

Mea Culpa: The Top 9 Reasons Why I'm Responsible for the Current Recession

With the world economy circling the drain, I think it's time we all come clean and explain why we are each responsible for the shit in which we're wallowing. I gave it some thought, made some notes, did a few Venn diagrams and have narrowed it down to these nine reasons. (And may I just say in advance: I'm sorry. Truly.)

1. I stopped going to Starbucks:
It seemed so innocent. I stopped buying hugely overpriced coffee and thoroughly addictive blueberry muffins several months ago. "I live in London," I thought. "What harm could it do?" Then Starbucks closed 600 shops worldwide. Totally my fault. And I'm still going to bi-weekly Starbucks Anonymous meetings and following the 12 Steps. (God grant me the courage to be tired and listless, and to ignore the temptations of the delicious buttery muffin goodness...)

2. I didn't change my mortgage:
Honestly, I'm not sure how this caused the recession, but I know mortgages were involved and I know that we took the cheapest interest free mortgage we could get and it was like a 95% mortgage and so I'm pretty sure it's involved in the whole thing. Somehow. Not sure.


3. I had a child:
This meant I stopped going out, buying stuff for myself or indulging in any kind of whimsical spending (apart from one nice anniversary present for my wife, but I bought that instead of a suit for work that, frankly, I could really use). It meant budgeting all spending all the time. Novelty toy shops, t-shirt vendors, musicians, DVD and CD stores and movie theatres have all borne the brunt of this, cut off from a regular stream of completely unnecessary spending.

4. I got a pension fund:
It has about 12,000 British pounds sterling in it right now. That's 12,000 I could have spent on things like flat screen TVs, a better car, new bay windows for my house and other whimsical items. Plus, that 12,000 is tax free, which means less money for the government to use bailing out banks and stuff.

5. I stopped paying into my pension:
This happened a few years ago when I realised there were other things I needed to spend my money on (see "I had a child" above). The fund has been losing money ever since. If I'd been a good citizen and continued to pay into the pension, it would be buying up all those cheap-o stocks right now and holding up the market a bit. Instead, it just keeps losing money and I'm not doing anything to shore it up.

6. I paid off my credit cards:
Banks make shitloads on credit card interest. But not from me. Sorry banks.

7. I scoured the internets:
As it turns, a lot of the stuff I like, stuff I used to have to pay, is available for free online. Stuff like music (myspace is still pretty kewl and Last.fm proves I'm not the only person who likes Shriekback and MTV.com has every video ever nearly), TV shows and films (Hulu is awesome), books (most of the classics are online, plus a helluva lot of Cory Doctorow's stuff) and even furniture (Craigslist and our local community forums have loads of stuff up for free).

9. I started to worry about the planet:
Al Gore's actually partially to blame for this. An Inconvenient Trust freaked me out so much that my wife and I started doing crazy things like turning off lights in rooms we weren't using (this was most of the rooms in the house, which makes our place look like an abandoned building sometimes - I wouldn't be surprised to find squatters living in our back bedroom some day), not leaving things on standby (TV, DVD player, toaster, microwave - you'd be amazed how much it costs to keep a glorified clock turned on 24 hours a day), turning the heat on when we were cold (not just because we were a bit chilly) and not throwing stuff away arbitrarily (composting and recycling where possible). Energy providers, oil & gas companies, second hand shops and garden centres have all suffered as a consequence.

Basically, I stopped spending so much money, didn't so waste much stuff and generally tried to think thrifty. And then the entire economy collapsed. I feel pretty bad now. I'm a bad person.

Sorry.