This Is This

Hello. Cliff Jones here reporting from the twitching corpse of blogging.

Actually, reports of the death of blogging are greatly exaggerated. It’s interesting to read about this in newspapers, too. It’s like horses talking about the demise of cars. Things co-exist. Horses are still around. And like newspapers they are more for fun than function, they make a lot of mess and French people eat them.

Where was I? Newspapers have a place in reporting of course, and many have excellent websites, but blogging. It is not dead.

Just because we have Twitter and Facebook, doesn’t mean that writing is going to shrink to brief updates, any more than text messages have killed the novel.

Anyone saying blogging is dead is missing a crucial point. People have Facebook and Myspace pages and Tumbler areas and Flickr pages and Twitter updates and all that stuff, because it’s easy to have and it’s low maintenance broadcasting and it’s fun. But bloggers have these outlets too but they still keep blogs because they do something else.

I draw a line between the blogs and the other stuff because their blogs are not for quick updates to people I know. Cliff is walking the dog does two things. It bores people I don’t know, and it also tells people I don’t know that I am not in my house. Facebook also would connect the people I don’t know with people I do know who might not want to know that people I don’t know can get to know them.

People use Facebook in different ways, but this is just the way I use it. It’s complicated but it keeps things simple.

Blogs are the best of informing an audience in an engaging way, the rest are for sharing things in a convenient way. Sure, blogs are not convenient, but ask any writing blogger if twitter has replaced their updates and they will say no.

how come I can do this?

This?

Although I do find the podcast is starting to compete for my headspace, but let’s see where that goes.

Have a great weekend.

No post today because blogging is dead. The smoking gun lies somewhere in between Facebook and Twitter and Mebo. So there’s no post today.

It is dead. It died on the blog. With its browsers around its ankles.

I read it on the BBC.

Cliff is: Hitting publish

There’s an ad on the side of a bus now in London promoting atheism and it’s causing quite a stir. I like the idea of this because it gets people thinking and talking and there are already lots of ads promoting the existence of god.

Actually, let me put that another way, the ads promoting god are selling something that makes people money. They sell courses that yes may enrich people’s lives, but they are selling all the same. The atheist ads are selling nothing at all, just peddling the idea that there probably is no god. That’s it. No number to call, just a message telling people not to worry.

I thought atheists were positive there is no god. This seems more agnostic. But I like where their hearts are. There’s not enough comfortable doubt and goodwill in the world, especially in the field of advertising. What’s staggering is that the funding target to get ads on the side of busses was £5,500, and since yesterday, the amount raised has doubled.

To £53,800. Want to donate money youself? Go to hell you do.

The only thing that gets me about atheists is that they often do the fire and brimstone thing as much as the preachers. I have to watch myself now because I became a godfather this month and I don’t want to end up a pile of smoking shoes.

I think it’s useful and heartening for some people to believe in a god, or a religion. I’m non-theistic myself, and I would never let religion get in the way of doing what I wanted to do if it benefitted others.

It’s the Jews in the basement thing. The bible says to speak the truth, and you’re hiding a Jewish family in the basement. The Gestapo knock on the door and ask if there are any Jews in the basement and you think for a second, and remember your religious teaching and go: “You know what? There are Jews in the basement.”

Fuck that. You lie. You lie like a thieving stepchild, because that is the right thing to do.

Anyway, back to real-life matters, the I Am Livid podcast with Mr Angry is nestling at number 58 in the itunes comedy audio charts, which is great. It’s above Jonny Vaughan and Lisa Snowden.

Capital Radio announced last week they now have more listeners in London than the BBC’s Radio One, and Jonny and Lisa do the breakfast show, which is their biggest programme, so it’s no small potatoes to be there. And one of those spuds could be down to you so thanks if you downloaded the show on itunes and cheers for listening.

We did it.

We cast the pod.

Last night Mr Angry and I waxed lyrical in the fourth I Am Livid podcast. Well, wax is a strong word because of the amount of times I say “um” and “you know”, but have a listen and hopefully a laugh as we tackle subjects like the Bee Gees, sausages and Mash, lapdancing and death. Mr Angry genuinely also says “hullaballoo”, which has got to make this a winning podcast and me glad to have been a part of it.

If you want listen, please download it using itunes if you can so we can see how it does in the rankings.

Subscribe to the podcast here

If you don’t have itunes you can get the file here but it would be much better if you downloaded it there so we can get into the comedy podcast charts.
And if you like it and want to send it round to your mates, that would be just super.

Also, if you want to take part, please send emails, questions or sound files to PODCAST followed by the AT sign and then IAMLIVID.COM

Cheers and enjoy.

One of the good things about personal hard drive recorders or what ever you want to call them, is the series link button.

This means I can watch one show and then programme it for the whole series at the touch of a button. So I’ve been watching a lot of Mash. This was on the whole time I was a kid and although I watched it then, there are still loads of episodes I haven’t seen. And if I had I’d know.

I’m odd that way. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but if you show me an episode of Friends, I can tell you three of the jokes coming up in that show that I haven’t seen in ten years and saw maybe twice then.

Hawkeye Pierce was a role model for me as a kid. He was a popular loner in the face of adversity and that appealed to me. In fact, I wanted to be a comedian/surgeon. But I knew I wouldn’t have been able to hack it – the long hours, the late nights, the watching people die. And then there’s the medical side.

Thanks to reader Abigail from Australia for clearing up why I got so many searches about how many ADHD sufferers it takes to change a lightbulb. Turns out that a newspaper down there had that as a crossword clue. I must love the internet, that is if love is defined by being more fascinated by something the more you learn about it. It’s cool to think that a hundred people reading a paper on their commute are led back here.

Anyway - it’s Monday people, and that can only mean one thing. That’s right. It’s Monday.

We’ve been doing this at work. They actually had my jacket, as well.

Go on, face your manga right up.

Of course, I really look like this:

but it’s not a million miles off.