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07:09 / 03.11.06

PS, and I honestly don't mean to make waves, but is the ze/hir convention something I should just deal with as a local-to-barbelith adjunct to English? (I'm in favor of neutral language, just a bit of a prude regarding English as Ze Is Spoke.) Is there some sort of long-running flame war I should refer to?

I looked through the wiki (which BTW isn't terribly easy to find once your account is confirmed) and didn't see anything there.

I swear, I'm not trying to start a flame war, just trying to acculturate.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:26 / 03.11.06

Hi, whir. The ze/hir thing kind of popped up because there is no way to identify people's genders on Barbelith unless they specifically state them - so, if you don't know whether someone is a he or a she, and either don't want to take the time finding out before getting on to addressing them, ze/hir is a useful way too avoid getting sidetracked. Also, there are some people who would rather not give a gender, or define themselves outside binary gender. It's a bit like a MUD, really.

07:47 / 03.11.06

Gotcha, thanks for the explanation. There doesn't seem to be an obvious way of specifying my gender in my user account either, though, am I missing something (short of changing my username to whir WHO IS TOTALLY A DUDE/HOTT LADY)? (Which it's OK otherwise, I'm just curious.)

08:15 / 03.11.06

There isn't a way of spcifying gender in one's profile.

You could always change your username to TOTALLY A DUDE/HOTT LADYbut still, how would we know.

That's one of the interesting things about net identities, I think, that they offer the chance to onceal, or define as other than, one's given gender. There's been a lot of Barbelith shennanigans in the past with playing with online identities ("fiction suits") ie. having multiple suits and writing different personas for each one, though this was shut down eventually due to abuse by trolls.

Oh, and hi newbbies, btw.

08:17 / 03.11.06

Meant to say, I actually find "ze" quite er... "ugly" on aesthetic grounds, less so with "hir", but I still use it from time to time and can't be bothered to think up something more appealing.

14:11 / 03.11.06

hello!
im new here, im youngish.
im obsessed with jade goody, im worried the amount of times i think about her.I find myself in the supermarket, pausing for reflection and thinking 'what would jade do?'. i used to be obsessed with michelle macmanus but i got over that.
i was thinking about starting a jade goody appreciation thread but do you think that would be a faux pas?

All Acting Regiment

14:12 / 03.11.06

I don't think so, I'm a fan of the film Pink Flamingoes.

14:52 / 03.11.06

Hi all,

I'm Jodrell. After waiting forever to be allowed in; poised at my keyboard, mind pregnant with mischeivous intent, I only managed half a dozen posts of limited value before the realities of work kept me away from the board for weeks. Bugger. So, second attempt;

Hello! I'm a mid-twenties, London-based, digital media specialist (blah) with a love of comics, cinema - from grindhouse to Merchant Ivory, sport, standup, fine wine and oh god this is starting to look like a Time Out personals ad ..

Anyway, look forward to chatting with you all. Be gentle..

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:03 / 03.11.06

Outside Swiss Cottage tube, with a copy of the Guardian?

15:13 / 03.11.06

or in the Billiards Room with the candlestick - I'm easy..

15:17 / 03.11.06

digital media specialist

What does that mean? And why is the first thing that comes to mind a medical profession?

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

15:32 / 03.11.06

this is starting to look like a Time Out personals ad ..

I wouldn't worry, more personal things have been posted here.

15:38 / 03.11.06

oh, I work in advertising. Online advertising.

It's not something I'm proud of.

In an ideal world, I'd be on the front lines of web pioneering, boldly pushing back the electronic frontiers and pathfinding the development of the pure, open-access social communication tool the internet ought to be.
Instead I pimp my shit to any corporation, cartel or monopoly with pockets deep enough all so Person X can't help but shell out their hard-earned on Product Y and swell the bulging coffers of Company Z. Not really much of a compromise.

for what it's worth, i'm actually pretty ethical about the people I represent and the ad campaigns I develop and manage but still...

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:56 / 03.11.06

You'd actually be amazed how many people might find themselves standing outside Swiss Cottage Tube with a copy of the Guardian. By the time your blind date finds you, he or she can be relied upon to be really, really angry.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

16:08 / 03.11.06

Haus, do we speak from experience?

16:15 / 03.11.06

To the advertising person, whats the going rate for consultancy for media (someones asking for my services on a film and I'm not sure how much i should ask) any ball park figures?

unheimlich manoeuvre

17:56 / 03.11.06

Hey more new people.
And they like stuff.

I like stuff too.

One thing. Please try searching before starting a new topic. Thank you.

22:37 / 03.11.06

Cliffchuff - honestly, I'm not sure. 'Consultancy' means different things to different people. Would your role be to buy, book, create or advise on advertising?

If you act as an agent in a traditional "ad agency" sense, the typical rate is 15% of whatever's spent but that gets very, very flexible depending on just how involved you are in the actual mechanics of getting an ad campaign running and how keen you are to get your client's business.

Truth be told, if you're just advising on the 'how' of a marketing push, you'd probably work on a flat-rate retainer but without more info on just what you're being asked to do, I couldn't say what that might be.

I should point out, that while I've sold a (very) little bit of TV advertising, I've never worked in cinema marketing - online's more my bag - and so couldn't be called any kind of expert. I know a bunch of people that have though so if there's any recommendations you think I could make, I'd be happy to. Drop me a PM, if you need.

Beyond that, I'd be interested to know what you're involved in - sounds fascinating!

10:31 / 05.11.06

I'm Alexis, I'm English, I'm male and yes, my primary school years were tainted with Dynasty-based insults.

I'm currently contributing eight and sixteen-page vignettes to a comic anthology called Alien Safeword run by a friend of mine in Lancaster. I've also just started a PhD in Literature and Cultural Research looking into changing representations of nostalgia, with specific reference to Douglas Coupland, JG Ballard, Chris Ware and Proust. Any further suggestions welcome.

Likes: Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Henri Barbusse, John Barth, Philip Roth, Carnivale, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Donna Harraway, Jim Crace, Robert Musil, James Joyce, Robert Anton Wilson, Proust, Arthur Rimbaud, Grant Morrison, Brian Azzarello, Greg Pak, David Cronenberg, Powell and Pressburger, Angela Carter, Paul Bowles, Dave Cooper, Jonathan Lethem, Ian Sinclair, Richard Powers, Anna Kavan, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Brian K. Vaughan, Garth Marenghi and Dean Lerner, Big Train, Frank Lloyd Wright, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, Grandaddy, Cowboy Junkies, Low, Nick Drake, Peter Ackroyd, Peep Show, American Dad, Big Train, Battlestar Galactica, Denis Johnson, Jim Dodge, schadenfreude.

Dislikes: Russell Brand, Jimmy Carr, Russell Brand, Zadie Smith, Russell Brand, Dan Brown, Russell Brand, John Reid MP, Dennis Miller, Jay Leno, Chris Moyles, Russell Brand, Jeanette Winterson, Mark Millar, JK Rowling, David Gemmell, My Hero, The Catherine Tate Show, James Blunt, Damien Rice, Morcheeba, fucking Coldplay, Tom Cruise, Lost, Richard Curtis movies, ironic t-shirts, ironic mullets, Islington/Shoreditch/Camden liberals (huppies or yippies, which is it?), social conservatives, millenarian Republicans, Tories, psychoanalysis, exegeses of the Matrix trilogy and/or LOTR, the retrofitting of the eighties as cultural arcadia, sixties revivals, cheesy music nights, epicene students, intellectuals who claim to like football/soccer to gain some spurious working class cachet, class warriors, emo fucks, goths, chav jokes, Julie Burchill, the commodification of dissent, dumb incursions into the middle-east, Jack Kerouac and Liquorice.

10:50 / 05.11.06

How in the holy word of fuck can someone dislike Jeanette Winterson?

12:14 / 05.11.06

Because I've heard she's been quoted in an interview as saying she believes she is the *kak!* "only living writer who will be read in a hundred years' time". This is, of course, unmitigated bollocks. Fine writer, loved 'The Passion', shame about the skull lodged in rectal cavity.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

12:35 / 05.11.06

I had to look this "Russell Brand" fellow up on Gooooogle and he seems to be of average obnoxiousness. What pushes him up on the noxiometer to triplehate levels?

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:54 / 05.11.06

Ubiquity, possibly. Brand has in very short order become a leading (sorry) Brand in Radio, TV, newspaper columns - having said which, the apalling shambles of his own-label Channel 4 show, Russell Brand's got issues, might have slowed the ascent a bit.

I quite like him, really, although on condition of not having to see too much of him. I like that a man whose schtick revolves largely around being a former heroin and sex addict is now on Radio 2.

18:14 / 05.11.06

Hello, new folk!

I'm Mirror, an old hand who posts even more infrequently than Nick, and usually in the Lab at that. I deplore sloppy thinking almost as much as Haus but am less inclined to expend the effort to attempt to correct it than he, for the simple reason that I often find myself guilty of the same crime and thus have a bit of sympathy.

I live in Colorado, climb rocks, write programs for money, and have a lovely garden where I grow much of my own food (and I hunt for a good portion of it as well.)

And I never have enough time for anything due to a horrhendous love of procrastination. Right now, for example, I should be making myself lunch or working on a particularly hairy theory of computation problem (I'm also currently working on a PhD in artificial intelligence.)

Oh, and a piece of news for those who know me: I'm going to be a father in May!

19:18 / 05.11.06

The problem I have with Brand is that, for me, he is the exemplar of our ambivalence towards celebrity culture. In his act, he lambasts the vacuousness of it (to the extent that he sometimes inserts a rolled-up copy of 'Heat' into his arsehole) and yet is routinely found knocking his immaculately disheveled hairstyle against the red-top of a tabloid newspaper for doing a sex on Kate Moss. He gives interviews to glossies and then writes an (admittedly well-written) column for the Guardian. He would argue he's being postmodern and embracing the zeitgeist (icky word, I know), but I've had enough of relativism and arch paradox to last a lunchtime. When someone becomes news, their ability to comment on the news with anything approaching objectivity becomes drastically compromised, don't you think? You just can't use a Big Brother spin-off as a career launchpad and then overnight become some alternative svengali, critiquing the cult of the celebrity. This is not some ideological volte face, the guy obviously hates the whole celebrity milieu and always has, so doing that show makes his every word, to quote Hicks, "like a turd in my drink".

19:21 / 05.11.06

Oh, and Mirror, dreaming of birth, congratulations!

19:59 / 05.11.06

Welcome all and congrats, Mirror.

02:23 / 06.11.06

congrats from me too, Mirror.

re: me

I'm fairly new, have been absent for a few months while finishing my Honors thesis. am currently working as an audiovisual technician at a university in Brisbane,(australia) where i live. i like comics, science fiction, cultural studies, gender theory and Zizek. i ride a motorbike.

09:28 / 06.11.06

Hello, I'm another new member. I'm from London, 33, married and work for ITV being an EVIL CENSOR. I watch shows of all genres before they're transmitted to see if they need any cuts or a warning.

I am interested in the following things:-

60s girl groups, bears in general, bed, being half italian, being lazy, billy childish, biographies, books, brian howard, cashmere, cats, cherries, chinese moon bears, curtis mayfield, daphne du maurier, esoterica, good sci-fi, headpress, jamie lidell, japanese lucky cats, japaraphernalia, john constantine, ken macleod, learning italian, martha reeves, nancy mitford, nice wine, northern soul, pancetta, paul thomas anderson, pencil skirts, polaroids, pork crackling, proper cocktails, re:search, reading in bed, reblochon, the baader meinhof gang, the bright young things (the ones from the 20s and 30s not the indie band), the pixies, tom driberg, true crime, vertigo comics, warhol superstars, will self.

10:47 / 06.11.06

Pork Crackling!
You reminded me just as I fell off the vegetarian wagon! Go you!

12:57 / 06.11.06

Don't be happy your no longer veggie be veggie again!

Moggy tell us more about censoring I'm really curious.

Welcome all new members!

13:03 / 06.11.06

although its been said that new folks (and opinions of, i imagine) are usually found by the posts they post i'll say a quick hello and howdydo here. I've spent the last 6 years as a basic bum, doing nothing productive but reading. I won't be one for making particularly articulate or unfortunately coherent posts, but i'm not afraid to say my mind. Thats not to say I think my opinions are flawless and that everyone else is wrong, I keep an open mind and consider nothing set in stone. If i see a thread where everyone is in complete agreement I may disagree just to be devils advocate, Some may look upon this as flaming, it is not. It's just that i believe its best to be aware of all the sides of a discussion, not necessarily to change your mind. Just to encourage debate. Thats mine, your free to yours.
From the years i have spent on and off visiting this site, I don't imagine I'm alone here. nice one gys

13:40 / 06.11.06

Moggy reminds me -- do we have a Wine thread? A cheese thread?

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:42 / 06.11.06

I think we had a cheese thread, although I could just mean that we had a whole bunch of threads that ended up in a welter of puns about cheese. Wine we don't have, and I'd be bang up for, if mainly as an interested observer.

17:58 / 06.11.06

Hello Princess Squeedlyspooch

And just after I posted I got a text from my mum inviting me to got round and eat organic pork with loads of crackling tomorrow night.

Hi Bear - Censoring, well it's not really that interesting. I don't know if you're in the UK but ITV programmes are on the whole not massively interesting. The only one I really love looking after is Creature Comforts. It depends on what type of programme it is and what time of day it goes out but we hardly ever ask for cuts to be made.

The one time I have was for a children's 'science' show about fears and phobias when there was a lot of dead rat action, specifically dead rats being fed to snakes - I thought this would really upset kids who had rats as pets, so we had some minor cuts where you see one of their faces close-up and another one where the smake lunges for the rat on the end of a stick.

If the public disagree with our decision they can take the matter to ofcom - www.ofcom.org.uk who regulate us. They'll ask for a statement from us if they've had some complaints and depending on that they'll either uphold the complaint or not.

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