Rafael Behr

Quick! A mashup!

Why fight, when you can dance?

Time to hear the Deep Message.

(Credit: DJ Moule)

Me, gluttony, punishment

Hmm. I have written a piece in the Observer about this business. (Can't link to my column yet, as not live.)

I have used it to illustrate a point I've been itching to make for ages: that the idea of 'online community', especially as seized upon by politicians in search of legitimacy and new audiences, is a myth. There is nothing intrinsically democratic about networks. The web is not civil society. It is something else. Not sure what.

A bit tenuous really. The peg, I mean. I think the point is interesting. Anyway, I'm gonna get murdered on CiF.

But you guys - all 8 of you - know I loves the blogging.

Show me the way to the tar and feathers.

Morituri te salutant. And other cliches.

Update: Comments on this post are now closed. If you have come here from CiF and want to get your caps lock on about nepotism or media arrogance or bad writing (or anything else for that matter) please do it elsewhere. Regular readers - usual anodyne fluffy blog service resuming shortly.

Overheard in the lift at work

Twentysomething woman: What have you got planned for tomorrow?
Twentysomething man: I'm gonna go on the piss all day.
Twentysomething woman: Nice! I like going on the piss all day.

So if anyone's free tomorrow and looking for something to do, there'll be a bloke in London on the piss all day. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you joined him. More the merrier.

Iggle Piggle, Upsy Daisy, get a room!

Honestly. There are children present!

Things I had forgotten about having a tiny baby*

1. The law of finite comfort.

This is the immutable law of childcare that says there is only ever a fixed amount of comfort in any room. If you are sitting in a cosy armchair and your newborn baby is crying that is because you have taken up too much comfort.

You can test this law by carrying the baby up and down the stairs until your back aches and your arms are in spasm. The baby calms down and sometimes even falls asleep.

Then ease yourself very gently back into the armchair. Or even just perch on the edge of the chair. The comfort you thus achieve will drain instantly away from the placated infant and he/she will wake up and start crying again. Works every time.

(See also: the altitude law of crying babies. They prefer it when you are standing up. Why? Don't ask. It's the law.)

*Yes. We had a baby. A Girl. Hence not much blogging recently.

In which I get all local community-minded and activist, for a bit

Hackney Council appear to have ruined my local playground. They refurbished it, tearing down all the fun things that little children played on and replacing them with rubbish things that even Spiderman would struggle to scale.

I am cross.

I have captured a bee, poked it a lot, teased it and called it names, fed it sweets until it is really over-excited and then released it into my bonnet. I have written letters.

I might get political. Or I might relapse into apathy.

Meanwhile, I will tag this post with phrases like Clissold Park new playground and rubbish. Then people google searching 'does anyone else think the new playground in Clissold Park is rubbish?' will be directed here and we will harness the power of the web to make the world better for kiddies.

(Next week: I fret about fried chicken-related litter. Week after: I take on the gangs.)

Rubber reggae mashup

It's the Beatles meet Joe White: If I needed someone. (Via GYBO)

Things I have learned since becoming a parent (Part II in an occasional series)

The exact location of every creaking floorboard in the house.

You put your child to bed, stroking, patting, reassuring, crooning until you think she is asleep. Then you tiptoe, with what you like to think is the stealth of a ninja assassin but is in fact the lumbering gait of an elephant on ketamine, towards the door. Then one of the floorboards emits a faint squeaking noise, scarcely audible by the human ear but somehow pitched at a unique frequency designed by nature to puncture the thin film of slumber covering a recently comforted infant. And all is lost. 'Daddy? Daddy ! Daaaaaaadddddeeeeeeee!'

Back to square one.

But I am wise now. I retreat from the bedroom on all fours to spread my weight more evenly. I have also charted an exact path that will take me out of the door and down the hall without making contact with any errant woodwork.

See also: how to close doors so gradually that a dozing child does not notice the diminution of light in her room.

A 5.30am mashup ...

... Plain wierd, with a sort of fidgety energy. Imagine you have run out of dance floor steam, but have no hope of sleep for hours to come* and then this comes on. The next day you aren't sure if you imagined that mashup of 2 Live Crew, Supertramp and Marvin Gaye.

(By DJBC.)

*Which means, probably, imagining also that it is 10 years ago.

Belgia, perhaps?

There is a headline in today's FT that reads: 'Two fractious Belgiums' (introducing a feature about divisions in the country).

I suppose it doesn't come up that often, but I like the idea of the plural of Belgium as Belgia.