Wikifibs, Jarvis cakes and the memorial scarecrows of Nagoro

Way back when blogging was still A Thing, I’d actually worry if I hadn’t posted in the past two or three days. Now it can slide to a week or more before I get an itch of guilt. Of course, in those olden days, if I couldn’t think of anything compelling enough to use as raw material I’d just put up a few links to stuff that had recently interested or amused me and then maybe top it off with an equally random YouTube clip and I’d feel a bit better.

Well, I haven’t posted anything for nearly a week and I feel not so much worry as a vague sense that if I don’t make use of this thing once in a while that it will atrophy and die like an inactive limb, or I’ll forget the password, whichever is the worse. So, without indulging in any further self-analysis, I offer up: an excoriating review of a project with which I was involved several lifetimes ago, which generously describes my own modest contribution as “entertainingly prissy”; musing on what it feels like to be the original for a fictional character (and I point once again to my own form in this area); the tale of a Wikipedia fib that took on a life of its own; Jarvis Cocker in cake form; a debate on whether the highbrow/lowbrow divide has any particular meaning any more; which leads in a roundabout way to the fact that the new Murakami novel will hit the shelves—digital or otherwise—in a matter of days; and from there, it seems to be a short hop to the Japanese woman who found a new way to replace absent friends.

Seems almost like old times.