Doug and dusted

First, thanks to all of you who took part in the Coupland contest. It was very difficult picking a winner, especially because none of you gave the right answer. If you're the slightest bit interested, the odd one out, the Coupland-free zone, was "In the future, everybody will mime to the Backstreet Boys between ironic fingers on YouTube for 15 minutes." There, that was worth the wait, wasn't it?

While I'm here, something odd has happened. I don't normally do the personal diary type blogging. But here you go. About four years ago, around the time I came to Bangkok, I changed my e-mail address, because the old service provider suddenly decided it wanted to charge me for the privilege. I notified everyone in my address book, but my old details presumably stayed in various mailing lists, in particularly those kept by a number of small, interesting record companies, and the PR companies working on their behalf. (Before I moved continents, I used to write for a small, interesting music magazine, now sadly departed.)

In the last few days, for reasons that aren't immediately apparent, e-mails sent to the old address have started to pop up at my current address. I presume someone's been sending them since 2003, presuming all the time that I've been receiving them. Two responses: a look back at myself four years ago; and the feeling that a parallel reality has been going on, and I've been granted a fleeting glimpse of what might have happened in my life, had I made a few different choices, or if circumstances had gone another way. All those potential connections, disappearing into god-knows-where. I half expect a gaping hole to appear in the narrow membrane between what happened and what might have happened, and hundreds of messages to gush out.

Maybe I need to stop watching Torchwood. It's not that good, after all.

Today's post is dedicated to the memory of Magnus Magnusson. "Dum der-der dum... DER dum..."