Tuesday 9 October 2018

Ten Idiotic Years



Today – incredibly, uniquely, unprecedentedly, unrepeatably – is the tenth anniversary of this blog. Ten years! Who'd have thought it? What started out as a tentative investigation into the nature of Web 2.0 and the possibilities of social media has ended up as ... Well, I'm not entirely sure what. A sort of diary-notebook-sketchpad left open on the virtual table for anyone to read, maybe? Or perhaps, for those of you in the sophisticated seats, Bruchstücke einer grossen Konfession ("fragments of a great confession", Goethe's formulation for his autobiographical writings). Whatever it is, there is now quite a lot of it, most of which you will almost certainly not have read.

Naturally, I have had thoughts of drawing a line under the whole enterprise, or perhaps even starting a new blog (I was strangely drawn to the title "Public Pyjamas"), but concluded that I enjoy doing this too much to stop and, crucially, can't imagine doing it any differently, unless I were to attempt writing it in, say, heroic couplets or blank verse. Or maybe a classic four-frame cartoon à la Doonesbury, until I realised quite how bloody difficult that is, compared even to heroic couplets. Respect, cartoonists.

So, to mark the occasion, as mooted earlier in the year, I have produced a CD containing all ten years compiled, unedited, as individual Idiotic Hat Annual PDF files. That's it, up above. Any resemblance to a fondly-remembered record label from the late 1960s is entirely intentional. Each of the ten volumes of the Idiotic Hat Annual that it contains runs from September to August, because when I started the blog I was still employed in an academic institution, and that's how the academic world does things, and also because before retirement I was in the habit of taking a summer "blog break" when posts became very thin on the ground. As with so many illogical things, it has its own logic.

You may recall that, in the earlier post Puck's Song Revisited, I referred to the availability of an "artisanal" CD of the book distributed in a "handcrafted" container. This was simply a facetious way of describing the traditional home-burned CD hand-labelled with a Sharpie pen and mailed out in a paper envelope. However, by happy chance I then discovered in a drawer a mysterious piece of plastic which turned out to be the CD tray for my venerable Epson Photo 1400 printer. Never having used it, I had completely forgotten that printing CDs was within its capabilities. Bingo! What's more, it works. Hence the Island pink-label lookalike above, and the New Improved Puck's Song CD below. Handcrafted by me, artisanally.


Having gone to that trouble, it seemed a shame not to match the effort with proper DVD-style cases, also handcraftily artisanal. Here's Puck's Song:


And here's the one for the "Ten Idiotic Years" album:


My original offer still stands. Send me £12.50 via PayPal [1], and give me your postal address, and I'll mail you a copy of either anywhere in the world. You can have both for £22.50, and if you've already bought Puck's Song via Blurb, but would like to have this version, too, you can take £4.50 off either price.

1. My email address is in the "View My Complete Profile" gadget at top right.

9 comments:

amolitor said...

How much extra to have the CD shred itself upon arrival?

Mike C. said...

Heh... I believe that's supposed, paradoxically, to double its value. If it wasn't a setup, that was one of the Great Moments, wasn't it? "Gasp..."

Mike

amolitor said...

I do appreciate that Banksy does take a moment now and then to remind us that in his heart he's still kind of a shit. It's not his fault that the Art Establishment ruins it by adding a zero every time he pulls some stunt.

Zouk Delors said...

Happy Birthday!

Mike C. said...

Thanks, Zouk! (says the blog)

I.H.

Thomas Rink said...

Congratulations! Even though I'm not able to relate to every post (I'm not from the UK), I often found something of interest here.

Looking forward to the next ten years!

Best, Thomas

Mike C. said...

Thanks, Thomas!

I do *try* to gloss any particularly parochial references, but I'm sure plenty slip through. Can you recommend any German blogs worth reading, btw? Not necessarily photographic, but well-written and lively. Following my Berlin trip earlier in the year I'm feeling the need to reconnect with contemporary Germany.

Mike

Thomas Rink said...

Mike, I'm sorry, but I'm not aware of German blogs which are 1) still alive and 2) worth reading. I have to admit that I didn't actively search for them, either; "The Online Photographer", Andrew Molitor's "Photothunk" and your blog are the only blogs I regularly read. If you come across interesting German blogs, I'd appreciate a pointer to them!

Best, Thomas

Mike C. said...

Thomas,

Interesting, I'll have to have a look around. It's so easy to forget that the Web is not exclusively carried out in English (or most of the world's business, come to that: it is a daily source of amazement to me, listening to some foreign politician on the radio speaking English to a level of idiomatic fluency that is, frankly, humiliating...)

Mike