Time for this again; sorry guys!
(N.b., this was written yesterday morning and posted this morning with minimal edits: however, ankle aside, it is a very nice day out and I think we’re going to the park. See, even Ms B can have a day off.)
I’m busy, and tired, and thinking. Spreading myself out all over the place like the blown petals. Or butter. Saying stupid things and too many of them. And my ankle’s still sprained. When you get to where you feel you couldn’t write anything decent or even true to save your life, you know it’s time to go inside for a bit.
A few more busy days ahead. An old friend plus child staying. I have to do publicity for the next Lemon Monkey reading, on September 12. I have CVs to send out and students to recruit for the poetry workshop (it’s going to be a GREAT group). I have a really great blog post half-written, where it has been all week, plus a tiny hommage to the brand-new grand old man, Martin “Just don’t mention Osama his teeth” Amis. Poems. Crap, no doubt. Half-written essays – puerile, no doubt. And unpaid. But all beside the point, really, at the moment, whatever the point is. And now it’s the Bank Holiday. Like the banks need a holiday!
Do you know, the internet is full of, it is PACKED with, “copywriting jobs” saying they want “article rewriters” for $1 an article. “Re-writers”! Or they want “original articles”. What the hell is THAT? 1,000 articles. I don’t even know what that MEANS. 1,000?!? Someone says people in India do it for the dollar but I still don’t get it. All I can think is that they want people to plagiarise existing web “content” to make money off their completely spurious websites through ad traffic.
So here you go: the Talisman. It wards off evil.
Snow
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
Louis MacNeice
weeew 1000 articles? I think our hand and eyes will be blind … nice article, and nice to know this post
Re: “All I can think is that they want people to plagiarise existing web ‘content’ to make money off their completely spurious websites through ad traffic.” Tragically close to the truth, I suspect. Jobs for journalists are on the wane, and vacancies for “online content producers” are on the rise. Rewrite merchants and citizen journalists spell death for your traditional hacks. Am I too pessimistic?
Well, maybe not, but I think it may also be more complex than that. The whole journalism industry is in meltdown here in the UK, since about the autumn, but it’s sudden and recession-related. I believe in the pendulum, and I think the trend will reverse, somehow, at some point. Ad-click enterprises are only good as long as people click. I have a couple of blog posts lined up on this actually. (Mind you I am always saying that.)
I also think it’s worth remembering that “citizen journalism” happens when there’s a crisis. It doesn’t fill the pages routinely every day. And it’s also not real, in the sense of trained and doggedly fact-checking, journalism. I think it works precisely because it’s held in place by the other kind.