Your Sunday Supplement

Sunday papers with their soft focus on hard news seem designed to bolster ennui.

As always, Sunday's Jakarta Post has pages of skinny lasses modeling unwearable rags and articles about limited edition watches which only a select few "privileged clientele" are allowed to look at. Nothing about accuracy, just incomprehensible blurb.

(Those of you using the Firefox browser will notice that I've installed a clock. Whilst you're online, it shows the time in Jakarta to the nearest nano-second. I hope you like it because I feel privileged to have you as my clientele; it's functional and doesn't cost you or me a penny.)

Heading over to the Sunday Observer Magazine in search of a deeper read, there's an article about some media-savvy writer called JT LeRoy who's an elusive libertine who's bewitched the likes of Courtney Love, Winona Ryder and Shirley Manson with his true-life tales of white-trash hustlers, hookers and abusers.

No? Ok, skip that one.

How about finding new uses for old food? Toast on beans anyone?

Even the reviews seem jaded. Example: In Camera: how photographs of bullet-ridden mobsters and slashed women inspired Francis Bacon.

Wait a minute. Hold the presses.

The Daleks Return!!
So the debate is renewed. My favourite Doctor was Tom Baker, a swivel-eyed, unpredictable Bohemian, quite fruity and correct - he kept a cricket ball in his pocket - but radical, too, and given to disdainful wit. 'Local politics are not my concern,' he would say.

Such is the excitement back in Blighty that the Observer Blog devotes today's posting to this momentous event.

But hang on a sec. What's this?

Three, count 'em, three of their links I've already given you: Squashed Philosophers, Error Message Generator and The Man Who Fell Asleep.

So, if you can't beat them, adopt them?

Harry asks, Just where has this notion that blogs are out to try and compete with or replace mainstream journalism come from?

It seems to me and the Big Blog Company that it's the other way round.

Jakartass is merely a commentary on whatever takes my fancy at any particular time. The mass media is paid to provide hard news. That the Guardian involves its readers is to be applauded, but I remain wary of attempts to co-opt the democratic right to write.

Remember: you read it here first.
 

postID=111009976369896949

¶ 4:00 pm