Sour Alba

All hail the New Media Company Generator - a worthy successor to the almost prophetic Web Economy Bullshit Generator. (I know companies that really do “exploit viral markets” and “scale robust communities”.)

The wickedly observed company generator came up with ThirstyBadger, which on the while I like better than w00tonomy.

It’s good to see the barriers of sick humour being pushed so I salute rathergood.com for their triumphant video “Two pumpkins, one cup“, which is almost as repulsively vomit inducing as the video it parodies. And if you don not know what video that is I for one am not going to tell you.

Mad propz to Craig McGill over at Cluttered desk for spotting this brilliant vision of a zombie outbreak as seen through Twitter. Key quote: “Rigged the house with explosives. This may be my last tweet, people.”

And that’s a sentiment I share as I find myself overwhelmed by social media: this blog, podcasts, my work blog, Twitter, Facebook, Dopplerz, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Flickr. And that’s without the daily grind of reading through my Yahoo Pipes and Google Reader. When’s a net professional supposed to get any work done?

Very funny wee film about cars at a zebra crossing being faced with a seemingly never-ending parade of pedestrians in fancy dress.

Yay for crazy mash-ups. This one effortlessly blends the delicate harmonies of the Beach Boys with a fondly-remembered advert of my youth.

I just took the What Is Your Net Culture IQ quiz. Man, has my finger slipped off the web trivia pulse. Given that I used to pen the Lazy Guide To Net Culture I was disappointed with the result: 104. Higher than average but less than half of the top score.

Mind you my disappointment was as nothing compared to what I felt what the redesign of scotsman.com did to the display of my old columns in the link above…

I was checking out the del.icio.us bookmarks of an Edinburgh design agency called Whitespace. There was a link to a most drollsome site which gives vent to designers’ frustrations with clients in general by offering Make My Logo Bigger Cream - complete with a natty video of the miracle product. The site is well done and very amusing but the thing that’s exercising my imagination is this: when Whitespace linked to this were they aware of the following imagery in the video?

Fresh from his campaign to sue his fans (way to go on the marketing front, Your Purpleness), the Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince has decided to have a go at b3ta.com.

The British user-generated-content site (woo, feel the Web 2.0) is a sometimes hilarious source of puerile humour and, in this vein, ran a competition for users to submit amusing images of said light entertainer (and that’s all Prince is by the way, despite what his ego tells him).

Cue much mockery (some of it in less than delicate taste). But then the following message appeared on the b3ta homepage:

Under threat of legal action from Princes legal team of “potential closure of your web site” - We have removed the Prince image challenge and B3ta apologises unreservedly to AEG / NPG and Prince for any offence caused. We also ask our members to avoid photoshoping Prince and posting them on our boards.

Two things strike me about this ridiculous situation:

1) Surely a bunch of cheeky images on a daft website are too petty to be worried about by a big star like Prince (though he is just a light entertainer, remember).

2) Is there a not an issue of freedom of speech here? I understand that TAFKATAFKAP wants to protect his copyright but how exactly is that harmed by images of him being caricatured? It’s not as if b3ta was trying to pass these images off as genuine Prince merchandise. In what way was the Purple One been materially damaged by this?

Knowing b3ta, I understand that there might have been some images that were particularly offensive. But then why not just have these removed rather than getting the whole competition stopped?

Prince is concerned about protecting his image online but actions like these on his behalf simply make him look ridiculous, which I suppose doesn’t matter because he is, after all, only a light entertainer.

As part of my rehabilitation back into the Order I have to undergo a series of tasks designed to humble the spirit. This my due lot after the great failure of being captured on a mission.

My first trial of the day is The Way of the Fluffy End of the Lollipop, which entails cleaning out the latrines. Now do not let this conjur up images of shining porcelain and rubber gloves. Ninja toilets are - as one would expect - unpleasant and fraught with lurking danger. They consist of a long log suspended over a deep ditch. The cleaning operation requires crawling through said trench with a large brush - or in my case, my fur.

This task has been made less bearable by Brother Niguri and his friends, who appear to have been subsisting on a diet of broccoli vindaloos and laxatives - and who “fail” to see me in the trench.

However, there seems to have been an instance of instant karma here because each one of the them has been hospitalised with a series of mysterious bowel perforations. These are exceedingly large and  painful in a way that baffles the doctors.

When I heard of this I mused on the workings of sin and fate a while. Then I returned to my second trial of the day, loading hay into a barn … with a large pitchfork.

Friends, ah friends, I look with shame at my last entry. The pride. The hubris. The talk of “large cheques”.

So long ago.  So much has changed. So many blossoms have flowed under the bridge since then.  I have suffered much and have  learned much.

It shames me further to confess that I am no longer a fully fledged Ninja (Junior Class, Order of the Shape of the Pear). I am now a lowly Adept once more, and this only thanks to the mercy of Master Hamzo. Without his intercession, my skin would be a fur rug in the Order’s library and my genitals would have been sold to aphrodisiac manufacturers.

I have brought disgrace on myself and the Order by committing the only act deemed unacceptable for a ninja. I got caught.

As for my long silence on this and other matters, let me put it this way: it’s not easy being a panda in prison. Especially not a pretty one…