No, not related to  Mike Whitby’s awful meaningless slogan, but the very real sense that — in online parody at least — we’re all pretty similar. At BiNS I got an incoming link from a blog site in Wellington, New Zealand, called “the Wellingtonista“. It seems to be doing similar things to what I do on BiNS, but the reason for the link is the row brewing over this T-shirt:

I was just looking a website for an unsigned bands competition (Festibull), which got me thinking about bands I’ve been in. The longest running and most interesting was ‘The International’ — we didn’t gig much, but we were completely out-of-time modish art-rock. We used to have a practise room next to Mistress (very metal) and Coaster who became Dexter who became Walk.DontWalk (who were a totally different band - one member remains - then, very OCS).

We self-released a ’single’ (EP, more a demo really) — so I thought I’d pop an mp3 onto the band competition thing to see what the process was. I have a copy upstairs, but I couldn’t be bothered to go and find it then rip to mp3. Maybe, maybe it’s already up on the interweb somewhere. So judicious searching later I found an abandonned geosites page belonging to one of our guitarists (who I haven’t seen for five years at least).

We did have a website (back in 1998 this was a odd thing), it’s long gone - or at least the WayBack Machine can only find a bit of it. (”Van Gough, Stan Collymore, The International, add us to the list. The explosion will be visible from space.”). I’ve now been motivated to scan the cover of the EP - although I can’t find a colour version of the cover (locked up in my box of old crap in the loft I think):

And of course, for posterity if nothing else, the mp3s… (I’m singing and playing bass — badly of course):

The International - Joan of Arc (was in the Go Gos)

The International - Freeze-Dry Me A Love Song

The International - The Hard-On Song

An article I wrote about "how to avoid students" in Brum — for a magazine aimed at them. [link]

Miss Baskerville T-Shirt

“Each Typewoman is created entirely with type (letters, punctuation, ligatures) in the typeface of their namesake and sit atop a pattern created with the same. No letterform has been skewed, stretched, flipped or any other bastardizing technique — just scaling at rotating. So the letters are pure as the driven snow!”

The danger in hanging out with fun, creative, people who you don’t necessarily have anything in common with is that you come away with more ideas, and less time to “do” them in. Such is life, and such is what happens to me when I go to a Birmingham Bloggers meeting (I don’t hold with the social-media name thing, podcasting is audio-blogging, flickr-ing, photo-blogging, twittering, micro-blogging, Facebook-usage, life-blogging – blogging is good enough for me) - like last night.

Yesterdays was the second meeting, still defiantly agenda-less, but now with added-too-many-people-to-hold-one-conversation-with-ness. I met Danny Smith , Antonio Roberts, Dominic Fisher, Steve Gerrard, for the first time, OrangeJon, Kevin, Si Hammond, again,  first time meets in the flesh with Mark Steadman (who I’ve been recording bits of podcast for), Joanna Geary, Donarto Esposito, second time in the same day (we’d been at a launch event) for Nick and Pete,  I never seem to be able to get away from Stef these days and there were others I didn’t get a chance to chat to (the man behind D’log at the very least).

I spent a good twenty minutes trying to persuade Alex Hughes to podcast his cartooning - not with commentary, or visuals, just the sound of the pen scratching, the rubber rubbing, and him swearing when he made a mistake. I think it would be good.

I also decided exactly what needs to happen with my “what did that pub used to be called” web-app (which I doubt will ever get done – if you want to do it, it’s a wiki, with a geo-locatory/map interface and Apple ‘tim emachine’-style flow-back, and beer) and the name - pubtimelord.com.

Despite having had almost no sleep over the past week, I really enjoyed myself and Jules  (who was initially a bit scared of it) did too. I found it more fun than the first meeting, but maybe less “useful” – do these things have to be useful? Should we have _horror_ and agenda? Or should we have a ‘turn’, or a ’show and tell’ spot? Or even a quick (online obviously) discussion beforehand so we could all be thinking about the same topic?

It re-enforced my belief that Birmingham has a huge variety of writing/blogging/photo/drawing/nonsense-spouting talent– anyone fancy a little side project? The world is crying out for a Brum-centred (but not centric) BoingBoing – the UK knows what’s coolest and Brum knows that it aint all in London…

“It’s a great chance for your brand” said David Gold, Chairman of Birmingham City, about the plan to destroy the concept of league football and play one Premier League game abroad per team, per season.

“The Premier League, which is the greatest league the world has ever known, is being adventurous, looking forward, looking to take a brand - which is an English brand - and looking to take it global.”

Forget the odious talk of brands, and the fact that for once there isn’t even the pretence of this being anything other than a money making scheme, this move would destroy the basic concept of league football - one that seems to have worked well for 119 years (120 this March).

The concept of a league is that it’s equal - each team plays every other one. Usually twice, once at home and once away to compensate for the perceived “home” advantage, but any number of times is fair. Not in this system, oh no.

In order to make money, another “random” but seeded match would be added - meaning that each team would play 18 teams twice, and one three times.

“What effect could that have on promotion and relegation issues? Are we going to see local derbies played in a foreign country thousands of miles away? Are supporters supposed to accept missing on the biggest games of their season because it’s being played on the other side of the planet?” Football Supporters’ Federation Chairman Malcolm Clarke (quote found on Pitch Invasion)

David Gold - if the Blues are in the Premier League when this is implemented that’s the day that thousands of the fan will finally give up on a competition that we not only have hardly a hope of winning but that isn’t fair any more.

I think you’ll find that that will be less money overall you grasping bastards.