HELLO!
Finally, after 30 months of successful evasion, covid finally got me – whilst I don’t think it’s likely to prove fatal, it turns out that it really does fcuk with my ability to concentrate for 6 hours whilst writing several thousand words about stuff on the internet (also, I physically couldn’t get out of bed at 6am today to write the fcuking thing – hear that? the sound of literally NO VIOLINS, right there).
So there’s no Curios this week – SORRY! – but I imagine that, what with the new Taylor Swift album, and all the news and stuff, you’ve probably got quite enough to keep you occupied.
On the offchance, though, that you’re DESPERATE for links, here are a few from what would have been this week’s selection. See? Even when I am AT DEATH’S DOOR I still care.
- This is Doom, but made using the little Pico-8 in-browser games system and it is really, really impressive
- This is an ‘Escape The Room’ game; I can’t tell whether it’s really hard or whether it’s the illness making me particularly thick, but this took me fcuking AGES
- I don’t normally feature stuff like this, but I was captivated by this state-by-state list of the oddest roadside attractions across America and it almost made me want to learn to drive so I could do a roadtrip and see them all
- This is a longread about the increasing obsession with the ‘craft’ of literature, and whether it’s having a deleterious effect on things like ‘plot’ – I featured another essay on a similar topic at the beginning of the year, I think, but this is a nice addition to it (and some of the writing is excellent)
- You’ve probably seen this being lauded, but if you’ve yet to read it then Imogen West-Knight’s article about her experience of going on a cruise for fan’s of the novel Gone Girl is as fun as everyone says it is (although, no shade, all of these cruise pieces are so obviously written in the shadow of DFW that they all ought to carry some sort of disclaimer and probably use extensive footnotes)
- In the week of the BBC’s first centenary, this is an extract from a never-published book by Adam Macqueen dealing with the Corporation’s history. It’s images of pages rather than HTML, so might be unwieldy on mobile, but I promise you it is SO GOOD and contains SO MANY great stories about what it’s like starting a national broadcaster. Also, the detail that Lord Reith (as he became) was 34 years old and ‘knew nothing of broadcasting’ when he was appointed Head of the BBC in 1922 is just wonderful. Can we start choosing Prime Ministers on that basis? It seems unlikely to be less successful than the current system
There you go. Links. EVEN WHEN I AM SICK. I’m like the Stakhanov of pointless webmongery.
Anyway, I hope that normal service will be resumed next Friday – til then, thanks for your patience and apologies for the reduced service (and please, if you preferred this shortened format to the standard logorrhoea, PLEASE KEEP IT TO YOURSELF).
BYE I LOVE YOU BYE!