:: gia’s blog ::

You know, it’s rather difficult to blog when my days are filled either with work stuff that no one else is really very interested in or private stuff that I’m not about to share with the world. I do use Twitter a lot because most of the public stuff going on in my mind/life is basically a sentence worth of information at a time… but I just wanted to say here: I’m still alive. :)

My doctor gave me an inhaler today. I’ve had a few random asthma attacks this year and though I’ve been able to get through them by remaining calm and relaxed, I was worried that if I had an asthma attack that was just slightly worse, I’d might not be able to handle it. I had one the other night at Brian’s that really wiped me out.

I met up with a friend of mine this evening who used to live in London, but moved back to Canada about 6 years ago. She said when she lived here she had asthma attacks, but hasn’t had one since she moved away. She said she thought it was the pollution. I thought it was pollution combined with growing up in another country and not having immunity to the pollens here.

It’s all a bit rubbish to be honest. Maybe I’ll have to move out of London.
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What I love about coming to conferences is that I sometimes get to meet people who have done things I love. Now, I’ve never been one to admire people from afar. I always tell them. Life’s too short not to. I have no embarrassment whatsoever in gushing to someone about their work. Sometimes I think people are a bit weirded out by it.

Last night, I was sooooo happy to be able to tell Chris Riley that I LOVED (lovedlovedloved) his film. I saw him across the room, left Brian and basically interrupted a conversation he was having (sorry) to dork out. Brian then came over and we talked The Apollo Moon Missions for ages.
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Here’s a bit of what I was up to last night.

This really is an excellent video by Lyle that truly shows the brilliance of The X-Files. This is what every week watching the X-Files felt like to me…

But, man, after all that… I wonder what Mulder and Scully are up to now…? ;)

This morning on Twitter, I started out with a conversation about a great blog post about how PR agencies don’t seem to get ‘online’, then segued into a short discussion about the differences between blogging and journalism (very basically, I think that bloggers haven’t done themselves any favours by continuing to operate without a ‘code of ethics’. Suw pointed out that the problem may simply be with *people* rather than journos or bloggers. Tom and I agreed with her. Hurrah! People are crap!). It ended with a discussion based on one sentence I wrote:

“Everyone thinks they have a right to be listened to…”

I was asked, “Doesn’t everyone have a right to be listened to?”

My answer, “Nope. Everyone has the right to SAY what they want. They don’t have the right to be listened to….There is a very, very big difference and some people don’t get it.” And then we went on for another 20 minutes trying to have a nuanced conversation two sentences at a time.

Maybe it’s an unfashionable thing to say. Maybe it doesn’t fit within a certain mindset. Maybe it’s wrong. I don’t know, but I’m going to expand my thoughts about this much more than 140 characters per post on Twitter allowed me to.

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I met loads of people at the LA Film Festival last night. It was remarkable how many people there came up to me to say, ‘Hey! You’re the one who got the X-Files script on YouTube!’ I had a tiny taster of what it must be like to be a WebCleb. :)

A few people asked for my email address, which, of course, I gave out. Today I got something totally cool in the mail. I’ve got no idea who it’s from cos they didn’t have a name other than ‘X’.

I just thought it was so cool I wanted to put it up! I love seeing the X-Files done in a different style!

(You can click through for a bigger version)

When I get some time, I might try doing an X-Files movie poster, too! Haha!

I’ve been pinged for a ‘green meme’ in a blog post entitled ‘The Greenscam Part II’. I’m supposed to “write about the ways in which [I’m] consciously “green”, and also the things [I] know [I] should do in a more ecologically friendly way but don’t.”

First, what I find interesting is how being green has become fashionable. Bruce Sterling’s ‘Viridian Manifesto‘, which when I read it was one of of those ‘wow!’ moments, was the first time I ever heard anyone say that being ‘green’ required the wealthy to find it a desirable way to live. He suggested that energy meters needed to be seen as ‘luxurious’, solar and wind power should be sold at a premium to only those who can afford it and that ‘fouling the air’ when we turn on a light “should be considered the stigma of the crass proletarian”. (When I met Bruce Sterling at LIFT a couple years ago, I told him how important the Viridian Manifesto was to me. A year after that, he and I talked about nuclear power for which he is a supporter, albeit a reluctant one.)

I’m not new to the whole environmental thing, which is why when I’ve been attacked and talked to like an idiot by people when talking about green issues it really makes me angry. It also makes me angry when people who hardly know me, and certainly don’t listen to me, claim that I have ‘entrenched beliefs’ because I support nuclear power. Actually, I’ve been told that when you look in the dictionary for ‘un-entrenched beliefs’ there’s just a picture of me there. I’ve not seen that myself, but it sounds right. I am ALL ABOUT questioning ‘beliefs’ which means that my views change. I allow them to change based on facts and information I learn. What I don’t do is blindly follow something I heard 30 years ago, continue to believe it without question and only look to other believers for information which validates my belief. That’s “religion”. [Read more]