While idly skimming through my grandmother's copy of today's paper, I noticed I was quoted in an article about how socialising on the internet isn't at all geeky, oh no, it is what all the well-dressed people are doing these days.
(I don't really count myself among the nation's well dressed. One clue to my lack of sartorial elegance was when my colleagues at my former place of employment elected to enter me for What Not To Wear, and another surfaced just this morning, when my grandmother looked me up and down for a long time and finally said, 'do you *always* wear such drab colours, dear?')
But the best thing about today's meeja outing is that I was reunited on the printed page once more with my old sparring partner, Dr Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University.
Dr Griffiths and I have been locked in philosophical battle on the printed page almost since before this blog began. We've clashed in the Guardian over whether girls are any good at computer games (I said yes; he said no), and we've clashed in Essentials magazine about whether blogging is good for you (I said yes, although bizarrely the magazine quoted me as saying it wasn't; he said blogging was for saddo no-lifers), and today we were reunited to debate whether online social networking is a good thing. I said yes, and he said...yes.
I reckon that makes it Patroclus 2, Dr Mark Griffiths 0, on aggregate.
Until next time, Dr G.
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10 comments:
Very interesting Patroclus, I didn't realise you were a celebrity.
What paper were you in yesterday? What was the article called? I would like to have a gander.
Also when where you in the Guardian? Both links in your article point to your 'essentials' outing...
Patroclus is the Jeremy Paxman of the blonky world.
Patroclus isn't 'a celebrity'. That implies that she goes on TV shows with the word 'celebrity' in the title. (I can't think of any more apt explanation.)
She is 'an authority'. That's a bit like being a celebrity, but you're allowed to use words of more than two syllables. And you go on shows with Andrew Marr and stuff.
James: well spotted re. the links, I have changed the Guardian one now. Although I'm afraid it still links to this blog, because the original Guardian spat (via a series of letters on the letters pages) is no longer online. It must have been back in 2001 or 2002 sometime. Details of yesterday's outing have been left deliberately vague because I like keeping the real me separate from Patroclus, for fear that the real me would spoil Patroclus's fun.
Annie: I like to think of myself as the Gillian Anderson of the blonky world. Except that gingerness is something I can (and do) only aspire to.
Tim: Andrew Marr would wipe the floor with me in seconds. I'm not a very good authority, although the fact that I wrote my MA dissertation about blogging seems to have turned me into one, as far as the meeja is concerned. MA dissertations about blogging will be two a penny this time next year, and my fifteen minutes of obscure 'celebrity' will be over.
I kick arse at Diablo. I was also very good at Boulderdash in the 80's, and Donkey Kong in the 90's.
I just needed to get that out.
I got new glasses this week and I used to think your location was a sort of joke that said London G8. But it says GB. Makes more sense, I suppose.
*officially challenges Patroclus to a Super Monkey Ball duel on the office Wii next week*
I went to Nottingham Trent, and we used to love the irony that the university had it's own much-quoted "expert" on gambling in the form of Dr Mark Griffiths, and that our boss at the student union was also called Mark Griffiths and had an addition to fruit machines. If only we could have got our boss interviewed on his views instead of Dr Mark Griffiths...
That should be "its" and "addiction" obviously. What a fine advert I am for Trent...
I'm rubbish at computer games.
Justine: I think you should send Dr Griffiths a letter to point all that out.
A friend of one of my exes' was one of the developers on Donkey Kong. I thought this was unbelievably glamorous, until I met him, and he turned out to live at home with his mum, and used to drive a Lotus Esprit round Nuneaton attempting to pick up women at cashpoints.
LC: Er, well, um, I only really do Tomb Raider and unfashionable adventure games. I love unfashionable adventure games, especially any ones that have the Templars as an underlying theme. They don't make them any more, though, sadly.
Kellycat: How is it that Dr Mark Griffiths manages to get quoted in every single media article about everything? He must do nothing but press interviews.
Billy: I've never surpassed my heyday of excellence at Luna Crabs on the Spectrum. It's been all downhill since then.
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