The state of the onion address

As regular visitors to this site may have noticed, there haven't been as many updates of late as previously. In part, this is because I have been very busy with work. But I've also had some issues with the site and over my direction with it.

You might have noticed that the Google adverts, which used to bring in a little bit of money for hosting etc, have disappeared. This is because Google objected to their being reviews of pornographic films on the site. I stated my position, they stated theirs, and I tried to remove the relevant code from the offending pages. Evidently it didn't do what was needed, hence no more Adwords. I could complain about seeing a number of other sites, whose raison d'etre seems to be pornographic content, that have Google ads on them, or the fact that many people will undoubtedly use Google itself to find porn, but why bother…

There was also something I read which struck a chord: in his autobiographical introduction to Lotte Eisner's book, Fritz Lang comments on his position in relation to film reviews. It's not just that he didn't accept the bad reviews, as the product of a journalist in a hurry, but also the good: "And if I cannot accept a bad review, then, equally, I must not accept a good review." This inclines me towards trying to do longer, more considered pieces…

But not until after the EIFF, which is starting in a week. Though as part of my general malaise, I'm not really that enthusiastic about it. Here's hoping that improves.