RageBoy points us to an article by Henry Jenkins (let's all use his name) that should tickle all bloggers right down to their, well, shoelaces, if we were wearing shoes. It builds nicely off my previous, now pre-historic post, which points an older article that puts words around the journalistic chasm that bloggers are now bridging.
Oh joyous noise. We are making such joyous noise.
Henry Jenkins writes: "Broadcasting will place issues on the national agenda and define core values; bloggers will reframe those issues for different publics and ensure that everyone has a chance to be heard."
See, we are Fixing the World!
I feel like I will sleep like a baby tonight. Why? I don't know. Some unnamable burden has just slipped of my shoulders. I wish I knew what it was so I could really enjoy it.
March 13, 2002
Journalists Are Fixing the World, Bloggers Are Fixing the World
Over on the Cluetrain List, one discussion is revolving around Marek's and Ann C's posts on the broken state of our world. I'm not so sure how broken it is considering RageBoy woke up happy this day. But I wanted to point to a 1997 Columbia Journalism Review article that shows some optimism for the world, and maybe even predicts our part in making it better--us, the bloggers.
The author, Mike Hoyt, says journalists play a key role in fixing the world, making it right again. I think his thoughts, which could be dated, aren't. In fact, they speak as much about the power of bloggers as they do traditional journalists. For example, Hoyt says:
"Why these tales lifted me, I think, is that they are molecules of affirmation of some connection between journalism and generosity. It's not that journalists are selfless, God knows, or that they need a tour of duty in Calcutta. But the best of them, the ones you remember the day after next, tend to be people who want to fix the world. They run on the usual fuel mix - ambition, curiosity, anger, whatever - but like the best cops or doctors, the best journalists also have a strong urge to make things better, to heal some wounds and wound some heels. This is not discussed. It might be considered naive by the wise sophisticates. But at a time when journalism's worst qualities are paraded and discussed everywhere, why be embarrassed about this one?"
Right. Right. And Right again. Hoyt points to that oft-demanded journalistic "objectivity" as one reason why the good journalists aren't given their props on trying--sometimes at great personal peril--to make things better. And Hoyt goes on, almost prophetically, to set the stage for blogging, for the state of the world in 2002, in his last paragraph:
"One student - a compelling writer and a dogged reporter - asked me in an moment of insecurity whether I thought she would ever find a corner in today's media world to do the kind of work she wants to do, which is to dive into some of the knottiest problems society has to offer and write lively and clearly and at some length about them. I told her yes you will. That's my leap of faith."
The best bloggers--the ones I compare to streakers and flashers in a post below--draw me in, as I said, because they expose. They expose something personal or something universal. Something incredibly just or unjust. Something perplexing or reassuring. And they are always interesting. I think blogging can fix things, is fixing things. With dialog, conversation, concern, and the emergence of understanding all things are possible. I only hope we're not too late.
The author, Mike Hoyt, says journalists play a key role in fixing the world, making it right again. I think his thoughts, which could be dated, aren't. In fact, they speak as much about the power of bloggers as they do traditional journalists. For example, Hoyt says:
"Why these tales lifted me, I think, is that they are molecules of affirmation of some connection between journalism and generosity. It's not that journalists are selfless, God knows, or that they need a tour of duty in Calcutta. But the best of them, the ones you remember the day after next, tend to be people who want to fix the world. They run on the usual fuel mix - ambition, curiosity, anger, whatever - but like the best cops or doctors, the best journalists also have a strong urge to make things better, to heal some wounds and wound some heels. This is not discussed. It might be considered naive by the wise sophisticates. But at a time when journalism's worst qualities are paraded and discussed everywhere, why be embarrassed about this one?"
Right. Right. And Right again. Hoyt points to that oft-demanded journalistic "objectivity" as one reason why the good journalists aren't given their props on trying--sometimes at great personal peril--to make things better. And Hoyt goes on, almost prophetically, to set the stage for blogging, for the state of the world in 2002, in his last paragraph:
"One student - a compelling writer and a dogged reporter - asked me in an moment of insecurity whether I thought she would ever find a corner in today's media world to do the kind of work she wants to do, which is to dive into some of the knottiest problems society has to offer and write lively and clearly and at some length about them. I told her yes you will. That's my leap of faith."
The best bloggers--the ones I compare to streakers and flashers in a post below--draw me in, as I said, because they expose. They expose something personal or something universal. Something incredibly just or unjust. Something perplexing or reassuring. And they are always interesting. I think blogging can fix things, is fixing things. With dialog, conversation, concern, and the emergence of understanding all things are possible. I only hope we're not too late.
God gets a bum rap
Sorrow begets many questions. And mostly, we direct them at God.
Raised Catholic (I am not now), I was lectured to frequently in school about how brave Job was. How stoic. He was a role model. He never questioned God. Right we all said. Like Job, I'd Like to Be Like Job. We shouldn't question or wonder why God threw Job these challenges.
One day, recently, I read the Biblical account of Job for myself. Holy cow, thought I. Contrary to what I had been taught, I saw that Job was all about questioning, all about asking "Why me?" In fact, that Job was almost whiny.
Many faiths, too simplified, too much interpretated for the benefit of the interpretors.
And in many of our interpretations, God sure gets a bum rap.
Our world is a battleground of diametrically opposed forces. Human nature? Scientific? Mathematic? Archetypal? God vs. Satan? However you look at it, with good comes evil, with sorrow comes joy, with the bloggies come the anti-bloggies. Why don't we see this when it comes to God? Why do we assume that the loving and innocent who die, those who are murdered, war among the axes of evil and good, are all His doing? I say, cut God some slack.
When my father died I was 5. He was just 36. Did he deserve the agony of pancreatic cancer? No. To miss his children growing up? No. He was a very gentle and good man. Yet, as it was explained to me in the only way my family could muster, my father was needed in heaven. God apparently had an important job for him. Since my father was a bassist and grocer, I couldn't imagine what God needed my father "up there" to do. But I thought about it a lot. Sometimes it even made me laugh.
Even so, I don't hold God accountable. When my cat was stolen and never found, didn't even occur to me to charge God with the crime. When my dumb dog choked my smart, sweet dog to death with a choke chain, God didn't even pop into my mind. When I almost lost my own life, I prayed a lot for God's help, but I didn't ever think He was the reason I was where I was.
With absolute good and absolute justice comes the antithesis--one that isn't as comfortable to ponder or as easy to explain away. I'll leave it at that. AKMA is a lot better at this than I am.
Raised Catholic (I am not now), I was lectured to frequently in school about how brave Job was. How stoic. He was a role model. He never questioned God. Right we all said. Like Job, I'd Like to Be Like Job. We shouldn't question or wonder why God threw Job these challenges.
One day, recently, I read the Biblical account of Job for myself. Holy cow, thought I. Contrary to what I had been taught, I saw that Job was all about questioning, all about asking "Why me?" In fact, that Job was almost whiny.
Many faiths, too simplified, too much interpretated for the benefit of the interpretors.
And in many of our interpretations, God sure gets a bum rap.
Our world is a battleground of diametrically opposed forces. Human nature? Scientific? Mathematic? Archetypal? God vs. Satan? However you look at it, with good comes evil, with sorrow comes joy, with the bloggies come the anti-bloggies. Why don't we see this when it comes to God? Why do we assume that the loving and innocent who die, those who are murdered, war among the axes of evil and good, are all His doing? I say, cut God some slack.
When my father died I was 5. He was just 36. Did he deserve the agony of pancreatic cancer? No. To miss his children growing up? No. He was a very gentle and good man. Yet, as it was explained to me in the only way my family could muster, my father was needed in heaven. God apparently had an important job for him. Since my father was a bassist and grocer, I couldn't imagine what God needed my father "up there" to do. But I thought about it a lot. Sometimes it even made me laugh.
Even so, I don't hold God accountable. When my cat was stolen and never found, didn't even occur to me to charge God with the crime. When my dumb dog choked my smart, sweet dog to death with a choke chain, God didn't even pop into my mind. When I almost lost my own life, I prayed a lot for God's help, but I didn't ever think He was the reason I was where I was.
With absolute good and absolute justice comes the antithesis--one that isn't as comfortable to ponder or as easy to explain away. I'll leave it at that. AKMA is a lot better at this than I am.
Did ya see that???
Wow, while Blogger goes all goofy on us, YACCS went and added a funky new feature that lets you link to specific comments... Suddenly a percusionist has joined our universal blogging band--think of the tunes we can play now. Holy-take-blogging-up-a-notch batman. Just right click on the number now associated with the comment and copy that address into your post like any other link. Like this. Super Groovy. At how many levels can we converse before we implode? I think maybe six more. I can't wait to go scout around for good comments now.
March 12, 2002
i must go to bed
I appologize to all my team blogs, and I hardly knew where to post this because I'm wrapped up in so many blogs, so I thought I'd post it here. I have two posts waiting--one by Tom Sugart on Gonzo Engaged and one on by Val Elchuk on Blog Sisters that are really interesting and that I want to respond to, but I'm too tired. So consider them bookmarked. Blogger friends, respond to them for me if you are awake in your respective parts of the world.
Also, big fricking revelation to me thanks to a comment left by Phil Ringnalda who lives here. He pointed me to a Blogger FAQ, and did you know that to get the proper link for a post you're looking to link to (compared to what I've been doing with my own posts, which is clicking on them and copying the link from the browser address line, which usually only gives me the right week, not the specific post I'm trying to link to), you can just right click on the link (be it "permalink" or the "time" or "date/time") and go to properties, and you'll find the address to the exact, specific, real live post right there? Also, there's a bit of code you can put in your template to make your post links work like post links and not links to some week somewhere in the vicinity of the post. Crap I'm tired.
So thanks again Phil! (One problem though--it didn't work when I did that with gonzo engaged and copied it in. so crap. but anyway, Phil notes a good FAQ down in one of my comment boxes you should look at. Don't take my word for any of this. I can barely post these days.)
Good night.
And RageBoy, wake up. I need an EGR send.
Also, big fricking revelation to me thanks to a comment left by Phil Ringnalda who lives here. He pointed me to a Blogger FAQ, and did you know that to get the proper link for a post you're looking to link to (compared to what I've been doing with my own posts, which is clicking on them and copying the link from the browser address line, which usually only gives me the right week, not the specific post I'm trying to link to), you can just right click on the link (be it "permalink" or the "time" or "date/time") and go to properties, and you'll find the address to the exact, specific, real live post right there? Also, there's a bit of code you can put in your template to make your post links work like post links and not links to some week somewhere in the vicinity of the post. Crap I'm tired.
So thanks again Phil! (One problem though--it didn't work when I did that with gonzo engaged and copied it in. so crap. but anyway, Phil notes a good FAQ down in one of my comment boxes you should look at. Don't take my word for any of this. I can barely post these days.)
Good night.
And RageBoy, wake up. I need an EGR send.
March 11, 2002
Southern Exposure
Why is it that the blog posts I like best are those like Mike Golby's of the other night? What draws me to bloggers that are willing to show me how and where they live? What they really believe?
The answer that came to me just this evening is "exposure."
Open your trench coat, show me what you've got. Give me a reason to look, a reason to care, a reason to come back. Give me a laugh, a tear, or rifle my feathers; the only way you are going to do that is if I know you are real. If you expose yourself to me. Let your guard down. Open up.
In one sense, we bloggers are online streakers. We expose ourselves to whatever crowd we imagine is gathered, and we do it because it is exhilerating, freeing, fun, and I think, healing. We also do it because we can.
Doris McIlwain, a lecturer in Psychology at Macquarie University, describes the appeal of streaking: "The streaker is breaking a taboo, and the shock of that is what makes us laugh. Nudity is a great leveller in a way. The streak itself is a form of protest as well as fun; it's usually a challenge or a dare. It's also about power: 'I can do this and no-one can stop me'."
And no one can stop us.
Obviously, though, we aren't exposing our flesh like the streaker, or even the more compelled flasher. So what are we disclosing here on the net? What are we showing the crowd if not our bodies, the family jewels?
Perhaps we are revealing our souls.
Charles Hayes begins his article A Materialist Notion of Soul and Spirituatlity with this:
"In a recent television interview best-selling author Tom Wolfe suggested that soul is the sum of one’s human relations. This struck me as a very profound statement and as a big surprise, coming from Wolfe. Still, it seems right, although the notion needs to be greatly expanded. It’s useful to think of soul not just as the metaphoric sum of one’s human relations but as a model applicable to all relations. In other words, we can think of soul as the sum of relating to people and to everything and anything one can relate to. This way, a person’s life can be thought of as a project, as a work in progress, a spark in a dark void, something worth doing, a life worth living."
Well it struck me too, Tom Wolfe's little suggestion. The soul, the sum one's human relations. Human relations encompassing online relations as well as realworld relations. The way Hayes carries Wolfe's notion along--proposing that the soul is the "sum of relating to people and to everything and anything one can relate to"--is also relevant to blogging, isn't it? The sum of the blog universe is just this: relating to people and to everything and anything we can relate to.
If we are streakers, daring to display our souls instead of our flesh, that does not mean that all posts must expose as fully or dramatically as Mike's did? Surely, the net would collapse under the emotional strain of millions of posts like this one. Exposure does not always have to look sombre--it can be funny, it can be outrageous, it can be many things. Universally, though, it is always interesting. We are the streakers of the net, compelled by an overwhelming need to expose, disrupt, and elicit a reaction from the crowd. We are removing our masks, revealing ourselves, to anyone who will watch.
No wonder it's so damn much fun.
The answer that came to me just this evening is "exposure."
Open your trench coat, show me what you've got. Give me a reason to look, a reason to care, a reason to come back. Give me a laugh, a tear, or rifle my feathers; the only way you are going to do that is if I know you are real. If you expose yourself to me. Let your guard down. Open up.
In one sense, we bloggers are online streakers. We expose ourselves to whatever crowd we imagine is gathered, and we do it because it is exhilerating, freeing, fun, and I think, healing. We also do it because we can.
Doris McIlwain, a lecturer in Psychology at Macquarie University, describes the appeal of streaking: "The streaker is breaking a taboo, and the shock of that is what makes us laugh. Nudity is a great leveller in a way. The streak itself is a form of protest as well as fun; it's usually a challenge or a dare. It's also about power: 'I can do this and no-one can stop me'."
And no one can stop us.
Obviously, though, we aren't exposing our flesh like the streaker, or even the more compelled flasher. So what are we disclosing here on the net? What are we showing the crowd if not our bodies, the family jewels?
Perhaps we are revealing our souls.
Charles Hayes begins his article A Materialist Notion of Soul and Spirituatlity with this:
"In a recent television interview best-selling author Tom Wolfe suggested that soul is the sum of one’s human relations. This struck me as a very profound statement and as a big surprise, coming from Wolfe. Still, it seems right, although the notion needs to be greatly expanded. It’s useful to think of soul not just as the metaphoric sum of one’s human relations but as a model applicable to all relations. In other words, we can think of soul as the sum of relating to people and to everything and anything one can relate to. This way, a person’s life can be thought of as a project, as a work in progress, a spark in a dark void, something worth doing, a life worth living."
Well it struck me too, Tom Wolfe's little suggestion. The soul, the sum one's human relations. Human relations encompassing online relations as well as realworld relations. The way Hayes carries Wolfe's notion along--proposing that the soul is the "sum of relating to people and to everything and anything one can relate to"--is also relevant to blogging, isn't it? The sum of the blog universe is just this: relating to people and to everything and anything we can relate to.
If we are streakers, daring to display our souls instead of our flesh, that does not mean that all posts must expose as fully or dramatically as Mike's did? Surely, the net would collapse under the emotional strain of millions of posts like this one. Exposure does not always have to look sombre--it can be funny, it can be outrageous, it can be many things. Universally, though, it is always interesting. We are the streakers of the net, compelled by an overwhelming need to expose, disrupt, and elicit a reaction from the crowd. We are removing our masks, revealing ourselves, to anyone who will watch.
No wonder it's so damn much fun.
Peter Pan Propaganda. And other thoughts.
I've taken to blogging in Notepad. Yes, it's come to this. Blogger has been completely unreliable since the last upgrade, and it wasn't so hot before that, oh say, for the last four weeks. Or, ever since I paid for it. I am finding this to be more and more true as a life rule. It's like those couples who live together for a thousand years before they get married, and then they get married and six months later you hear they're divorced. Go figure.
Just got back from seeing Return to Neverland the sequel to Peter Pan. Our daughter begged us, and my husband and I said okay fine, the popcorn and candy will make it worth while. I meant to bring Stupid White Men (the book, not acutal stupid white men) so I could sneak in a couple of chapters when the lighting would allow, but I forgot it. So I was stuck watching the movie, which was mostly bad. The beginning was, well, wartime propaganda? I'm trying to figure out if they came up with this shlock pre or post 9-11. I have my guess when the dramatic opening scene popped into their heads.
It opens in London with what I think was WW2 hot and underway, bombs falling, air raid sirens blaring, father leaving for the War, and frightened "Jane" trying to make her way home to Wendy, Jane's mother the heroine of PP1. Lights go out in the windows of the houses still standing amid the destruction of previous bomb blasts, and, after what's left of the family emerges from the bomb shelter in their back yard, an official goes door to door announcing that all the children of London are being taken to the country, away from danger and their families, to wait out the war.
For crying out loud. Okay? My daughter's four. I thought this was all about pixie dust.
But of course, everyone's willing to do their part for the War Effort--that axis of evil has existed for a really long time; different players, same deal--and our Wendy prepares
to tell her daughter she'll be the one looking after her little brother in whatever camp they're taking all the children to. At this point Wendy falls fast asleep and has an Ecstacy-induced dream where she straddles the back of Peter Pan, who flies her around Neverland before taking her to his crib, where she sits on his bed and meets all the boys who hang there.
And so it goes. There were probably six or so kids in the theater (it's not pulling them in in droves, in other words), and I heard a few crying, but none laughing. Everything turns out alright in the end (this is Disney), but only after Tinkerbell almost dies.
Skip it if you want my advice. Especially if you're looking for an uplifting fairy tale. Go see Snow Dogs instead. At least you'll chuckle.
Just got back from seeing Return to Neverland the sequel to Peter Pan. Our daughter begged us, and my husband and I said okay fine, the popcorn and candy will make it worth while. I meant to bring Stupid White Men (the book, not acutal stupid white men) so I could sneak in a couple of chapters when the lighting would allow, but I forgot it. So I was stuck watching the movie, which was mostly bad. The beginning was, well, wartime propaganda? I'm trying to figure out if they came up with this shlock pre or post 9-11. I have my guess when the dramatic opening scene popped into their heads.
It opens in London with what I think was WW2 hot and underway, bombs falling, air raid sirens blaring, father leaving for the War, and frightened "Jane" trying to make her way home to Wendy, Jane's mother the heroine of PP1. Lights go out in the windows of the houses still standing amid the destruction of previous bomb blasts, and, after what's left of the family emerges from the bomb shelter in their back yard, an official goes door to door announcing that all the children of London are being taken to the country, away from danger and their families, to wait out the war.
For crying out loud. Okay? My daughter's four. I thought this was all about pixie dust.
But of course, everyone's willing to do their part for the War Effort--that axis of evil has existed for a really long time; different players, same deal--and our Wendy prepares
to tell her daughter she'll be the one looking after her little brother in whatever camp they're taking all the children to. At this point Wendy falls fast asleep and has an Ecstacy-induced dream where she straddles the back of Peter Pan, who flies her around Neverland before taking her to his crib, where she sits on his bed and meets all the boys who hang there.
And so it goes. There were probably six or so kids in the theater (it's not pulling them in in droves, in other words), and I heard a few crying, but none laughing. Everything turns out alright in the end (this is Disney), but only after Tinkerbell almost dies.
Skip it if you want my advice. Especially if you're looking for an uplifting fairy tale. Go see Snow Dogs instead. At least you'll chuckle.
Blogger is sucking lately
I can see my blog, but I can't post. Or I can post, but I can't see my post. I've taken to blogging in other bloggers' comment boxes. I didn't feel as badly about it when it was free. Now I'm actually getting pissed. Not to mention, there's nothing much new to read since most of my blog-buddies are on Blogger too. But thank God for Doc and David and Kent. I'm not thanking God for RageBoy because he hasn't blogged since Friday. But I'm gonna start using his comment boxes to blog in if he's not going to be using his blog for the good of mankind.
Okay, now let's see if this fucknozzle posts.
Okay, now let's see if this fucknozzle posts.
An example of blogging at its best
A post I almost missed is this one by Mike Golby. This single post is a tribute to so many things, I'm not sure I can wrap words around it that capture its essense or beauty. Read it. Bathe in it. Let it wound you, and maybe, if only for the time it takes you to read it, heal you.
This is blogging at its best--the convergence of the personal and the universal. Blogging done right unleashes truths, putting type-to-screen and hyperlinking it across our webbed universe. Although these truths we share would be easier, though not better, left buried, the blog lets us share, discover, dress our wounds in public, and ready ourselves for another day of battle with the imperfections of the real world.
This is blogging at its best--the convergence of the personal and the universal. Blogging done right unleashes truths, putting type-to-screen and hyperlinking it across our webbed universe. Although these truths we share would be easier, though not better, left buried, the blog lets us share, discover, dress our wounds in public, and ready ourselves for another day of battle with the imperfections of the real world.
Doc, live at the scene
Those of us who checked in on Doc's blog last night were treated to a real-time report of the SXSW award show, complete with winners, losers, and Doc's valiant and humorous attempt to keep up with the action, especially given his failing batteries. Absolutely fab--it was almost like being there.
I can't wait to hear more about what a Fray is--Doc describes it as live blogging, which sounds to me really cool. I imagine a bunch of bloggers in the room vibing real time off of one another's posts, but I have no idea if that's what it is.
Doc also touches on the notion that blogging may already be uncool. As long as search engines like google and yahoo and daypop continue to track bloggers, the proof is in the pudding. Four months ago google brought up 1 search result on my name. Today, that number is 3,600. That can't happen with a Web site. It's all about the linking, the conversations, the repercussions, and the resonance. It may be uncool for the too cool, but for the rest of us, it's just cool enough.
Can't wait to hear more about Doc's adventure and his perceptions when he returns.
I can't wait to hear more about what a Fray is--Doc describes it as live blogging, which sounds to me really cool. I imagine a bunch of bloggers in the room vibing real time off of one another's posts, but I have no idea if that's what it is.
Doc also touches on the notion that blogging may already be uncool. As long as search engines like google and yahoo and daypop continue to track bloggers, the proof is in the pudding. Four months ago google brought up 1 search result on my name. Today, that number is 3,600. That can't happen with a Web site. It's all about the linking, the conversations, the repercussions, and the resonance. It may be uncool for the too cool, but for the rest of us, it's just cool enough.
Can't wait to hear more about Doc's adventure and his perceptions when he returns.
March 10, 2002
I'm adding this one to my blogroll
Thanks Denise Howell for this terrific blog resource called Law Meme, where Yale Law School students blog about current legal issues.
Oh, so this is conkers
Mike Golby tells us more about what Conkers is, how you play it, why we should care, and then discusses the cultural implications of this child's game in his usualy witty way, which wanders in and about the subject at hand:
"The Brits will skewer anything given half a chance. They've been doing it for centuries and nothing and nobody is considered sacred (if you've seen 'Braveheart', you've seen the British - the place hasn't changed a bit). They will skewer the Church, the Queen, and Prince Harry the Potter. Their press is currently skewer-in-chief and is said to enjoy Prince Phillip's particular favor. He had the media moguls do the job on that Diana woman. When it comes to their sporting heroes, the media are particularly vicious. "Pathetic", "crushed", "humiliation", and similar words are reserved for reports on sporting events in which they take part."
Mike, you're a bloggers' blogger.
"The Brits will skewer anything given half a chance. They've been doing it for centuries and nothing and nobody is considered sacred (if you've seen 'Braveheart', you've seen the British - the place hasn't changed a bit). They will skewer the Church, the Queen, and Prince Harry the Potter. Their press is currently skewer-in-chief and is said to enjoy Prince Phillip's particular favor. He had the media moguls do the job on that Diana woman. When it comes to their sporting heroes, the media are particularly vicious. "Pathetic", "crushed", "humiliation", and similar words are reserved for reports on sporting events in which they take part."
Mike, you're a bloggers' blogger.
In the hippie dippy tradition
The Hippie Brain Explosion will be fun to play with at the hotel, which I assume will have high-speed Internet access.
March 09, 2002
i laughed so hard I almost tossed my fish
This Fishrush guy is so damn funny. He's right. Hippy dippy is so 60s. Even if Dorkvac thinks we're creepy hippy dippy types, there's no reason why we should have to travel like hippy dippy types. Hell, I'm not sharing a room at the funny farm with any blogger I know. I'm stylin' when we scooter on Washington; that's why I'm buying the "Doc's March on Washington Package™"!
Hurry--space is limited!
Hurry--space is limited!
Tom Matrullo is my Morbid Ally
Someone was reading and is thinking ahead, like me. Tom takes this question of what will happen to our blogs, thoughts, dreams, logos, blogstickers and the like when we're gone? Call me a romantic, but I'm hoping my daughter will continue to pay the annual fee for sessum.com, at least until she gets married--I guess we need a son?--and will take over allied, maybe even blog sisters. Who know what gonzo engaged will have morphed into.
I am, at the very core, a morbid person. I stare at my father's baby grand, upright bass, my grandmother's antique record cabinet. In each of these things, especially because they are made of wood, a little piece of them remains. The indents of my father's fingers in the neck of the bass, the piano keys worn just so, the worn handle on the record cabinet where she opened and closed the door how many times?
I like having these things with me, but my thinking doesn't stop there, with the appreciation of what's been left with me. I think about my father's 1953 Fender electric bass and amp--one of the first off the line--and the only thing I have left of it is the receipt for $150.00. The bass, like many of my father's things, walked away with some pillager after his death.
My mind naturally wanders from these places to the things I've invested the most in--these digital instruments--and contemplates who might take care of them--or rip them off--when I'm gone.
I am, at the very core, a morbid person. I stare at my father's baby grand, upright bass, my grandmother's antique record cabinet. In each of these things, especially because they are made of wood, a little piece of them remains. The indents of my father's fingers in the neck of the bass, the piano keys worn just so, the worn handle on the record cabinet where she opened and closed the door how many times?
I like having these things with me, but my thinking doesn't stop there, with the appreciation of what's been left with me. I think about my father's 1953 Fender electric bass and amp--one of the first off the line--and the only thing I have left of it is the receipt for $150.00. The bass, like many of my father's things, walked away with some pillager after his death.
My mind naturally wanders from these places to the things I've invested the most in--these digital instruments--and contemplates who might take care of them--or rip them off--when I'm gone.
Team Blogs Morphing into Loosely Joined Organizations
Frank Paynter thinks I'm onto something with the blogs as organization of the future theory I posted down below. (Something's wrong with my links/archives. Linking to a past post seems to always go nowhere but the present post. I gotta fix it, but I don't know how. Anyway...) Frank's comment on that post is worth posting here, top level. Look what's already happening:
"I've been sick. But I've been listening. I recently cobbled together a demonstration of the wonders of bloggery for a client: four team blogs with overlapping memberships (three belonged to number four, one and two each had their own workspace but could see each other and comment... and like that). Instant Messaging was a second piece of this puzzle that I didn't demo for them, but loosely invoked as in ("plus you can have an AOL buddy list kind of thing...." They all got it.) So I'm with you on this. Blogs as collaborative workspace make a lotta sense. There are some security issues associated with IM that might make them an operations bad-dream, but the users need the function so we need to harden the implementation a little. Anyway. I gotta clean up my blog and get my Radio 8 working and like that, but I've been as down as you seem to have been with the mid-March blahs and a nasty flu. I hope to surface again as a witty and charming person soon."
Think of this, team blogs with overlapping members, much like what is happening with me between Gonzo Engaged and Blogsisters (with female members anyway), and lately I've had all sorts of quantum leaps on the use of team blogs with any number of "organizational" themes, from writing to PR to mothering. Only thing stopping me is, like Frank, time and exhaustion. Things are bubbling up. Get ready to stir the pot or get burned.
"I've been sick. But I've been listening. I recently cobbled together a demonstration of the wonders of bloggery for a client: four team blogs with overlapping memberships (three belonged to number four, one and two each had their own workspace but could see each other and comment... and like that). Instant Messaging was a second piece of this puzzle that I didn't demo for them, but loosely invoked as in ("plus you can have an AOL buddy list kind of thing...." They all got it.) So I'm with you on this. Blogs as collaborative workspace make a lotta sense. There are some security issues associated with IM that might make them an operations bad-dream, but the users need the function so we need to harden the implementation a little. Anyway. I gotta clean up my blog and get my Radio 8 working and like that, but I've been as down as you seem to have been with the mid-March blahs and a nasty flu. I hope to surface again as a witty and charming person soon."
Think of this, team blogs with overlapping members, much like what is happening with me between Gonzo Engaged and Blogsisters (with female members anyway), and lately I've had all sorts of quantum leaps on the use of team blogs with any number of "organizational" themes, from writing to PR to mothering. Only thing stopping me is, like Frank, time and exhaustion. Things are bubbling up. Get ready to stir the pot or get burned.
March 08, 2002
futureblog
Who will you will your blog to? Is your user name and password somewhere safe? Do team blogs need a co-administrator just in case? Or will your blog go with you here? Twenty, fifty years from now, how many blogs will memorialize and link to dead bloggers' blogs. Leap forward, then look backward. What do you see?
the pain within
is the pain within
there's no getting over
this pain I'm in.
Okay class, that was tonight's cat-in-the-hat for grownups. Ah. I need to work on this blog tomorrow, don't I? Funky february's still there, old books I'm done with. This blog's starting to look like our living room after a baby blogger painting fest. I wish I knew how to work those skins. tom is playing around with redesign. Is it worth it? I'm not sure yet. But this place sure needs some house cleanin'... like my life.
I'm blog jumping tonight, and torturing the bombast-bashing nerds over on slashdot. All in a day's work.
is the pain within
there's no getting over
this pain I'm in.
Okay class, that was tonight's cat-in-the-hat for grownups. Ah. I need to work on this blog tomorrow, don't I? Funky february's still there, old books I'm done with. This blog's starting to look like our living room after a baby blogger painting fest. I wish I knew how to work those skins. tom is playing around with redesign. Is it worth it? I'm not sure yet. But this place sure needs some house cleanin'... like my life.
I'm blog jumping tonight, and torturing the bombast-bashing nerds over on slashdot. All in a day's work.
Golby's on Fire
Mike Golby's latest on this obsession we call blogging:
"Playing conkers with words, smashing them together until the one breaks, dropping them as memes into containers or packets this side of the Web and my head and watching where they go. Weinberger opens us to the realization that space as a container does not apply on the Web. Time becomes that which we measure with a clock and space with a rod. Yet, because we live in the real world, our ideas seem to somehow conform to real-world values. So, on the Web I imagine packets of memes. I pop 'em in, send 'em out and see what happens. This place is eerily open to the most mind-bending phnomena, phenomena that have their origins in us."
Marvelous!
Mike, dictionary.com tells me a conker is "the inedible nutlike seed of the horse chestnut." So, what do you do with them, I mean, if you're not smashing them together. Or eating them, which, apparently, you can't.
"Playing conkers with words, smashing them together until the one breaks, dropping them as memes into containers or packets this side of the Web and my head and watching where they go. Weinberger opens us to the realization that space as a container does not apply on the Web. Time becomes that which we measure with a clock and space with a rod. Yet, because we live in the real world, our ideas seem to somehow conform to real-world values. So, on the Web I imagine packets of memes. I pop 'em in, send 'em out and see what happens. This place is eerily open to the most mind-bending phnomena, phenomena that have their origins in us."
Marvelous!
Mike, dictionary.com tells me a conker is "the inedible nutlike seed of the horse chestnut." So, what do you do with them, I mean, if you're not smashing them together. Or eating them, which, apparently, you can't.
Burn, Baby, Burn
Doc defines marketing in terms of the elements today in one of the most simplistic and inspiring uses of logic I've seen. He says:
"Somewhere back when Cluetrain was forming out of primordial conversations, I told Chris Locke my Theory of Marketing, the logic of which was slyly intended to scare potentially boring clients away from my consulting business. It went like this:
Markets are Conversations; and
Conversation is fire. Therefore,
Marketing is arson."
I suppose that's why I came away from my reading of Gonzo Marketing with this impression:
It's okay.
incite.
spark to flame.
ignite.
Why does fire seem such an appropriate metaphor for what we are doing right now, right here, on the net? The reasons are plentiful:
Conversations are as primeval as fire, one of the earliest discoveries of mankind.
Aren't we sending smoke signals to anyone who will listen?
Fire levels and clears, readying the land for fresh growth.
Fire evokes fear; those who handle it wrong will get burned.
What we are doing is hot, dangerous, exciting, thrilling, and romantic.
Fire is destructive, but what succumbs to its force is often rickety and unstable.
Enter the arsonist, who creeps through the night, explosive power under wraps, until, POW! The only way to wake up whitey....
The only way to lay business as usual to waste, clear the land, sweep away the debris.
We're burning and building right now.
Burning, building, and blogging.
Can't you hear the sirens?
Spark to flame, ignite.
"Somewhere back when Cluetrain was forming out of primordial conversations, I told Chris Locke my Theory of Marketing, the logic of which was slyly intended to scare potentially boring clients away from my consulting business. It went like this:
Conversation is fire. Therefore,
Marketing is arson."
I suppose that's why I came away from my reading of Gonzo Marketing with this impression:
incite.
spark to flame.
ignite.
Why does fire seem such an appropriate metaphor for what we are doing right now, right here, on the net? The reasons are plentiful:
Conversations are as primeval as fire, one of the earliest discoveries of mankind.
Aren't we sending smoke signals to anyone who will listen?
Fire levels and clears, readying the land for fresh growth.
Fire evokes fear; those who handle it wrong will get burned.
What we are doing is hot, dangerous, exciting, thrilling, and romantic.
Fire is destructive, but what succumbs to its force is often rickety and unstable.
Enter the arsonist, who creeps through the night, explosive power under wraps, until, POW! The only way to wake up whitey....
The only way to lay business as usual to waste, clear the land, sweep away the debris.
We're burning and building right now.
Burning, building, and blogging.
Can't you hear the sirens?
Spark to flame, ignite.
March 07, 2002
Team Blogs - The Organization of the Future?
I've been thinking lately about the team blogging movement, one I feel somewhat responsible for nurturing, if not launching. There weren't many when I started Reading Gonzo Engaged, at least not many like RGE. When I started the blog, it wasn't a team blog at all. Today we have more than a dozen members with a range of talents from marketing gonzo-style, to developers, to public speakers, to journalists and authors, and even a lawyer. We discuss meaningful issues about business, the economy, humanity, who's a fucknozzle and who's not.
Since RGE's beginnings, other team blogs have emerged--Blog Sisters, a spot for women bloggers to talk, engage, and become, and most recently Small Pieces and Non Zero, both team blogs to discuss books of the same name (and take it from there).
As I see these organic groups take form and congeal, I have started wondering if the team blog might not be an organizational model for the future--a bloggernization if you will. Gonzo Engaged the most mature of these team blogs in its sixth month, has all the makings of a really smart company. Denver Fletcher mentioned early in RGE's genesis, why not start our own thing. At the time, I thought, man I don't even have time to do what I'm doing, let alone think of how to turn this into a viable business. I'll just sit back and wait for the Gonzo prophecy to be fulfilled, when sponsors come knocking at our blog asking to underwrite and support us.
But maybe one of the iterations of blogs in business will look a bit different than the sponsorship and underwriting model, which I still believe will--if we all stay strong--feed micromarketeers in the near future. Perhaps team blogs are a precursor to some sort of loosely joined organization. (No, I haven't received the book yet, but I've joined the blog already!)
Think of how easy and smart it would be for companies to throw us some work over on RGE. They might leave us a post in some yet-to-be-made blog request box "Need help communicating from our audiences inward, from the bottom up--we want a web site that talks like people talk--you guys have any ideas?" Then we launch a private team blog off of RGE, add the client to that blog with the specialists from RGE that are the best at solving that particular problem, and the conversation moves forward. Ideas, applications, web sites, collateral all spawn from that. Of course, the client pays to join the private team blog, and for everything we do to put our ideas into action. cha-ching.
These bloggernizations won't look much like today's companies. We won't sit in cubes. We sometimes won't wear clothes at all. The team members may have never even met. Or spoken. We will remain connected on a deeper level, one where conversations take the place of staff meetings, and water cooler discussions take place on our individual blogs, linking as we drink. We will care deeply about one another. No one will need to be fired, though they may be encouraged to start a team blog of a different flavor. Our paychecks won't be signed by our bosses; they'll be earned from our ideas.
It's a work world I think makes a lot of sense. Anyone listening?
Since RGE's beginnings, other team blogs have emerged--Blog Sisters, a spot for women bloggers to talk, engage, and become, and most recently Small Pieces and Non Zero, both team blogs to discuss books of the same name (and take it from there).
As I see these organic groups take form and congeal, I have started wondering if the team blog might not be an organizational model for the future--a bloggernization if you will. Gonzo Engaged the most mature of these team blogs in its sixth month, has all the makings of a really smart company. Denver Fletcher mentioned early in RGE's genesis, why not start our own thing. At the time, I thought, man I don't even have time to do what I'm doing, let alone think of how to turn this into a viable business. I'll just sit back and wait for the Gonzo prophecy to be fulfilled, when sponsors come knocking at our blog asking to underwrite and support us.
But maybe one of the iterations of blogs in business will look a bit different than the sponsorship and underwriting model, which I still believe will--if we all stay strong--feed micromarketeers in the near future. Perhaps team blogs are a precursor to some sort of loosely joined organization. (No, I haven't received the book yet, but I've joined the blog already!)
Think of how easy and smart it would be for companies to throw us some work over on RGE. They might leave us a post in some yet-to-be-made blog request box "Need help communicating from our audiences inward, from the bottom up--we want a web site that talks like people talk--you guys have any ideas?" Then we launch a private team blog off of RGE, add the client to that blog with the specialists from RGE that are the best at solving that particular problem, and the conversation moves forward. Ideas, applications, web sites, collateral all spawn from that. Of course, the client pays to join the private team blog, and for everything we do to put our ideas into action. cha-ching.
These bloggernizations won't look much like today's companies. We won't sit in cubes. We sometimes won't wear clothes at all. The team members may have never even met. Or spoken. We will remain connected on a deeper level, one where conversations take the place of staff meetings, and water cooler discussions take place on our individual blogs, linking as we drink. We will care deeply about one another. No one will need to be fired, though they may be encouraged to start a team blog of a different flavor. Our paychecks won't be signed by our bosses; they'll be earned from our ideas.
It's a work world I think makes a lot of sense. Anyone listening?
March 06, 2002
creature of resolution
I've always been of a mind that anything can be fixed--unless it's a fatal disease, and even then, sometimes you beat the odds. Maybe it's that 4-0 looming just a couple months away, or maybe it's the fact that my extended family is trying to do me in, or maybe it's that St. Patty's day is right around the corner--that hated day my dad died despite my sack full of get well cards from my kindergarten class--or maybe it's my mom's birthday coming up a week after that, or maybe it's that I'm overworked and absolutely broke, or maybe it's all of these things. The point is, I'm getting the sneaky suspicion that more things than I ever knew can't be fixed.
Why didn't anyone ever tell me that there is no resolution to some problems? That the best you can do is go along all broken? Someone could have left me a blog comment to clue me in. Really now.
But no, I yell into the canyon--"Hello? Can this be fixed?" And all I get back is, "Hello? Can this be fixed?" That's no kind of answer.
It's about family you thought you knew all your life, and then one day, enough crap is shoveled on top of you, that this movie starts playing backward. And as the movie runs in reverse, you see these scenes you never saw the first time around. I'm not sure what I was doing that I missed them the first time around. Out getting popcorn? In the ladies room? No, I was there, because I see my child self, perplexed but resilient. Adapting. Growing. But not growing up.
SLAM, fist to table.
SLAM, fist to table.
It wasn't the movie I thought it was.
Falling up stairs.
Dishes crashing.
And I'm not sure now that it will ever have a happy ending.
Why didn't anyone ever tell me that there is no resolution to some problems? That the best you can do is go along all broken? Someone could have left me a blog comment to clue me in. Really now.
But no, I yell into the canyon--"Hello? Can this be fixed?" And all I get back is, "Hello? Can this be fixed?" That's no kind of answer.
It's about family you thought you knew all your life, and then one day, enough crap is shoveled on top of you, that this movie starts playing backward. And as the movie runs in reverse, you see these scenes you never saw the first time around. I'm not sure what I was doing that I missed them the first time around. Out getting popcorn? In the ladies room? No, I was there, because I see my child self, perplexed but resilient. Adapting. Growing. But not growing up.
SLAM, fist to table.
SLAM, fist to table.
It wasn't the movie I thought it was.
Falling up stairs.
Dishes crashing.
And I'm not sure now that it will ever have a happy ending.
March 05, 2002
Power to the Loosely Joined People
Today, David Weinberger discusses his upcoming keynote at an Instant Messaging conference (Do they really have conferences about IM that you travel to and stuff? Why don't they just type to eachother?) David invites commentary (he's always been a smart guy) to bullet-test his ideas, which I think are great. Among them: "While the persistence of IM messages is quite low, the persistence of IM groups is quite high. In other words: buddy lists rule. We need to make more of buddy lists. First, we need a way to move threads among all the different conversation forms (and he sites the threads ML initiative)."
This is all true, and as we join together in these small (and growing) conversations, I don't know how IM will scale, or if it should. To me, it's not a technology that should connect one to many. It's a technology that's best at connecting one to a couple or few. If IM is, as Tom Matrullo says today, "more like typing through a telephone; it can be intense and tends to grab all my attention," then it is perhaps akin to the "three-way" or "conference call" phone features many of us use today.
But David's premise that IM at home is a lot like IM at work strikes me differently. I am someone who uses IM both at home and at work, and they are different beasts to be sure. While I welcome IM interruptions at home, because it is a lot like a phone call from one of my friends that I'm happy to receive, I'm not always so glad to get "brrrringed" by my clients, who tend to look at IM as our online umbilical cord. One of the first questions I get in working with a new client is, "What's your IM screen name so I can add you to my buddy list?!" (the exclamation point is purposeful--they ask the question with glee.) Because I'm online virtually round the clock, this is like giving them my home phone number (which I also do), except that I can close my IM and they don't know I'm online then, just like I sometimes don't answer my calls.
For me, IM in the work world has become less like chatting and more like an air raid siren--red alert, incoming incoming! I need help putting out a fire. Which is all fine--that's what we're paid for. But it's definitely not like my home IM experience.
The day my client figured out how to talk at me through yahoo messenger, and I mean literally talk to me, I really got the jitters. I sat peacefully playing with my daughter in the living room, when my laptop, from its usual member-of-the-family spot on the couch, yelled at me. "Jeneane! Can you hear me? Are you there? I need some help." Huh? My daughter, who's four, was undaunted. "Make your computer talk again, mommy!"
So, although the occasional IM with my aunts is a blast and all the playful fun David talks about in his premise, to me IM at work--while it bridges distance and time and that is great for business--isn't always so much fun. It makes me feel more like a responsibility-laden adult then an adolescent. In fact, it kind of gives me agita.
"brrrrrrrring!"
This is all true, and as we join together in these small (and growing) conversations, I don't know how IM will scale, or if it should. To me, it's not a technology that should connect one to many. It's a technology that's best at connecting one to a couple or few. If IM is, as Tom Matrullo says today, "more like typing through a telephone; it can be intense and tends to grab all my attention," then it is perhaps akin to the "three-way" or "conference call" phone features many of us use today.
But David's premise that IM at home is a lot like IM at work strikes me differently. I am someone who uses IM both at home and at work, and they are different beasts to be sure. While I welcome IM interruptions at home, because it is a lot like a phone call from one of my friends that I'm happy to receive, I'm not always so glad to get "brrrringed" by my clients, who tend to look at IM as our online umbilical cord. One of the first questions I get in working with a new client is, "What's your IM screen name so I can add you to my buddy list?!" (the exclamation point is purposeful--they ask the question with glee.) Because I'm online virtually round the clock, this is like giving them my home phone number (which I also do), except that I can close my IM and they don't know I'm online then, just like I sometimes don't answer my calls.
For me, IM in the work world has become less like chatting and more like an air raid siren--red alert, incoming incoming! I need help putting out a fire. Which is all fine--that's what we're paid for. But it's definitely not like my home IM experience.
The day my client figured out how to talk at me through yahoo messenger, and I mean literally talk to me, I really got the jitters. I sat peacefully playing with my daughter in the living room, when my laptop, from its usual member-of-the-family spot on the couch, yelled at me. "Jeneane! Can you hear me? Are you there? I need some help." Huh? My daughter, who's four, was undaunted. "Make your computer talk again, mommy!"
So, although the occasional IM with my aunts is a blast and all the playful fun David talks about in his premise, to me IM at work--while it bridges distance and time and that is great for business--isn't always so much fun. It makes me feel more like a responsibility-laden adult then an adolescent. In fact, it kind of gives me agita.
"brrrrrrrring!"
AKMA Almost Lets It Fly
and in the process, coins a newer, gentler term: "flopnozzle." I wonder if daypop will let that one in? Perhaps AKMA will become the family-friendly filter for RageBoy. There may be some money in that one day. Look at AOL.
March 04, 2002
March 03, 2002
Oath of the Cult of Cluetrain
The typical first step for cultists throughout history is the taking of an oath. For Cluetrain enthusiasts, who have of late been labeled cult members, the time to put up or shut up is now. Are you man enough? Are you ready to take the oath?
Well, I am, and that's why, like any connected chick, I turned to google to find us a good one. Luckily, the Swiss Imperial Navy has a long-standing oath. (I’m assuming from days of olde, although I was too tired to search back on the history.)
What I like about this little oath is that it’s simple, powerful, and it maps directly to Cluetrain and the most vilified Cluetrain defender, RageBoy. It also maps nicely to the online universe we are creating among all of the blog constellations, which are growing in number and luminance even as I blog this.
Without further delay, here is the Cluetrain oath. (After the oath, I’ve provided a little “key” to the words I changed in updating it for Cluetrain purposes).
Put on your Nikes and say it loud and strong, People of the Earth!
Oath of the Cult of Cluetrain
Sworn by a mystery cult surrounding the warlike deity RageBoy, especially popular among Corporate Outcasts
I, _________, as a citizen of the Internet and ordained a soldier of Cluetrain, do hereby swear, now and forever, to serve and defend the Net and all of her citizens; I swear not to rest while there is evil in the universe; and I swear above all to serve the sacred and fundamental ideals of Humanity. I swear these things on the holy altar of RageBoy, the Bringer of Victory and the Defender of the Home, RageBoy the Wrathful, and RageBoy the Just, in the presence of my sworn comrades and the God Himself.
Mapping from original Cult of the Swiss Imperial Navy:
Bellator=RageBoy
Exped Forces=Corporate Outcasts
Swiss Imperial Navy =Cluetrain
Greater Swiss Empire=Internet
Empire of Switzerland=Net
I expect complete compliance in taking this oath, or I'll send Bellator after you.
March 02, 2002
The Derivation of Fucknozzle and other Life Mysteries
It goes something like this: Wired runs an article in which it reports that Xybernaut's CEO--offended at some random posting that said something about the fact that the company has never turned a profit and so he must be an idiot--decided to sue the poster. For my part, I've noticed that companies failing to turn a profit are often led by incompetent short men with napoleonic leanings. I'm just saying.
Next, RageBoy weighs in with a post urging us to decide for ourselves whether or not this CEO is a fucknozzle. Well. That is an interesting question, since you can use that same said "own mind" of yours to run through conjured images of what a fucknozzle might be. But more on that later.
Next, b!x blogs about this matter, putting RB in perilous legal danger by stating that RageBoy called the fucknozzled CEO a fucknozzle.
Rageboy sets the record straight with this post, in which he categorically denies calling the CEO a fucknozzle, although he would urge us to do so.
By now you are maybe wondering, why all this noise over fucknozzle? Either that or you've already clicked off to Doc's blog, where things make more sense.
Those of us familiar with RB know he is litigation-phobic. You need only to read his latest book to see how careful he is in his writings about companies, other authors, and especially his past employers. Kiss up much, RB? So let's dig a little deeper. Why is RageBoy--champion of the common man and business automaton--so often silent on important matters that may be perceived as controversial--even slanderous?
As with all truths, the answer is buried in his past.
When RB was 14, he was seduced by a powerful female lawyer, who shall remain nameless because I too am afraid of litigation. This unscrupulous 30-something adultress coerced RB into becoming first her pool boy, and next her underage lover. One evening, her husband away on business, she called young RB to her lair. What was he supposed to do? What would any 14 year old hormonally-challenged young man do? He slapped on some acne cream and ran all the way to her house.
She greeted him at the door, led him up the stairs, and sat him on her bed, where, expectantly, he licked his dry lips and oogled her as she walked provacatively to her dresser. As she opened the top drawer, he craned his neck to see what was in store for him. And he saw. "Wow," he gasped. "Um, what is that?" he asked, his shy young voice barely audibile.
"This, my dear young man, is a fucknozzle."
Fade to black.
Next, RageBoy weighs in with a post urging us to decide for ourselves whether or not this CEO is a fucknozzle. Well. That is an interesting question, since you can use that same said "own mind" of yours to run through conjured images of what a fucknozzle might be. But more on that later.
Next, b!x blogs about this matter, putting RB in perilous legal danger by stating that RageBoy called the fucknozzled CEO a fucknozzle.
Rageboy sets the record straight with this post, in which he categorically denies calling the CEO a fucknozzle, although he would urge us to do so.
By now you are maybe wondering, why all this noise over fucknozzle? Either that or you've already clicked off to Doc's blog, where things make more sense.
Those of us familiar with RB know he is litigation-phobic. You need only to read his latest book to see how careful he is in his writings about companies, other authors, and especially his past employers. Kiss up much, RB? So let's dig a little deeper. Why is RageBoy--champion of the common man and business automaton--so often silent on important matters that may be perceived as controversial--even slanderous?
As with all truths, the answer is buried in his past.
When RB was 14, he was seduced by a powerful female lawyer, who shall remain nameless because I too am afraid of litigation. This unscrupulous 30-something adultress coerced RB into becoming first her pool boy, and next her underage lover. One evening, her husband away on business, she called young RB to her lair. What was he supposed to do? What would any 14 year old hormonally-challenged young man do? He slapped on some acne cream and ran all the way to her house.
She greeted him at the door, led him up the stairs, and sat him on her bed, where, expectantly, he licked his dry lips and oogled her as she walked provacatively to her dresser. As she opened the top drawer, he craned his neck to see what was in store for him. And he saw. "Wow," he gasped. "Um, what is that?" he asked, his shy young voice barely audibile.
"This, my dear young man, is a fucknozzle."
Fade to black.
February 28, 2002
I am putting this here...
...so that I remember to talk about it as soon as I can rip myself away from the lady's team blog, Blog Sisters, where I continue to add members at a rate of one an hour. I'll be back as soon as I can.
February 27, 2002
where am I?
I have started or joined so many blogs in the last four months, I'm not sure where I live anymore. It's disorienting, the discussions I'm having, or those having me. Here on allied, I talk about jeneane-centric stuff, observations, stops along my journey, my blog friends, you know. Things.
But I didn't have this place at first. My first blog was Gonzo Engaged. This is where I launched into the world of blogging, five months ago, under the wing and watchful ear/eye of RageBoy, as I chronicled my journey through his book, Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices.
When I got to the end of the book, I wasn't sure what to do with Gonzo Engaged. In his usual psychic kind of way, Chris emailed me, as I wandered my way through the Index of Gonzo Marketing, boring the crap out of readers. He said, "I bet you're wondering, what now?" He was right. I was wondering just that. So I reviewed Blogger's "Team" feature and used it to open Gonzo Engaged up to others interested in discussing gonzo marketing and business as unusual. Today we have 27 members, and the discussions remain lively.
Next, I wrote this article about what it's like to work from home, raise a child, blog, and generally live in a hyperlinked space: The Hyperlinked Mom. At first I kept it a private blog. Then something I was discussing with David Weinberger made me click the "public" button. But, truth be told, haven't posted on that blog since I wrote it. I guess I should make it a page off of allied or something. It's just kind of sitting there out in blogspot land right now. Child of allied.
Even after the "what do I do with hyperlinked-mom?" question, I guess I still wasn't satisfied that I was spread too thin. I started a blog with our four-year-old daughter, Baby Blogger. That one is fun. Probably the most fun. My best hope for keeping it up to date is sitting on our bed with my laptop while she's in the tub making up some of the most amazing songs and adventures I've ever been privileged to hear.
Somewhere along the way--after babyblogger? before?--I decided to join Frank Paynter's blog sandhill trek where we discuss any number of oddities, including Frank's oversized dog Fang, who is prone to eating lizzards among other things.
Now, I've decided that the women of the blogging world need a place to hang. To feel free and unencumbered. To talk about things that interest us and might either frighten or bore the menfolk silly. Hence, Blog Sisters.
Have I forgotten any?
So, now that I've evolved into a multiple personality blogger, I'm finding something odd. Even with all of these homes, I feel homeless. My stuff is strewn across five or six friends' houses. Where'd I put my fricking hairdryer? Which way is the bathroom? Don't they have whole-wheat bread here?
Not that this is a bad thing. Perhaps a necessary evolution. I will either land someplace I needed to be in the first place, or come right back to where I started from. Either way, I think I will be happier for having taken the trip.
But this night?
I'm still looking for my hairdryer.
But I didn't have this place at first. My first blog was Gonzo Engaged. This is where I launched into the world of blogging, five months ago, under the wing and watchful ear/eye of RageBoy, as I chronicled my journey through his book, Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices.
When I got to the end of the book, I wasn't sure what to do with Gonzo Engaged. In his usual psychic kind of way, Chris emailed me, as I wandered my way through the Index of Gonzo Marketing, boring the crap out of readers. He said, "I bet you're wondering, what now?" He was right. I was wondering just that. So I reviewed Blogger's "Team" feature and used it to open Gonzo Engaged up to others interested in discussing gonzo marketing and business as unusual. Today we have 27 members, and the discussions remain lively.
Next, I wrote this article about what it's like to work from home, raise a child, blog, and generally live in a hyperlinked space: The Hyperlinked Mom. At first I kept it a private blog. Then something I was discussing with David Weinberger made me click the "public" button. But, truth be told, haven't posted on that blog since I wrote it. I guess I should make it a page off of allied or something. It's just kind of sitting there out in blogspot land right now. Child of allied.
Even after the "what do I do with hyperlinked-mom?" question, I guess I still wasn't satisfied that I was spread too thin. I started a blog with our four-year-old daughter, Baby Blogger. That one is fun. Probably the most fun. My best hope for keeping it up to date is sitting on our bed with my laptop while she's in the tub making up some of the most amazing songs and adventures I've ever been privileged to hear.
Somewhere along the way--after babyblogger? before?--I decided to join Frank Paynter's blog sandhill trek where we discuss any number of oddities, including Frank's oversized dog Fang, who is prone to eating lizzards among other things.
Now, I've decided that the women of the blogging world need a place to hang. To feel free and unencumbered. To talk about things that interest us and might either frighten or bore the menfolk silly. Hence, Blog Sisters.
Have I forgotten any?
So, now that I've evolved into a multiple personality blogger, I'm finding something odd. Even with all of these homes, I feel homeless. My stuff is strewn across five or six friends' houses. Where'd I put my fricking hairdryer? Which way is the bathroom? Don't they have whole-wheat bread here?
Not that this is a bad thing. Perhaps a necessary evolution. I will either land someplace I needed to be in the first place, or come right back to where I started from. Either way, I think I will be happier for having taken the trip.
But this night?
I'm still looking for my hairdryer.
multiple personality disorder
In an effort to split my attention in half yet again, I've started a community blog for ladies called Blog Sisters, where men can link but they can't touch. Women of the blog, join us there. Men of the blog, link and learn.
February 26, 2002
comment2?
In a self-posted blog comment on his own Chris Pirillo blog, Chris wonders aloud, "Hey, what's it called when you post a comment to your own blog?" Interesting and playful question. Is it a comment, or is it more like an answer, or an interjection, or maybe a comment2? Ah well, I'll leave it to those better at blogging terminology than I am.
And Chris, if you grab the Ramen Pride, they have a new "roasted chicken" flavor that rocks. The cheapest and saltiest meal on earth at Target this week--just 16 cents each!
And Chris, if you grab the Ramen Pride, they have a new "roasted chicken" flavor that rocks. The cheapest and saltiest meal on earth at Target this week--just 16 cents each!
This is why I love Kalilily
From Elaine's blog, an inspired reflection on a moment of meaning shared with her son. I look forward to looking back on memories like this one with my cherished babyblogger one day.
"Remember, b!X, when we marched on the Pentagon to protest our government’s involvement in Guatemala? That hot summer day among those thousands and thousands of banners and signs and sweaty chants for justice and peace? You were only about 9 years old and you got a bloody nose just before we got to the Pentagon, and dozens of people appeared with ice and kleenex and advice on how to stop it. And we sat in the shade on a little hill to eat our lunches and wait to see if that other bunch really would “levitate” the Pentagon, as they promised they would."
"Remember, b!X, when we marched on the Pentagon to protest our government’s involvement in Guatemala? That hot summer day among those thousands and thousands of banners and signs and sweaty chants for justice and peace? You were only about 9 years old and you got a bloody nose just before we got to the Pentagon, and dozens of people appeared with ice and kleenex and advice on how to stop it. And we sat in the shade on a little hill to eat our lunches and wait to see if that other bunch really would “levitate” the Pentagon, as they promised they would."
February 25, 2002
Mr. Dvorak, I Beg You to Lose Your Computer...
In my critique of Dennis Mahoney's recent take-down of the amateurish writing in blogs (earlier today), I agreed with Mahoney on something he says: "The advice ‘write only what you know’ increases the likelihood that you will know the same things forever.”
When it comes to PC Magazine's John Dvorak, I amend myself. I wish he would stick to writing about what he knows. He doesn't know blogs. He doesn't know marketing. And he's not a technologist's technologist either. I could write a week's worth on what John doesn't know, but since that's just what dorkvak wants, I will slip into silence, hoping he follows me there.
For more on the topic, see the people I love kissing up to:
RageBoy
Doc Searls
David Weinberger
Now, I must go wipe the shit off my nose.
When it comes to PC Magazine's John Dvorak, I amend myself. I wish he would stick to writing about what he knows. He doesn't know blogs. He doesn't know marketing. And he's not a technologist's technologist either. I could write a week's worth on what John doesn't know, but since that's just what dorkvak wants, I will slip into silence, hoping he follows me there.
For more on the topic, see the people I love kissing up to:
RageBoy
Doc Searls
David Weinberger
Now, I must go wipe the shit off my nose.
Mr. Mahoney, I Beg to Differ...
In a recent article on A List Apart, Dennis A. Mahoney gives his take on why so many weblogs today are boring and not worth the clicks it takes to get to them. His answer--they are badly written. He also offers advice for bloggers who want to become more readable contributors to the cyber dialogue. As I understand it, the article is an attempt by Mahoney to offer positive suggestions to offset the complaints he’s levied on 0format.com.
Simply put, I disagree with Dennis, especially with his basic premise: that amateurish writing in the blogging community is a bad thing. He says:
"Amateurs are writing as they’ve always written. Self-consciousness, self-doubt, awkwardness, and overcompensation are perennial hallmarks of the beginning writer. The reason today’s amateurs seem more profoundly un–profound could be a simple matter of exposure.”
Let me start by admitting this: I am a “wordaholic.” I've made my living at writing and editing since 1982, and I’ve come across the range of writing talent (and lack thereof) over the last two decades.
I'm not sure whose weblogs Dennis has been reading, but they must be different than the ones I’m reading. It makes me wonder, are we on the same net? For my part, I’ve come across astounding “amateur” writers in my blog travels—folks who didn’t know they could write, who still don’t think they can write even though they’re doing it every day, and who today putmy blog to shame. The words they choose are inspired by emotion, not by years of study in the finer workings of grammar. Their thoughts are free from corporate confines, usually for the first time. They are expressing what’s meaningful to them—from cat shit, to divorce, to Linux—in a way that’s meaningful to them.
And I can’t get enough.
Mahoney points to the lack of “gatekeeping” as a reason why we are burdened with poor writing on the net:
”There used to be impenetrable gatekeepers. Now, CNN roundtables, documentaries, independent films, MTV, and the web—which has no gatekeepers in most countries—are broadcasting every poorly crafted phrase and half–cooked idea imaginable. Patience, readers. All is not lost.”
Message to Dennis: Nothing’s lost. Everything is found.
Give me every poorly crafted phrase and half-baked idea. And then give me some more.
I want to get lost and stay lost--lost in the world of possibilities, of mining gems from this fertile online playground. I want to be the first to find the amazing, and then share it with everyone I know. I want to unearth ideas, not good sentence structure. I want to read all of the asides, all of the streams of consciousness. I want to ride those streams as they wind and intersect with others and find amazement in those intersections.
And, call me strange, but in the constructs of blogging, I’d rather read this (Mahoney’s example of amateurish writing):
”I know this is a cliché nowadays, especially after 9/11, but I live in New York, which is much cleaner and safer now because of Giuliani, who really ought to be president after handling the crisis so well, and I know I’ve had some issues in the past with the mayor’s handling of the NYPD in regard to African Americans and his war against art involving sacred religious icons and feces (hello!? freedom of expression!?), but when all is said and done, New York, as maybe the best example of the ‘melting pot’ etc. etc., is a great city, especially when it starts getting warmer and people go outside more, like around March or April.
…than this (Mahoney’s example of professional writing):
New York is magnificent in spring.
Much of the advice offered in the RULES section of the article is helpful. I’m not sure Mahoney’s rules are necessary, but they’re helpful. I don’t agree with his advice to discard the first person (“I”) when possible. After all, if we are “writing ourselves into existence,” as David Weinberger says, then it’s hard to throw ourselves aside in favor of “good” writing.
I do agree with Mahoney on a point he makes toward the end of his article, and one he makes nicely: “The advice ‘write only what you know’ increases the likelihood that you will know the same things forever.”
This is sound advice for bloggers. Blogging is exploration. Good blogging is not always writing what you know about—often it’s writing about what you don’t know, what you can’t understand, the mysteries that have been tugging at your shirt sleeve since you were a kid. Uncover those, and I’ll read you every day, I don’t care how few periods or how many commas you use.
I again agree with Mahoney in his recommendation that bloggers get personal.
”Readers crave your anecdotes and stories. They really do. So give ‘em the whole megillah. Instead of, ‘The party was a riot!’ or ‘I’m depressed today,’ carefully explain why. Elaborate. Parties and depression are perfectly good writing subjects. The Great Gatsby, for instance, has plenty of both.”
I suppose my biggest problem with the article is this: I just don’t see this level of writing lameness that Mahoney asserts is rampant in the blogging community. What has stunned me all along is the lack of lameness, the overwhelming brilliance of so many people. When I click close on my browser at the end of the day, I wonder, “Where the hell did all of these smart people come from? And where have they been?” They aren’t professional writers, but they are becoming professional thinkers. And that’s even better.
In his conclusion, Mahoney advises bloggers to pay attention to their readers:
”No matter what your audience size, you ought to write as if your readership consisted of paid subscribers whose subscriptions were perpetually about to expire. There’s no need to pander. Compel them to re–subscribe.”
I advise you differently:
Write like no one’s there. Write like everyone’s there. Write as if you have no audience, because you don’t. You are part of a conversation. You are completely and perfectly free to explore, to not care, to lose yourself in conjecture. You are free to destroy notions you’ve always had. You are welcome to challenge me and everything I thought was true. You are advised to listen, to reflect, to engage.
And then, when you are done with all of that, do it again tomorrow.
Simply put, I disagree with Dennis, especially with his basic premise: that amateurish writing in the blogging community is a bad thing. He says:
"Amateurs are writing as they’ve always written. Self-consciousness, self-doubt, awkwardness, and overcompensation are perennial hallmarks of the beginning writer. The reason today’s amateurs seem more profoundly un–profound could be a simple matter of exposure.”
Let me start by admitting this: I am a “wordaholic.” I've made my living at writing and editing since 1982, and I’ve come across the range of writing talent (and lack thereof) over the last two decades.
I'm not sure whose weblogs Dennis has been reading, but they must be different than the ones I’m reading. It makes me wonder, are we on the same net? For my part, I’ve come across astounding “amateur” writers in my blog travels—folks who didn’t know they could write, who still don’t think they can write even though they’re doing it every day, and who today put
And I can’t get enough.
Mahoney points to the lack of “gatekeeping” as a reason why we are burdened with poor writing on the net:
”There used to be impenetrable gatekeepers. Now, CNN roundtables, documentaries, independent films, MTV, and the web—which has no gatekeepers in most countries—are broadcasting every poorly crafted phrase and half–cooked idea imaginable. Patience, readers. All is not lost.”
Message to Dennis: Nothing’s lost. Everything is found.
Give me every poorly crafted phrase and half-baked idea. And then give me some more.
I want to get lost and stay lost--lost in the world of possibilities, of mining gems from this fertile online playground. I want to be the first to find the amazing, and then share it with everyone I know. I want to unearth ideas, not good sentence structure. I want to read all of the asides, all of the streams of consciousness. I want to ride those streams as they wind and intersect with others and find amazement in those intersections.
And, call me strange, but in the constructs of blogging, I’d rather read this (Mahoney’s example of amateurish writing):
”I know this is a cliché nowadays, especially after 9/11, but I live in New York, which is much cleaner and safer now because of Giuliani, who really ought to be president after handling the crisis so well, and I know I’ve had some issues in the past with the mayor’s handling of the NYPD in regard to African Americans and his war against art involving sacred religious icons and feces (hello!? freedom of expression!?), but when all is said and done, New York, as maybe the best example of the ‘melting pot’ etc. etc., is a great city, especially when it starts getting warmer and people go outside more, like around March or April.
…than this (Mahoney’s example of professional writing):
New York is magnificent in spring.
Much of the advice offered in the RULES section of the article is helpful. I’m not sure Mahoney’s rules are necessary, but they’re helpful. I don’t agree with his advice to discard the first person (“I”) when possible. After all, if we are “writing ourselves into existence,” as David Weinberger says, then it’s hard to throw ourselves aside in favor of “good” writing.
I do agree with Mahoney on a point he makes toward the end of his article, and one he makes nicely: “The advice ‘write only what you know’ increases the likelihood that you will know the same things forever.”
This is sound advice for bloggers. Blogging is exploration. Good blogging is not always writing what you know about—often it’s writing about what you don’t know, what you can’t understand, the mysteries that have been tugging at your shirt sleeve since you were a kid. Uncover those, and I’ll read you every day, I don’t care how few periods or how many commas you use.
I again agree with Mahoney in his recommendation that bloggers get personal.
”Readers crave your anecdotes and stories. They really do. So give ‘em the whole megillah. Instead of, ‘The party was a riot!’ or ‘I’m depressed today,’ carefully explain why. Elaborate. Parties and depression are perfectly good writing subjects. The Great Gatsby, for instance, has plenty of both.”
I suppose my biggest problem with the article is this: I just don’t see this level of writing lameness that Mahoney asserts is rampant in the blogging community. What has stunned me all along is the lack of lameness, the overwhelming brilliance of so many people. When I click close on my browser at the end of the day, I wonder, “Where the hell did all of these smart people come from? And where have they been?” They aren’t professional writers, but they are becoming professional thinkers. And that’s even better.
In his conclusion, Mahoney advises bloggers to pay attention to their readers:
”No matter what your audience size, you ought to write as if your readership consisted of paid subscribers whose subscriptions were perpetually about to expire. There’s no need to pander. Compel them to re–subscribe.”
I advise you differently:
Write like no one’s there. Write like everyone’s there. Write as if you have no audience, because you don’t. You are part of a conversation. You are completely and perfectly free to explore, to not care, to lose yourself in conjecture. You are free to destroy notions you’ve always had. You are welcome to challenge me and everything I thought was true. You are advised to listen, to reflect, to engage.
And then, when you are done with all of that, do it again tomorrow.
February 23, 2002
This blogger's got some scruples, huh?
Gonzo or bonzo? You decide. Tony Pierce is selling links from his blog on ebay.
What is it worth to you to get rock stars, hot chicks, political pundits, brainacs and nerds to go to your site simply because I link to it?
I guess you really can buy anything on ebay.
What is it worth to you to get rock stars, hot chicks, political pundits, brainacs and nerds to go to your site simply because I link to it?
I guess you really can buy anything on ebay.
Tom Shugart Starts Blogging!
Check out our newest addition to the world of blogging. I'm honored that Tom credits me with helping him leap the blogging chasm. I'm glad I could assist, but the truth is, he was blogging in his head and his emails all along. Welcome Tom!
February 19, 2002
February 18, 2002
what i sound like sick
wanna hear how I sound sick? wondering who's this baby blogger I'm always talking about? Gary caught us on tape! For a 40 year old who usually gets an "Are your parents home?" when I answer the phone, I can't believe I'm admitting this hard-smokin' loud-singing voice is mine. :-)
And no, that's NOT me below.
And no, that's NOT me below.
And Golby Steps Forward for a Solo
It's a behind-the-scenes look you won't want to miss. Oh, and the next time a good book comes out, let's toss a coin and see who sends a copy to Mike, so's he doesn't end up in the slammer. This is what he has to deal with:
“Christopher Locke. L-O-C-K-E," I said, spelling it out for the brain-dead numbskull on the other side.
The phone went down, I heard a clacking keyboard, and the phone was picked up again.
“No, sorry, never heard of him.”
“What?” I asked, incredulous. “The man has published three books, one of which was one of the Harvard Business Review’s books of the year.”
“What business review?” came back the moronic voice.
“Christopher Locke. L-O-C-K-E," I said, spelling it out for the brain-dead numbskull on the other side.
The phone went down, I heard a clacking keyboard, and the phone was picked up again.
“No, sorry, never heard of him.”
“What?” I asked, incredulous. “The man has published three books, one of which was one of the Harvard Business Review’s books of the year.”
“What business review?” came back the moronic voice.
Bouncing Bombast with Marek
Marek blogs me back about Bombast and takes it further out...
"I make love to the world and the world loves back. It loves back and I am home. This life. This planet. This language. These faces. This house. These shoes. This Century. These stubby fingers. This shaved head. It's all of it and all over again falling in love with the world and I disappear my resignation and I am home. This day. Right now...."
Yes, Marek. Here, all of us one, we make it better, not because we are linked all sloppily together like this, but because we've been connected, and in connecting, have morphed, have transformed one the other.
Who is Golby now? Who is Tom, or Gary, or you, Marek? Who have you become?
Yes, we have become.
We are the ones who used to not think twice taking out the garbage Sunday night, twisting the bags tight, thinking it's a shame all this trash is going to the landfill, oh crap I forgot the fish stinking up the fridge, and will they even take this in the morning, or is it too heavy, and how likely is it I'll be picking all this same shit up off the driveway tomorrow after the bag gives way?
What used to matter, fill time, moments, doesn't anymore. Now there is a world to get to. Now we aren't just talking to ourselves. Now we are falling in love with this world, faults and warts and undeniable insanity, all over again, and because we love, things matter again. Finally. Things matter.
Things matter.
You matter, you mad fucking hatter.
"I make love to the world and the world loves back. It loves back and I am home. This life. This planet. This language. These faces. This house. These shoes. This Century. These stubby fingers. This shaved head. It's all of it and all over again falling in love with the world and I disappear my resignation and I am home. This day. Right now...."
Yes, Marek. Here, all of us one, we make it better, not because we are linked all sloppily together like this, but because we've been connected, and in connecting, have morphed, have transformed one the other.
Who is Golby now? Who is Tom, or Gary, or you, Marek? Who have you become?
Yes, we have become.
We are the ones who used to not think twice taking out the garbage Sunday night, twisting the bags tight, thinking it's a shame all this trash is going to the landfill, oh crap I forgot the fish stinking up the fridge, and will they even take this in the morning, or is it too heavy, and how likely is it I'll be picking all this same shit up off the driveway tomorrow after the bag gives way?
What used to matter, fill time, moments, doesn't anymore. Now there is a world to get to. Now we aren't just talking to ourselves. Now we are falling in love with this world, faults and warts and undeniable insanity, all over again, and because we love, things matter again. Finally. Things matter.
Things matter.
You matter, you mad fucking hatter.
February 17, 2002
It Came from Canada: A Review of The Bombast Transcripts
if you hear me in the silence
then am I real.
if you see me in the darkness
then am I music
to your music.
if your heart is empty
yet fills with joy
then are your colors
my colors.
-christopher locke
Hold on a second.
[Quick shake of the head.]
Doesn’t this guy write about business? What’s this poetry doing here?
“The solution is poetry.” That and other fundamental truths according to Locke and RageBoy—Locke’s cantankerous alter ego—are just waiting to slap you around the room as you read the team’s latest: The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy.
It’s safe. You can throw away that little postage-paid merchandise-return sticker from Amazon. Put the box in the trash. You may quite confidently expense this book through your place of employment. As a bonus, the book will give you the secret for appeasing the finance jockey who will undoubtedly email you upon receiving your expense report, asking what a Bombast is and who authorized its purchase.
But I digress.
Truth be told, Bombast is more than a business book. And you should know that before you agree to read it.
From “Eden to E-Commerce,” Bombast is the world in RageBoy time, a world designed to destroy everything you thought was so, and then lift you up with the possibilities. It is a journey that crosses every border, deconstructs every widely held notion, teaches as much about what it means to be human as it does about what it means to do business in a connected world.
For RageBoy, nothing is off limits:
touch, madness, the Internet, work, love,
corporations, angst, mores, TCP/IP, music,
artificial intelligence, joy, ROI, dreams, lies,
HTML, 5-GL, change, excrement, rejection,
karma, chaos, fear, creation, paradise, belief,
disbelief, disestablishmentarianism, Elvis,
people, geese, broadband, patterns, walls,
space, fiction, portals, brand, astrology,
guilt, coffee, poverty, philosophy, tear gas,
eclipse, email, addiction, science, passion,
communism, capitalism, aboriginal darkness,
oriental light, power, magic, sin, politics,
pictogram, wanting, sex, P2P,
getting it, and getting lit.
This, my friends, is some serious shit.
I could take you through this browser-free read of Locke’s famed ezine, Entropy Gradient Reversals, step by step. But I won’t, because Bombast is best read without a guide.
So if I’ve intrigued you, good. If not, let me touch on my favorite part of the book and linger here a moment longer. At its core, Bombast has one simple and profound construct, one that RageBoy delivered in a passionate diatribe at a keynote address before 2000 people in Copenhagen:
“What is happening on the net is that people are falling in love with the world all over again.”
Holy cripe.
Did you get that? Worth repeating:
“What is happening on the net is that people are falling in love with the world all over again.”
You see, in the end, it’s not about the net at all. It's about what’s happening because of the net.
As RageBoy tells the good crowd in Copenhagen, we have been here before, with cave paintings, with bone axes, with mythologies and arts. All of these, so distracting in their own right, only tools--tools that help us fall in love with our world—again and again without end.
And that, in a few words, is the beauty of all of this.
Without end.
Tune in, turn on, stay tuned…
Find out what’s next – subscribe.
February 16, 2002
and while you're there....
Radical Suzuki would like you to check out this little number (click the next buttons to work your way through). tee hee.
Funky Radical World
I don't know if you've seen this, and heck for all I know it could be a meme past, but I'm on google searching up "radical" - yeh I admit it. How I got there, I forget, but it started with searching up pnemonia (which I spelled wrong and still think I'm spelling wrong), which led me to any number of frightening lung disease sites, from which I surfed unhindered into therapies and philosophies until I somehow got to "radical," where I found my jewel: Funky Radical World and if you've already been, then shut up and let the others enjoy it. Click around for a journey of wierd images and only sometimes English text.
Some renderings follow:
and
and, consider this--could I have put it better myself? No.
Angelic nudes wink bashfully as you gaze upon their exquisiteness.
Stylin' ladies show you what they've got on the dance floor.
This is the peach-fuzz fizzy delicious world of Radical Suzuki.
Step into the Funky Radical World!
happy saturday.
Some renderings follow:
and
and, consider this--could I have put it better myself? No.
Angelic nudes wink bashfully as you gaze upon their exquisiteness.
Stylin' ladies show you what they've got on the dance floor.
This is the peach-fuzz fizzy delicious world of Radical Suzuki.
Step into the Funky Radical World!
happy saturday.
Heh + Heh
Dean Landsman has a good Lay cartoon and commentary in his DeanLand blog. He also emailed me some good song ideas for that string of Enron "I Plead the Fifth" copouts that I'm hoping someone will turn into a catchy little medley. Dean suggests:
"Take The Money and Run" (Steve Miller Band)
"Money" (Pink Floyd)
and...
Cheney and Bush are probably singing a Police song when they think about their buddies at Enron, "Don't Stand So Close To Me."
Of course it is all the Texas Two Step, isn't it?
Yes, Dean, I think it is. I hear that's how b'ness is done down in Texas.
"Take The Money and Run" (Steve Miller Band)
"Money" (Pink Floyd)
and...
Cheney and Bush are probably singing a Police song when they think about their buddies at Enron, "Don't Stand So Close To Me."
Of course it is all the Texas Two Step, isn't it?
Yes, Dean, I think it is. I hear that's how b'ness is done down in Texas.
February 15, 2002
Thanks Denise
for pointing to Sir David W. who does a great solo off Pirillo's Blogger Manifesto. We are hoping Sir David links to us. At some point again. For something we may say or have once said.
sick and tired
yes, that I am. Coming off steroids, antibiotics, and still sick as a dawg. But I've started reading blogs again, and the doc says that's a good sign indeed.
How fun would this be? Anyone going? I am hoping there will be some stuff for kids to do--I know Vegas ain't a particular kid-friendly place, but we'd have to come with babyblogger in tow, and after all, she is a babyblogger. If kids are welcome, I really think we'd try to do it. How fricking cool would that be. If you register your possible inclination to maybe perhaps attend, you get to see the others who've registered. Leave it to the cool cats a blogger.
I am up to nothing else right now, except waiting for master husband to return with pizza.
night.
How fun would this be? Anyone going? I am hoping there will be some stuff for kids to do--I know Vegas ain't a particular kid-friendly place, but we'd have to come with babyblogger in tow, and after all, she is a babyblogger. If kids are welcome, I really think we'd try to do it. How fricking cool would that be. If you register your possible inclination to maybe perhaps attend, you get to see the others who've registered. Leave it to the cool cats a blogger.
I am up to nothing else right now, except waiting for master husband to return with pizza.
night.
February 13, 2002
I plead the fifth
Could someone string together all those Enron "I'll have to take the fifth amendmant" answers into a string and set it to music, like the Balmer "monkey boy" video? might draw quite a crowd, as memes go. I'm lame at this web stuff or I'd do it myself. What songs might we use:
You dropped the bomb on me
Another one bites the dust
Take this job and shove it
or maybe...
A simple question makes you look away
Your hesitation gives it all away
There's some protection in the way you move
If there's sadness in my eyes
It's coming from your lies
Hey little liar I believed in you
Hey little liar I believed in you
Hey little liar I believed in you
I believed in you
--Little Liar (joan jett)
Others guys??
You dropped the bomb on me
Another one bites the dust
Take this job and shove it
or maybe...
A simple question makes you look away
Your hesitation gives it all away
There's some protection in the way you move
If there's sadness in my eyes
It's coming from your lies
Hey little liar I believed in you
Hey little liar I believed in you
Hey little liar I believed in you
I believed in you
--Little Liar (joan jett)
Others guys??
the web site you never hope to start
I'm not sure what I think happened to this little girl, but the web site they've launched since her disappearence on 02/02 is a marketing marvel:
"Pat & Oscar's in Carmel Mountain Ranch
Will donate 15% of the cost of your meal to the
Danielle Search Effort
If you bring in a Pat & Oscar's Flyer"
...still developing. In the mean time, let's all keep our eyes open.
Will donate 15% of the cost of your meal to the
Danielle Search Effort
If you bring in a Pat & Oscar's Flyer"
...still developing. In the mean time, let's all keep our eyes open.
"With others if we must; by ourselves if possible"
Why do I still wish he would have won? Maybe because he's smarter:
"The evil we now confront is not just the one-time creation of a charismatic leader and his cohorts, or even a handful of regimes. What we deal with now is today's manifestation of an anger welling up from deep layers of grievance shared by many millions of people."
Can I have a recount?
"The evil we now confront is not just the one-time creation of a charismatic leader and his cohorts, or even a handful of regimes. What we deal with now is today's manifestation of an anger welling up from deep layers of grievance shared by many millions of people."
Can I have a recount?
February 10, 2002
The Blogger's Manifesto
Chris Pirillo has constructed his own Blogger's Manifesto (gee, that word's re-cropping up all over isn't it--thanks cluetrain guys), a list of 25 principles Pirillo blogs by. My favs on his list are:
8. You don't have to agree with everything I say.
9. I egosurf Daypop, Google, and Blogdex nightly.
10. I share what I want to share.
Nicely done, Chris. I want to think on this and maybe come up with a few of my own. Why don't you, too, fellow bloggers? Let's shoot for, oh, I don't know, 95?
8. You don't have to agree with everything I say.
9. I egosurf Daypop, Google, and Blogdex nightly.
10. I share what I want to share.
Nicely done, Chris. I want to think on this and maybe come up with a few of my own. Why don't you, too, fellow bloggers? Let's shoot for, oh, I don't know, 95?
Gary Turner Personifies Voice
Gary reads aloud his blog on voice today, as we all learn what he "sounds" like. I'm not sure if I can weave the scottish accent into my head as I read him from now on, but I definitely have incorporated the tenor and cadence of Gary's impressive spoken voice into my reading. See what the guy had to resort to when no one called him? THANKS gary!
February 08, 2002
Nerds Shall Overcome
Blogging empowers, brings confidence. I am who I say I am. Suddenly popularity is bestowed on the braniacs who missed being the life of the party the first time around (unless you were a young Chris Locke passing out your homemade jug of acid to the student body of the UofR and single-handedly changing the genetic makeup of western New York). Aside from those always-bold web personalities, many of us who make up the blog community (and the good folks at google) are just smart, really creative, unassuming, regular people. Not flashy... our messages are our meaning. It's not java script or flash intros that make us say "Ah ha!" It's good thinking, good writing, and good humor. We fight; we make peace. We joke; we laugh. We learn; we link. We create; we appreciate.
And you know, the Real World could learn a lot from us.
And you know, the Real World could learn a lot from us.
Learning
If I keep my self-control,
I'll be safe in my soul.
And the childhood belief
Brings a moment's relief,
But my cynic soon returns
And the lifeboat burns.
My spirit just never learns.
-From Genesis - In the Cage
Work hard to recreate yourself. Let yourself be new, brand new.
February 07, 2002
Uncountry
Understand
that everything isn't so,
it never was.
between the forms
and shapes
crystal clear moments
unfold.
where was I then
that I missed them?
hideous, dangerous
monster memories
swipe and slice
lion claws
that leave deep marks
in young flesh.
Unlikely to untangle,
unending.
Understand,
can't you?
the wanting,
the waiting,
the hated
the hating
it was all a waste.
nothing from you
would have been better
than this.
that everything isn't so,
it never was.
between the forms
and shapes
crystal clear moments
unfold.
where was I then
that I missed them?
hideous, dangerous
monster memories
swipe and slice
lion claws
that leave deep marks
in young flesh.
Unlikely to untangle,
unending.
Understand,
can't you?
the wanting,
the waiting,
the hated
the hating
it was all a waste.
nothing from you
would have been better
than this.
February 06, 2002
Watching the Detectives
This one's a doosey. RageBoy talks of wearing patterns in the carpet of the local bookstore and begins to unravel the many mysteries that make him, well, RageBoy. And of course there's lots of that real smart stuff he's always saying 'bout Zeitgeist and synchronicity and triumphalism and such. Open dictionary.com and give this installment of EGR your complete attention.
Call Gary
Gary Blockstickers Turner has a great post today in his other blog further exploring the notion of "voice" in how we read one another's blogs. You know, the voice you "hear" in your head when you read these things, these personalities, these emoting demons of the net netherworld. Well all this time I read Gary as a cross between an excited Garfield and a resolved Eeyore, and it turns out he's more like Daffy Duck meets Sean Connery! Gary doesn't just stop there--he says this:
"For total authenticity in the future when you read this blog you can call my office voicemail number and hear my dulcet tones on (44) 1536 495482, if you call during office hours I'll likely answer it so unless you want to purposely embarass us both then call some other time. I'm on GMT here. Hell you could even leave me a message."
Gary, you freak, I love it! I am calling. Hey everyone, call Gary. Tell him you love him.
"For total authenticity in the future when you read this blog you can call my office voicemail number and hear my dulcet tones on (44) 1536 495482, if you call during office hours I'll likely answer it so unless you want to purposely embarass us both then call some other time. I'm on GMT here. Hell you could even leave me a message."
Gary, you freak, I love it! I am calling. Hey everyone, call Gary. Tell him you love him.
February 05, 2002
Bathing in Bombast
There is a lot to love about The Bombast Transcripts. Chris Locke's brilliant mind, incredible gift for story telling, mixed with his often damn-scary use of idea enhancing self medications, make for a wild ride through the worlds of business, art, love, loss, grief, and discovery. And I'm only half way through it.
What's taking so long? I've been re-reading a lot as I go along. It's a good idea to do this when you're reading Locke. Take any special passage--and there are a lot of them: The first read startles you, the second read brings forth an "Ah ha" (and often a "ha ha"). And the third read is special--it's for soaking in his ideas.
Here's one of my favorites, from page 72:
"What I believe about my writing -- sometimes, when it's not just flatulent exhibitionism -- is that it's a way to turn those headlights on myself. Not to shock anyone, but to cease ignoring, fearing, hating what I am. After half a lifetime doing that, one day fourteen years ago I stopped. And right before I stopped, I got truly angry. It wasn't anger born of fear, for once, but of understanding. Understanding how I'd been complicit with whatever it is we go along with, buy into, lay on ourselves and others constantly: the shameful guilty knowledge that we are licking our own secret wound in private, in the dark, and no one must ever see. No one must ever know."
This is what I've been doing with my blog. And perhaps what many of us bloggers are doing--turning the headlights on ourselves so we can start healing. Start living again, at first within the safety and almost-anonymity of the net. Here we can examine. We can practice. And we can fail.
We start again. We test the waters. Who am I now? And who might care? Start to reveal the wounds. *Speak* the pain. And when the message connects with someone, resonates with them, that very connection begins the heaing. The growing. The becoming.
In this process, I've had gut wrenching moments. Why is it all coming back to me now? Taking me on this personal oddessy? Converging and climaxing around painful memories and a present-tense that feels uncertain? Why is it all at once so painful and so thrilling? And why the hell am I so compelled to share it?
Because it is birth.
Creation, birth, rebirth. It's bloody and painful, it pushes you to the edge and jabs at you until you think it might be better to jump than to take the punishment a second longer. That's what I'm here to do, to give birth to myself, and to maybe do a few things better this time around. Here. With you.
What's taking so long? I've been re-reading a lot as I go along. It's a good idea to do this when you're reading Locke. Take any special passage--and there are a lot of them: The first read startles you, the second read brings forth an "Ah ha" (and often a "ha ha"). And the third read is special--it's for soaking in his ideas.
Here's one of my favorites, from page 72:
"What I believe about my writing -- sometimes, when it's not just flatulent exhibitionism -- is that it's a way to turn those headlights on myself. Not to shock anyone, but to cease ignoring, fearing, hating what I am. After half a lifetime doing that, one day fourteen years ago I stopped. And right before I stopped, I got truly angry. It wasn't anger born of fear, for once, but of understanding. Understanding how I'd been complicit with whatever it is we go along with, buy into, lay on ourselves and others constantly: the shameful guilty knowledge that we are licking our own secret wound in private, in the dark, and no one must ever see. No one must ever know."
This is what I've been doing with my blog. And perhaps what many of us bloggers are doing--turning the headlights on ourselves so we can start healing. Start living again, at first within the safety and almost-anonymity of the net. Here we can examine. We can practice. And we can fail.
We start again. We test the waters. Who am I now? And who might care? Start to reveal the wounds. *Speak* the pain. And when the message connects with someone, resonates with them, that very connection begins the heaing. The growing. The becoming.
In this process, I've had gut wrenching moments. Why is it all coming back to me now? Taking me on this personal oddessy? Converging and climaxing around painful memories and a present-tense that feels uncertain? Why is it all at once so painful and so thrilling? And why the hell am I so compelled to share it?
Because it is birth.
Creation, birth, rebirth. It's bloody and painful, it pushes you to the edge and jabs at you until you think it might be better to jump than to take the punishment a second longer. That's what I'm here to do, to give birth to myself, and to maybe do a few things better this time around. Here. With you.
February 04, 2002
Lessons
My friend Phyllis is telling me a story, my ear drips with sweat it's been listening so long. I hear a thud, bump, thud outside. Damn dogs are playing rough again. They never shut up. Gotta let them in soon. "Huh, he said what to you? No frickin way. Come on." Half hour. Hour. "It's not you. No, you need to stop calling him. Just stop yourself," I tell her. Like she ever listens.
My mind drifts, half listening I wonder where my husband is playing tonight. Somewhere in Boston. Another gig I missed. I wish I were there. Feeling like a band widow and that sucks.
"What? No, you don't call him. You forget him, Phyllis."
Think back to the night I met him. I'd been watching a long time, secret groupie. Daughter of a bassist, looking for the deep dark rush of the low end. Found him when I least expected it. Or he found me.
Now two years later, we are married and in our first house together. Somethings don't change, like Phyllis and her man problems. The rest of my life is, and will remain, one guess at at time.
Finally she's done. We won't solve it on the phone tonight, but as usual, it doesn't stop us from trying.
"Okay, call me later." We always call each other later.
Upstairs I think, he must be back from the gig by now. I think I'll call. Lemme let the dogs in first, get ready for bed.
Nothing prepares me for the shock as I open the back door.
That sweet boy--the most lovable and intuitive of our two mutts--still and lifeless, a single link of his metal choke collar embedded in the fang of our problem dog, Ikea.
I stand there for what has to be a solid minute, bathing in the trauma. "NO!" I try desparately to untangle the choke colar from Ikea's fang. On the other end, Peanut flops lifeless. Ikea in a primal panic bolts and pulls, tighening the chain around his neck until I'm sure it will sever his head.
It doesn't matter. He's been dead for an hour.
These are the lessons we learn.
While we engage in the useless, the meaningless, the profound and often deadly is unfolding quietly just out of view.
My mind drifts, half listening I wonder where my husband is playing tonight. Somewhere in Boston. Another gig I missed. I wish I were there. Feeling like a band widow and that sucks.
"What? No, you don't call him. You forget him, Phyllis."
Think back to the night I met him. I'd been watching a long time, secret groupie. Daughter of a bassist, looking for the deep dark rush of the low end. Found him when I least expected it. Or he found me.
Now two years later, we are married and in our first house together. Somethings don't change, like Phyllis and her man problems. The rest of my life is, and will remain, one guess at at time.
Finally she's done. We won't solve it on the phone tonight, but as usual, it doesn't stop us from trying.
"Okay, call me later." We always call each other later.
Upstairs I think, he must be back from the gig by now. I think I'll call. Lemme let the dogs in first, get ready for bed.
Nothing prepares me for the shock as I open the back door.
That sweet boy--the most lovable and intuitive of our two mutts--still and lifeless, a single link of his metal choke collar embedded in the fang of our problem dog, Ikea.
I stand there for what has to be a solid minute, bathing in the trauma. "NO!" I try desparately to untangle the choke colar from Ikea's fang. On the other end, Peanut flops lifeless. Ikea in a primal panic bolts and pulls, tighening the chain around his neck until I'm sure it will sever his head.
It doesn't matter. He's been dead for an hour.
These are the lessons we learn.
While we engage in the useless, the meaningless, the profound and often deadly is unfolding quietly just out of view.
now
If in running past, we miss that big something we should have crashed smack-dab into, who's doing is it? sigh. All by design. To fail to falter is my biggest mistake. Don't let yourself bleed half a lifetime before you look down and notice the wound. It's harder to heal that way. Cut, bleed, cry, rage, stomp, cuss. Do it all right then and there. Delay is nothing but false harbor. No one is safe. Let it wash over you. You are not safe. Accept it, feel it, know it, and push on anyway.
That is my job today.
That is my job today.
Clinton Drops Da Bomb
On a related musical note, this just in from the Onion. Actually, it's not just in. In fact, it first appeared during that other little mid-east tiff we had, when Iraq succesfully dodged UN Weapons Inspectors, much to Mr. Clinton's dismay. But look how cyclical life is! This game plan is just as relevant today as it was the third time around. In fact, I'm going to have to run right now so I can fax it forthwith to the asses of evil for their consideration.
Every American should do his part. Funk on...
Every American should do his part. Funk on...
February 03, 2002
Get Your Funk On
If you've never seen George Clinton in concert, you should ask yourself why not. It's an extraterrestrialfunkified experience that is sure to delight. In the mean time, flip on over to the right nav bar, baby, because it's funky february here on allied. Listen to that slappin bass and groove on with yer bad self. Youssou N'Dour is a stretch for funky february, I know, but since we listen to him every day in the car, and our daughter can almost consistently tell you where "1" is on those odd-metered tunes, he deserves top spot this month.
n'joy.
n'joy.
February 02, 2002
Did you try too?
"The axis of evil." It kind of grows on you, doesn't it? That's why I set off to see who grabbed the domain name, figuring it would be gone, and it was:
Congratulations to johnboy, the proud papa of axisofevil.com, born January 29, 2002!
Helgeland, Clair John
[email protected]
2151 COMO AVE
SAINT PAUL, MN 55108-1807
US
If he puts up a site, let's hope he sides with good and not with, well, evil.
Oh, and b!x, you should know that assesofevil.com is still available. Hurry, supplies won't last!
Congratulations to johnboy, the proud papa of axisofevil.com, born January 29, 2002!
Helgeland, Clair John
[email protected]
2151 COMO AVE
SAINT PAUL, MN 55108-1807
US
If he puts up a site, let's hope he sides with good and not with, well, evil.
Oh, and b!x, you should know that assesofevil.com is still available. Hurry, supplies won't last!
February 01, 2002
the asses of evil
This from the one true b!x, who encapsulates the mighty one's state of the union in his latest blog:
Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft -- the Asses of Evil -- are asking these nations, begging these nations, to try something. Try anything. Hit us again. So we can wipe you off the face of the then-bloody Earth.
Madmen. Every single fucking one of them. Theirs and ours alike.
If it weren't so true, it would be hysterical.
Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft -- the Asses of Evil -- are asking these nations, begging these nations, to try something. Try anything. Hit us again. So we can wipe you off the face of the then-bloody Earth.
Madmen. Every single fucking one of them. Theirs and ours alike.
If it weren't so true, it would be hysterical.
This blog has gotten far too depressing. For me at least. Let me take a cue from my fellow blog chroniclers and summarize some of my more interesting findings this fine Friday. Let's run through them, shall we?
You got your everyday "lady nurses a monkey" story. What is there to say?
Craig at BookNotes is incredibley prolific. [ed.--I thought I remembered reading that he was the last liberal in texas, but on further exploration of his blog, I'm not sure where he's from, but his blog is indeed awesome.]
Doc's talking about Jackson Browne, and then gives us a disturbing hollywood update--Jeff Bridges sings?
RageBoy's back--He's going to the movies.
Helen Razer made me a really cool graphic for this blog, which I have to figure out how to incorporate, and I will.
I am completely digging Mike Golby's blog, and his human nature.
Marek hasn't blogged since his soul food for thought. You okay Marek?
I think this is b!x's mom.
That's all for now.
You got your everyday "lady nurses a monkey" story. What is there to say?
Craig at BookNotes is incredibley prolific. [ed.--I thought I remembered reading that he was the last liberal in texas, but on further exploration of his blog, I'm not sure where he's from, but his blog is indeed awesome.]
Doc's talking about Jackson Browne, and then gives us a disturbing hollywood update--Jeff Bridges sings?
RageBoy's back--He's going to the movies.
Helen Razer made me a really cool graphic for this blog, which I have to figure out how to incorporate, and I will.
I am completely digging Mike Golby's blog, and his human nature.
Marek hasn't blogged since his soul food for thought. You okay Marek?
I think this is b!x's mom.
That's all for now.
January 31, 2002
My friend marge calls from Rochester. I miss her so much it still hurts. She says, "Are you okay? I've been reading your blog." Think about the connections in our connection. I had just finished posting--she's at the other end, looking at her monitor, sees my pain. My flat screen, a two-way mirror. The kind where concerned social workers watch family therapy sessions, invisible, observing the grief and anguish from a distance. Then we reconnect--coversation--over the phone, voice to voice. Ah--refreshing. I tell her ya, I'm okay. Margie, I'm okay, well, except for wanting it to be okay.
I miss ya Margie. I miss our camelot, the biosphere, oz.
Damn that wizard.
I miss ya Margie. I miss our camelot, the biosphere, oz.
Damn that wizard.
In hiding
I lie silent at last
I am free from my past
I walk among the tall trees
This is beauty I know
I am in love with it all
I have the freedom to love
In hiding
-Genesis, In Hiding
Split, twist, engage, extend, morph, converge. Sometimes, you're 40 years old before you find out that something you always thought was so isn't. Shall we say I had a revealing therapy session yesterday? Yes, let's just say that. These truths that are emerging about my life--what do they have to do with blogging? I think everything. In writing ourselves into existence (as David Weinberger describes this little exercise of ours), we have a chance to change what was wrong the first time around.
Born again blogging.
It goes like this. You reach inside your soul--where else are you going to get all this material, the stuff that matters--and you pull out all of your collective experiences, understandings, rights and the wrongs, all better known as baggage. You approach this clean slate--the net, your blog--and you begin to define yourself.
Come out from hiding and share your life with the universe.
Man, there's no better way to see how fucked it's been.
And it's not always the things we write about--sometimes the significance is in the omission. The things I don't blog. But still, they inform my writings. There is no hiding in good blogging.
So back to therapy. Things are happening, coming undone. Lies and Truth have intersected and I stare at the axis, blinking. Amazed. confused.
Where have I been?
W-h-e-r-e have I been?
There is comfort in pretending, in hiding, which is why I think a few posts back--in leaving my read of Cixous--I was comfortable to stay in exile. Remember that? That's where Cixous left me. Wrapped in the notion of exile. And I thought that was where I needed to be.
With no camoflage left
Naked I stand shaking
Waiting for rebirth.
I lie silent at last
I am free from my past
I walk among the tall trees
This is beauty I know
I am in love with it all
I have the freedom to love
In hiding
-Genesis, In Hiding
Split, twist, engage, extend, morph, converge. Sometimes, you're 40 years old before you find out that something you always thought was so isn't. Shall we say I had a revealing therapy session yesterday? Yes, let's just say that. These truths that are emerging about my life--what do they have to do with blogging? I think everything. In writing ourselves into existence (as David Weinberger describes this little exercise of ours), we have a chance to change what was wrong the first time around.
Born again blogging.
It goes like this. You reach inside your soul--where else are you going to get all this material, the stuff that matters--and you pull out all of your collective experiences, understandings, rights and the wrongs, all better known as baggage. You approach this clean slate--the net, your blog--and you begin to define yourself.
Come out from hiding and share your life with the universe.
Man, there's no better way to see how fucked it's been.
And it's not always the things we write about--sometimes the significance is in the omission. The things I don't blog. But still, they inform my writings. There is no hiding in good blogging.
So back to therapy. Things are happening, coming undone. Lies and Truth have intersected and I stare at the axis, blinking. Amazed. confused.
Where have I been?
W-h-e-r-e have I been?
There is comfort in pretending, in hiding, which is why I think a few posts back--in leaving my read of Cixous--I was comfortable to stay in exile. Remember that? That's where Cixous left me. Wrapped in the notion of exile. And I thought that was where I needed to be.
With no camoflage left
Naked I stand shaking
Waiting for rebirth.
January 27, 2002
All I'm saying is this: The connections we make on the net are helping us rewrite our real world selves even more dramatically than our online selves. Yep, I need to explore further, and I will give personal examples, but not tonight. For tonight I will say that connections alone are not enough. They are not the end, they are a means. Something happens, is happening, to me and to you because we're here. Something not defined by google search results or inside our blogs. It's physical. It's tangible. What is resonating with you? Where will it take you? How are you different because you've been? Who are you becoming?
I am not who I was. And I'm not alone.
I am not who I was. And I'm not alone.
January 23, 2002
What do you do when you're tired to the bone, waiting for that one more thing to push you over the edge? I'm pretty sure my one more thing is coming, and soon. Consider this a pre-blog. I'm not blogging about what was or is, but pushing the blog-forward button, telling you another shoe is about to drop. Look up--see it? I do. What's yours look like? White? Brown? Dirty with some gum stuck to it? Mine's one bigass sole (with cleets I think). Poised.
Nothing left but fruition.
If it doesn't stomp me to death, I'll let you know what it brings forth.
In the mean time, I blog. Why not?
David over at JOHO has some interesting ideas on blogging and what we are accomplishing by bringing forth these net voices:
The importance of the weblog phenomenon isn't so much that it enables people to publish their breakfast menus or even their genuine insights. It's that we now know what our "avatars" on the Net are going to be: not graphical cartoon representations but our body of writing. You are what you write. On the Web we are writing ourselves into existence. This introduces into the self the same issues of control, inspiration, invention, deception and play as have always been present in the relationship of authors to what they write.
I think Dave's right on with this, and I think we can take it one step further, and a hyperlinked thought it is: As our fingers wind around the keyboard sketching our online selves--filling in the furrows, the wrinkles, the gleam, the raised eybrow as we go--that avatar we create *recreates* us in the offline world. It is a circle of creation and recreation. That is the joy in it for me--not so much the voice, the self I have created through blogging, but how that unleashed voice is transforming me, the person, the flesh and the mind.
Food for thought. An ecosystem, a food chain, an infinity symbol... I don't have all the answers, but I do know that the hard-copy me, the one who created these five pages of search results on *me*, has been changed by that very act. For the better. I think.
joy. don't forget the joy. it's gotta be here someplace (now where did I put it?)
-night
Nothing left but fruition.
If it doesn't stomp me to death, I'll let you know what it brings forth.
In the mean time, I blog. Why not?
David over at JOHO has some interesting ideas on blogging and what we are accomplishing by bringing forth these net voices:
The importance of the weblog phenomenon isn't so much that it enables people to publish their breakfast menus or even their genuine insights. It's that we now know what our "avatars" on the Net are going to be: not graphical cartoon representations but our body of writing. You are what you write. On the Web we are writing ourselves into existence. This introduces into the self the same issues of control, inspiration, invention, deception and play as have always been present in the relationship of authors to what they write.
I think Dave's right on with this, and I think we can take it one step further, and a hyperlinked thought it is: As our fingers wind around the keyboard sketching our online selves--filling in the furrows, the wrinkles, the gleam, the raised eybrow as we go--that avatar we create *recreates* us in the offline world. It is a circle of creation and recreation. That is the joy in it for me--not so much the voice, the self I have created through blogging, but how that unleashed voice is transforming me, the person, the flesh and the mind.
Food for thought. An ecosystem, a food chain, an infinity symbol... I don't have all the answers, but I do know that the hard-copy me, the one who created these five pages of search results on *me*, has been changed by that very act. For the better. I think.
joy. don't forget the joy. it's gotta be here someplace (now where did I put it?)
-night
January 17, 2002
January 15, 2002
Top ten reasons I wish RageBoy would blog more:
10. I don’t have to blog if I’m busy reading his.
9. My dire straits album is getting dusty.
8. I need an excuse to read The Harvard Business Review.
7. I got my war on with no place to go.
6. One word: Zeitgeist
5. Every once in a while, I kinda, sorta understand him.
4. What good’s a meme if no one’s there to propagate?
3. That "Grumpy Fuck" Winer is starting to make sense.
2. Can’t get enough of that funky stuff.
1. I’m still waiting to find out how the LoveLeash worked out.
10. I don’t have to blog if I’m busy reading his.
9. My dire straits album is getting dusty.
8. I need an excuse to read The Harvard Business Review.
7. I got my war on with no place to go.
6. One word: Zeitgeist
5. Every once in a while, I kinda, sorta understand him.
4. What good’s a meme if no one’s there to propagate?
3. That "Grumpy Fuck" Winer is starting to make sense.
2. Can’t get enough of that funky stuff.
1. I’m still waiting to find out how the LoveLeash worked out.
Whitsuntide
screaming to the edge
I stop short
and take wing,
sweet ascension.
I knew you yesterday,
the someone else
you were then,
something in your
laughing eyes
made me believe.
Rising with a star
night-dark rage
angry Aries,
was it something I said?
Without the death
no resurrection,
so untie me then.
And in the end,
will it matter to you
if I leap and lose?
screaming to the edge
I stop short
and take wing,
sweet ascension.
I knew you yesterday,
the someone else
you were then,
something in your
laughing eyes
made me believe.
Rising with a star
night-dark rage
angry Aries,
was it something I said?
Without the death
no resurrection,
so untie me then.
And in the end,
will it matter to you
if I leap and lose?
January 13, 2002
Cixous writes: "I want the word depays (uncountry); I am sorry we don't have it, since the uncountry is not supposed to exist. Only pays (country) and depaysement exist. I like beings who belong to the removal (depaysement)."
--------------------------------------------------------------
I leave Cixous and my journey down the three steps here, in my own uncountry. Although she writes more, on naming, on sex and the presence/absence of gender, on dying and flowers and Kafka's deathbed scraps of paper, I'm not there yet. I have read it, but I am not that far in my own journey. I will stay for now in the School of Roots, somewhere between Exile and Uncountry. You go on without me. Because this is where I need to stay, at least for now.
Unbeing is hard. Transitional, but I don't know to what. "Un" is not forever, because there is the dying to be done. And thank you Helene Cixous. I haven't found any other writer as curious as I am with dying and its inherent tangles with writing, with the writer.
So as I close this portion of my blog to Cixous, you know me. I am the one who lost early and often, and then almost for good. I am the one who dreams of creation and babies who are born, lost, and sometimes never found again. And I am the one struggling with my roots, what they mean to me and my daughter, who is calling me back, just now, as I finish this:
"Mama?"
--------------------------------------------------------------
I leave Cixous and my journey down the three steps here, in my own uncountry. Although she writes more, on naming, on sex and the presence/absence of gender, on dying and flowers and Kafka's deathbed scraps of paper, I'm not there yet. I have read it, but I am not that far in my own journey. I will stay for now in the School of Roots, somewhere between Exile and Uncountry. You go on without me. Because this is where I need to stay, at least for now.
Unbeing is hard. Transitional, but I don't know to what. "Un" is not forever, because there is the dying to be done. And thank you Helene Cixous. I haven't found any other writer as curious as I am with dying and its inherent tangles with writing, with the writer.
So as I close this portion of my blog to Cixous, you know me. I am the one who lost early and often, and then almost for good. I am the one who dreams of creation and babies who are born, lost, and sometimes never found again. And I am the one struggling with my roots, what they mean to me and my daughter, who is calling me back, just now, as I finish this:
"Mama?"
January 12, 2002
--------------------------------------
Cixous Break
Reader-friends, I have a favor to ask. If you happen to be online on Saturday before Midnight, take a trip over to GarageBand.com and check out the Funk/Soul/R&B track of the day from LeadBelly. My husband produces (and lends his nimble bassist fingers) to the band.
The song is in the 100s within its genre now, so I'm thinking some extra attention might keep it climbing up the charts. I'm not sure how the number of downloads/listens figures into their popularity contest over there, but I suspect that it does--and it sure can't hurt. (After midnight, you can still listen, but the tune's run as track of the day will be over.)
Much appreciated. Meme on.
--------------------------------------
Cixous Break
Reader-friends, I have a favor to ask. If you happen to be online on Saturday before Midnight, take a trip over to GarageBand.com and check out the Funk/Soul/R&B track of the day from LeadBelly. My husband produces (and lends his nimble bassist fingers) to the band.
The song is in the 100s within its genre now, so I'm thinking some extra attention might keep it climbing up the charts. I'm not sure how the number of downloads/listens figures into their popularity contest over there, but I suspect that it does--and it sure can't hurt. (After midnight, you can still listen, but the tune's run as track of the day will be over.)
Much appreciated. Meme on.
--------------------------------------
January 11, 2002
the school of roots
Cixous writes: "Exile is an uncomfortable situation, though it is also a magical situation. I am not making light of the experience of exile. But we can endure it differently. Some exiles die of rage, some transform their exile into a country."
----------------------------------------------
I see the place named My Exile. I should embrace that place, but I don't want to go, don't want to be apart. Exile is terrifying until you are apart so long you forget the pain of the rebuff.
More and more with the offline world I am wandering into exile. There seems less reason to reach out, to travel outward physically. And there is, for me, less and less reward in it. It's the online, inward journey I'm interested in right now. Traversing the web of discussions and connections that make the old world seem one-dimensional and flat. How ironic that this flat screen leads into a world thick with dimension and energy, while my own front door leads to a bland, disconnected place--a place of far less joy.
What of this? When the touch of the keyboard feels more familiar than the touch of a hand. When to leave, to exile yourself, becomes more compelling than staying.
When the light out there
is much too bright
and the day too hard
to bear.
Cixous writes: "Exile is an uncomfortable situation, though it is also a magical situation. I am not making light of the experience of exile. But we can endure it differently. Some exiles die of rage, some transform their exile into a country."
----------------------------------------------
I see the place named My Exile. I should embrace that place, but I don't want to go, don't want to be apart. Exile is terrifying until you are apart so long you forget the pain of the rebuff.
More and more with the offline world I am wandering into exile. There seems less reason to reach out, to travel outward physically. And there is, for me, less and less reward in it. It's the online, inward journey I'm interested in right now. Traversing the web of discussions and connections that make the old world seem one-dimensional and flat. How ironic that this flat screen leads into a world thick with dimension and energy, while my own front door leads to a bland, disconnected place--a place of far less joy.
What of this? When the touch of the keyboard feels more familiar than the touch of a hand. When to leave, to exile yourself, becomes more compelling than staying.
When the light out there
is much too bright
and the day too hard
to bear.
January 09, 2002
the school of dreams
Cixous wonders what men dream about. If not creation, she reasons, which is at the core of every woman's dream self--conception, birth, loss, separation, our babies who are sometimes as small as beans and other times disguised as puppies or plants--then what? What colors the dreams of men, especially men who write? What do you birth in your dreams, through your dreams?
In my dreams, I am the child, the mother, the one who loses and the one who is lost.
Cixous finds more comfort in her dreams than I do, or at least draws more creatively from them. For me, lately, my dreams simply mirror my angst. If I could open the door to my blog and climb inside, I think I would. For a while at least. Escape inside the comforting shapes of text and space, of colors and the absence of color, of people who know me well enough to make me laugh, but not so well that they can hurt me.
Here. Here is where nothing happens until I write it, nothing comes undone without my permission. Lately I need to write more than to dream. Lately writing is that dream.
Cixous wonders what men dream about. If not creation, she reasons, which is at the core of every woman's dream self--conception, birth, loss, separation, our babies who are sometimes as small as beans and other times disguised as puppies or plants--then what? What colors the dreams of men, especially men who write? What do you birth in your dreams, through your dreams?
In my dreams, I am the child, the mother, the one who loses and the one who is lost.
Cixous finds more comfort in her dreams than I do, or at least draws more creatively from them. For me, lately, my dreams simply mirror my angst. If I could open the door to my blog and climb inside, I think I would. For a while at least. Escape inside the comforting shapes of text and space, of colors and the absence of color, of people who know me well enough to make me laugh, but not so well that they can hurt me.
Here. Here is where nothing happens until I write it, nothing comes undone without my permission. Lately I need to write more than to dream. Lately writing is that dream.
January 07, 2002
------------------------------------------------------------------
the school of dreams
Cixous writes: "A woman who writes is a woman who dreams about children. Our dream children are innumerable. The writing time, which is like reading time--there is latency, there is pre-writing--is accompanied by a child state, what Tsvetaeva calls the "state of creation." The unconscious tells us a book is a scene of childbirth, delivery, abortion, breastfeeding. The whole chronicle of childbearing is in play within the unconscious during the writing period."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I weep all the way home, and once there, I'm plagued by dreams. My baby is born, no she is still unborn. I hold her and then lose her, or she is not mine at all. I swim through them, dark nights of pain, and wonder too long about what could have been--should have been? Most days I am not sure what's real.
And then my baby comes back to me. To be with me. With us. For me to take care of, for real. I can't pick her up because I'll rip in two. So I return to the bed, for a time. I settle with her there, to stare and wonder: what do I do now? My memory of her is gone, my scent isn't on her. Who's is she?
And then it starts. I feel her again, I feel that place inside so wounded by surgeons, where she once lived, that place of the memory of my child. It happens a little at a time for good reason; to happen all at once would kill me all over again.
And I am finally mother.
I am mother, I am writer, I am dreamer.
And she is with me, she is in me, she is me.
I'm home.
the school of dreams
Cixous writes: "A woman who writes is a woman who dreams about children. Our dream children are innumerable. The writing time, which is like reading time--there is latency, there is pre-writing--is accompanied by a child state, what Tsvetaeva calls the "state of creation." The unconscious tells us a book is a scene of childbirth, delivery, abortion, breastfeeding. The whole chronicle of childbearing is in play within the unconscious during the writing period."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I weep all the way home, and once there, I'm plagued by dreams. My baby is born, no she is still unborn. I hold her and then lose her, or she is not mine at all. I swim through them, dark nights of pain, and wonder too long about what could have been--should have been? Most days I am not sure what's real.
And then my baby comes back to me. To be with me. With us. For me to take care of, for real. I can't pick her up because I'll rip in two. So I return to the bed, for a time. I settle with her there, to stare and wonder: what do I do now? My memory of her is gone, my scent isn't on her. Who's is she?
And then it starts. I feel her again, I feel that place inside so wounded by surgeons, where she once lived, that place of the memory of my child. It happens a little at a time for good reason; to happen all at once would kill me all over again.
And I am finally mother.
I am mother, I am writer, I am dreamer.
And she is with me, she is in me, she is me.
I'm home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
the school of dreams
Cixous writes: "In order to go to the School of Dreams, something must be displaced, starting with the bed. One has to get going. That is what writing is, starting off. It has to do with activity and passivity. This does not mean one will get there. Writing is not arriving; most of the time it's not arriving. One must go on foot, with the body, One has to go away, leave the self. How far must one not arrive in order to write, how far must one wander and wear out and have pleasure? One must walk as far as the night. One's own night. Walking through the self toward the dark."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
As bad as nearly bleeding to death is, the secondary infection is what almost kills me. Ten days on the edge begin to tear apart mother and child bonds, my bond with my baby, my mother's with me. And just there, I have arrived at a truth I hadn't known until I set out, wandering, as Cixous says. The depth of killing in the parent-child separation.
But in the end, I do get up from the bed, and I cry as I leave it. I cry because to die is easier, to be immortalized a heroine, "died in childbirth," the headstones that stop you as you wind through cemeteries. Easier because the damage done to the family from my near-death can't be undone.
But instead I rise from the bed, at the moment of staying or going, I both stay and go at once. I rise from the bed to write. I stay to dream.
the school of dreams
Cixous writes: "In order to go to the School of Dreams, something must be displaced, starting with the bed. One has to get going. That is what writing is, starting off. It has to do with activity and passivity. This does not mean one will get there. Writing is not arriving; most of the time it's not arriving. One must go on foot, with the body, One has to go away, leave the self. How far must one not arrive in order to write, how far must one wander and wear out and have pleasure? One must walk as far as the night. One's own night. Walking through the self toward the dark."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
As bad as nearly bleeding to death is, the secondary infection is what almost kills me. Ten days on the edge begin to tear apart mother and child bonds, my bond with my baby, my mother's with me. And just there, I have arrived at a truth I hadn't known until I set out, wandering, as Cixous says. The depth of killing in the parent-child separation.
But in the end, I do get up from the bed, and I cry as I leave it. I cry because to die is easier, to be immortalized a heroine, "died in childbirth," the headstones that stop you as you wind through cemeteries. Easier because the damage done to the family from my near-death can't be undone.
But instead I rise from the bed, at the moment of staying or going, I both stay and go at once. I rise from the bed to write. I stay to dream.
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