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June 30, 2002
Pointing
You've probably heard of Epimenides' Paradox. Epimenides was a Cretan, and the paradox that bears his name goes like so :
"All Cretans are liars."
Of course, if the statement is true, then Epimenides is a liar, and thus the statement is false. If it's false...well you can see where that one's going. The same paradox is manifest if you say "I am lying" or "This statement is false".
This is simpleminded stuff, the kind of thing that was intellectually thrilling when we were ten years old. I know. The self-referential frisson. Bear with me.
Let's stretch out old Epimenides a bit into something that's also very familiar :
The following sentence is false.
The preceding sentence is true.
Taken separately, each of these sentences is perfectly fine, potentially useful, unremarkable. Taken as a unit, though, we're back at the bar with old Epimenides, swilling wine and scratching at our verminous beards in bemusement, back in Paradox City, Arizona.
It would be possible, of course, to build a group of 3 or 4 or more sentences, each of which in isolation is perfectly acceptable, but which as a group leads us into botheration again. The way in which these sentences point to one another spawns the whirling core of chaos from which the paradox emerges. The way in which they refer to one another generates all the heat.
There's a quote, or just a bit of homespun wisdom, I'm not sure which, that surfaces from time to time, one that I seem to recall deploying here sometime in the last year or so, in relation to something or other. It's also something most of us have experienced at least once, which is why it's juicy. It goes like so :
If you point at something, a dog will look at your finger, rather than the thing at which you're pointing.
I used this, as I think most do, to poke fun at people who 'can't see the forest for the trees' or 'can't see past their own noses', or just to make myself feel clever. I don't recall, exactly.
But I've been thinking this morning about Epimenides, and my growing dissatisfaction with a whole range of things in my life, and I realized that I've been completely wrong all this time.
You see, the dog is right.
It's the act of pointing that deserves the attention. The actor, who by pointing, attaches significance to that at which he points. It's the relationship between the pointer and the pointee, if you will, and the fact that the pointee is frequently pointing back - this is where the Good Stuff comes from.
Now that I've gotten out of the bathtub and written this down, I realize that what I've been saying here applies in good measure to this weblogging stuff as well.
I really was only thinking about my own life, as I tend to do. Your results may vary.
June 29, 2002
...
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June 28, 2002
This is a Test. This is only a Test.
This is a test of the emergency broadcast system.
Poop. The upgrade to MT 2.2 has borked my categories a bit, no doubt due to something stupid I did. Please stand by.
Edit : I'm reflagging entries with categories by hand. This is going to take longer than I thought.
June 26, 2002
Treasure
Koan :
A monk asked Nansen : "Is there a teaching no master ever taught before?"
Nansen said : "Yes, there is."
"What is it?" asked the monk.
Nansen replied : "It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things."
Mumon's Commentary :
Old Nansen gave away his treasure words. He must have been greatly upset.
Mumon's Poem :
Nansen was too kind and lost his treasure.
Truly, words have no power.
Even though the mountain becomes the sea,
Words cannot open another's mind.
Ftagn!
Anybody else out there have recurring dreams about Godzilla? I'm askin'...
I've said it before...
..and I'll say it again : fishrush is a place or an idea or a condition or possibly an affliction where fast fish slow down, or slow fish speed up, or some goddamn thing or other, and I don't claim to understand what the hell is going on, but I tells ya, I sez to ya : I like it.
Just a reminder
The discussion about 'Thread The Needle', a tool to enable tracking of interblog conversations being built by Shelley Powers (aka Burningbird) continues here, and the discussion is an interesting one indeed.
Your two bits are requested.
[Further to this.]
June 25, 2002
Like Young Dogs
"For the sake of Korean football and the Korean people, we will go like young dogs at Germany,'' says Guus Hiddink, the recently-deified coach of the Korean football team.
I've considered and discarded about half a dozen silly jokes, but I feel it'd be best if I just leave a space for you to come up with your own, as mine were invariably rude.
Please take this opportunity to insert own humorous comment here (results may vary, void where prohibited by law) : _________________________________________________________.
There, now - wasn't that fun?
The game match kicks off in about 4 hours.
Edit : Well, they lost, but it was a good, clean game, and the Koreans have done phenomenally well by getting as far as they have, so no disgrace. Congratulations to them, and to hell with the whiners. In other, related news, North Korean state television picked today to reveal to their citizens that South Korea was actually hosting the World Cup. No mention was made of Japan.
Those North Korean apparatchiks would be a laff riot if they weren't so determinedly nasty, dim-witted and inclined to wax corpulent like giant bouffant-sporting post-apocalyptic aphids on the refined agony of their own people.
June 24, 2002
In Grease We Trust
Pure. Tasty. f--king. Evil.
June 23, 2002
Daehan Minguk! Again!
That was an astonishing semifinal game, and the Korean team makes me proud to be...
...well, you know. Canadian. Got caught up in it for a second, there. But honestly - what a well-fought, sportsmanlike, pulse-pounder of a match. sh-t like this might just make a sports fan of me after all these years.
(Edit : Although, clearly, there are some questions about the accuracy of the officiating.)
There's going to be one hell of a party here tonight. The game just finished, and it's cocktail hour on a Saturday night.
June 22, 2002
Wonderchicken vs (ex-)Space Nerd!
I'm not sure how happy I am to be cast as a Bad Guy in Dune, The Musical, but hey, I'm happy to be cast at all. Beats waiting tables. You take the luck of the 268-million-strong draw, or you go home empty-handed. It's not lost on me that the casting process occurred under the auspices of a bottle of The Macallan, either, which might explain my inclusion amongst the ranks of the better-known and slightly less prone to outbursts of borderline psychosis.
But it does make me especially happy to be slated to engage in mortal combat (whilst singing something heartstirring and suitably martial, one hopes) with Wil Wheaton. That oughta be heaps o' fun... but now I'd better start reading his blog a little more often, to study up on his moves! Them Hollywood types is full of devious trickery, I've heard tell....
Put up your dukes, El Whea al' Ton!
You reckon?
"How weblogs straddle personal and social spaces and the potential implications for developing new communities."
Tom from Plasticbag.org says some pretty cool stuff about some things. Powerpoint, 2.8 Mb. (That's funny, isn't it? I wonder who the presentees were...)
Anyway, a quote :
The best, the strongest, the most creative communities can emerge out of the interconnected nature of individual spaces.
Making great communities is about celebrating the individuals within them - giving them spaces that they can use to show off their creativity and passionsâ¦
And in return these individuals will themselves build a vibrant, creative and passionate communityâ¦
No argument here.
Transliteration
Jonathon's talked recently about the way his name is modified by Japanese speakers to make it a word they can more easily pronounce. This is probably why, while watching the World Cup game between Brazil and England this afternoon, I noticed the oddball way that the name 'Ronaldo' (who's still an idiot, as far as I'm concerned) is rendered in Korean.
It's doubly odd, because Han'gul (the Korean alphabet) is perfectly capable of rendering the name perfectly.
This
which sounds like Ro - Nal - Do, would be the perfect way to go, I'd think. Sounds almost identical, bar the minor differences in the way the 'r' sound and the 'o' sounds are pronounced in Korea.
But noooo......
For some reason, the Korean spelling of his name on TV today (and all the other times I've seen it) looked like this :
This sounds like Ho - Na - Oo - Doo.
What the hell is up with that? I have no idea.
But this creative mangling of the sounds of names and other words imported from other languages drives me moderately batty sometimes, as one of the things I have to do in my work is (for example) to disabuse my students of the notion that the proper English pronunciation of 'sports' is 'suh-PO-chuh', which is the correct way to pronounce the word as it is written in Korean. This tends to be difficult, as they've seen and heard the word in all its Konglish glory every damn day of their lives for 20 years, on the evening news.
Don't even get me started on 'Fighting!'
Ah well. That's what they pay me the big bucks for.
June 21, 2002
Sex Pit Help Me Jesus
Nothing to say today (except fishrush is trying to blow my mind, daddy-o!), so I'll show you this cool picture instead. Please excuse.
June 20, 2002
Everybody knows
I don't know why I thought this was so funny, but I'm tellin' ya, I almost peed myself.
June 19, 2002
Think, build, lather, rinse, repeat...
Help Burningbird to build a tool that may just enable the next generation of blogspace interconnectedness (never one for hyberbole, me) by dropping your comments and suggestions here.
Self-Link Love
My design for 9622.net - which is a MeFi-offshoot community blog created by a bunch of groovy and determinedly silly Metafiltrons who outgrew their cult thread and have been demonstrated to harbour an unhealthy obsession with monkeys - has gone live.
The design strikes a fine balance between a total absence of useability and, well, determined silliness, I think. I just thought I'd link it to toot my own horn, as I've never done something like this for a group of people before, and I think it's pretty spunky. Considering I don't know jack about design, and just make sh-t up as I go along.
[Please note the liberal use of #006699, which is an homage to you-know-where, of course.]
Edit : [Warning - self-obsessed wankage ahead] It strikes me as I wander around, reading the words of people who know so much more than I about, well, stuff, that it would be, with the kindness dial turned up to 11, charitable to describe me as 'an enthusiastic amateur'.
I leap into stuff with both feet, I do, like that 'design job' I pointed to above, but it seems that I am almost never equipped with the training or tools to attempt anything but make sh-t up as I go along. I keep going at it with guns blazing, but I do wonder if my mock-buffoonery is just a cover to deflect accusations of real buffoonery. In my decision many many years ago to just wander the planet and see what happened (with 10 kilos of books in my backpack, naturally) I couldn't forsee that the truly Towering Influences in my life, the people that I'd meet in out-of-the way corners of the planet who would shape my vision of the person I wanted to be, would be the mad bastards, tinkerers, and yes, the enthusiastic amateurs.
On nights like tonight, though, when I'm exhausted, drained, and sweating like Corky The Magical Sweating Bear, when I'm reading things people say that I understand, dimly, but that are clearly just signposts to deeper and more tangled thickets of learning, it's times like this that I begin to suspect my approach to knowledge hasn't panned out to be as good an idea as it seemed at the time that I devised it. Which was probably on a nude beach in Greece or some damn place like that.
Is this the mid-life crisis of the childless? Damned if I know. I'll keep you posted.
June 18, 2002
Tripping over the p0rn
Reading a thread at the SA forums tonight, which began with the question : "Did you ever find porn in the woods as a child?"
My immediate answer was "Yeah! I did!" And apparently dozens of other goons did too, leading to the positing of a magical Johnny Pornoseed who long ago in a more idyllic age travelled the byways of North America and charitably scattered dirty pictures in the forests for pubescent males to discover and cherish. Astonishing. Something I'd never thought about as a common experience, hadn't really thought about in decades, but there it is : finding porn in the woods is something that many many young men have experienced.
And what a joyous, revelatory experience it is, too! Explains the fervor of a lot of Green Party members, I reckon.
One SA Goon said this, which is so evocative for me of my teenage hunger for porn :
Has anyone noticed that smell forest porn always has? Kind of musty, but unlike any other kind of smell in the world. It always smells exactly the same. The forest porn smell....
I will never forget the smell of rained on porn mags that have been dried up. For me, it's the smell of porn.
What's f--ked up though, is that to this day, my brain associates the smell of ferns with porn. No lie. We hid our rescued stash in a small cave that was hidden by a blanket of ferns.
The reason I talk about this, though, is because it reminded me of what I like to think of as one of my more amusing off-the-cuff comments, one of the proud random snapshots from my life that I like to remember when I'm in need of proof that I'm not a complete moron.
It was Edinburgh, Scotland, in the winter of 1998, I think. Me and Rick (of whom I've spoken many times before) and the Bearman and Stiffy The Magic Austrian were living in a B&B in Portobello, which is a grey concrete seaside suburb of Edinburgh (which we customarily referred to as Edithburg, just to be annoying), perched like a frozen dog turd on the southern edge of the Firth of Forth.
For some reason, while drinking the cheap Hungarian wine ('Blood of The Bull') that fueled my joyous and aimless unemployment at the time, I'd gotten it into my head that I was infallible at finding sexy bits in novels. I'd sit down with Rick or Barry and make them riffle through the book of their choice. I'd melodramatically stick my finger into the flying pages, and 4 times out of 5, stop the cascade on a page that contained some sort of sexuality. It was downright spooky. But an amusing party trick.
So. One afternoon we're walking back from downtown Edinburgh, which was only couple of kilometres away, through the shortcut alleyway which bore a sign that designated it, colourfully enough, as the 'Fishwives' Causeway'. Some way along the narrow, high-walled, piss-reeking, dogturd-littered alley through which we meandered, I spied a flash of colour to the side, investigated it, and discovered it to be a Nudie Magazine. Huzzah!
Says I off the cuff, as I reach in under the vines to peel it off the asphalt, breathing deeply of that magazine-that's-been-rained-on scent, unmindful of possible cooties : "Not only can I find sex passages in books, I can find sex books in passages!"
Much hilarity ensues, hindered only by the lack of a laff-track and rimshot.
Having actually written the little story down, I now realize how lame that comment actually was. I swear to god it was funnier'n hell at the time...
Proves, I guess, how deeply unexciting the day to day existence of being a World Traveller can actually be when you get right down to it (at least if you did your travelling with us)...remind me to tell you the tale of Ailsa the Hogmanay Girl sometime, just to balance things out.
So : you ever discovered woodland porno?
Not strictly legal...
...so don't tell anyone, OK? But this is incredibly cool, particularly for someone, like myself, who has to ride the subway for 90 minutes to get to the nearest English bookstore...
[via wood s lot]
Now I'm going to have to think this over again...
What Jeff has to say about Megnut's article is very interesting, if a touch erudite for my beer-and-sausages self. Indeed, I wonder if those are the sorts of underpinnings from which she was working when she conceived the piece, and that I just missed the deeper nuances in my rush to poo-poo it.
Simply put, the structure imposed by the grammatical rules of timestamps, permalinks, etc., results in paratactic information exchange. Each day adds another level of and then. . . which had been largely lost in conventional hypertext documents. In hypertext, there doesn't have to be a then, only rhizomatic patterns of connection. Blogging imposes a structure which makes hypertext more functional as a medium. The first generation âlink blogsâ are entirely paratactic, compared to the hypotactic, subordinating [dare I say tree-like] nature of first generation personal home pages. Hypotaxis was derived from print literacy. Link blogs are in essence far more oral and conversational.
[more]
If so, I owe her an apology. This, I can see flowering into something interesting. If the structure imposed by the grammar of blogging (as I think Jeff is describing the subject of Meg's piece) does indeed move us back closer to the roots, to the orality of the storyteller as he tells the tale of the hunt, lit by the light of the campfire (my image, but the one that strikes me each time Jeff talks about this stuff), then I'm much more interested than once I was in the implications of mechanics.
Thank you, Jeff. And Meg, regardless of whether or not she was thinking these sorts of Big Thoughts when she wrote the piece, for giving us grist for this kind of discussion.
As my old pappy used to say : faskinatin'.
We won't deny our consciences
Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression. The signers of this statement call on the people of the US to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11 and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.
We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. We believe that all persons detained or prosecuted by the US government should have the same rights of due process. We believe that questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.
We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do - we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world.
We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage - even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City and, a generation ago, Vietnam. We too joined the anguished questioning of millions of Americans who asked why such a thing could happen.
But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of "good v evil" that was taken up by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression at home.
[more]
That there is such a ragtag group of signatories (Kasey Casem? Starhawk?) is perhaps more revealing than anything else about this declaration of dissent. Still, heartening, and hopefully not totally pointless.
In light of recent revelations and discussions about covert plans (which in reality have been about as covert as a waterbuffalo in an elevator (a little teeny glass elevator, the kind that go up the outside of the building)) and first strikes : Would you sign?
Edit : If you're still not sure whether you'd sign or not, have a look at this book-in-progress by Douglas Kellner. Might help.
[This] is an experiment in writing contemporary history as it evolves, circulating a first-draft condensed from various media sources. As more material comes out, I plan to keep up with new information and various interpretations of the emerging Terror War and New Barbarism to help produce an eventual book on the topic, one that documents the conjunction of Bushâs theft of Election 2000, the September 11 terror attacks, and the consequent Bush administration responses and their global ramifications.
[more]
[via the perpetually humbling wood s lot]
Dahmer Comix
Via this MeFi thread, this is gripping. I just don't know if it's fiction or not. A lot of groovy stuff here and here.
June 17, 2002
What I really meant to say was...
No, I'm not recanting my earlier lambasting of Meg for that article folks are talking so much about. Although in true wonderchickonian fashion, I tacked rather heavily into the tradewinds of hyperbole - hard 'a port, Mr Qeeqeg! - and it's entirely possible that my surprise and disappointment at reading a piece quite devoid of blood and juice, in tandem with what may fairly be described as my impatience for this efflorescence of creativity to mature...well it's possible that my rain dance was a little, shall we say, intemperate.
Starting at the unforeseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, "I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, sir."
"Avast!" gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation.
"No, sir; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, "I will not tamely be called a dog, sir."
"Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone, or I'll clear the world of thee!"
As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.
"I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it," muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle.
Over at Jonathon's, where Meg responded to his excellent translation and elaboration of my rant into calm and well-crafted English prose (thanks, mate!), one of Jonathon's other guests has weighed in on my bare-breasted, blood-streaked ululation :
The arrogance and hyperbole astounds me. The weblogging "community" would do well to learn some humility as they go forward into this bright Utopian future he describes.
I responded :
f--k humility, let's dance.
For a split second after I pressed the submit button, I regretted that a bit, but now, as I sit back with my cup of green tea, it's growing on me. So much so, I think I'll make it the new tagline of the week.
Why on earth should I be humble? How is that going to help anyone? It's a dance, my friends, and if you don't care to join in, you can help call the tune. If you don't care to do that, well, pour the drinks or something, while the rest of us whoop and holler and kick up our heels for the sheer joy of it, for the pleasure of creation, of comradeship, of life. Humility just doesn't enter into it.
Not for nothing do I have this quote on my little website :
"I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it: we must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul. It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!"
Although that paragraph was written almost 70 years ago, if you replace the word 'book' with the noun of your choice [hint], you can perhaps see where I'm coming from, or where I'm going, or something.
But I'm getting off track again, as I so often do.
I do not begrudge Meg her mild fame or her position of influence, or any of the other people who make up the oft-derided, oft-denied, semi-imaginary 'a-list'. And nor, when it comes down to it, do I disagree with much of what Meg had to say, because, at the end of the day, it was pretty mild stuff.
Where I do part ways is at pretty much the same spot as Shelley and Jonathon : the tools, the technology of it all, the minutiae of the format, these are not the common ground from which the communities and friendships and creative ferment that blogspace is fostering spring. This, to my mind, is a dangerous misconception that will ensure that what we are doing remains on the sidelines of the new mediaspace, a diversion of the geek and the technofetishist.
The fertile common ground is the common ground we share as humans : our creative urge, our need to find like-minded people, our need to challenge ourselves and others, our need for play and conversation, our fascination with the New.
Now I sound like a freakin' hippy here, so I'll add in to that list 'our need to argue, to engage in combat, to breed divisiveness and segregate ourselves into tribes over infinitesimal differences of opinion or lifestyle'.
But the tools? The tools are just tools, for goodness sakes. Meg says, over at Jonathon's :
... what I was trying to do in my article was simply point out that we can't define this thing based on the content we're outputting...
I understand that she was talking about the format, dumbing it down for non-bloggers and the non-technical (I mean come on : is there a single person who has ever had a blog who needs the concepts of permalinks and posts explained to them?) But my argument is that we can, we must define this thing based on the 'content we're outputting' (and that phrase reminds me that she was the director of development for Blogger, because the mechanical sound of it reminds me of all the coders and business types that I used to work with in Sydney at HyperGlobalMegaNet, who were good and kind people, but not precisely, uhh, lyrical), not on the tools, or on how it's temporally arranged or permalinked.
A couple of things seem pretty clear to me : one, that the article was written for non-bloggers. It talks (in simple terms, yes, but nonetheless) about technical things, that dollars-to-donuts, your average web-user already knows and understands about blogs, and your average non-web-user doesn't give a rat's ass about, or even understand. Or want to, for that matter. So what audience is it intended for? I'm uncertain.
Two : the article is written by a technologist (who is certainly more than that, and is not a one-dimensional cartoon, and is from all accounts a really nice person, but) : someone who seems to apprehend what's happening out there through the lens of technology, of Product Development.
I've worked with folks who do this. Some of my best friends do this. But this is not the kind of article that's going to excite anyone. And it's not likely to even interest people who don't already know what a blog is and what it looks like, anyone who's not a technophile already. "Permalinks? Datestamps? What the hell is this geeky crap supposed to mean?" would be Joe Sixpack's response, I'd say. It strikes me as odd that the outpouring of praise for Meg's piece comes from the very webloggers who already understand intimately and work daily with the very concepts she painstaking explains. Have so many people lost sight of the fact that the vast majority of humanity just doesn't give a sh-t about blogging, and probably never will? But at the same time, that same majority loves poetry and music, stories and songs, all manner of art and craft. But they don't care about the technology, even if we do. And we already know a blog is bite-sized, permalinked and temporally arranged.
Jonathon said :
Which is not to say there's no place for an explanation of the mechanics of weblogging: tools, posts, links, time-stamps, permalinks... But wouldn't it be better to leave those prosaic details for later? And to start by mapping out an imaginative vision of the medium's potential?
To focus attention on the magic and mystery of blogging. To acknowledge (paraphrasing Burningbird) that the key to weblogging is people, not a format. To admit thatâfive years onâwe're only just starting to realize what might be possible. To stress the communal nature of the activity. To celebrate the amplification of meaning that occurs when smart, creative people collaborate. To invite newcomers to join a grand adventure, a networked version of Hesse's Journey to the East.
This is what I'm talking about. What I'm trying to figure out is who the piece was intended for, and why. It doesn't really seem to serve anyone's needs, and perhaps this is why I reacted so strongly. Meg says, again over at Jonathon's, "I tried to look beneath the content to the tools and format that enable us to make connections."
I understand where she's coming from, and I respect that, but I think she has it ass-backwards. I'm a technologist too, or at least I used to be, and I am as certain as I've ever been about anything that you need to look beneath the tools and the format to what she calls the content, and what I think of as the people. A blog is not a container for content, or the product of some cleverly designed software tools : it's a person. That's the bedrock of this thing we're building.
Meg also says "I wasn't saying that's all there is to blogging, I was just saying that's one piece of it," and of course she's right, and it was my mistake to imply, if I did, that that's what she was saying. It would seem that Meg and many others around the traps do feel that what she wrote about is the most important piece. I would call it the least.
I'll also say, for what it's worth, that my ranting of a couple of nights ago was meant to stir a little reflection, and not intended as an attack on anyone. I get carried away sometimes.
It was arrogant and hyperbolic indeed, in the same way it would have been if I hand-edited the HTML and uploaded it with a command-line FTP client.
The Less Glamorous Side of The Cup
For Jonathon, because he enjoys the funny ones, and I thought this one was pretty darn funny :
Found, as usual, at the 'pile.
Doppelganger
Holy crap. Zeldman looks an awful lot like I did 10 years ago or so. Right down to the biker jacket...
Neat. More pics of members of the Cabal™ can be found here. I like pictures. There were some surprises there for me - some of them folks look nothing like I'd expected.
Just in the interests of disclosure, here's an old snap of me in my biker days :
This can't be right...
English man held without charge, interrogated relentlessly by Japanese police.
"This can't be right," said Jo Holt, who owns a pub in England. "Japan is just beautiful except for this. This wouldn't happen in England. I don't think it would happen anywhere else.
You wanna bet, lady?
June 15, 2002
Is it safe? Is it safe?
I am way keen to see Shelley's new project in action - I've maundered and pondered and arm-waved about something like this for ages (which in blogspace years is about 15 minutes, but still).
I hope she won't mind me referring to it as The Hot Needle of Inquiry, though.
What's Going on?
Godwin's Law aside, this, compared and contrasted with this, despite attempts to debunk it here, is a little scary, I'd venture...
One poster on the (admittedly shrill) forum linked above says :
If you can't stand up and silently protest in this country without being led away by police, the game is over for America.
I would be inclined to agree.
Never one to give offense, me.
There's praise a'plenty. And some canny marketing too, methinks. Oh, yes. But I'll weigh in as well, since that's what it's all about, right? Here... We. Go!
How tedious is this, how perfunctory and lacking of any sense of the mad, wild spirit of creativity that is tearing through the souls of (fill in the names or pseudonyms of your favorite bloggers here)? Sorry, Meg, but this piece strikes me as soulless, by-the-numbers, and regrettably keen to dumb things down as much as possible, custom-designed for Big Media to understand and quote it. Calculated to be Just what the Market Wants. My ungracious guess is that it's just what the publishing industry would like to read, before the Blogroots -related book comes out. Antithetical to the spirit of what so many of us, you included, I thought, were doing...
(And almost as uninspiring as the radio appearance recently of another blog luminary, which, I've got to say, was one of the things that resulted in my lament a while back about how deeply I'm being disappointed of late by some people in the blogosphere for whom I've developed a sort of lame-o superheroesque respect.)
Take a breath.
If you people, you A-listers, you pioneers (and I bow in respect to the Old Blog Guard, but some just don't seem to get the New, in much the same way, ironically enough, that Old Media don't seem to get La Kottke or whatever archetypical high-traffic blogger that they happen to pick out of their very small grab-bag when a url is necessary for street-cred in their latest in-depth analysis), if you can't muster the juice to sing a soul-stirring song about this beautiful web of voices we're collectively weaving, then I suggest you step the hell back, and point your fingers to those of us who can summon the muse and weave the hymns that will bind the New Tribes together.
[Edit : I've just suddenly become aware that this piece was written for a Techo Journal, and that my guns-blazing attack may be Quixotacular. Nonetheless, I'll fight to the f--king death arguing that the defining aspects of my writing here (or Golby's or AKMA's or Shelley's or Jonathon's or Eeksy's or that of multitudes of others) are not Time Stamps or Permalinks. Lead, damn it, or get out of the way.]
Who The fcuk Are You?
Rory hits the Identity Question currently #1 on the Blogosophy hit parade (with a bullet), tacking close to one of my personal ports of call, too, Metafilterolonomomo, and does a fine job of separating the sh-t from the shinola.
Also : "I woke up in a Soho doorway, a policeman knew my name."
June 14, 2002
A Wee Drop of Whine
Time for another Wonderchicken Laundry List Of Annoying Things About Living In Korea© :
That's enough for today. Just had to vent a bit. Thanks for listening.
June 13, 2002
Eek!
In tribute to those Fighting Argentinians, who have been knocked out of the Cup, I give you this.
Found at the 'pile.
June 12, 2002
Worth it?
I'll think I'll stick to the Fart Jokes and Wacky Tales henceforth. Might be best to leave the Big Thinkin' to the Big Thinkers, yeah?
My tragic flaw is that I'm not clever enough to figure out if I'm being made fun of or not. And I hate like hell to be made fun of, ya know?
Edit : Like the big drunken boor that I pretend to be but secretly am (Mossman is really made of Moss, how boring is that?), I've sent abusive and angry messages to someone (psst..that'd be AKMA) because I thought I was being made fun of. My outrageous and pathetically demonstrative response arose in its entirety out of my sad and deeply personal unresolved childhood hurts. I apologize, sincerely, a thing I've been doing in response to blood I've drawn or hurt I've inflicted since I was a young man.
How many times can an apology be offered before it becomes a mantra? And how f--king sad is that?
I'm sorry, AKMA.
June 11, 2002
Daypop goes the chicken
I've made the Daypop Top 40 (#32, rocketing upward, screaming like a mechanical weasel strapped to a solid fuel booster), and I haven't the faintest idea why. (Other than my good looks, debonaire manner, and staggeringly huge bribes, of course.)
How nice for me. Can I have my A-List Secret Decoder Ring Now*?
*nah, I didn't think so.
Identity
[Further to my not-terribly deep musings about anonymity here and this discussion linked here...]
AKMA is toying with thoughts about identity, integrity, accountability, and anonymity. I know I am probably getting into water that's deeper than that in which I normally care to wade, or hotter, or something, but let's press on my mental zit and see what pops out, shall we?
He says :
I started with the premise that âidentityâ functions as a principle of continuity. That is to some extent a constructed principle; Iâm not the same person I was thirty or even fifteen years ago, not by a long chalk.
[...]
At the same time, what about people who decide (for plausible or pernicious reasons) to cultivate more than one âidentityâ? That is, what about people who deliberately disrupt the continuity that ordinarily characterizes our identity? When a blogger chooses to keep his or her âreal nameâ concealed, so as not to be associated with the observations contained in the blog, he or she may be evading accountability in a way that warrants criticism.
Here, before we even get to the parts that I wanted to talk about, I have to stop, scratch my noggin, spit and ponder a bit. There is something to be said, certainly, for the idea that 'identity functions as a principle of continuity'. I understand this to mean that the primary persona that the world-at-large identifies as me (and mark that word 'primary - I want to come back to it) exists and is generally agreed upon as a result (if not in whole, at least in part) of the fact that it has been to some degree consistent over time. In other words, people have certain well-founded expectations and assumptions about me based on the behaviours I have publicly exhibited over time, and are reasonably safe in basing guesses about my future behaviour on those observations they have made.
This public identity is unitary and unique - the very word 'identity' seems to point to that. And this is as it should be : if we could not make reasonable guesses about the behaviour of the people with whom we interact, if we were totally unable to predict their actions and reactions, we'd be in a fine mess, now wouldn't we?
But it seems to me that the leap from this to discussion of integrity, accountability, and anonymity misses an important step. I am strongly drawn to the idea that we harbour a multiplicity of selves, of personas within us, any one or more of which may be our current interface to the world, rather than a single 'identity'. I'm reminded of the quote from Antonio Tabucchi's Pereira Declares Jonathon used back in February :
Well, said Dr Cardoso, it means that to believe in a "self" as a distinct entity, quite distinct from the infinite variety of all the other "selves" that we have within us, is a fallacy, the naive illusion of the single unique soul we inherit from Christian tradition, whereas Dr Ribot and Dr Janet see the personality as a confederation of numerous souls, because within us we each have numerous souls, don't you think, a confederation which agrees to put itself under the government of one ruling ego. Dr Cardoso made a brief pause and then continued: What we think of as ourselves, our inward being, is only an effect, not a cause, and what's more it is subject to the control of a ruling ego which has imposed its will on the confederation of our souls, so in the case of another ego arising, one stronger and more powerful, this ego overthrows the first ruling ego, takes its place and acquires the chieftainship of the cohort of souls, or rather the confederation, and remains in power until it is in turn overthrown by yet another ruling ego, either by frontal attack or by slow nibbling away. It may be, concluded Dr Cardoso, that after slowly nibbling away in you some ruling ego is gaining the chieftainship of your confederation of souls, Dr Pereira, and there's nothing you can do about it except perhaps give it a helping hand whenever you get the chance.
I'm not sure if I'm willing to go all the way to 'Confederacy of Souls', but hopefully you see what I'm getting at here.
Now, although I will grant that continuity is a principle of identity, I'm not sure that 'identity' is the scab we need to pick at here. Taking as seriously as I do the possibility that there may not be a singular me as much as a multiple one, AKMA's connection from 'identity' to 'integrity' feels tenuous to me.
Iâd like to make a connection between âidentityâ and âintegrity,â so that I can work with that stipulated continuity as a lever on ethical problems. [...] That would go along very nicely, so that âintegrityâ could stand both for âmorally reliable behaviorâ and âpersonal coherence.â
It's possible (or, given my track record, likely) that I am misunderstanding, here, in which case see! look at my ass hanging out there in the wind!, but, like Jonathon, the me-as-multiplicity explanation meshes better with my lived experience than any other. I am a boozy wild-eyed country-boy, yes, but I am a reasonably urbane univeristy professor as well. I am a tender and considerate husband, but a merciless opponent to those who attempt to harm to me or mine. I am an occasional misanthrope who donates to charities. (I am the wonderchicken!) I am a multitude, integrated better on some days than others.
Am I displaying less 'integrity', in the sense that I think AKMA is using it, when one of those people that is me is temporarily to the fore, as opposed to another? For some people who know me there is more continuity, for example, in the 'stavrosthewonderchicken' persona, which first appeared on Metafilter in November 2000, than there is in the 'Real Me', the corporeal one, which has lived here in Korea since August 2001.
Are these two people identical? No, not precisely. But then, none of the 'souls' swarming within me are coterminous at all points, either. There is overlap, there are spiky bits that stick out and poke you in the eye, if you're not careful.
The question becomes : is the 'wonderchicken' subsumed within the 'real me', and if so, which 'me', or vice-versa? Or is stavros just another of the continuous, predictable, real elements of myself, the one which is my primary interface to the web, in the same way that ProfessorMan is my primary interface to the world at work, and AngryGuy is my primary interface with people who try to f--k with me?
The next question that pops up is : does the fact that I do not use the name that I was given by my parents, in my writing here and elsewhere make me 'anonymous' for the purposes of my interactions with people on the internet, in any real sense?
I don't feel that it does. Although AKMA is right to suggest that "we may want to take a few minutes to ponder whether pseudonymity doesnât involve ethical hazards that we conceal when we take them for granted," and to observe that pseudonymity opens a door for "the malevolent blogger who uses pseudonymity as a device for trolling, flaming, baiting, and generally propounding outrageously offensive codswallop†", I suggest that these behaviours, like any others, would through their continuity over time lead to an 'identity' every bit as valid as the one that the Evil Blogger used in his or her real, corporeal, life.
Of course no one would be listening by then. If an Evil Pseudonymous Blogger blogs on a website and there's no one around to read it, does it still make a sound?
† I'd just like to mention that I love the word codswallop. It sounds so dirty...
June 10, 2002
Blogroots is live
I hope this turns out to be as interesting as I hope it will be. I'm not sure how it is meant to tie into the book, and I would be very disappointed if it has been created as a promotional tool.
But, given the healthy lack of obsession with commercialism and the teen spirit evinced by the folks in charge, as far as I've seen, anyway, I suspect this will not be the case. I've been checking damn near daily to see what blogroots was going to be since I first heard about it, and I just found out it was up and running from a Metatalk post.
*sigh*
Ah well, I'm happy to have a new place to drone on endlessly about my ever-so-important ideas! Whee! Go go gadget codebase!
Daehan Minguk
It's about an hour and forty-five minutes before the World Cup match between America and Korea begins in Daegu.
The Korea Herald is reporting that about 150,000 Red Devils (supporters of the Korean team) are expected in the Gwanghwamun area of Seoul, near the US embassy.
"The police are worried that citizens might throw things into the embassy or set the US flag on fire if Korea loses to the United States or if one of the US players angers Korean supporters by taking a so-called 'Hollywood action' or exaggerated gesture, similar to the incident involving US speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno during the 2002 Winter Olympics."
So let that be a warning to you, you Imperialist Yankee Footballers : no exaggerated gesures, or we're gonna trash your embassy!
Repoland
"RepoLand.
This is my work, my words, the years slamming the lines down hard as concrete hitting the pillow. After all the books, the chapbooks, the magazinesâ¦this is where I want the words to be.
Free. Accessible. In front of your face.
Rather than the lag time of a book â which is always a couple years â my stuff will be here within hours of being written. Itâs "Smash Or Trash."
This is the new small magazine, the new small press â your eyes will make it happen or disappear.
Oh yeah. I like that.
There is more on this site than any two of my books. I like the immediacy â you want it, you got it. Or. One click & youâre out of my world.
But Iâd rather you hang on.
Fill up an ashtray."
Go, little fishy!
Fishrush is always doing interesting and amusing things. This is pretty super-cool, I reckon. Expect imitations, but accept no substitute!
June 9, 2002
As they say in the movies : Holy sh1t!
This app is, hands-down, about the most amazing thing I've seen this week. Broadband seems to be a prerequisite, but if you've got a fat pipe, download the demo and have a look.
Holy sh-t.
Slicin' up eyeballs
Got me a movie
I want you to know
Slicing up eyeballs
I want you to know
Girlie so groovy
I want you to know
Don't know about you
But I am un chien Andalusia
I am un chien Andalusia
Wanna grow
Up to be
Be a debaser
via bottomdwelling, Mena Trott relives Doolittle a song at a time.
Edit : Also from the same fine iNtarwEb publication, "What Are You, Drunk?"
The study is filled with similar facts, usually highlighted with scary italics like the ones found on Ed Wood movie posters: âFrequent binge drinkers were 10 times more likely than non-binge drinkers to have driven after drinking alcohol.â Okay, but Iâd also bet that frequent binge drinkers were at least 100 times more likely to tell you they love you. Man.