What I hate about blogging

Idiots who flame in comments without leaving their email.

Feeling like I have to blog when I don't feel like it.

That the blog takes time away from my family.

That blogging doesn't pay.

Daypop's same old "which one are you" contests that always clog up the Top 40.

When all of blogland turns grey.

When no one comments.

That I have to blog so often.

That I can't blog all the time.

That no good memes have gone around in a long time.

Not finding any great new bloggers to read.

That Shelley's quit and other good bloggers are giving up.

That our secret's out.

That it's a lot of work.

That it makes work seem more like work because work is not as fun.

When bloggers go on vacation.

Clicking on a link and finding that the blogger's the most recent post is three weeks old.

That the apps for blogging aren't evolving fast enough.

...and you?

Valued Bleeders

Chris Locke took to the Internet airwaves on CNET Radio’s Online Tonight with David Lawrence.

Lawrence and Locke talked about this EGR send, where RageBoy apparently stole the keyboard from Locke and flamed valued readers everywhere. Later, Locke came as close as he ever has to “recanting” with another EGR apologizing for RageBoy’s nasty if not accurate rant earlier in the day.

Fortunately, Locke recanted his near recant on tonight’s radio show, explaining that we EGR subscribers actually enjoy being yelled at. And he even got a shot in at Dvorak. Cooool.

Ask yourself, if you're a RageBoy fan, have you done your part as a valued bleeder?

Small Interview Loosely Joined

Marek interviews David Weinberger on his new book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined. The conversation is as interesting as the book. I wish they would have talked longer. It's kind of a "The Making Of" thing -- you know, like they do for movies, "The Making of Jurrasic Park." Fascinating in and of its own rite. Here's a tidbit from Sir David:

"As to the people who want us to get off the Web and get back to work, I'd say: Yes sir and/or madam! Immediately! I will unplug. And I will also stop talking because if you monitored what I say in a day, you, sir and/or madam, would be shocked -- shocked! -- at just how much time I waste! Why, just this morning I blew almost 2 minutes chatting with the security guard."

Just one

I'd like to get my mitts on just one parent who allows this, the latest hate group video game, in their house.

We can take turns on the rest.

Part of me wonders, though, might it not backfire for the gang at the wheel of this thing? How many blacks and jews does a kid have to blow away in this game before it gets boring? How many monkey sounds before he doesn't laugh anymore?

"The player (who can choose to dress in KKK robes or as a Skinhead) roams the streets and subways murdering 'predatory sub-humans' and their Jewish 'masters' thereby 'saving' the white world.

I guess I answered my own question.

Identity Crisis

Eric Norlin takes the identity czars to task over on Digital ID World.

"These discussions over identity shouldn't begin with computer geeks acting like Zoroastrian missionaries -- zealous in their fight for the truth of their position. Rather, these conversations must begin by asking some fundamental questions: How are we to define the idea of a "digital identity" in the coming decades? Is it different than our physical, or non-digital, identity? Is it more valuable? More malleable? More diverse?

interesting links of the day

I'd like to attend this session, although I think I'm involved in the home-study-by-default course currently: "giving voice to the man in the woman and the woman in the man, the giant, the witch, the dictator, the victim, the hero, the lover, the elements, animals, demons and gods within us."

I'd like to understand more about this.

I'd like to read this book.

I think Joyce Carol Oates should blog: The human voice, and the ways in which the human being expresses him or herself in the theatrical setting, is very interesting to me. Often people standing in front of an audience say things and reveal things about themselves that they would never even dream of revealing in a more intimate situation. Nor would they think of these things if they were alone. There's some strange -- perhaps it's an atavistic -- response, maybe it's not understood at all.

unspoken

a voice hushed
wrapped in chains
lock snapped tight
teeth clenched.

the wrath of words,
fire like hail,
rain down
on this family.

for appearance
we sacrifice
voice, soul

for appearence
we learn to believe
the lie.

Today I spoke.
Today I said
there is a problem,
Today my voice rang clear
for me the child
for my child.
Today I was seen
and heard.

Today,
nothing was left
unspoken.

Alphonse Dimino, Part Deux

And now he is here with me.

the folks I work with

I bet these guys will let me surf the Internet all day long! And I don't even mind that he's recruiting from within my own bloggernizations.

"A global reach consulting team, with offices in more than 10 countries, staffed by 20+ experts, with round the clock continuous operation."

One thing: don't gobble up ALL of my blog sisters' resources, dammit! They are an important part of my MRM effort.

Who am I, Part 1

I surfed on over to parents.com tonight to see if I could find a little info, a little support for spouses of spouses (?) who travel extensively on business. That after we nearly sealed a sweet gig for my sweet love over in Hong Kong for three months. Yep, three months. As a mom. Working full time. From home. Me, myself, and I, and four-year-old makes four.

Yes, I understand that single mothers do this all the time (how they do it, I'm not sure), but most don't have their kids at home because they have to work (mine has just started school, but it's just for a few hours), and most with their kids at home don't have a husband they love that they're missing so, otherwise they wouldn't be single moms. Am I making sense? No? I didn't think so. He's not gone yet. No it's not a done deal. But you know how bloggers think. I already have him gone.

So my point to all of this was, I found the "Family Boards" on the site and was thinking, heck, I'll find some great ideas for passing the time, or ways I can talk him into coming back early, stuff like that. And I get these boards to choose from:

Family Time Boards:
Married Life
Single Parents
Stay-at-Home Moms
Working Moms
Family Time Open Forum
Recipe Exchange

Suddenly a wave of exhaustion washed over me, as I ran my mouse over the options and realized, in one painful moment, that I am all of these things. At once. (And they don't even list "Blogger" or "Team Blog Leader.")

Lets run through the list, shall we?

-Married life: check, been married 16 years.

-Single parents: yep, married to a road warrior music man, and have an amazing, spirited, demanding, insanely creative child. go figure.

-Stay-at-home mom: yep, I stay at home all the time (except every other Friday, when they make me come into the office)

-Working mom: check, work full time, usually more. maintain near perfect utilization and manage an editorial group. online 24/7, except when I sleep. sometimes.

-Family time: yep, every Sunday is family day. the rest of the week we pretty much play it by ear. our household is jazz through and through.

-Recipe exchange: yessiree, I cook too.

I'm not saying I'm special or anything, but, shit, no wonder I'm stinking tired.

Is there a name for this? More importantly, is there a cure?

And, finally, which one do I click?

Restructuring at Blogsisters--New President to Share the Load

Sometimes you have to take a hard look at your business, a hard look at your life, and realize that things aren't working the way they are. That's what spurred me into action, reorganizing the women-only blog behemoth called Blog Sisters after just three weeks in business. Read more about our organizational changes here.

sorry i haven't blogged more

but i've been engaged in fighting a vast right-wing conspiracy over at Blog Sisters. You can wander over and see what all the comotion's about, or you can just read b!x's take on it and call it a day. I recommend the latter, the former being too irritating.

More news on blog sisters soon. Big news. Ha, now I have your attention.

Nah-nah. Blog Sisters nay-sayers, get your little steely knives ready to see if you can kill this beast.

Not.

From father to husband

My father was a professional bassist and composer; my husband is a professional bassist, composer, and producer. Freud would have a field day with me, but I have never cared. We seek to marry our fathers, our daughters, our mothers, our sons, and it isn't inherently wrong. My husband, George Sessum has been my harbor for 18 years. His mind and his music wrap me in comfort and blow away my dark clouds.

Digital heritage

Al Dimino on piano, 1965 at my grandparent's house, where there was always music. Who do you think the munchkin whooping in the background might be?

Alphonse Dimino

He doesn't exist on the net. These are not him. He's not here with me. The further I wander into this world, the further I wander from him. So, today, I bring him here. With me.

Ancestry.com gives me information I never knew. My father wasn't 36 when he died, he was 38. I wasn't 5, I was 6. To anyone else, these life-long discrepancies are meaningless. To me, they rock the foundation on which I've built my life. Especially so because without the net, I never would have known. The net moves beyond the living to give insight into the dead. Moreso, I'm sure, as we, the pioneers of net voice, live and die online.

ALPHONSE DIMINO Request Information (SS-5)
SSN 070-26-8940 Residence: 14526 Penfield, Monroe, NY
Born 16 Dec 1930 Last Benefit:
Died Mar 1969 Issued: NY (Before 1951)

That's the only reference to him here, in this world. Nothing about his soft voice, the cleft in his chin, the way his shoulders hunched over his upright bass when he played. Nothing about Al Dimino's nickname, "Tootie," which he went by at home and in the music business. Nothing about his time with the Woody Herman All Stars, Nothing about touring with Serge Chaloff. His lyrics aren't here. His music isn't here. There's nothing about how my daughter has his eyes, his chin.

Today, he has a place online.
I am making him a place. With me.
Because I can't leave him behind.

the day of shamrocks and death

today is the day my mother, just 35, lost her husband, the only man she would ever love.
today is the day my mother cried on her father's shoulder, not knowing that in three weeks he too would be dead.
today is the day my mother lost her mother, twenty years later.
today is the day my mother, unquestioning Catholic, celebrates her feast day, Patricia to Patrick, living to dead.

Grief unspoken destroys us. Grief unspoken welcomes disease, turmoil, violence, and chaos. Grief unspoken consumes the family. Grief unspoken has taken my mother from me.

today is the day I celebrate loss.

Machine Gun Memories

It's 3:00 in the morning. I haven't slept well in weeks. Machine gun memories. I have never had them before.

The movie is playing backward in my head again. What act, what scene?

One after the other after the other after the other.

Rat tat tat tat tat. rat tat tat tat tat. rat tat tat tat tat.

"Hold your fire!" I cannot make it stop.

I'm 36, I'm 30, I'm 26, I'm 22, I'm 18, I'm 16, I'm 12, I'm 9, I'm 6, I'm 3.

Backwards in time.

I'm in the house with the turret, the one in the city, my father's baby grand sits at the bottom of the winding staircase for three years because no mover will bring it up past those stained-glass windows, relics of another age.

I'm in the perfect brick ranch, where nothing is perfect except the brick facade, a year in Virginia like a life sentence.

I'm in the house with the pool that no one wants to clean and it isn't the only thing that's dirty.

I'm in the house by the Lake, my room all arches and charm, my closet full of gobblins.

I'm on the farm, I don't swing from the hayloft--if you fall through the trap door you'll die.

What is this movie and why am I in it?
Who are these people--I don't remember them.
I don't remember playing this part.
This wasn't how the story went.
My gut is on fire.
My lungs burn.

I can't get close to my daughter this week--I see me standing there, not her, and I'm not ready. I will be ready? For now I am glued to my own rapid fire memories. Forgive me. Baby, forgive me.

I wan't to go back and reshoot these scenes, the ones that are haunting me now, my rage building now.

What were they thinking?

Patches and patterns.
Pieces. Falling to pieces.

How could they let this happen to me?
How could they let this happen to me?
How could they let this happen to me?
How could they let this happen to me?
How could they let this happen to me?
How could they let this happen to me?
How could they let this happen to me?
How could they let this happen to me?

Villian, villian, hit your mark,
The spotlight's coming your way.

And someone is watching us.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

don't hit [esc] by accident when you're writing a post

it goes away. byb-bye.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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!"

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.

Marek's got a big red button, or something...

The important thing is, he's back!

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.

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.