By the way, you all totally missed the April’s Fool joke I did play today.
You’re all fired 😉
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Year: 2002
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April Fools Not!
I wish I could say that my taking down the weblog was an April Fool’s gag, but it wasn’t. I seriously wanted to take this weblog down and remove any non-professional related material from the web as I conducted a job search. I even went so far as to hand delete postings at my old Manila weblog since I couldn’t remove the entire weblog.
However, when I saw weblog after weblog after weblog filled with such hate this morning, I knew that to take my weblog down now was morally wrong. If all of those who try and speak with reason, who try and see all sides of these complex issues, who try and protect freedom of speech, religion, and belief silence themselves, who will fight the battles that need fighting? Particularly in my country?
I can’t do much. That’s more than true. The most I can do is speak my mind and I’ll have to take satisfaction from that. Hopefully the fact that I live in a fairly liberal community means that speaking my mind won’t handicap my job search. However, I know that I’m effectively closing the door on getting a job in certain parts of the country with what I have spoken, and will be speaking in the weeks to come.
So be it.
However, there will be a new rule with this weblog now: All people are welcome to post comments — except for those people who have weblogs and don’t enable comments themselves.
If you don’t have a weblog, please feel free to post a comment. If you do have a weblog, and you have comments enabled, then feel free to say what you want. But I’m not going to continue providing a forum for free speech to those who will not provide a public forum of their own.
And I am more than capable of selectively deleting specific comments, so don’t think I won’t enforce this.
Am I being unfair? You tell me how the hell I’m being unfair.
Take a look at a posting at Jonathon’s, whose comments I’ve been appreciating. Notice how some of the comments aren’t even related to Jonathon’s posting topic? For instance, this Michael Glazer drops in some fairly vicious verbal thrusts about the Palestine/Israel situation (Jonathon’s postings were about sisterhood and the fact that women can be pretty vicious in our dealing with each other), but if you follow the link to his weblog — he doesn’t provide comments capability in his own weblog. Why is that Michael? Do you feel free to say anything to others but are incapable of allowing that same freedom in return?
Am I suppressing freedom of speech? Not a bit of it. These people have weblogs, they can speak on their own dime.
I’ve tried different means to communicate, including intellectual conversations, and poetry, and satire, and what have you. I admire those that can use these techniques and I will visit them and appreciate their efforts daily, as well as point out their choicest bits to my reading audience. However, these techniques aren’t me. I am passionate, with strong beliefs, a fierce love of my country and the principles upon which it is based — though these principles do get battered more than a bit.
And I will speak from an emotional base. I hope to also speak from reason, and compassion, and a sense of humor and perspective, but what I am and what I feel is going to remain a part of this weblog.
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Will not be speaking at NextWare
Well, I’ve pulled out of presenting at the NextWare conference in Baltimore in May. The Penton folks were just terrific and left the door open for me to speak at the Fall conference instead. I need to focus on getting the two books for O’Reilly finished AND finding a job. Definitely finding a job.
Speaking of which, there’s an “About BB” link to the right there, with a nice downloadable copy of my resume in Word format. Please feel free to grab a copy and distribute to the HR person of your choice. There’s an autographed copy of one of my books in it for you 😉
Once the books are done, I want to turn to other things, try other things out. Woman does not live by technology alone.
Woman also doesn’t live by weblogging alone, either.
There’s a Playwright Cafe here in San Francisco that I want to join. They meet every month to talk craft and discuss scenes, chat, hear from professional playwrights, and generally have a lot of fun.
I want to write a play. You’ll all be my stars. Stick with me, I’ll make you famous.
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Favorite children’s book
One more post in my little orgy of posting tonight, and then off to bed. Sharon finished a class in Children’s Literature, and reading her words triggered fond memories of my own childhood reading.
Question: What was your favorite reading when you were a kid? And if you say Harry Potter, then you’re too young to be reading this weblog. There must be some kind of Britney Spears weblog you can read somewhere.
For me there were the usual books — Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verse, as well as Little Women and The Secret Garden. There was also one book that I can’t remember the name of but it was about a day when all the toys in the land became alive — for just one day. It was a great book. I also read every animal-related book I could get my hands on. And comic books when I could snitch them from my brother’s collection.
However, my favorite reading was faery tales. The best was Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling, though I also liked the Snow Queen and the Nightengale. And for a tale to curl your toes, there was the Grimm’s version of Cinderella (BTW, not for the faint of heart — what can I say, I was twisted at a young age).
Speaking of faery tales, the best movie depicting a faery tale is Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bête. This movie put to shame Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, though the latter was an excellent introduction to the melding of traditional and computer animation.
BTW — Sharon, you’re going to be a terrific librarian, but they’re not going to let you swear among the stacks, m’dear.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I made a mistake last Friday — I thought to introduce conflicting viewpoints to demonstrate that one can, intellectually, appreciate more than one viewpoint on an issue. This was a mistake because there are some issues that one cannot discuss from the detached, bloodless core that exists at the root of all intellectual discourse.
We’re seeing the collapse of the Arab Summit amidst more suicide bombings in Israel. We’re witnessing a seemingly non-ending spiral that can only have devastating consequences. Ira Riftkin writes of the conflict:
Israelis cannot kill Palestinian aspirations without obliterating the Palestinians, and no number of Palestinian attacks will force Israel to surrender meekly, certainly not after the Holocaust.
Faced with such stark words, what possible intellectual spin could we put on this issue? Without sounding hollow and vain?
I was a foolish woman who forgot for a moment that blood issues such as this go beyond any form of “reasoning” one can do with the written word, no matter how eloquent the writing, no matter how intelligent the communicator, no matter how erudite the audience. To have brought this topic up in my weblog was the absolute height of vanity and arrogance. And I have paid for this attempted intellectual encapsulation of such a dire, incredibly sad, and heartbreaking situation as exists in the Middle East.
My desperate hope is that there are others out there more capable than I that can find a solution to this tragedy before we are faced with the complete extermination of a people — whether the people be Israelis or Palestinians, or both.
And now I apologize to all of you for having originated this topic in this weblog, first out of intellectual vanity, and later in a fit of anger and self-righteousness. If I decide to continue with this weblog, I will not do so again in the future.