Author: Shelley Powers

Shattered Webs

Points meet and swirl in an eddy of communication and reach, growing into a circle so large that light must surely shine from its depths…

…until the darkness of the surround intrudes and the circle spins more slowly

…and falters

…and breaks

Splintering into bits and pieces of shattered web, gossamer fine, edges dulled by wit

—

And Mike writes:

“On 8 April, the Israeli army allowed a single ambulance access to the camp for the first time in 10 days. However, as the ambulance evacuated three badly injured people from inside the camp, Israeli troops held up the ambulance and violently snatched two of the injured, claiming they were terrorists and were under arrest.”

And AKMA writes:

“No one should be subject to the fear of sudden violent death; no one should be subject to the fear that tanks will flatten his or her home. And so far as I can tell, no one advances the cause of peace by killing more people. Killing more people advances the causes of hatred (suppressed or overt) and vengeance, and killing more people will only cost a steadily increasing number of lives.”

And Elaine writes:

“Killing innocent people is wrong. It’s wrong for the Palestinians and it’s wrong for the Israelis. But if neither side doesn’t want to deal with the consequences of warring on their neighbors, then they should simply stop making war and resolve to negotiate.”

And Meryl writes as she and Mike Sanders join in March:

“We want peace, too. But not at the cost of the State of Israel, or by more loss of Jewish lives.”

And Jonathon writes:

“All around Beckett senseless arrests and killings were commonplace. Even more devastating was the knowledge that numerous friends were either colloborating openly with the Germans or indirectly toadying to them. He found himself unable to remain neutral any longer. Now that the war touched his friends, it was no longer a philosophical exercise — it had become grimly personal.”

And Chris Writes:

“Bathe in the blood of your enemies, before they have a chance to caper like children in arterial gouts of yours. Cleanse the world of your hated foes, yes, that’s it, ethnically cleanse.”

Splintering into bits and pieces of shattered web, gossamer fine, edges dulled by wit

A weblogger’s nightmare:

I am looking at a weblog page with a Google box to the right and a NY Times box to the left and several buttons with coffee mugs all over them that generate OPML, RSS, and various other assorted and sundry XML flavors. Within the page there is this outline with links and plus signs and you click on the plus signs and the content is expanded to show even more outlines, which can expand to even more outlines, and on and on and on.

And I see myself hunting desperately through the page knowing if I look hard enough, deep enough, I will find the truth. I will find what the weblogger has to say.

Finally, after I click enough of the little plus signs, and get rid of all these boxes that keep opening up and tell Google to shut the fuck up for just one second, I find it.

Hear the words of The Weblogger:

You are The Doc Searls Weblog!

You are located at http://doc.weblogs.com/

You are rather jolly. You write a lot of geeky stuff. You are so fond of penguins that you edit a journal about them.

At which point my head implodes from one mind bomb too many, and the weblog falls over and the Internet gets sucked up into this huge black hole and the universe as we know it ceases to exist.