Category: Weblogging

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Halley wrote that she’s a Chris Locke wannabe. I shudder at the innocence of such a request as she couldn’t possibly know the truth…

Due to an unfortunate chemical reaction between certain rare substances only found in Starbuck’s coffee sold in Colorado, and the residue of past _experimentation_, Chris was already in a dangerously febrile state. Add this to his close proximity to several large electrical towers, and it was only a matter of time before some catalytic agent served to disassociate the manic, mischievous RageBoy persona from the meeker, milder, professorial Chris Locke.

Then he met the 19 year old….

At this time RageBoy is wondering loose within the network, seeking homes on weblogs as the spirit, and router, moves him. Halley, run….run for you life….it may already be too l…..

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

There seems to be tentative reaching out by webloggers to one another, at least in my virtual neighborhood. Is there a new evolution in weblogging — a desire to extend contact beyond the ephemeral?

I’ve met people through weblogging who I really like. When they’re hurting or having a difficult time, I want nothing more than to reach out and give them a big hug, show them I’m there for them. Hold their hand and gently pat their back. Tease them softly until I receive a return smile.

However, I live miles away from most of the people with whom I’ve become connected. All I can do is send emails, read their posts, leave comments, talk on the phone, and write to this weblog for them.

How frustrating — we’re socially at the stage where we need instantaneous transportation, but we’re stuck with technology that can, at best, move us about within 24 hours.

What if I have to positively, absolutely, get there overnight? Can I FedEx myself?

I guess I’ll just have to settle for emails, reading posts, leaving comments, phone calls and writing notes here. Virtual hugs and cybernetic pats on the back.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Due to problems at provider, my DSL connection was choked down to sub-modem speeds. Painful. And basically unworkable with Movable Type — all those buttons…

Thankfully, back to working speed today.

Yesterday, I was sitting in my favorite chair, listening to music and typing into my laptop when the door to my apartment opens. A man enters, sees me and stops, half in, half out. He stares at me, I stare at him, waiting for him to say something along the lines of “Oh, excuse me! Wrong door!”

When he continues to stare and look around the apartment in confusion, I ask, “Can I help you?”, being sure to put a little ‘you’ve walked into my home, bud, and what if I had been nude’ tone into my voice.

He starts laughing and says, “I’ve come to the wrong floor! I live on the second floor and must have got off on the wrong floor. I live in 222!”

Sounds reasonable. Easy mistake. Just shut the door on your way out.

“I was so surprised. I couldn’t figure out who you were.”

Well, cool. Please leave now.

“How funny! You must have really been surprised, too.”

WHAT THE HELL DO I NEED TO DO TO GET YOU TO GO!

I got up and walked towards the door and the guy still isn’t leaving. Friendly, not harmful at all — just chattering away. Being a polite soul, I respond to his chatter. Yes, funny coincidence. Yes, I do sometimes forget to lock my door when I bring groceries in. And, yes, weather has been nice…now move your butt outside my door!

After I herded him out, and just as I’m closing the door he calls back, “Well, nice meeting you!”

I locked the door and started to walk away. Stopped. Turned back and threw the dead bolt.

We are a society that is, above all, polite. We have raised courtesy to an art form, honing it into fine-edged usefulnes. Our words become knives as we fight a duel called “conversation” — victor and victim equally bloodied. We circle and stab, and then commiserate with the pain, apologize for the sting.

We pommel each other with argument and viewpoint, all the while debating the finer points of etiquette. We hammer at each other with opinion; we blast most eloquently, and always with the highest regard, the deepest sincerity.

We hold mirrors up to show others their flaws, only to find that the silver has flaked off, the glass is transparent.

You know what I like about weblogging? If you read something you don’t like, or something that irritates you, or a piece of self-righteous garbage, you can close the browser and it’s gone. You don’t have to be polite. You don’t have to read, react, respond.

Just close the browser.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

At first I thought the Weblog Foundation was a joke, but additional reading showed me that, no, this guy’s serious. And so are the people who’ve been responding to the suggestion.

A Foundation that will do, among other things:

Provide honorariums for deserving webloggers
Provide hardware and software to support webloggers
Provide weblogging PR
Arrange corporate and other sponsors of weblogging

And so on…

And the response to the idea has been favorable — primarily from people who want to see themselves acknowledged as “professional” journalists because of their weblogging effort.

Professional weblogging. Doesn’t it just make you want to cry?

Not all the response on the idea has been supportive as can be seen at MetaFilter, not surprising that. Though I hesitate to provide buzz to a weblogging book competitor (she says with a smile) Rebecca Blood’s MeFi response is one of the best:

at this moment there are too many *excellent* weblogs for me to have time to read them all, and all of them are paying a little bit for the privilege of maintaining their sites.

so many professional writers seem to have the idea that good writers must be paid in order for writing to be worth their while–the web belies all that. *professional* writers need to be paid in order to be professional, but there are even some of them who are willing to do it on their weblogs for free.

Over at AKMA’s, Dorothea has been conducting an extensive makeover of the PreacherMan’s weblog. She’s not being paid for this effort. Instead, she’s doing this as an act of kindness, for fun, and with a sense of adventure.

Ultimately, Dorothea is acting as a member of a community, the same community that David Weinberger writes about:

Relativism need not be what we learn from our encounters with others. Respect and open-mindedness are more likely given the fact that the Internet as a technology teaches us one value more deeply than any other: the joy of being connected … which in some parlances is more accurately termed love.

Now if you’ll excuse me a moment, I have to go dust off my tin cup.