1 step beyond

I've taken some of the advice you've so graciously offered me relative to my blog and found a site that lets a person generate tests and quizzes for their audience's viewing and time wasting pleasure. So the thing is I am always of a mind to say that people have a public mask that they always put on and - even in sometimes the most intimate of settings - they rarely ever reveal the true nakedness of their soul to anyone. So I'm sitting around thinking - woh, y'know? - everybody's got these masks we wear. Pretty brilliant eh?

So I made this test up to cut through the nonsense and see right through you. And aren't you just a little bit curious? Oh yes you are.

The premise is that by revealing a set of your "ideals" for more or less usual life situations you will find that "secret self" that exists behind the mask. The deal is - pick your "Ideal"; that which you would like it to be in your heart of hearts. Then the accumulation of info will help you identify yourself amongst a veritable maze of possibilities.

But... um... just remember.... this will not end well.

May I present... Your Secret Self When 1 Step Beyond

Then come back here & let us know - with description of the real you. Or post on your blog as you want. This is a fun deal. I may make a bunch of these!

Labels: Internet

And I am the last sane person left online.

I came from off the old newsgroups back in the mid-90's and the developing discussion boards that followed. Enticed because of its unique characteristics, and then repulsed by the discussion board culture that evolved (flame wars, sexual predators, sock puppets, nazis, deconstructive obfuscaters, back channel gossip, vendettas, Godwin's Law every third post, etc.), it was so very refreshing to stumble upon a new way to communicate.

The very first blog that got my creative juices going was one started in 2004 called Andy Kaufman Returns. It was my first exposure to the concept of a "meme." I was energized, to say the least. I tire quickly of the same old stuff and had stopped writing for over a decade to concentrate on my "career". Needless to say I was recharged to return to what I honestly loved.

Over time I sort of fell into a kind of community that develops with this kind of medium and carved out a modest little niche for myself in it. I didn't have any great designs to become super-blogger, yet I had a standard that said "no, this isn't just for me because people actually, like, READ it and so you should think about that when you write something". And it really wasn't any more complex than that. I had already developed the hard shell a person who has been online since the mid-90's and went through the old-time post wars grows over time. The kind of keep-your-ego-in-check stuff that is helped by not taking yourself so seriously. After a while, and into this recent incarnation of my stuff, I even disconnected from all possible ways of measuring how many people stop by and how big the audience is. For a short while I was kind of proud of the fact that the only people who commented here were folks who had - or seemed to have had - very well-participated blogs far far ahead of my little shop. It was almost as if they came here to destimulate and relax - though I know that (really) that's reading WAY too much into things. Still, it seemed that way.

So I don't know what's happened.

My "community" (or - more accurately - my illusion of a community) has now busted up into various camps and nuances of camps and sub-groups and the like. There's been a spate of actual "raids" being done from one side to the other and all kinds of stink bombs placed in the pathways. I think they're known as landmemes (joke). But in any case there's a lot of hard feelings going around and a lot of people stuck in the middle and some people (read: casualties) have dropped out of sight, seemingly forever.

I tried, in my own stupid way, to stay detached and neutral, and to try and participate more widely amongst the efforts of the people I liked and felt I got along with, in an effort to sort of just be there if anybody needed a stable reference point to look at and go "Ok, it's safe here." I recognize that that was pretty grandiose of me and also FAIL. But, you know, c'est la vie.

I am actually this || close to just knocking out three or four links over there in the blogroll just on the esoteric principle of what I'm advertising to uninvolved parties in the way of connections to other people's minds. I don't want emails about it. I'm walking away from any hint of it in your posts. I comment if I'm interested (which is easy to do when you're not the kind of person who posts just to hopefully get new people to come to your little island). And I visit who I visit and that's all you need to know.

If there's anyone around who has cut me off because they perceived I held one view or another on the ongoing stupidity - I've been just me, so fuck you and everybody you know. Just sayin'.

I almost thought about closed comments on this post. I leave them open because we're all adults. Supposedly. If you have no idea what this is about - CAN I COME OVER TO YOUR PLACE PLEASE!? You haven't missed anything and may God continue to bless your little pea-pickin' heart! Don't gwo away i wuv you!!! BWAHHHH!

The rest of you behave. I got my delete finger all ready for any bullshit, and I don't really care from what side it originates from.

This ground is NOT INVOLVED.

Labels: Internet

There are 1,407,724,920 people on the internet at any given time. REFERENCE For the sake of argument let's say that one quarter of one percent of any gathering of human beings will consist of people who are bad. Bad, as in, not nice in some way. It's a very small percentage - when you look at .25% of a group. It means that amongst one hundred people there's one guy who is really only one-quarter bad. In one sense, not so much. but in another sense, remember, at any given time when you are online there are 3,519,312 jerks connected to you in some way. Think about it... I'm just sayin'.


Words appearing on a screen connected to the internet are really just the result of a browser reading and translating code into your connotative and regional verbal language. The words consist, in actuality, of more 1's and 0's than anything else when you come right down to it. Though it has been said at least, by now, 109,787,565,323 times; the person reading it is the source of inflection in the reading of those words, and though words may lead to negative stuff no one can literally type you to death. Think about it... I'm just sayin'.

Your motivation for participating in the internet, at least as it entails your contribution to the interpersonal communicative aspects of the endeavor, is actually quite irrelevant in the context of the greater picture. Whenever you put something out on the interwebs it can - at any given time - be accessed by any random 3,519,312 jerks (see above). So even if you are writing to do nothing more than go with a little mental masturbation there are people who are watching you. And these people can do 1's and 0's too. You can say "I'm writing for myself and if you don't like it you can just hit that little X in the corner" but when you do that - I mean BY NOW I'd assume you have to know this - you obviously have no concept of what 1,407,724,920 actually means, or that 3,519,312 jerks who think they can 1 and 0 you to death if they wanted to are sitting on the other side of the screen thinking that they, too, can do and say anything they want "for themselves" as well. Think about it... I'm just sayin'.

So what are we to draw from this review of the reality of the situation?

For starters, I think you should just assume that I am one of those 3,519,312 jerks connected to the internet at any given time. But, more than this, it is important to remember that the rules of the internet are very close to the rules of sex for single people. If you randomly screw around with anybody who comes along you do increase your chances of catching something, and even if you just screw around with a select number of the same people there's really no telling where THEY'VE been so that's no guarantee you won't catch something either. And since everybody is .25% jerk that means 4 people in any one room equals one person who is 1% bad. Unless my math is off, in which case it isn't that I'm 'wrong', it's just that the number is different.

I'm just sayin'....

Labels: Blogging, Internet

Before the era of blogs, before we all became blogtards, internet communication outside of email was basically done via discussion boards, and the original bean that existed before discussion boards was usenet, or newsgroups. Now I may be older than sin around these parts and therefore dismissed as an internet noob but I've been online since the stone age nineties and the chances are pretty good I didn't see a lot of you back in the days of the .alt world being the only world unless you were intranetted with some university nerds. But if I did I expect you're not the kind of person to waste their time on pointlessly pointless internet activity (I differentiate between pointlessly pointless and merely pointless, you'll note. Just about everything except banking, researching and buying shit is pointlessly pointless; where banking, researching and buying shit is simply pointless. And don't play word games with me. This is going to be tl;dr enough).

Pointless is cool. Pointlessly pointless is not cool. Pointlessly pointless is a person reacting to a spam on their comments with "OMG how can people do that?!" Pointlessly pointless is a comment war that goes on between posters for more than six minutes. Pointlessly pointless is wasting time complaining about bloggers who complain about bloggers complaining about bloggers complaining about what bloggers write. Pointlessly pointless is thinking it's all about YOU and where you fit into that last sentence. Pointlessly pointless are blog entries talking about the state of blogging. The next person to complain about what people are writing about loses the game. The next person to say "I write for myself" loses the game. Did that make you think about the game? You and I just lost. Have you ever sat down in front of the computer and felt a tinge of anxiety about what some nemesis (asshole du jour) said in your comments that you are going to have to "save face" with in responding? Did you ever go to another person's site and whack on their behavior or taunt their ass or just basically troll them? If you did, you lost the game right thar. You didn't know the game was on, and I kamikazed it. Yes I am a fucker. I am writing this for myself and I'm complaining about bloggers. I am a loser / and I'm not what I appear to be.

Before we go any further, if you're about to whack me in the comments or on your blog for what I'm saying, let me just get this out of the way right now...



Also - if it hasn't been obvious by now - Rule #00 - I am sick and tired of hundreds of sycophants showing up every day at blogs and creaming all over the host whether they wrote something good or not. EDIT: This is a blatant disrespect to the commenting people, not the host. Rule #0 - My readers are encouraged to disagree quite regularly. if you don't know that YOU LOST THE GAME.

Point being if you have not been an ass at least once on the internet you don't exist. If you've been a polite person through it all and never engaged in the online back and forth with someone you decided to hate intensely even for three seconds you don't exist. Sorry, you just aren't. What was that?? Did you hear something??

I don't want an answer. This blog is not a democracy. I'm tired of building you up every fifth day only to see you go crashing back down into your deep, dark hole of self-loathing again waiting for the rest of us to come pick you up YET AFUCKINGGAIN.

So a little behavior modification is in order. Use this. The full list in all its glorious context of the following rules can be found here. I have lifted and emboldened the rules that hereby apply to this blog and your relationship to it. You can follow them or continue to move headlong into the geriatric world of fucktardotry. If you think this is about you, YOU LOST THE GAME.

there will be a test on the big ones...

1. Do not talk about /b/
2. Do NOT talk about /b/
3. Anonymous is legion.
4. Anonymous does not forgive, Anonymous does not forget.
5. Anonymous can be a horrible, senseless, uncaring monster.
6. Anonymous is still able to deliver.
7. There are no real rules about posting.
8. There are no real rules about moderation either—enjoy your ban.
9. If you enjoy any rival sites—DON'T.
10. Pics or it didn't happen.
11. Lurk moar—it's never enough.
12. Nothing is sacred.
13. Do not argue with a troll—it means that they win.
14. The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it.
15. There are NO girls on the internet.
16. A cat is fine too.
17. One cat leads to another.
18. The more you hate it, the stronger it gets.
19. It is delicious cake. You must eat it.
20. It is a delicious trap. You must hit it.
21. /b/ sucks today.
22. Cock goes in here.
23. You will never have sex.
24. ????
25. PROFIT!
26. Tits are always relevant.
27. It needs moar Desu. No exceptions.
28. There will always be more fucked up shit than what you just saw.
29. You cannot divide by zero (just because the calculator says so).
30. No real limits of any kind apply here—not even the sky.
31. CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL.
32. EVEN WITH CRUISE CONTROL, YOU STILL HAVE TO STEER.
33. Desu isn't funny. Seriously guys. It's worse than Chuck Norris jokes.
34. There is porn of it. No exceptions.
35. If no porn of it can be found, it will be created.
36. No matter what it is, it is somebody's fetish. No exceptions.
37. Even one positive comment about Japanese things can make you a weeaboo.
38. When one sees a lion, one must get into the car.
39. There is furry porn of it. No exceptions.
40. The pool is always closed.
41. If there isn't enough just ask for Moar.
42. Every win will eventually fail.
43. Everything has been cracked and pirated.
44. DISREGARD THAT I SUCK COCKS
45. Rule 45 is a lie.
46. The internet is not your personal army.
47. The cake is a lie.
48. Rules 1 to 48 are absolute!

If you're trying to figure out who this is about you lost the game. If your comment is about to make sense you lost the game.

I don't know, what do you think it's about?

Labels: Internet

Sometimes I feel all out of touch with people, especially on the intertubes. There are moments, let me tell you. Sometimes I feel like the guy at the computer, and sometimes I feel like the person standing behind him.

I guess it depends on where I am and who I am with. But I will say every once in a while I get tired of agreeing with everybody. I hope it all isn't just a case of we're all starting to bore one another is it?

I mean - seriously - sometimes all the kumbaya I read between bloggy buddies really makes me want to hurl.

Labels: Internet

I re-did the blogroll one at a time. I discarded some blogs that haven't been posted-to since Christmas, and also some blogs whose owners have for some reason dumped me from their roll. Wtf is that all about? Oh well...

Also I noticed some folks still have me listed at the Vincenzo's site. Hey - wake up. I'm over here.

Since I've fired Blogrolling (and not giving them a link) this would be a good opportunity to let me know if you want to exchange a link. There's a little E under the avatar at the top of the sidebar which is an email, or just make a note here in the comments. But if you're going to get pissed at me for saying things you don't like or because I'm not kissing your feet or something don't bother, k?

In other news - last night I wrote the ending to the thing. I figure maybe 3-4,000 words to connect where I am to the ending & I start sending off query letters. Keep your boobs or balls crossed for me, depending.

Labels: Blogging, Internet

I must have tried a dozen things suggested by web sites and people through email concerning my occasionally occurring Blue Screen of Death popping up on me (yes email, you see that real tiny little "e" underneath "cool guy" over to the left in the sidebar? Yep. That's how!) and how to deal with it. I have not seen it here now since yesterday morning. It usually happens on boot-up now, if it happens at all. In the meantime I have collected all my disks and manuals into one place and am ready - if need be - to get a brand new hard drive so I can attach it to my monitor and printer and the rest. I have to say you can get them pretty inexpensively.

But what's happening is I've had to curtail my online activity for all the fixes I'm attempting. Side benefit being I now have the cleanest, most virus-free system on the face of the Earth. But the other thing is I have been forced to keep my travels to a minimum. So if you were looking for your daily comment on your blog from your bestest friend in the entire world I just haven't been hands-free enough to keep up with it. I can pick up some slack at work but still have to actually DO some work at some point, you know?

So those of you who persistently check your stats to monitor your visits every two hours or more may have noticed my manic travels (coming back to your blog 14 times a day because I am needy for someone to talk to constantly packing 20 minutes of activity into 5 minutes and cycle through links faster than anyone I know) have been cut back. It isn't that your hits have decreased because people are getting bored with you, it's that RW has not been around as much.

And the overall effect of this is that my own mantra about bloggers shutting the hell up if they have nothing interesting to say has added an additional aspect - recognizing that the times when you best engage your readers coincide with truly lucid moments in your thinking. When that happens words just radiate from out your fingers.

Just imagine if we never came to the posting screens unless we had something to say AND were totally lucid relative to what we were going to write.

The blogosemifixativosphere would be a wasteland. Blinks. Crickets.

What would that be like if that's how we communicated in person, I wonder? Only speaking when we had something interesting to say, instead of the usual babble we engage in every day, like for instance the last three or four sentences of this post?

Labels: Blogging, Internet

The other day I'm moseying along on my spreadsheet workin' on my finances when the screen bunks out to black and then fades in one of those frightening Windows blue screens. I've seen the usual ones but this one was different. It was talking about "serious error" and "memory dump" and "Windows is shutting down to protect your computer" and tells you what to do if this is the first time it has happened and what to do if this has happened before.

Except, of course, it being Microsoft the screen doesn't actually stay up long enough to read it all because the computer reboots itself and then you're back and the little device says "click here to notify Microsoft about this so we can keep track of all our fuck ups."

I go to the Microsoft download site because there's apparently something I can download that will save my system for me, and I start downloading, except the computer bunks out again and the blue screen is back with its "do a memory scan" crap. This time it stays up. And it stays up. And it stays up. And nothing I can do is making it go away. So I do what any other red-blooded veteran of Windows does in these situations - I do a hard reboot aka pull the plug and then put it back in.

I have to do this three times to get the blue screen to go away. Then it goes away and I'm back to the Microsoft web site downloading this thing I need. It downloads it and I hit RUN and it says "Cannot run. You already have a more updated version on your computer."

I do? Where? And when did I get it? And what's it called? What am I supposed to start up???

Screw it, sez I. I turn it off and go to sleep. The next morning I start it up and there's the screen again. I have to go to work so I'll look up what I have to do while I'm there and do it when I get home.

Well, long story short - Microsoft has an impossible navigation system for finding things on its website, as most of the world already knows, especially for people with limited skills like myself. So I went around searching for other fixes.

When I got back home I booted, rebooted, rerebooted and when I finally got back online I bought and downloaded PCDoc and Spyware Doctor (with anti-virus).

I bought them, I ran them I removed one "Trojan-Downloader", 887 Problems, "33 bugs from Known_Bad_Sites" a handful of programs that attached themselves to me to lead me to bogus web sites when I look stuff up on Google, and some kind of "Explorer" thing that was there twice and was trying to read all my activity, and though Norton was blocking it, it was still just sitting on my computer like a vampire just hiding there.

It bothers me because I've got firewalls and all that shit set up and never do all the risky things that get you into these kinds of messes and travel amongst the same old sites regularly, and boringly.

Anyway, I'm not shilling for these products but they worked like a charm. I ran a disk Clean-Up after running the above programs and things are going great so far.

Microsoft. BWAAAA HAHAHAHA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Pleh.

Labels: Internet

But you can return me a kindness.

The 2007 Weblog Awards are up and running and everybody can go and vote once every 24 hours. People are making links to help other people back their blog in the voting and the usual mayhem has ensued.

I am not nominated for a thing and, to be honest, that's just the kind of contrarian policy that I prefer. Over the years I have noticed I seem to attract a small audience filled with other bloggers that have relatively large followings who stop by because this is sort of like that hidden little bistro the public doesn't think about but the other bartenders congregate at after they close down. That's perfect for my anti-social nature! That is good enough for me, no lie. This is where it's at, after all.

And like any proprietor in any out-of-the-way venue only a few hearty souls know about; if I like you I like you. And God help you if you slip up and I don't like you. I never like someone without they deserve it and I never stop liking someone without they got it coming to them. I never look back. Screw with me - I'll let it pass. Insult a friend or someone in my family - you're horseshit, no matter how grand and popular you may think you are. My personality is such that you can go from Porterhouse to gristle in my eyes in a heartbeat. I'm petty that way.

But when I backs ya, I backs ya. And many times I have gone to your blog over the years and participated in voting programs at your behest and done so willingly. Now the time has come for you to do the same for me.

Except this isn't about me (because I don't do those things, WEREN'T YOU LISTENING!?). This is about, when I think about it, what may be the longest long-time contact in the blogosphere that I have. Outside of the fact that she happens to be one of the best writers in the community (her stuff is featured at Pajiba, the megamedia site), or that her daily weekday dose of entertainment news and views has kept those dirty fingernails firmly on the pulse for some time now, or that she designed the template for my last venue in her other role as web designer, or even that this spring I finally had the opportunity to buy her and her secret agent some pizza at the only real pizza place in their whole town - she also happens to be a happily-accumulated extra daughter that I have acquired... somehow... and is usually found at her normal haunt every weekday.

Agent Bedhead, aka "Sadie" (and the other members of her team blog) are in the running for an award. And I am asking you to return for me a favor. See...? be my friend and you too will always have somebody watching your back.

So please go here once a day. I'll leave little reminders here and there to help you remember.

And thanks for doing that. You guys are the best! I knew that all along.

Labels: Blogging, Internet

A short email conversation the other day with Miss Britt and an idea highlighted by a comment from annieb (who we wish would get a blog already) prompted an observation that had already existed for some time. There are blogs made for entertainment and blogs meant for more serious stuff and some combine both. We all know of a handful of blogs whose creators deserve an audience because they always seem to have something creative to participate in or talk about. They are as valid as a daily paper or a magazine you subscribe to and in most cases they provide a genuine and worthwhile part of the day. Some blogs try to stretch the boundaries of art or expression or your way of thinking and this is always welcome too. The quirky viewpoint and the confessional. There's a lot of good stuff out there.

But it has to also be said that the sad sad truth is that most blogs have merely become the latest version of the online Message Board Lounge, where dozens of people with no actual lives and nothing to say live vicariously while talking about... well... nothing. All subjects are open (good) but no substance is required (most times OK), people group up into tribes (the start of trouble), and instead of a neat and linear list of subjects originated by the group there is a kind of horizontal spread of independent fiefdoms serving the same purpose but wrapped up into something "everybody has a right to" and "if you don't like it fuck off." (Not exactly what they taught us about the importance of writing to communicate at Columbia).

I don't want anyone to take this personally. God knows I have strayed just as much as anyone else - maybe more so. And even the best bloggers in the world revert to the tried-and-true when they've got nothing to say. But really... when there's nothing to say, why say anything?

My thing is mentioning my age. "I'm too old for that"... "well in my day we"... "don't scare an old man"... "I can't remember". Regular readers have seen it. I bore myself with it and am struggling mightily to keep from falling back on it instead of just shutting the hell up if I have nothing to say. I should take my own advice, and I'm trying to.

My mea culpa is put there to not make it seem like I'm so perfect myself and am going after people when I say...

How many times do we talk about slow drivers and women's monthly episodes and how the neighbors are true jerks (and fish out a long list of nodding heads from people who - if they didn't read us - would probably actually BE neighbors we wondered about) until we've said it enough times already?

Yes yes yes. Nobody knows how to drive and women bloat and men are insensitive and George Bush is the devil and the neighbors are self-serving dolts.

But...

Then it dawned on me - I know exactly how long!

On the internet there is Benford's Law of Controversy, the Association Fallacy, and even Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies. These are all time-honored, even if debatable, internet phenomena.

To these illustrious references may I add (and feel free to include it in wikipedia for me because - God knows - I'M not going to get it started) "RW's Law Of the Endless Blog Topic" which states:

Bloggers will continue to write about slow drivers, periods, stupid neighbors and how old they are getting only so long as they are willing to defend such indefensible activity by saying "I blog for myself and if you don't like it kiss my ass."

Therefore the inverse would be true: (RW's Corollary to the Law of the Endless Blog Topic): Blogs are interesting in proportion to the willingness of the blogger to admit they care about their audience.

Now if I can just put a stop to the Valley. Girl. Period. For. Expressing. A. Reaction., I'd feel a whole lot better about being such an old fart. (drum/cymbal)

Labels: Blogging, Internet

I'm declaring Monday, October 15 2007 as International Squish The Toady Day. This is where you go to that website or discussion board or blog where you've developed into a real good ass-sucking sycophant and tell the person whose butt-cheeks you usually kiss (even when their entry is the dumbest piece of crap they've ever foisted) that sometimes you tell them they are really really funny when they're not because you're as bored as they are and would rather write innocuous drivel in the comments and don't have the hair to just say "Jesus, dude, that sucked."

Now here's the test.

The chances are pretty good that if you read this and took it personally you really are a toady, but if you read this and knew exactly what I was saying and laughed along with me you are really cool.

And because I know the folks who come here, I am certain everyone is laughing their heads off right about now.

Which reminds me - we should also use International Squish The Toady Day to "handle" blog authors who act in a patronizing manner toward their readers.

I'm sure you get my meaning, because you guys are really smart.

Labels: Internet, Kiss My Ass