Cartoon Me:

Thanks to Dani for that image. If you want to contact her, let me know and I’ll hook a bruddah up.

It’s one of those circular kind of things.

One of those incestuous blogger deals.

A bloggers circle jerk.

Wait, it’s warm in here. Is it warm in here? Maybe it’s just me.

So I’m reading the incomparable Doxy’s latest blog entry over at Phone Slut Diary. And she mentions Eros Blog.

So I hadn’t looked at Eros Blog in a long time, I’d forgotten it. Oh Yeah, I’m thinking, I should get over there and maybe link to it.

And so I go to look at Eros Blog. And what do I find? I’m already there.

That’s just plain cool. Thanks Bacchus. Links back atcha.

Here’s how the story goes.

I pick up a new reader and start up a conversation.

This new reader confesses how they found my blog.

Evidently this entry caught the attention of someone named “Spank Boss” at Spanking Blog. Yes, Spanking Blog.

How cool is that?

Warning – the above-linked blog has some dirty pictures. Click at your own risk.

We can’t all be Trancejen. We can’t all be Circe.

Some bloggers find something to say every day. I’ll be goddamned if I can figure out how they do it, honestly; I’m stunned that I have anything to say here, ever (and in fact, maybe I don’t). And when I do think of something to say, and type it out, half the time I wind up with an annoying whine, or something just plain boring. I don’t always delete it, but I always think I should. I have several unpublished entries I keep thinking I’ll pull back out but I know I never will.

So Circe says – and I don’t think she’s talking to me but hell, she might be, “why doesn’t anyone ever update their freaking blog?”

Read more “Updating my freaking blog”

The pusher-man strikes again.

Gregg, welcome to blogger-land. You are one of us. Ok, that’s a little pre-mature you have yet to get a real entry up, but you will man, you will.

While talking to Gregg (Who has too many gees and whose name I always want to spell with a differing number of them, Greggggg, Greggggg, Greggg) about this, I also started thinking about desktop blogging clients. I don’t have a strong opinion about the idea yet, I need to monkey with MT a little to get Ecto working. But it seems a worthy idea for some additional functionality that you might get with a desktop client – spell check, a better preview mode, automated html insertion to save me extra typing. But the luddite in me laughs at the idea.

Opinions? Anyone out there using an external blogging client rather than a web interface? If so, why? Particularly MT users, which ones are you using?

And while we’re geeking out, note there’s a new Style in the pull-down menu, Titanium Gold. I rather like it. Again, courtesy of Scotty at movablestyle.com.

Ok, I promise, next entry will be free of geekery, and will contain only very little about orkut. Really. It won’t have any sex in it either. Wait though, we’ll get to that.

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Now Playing: Dear Old Dad from the album Death Taxes & Prozack by Prozack Turner

Read more “Blog about Blog”

I am the pusher man.

Ok, not so much. But there are those moments. Where you buy a thing, a concept, a hobby, an interest, an activity. Where a friend pumps you up, gets you interested, and you start thinking, and then doing. Where (s)he is the pusher man, and you are thinking junkie thoughts.

And then a while later, you are the pusher man and you are telling a friend, go, do, buy, want, use, like, have, be.

It’s a funny thing.

This can be religion for those who do that drug. This can be something scary like a drug or a dangerous habit that could get you killed. This can be a sport. This can be some stupid hobby or other.

But there seem to be those moments where there’s a bump from someone that moves us in some direction.

Peer pressure? I dunno.

Sometimes it’s funny the things that can come from a minor choice; giving in and doing something you’re pushed into. Sometimes bad, clearly. That’s obvious. Who hasn’t smoked a cigarette because a friend said it would make you cool, or done another shot or three or five because your friends chant ‘drink drink drink’. Some of us have gone further, dropping or swallowing or snorting or smoking or shooting based on what our peers do or like or use or think is cool. And while a lot of that is harmless fun, sometimes it’s not harmless.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. We know that story, first hand or second or from a book or a film or the front page. I’m talking about the silly, foolish things that our friends get us doing, or that we get our friends doing.

Here’s an example; “Hi, I’m Karl, and I’m a fish-geek”.

I used to have that bad. I maxed out at fourteen fish tanks. I used to spend my weekends cleaning tanks and hanging out at fish shops, posting on *aquaria* newsgroups, debating about filters, pumps, heating systems, live food vs. frozen vs. dry. You get the idea. Hard-core geekery.

This started because a friend of mine had the bug. I used to drink and party at his house, and stare at his fish tanks. And then one day he said it; “Hey, you should start up a tank, I’ll help you.”

And I did. Went off. Bought a tank. And got it going. And then wanted another. And then he laughed at me; “sucker, I got you hooked!” We called him ‘the fish pusher after that.

And then I needed to get other friends into the hobby. “A tank would look great here!” I’d say. “You need a bigger tank,” I’d say to the ones who had one little tank.

And I was the fish pusher.

Silly, huh? But you know, it all started with a bump.

I started writing the same way. Long, ages ago, someone I was talking to, flirting with, said “You should try to write me some erotica.” And so I did. And started something that, who knows, might never have gotten started.

A lotta years later, someone else said “You should write something for me.” And I did. And somehow, this hooked me into reading blogs of other writers, and started me writing again.

One little bump. And things fall like dominos.

Out of that, I found a slew of new friends, started blogging (another bump, a push, ‘you should start a blog’, ‘why don’t you start blogging’, and somehow I’ve joined some sort of tribe). And somewhere in there found a story I had to let out of my skull which opened new areas of my life, proved to me I am in fact a writer, and has made a couple of friendships that might never have happened otherwise (That story has been talked about before, “Wanton“, an erotic novella).

One comment – ‘You should try writing a story’. The ripples spread.

Recently two friends, after reading my blog, started blogging. I can’t say I made them do so. But with both, I had conversations about the whys and the what I do it for and with one, Austin Ray, I actually said “Dude, you have something to say, you should blog.” And so he did. So with both, there’s the bump.

And I am the pusher man.

I don’t really do this stuff on purpose. But I do it; ‘read this book’, ‘you’ll like this album’, ‘ever heard of of a band called…’. Maybe it’s a compulsion to share pleasures. Maybe it’s the same reason I always want to fuck people I like; ‘This is good, have some!’.

I dunno. It’s a pattern though. Have a hit, catch a buzz, pass the pipe along. We’re all brothers now, man.

It’s not a compulsion to belong. I don’t tend to do things just because my friends do them. I tend not to follow fashions, or to drive what my buddies drive, or watch what they watch (I generally resist when people say “watch this show”), or read what they read. I think it’s more about knowing; that’s what I was doing, I told myself, when I started blogging. Just wanted to know how the tool worked. Curiosity. Maybe, in a tribe of friends physically far apart, it’s a need for shared experience. It’s akin to hanging out on a saturday afternoon, drinking a beer and watching a game. When friends are distributed far and wide, have disparate backgrounds, different tribal language, there’s a drive to find commonality. So we forge a new shared interest to connect our worlds. When one has good, truly good friends that one has never met, maybe it’s a device we use to tattoo on our tribal marks.

Friends far apart. And there I’m veering into another topic, which I think I’ll shelve for another entry.

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Damn, right in the middle of this entry, there was a chocolate-fueled child disaster including silly-putty stuffed into a TiVo remote, a screaming jag and a lot of sulking. I wish I had a good joke about ‘…And that’s just what I did…’ but I can’t quite seem to get there. Ah, parenthood. Who decided that certain holidays should be all about stuffing kids full of chocolate and sugar (kid-crack, I tellya) as if this was a good thing? You know it only means someone’s gonna wind up crying and something’s going to wind up broken. Actually it’s sort of like saint patrick’s day or mardi-gras, I guess it’s only fair the kids get one also, but next time, maybe I should go elsewhere until it’s all over.

Read more “God damn the pusher man”

“And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.

And that’s what it is , the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and
all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come’s around on the
guitar.”

A girl said to me (and let’s call her Squid Girl, because why not call her that?), the other day, she said:

“I find the blog phenomena really interesting (…) Tell me why you do it.”

And I said to myself (yeah, of course, because when ever I get to use this line), “Self,” I said…

It got me thinking though.

My flip answer was that I think blogging is stupid. And honestly, I sort of do think that. Most people have nothing to say. God knows don’t think I have anything much to say in a journal. That’s why I’ve never kept one apart from a few attempts while traveling.

So why do it?

First, let’s clarify. I don’t think all bloggers are wasting time. I can think of a good few people out there who really have something to say, who write well, or who are just doing something entertaining. They are, in effect, columnists. Like Dave Barry or Carl Hiaasen or Herb Caen or Jon Carrol or – insert your favorite. They just muse; that’s what these people do. They think about things, in writing. And if the writing is good, sometimes it doesn’t really matter what the thoughts are.

The problem is that blogging has turned into a “Phenomenon“. A – to quote old Arlo up there, a “Movement“. Which means simply that everyone is doing it.

And frankly, like 40 year old women dressed like toddlers, like men who wear sans-a-belt slacks, like people who think that clothes fit just because you can get into them; like all those people, some just shouldn’t.

I’m one to talk, right?

The thing is, I don’t have my shit up on clix. I don’t have it on livejournal (well, ok, there’s a link there, I keep forgetting). I don’t publicize it or tell people to go to it, and I’m honestly a little shocked when someone says “I read your blog”. I do this stuff for myself only.

Why do people read these things? I don’t know. Is it like reality TV? Is that what blogs are? We wanna take a voyeuristic peek into some else’s life so we can scoff (*scoff*scoff*), so we can empathize, so we can say, “There, but for the grace of {insert deity of choice here} go I“?

Why else?

Of course people who blog about sex, that’s obvious. You might read something dirty and get a little thrill (and that’s what disapproval is, a thrill), without stooping so low and to read dreaded pornography. So let’s set that one aside.

So what is it? We’re not all really that interesting, us humans. Most of us are so mind-numbingly boring that it’s a wonder we can go through the day.

But people have to be reading. Or else there would not be so many sites dedicated to blogging, so many tools, so many orkut groups. So many services that can actually *charge* people to host a blog. If no one is reading, what’s the point in all this?

So why do I do it?

Why the fuck not, right?

Honestly, that’s how much sense it makes.

This all started as geek curiosity. I wanted to see how Movable Type worked. Was curious about the interface and the tools behind it. So when I moved my web page to a new server and was offered a blog, I said – yeah, sure, but I won’t do much with it.

And I didn’t for a couple months. Fiddled with it. drove it around, kicked the tires. And then I got bored and decided to write an entry.

And you know what? That was kind of fun.

After that, I said to myself (wait for it…), I said, why not try using this as a writing project, keep the chops up, maybe it will help me get back to writing the fiction I want to write. If not, at least it’s a good exercise in writing essays.

So I started doing it. At first to muse about writing itself, but you know how I get distracted. So then it was just for the hell of it, if I had an idea I wanted to write about, or just because I felt like writing.

But people found it. Not that I was hiding or anything, I actually was sending out notices about updates for a while. But people I never told accidentally tripped and fell in. Which was a shock to me.

So what is it with the “blog phenomenon” (I want reverb on that)? When’s it going away? How many of it’s fifteen minutes are up?

All I know is, when I first heard about it (from my friend Mickey Sattler, whom I know from the Utilikilts mailing list), I was derisive and dismissive. And yet now, I have a growing list of blogs I try to keep up with. And to my amazement, I’m doing this.

And still have no idea why.

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So ObOrkut commentary.

I swear to god it’s a drug. When you have it you want more, when you are jailed and can’t get it, you need it like a spike in your skinny white junkie arm.

More. And more. More friends. More groups.

But you know what? I’m actually making real friends there. That’s the shocker. Because that’s sort of what it was made for. And even though we’re all out to twist and pervert and use the system, I’m finding – hell, I like some of these people. Some of ’em I’d very much like to actually hand out with.

Alas, most in faraway places like chicago or australia conecticut or brazil or canada. Or maybe not alas in some of these cases to save me some – ah – trouble. But still. I’ve met some bitchin’ folk.

It’s funny though. How quickly the place is developing a culture. It’s been around only a few weeks and already there’s cultural ebb and flow, there are celebrities and villains. There are laser beams in people’s eyes.

It’s nutty. In some ways it’s akin to the glory (hole) days of usenet, only in extreme fast forward. Like it’s going through the development and propagation; any day now we’ll have the equivalent of when AOL hit usenet, and the slide into stupidity will begin. I’m counting the days or weeks that is stays so giddily entertaining, it can’t last. But for now it’s as much fun as I’ve had on the net in quite a number of years.

Not only that, but I get to write like a hillbilly in phonetic broken english. How often do you get a whole bunch of people all doing that?

Read more “You can get anything you want”