Fanatic (Second) Life and Semiotic Death

Among the Soapblox Bums.

…he said, knowing full-well he was purloining and abusing the fine title of a fine Rolling Stone article by Stewart (Whole Earth Catalog) Brand -- “Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums.”

Sometimes, when out and about, I find myself to sitting at the periphery of a wireless cloud, straaaaaining to slip the surly bonds of Earth to touch the Face of Blog. I try to make it a virtue; to use it as a meditative moment to relive the glory days of 9600 baud modems, 50 MG hard drives and watching for anxious minutes as the screen repaints itself and I learn that, yet, she does have glorious tits.

Call it kilobyte nostalgia, except it's not real. True, those were the wide-open, pioneer days, when writing mad-tight code could get you laid, and everyone at the clubs knew how to do the “Electronic Handshake” (You put you right squeal in. You take your right squeal out. You put your left squawk in, and you squeak it all about…)

But I do not pine for the Good Old Days of Big Iron.

These are the good old days.

And so it was that I found myself at the outer perimeter of the folk (2000-ish? With 250 members of the credentialed press? Hehehe. I like those odds…) waiting for Dr. Dean and the senior senator from Illinois to tell us that the intertoobs have arrived.

And they have, sorta.

It is a grand time, with cool discussions busting out all over, about which more late.

For now, the small, vital thing I learned was, everything I do is wrong.

Ah, but I knew that going in, so I guess I’m ahead of the game.

The lone blogman is over. Dead as Diogenes. Soooo mid-2006. Like Waits’ tragic mystery woman in “Hold On” – she of the “charcoal eyes and Monroe hips” – the lone blogger is leaving the arena “Just like a bullet leaves a gun”. Or should. Or so I am told.

Too bad.

If I nicheblog, or localblog, maybe there is some hope.

If I get a buncha friends, a barn and some costumes, maybe we can put on a show and save the farm!

If I become a village smithy diarist ‘neath the spreading chestnut tree of a Big Blog, hammering molten consonants into custom-crafted adjectives with my large and sinewy hands, then perchance I shall leave some small impressions in the digital sands.

Perhaps not.

However there is much to enjoy here, and these thoughts do not trouble my mind.

Whereas it is very hard being an Alpha blogger. Very, very hard. They have worry-lines, and agita, and have to fret over fluctuations in the price of blogads.

Heavy indeed hangs the head that wears the "Heh. Indeedy."

Or, as Huxley put it:

"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard..."

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Or, anyway, so I am told.

On a side note, one conference over, the Shriners are here. Funny hats, rituals, hierarchy and good causes.

And that, I think, in the end, is how a fair man can render a fair judgment on a day at the Big Orange Fair: By looking for an answer to the question, "Have forms and formalities consumed the mission and the passion?"

At YKos, the evidence suggests they very definitely have not, and that is why I do not pine for yesterday or worry about what happens in the pantheon when the thunder gods choose up shirts and skins.

Because these are the good old days.

And we are winning.

Or so I am told.