Blab's Erring Storm

Ladies and gentlemen, any of the rest of you, we have a special edition of Robert Radio today: a playlist based on a listener request! It's actually a first. Well, okay, not really, if you count requests from friends (mostly Glen) sent via email or IM. It's a first official request in the comments section from an anonymous requester. Who are you, anonymous requester? Do I know you? Anyway, the request was for "Westernized World Folk. That would be folk music from around the world that has been re-formed into an updated westernized sound. So stuff like Gogol Bordello, DeVotchKa, Flogging Molly, Balkan Beat Box. Ithink there are possibly a lot of others -- feels like this is becoming a movement."

This was a very interesting and enjoyable bit of musical research, as I've not previously known much about this particular musical space. I mean, I have tons of music that roughly fits that description--westernized folk music--but probably the great majority of it is based in the American or British folk traditions, and much less that's based on other folk traditions. How poor was I, aesthetically speaking, not to have listened to more, say, klezmer punk? Anyway, I hope this is sort of what you had in mind, Dear Listener. If so, enjoy!

http://fun-haters.com:8666

Any other requests? I could really get used to this.

My parents, Zeus bless their, um, souls, have discovered computers in a big way. Of course, they've used computers a little bit for a long time, but maybe they're just that much more bored or something, because it seems they spend way more time than before on their computers, doing genealogy, playing solitaire, and, most recently, sending emails. They have joined the great masses of people who forward each other all those emails. You know which ones I mean...dire sounding virus warnings that were debunked years ago on snopes.com, silly gif animations, cute pet pictures, and, worst of all, political diatribes filled with classically fallacious reasoning. Political nonsense of every variety fills up email inboxes everywhere--I realize this, of course. It just so happens, though, that my relatives send out all the right-wing nonsense. Some of this I can take, and even be mildly interested in, at least in that way that it's interesting to see what kind of stories and craziness gets passed around.

There's one particular category of disinformation that just drives me up the wall, though, and it happens to be a favorite of my relatives: anti-immigrant propaganda. Those damn illegal immigrants are ruining our great country! They're all lazy and poor, and they're on welfare and food stamps, running up huge health bills, and committing the majority of the crimes in our country. Can't stand to see this great country ruined by those freeloaders! Blah blah blah.

OH. MY. GOD. When I read that bullshit, I see red. I want to crack some heads together. Line up please, ignorant, racist relatives, and put your heads in proximity, and I shall commence cracking forthwith!

Which is all well and good, I suppose. I should let well enough alone, and just be annoyed in private, but I feel compelled to actually Reply to All and argue with this crap. What is my major malfunction? What on earth do I hope to accomplish with such tomfoolery? Maybe my hope is that someone, somewhere, will take me off the list of relatives they forward lame-o chainmail to. Because that's probably the best result I can realistically hope for. (Like how I ended not just one, but two consecutive sentences with a preposition?)

Today's playlist has everything from my collection that's in my folder called "Various Artists," which basically means everything that's a compilation, as opposed to by a single artist. Which means that it's a crazy mixed up grab bag. Which is fun! Who knows what could come up?

http://fun-haters.com:8666

Got any playlist requests? Leave a comment.

Jack and Katie have recently discovered the power of money. Of course, they've both long known, somewhat vaguely, about the idea of currency, but recently Jen started giving them an allowance. Both kids love the concept of allowance, of course, but Jack, in particular, quickly started to feel pinched, and so his mind has begun searching for ways to increase his money pool. We've done a little bit of giving them some money for odd jobs around the house (though we're careful, as per the parenting magazine wisdom, not to pay him for his regular chores). He's also discovered the scrounging strategy. Both Jen and I have a tendency to leave loose change around the house, so Jack took to searching the house for change. One day he found one of the places I regularly leave change and exclaimed, "I really hit the jackpot!" But eventually, that source ran dry.

His next strategy has been to essentially beg for money.

Jack: Can I have a dollar?
Dad: No.
Jack: But I really want one.
Dad: Sorry.

Next, he tried to cut a deal:

J: Would you please give me a dollar?
D: No.
J: Pleeeease?
D: No.
J: (after a little thought): I'll give you 21 cents if you'll give me a dollar.
D: (after no thought at all): Uh, no.

Finally, tired of fending off requests like these, I suggested that perhaps he could go into business. In the time honored tradition of childhood entrepreneurship, I suggested he open a lemonade stand. It really wasn't a very good day for it--it was cloudy and a little on the chilly side. I was worried that it might be an abject failure, but even that is a certain kind of lesson, I figured. So Katie made the lemonade (she was so cute, counting out scoops and singing little songs while she stirred) while Jack made a sign, a really beautifully decorated sign that I'm sure didn't receive nearly enough appreciation. We went to the store to buy ice. We happened to already have some plastic cups. We taped the sign to their art table, hauled everything up to the nearest busy street, and opened up business. Jack wanted to charge 25 cents a glass, but I urged him to charge 50 cents (in retrospect, we probably should have charged a dollar; several people gave a dollar and said to keep the change anyway).

Our first customer came within about a minute. For it being a fairly chilly day, business was surprisingly brisk. Within a couple of hours, they had pulled in about $21, and by then they had grown very bored, so we called it a day. They had invited another neighborhood kid to participate (I argued against this idea, but Jack generously wanted to share the profits), so at the end of the day, I gave them the %15 cut I had agreed to when we drew up the contracts. Er, I mean, I took back $2 for supplies, and they split up the rest. They were so unbearably cute waving and shouting at the cars and bikers that came by, "Get your lemonade, fifty cents!"

As always, I wish I could peer inside their heads to see what they made of this experience. In some way, I'm willing to go with the basic American story that they may have learned something about the value of work, and about the exchange process. In reality, I fear that the lesson they may have taken away from this is: it's easy to make money. But hey, at the very least, we had a really fun afternoon.

Soon after I got back from Seattle and Bellingham and posted the entry about my search for my birth father, I received my first response--not from the ad I placed, but from the blog entry itself. Out of the blue, someone with a Google search agent in place for the word Lummi saw my post and got in touch. Turns out he's an adopted Lummi as well who has re-established his ties with his Lummi roots. He contacted me to provide encouragement, since, as he said, for all we know he could be my brother. So to my newfound brother/cousin, thanks! It's so great to have that kind of support.

Turns out my new brother/cousin is also a fantastic musician, actor, storyteller, and all-around creative guy. You can find out more about him from his web page. Some of you may have seen him in Sherman Alexie's movie "The Business of Fancy Dancing," which I highly recommend.

I particularly like something he wrote for his site called his Elements of Honor:

My name is Richard Marshall. That is just my name. Who I am
is Swil Kanim. That is my Lummi name. I am an enrolled member
of the Lummi Nation. That is what they call us. The Lummi Nation.
That is not who we are though. For centuries we were called the
Laq'temish. ~The People from the Place of Frogs.~ Maybe something
got lost in the translation during assimilation.

Some would say that I am part Chillawack, part Nooksack, part
Upper Skagit, and part Samish. I don't know which part of me
is which. I guess that means that I am everyone I am. Not part
anyone. Like in the spirit of ~We the People~ we are everyone
we are. Not part anyone. We are all of our stories told and untold.
We are all of our mistakes, failures and our victories. We are
our 500 word essays and our haikus. We are all the right answers
to the wrong questions. We are every version of the truth and
every feeling, meaning and decision we have made. That is who
we are.

For thousands of generations my ancestors have addressed the
people in the language of the land by saying, ~All my relations.~
Albert Einstein in the language of physics said, energy is equal
to the mass times the constant squared. E=MC2. The constant
is the speed of light. The result of this theory is that for
every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You see,
we are all related to the speed of light through the night sky.
We are all related to enlightenment and bigotry, ignorance and
inquiry.

For every privilege there is an equal and opposite oppression.
I may stand before you in the privilege of being a public speaker.
When I speak, I will speak for every one that has ever been told
they weren't good enough to speak. Like when I play my violin
in front of an audience there is no doubt someone is in the audience
that 'used' to play because they believed the lie that they weren't
good enough to keep on playing. I have received accolades as
a 'sensitive' man when a woman behaving the same way would have
been perceived to be weak. We the People must learn to be generous
with our being. We must use every privilege to uplift the oppressed.
That includes assuming the privilege of overcoming our own internalized
oppression for the sake and honor of all.

In 1983 Native American elders met at the University of Lethbridge
to address substance abuse on reservations. Their conclusion
was, ~The hurt of one is the hurt of all. The honor of one is
the honor of all.~ It is my responsibility to honor all by expressing
who I am in the context of community. My self expression has
most constructively been expressed through my heritage of music
and spoken word. Self expression in community is not selfish.
In fact self expression in community identifies who we the people
are.
© 2004 Richard A. Marshall aka Swil Kanim

A new playlist is up: African music. Which, like my Japanese music playlist, hardly qualifies as a category, it's such a broad expanse, musically speaking. But there you have it.

http://fun-haters.com:8666

I should probably mention from time to time how to use that address, for those who haven't ever streamed internet radio. There are basically two ways to use that address:

1) You can open up the address in a browser, which brings you to the Shoutcast navigation page. From there, you can click the word "Listen," which is on a gray bar at the top of the page. Doing that should automatically open a music player (such as Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp, etc.) and start playing the stream. Sometimes, though, your computer may not know what to do with the type of file that is sent (a .PLS file), and may ask you to either choose an application to use to open that file, or to download the file. You can try choosing an application, or else you can just use method 2.

2) The other way to use that address is to open your music player of choice (these days I'm using something called Foobar 2000, but any of those I mentioned will work) and tell it to open a URL or a "location" (the exact language varies from player to player), and then put in the address above. Note that you have to get it exactly right, though case isn't important, and you can't leave off the ":8666" part. That should open the stream and start playing the latest playlist (unless for some reason there's a glitch on my end that has caused the stream to stop).

See how easy that is? And you learned something too! You learned, again, how much you hate computers. :)

The case of the polygamists in Texas being overrun by jack-booted government thugs has been one of the most mixed up news stories I've read in a long time. It reminds me of the mixed feelings I felt about the O.J. case: granted, he probably did it, and you can't feel anything remotely like sympathy about that if you believe he did it, but the justice apparati of the state (and the scary reaction of so much of the people around me) make it oh so much harder to get on board. In much the same way, I'm so far from being a candidate for feeling sympathy about Mormon fundamentalists, it's laughable that I actually do. But the case is just so absurd: some wacked out woman in Colorado calls up authorities and pretends to be an abused polygamist, and on the strength of some fake phone calls that could have easily been traced, law enforcement officers invade the compound and take away all their children. Not just those for whom there is any reasonable suspicious of abuse, mind you. Every last one. Even boys, though there have been no allegations about boys being abused, as far as I've heard. What could possibly justify an action that extreme? Certainly not the flimsy evidence the government apparently had available to them.

Just as disturbing as what the government did has been the public reaction, both in the press and what I hear from lots of people around me. There's so little concern about the violation of rights, and about actual evidence of wrongdoing (as opposed to the rampant assumptions and innuendo). The fact that they're weird, and somehow fall into the category of cult (always a dubious designation, since it erases so many questions and just puts one big identity sticker that comes with a multitude of associations onto a group), makes it acceptable for the government to sieze all their children and take them away?

Granted, if underaged girls are being abused, those girls should be protected. I fully agree that girls under the age of 18 should be given every opportunity to assert their will, and that consent for anyone under 18, particularly in the face of heavily authoritarian religious pressure from much older men, is dicey at best. I think that even mainstream Mormons are deeply authoritarian and sexist, and that Mormon women are subject to patriarchal pressure that is a form of oppression. So I can only imagine how bad things could potentially be for women in funadmentalist Mormon communities. In spite of all that, I'm nowhere close to feeling comfortable with raiding a community and taking away all their children. The only way you get to that place, I think is by broadly formulating that being very different essentially erases your basic human rights and civil liberties.

This past weekend I got to bask in the magical experience of being around lots of old friends. There's nothing quite like being around people you know very well and love dearly, and who know and love you. It's so easy, compared to most social interactions. You don't have to worry as much that they'll be offended by something they may have misunderstood, or that they won't get your sense of humor. You can rely on shared history, and the common language that comes from it, which it makes it so much easier to communicate. Because there were quite a few of my old friends in attendance (for those of you who know my friends, it was Minette, Andy, Wendy, Bob, Stan, Grey, and Kim), it was like a smorgasbord of conversational delights. All weekend long I got to move from one enjoyable conversation to another, some of them tasty little snacks, some of them multi-course meals.

In addition to the rare pleasure of making planned connections, I also had a moment of pure serendipity. In between one of my many enjoyable conversations, this one with Kim and my half brother Eric, I noticed a woman coming out of her car on the street. We made brief eye contact, and I thought she looked vaguely familiar. Since I was in a place I hardly ever go, Bellingham, Washington, I dismissed it as just one of those odd things that happens, when you see people that seem familiar. After we walked by, however, the woman asked my brother, who was behind me, what my name was. He told her my name was Robert. She called out to me, "Robert?" When I turned around and looked at her more carefully, it suddenly came to me: it was Erin Corday, who was my closest friend my senior year of high school. I hadn't seen Erin in probably a dozen years.

Like me, Erin moved to the teensy little town that is Council, Idaho for our senior year of high school, so we were both outsiders, and both intellectually, artistically inclined people in a place where that was pretty unusual, and not particularly valued. Our graduating class was 36 people, so it's not like at big schools, where there are social cliques of every stripe. Most of the 36 had been together since Kindergarten, so we definitely felt like outsiders. We quickly bonded. After high school, though, we went in different directions, so we didn't see much of each other, and mostly lost track. When I did manage to stay in touch, I kept hearing news about such an interesting life. Erin is very musically gifted, and had long been a singer-songwriter and wonderful guitarist. She went on to have a full-fledged musical career, releasing several CDs and touring widely. I love her stuff. When I first heard Joni Mitchell's album Blue, it became obvious that JM was a big influence on Erin's style. Since I heard Erin's music before I heard Blue (or any JM besides what played on the radio), to me Joni Mitchell will always seem like a dead ringer for Erin Corday. Over the years I also picked up bits of pieces of Erin's burgeoning interest in knowing and championing the downtrodden, first in Central America and then later back home in Washington. Even though we weren't in touch much, I had immense respect for her.

So what a pleasant surprise it was, then, to just run into her on the street. I didn't even know she was back in Bellingham (though I did know she had lived there at one time). I just happened to be leaving a coffeeshop after having called my brother and asked if he wanted to get together to chat for a little while before my friends and I went back to Seattle. We were both flabbergasted. Since I was just leaving, and was with some kids who needed to get back to their parents, I didn't think I'd be able to talk, but Erin offered to drive me to Seattle the next morning, so I stayed behind and spent the whole evening chatting with her and her husband Joel and then stayed the night in their guest room. The next morning, Erin was going to Seattle with a couple of her closest friends, so I got to meet even more interesting people and chat with them on the way down to Seattle.

I was in Bellingham in the first place because I had gone up to the Lummi reservation, as I mentioned before, to place an ad in the Lummi monthly newsletter in an attempt to find my birth father. The Lummi tribal government (oddly enough called the Lummi Indian Business Council) has a communications department that consists of two people, it turns out, sharing an attic office above the fitness center. A woman named Candy does the newsletter. There was another man there named Freddie who, among other things, programs the tribal TV station (something I didn't even know existed). Freddie suggested doing a little interview with me and taping it and running it on Lummi TV, which was very nice of him. So soon (maybe already?) I'll be on Lummi TV and in the Lummi monthly newsletter, called Squol Quol, searching for my birth father. Everyone cross your fingers and toes.

Today's playlist is some random albums I recently acquired, mostly through emusic.com, including Cornelius - Fantasma, Mission of Burma - Vs., Teddy Thompson - Up Front & Down Low, Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works, Les Savy Fav - Go Forth, Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel, A Place to Bury Strangers - A Place to Bury Strangers, and Japancakes - Loveless. Whereas normally I put everything on shuffle play, today's playlist is by album.

http://fun-haters.com:8666

On a techie note, for those of you who care about such things, whereas I normally shoutcast using Winamp and its shoutcast plugin, as of today, I switched over to Foobar and a Foobar component for shoutcasting (and icecasting) called edcast. I'm still working out the particulars of how it grabs metadata, so that may be messed up in your player, but you can always open the website (using the above address) in a browser to see the recently played songs. Winamp, my music player of choice for many years, sadly no longer whips the llama's ass. It's been suffering from more and more bloat, especially since it got acquired by AOL. Foobar is lean and clean, and I think it may be my new player now for a while on all my machines. Adios, Winamp. I loved you dearly once, but things change. Hope we can still be friends.

Roots and Stuff

Today I'm off to Seattle to visit friends! Woohoo! Also, I'm going to try again to find my birthfather. I received an email from a woman who's been helping me, and she came out and said something I'd suspected: she's fairly sure she knows who my birthfather is, and has spoken to several other people who have all previously had access to tribal records by virtue of being in tribal government positions, and they agree with her guess. She can't (won't) tell me straight out, however, as an ethical matter, since the records are confidential. However, she did say that if my birthfather is who she thinks it is, she believes that he would welcome the knowledge that he had an unknown son. So wow, I think this is still sinking in, but it's an exciting possibility. Stuff like this, I've found, has an emotional content that runs deep under the surface. That's how it was with finding Rose, anyway. So, that said, it's best not to get my hopes up too much. If I may indulge in some understatement: my curiosity about what my father might be like, and what it might be like to interact with Lummis after having established a connection (rather than being a complete outsider), has been piqued.

Primaries Redux

I'm still enjoying the primaries. As I've already stated, I don't think HRC has any chance of getting nominated outside a major scandal sinking Obama. Which is a scary prospect, given that HRC has been through the scandal grist mill already herself. She's seen firsthand how to throw together vast conspiracies and chip away at someone. And the Clintons are nothing if not pragmatists. So I do think that worries that the Clinton campaign might wage trench warfare are well-founded.

That said, I don't think the ongoing battle is as bad for the Democrats as some people are suggesting. For one thing, anything that can be used against Obama will eventually be used against him. The way news cycles work, once an issue has been raised, unless it sinks him outright, it pretty much comes off the table, I think. The Wright flap, for example, is done, and I don't think the Republicans would gain much by trying very seriously to revive it. So it's possible that the Clinton campaign can actually inoculate the Obama campaign against certain issues, but with comparatively less vitriol than the Republicans would have brought to those same issues. Another potential benefit of the long primary process is the amount of attention it's getting (McCain is pretty much out of the news cycles now, and will be for a while to come), and the interest it's generating. Far more people than usual are getting interested, far more money is being raised, and the primary turnouts are huge. Even if Obama uses up lots of money fighting off HRC, the investment, in terms of interest and attention, is already happening. I think that means that Democrats can expect a surprisingly high turnout come November, and the great majority (99%?) of Clinton Democrats will still turn out to vote for Obama.

Spring Still Not Sprung

Dear Spring,

You may come now. Don't be shy. Really. It's now April 24, and there's no need for snow. Oh no. No snow. Sunshine and warmth now, if you please. I'm asking nicely this time, but I will not hesitate to contact my attorney and/or congressional delegation if necessary.

Love,

QZed

I've long been fascinated with bossa nova, having discovered the Brazilian influences in Stan Getz as I worked my way through the jazz archives. Then I discovered, quite by accident, something interesting and cool: Brazil had its own pychedelic 60s movement, ushered in by a landmark album called Tropicalia, and a subsequent musical movement called Tropicalismo. Brazilian music, as you would expect, given its cultural roots, is a big melting pot of influences. In much the same way that the best American music draws on many traditions, so too does Brazilian music offer a cornucopia of styles and influences, much of it underpinned by mesmerizing samba rhythms. So for the next few days I offer a playlist of Brazilian music:

http://fun-haters.com:8666

I've put up a new playlist, and it's one of my all-time favorites: music made between 1965 and 1975, which I consider possibly the richest musical period in my lifetime (though I wasn't old enough to be aware of hardly any of it at the time it was happening). What an amazing time, in so many ways. Musically, though, it was a veritable explosion, amazing as much for its diversity as for its quality. So I've thrown together a big mish-mash of all kinds of music made during that time period, everything from Pentagle to Sun-Ra, passing through the biggies, like the Beatles, Stones, Who, Zeppelin, Dylan, Hendrix, Velvet Underground, Stooges, Yes, but also including many lesser known artists.

http://fun-haters.com:8666

As I argued a little while back, I think Hillary Clinton has almost no chance to win the Democratic nomination, mainly because we're well past the point where she has a realistic chance of having more pledged (non-super) delegates going into the convention. A new tool up at Slate, a delegate calculator, makes this point pretty clear. The calculator lets you adjust the outcomes of all remaining primaries and see what the resulting delegate total would look like. If you just change every race to be the same, in order for Clinton to get a delegate lead going into the convention, she would need to prevail by a margin of 65% to 35%. In every contest. If she won every remaining race by 64% to 36%, Obama would still nip her in the pledged delegate count, 1619 to 1615. Now, I'll grant you that neither candidate can win at this point without the support of the superdelegates, but the only possible scenario that causes the superdelegates to overturn the pledged delegate advantage is some really major scandal that sinks Obama through bad press coverage. Obviously, that's why the Clinton camp refuses to throw in the towel yet, because stranger things have happened. One hopes only that the fodder for any such scandal will not originate from the Clinton camp itself.

So as frequently happens when I create a new playlist, I spend hours and hours surfing the web, looking for representative and interesting groups, reading up about a particular musical scene. Of course, "Japanese music" hardly even qualifies as a category. It's probably safe to say that most of my searching has centered on prog rock (the Japanese went in for prog rock in a big way), noise/art, also sometimes referred to as "Japanoise," electronica (mainly DJ Krush--thanks Minette for the recommendation!) and a little bit of alt/punk/post-punk/whatever. My main entry point into contemporary Japanese music was my discovery of a band called OOIOO, whose album Taiga I reviewed here. From there I moved on to the Boredoms, which is a full-on exploration all in itself. All of this is an amazing musical space. But I'm absolutely sure that it doesn't even begin to get at the richness of category as broad as "Japanese music." Which is something I love in general about creative expression: you scratch the surface of any scene, and you'll find a bleeding profusion of fecundity. (How's that for a disgusting metaphor?) Scratch a culture, get oozing pus, loaded with thought virii! The sick anti-medicine that is memetics.

Today's playlist is all the Japanese music I could scare up from my collection. Well, not quite ALL. I left out the traditional Japanese flute music and the taiko. I put in all the crazy, noisy, whacked out stuff, along with the ambient/electronica. I'm including what we in the biz refer to as "da funky shizzre."

Who knew the Japanese were so creative? Apart from the Japanese? And anyone else like me who's not hideously Americo-centric?

http://fun-haters.com:8666

Playlist for some indefinite period of time:

Manu Chao, and various bands he's been in. He's kind of a fascinating character, a Spaniard raised in France, heavily influenced by British punk, who spent several years wandering around Latin America, recording himself on a portable 4-track recorder. It's fun stuff, very diverse.

http://fun-haters.com:8666

The Trial of Emilio S.

WEDNESDAY
Wednesday last, after having consumed four pieces of Kentucky Fried chicken-mostly dark meat, which he had always said was more moist, and therefore tasted better-and four Tecates, Emilio S. fell into a deep, powerful sleep, as was his custom. Without his knowing it, without his having ever considered the possibility, the last bit of physical material still in him when he had accidentally chopped off his left index finger with a skilsaw while helping to frame his brother Marcelino's house passed out of him that night while he slept, passed out of him through his nose while he breathed deep and even, and he became a completely new person.

( Read more... )

So I am now officially a victim of the tanking economy. I have been sized downward, reduced in force. I've gotten laid, but not on. I am an ex-employee. There are far worse fates in life, of course, and many silver linings: more time, for all kinds of things, six months of unemployment, should I have trouble finding a new gig, or even if I just feel like I need a break, I guess. Also, an excellent opportunity to meditate on life's vicissitudes. We none of us get enough vicissitude meditation time, do we? I mean really quality time.

Also, a chance to get up a new playlist on Robert Radio! Today's playlist: mixed new stuff (new to me), including Neutral Milk Hotel, Jesus Lizard, Neko Case, Jesca Hoop, Grizzly Bear, Battles, Babe the Blue Ox, and Plants and Animals. Much nature-named bands.

You've been languishing, Dear Reader, in meditative silence, haven't you? Each day you ask yourself, "Will Robert Radio ever come back? Can my acoustic life ever have quite the same meaning again?" And today, the answer is a resounding YES. For today's playlist, I've chosen...everything. Well, not quite everything. Everything that's not classical or jazz. Which covers a lot of territory. On shuffle play. Because I'm all about shuffle play these days. Clearly I should own an iPod Shuffle, were I not so anti-Apple.

You can link up to this musical schmorgasbord here:

http://fun-haters.com:8666

This will be great fun, since I've probably never heard lots of the stuff that will be playing today. I only have so many ears, after all! Too much music, not enough ears to listen to it all.

Blogging about blogging is a tedious thing, of course (except when it's not), just as I was always steered, by my various writing teachers, away from writing about writing. Unless you're particularly famous, it's just too self-indulgent (does success earn one the right to be self-indulgent?). But if you'll indulge me (and even if you won't!), I'm thinking about blogging, after having discovered the success of some of my friends and acquaintances as bloggers. Without begrudging them their success--I'm thrilled by their success!--I do ask myself: why am I not a more widely read blogger? Surely no writer, no matter how audience conscious they may pretend not to be, ever quite gets away from the basic audience questions: Why do I write? Does (or will) anyone read my stuff? Does (or will) anyone like it? Even your most secretive of writers, the Emily Dickinsons of the world, must have some kind of reader in mind, and must, at least at some level of consciousness, even if it's not front and center, think about those questions. Not to say that everyone truly cares equally about these questions, or yearns for the same answers. I, however, can frankly and honestly confess: I yearn for readers, and for people who will be taken by me as a writer and become fans. The best-case scenario is that these imaginary fans would also become my friends, but legions of anonymous fans and any associated accolades wouldn't hurt my feelings either.

Here's the weird thing, though: even though I like the idea of legions of adoring fans, I do not in fact make any effort to promote my blog. I've told a few friends about it, but I by no means tell even most of the people I meet or have conversations with that I write a blog. Partly that's out of fear of being held more accountable for what I write (if you write about your life, it makes it harder to be personal without getting your writing and your life tangled up in complicated ways), and having to be more audience conscious. But partly it's also, I'm guessing, the fear of pressure and failure. What if people liked my writing? Then I'd have to write really good blog posts all the damn time! I've witnessed some of the ways that bloggers draw in an audience. One blogger I know, for example, reads tons of blogs, comments all over the place all the time, leaving her blog address all over the place, like a trail of bread crumbs back to her blog. Not that she reads or comments only for the attention, of course. A strategy like this hadn't really occurred to me until I witnessed her discuss it, in relation to promoting a group blog she and I both contribute to (her far more than me). I'm sure there are other ways of promoting blogs too, though that does seem like one of the best ways. People who read other blogs are of course more likely to read your own, being consumers of blogs. And it makes perfect sense to zero in on blogs that are related to your topics of interest. So, given that I do at least claim to want readers, why do I not do this? The short answer, I guess (the one that doesn't involve long hours of discussions about my childhood) is that what I apparently really want is not so much to have legions of readers as to feel that I am a great undiscovered talent. I aspire to write the Confederacy of Dunces of weblogs.

I'm only partly joking. The part that makes me seem cleverly ironic...that's the real me. The part that makes me seem pathetically friendless and vulnerable...not so much.

Speaking of which, one of the habits of bloggers, I've noticed, is that whole networking thing (the web part of the weblog phenom). Bloggers link to and promote other bloggers all the time. I rarely do this. So for a fresh change today, let me promote a couple of my favorite blogs:

Mimi Smartypants
MS is probably the best blogger in the sphere, in my opinion. She's wickedly smart and funny. She has apparently gotten at least some amount of notoriety, as she was invited to excerpt parts of her blog into an actual kill-some-trees book. Yet she seems to have gotten hardly any attention from the Bloggies folk. But then I have no idea about the whole blog award world. Maybe MS gets awards somewhere else. If not, she definitely should. She has a great self-deprecating tone, a zig-zagging non-sequitur curiosity about oodles of subjects, a keen eye for absurdity, a bad-ass in-your-face punk attitude, all wrapped up in a delish adoring mommy persona.

Already on my link sidebar, but deserving some special attention:

Bob's Web Log
Bob is a treasure, even when he's writing about inherently boring topics like sports. Why? Because he's so great at writing things that are simultaneously funny and silly, but with a certain dark edge to them. Bob has participated in some other very good blogs, not least of all his Top 5 blog, which was, to quote his own tagline, "Objective truth distilled into hierarchical format." Some of his Top 5 lists are pure classics. At least equally good was his work on the Random Reviewer. [Full disclosure: I myself participated in, and thus brought down the overall quality of, both of these blogs.]

<pointless digression>I'm always amused by those "full disclosure" notes that writers put in their pieces now. I understand the point, of course, about journalistic integrity, blah blah blah, but the phrase just seems so out of place. Full disclosure? Oh no, my friend, full disclosure requires so much more than just an aside about your personal or professional relationships with the subjects of your writing. Full disclosure is a task more like that undertaken by Proust in Remembrance of Things Past. Full disclosure would fill pages and pages and pages of newsprint. Let me assure you that no one really wants full disclosure.</pointless digression>

Minette's Flickr Photostream
Minette is an insanely talented photographer, with a great eye and a high degree of technical interest and knowledge. Probably her greatest strength is her ability to compose so well. But she also has a great eye for colors and textures, and the ability to find the mysterious and beautiful in the perfectly ordinary, the stuff that's all around us. So okay, this isn't a blog as such, but she does sometimes include some very interesting commentary and stories along with her steady stream of beautiful photos.

Give these folks a visit, along with Dooce and Fat Cyclist (who clearly don't need my help promoting them, but deserve it anyway).