"You're Running A Blog Not A Democracy"

Take 'em out back and shoot 'em... Anonymous Trolls (ATs) on blogs, that is. The blogosphere is all a'twitter (lower case twitter, not upper case Twitter) about a call for greater civility in the blogosphere: codes of ethical conduct , rules, regs, ethics badges, pledges, notices of of honor codes one chooses to abide by -- or not. That sorta thing.

Jeez, I go off the grid for four days and the conversation changes... not one iota. Might just stay off longer next time.

I agree that ATs are the worst of the worst slime who live under rocks. They annoy me to no end too, but I can't say I've had a terrible problem with ATs. Only once were they an issue anyways, when I foolishly left Anonymous Commenting up on the SGR right after Neal Boortz had blabbed (and blogged) about this very blog while on-air. Even then, I just deleted the stream of really vile comments. Didn't have any kinda ethical or moral dilemma about doing so, either. As the great Rusty T says, "You're running a blog, not a democracy."

So I can't really get all fired-up over masturbatory debates about should anonymous commenters be allowed or not, not to the degree of this NYT article today at least. Then again, I'm hardly as popular as BlogHer, so I don't attract their kinda attention, good or bad. (And if you do read this blog, you'd likely come to the conclusion that I tack to the "no such thing as bad press " end of the PR spectrum.)

For the record, I do not allow annonymous comments here. That's merely a coward's MO, and hardly worth protecting, in my book. Also, the registration process is so daunting on Blogspot, that most ATs lose interest at the thought of having to register and use a nom de plume just to cuss me out. (I laughed my butt-off though when someone was such an AT, and thus too cowardly to leave a post on my blog, that they instead left an anonymous post about me on someone else's blog! Now that's slime so low no microbe could even get under.)

Anyways... here's the NYT article again. It features gals from BlogHer.com, a site I once tried to post what I thought was a fairly reasonable (I didn't even use profanity!) comment, but of course I got slapped on the hand and lectured to about "rules" on personal attacks when I decided to speak my piece about the (dubious) professional choices of a certain BlogHer blogger. (She once worked for Edelman PR.) Women really are annoying with all their nicey-nice rules and such. And that was, naturally enough, the last time I visited BlogHer.

Then again, no one really likes being called a "stupid illiterate cunt" and things of that nature for too long. And women are often targeted for particularly vitriolic comments in the blogosphere. Still, I kinda like the creativity displayed by a certain Atlanta-based, male photographer who commented here (anonymously, of course, other than noting his profession 'cause I guess he felt it/he was special) that I wrote like a "drunken five-year old."

If I ever met-up with that dude, I'd let him buy me a drink just so I could toss it in his face. Just like a boozing kid, eh? But no, I didn't delete the "drunken five-year old" comment. It's on some post somewhere in here for all the world to judge -- both me and the commenteer.

Frankly, if some of these pro-guidelines folks had come of age before the blogosphere with, say, David T. Lindsay as one's snark guru, as I did, they'd know perfectly well how to wield and weed the vitriol -- in just the perfect places, for maximum impact. Or for at least some damn flavor. And Lordy Mercy how most blogs need not so much a lot of rules and regs, but instead just a whole lot more old-fashioned... style and flavor.


The plan is proceeding as, uh, planned... Mahhhh-ster. (My advice? Always do the accent.)

Jesus Died For Ugly Bobby's Sins, Not Mine

Just when you think you can tolerate men again, maybe just possibly maybe, then one of 'em goes and writes utter shite like this. This time about that dearly beloved space biscuit, Patti Smith, who, admittedly, is a total bat-brain from freakin' suburban New Jersey. She changed a lot of women though. Changed 'em up at least. Shook 'em the fuck up, and all over the freakin' world too, thank you very much. Permanently. For life. Hell yeah.

Fuck you, Ugly Bobby. You are more full of utter wordshit than even DTL.

If we could cast votes in someone's honor, kinda like sending a donation to a charity in lieu of just lovely flowers when someone dies of some weird kinda cancer, I'd vote for Hillary in the primary in DTL's name just for a cheap giggle.

And the gender wars commence all over again... sigh.

Amateurs

So bands that don't like the way the music site Pitchfork writes about their "music" make cute little videos of double entendre disgust and put 'em on YouTube? What a darling love letter compared to the cracked skulls that used to be administered to smart-ass music critics in Atlanta back in the day.

Try as they might, those gumming wannabees at Pitchfork will likely never achieve full-bite DTL status. Ahhhh... the good 'ole days of genuine music industry abuse.

Are All Men Really Gay?

Funny, I was just reading a short story which attempts to place the burden of gross societal isolation on male homosexuality, or, better yet, on men's ultimate indifference to the fate of women/womanhood, in a short story collection by Alexander McCall Smith, the African author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Or is it just indifference to intimacy in general? Tune-in to Brokeback Mountain to find out more.

So then I sneaked a peek on that same movie by reading the DTL review first. Hate when that happens, but as a single working mom, I'm way too busy being a societal scourge myself to get to the cinema as often as I'd like. Too many men to vilify/screw while stirring the meth pot instead. I'll be sure to cry extra tears to make up for his deficit when I finally see this must-see for the NPR set.

If only there was a fiction writer courageous enough to just lay it all on the line and advocate a complete separation of the sexes. Margaret Atwood is likely the only female writer brilliant enough to undertake that considerable task.

Note that I place emphasis on the word "fiction," as I'd hate for reality to intrude on a good fantasy. Those glib, attention-grabbing titles such as MoDo's bestselling Are Men Necessary? are clever and righteous as long as you're gettin' some. If not, then that camera loving, Bible thumpin', Oprah-speak spewin', bad-teeth brother in-law of a dead coal miner on CNN starts looking adorable. And books, well... not so terribly engrossing.

Of all the seemingly zillions of writers I've read over the years, on a cumulative basis, there's probably no one writer's work I've followed more than the ATL's own David T. Lindsay, possibly one of the greatest overlooked media critics on the planet. (I'd call it a "career" rather than "work," but last time I checked, it ain't that.)

It's a crying shame, of almost Brokeback Mountain-hankie proportions, that Mr. Lindsay harbors no grand ambitions, and presumably never has, as he so modestly declares with not so much as a quiver of a proud yet likely grossly underutilized lip. (Think, proportionally, of just the TV lip-flap time allotted to another fine Atlanta writer, Cynthia Tucker, and a veritable wall of shame emerges.)

In a reply to a letter-to-the-editor in the January issue of Stomp and Stammer, an editorial hallmark of the last truly funky publication on the Eastern Seaboard, Lindsay valiantly blurts, "I'm not vying for a gig at the daily newspaper." Jeez hon, who is nowadays?

Sure. About as much as I never think about owning the S-class model.

Despite the (premature) death knell being sounded for all print matter lately, DTL should be at something no less than The Economist. It doesn't matter if you rarely agree with a word he writes. I frequently do not, sometimes to the point of venomous outbursts involving a car or refrigerator door.

But given that there are so few writers with the sheer natural ability and stamina to take you, masterfully, beyond your comfort zone so that you hardly even realize you're out of it until you start to head back to base camp then all of a sudden you're in a freakin' mind-blizzard that's about to hurl you off into the void, again, that you read 'em for the sheer adrenalin rush alone.

Of course, some of us are excellent, experienced, uh, climbers. It's just when we get a little overly confident, stuff starts screwin' up. But I diverge...

DTL's so good, we should be paying to read his work. Hell, he should be given government funding to practice his craft. He should be bathing in a bubble bath of hard-earned, taxpayer C-notes while we serve him fine (French) sparkling wines and (subsidized) domestic pate. Every now and then he could deign to lean over the edge and stuff one of those bills in my diamond-studded thong. Surely that would be a sign of a civilized society, as the reinstatement of the death penalty and assorted warmongering ain't exactly doing it for us right now.

At the very least, there should be a collected series of Lindsay's work available. I say series, as the dude's been at it since I was a teenager, and that, alas, was a long long time ago. It honestly pains me when I think about the dozens of youngsters reading S&S now who know him only as a joyless, forsaken oppressive, and not as the hilariously scathing caustic who could hurl one-liners about awful bands faster than a teen can drone on about his iPod. Twenty or so years later, recalling "The reason ninjas were invented" is enough to make for a darn good day.

Of course, if there was such a book it would be called "unmarketable." Or would it? To understand what technology has done to the literary market place, I direct your attention to this extremely valuable piece, from Wired Magazine's editor-in-chief, about the "Long Tail."

Here's a bit from that:

In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, a harrowing account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, a strange thing happened. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation.

Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again. Random House rushed out a new edition to keep up with demand. Booksellers began to promote it next to their Into Thin Air displays, and sales rose further. A revised paperback edition, which came out in January, spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. That same month, IFC Films released a docudrama of the story to critical acclaim. Now Touching the Void outsells Into Thin Air more than two to one.

Full article here.

One other note before I let you go, isn't it just good old-fashioned, fun-lovin' narcissistic male arrogance to say that a good woman's vagina, or her brain for that matter, ultimately goes "to waste?!" That's so retro it's almost funny. He's almost funny - again. After all these years. Almost.

So who's so isolated now?