Say what you mean, and mean what you say... Definitions MATTER

If you mean "it's to be expected that X happened" or "it's unsurprising that X happened", say so.. Don't say its "Understandable that X happened"...

Understandable means that you empathize with the action, or sympathize with it, or can find it reasonable, or excusable, or justifiable... or at least understand and find reasonable that others might.. If that's what you mean, then OK... that's what you mean. But if it isn't, then use the right words and constructions to convey the right meaning.

This isn't just meaningless wonkery... it's a very important distinction.

Definitions matter. Words matter. Communication depends on these things. Misunderstanding and conflict are generated and perpetuated based on getting them wrong.

You Like Me... You REALLY Like Me...

At peak, my blog was averaging about 2,500 to 5,000 unique views per day... a few times I went as high as 25,000, and a rare couple of times I went over that...

But I nearly stopped writing on the blog in 2015... and had been writing a lot less since 2013. I wrote more than 3900 posts from 2005 through the end of 2014... I've written exactly 145 posts in the 5 years since.

... But there's something funny...

As late as the end of 2018, I was still seeing up to 2500 uniques a day, and now, 5 years since I stopped posting every MONTH (I've averaged about 2 posts a month in over the last 5 years), never mind every week or every day... I'm still getting between 500 and 1,500 unique page views every day... That's how much my writing is out there, circulating, linked and referenced in other peoples posts, on forums etc... And how often is shows up in searches for the topics I write about.

... And that feels pretty damn great...

Travelling Back From Out Of The Fog

A few years ago, I decided to deprioritize the blog... for several reasons.

First, my life was all cancer all the time, and I really just didn't feel like I was writing much worth reading that wasn't about the cancer and the impact it had on our life.

Second, and more relevant to the current state of social media, is that in large part, people stopped commenting on blogs... They would comment on twitter, or facebook, or reddit, or wherever they found the post, or had the post shared with them etc... but they wouldn't actually comment on the blog itself.

... The discussion moved away from the platform... and that killed the entire point of blogs, which was to actively engage with readers and commenters. Otherwise, it's just a web site... or worse, a livejournal...

So, I moved my primary social media activity and most of my new writing, from this blog, to other social media... Mostly facebook, with a little bit of twitter, and eventually a little bit of MeWe.

... I still occasionally posted, as my loyal readers hopefully noted... but often I went months at a time between blog posts.

However, I am generally a long form writer... I've got several blog posts exceeding 10,000 words, and at least a couple exceeding 20,000 words... and across the last 15 years that Ive been writing in this space, I've managed to write a couple of series of posts exceeding 100,000 words, which is entire book length.

... And Facebook isn't exactly well suited to long form writing... though I've still managed to write a fair few long form posts anyway.

Well... For quite some time now, a lot of my readers and friends have asked me to start posting my longer FB posts back to my blog... at the very least because FB makes it extremely difficult to save and find posts later, and it can be difficult to link to or excerpt a post when you want to etc...

As it happens, I had already decided to do so... and few days ago I mentioned I was already in the process of doing it... But, you have been following both FaceBook AND the blog all along, you may have noted I hadn't done so yet (or at least not until a few minutes ago).

I haven't forgotten about doing so... I'm just in the process of collecting, cleaning up and re-writing in blog format, and then scheduling those posts to come out one or two at a time, so i'm not flooding the blog with tens of thousands of words all at once.

... So... why now?

Well, a few reasons... For one thing, I've noted that some people are starting to engage with long form writing and blogs again. Also, my life, while not exactly great at the moment, is at least no longer all cancer all the time, so I feel like I can write more about what I actually want to write about.

... But there WAS something specific that prompted me to act on the notions that have been stewing for months, where I was hesitating before now...

For the last 10 years, I have suffered from what I, and other cancer warriors call "cancer brain"... I have had long and severe bouts of  overwhelming fatigue, lack of clarity and focus, writers block, and even readers block, where I literally can't concentrate or focus enough to read, sometimes for months at a time. I have spent days, weeks, months at a time, going in and out of what those of us who suffer from it call "brain fog"... where I can have seemingly normal function, even be reasonably intelligent and clever and seem to write reasonably well... but it's not me... it doesn't feel right, it doesn't... work... It's not good work and good writing, or at least not good enough. I try to grasp ideas and work with them, and they just slip away. I try to write the proper words to say what I really mean, in the way I want to say it... and I just can't.

... But there have been moments when I came out of the fog, and WAS able to do good work... even some things I thing are great. Among the best I've written... They're not common, but they have been happening more and more, as I recover more and more.

A few days ago, I managed to write about 20,000 words, on several different subjects, in just a few hours... I think maybe some pretty good ones, as I have strung them together.

My brain started working close to how it should for a few hours... Waking up after a good quality sleep with less pain and no reflux (for the first time in days) was undoubtedly a big help there... but sometimes, in the midst of the fog, I hit a clear patch, and can think, and write, and be productive, at least a bit like I used to.... And hopefully will again.

And in that clear patch,  I wrote wrote couple of the best things I've written in a good long while, as well as a couple of linked posts that are...

...Let's call them interesting seeds, that will hopefully grow from possibilities in peoples minds, to interesting realities in peoples lives.

So, I decided that I would stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and at the very least, post here, whatever I may write that I think is good... or that may plant interesting seeds in peoples minds...

...If I can achieve that... it's something worthwhile... And you can't hope for much better than that.

Creators Are People Too

For many people who are not serious con-goers, or who don't go to a lot of live music shows, or who don't participate very much in the "author" or "independent/genre flim/tv" or "independent musician" regions of social media; the people who create the art they love, are seemingly remote... set apart from "normal" folks.

Sometimes these folks wonder how it is I have met and/or know so many authors, actors, producers, directors, musicians and other artists and creators that I like; and how I've been lucky enough to have become friends with more than a few.

Simple...

1. Find out where they are going to be in public, be it a con, a book signing, a reading, a lecture, a showing, a festival, a small show, a big show you can get a backstage pass for, a public event of some kind...
   
   It's easy... they'll tell you when these things are happening, and ask you to show up and support their work.
2. Go there, while being reasonably well groomed and bathed, preferably with a few friends who also like the creator in question (though not a huge gang all at once... that can be overwhelming). Big Plus if you include an item of swag you bought from them in your accouterments. Big minus if you go as them in cosplay, because that's just creepy.
   
   Bringing me to...
   
3. Say hi, and tell them you like the stuff they create.. but don't be creepy. You may love everything they have ever done, it has changed your life, you have defined yourself by it... but don't gush... too much anyway. A little gushing is OK.
   
4. Remember, creators are fans too... And if you're a fan of their stuff, there's a good chance they're fans of other stuff you like, and you're fans of other stuff they like.
   
   Most creators were fans... and very big intense fans at that... long before they were creators themselves, and becoming a creator doesn't stop them being a fan. You may love their stuff... but you may both gush together over your mutual love of someone elses stuff.
   
   .. actually I can say without doubt, I have spent far more time with my creator friends, obsessing about the stuff that we love that other people have created, than every other subject combined
   
5. Say hi on Facebook, or twitter, or their blogs, and add them. Follow their posts, interact with them. JUST LIKE ANYONE ELSE.

Because creators are people too... No matter how remote they may seem

Often, they're very lonely people, especially on the road stuck away from their families for weeks or even months at a time. Someone being genuinely nice to them and liking their stuff, and being genuine and human and real, and not just wanting a piece of them... is great.

One step beyond...

Now... here's the advanced level course, for those of you who would like to be IRL friends with your favorite authors, or at least hang out with them:

Creators are often broke (or at least not rich and not on big expense accounts), and often like things such as steak and beverages.

Yes, really, you and everyone you know may love everything they do, but most authors, actors, directors, and other creators in general, don't make very much money most of the time.. and often, most of what they do make goes into trying to make more of the stuff you like.

It may be years in between books, or gigs with decent pay. In between, they're just trying to get by,often while living in the stupidly expensive New York or Los Angeles...

...and no matter what, creators have lots of non creators to pay... Lawyers, agents, accountants. publishers... It's not cheap to be a creator who wants to make a living from their creation

So, when they're out on the road promoting their creations, creators are often trying to maximize enjoyment and fan engagement, while minimizing cost to their personal wallets (most creators are eating on their own "thank god this is tax deductible" dime most of the time. Even if you can get one to do so, every dime another company fronts you for "promotional expenses" is probably 2 dimes taken out of your earnings).

So, if you're cool, and you're not creepy, and after interacting you seem to like them, and they seem to like you... If you get the opportunity, offer them free food and beverages.

This works particularly well if that food is something that your city is particularly good at that they haven't tried, or it's one of their favorites, or if it's beyond their normal budget.

How do you do that?

Again, simple:

"Hey... we really like what you do. We're going to get some of this awesome food. If you've got time and are up for it, we'd love to have you come get some of this awesome food with us. Because we love what you do, we'd be really happy if you'd let us buy you lunch/dinner/breakfast/elevenses"

Yes, really, it's just that simple...

If they have time, and you've been cool and non-creepy, there's a very good chance they'll take it. And if they don't have time, they'll still be happy you offered, because they know it means you like them, and their stuff.

Because the most important thing you have to remember, is that mostly, CREATORS ARE JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.

...except usually more broke, and with less time, and less room in their heads for stuff other than what they are creating.

Blogging is Not Dead... Quite

I haven't exactly given up on blogging, but I have cut back a lot, and there's a couple reasons why.

First, the cancer, treatment, and the... Aftermath and recovery I suppose is the way to put it... They took a hell of a lot out of me. More than I have ever talked about really... More than I even understood until I changed some of my medications and got a bit back that helped me see more of... Just how bad it got.

Combined with that, I haven't bought a new gun, or even been in position to talk about one in... I dunno, Four years maybe? Five? I don't even remember... I think... Yeah the last time I bought a new gun was a couple months before we moved to Idaho... So four and a half years ago?

Oh wait... I did complete two gun builds while I was in Idaho. I had the base guns before we moved, but I actually finished the builds in April 2011. So three and a half years. I've been selling guns off ever since actually.

Since Boomershoot 2011, I haven't been to a single shooting event, training class, etc... I've even missed the last couple gunblogger rendezvous, and at GBR in 2011, I was so sick and had tremors and pain so bad I couldn't shoot, or even go to the range events, except for a couple hours of the first one.

Bringing us to the next reason. Basically, other than the Boy being born, my life has been mostly suck most of the time since late 2010. When I felt something would be particularly interesting, or I really needed to get something out on "paper", or needed to vent, I'd write something... But I didn't feel like being the " all misery all the time" blogger.

It's not all personal though, there's also been a change in the environment that has significantly impacted my blogging.

There has been a massive falloff in the quantity and quality of both bloggers, and blog refers and commenters.

Blogging is essentially an interactive, almost collaborative process. Bloggers get inspired, or irritated, or motivated, by other bloggers, and the ongoing conversation with their readers and commenters.

Its a virtuous cycle of ideas and interests and inspiration and motivation and feedback and continuous expression and refinement of ideas.

Except its not so much that anymore.

There's much less of it, and what there is, just isn't as good.

Oh, there's still good stuff, but a lot less of it, and its fewer, farther between, and harder to find.

Then, when you do find it, the engagement and feedback and interplay isn't there, so it doesn't generate more good stuff.

The virtuous circle isn't happening.

Honestly, its just not as fun or interesting anymore. I've still got plenty to say, but saying it through blogging isn't scratching the itch like it used to.

People who used to be blogging and commenting and engaging in long and interesting conversations... Now they're "writing" text bytes 140 character at a time... And half those are used for hash tags. Or worse, they're just exchanging memes and info graphics that other people made.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you can't talk about things with any depth or in interesting and original and insightful ways with stock photos and pithy captions.

Likes, and shares, and retweets may gratify the ego, but a conversation they do not make.

People are still reading blogs, but instead of reading the interconnected web of posts and comments in the blogosphere, they're reading single posts linked off of facebook or reddit. Most importantly, they're not really commenting on the blog posts themselves.

So, instead of the blog, I'm writing most of what I used to put on my blog, on Facebook.

That may seem hypocritical and contradictory given the paragraphs above, but its not.

I write short and medium length posts on Facebook, and I get more comments, more feedback, more interaction, than I EVER got blogging, even in the glory days. With the ease of reaching large audience who otherwise wouldn't have seen your writing with shares and likes et al... More people are taking what I'm writing and being inspired by it or motivated by it.

Unfortunately, it IS much more shallow interaction than the best days of blogging were. Its shorter, its less in depth, whatever you want to call it.. But at least there is an active conversation. An exchange of ideas and thoughts.

So, I save the really long or really deep stuff for the blog...

...Which by the by, no matter how good the post is and how much traffic the posts get still almost never gets more than a couple comments, most of which are either "good post, me too" or ignorant rants about how wrong and evil I am. I had insty link a post of mine last year, and still only got 15,000 hits on it, and NOT ONE COMMENT.

In fact, as I said above, it seems that most people are finding blog posts through twitter and Facebook, or on aggregator sites like reddit these days. Instead of commenting on the blog post, and sharing the converting with the author, they're writing their comments on Facebook, or the subreddit, or in tweets; and the conversation stays there.

So, I write the long deep stuff on the blog, and then I facebook it and tweet the link. I get no comments on the blog post, and dozens of comments and shares and likes on facebook and twitter, and other people write posts in response or are inspired...

...Which is kind of the point of blogging... at least for me.

Oh damn... I missed another traffic milestone...

Apparently, according to the increasingly irrelevant and inaccurate sitemeter, I went over 3 million unique visitors sometime in the last 24 hours.

Or at least the widget on my sidebar says so... when I drill down into the stats I'm like a week or so away...

...and as we all know by now, sitemeter isn't even a rough guess anymore...

But what the hell, it's what I've used since day 1 so I'll go by that.

Oh and it also says 4 million or so pageviews... something like two weeks ago.

I'm a month short of 8 years on this blog (first post was valentines day 2005), I average something like 35,000 sitemeter uniques a month, with 45,000 page views (google stats say it's more like 65-75,000 pageviews a month)

And of course that doesn't count RSS readers, which I would guess would be about double that (about 3/4 of my regular readers are feed readers, and about 1/3 of my hits are regulars).

Also, a surprising number of people seem to use Lawdog, MadOgre, and Borepatch as their own personal gunblogger reading list. Like a couple hundred people a day, including folks I know are regular readers, always seem to reach me from their links (them, and the firearms blog, and gunblogblacklist are my top referrers other than google. Google runs something between 1/3 and 1/6th of my total traffic on any given day).

Before "all cancer, all the time" two years ago, I was close to double that... and frankly I think people were reading blogs more then anyway...

I'm actually surprised I've retained that much readership given how little content I've been posting, and how little quality of it... Thanks guys, I appreciate it.

MHI Santa Cookies

Because normal Christmas sugar cookies are boring:

MHI Santa cookies made with the Perfect Dark Chocolate Sugar Cookie recipe with about 1/2 tbsp of cinnamon added, because normal sugar cookies are also tasteless. Chocolate is much better.

Boxes of assorted Christmas cookies (including a fair number of these) ended up at Malmstrom AFB and Fairchild AFB. Luckily we got the opportunity to drop them off in person at Fairchild and visit with a certain author:

Mike Kupari, co-author of Dead Six.

A box will be on its way to Larry shortly, because we can.

Mel

Having this little problem

Over the last few months, I've had this little problem.

See... I've started writing dozens of pieces... and I just haven't bothered finishing, or posting them. some of them I've actually finished, but still... I just can't seem to get motivated enough to bother.

I've written some decent stuff... It's just that I feel like I've already said it a dozen times; or that the issues have been covered a million times etc... etc...

A couple things I wrote that I thought were really good, but I didn't want to deal with the morons who would be commenting on them...

Actually more than a couple...

Not my good regular comments and most of the commenters of the gunblogosphere and libertarian blogosphere; the "truth brigade" idiots and the paulbot types and 9/11 truther types... THOSE idiots.

Part of the problem is that the leftist idiots have got to the point... in fact they're way beyond the point... where I can no longer tell their actual positions and rhetoric, from ridiculous over the top satire of their actual positions and rhetoric.

We have reached a point in this country, where it's not just that headlines from "The Onion" are entirely believable; but that the entire articles are not only believable, they are in fact more reasonable... and better written... than the "real" thing.

I've actually got a bunch of pieces sitting in "draft" status right now that I could publish... but yaknow, I just don't feel like bothering.

I do have a megapost on the AR10, and a couple of non-gun posts that I will probably hit the button on in a couple of days....

It's just that if it isn't something really big and important, or really quick, or just fun... I just feel like it's not worth the time or effort right now.

A lot of it has been the cancer of course, and I think a lot of it is election fatigue.

I'm REALLY hoping that I'll feel different after the election.

Process Story

Y'all might have noticed, I've been relatively content free for a couple weeks... Really since before the holiday.

The thing is, I've got a ton of stuff about 3/4 written; almost ready to go, that I can't quite finish.

And it's a process problem

I generally don't write much during the day... at least in terms of personal writing, as opposed to writing for work, which I do all day long.

I'm an insomniac, and a late night person; and I do most of my writing for the blog at night, in bed, on my laptop. I'm comfy, and nothing else is in the way, and I can just let the ideas flow from brain to fingers to keyboard.

When I'm writing for work, I rarely get blocked up. I generally don't have a problem just working through whatever is going on to get things done on time.

Writing for the blog though, is a different story (as is my fiction, or poetry). I can't push it, when it comes it comes.

The problem at the moment though, is that my process is being disrupted by not having my laptop.

I'm on my netbook sat the moment, which is great for reading, and for short posts, but it's just too cramped to write anything long and involved on. The keyboard is fine for a few minutes of typing, but the hours of typing it takes to write 10,000 word posts... just can't do it. Also the screen is just too small to have multiple windows and tabs open to flip back and forth to, as I like to do with posts that take a lot of research (as these 1000 yard posts do).

If it was work, I'd just suck it up and do it, but blogging is optional. It's supposed to be fun.

Of course it's also frustrating as hell, because I WANT to publish this stuff, I want to finish writing it... hell, the reason I write the blog is because there are tons of ideas rattling around my head, and I need to get them out, or I go a bit nuts and start ranting in public places etc...

Better than shooting every idiot I come across I suppose...

Anyway, the laptop has been non functional since the week before Christmas, but with the vagaries of the holidays it didn't get into their depot until January fifth; and the status on it wasn't updated until last night; when they listed an out of warranty repair required.

Odd given the problem is that the system is poorly designed, and oeverheats, which causes multiple component failures... none of which would be out of warranty.

So, HP called me up today and tried to say there were "scratches" on my LCD... which is rather odd. There were no scratches when I sent it out, and the problem wasn't the LCD at all.. which by the way they wanted $429 to replace. I told them just to do the in warranty repairs and send it back to me.

I just checked the status again, and there is now no shipping date scheduled, status, or punch list on the machine now...

So thats at least another two or three days before I get it back.

I'm a bit irritated.

Computer Problems... Again

So I've been dealing with yet more computer issues the last... few weeks really, but specifically in the last 48 hours.

Real PITA.

Anyway, the monster desktop replacement will be going back to HP for the third time, for another warranty repair.

In the meantime, I'll be on my netbook. Kinda hard to write on the netbook. Little screen, little keyboard.

Terms and Conditions

Whenever anyone has asked me, I've given them permission to reprint my original work for this blog under a Creative Commons license; but I never bothered to put up the license notice.

For one thing, I do prefer that people ask; if only so I know where I'm being reprinted, and what the reaction of that sites audience is.

However, I realized that not listing a license explicitly, makes it more difficult for those who want to repost/reprint legitimately to do so. Also, I'd like to further spread the message of the creative commons licenses.

So, as of today, my wife and I am officially licensing all content of this blog, and all other publicly accessible web content to which I retain copyright (including all materials published non-commercially on all other sites, and on all dates since the inception of any of our websites; and other materials we have published non-commercially online, that either of us still retain copyright to, and have not otherwise separately licensed); under the Creative Commons, Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, unless explicitly noted otherwise.

Yeah, there's a bunch of legalistic stuff in there, because I can't grant you right I don't have to give; and some of my content is used under fair use, or by permission from other sites; and some I've already licensed differently, or published commercially (which is also licensed differently) etc... So I can't just blanket give you all everything.... Too bad as it'd be a lot simpler.

That said, the core if it is pretty simple. Almost everything is licensed CC-BY-NC-ND.

What that means, is that anyone is free to reprint or republish my original work from this site, so long as they credit me and this site, don't alter it (including deleting or adding), and don't use it for commercial purposes.

If you wish to use content from this site for commercial purposes, please contact me at the address listed in my personal profile.

Commentary, parody, criticism, and reasonable excerpting for citation, are of course all acceptable fair use, and need not be covered under license.

I'm putting up a notice in the blogs template, that will show on the sidebar and footer; along with the explanatory link, and Creative Commons button:

The AnarchAngel by Christopher J. Byrne IV
is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

This button and link were created using the Creative Commons "License your work" tool, which formats the whole thing for you.

I don't think it's particularly necessary to do this right at this moment to protect myself, and I'm certainly not looking to protect a potential revenue source.

I just think that every blogger should understand copyright, and licenses, and how it effects them and their work; and should explicitly publish under a license (there are many others out there, not just Creative Commons).

Two Hour War Games: Bad Plagiarist, No Donut

So it seems some staggering genius named Ed Teixeira of "Two Hour War Games" decided to rip off a friend of mine.

A friend of mine that used to own a machine gun store...

So Ed, you're theoretically a wargame designer right? Would you describe that as a tactical error on your part?

It seems that the mental midget in question decided to lift a little content...

"Origins - All Things Horror

Vampires terrorizing your town?

Call us!

It's been almost twelve weeks since your own personal nightmare took place. Looking back, it's hard to believe it really happened. When most people come face to face with a supernatural creature (we call them monsters) they run. They also die. Not you. For some reason you fought back. Fought back and killed it.

I guess you could consider that your interview.

Anyway, it was only a matter of days before they approached you in the hospital about working for the Company. Smooth talking operators, with money to burn, you fell for their pitch. After all, did you expect you'd be able to return to the nine to five grind once you found out that nightmares are real?

...

You're a highly trained monster killer. You work for a high paying, highly secret private company, whose job it is to kill monsters. Vampire terrorizing your town? Call us. Bad case of the walking dead? We're on it. Get the idea? Good? Now grab your gear and get going "newbie". "

Sound familiar to anyone?

It should, it's the plot of (and some direct quotes from) the first eight or nine chapters of Larry Correias best selling book "Monster Hunter International";

As it happens, the first seven of those chapters are available online for free, from Baen.

So not only did they plagiarize Larry, but they may not have even had the courtesy to buy his book to do it.

However, it seems that Ed has discovered his tactical error:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/twohourwargames/message/58321


" "Ed" Message #58321 of 58321
Tue Dec 1, 2009 12:57 am

There has been an issue with some of the content of ATH and of this moment it
has been pulled from circulation."

Let's just see if this guy does the right thing by Larry. If not, we googlebomb his unoriginal, thieving, plagiarizing ass back to the stone age.

Update:

It looks like Mr. Teixeira has done the right thing. He pulled the game, and has worked out an agreement with Larry, and will be working with Baen to deal with the copyright issue.

A comment from Ed Teixeira:

Ed Teixeira, on December 1st, 2009 at 1:00 am Said:

Larry,
Can you email me so I can talk to you. Seriously man, there was no offense intended. I’d like to show you what I have an get your opinions.

Ed

From Larry:

EDIT: Okay, before reading forward, everybody can relax. I spoke with the owner of the Two Hour Wargames after I posted this. Yes, he was inspired by the first part of MHI. He will be putting up a thing on his page about that is where he got the idea. He apologized, and will be linking to where people can get my book. Ed apologized, said that he read that bit and got fired up, and should not have used my stuff like that. I respect that he contacted me so quickly to apologize and to try to make things right.

I don’ t mind fan fiction, in fact I love it and there is some great MHI fan fic on the internet. I know of at least a dozen different gamer groups that are running their own MHI based campaigns and I think that is awesome, but when someone uses a writer’s creation to make money, then that is different. Baen Books owns the rights to MHI, and anything that ties in there needs to be cleared through them through proper channels.

Dammit, still working on it

It's one of those pieces that wont let anything else get finished before it is.

Now I've got like three others backed up behind it.

Writers Block

I know, poor excuse and all that.

I've got a bunch of work docs I need to finish up, a bunch of docs for a friend I need to finish up and I cant manage to quite close the deal.

I'm also percolating on about 8 different posts here, all about 3/4 written. Again, I can't quite seem to finish off.

In writers terms, Ive got blue balls...

More Good Stuff from Camille Paglias' Mailbag

Remember a few months ago I mentioned I have a great deal of respect for Camille Paglia? Well here she goes again:

Something very ugly has surfaced in contemporary American liberalism, as evidenced by the irrational and sometimes infantile abuse directed toward anyone who strays from a strict party line. Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new religion for those who profess contempt for religion. It has been reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas, which posit the working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of government power. The problems on the American left were already manifest by the late 1960s, as college-educated liberals began to lose contact with the working class for whom they claimed to speak. (A superb 1990 documentary, "Berkeley in the Sixties," chronicles the arguments and misjudgments about tactics that alienated the national electorate and led to the election of Richard Nixon.) For the past 25 years, liberalism has gradually sunk into a soft, soggy, white upper-middle-class style that I often find preposterous and repellent. The nut cases on the right are on the uneducated fringe, but on the left they sport Ivy League degrees. I'm not kidding -- there are some real fruitcakes out there, and some of them are writing for major magazines. It's a comfortable, urban, messianic liberalism befogged by psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Conservatives these days are more geared to facts than emotions, and as individuals they seem to have a more ethical, perhaps sports-based sense of fair play. Probably the main reason for my unorthodox view of politics (as in my instant approval of Sarah Palin) is that I had much more childhood contact with working-class life than appears to be the norm among current American columnists. One of my grandfathers was a barber, and the other was a leather worker at the Endicott-Johnson shoe factory in upstate New York. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, my father was able to attend college, the only one in his large family to do so. I was born while he was still in college and mopping floors in the cafeteria. Years later, he became a high-school teacher and then a professor at a Jesuit college, but we never left our immigrant family roots in industrial Endicott. To this day, I have more rapport with campus infrastructure staffers (maintenance, security) than I do with other professors or, for that matter, writers. Don't get me started on the hermetic bourgeois arrogance of American literati!

Read the whole thing; it's definitely worth a few minutes of your time.

Damn busy

Ok, so I know I promised y'all some yummy yummy content this week; and I've got some coming, I've just been too crazy busy to write it all up.

So far this week I've had 28 meetings; and it's only mid way through Thursday. And hey, some of those meetings were even useful... not many, but at least some.

So, I've got a post on building a hackintosh, a post on building a home NAS, backup, and media server setup, and an iPhone review coming. I just need to get the time to finish them up.

Seriously Exhausted

So since Friday I've only had about 8 hours of sleep total. I've been building systems and playing with the iphone and taking pictures etc.... all weekend, and I'm going to be writing it all up shortly.

...But for now, I need to sleep. Really really need to sleep badly. Seeyas all tomorrow.

Dammit, I'm not done yet

...with various pieces I'm writing, and various tasks I'm performing that I'll be writing about that is.

I promised a piece on building your own NAS box today (since people have been asking me for one for months), but I didn't get around to actually building the box today, so I can't exactly write about it.. Well I could since I've done it... Oh I dunno a couple hundred times maybe? But it wouldn't be as interesting as writing about what I'm actually doing right then... but anyway.

Tomorrow, we will have had our iPhones for a week. I was originally going to post a review immediately, but I decided on Friday afternoon to give it a few days, so I could live with the phone for a while.

Anyway, That'll be out tomorrow, mid morning or so I hope.

I'm planning on building the NAS box tomorrow, and writing it up over the weekend to be published on Monday.

Scribus Interuptus

So, I've written a TON of stuff lately... and finished almsot none of it.

For some reason I've got a BUNCH of ideas going through the brain, and either they aren't flowing out to the fingers; or they aren't coming out in a way I'm satisfied with.

In particular, there's one VERY BIG thing that I really want to write. The concept and points of it are kind of sitting there taking up all my mental room; and it won't come out until it's fully formed, but it's also crowding everything else out.

Sorry for the scarcity of content around here lately, I'm just in one of those occaisonal slumps.

Irritating.

Why do I live with the trouble?

I got an email with a question, about why I took my resume down off my website; and more generally, how my writing online has effected my life.

It's a good question really. It's certainly one that other bloggers and I have discussed, mostly amongst ourselves, but also with our readers.

Well, first, I took my resume down temporarily because I was getting some harassment; and people were using the information on it to screw with me. I'll eventually put it back up; but at the moment I have no need for it to be online. Besides which, it CAN be found, if you want to make any kind of effort, and you know how. Most of the idiots who are stupid enough to harass me, are incapable of such things.

This is also one of the reasons why I don't discuss specifics of employment, past or present.

Hmmm, how has my online writing effected my life....

Well, It's given my thoughts and words a much broader audience, and introduced me to many new friends. I'm hoping that it has influenced many people, to understand many things, much better than they had before reading; and that I've been able to dispel a lot of nasty and stupid myths and answer a lot of interesting questions.

On the other hand...

It has also resulted in death threats, harassment, being fired from two different jobs, and most likely prevented me from getting several more; and it has certainly complicated our legal issues.

Of course I'm not the only one. Joe Huffman, and Kim DuToit, have both seen the same impact that I have; and many others out there have similar experiences.

I wouldn't trade all that though; nor would I choose to go back and blog pseudonymously. I believe a man must be willing to stand behind what he says, and what he writes. Not to say that I respect a person less when they write under a pseudonym; but when I write something, and I put my name on it, people know who and where it is coming from.