I head out to Boston on Monday to discuss a possible novel idea with an unusual and interesting individual.
Meanwhile, a bunch of videogames arrived for me to peruse: Black, Fight Night Round 3, and among others, Age of Empires for Nintendo DS. I look forward to boxing, shooting, and kinging.
Last night, a birthday card I was writing for my sister disappeared off my kitchen table: suddenly, unexpectedly, completely. I never found it again. It was there when I left the table to let my sister in the door, but gone when I checked. Apartment gremlins? Vengeful mice? Quantum shift in the table structure that let the card pass through into the plyboard, forever to be trapped?
I still feel unsettled about it. The sudden disappearance of things is the most brain-eroding torture one can suffer.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Time to be Honest
Blogs scare me.
They scare me because, unlike the old days of new media, blogs are being read by everybody. Because they publish so quickly. Because they take your thoughts and broadcast them. Because there are no censors. Because there's no fact-checking. Because accountability is so high, yet so mutable. I could change any statement made on here instantly. There's no permanence. There's no hard copy. There's no original.
Also, should I be honest? Because if I were truly honest, how many people would I offend? Friends, family? Businesses? Associates?
What is the line between professional and personal?
I could tell you, right now, something honest and revealing. To any of those listening. But I'd be more vulnerable than I would be under an umbrella of fiction, because fiction at least claims an innocence from the artist. This pseudo-reality we call the blogosphere, or blog kingdom, or information avalanche, is really a different sort of half-thing.
An idea occurred to me: perhaps I should have a pseudonym. Or a pseudoblog. Or, maybe I make this blog a different project: an encyclopedia of my own entries, a self-referential sort of set of observations about the known universe as I've seen it.
OK, cut the bullshit. My revealing moment:
- I once got an erection while riding a donkey.
Now, is that true or false?
They scare me because, unlike the old days of new media, blogs are being read by everybody. Because they publish so quickly. Because they take your thoughts and broadcast them. Because there are no censors. Because there's no fact-checking. Because accountability is so high, yet so mutable. I could change any statement made on here instantly. There's no permanence. There's no hard copy. There's no original.
Also, should I be honest? Because if I were truly honest, how many people would I offend? Friends, family? Businesses? Associates?
What is the line between professional and personal?
I could tell you, right now, something honest and revealing. To any of those listening. But I'd be more vulnerable than I would be under an umbrella of fiction, because fiction at least claims an innocence from the artist. This pseudo-reality we call the blogosphere, or blog kingdom, or information avalanche, is really a different sort of half-thing.
An idea occurred to me: perhaps I should have a pseudonym. Or a pseudoblog. Or, maybe I make this blog a different project: an encyclopedia of my own entries, a self-referential sort of set of observations about the known universe as I've seen it.
OK, cut the bullshit. My revealing moment:
- I once got an erection while riding a donkey.
Now, is that true or false?
In Seattle...
Thirty minutes away there is a village in a world surrounded by trees, and it's called Redmond.
I am there, in a hotel room, and outside the window glows a set of shopping mall facades that ring me like a wagon train.
Under streetlights, coffee shops and Eddie Bauer outlets conduct quiet business. In a bucket near the hotel and at every street corner, free purple umbrellas are offered as protection against the rain.
Nintendo's headquarters are nearby, not far from Microsoft's. In fact, they're right next door.
Night has fallen at 6:00, and through the curtain I can see ghostly shapes of cars.
What happened in the news today? I have no idea. I played videogames all day long...endless sessions of Metroid Prime Hunters on the Nintendo DS in a warm conference room, followed by a slow wandering through endless walls of videogames and Nintendo peripherals.
Today I'm preparing for tomorrow...when a flight will deliver me back to Newark, New Jersey, on the way back to New York City. Land of a hundred thousand streetlights. And probably, several dozen Eddie Bauer outlets.
In the interest of news, I present this: I read on a blog that Anathasius Kircher developed a musical instrument made out of living cats sometime in the 1700s.
That, and Metroid Prime Hunters comes out on March 20.
I am there, in a hotel room, and outside the window glows a set of shopping mall facades that ring me like a wagon train.
Under streetlights, coffee shops and Eddie Bauer outlets conduct quiet business. In a bucket near the hotel and at every street corner, free purple umbrellas are offered as protection against the rain.
Nintendo's headquarters are nearby, not far from Microsoft's. In fact, they're right next door.
Night has fallen at 6:00, and through the curtain I can see ghostly shapes of cars.
What happened in the news today? I have no idea. I played videogames all day long...endless sessions of Metroid Prime Hunters on the Nintendo DS in a warm conference room, followed by a slow wandering through endless walls of videogames and Nintendo peripherals.
Today I'm preparing for tomorrow...when a flight will deliver me back to Newark, New Jersey, on the way back to New York City. Land of a hundred thousand streetlights. And probably, several dozen Eddie Bauer outlets.
In the interest of news, I present this: I read on a blog that Anathasius Kircher developed a musical instrument made out of living cats sometime in the 1700s.
That, and Metroid Prime Hunters comes out on March 20.