I'm Only Doing This Once

Dear Conservatives,

I'm writing you to tell you something very important.

In the past, I have been called many things by you. A homosexual, or a 'queer lover' for supporting gay rights. I LIEberal, insinuating I am a liar because I'm a liberal. A DEMONcRAT, insinuating I'm a demon and a rat because I vote democrat. Among other things. My beliefs are based on a lifetime of experiences - my own life - and firmly held moral convictions about right and wrong and the value and sanctity of human life and dignity. You have slandered me because of my lack of firm belief in a specific Christian God, been called a coward and a pussy because I have argued for finding peaceful alternative solutions to problems other than fighting, and been made fun of for supporting the ACLU, an organization which ironically exists only to defend our First Amendment rights to call each other names (and have rational discourse.)

You know what? That's all OK. I've been discussing video games and politics on the Internet since I was dialing into Prodigy in 1990. That's a long time: longer than some of you calling me these things have been alive. I have a thick skin and frankly I believe that a plurality of opinions makes for good discourse and ultimately good compromise, which is the basis of American democracy in the first place. If we can't troll each other at least a little bit, what's the point?

But I will say this: you guys way overstepped the line with questioning our patriotism for opposing the Iraq war. You called us traitors to America for daring to oppose Bush and question whether the war was justified and whether we were being mislead by the administration into the way. That's right, you called us traitors. I realize that not all of you did this, and I realize that there was a certain fervency sweeping the nation at the time. But the whole 'if you're not with us, you're against us' thing hurt. Because the reason we questioned the war and questioned Bush was our patriotism and love of our country, and our support for our troops. We don't want America associated (any more than it already is) with unnecessarily meddling in foreign affairs, and we certainly don't want to see our friends who enlisted in good faith sent to fight wars for the wrong reasons.

We'll never see eye to eye on this, and believe me there's part of me that looks at the polls right now and thinks, well, it's pretty much going to be Obama. I'm not celebrating early, but I'm what you might call cautiously optimistic. And there's a part of me that is enjoying watching conservatives self-destruct and bicker and fight amongst themselves, and wildly accuse Obama of this and that (the latest bit about his not actually being born in the United States is pure Rove). The hand-wringing over how he's going to turn the US into something resembling Soviet Russia is pretty funny, the accusations of him being a radical Islamic sleeper agent are hilarious, and the racism that's being exposed among Republicans (not all of you, but the fringe is certainly coming out of the woodwork) is frankly a little freaky.

But there's another part of me that thinks this: turnabout is going to be fair play. But you know what? It isn't. And here's why. It's not going to be wrong to criticize Obama's tax plans. They should be questioned and inspected and not simply rubber-stamped. It won't be wrong to speak out against the President, against the Democratic majority in Congress, against the government in general. Because as Americans this is our right. This is (one of the reasons) why my ancestors left oppressive environments in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire, this is why your ancestors came over, and when you talk about American soldiers protecting our freedoms, that is the freedom they are fighting to protect.

I'm not going to call you a traitor for questioning the President. I'm not going to question your patriotism for challenging him, for making him own up and be honest, and if you don't like his answers I won't call you names for voicing your discontent. That, my friends, is your right and it is a right I would fight and die for you to keep.

So call me names if you'd like, LIEberal or DEMONcRAT or coward or traitor. Knock yourselves out. And I'd fully expect, if we win on the 4th, for there to be a bit of celebrating on our side - we've had eight years of your guy, and frankly he's kind of run things into the ground. But you will not hear from me any name-calling or insinuations that you are anti-American because you are exercising your American rights should you question us, should we actually manage to win.

As I said, I'm only doing this once, and that's the closest I'll come to gloating.

This Post Is Unique

This post also breaks completely new ground for me.

It is the first post to this blog I'm writing on an open-source operating system on a computer I own.

After several weeks of research inspired in no small part by my read through The Pirate's Dilemma earlier this year, I took the plunge, partitioned my laptop's hard drive and installed the new release of Ubuntu, a version of Linux.

Linux is a completely free piece of software, and what 'open source' means is that the code is freely available to distribute and alter, as long as you agree to distribute your altered code. So anyone can work to improve it and make it better. Think of it a little bit like Wikipedia: a whole lot of minds working on various parts of a project to try to improve it, and while not everything will be an improvement, it eventually gets there.

There are several reasons one would consider switching to Linux. Security: not really a problem, since my home wireless network is locked down tight and viruses are only a problem online like they are in real life - avoid the scuzzy back-alleys of the Internet and you're fine. Stability: also not really a problem for me. Computers crash, hardware goes out, it happens. Microsoft sucks: well, they're my client so I can't really claim that and I know it's really more of a bureaucratic institution than anything intentionally evil. I'd considered a Mac, but the only thing worse than closed source computer software (which OSX is), is closed hardware. You require me to buy my RAM only from your overpriced store? Go to hell.

But here's the crux of why I switched. Because open source, like Wikipedia, is an entirely different business model and one that I firmly believe is on the rise as more and more of us migrate to the cloud. Old business models are based on consumption, from the end user and from the corporation itself. A company must grow. Right? Maybe. What happens when it doesn't, or when it grows in a different manner? Can a company not only give away its product for free, but give away the secrets to how its product is made for free and let people make changes as they see fit?

Apparently it can be done.

To be perfectly honest, from a practical point of view, this is an experiment. I don't expect to use Linux all of the time, and I know I won't be able to play a lot of my games in Linux so I'll be back in Windows when necessary. But for most of my computing tasks - writing, surfing the Internet, listening to music - there's no reason not to at least try it out.

Oddly enough my tipping point came from a piece of software that can't even run on Linux yet: Google's Chrome browser. I'm a hardcore Firefox user and have been for ages, but I've been doing about 95% of my browsing in Chrome lately because I like the interface and its speed better, despite not being able to do some of the things I want it to do. And I realized that if I was willing to learn a new browser (which is where I spend most of my time on any given computer anyway), then there was no reason not to try something new on the operating system front.

I'm still learning my way around but I like it a lot so far. It's very fast and slick, and so far has done everything I need it to do with ease. I can easily dual-boot back to Windows if I need it. If I end up getting a new laptop this winter, one of the first things I'm going to do with it is put Ubuntu on it as well.

Bob and Angela - you guys ought to be proud.

A Game That Matters

Normally I wouldn't spend an entire blog post talking about one Xbox Live Arcade game, but in this instance I'm going to make a massive exception. I pulled out Braid the other night and finally finished it. And I'm happy to say I did it about 99% on my own, without looking at a walkthrough (that last 1%, well…)

Much has been made of Braid's great puzzles, ambiguous plot, amazing look and feel and innovative gameplay so rather than parrot what I've read other places, I wanted to talk a little bit about why I liked it so much. Which was all of those things, but more.

The guys at Penny Arcade referred to Braid non-ironically as 'a game that matters,' and I agree although not because the plot itself is anything that groundbreaking. Don't get me wrong, the plot is great, a puzzle unto itself and is a Nautilus shell spiraling inward with layers of meaning and interpretation (just look at the various attempts to explain the plot online for proof of that.) But the narrative structure itself is what's so groundbreaking and ultimately satisfying about Braid.

At its heart, the game is a traditional platformer. The time mechanic is cool, but isn't exactly 100% original (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time did something like this as well, as a way to fix mistakes, much like in Braid.) But Braid does something no other game has managed yet: it takes the platformer mechanics – including the time-rewind bits and other parts – and actually makes them part of the narrative itself. POP: SoT anticipated this but never fully followed through, and Braid takes it and cements it as a central part of the game.

I'd compare it to a television narrative or play that broke the fourth wall. Doing it once or twice can be funny or make a dramatic point, but when it becomes part of the narrative itself it's something totally different. The best literary analogue I can think of is a live performance of Copenhagen by Michael Frayn, where the audience becomes part of the play's narrative itself.

The thing that's surprising about Braid isn't that the platformer has been changed so elegantly into a piece of the narrative itself, but that it hasn't been done sooner. You could argue that this is what video games – if you take the 'games as art' route, which I don't see any reason not to – have always done. The narrative relies 100% on user input, on decision-making or at the very least pushing a stick left and right to make a character move around. And yet somehow it was always a secondary element to the plot of a game, apart from RPGs that relied heavily on user decisions (Fallout, Torment) or simply 'progressing the story' by moving a character closer to his goal.

Braid even plays with this concept, because as Tim (the main character) progresses through the game his 'goal' gets farther and farther away. I'm not going to spoil it in case you want to play, but suffice to say that even the 'push your joystick to move the character closer to his goal' mechanic becomes subverted and even an important part of Braid's narrative structure – in both traditional and altered forms.

So check Braid out on Xbox Live Arcade or on the web. It's the highest-rated game on XBLA and for good reason. It's a game that matters, because it sets a damn high standard for what can be done with video games, even platformers that may not seem like the most obvious venue for storytelling. I can't wait to see what Braid inspires.

Knight Club

I was discussing art with the Beautiful Competition over a lovely dinner of Italian food, pink Champagne and lemon gelato last evening (it's a difficult life, isn't it?) and we got on the subject of film. I've been thinking a lot about The Dark Knight lately, which I've reviewed before, as a cultural touchstone or artefact: that is, something that captures a certain kind of zeitgeist. I realized that I like Dark Knight for many of the same reasons I like another artefact film: Fight Club. They're excellent films to examine side-by-side.

Fight Club came out in 1999, and managed to capture the late Clinton-era zeitgeist in a way that no other film can claim. The notion of office workers, bored by their jobs and betrayed by promises that they would be ‘rock gods or movie stars' turning to small-scale domestic terrorism to show their dissatisfaction reflected a growing ennui among the young professional class. It was a film born from economic safety, a remote threat of real terrorism (can you imagine Fight Club being released after 9/11?) and a view that the villain is not only likable, he's something to which we might aspire as he's just an aspect of us.

Other images I associate with this time are almost straight out of the film: the pictures of the impotently-smashed windows of Starbucks' and McDonalds during the so-called Battle of Seattle WTO protests. Rather than striking at the true culprits, it's as though the anarchists decided upon direct action for direct action's sake, vandalizing franchises that represented something tangentally associated with the targets of their rage. They struck against the same coffee shops where they purchased their own tall skinny soy lattes, as if what they hated the most was something inside themselves.

Then consider Dark Knight, where a much more separated hero battles a villain who is more like a force of Nature. Bruce Wayne is the military-industrial complex, a do-gooding rich person who feels that the best way to alleviate crime is not to redistribute wealth or fund educational programs, but to physically beat criminals and purchase hotels by writing personal checks. His superpowers consist of nothing more than access to the latest military weapons technology that in turn fuels his vast personal fortune when he's not using it to hit escaped mental patients.

On the other side is the Joker, a literal wildcard who makes quite clear that he wishes only to cause destruction and chaos. He has no logical plan or reasoning – he is, by his own admission, a ‘dog chasing cars, and wouldn't know what to do if [he] caught one' – acting entirely on instinct. His villainy comes not from any rhyme or reason; in fact, it's difficult to even call it evil as it doesn't appear to be motivated by a need to cause harm other than the opposite of the established order. In a way, it's a perfect and safe Western dream: good people in the military-corporate network keeping us safe from forces of darkness that cannot (or we simply refuse to take the time to) be understood.

Don't get me wrong; I loved the Dark Knight but its overtones are difficult to ignore. It's interesting to compare the two films as far as what they indicate of the national mindset, what makes a ‘hero' and what's acceptable both for heroes and villains. In fact, are the villains actually us? How much are we like them? These questions are nothing new to comics or stories, but the ways in which the answers change are very indicative of how our mindset shifts, however subtly. In this case, I think it reflects a growing cynicism, that the ennui of the late 1990s was replaced first with a renewed optimism and faith in leadership, government and military which was the squandered and eventually taken advantage of, creating a reaction possibly more cynical than the previous one.

Oddly enough, it's not the heroes in these films that are the most accurate reflections of the times but the villains themselves. Tyler Durden's rage against the corporate machine manifesting as minor acts of terrorism and simple human empowerment with material denial is a perfect model of the aimless feeling of basic dissent we exhibited at the end of the 1990s. Clinton lied, but he lied about getting blowjobs. The economy looked pretty good. We weren't involved in any foreign wars, and had the full backing of NATO and the UN in Kosovo.

The Joker is us now, rage without focus, the anti-structure. Whatever's in place is bad, because it's inherently corrupt and probably going to screw us anyway. Piles of money in shipping containers? Just stuff to be burned, because hey, the guys at the top have been bleeding it out of the good citizen of Gotham anyway. And we should probably be punished in some way because we're complacent in putting these power structures in place to begin with. The commoners are as much to blame as anyone else, and it's better just to burn it all and start again.

It's hard to imagine a Joker smashing a Starbucks', but it's also hard to imagine Tyler Durden forcing commoners and criminals to face a prisoner's dilemma. And it's hard to imagine us accepting either doing those things, exactly because it would be so out of context of the times.

My Read-Roll, Updated

About a year ago I posted my read-roll, the list of blogs I regularly read through RSS. I do approximately 99% of my reading through RSS now and I'm taking today to do a little housecleaning, both around the house and around the blog. I realized some elements of the old Puppet Show are woefully out of date, including the Control Panel that still had WizKids page on it (nuked that just now) and the blog roll, which is really just a list of friends.

So here's my updated read-roll, with the associated reasons why I regularly read these blogs and why you should check them out. Pardon my simplistic classification system. If your blog isn't here, why don't you drop me a line in the comments with a link and I'll check you out?

Apocalypse Blogs

• Post-Apocalypse UK News. Post-apocalyptic things - movies, books, etc. - with a focus on the UK.
  
• Quiet Earth. Simply put, Quiet Earth is the blog I'd write if I had time to write a blog full-time. Comprehensive in the way only the best news blogs are, it covers every scrap of news about post-apocalyptic and apocalyptic fiction in all of its many forms. Should they ever need a new or additional London correspondent, they should get in touch.
  
  Comics
  
• The Fate of the Artist. Eddie Campbell, who illustrated From Hell and was kind enough to link to my From Hell Walking/Riding Tour post, blogs here. I cannot say enough good things about him or his art, so I'll let the link speak for itself.
  
• xkcd.com. Fast becoming an online standard, xkcd is probably the only online comic I read every strip, and enjoy about 90% of the time.
  
  Cool Stuff - AKA my catchall category.
  
• Anacrusis. You may remember this blog from last time I did this exercise, and I'm happy to say that it is as good as it was then if not better. Still an enjoyable daily read.
  
• Boing Boing. I get most of the good links if my friends' shared items anyway, but old standard Boing Boing is on my list.
  
• Flying Pizza Kitty. I don't remember how I found this blog, but it consists of animated GIFs of a cat on a flying carpet in a variety of situations. Has a very distinctive 8-bit feel.
  
• Francesco Explains It All. Francesco Marciuliano, a writer and cartoonist, posts here. His posts are generally that kind of dry, biting humor that makes for an excellent read after a long day at work.
  
• Gibson Blog. Author William Gibson writer this blog. It is exactly what you'd expect from that equation.
  
• I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER. I'm almost ashamed to admit I read this every day, and occasionally even laugh out loud at those crazy cats with their Impact font expressions.
  
• io9. Gawker Media's Sci-Fi blog. Comprehensive, thought-provoking and often chock-full of interesting content.
  
• Jericho Blog. I keep this in my feeds in the hope that someday it will be updated with news of Jericho Season 3.
  
• John Cleese's Cleeseblog. Yes, former Python John Cleese has a blog. Still in its relative infancy, it is rapidly becoming a must-read.
  
• Laughing Squid. As noted in the prior read-roll post, I found Laughing Squid during the Vista launch days. I still read it every day, and Scott is an excellent source for various artistic strangeness.
  
• Lifehacker. I admit I largely skim Lifehacker as it is far more comprehensive than I have time to read, but there's always some really cool content there.
  
• Mashable! Mashable is kind of the 'it-girl' place for the social media industry. If you're on Mashable, you're 'it.' I've never been on Mashable.
  
• Mr & Mrs Smith Boutique & Luxury Hotel Collections. Doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, does it? A blog run by a travel company catering to couples and run out of London, they offer occasional deals and more importantly inspiration for travelling.
  
• O Chateau Blog | Stuff Parisians Like. A blog by Olivier Magny. My French coworker linked me to this blog, which is routinely hilarious even if you aren't Parisian, French or in either place. It reads exactly how I'd imagine a Parisian's blog to read.
  
• Offbeat Earth. I cannot remember how I found this gem, but it's a (mostly) picture blog about some of the generally crazy stuff you can find in this strange world of ours.
  
• Paleo-Future. They haven't updated in over a month so I hope everything's alright. Paleo-Future collects old news stories that predict what the future will be like, and compares them to how things have actually turned out.
  
• Proton Charging. I'm a Ghostbusters fan, and this site is your number one source of news for Ghostbusters-related things. And yes, there is news for Ghostbusters-related things. More than you'd imagine, probably.
  
• Something Awful Frontpage. There's a frontpage?
  
• Strange Maps. Another blog that I cannot recall how I found, but I read consistently when it updates. The blogger celebrates strange maps, either fictional, real, or just plain unusual.
  
• The Big Picture. I just added this within the last week, through one of my friends' shared items feed. It offers big pictures.
  
• YesButNoButYes Stories. I literally just added this feed yesterday. This is another collection of strange and interesting things.
  
• Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted). Have science, will travel. A scientist's blog about science things and her travels, although it seems to be more of the later than the former. She also has a cool 'mystery bird' that she posts each day during the week so readers can try to guess/research what the bird is.
  
  Cricket Blogs
  
• Cricket-Blog.com. One of the two cricket blogs I read in my quest to try to make sense of the sport.
  
• King Cricket. And here's the other one.
  
  Friends and Family
  
• Accidentally Jewish. My friend and co-worker Leah's blog, about a variety of things, but often about experiences related to her conversion to Judaism.
  
• Become What You Behold. My friend Roger's blog.
  
• Being(s) Abroad. My buddy Brandon recently moved to Israel with his new wife, and this is their ex-pat blog.
  
• Bhagwan Redux. My friend Scott's blog.
  
• Confessions of a Palindrome. My friend and former co-worker Hannah writes this blog.
  
• A Doodle A Day. Buddy and fellow Alliterate Stan! posts, as you might guess, a doodle a day here.
  
• Dthon. Scott, former coworker and fellow Alliterate, blogs here from time to time.
  
• Grubb Street. Friend and fellow Alliterate Jeff Grubb's personal blog.
  
• High School Poetry. Angela hasn't updated in almost a year, but I know she will someday!
  
• Knit Jenious. I've linked to my friend Jen's blog recently and it's still worth checking out.
  
• Nothing good can come of this.... My friend and former coworker Jon's blog.
  
• Ober Dicta. My friend Seth doesn't blog much anymore, but I keep his feed warm just in case.
  
• Stephen D. Sullivan. Although I've never met him face to face, I owe a lot of my current fiction writing career to Stephen Sullivan and his Blue Kingdoms anthologies.
  
• The Monkey King. Friend and fellow Alliterate Wolfgang's blog.
  
• Vault. My friend Bob from college blogs here from time to time. I wish I could register to post comments there.
  
• Who's Your Baba? A little experiment from my family to see if they could blog. So far, I think everyone's updated once or twice and kind of let it sit.
  
• Tipping the Scales. My friend and coworker Amy started this blog, which I'm sure will start to get rolling when she's more into blogging.
  
  Gaming
  
• Adventure Classic Gaming. These guys are trying to keep the spirit of the old-school adventure game alive.
  
• Adventure Gamers' Blog. From the site AdventureGamers.com, a community of - yes - adventure gamers, including guys who love the classics.
  
• Avant Game. A blog by Jane, an ARG designer who it turns out helped work on Superstruct, where I've been spending some of my time lately.
  
• My Xbox 360's Blog. Smart little machine, isn't it?
  
• Classic Let's Play. Videos of old adventure games, run by yours truly.
  
• Darths & Droids. Hilarious webcomic about gamers and RPGs, set over a campaign spanning the Star Wars films.
  
• Dennis Detwiller's Blog. One of my favorite RPG writers/designers blogs here.
  
• Fallout 3: A Post-Nuclear Blog. This blog has been tracking Fallout 3 news since the last time I did this post, and will likely shut down once the game releases officially later this month.
  
• Gamerscore Blog. Microsoft's gaming blog. More advertorial now than anything else.
  
• Grand Text Auto. Calling GTA a 'gaming blog' is a bit like calling the Louvre an 'art gallery.' These guys are into the theory behind interactive fiction, and a whole host of other things too.
  
• Grumpy Gamer. Ron Gilbert, designer of Monkey Island, occasionally blogs here.
  
• How They Got Game. This blog, although updated infrequently, is always a great read about the history of video games.
  
• Kotaku. Hey, I have to get my current gaming news from somewhere.
  
• Online Fandom. It's really tenuous to classify this with gaming blogs, but it's the only category I could see as being close. Online Fandom is a great read about events and theory behind interaction online - focusing on entertainment. Which can mean gaming, and ARGs specifically.
  
• Play This Thing! Daily (kind of) reviews of games, from video to tabletop and more. A great discovery mechanism for finding new games.
  
• Robin D. Laws. Robin Laws is a big name in the RPG industry, and his blog about gaming and writing is consistently thought-provoking. He also does some pretty funny webcomics.
  
• Roleplaying Tips 2.0. Not so much a blog as it is a journal, RPGTips2.0 still has really good - you guessed it - RPG tips. I have used a lot of their suggestions as DM in the past, and will do so again when I'm back in America and DMing regularly.
  
• The Escapist. I subscribe to this mostly for Yahtzee's reviews, which you can't get in their own RSS feed.
  
• Total War Center Forums. Some forums actually have RSS feeds for their news! TWC is my source for news from the Total War series, of which I am a hopeless addict. There's a new one coming out next year...
  
• Twenty Sided. Despite being named for a dice, Twenty Sided does gaming news from across the spectrum with insightful commentary as well.
  
• Wonderland. Wonderland is run by Alice Taylor, who works on 'social software' - IE, multiplayer games. I'm not sure how I found this blog originally but I find her posts original, insightful and thought-provoking.
  
  History
  
• (pre)texts. I just subscribed to this blog on Friday through a link from one of the other history blogs I read, so I can't much vouch for its content yet. Yes, it's half in Greek, and no, I don't speak Greek.
  
• Roman Archaeology. Guess what this blog covers? News about archaeological finds of Roman ruins. Archaeology, specifically the Iron Age, is a hobby of mine so I read every word of every update on this blog.
  
• Roman Times. What Roman Archaeology doesn't cover, Roman Times does. Roman Times is more like an online scholarly journal, but updates regularly and frequently.
  
• The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World. A grad student authors this blog, which covers his adventures as an archaeologist focused on the Greeks, Romans and other inhabitants of the Mediterranean.
  
  London Blogs
  
• An American in London. She's not in London anymore and doesn't update much, but I still keep her on my read-roll because she was so helpful before I moved.
  
• diamond geezer. 'Geezer' doesn't mean 'old guy' in the UK like it does in the US, and as far as I can tell diamond geezer isn't old. In fact, his tours of London neighborhoods are absolutely fascinating, extremely well-researched and a pleasure to read. I learned of this blog because some people at Edelman talked to him once, I checked it out and was hooked.
  
• Going Underground's Blog. A blog devoted entirely to the Tube. Yes, and it's probably one of the absolute best London blogs. Annie Mole does an amazing job of collecting news, making interesting posts and taking pictures of people's shoes on the Tube. She's also a very nice person in real life.
  
• London Bloggers. The blog for the London Bloggers meet-up group. Transparency notice: I worked with them on behalf of one my clients once to sponsor an event, but was a 'member' of the group before then. Not that there's actual membership, mind.
  
• Londonelicious: A London Restaurant Blog. Nothing but reviews of restaurants in and around London. Helpful, since the Beautiful Competition and I enjoy eating out.
  
• Londonist. I know a couple of the people who write for it, and it's a member of the Gothamist network. It's also the single-best source for London news online as far as I'm concerned.
  
• Prince Charles Cinema. They publish their showtimes as an RSS feed. Isn't that helpful?
  
• Rachel from North London. Rachel's from north London, I'm from north London. I can't recall how I found her blog, but I read it faithfully.
  
• That Canadian Girl. Blog written by a Canadian ex-pat in London; I found this through Twitter, believe it or not.
  
• The Daily Mash. The Daily Mash is The Onion for the UK, except it posts three or four new stories each day.
  
• The London Review of Breakfasts. One of my favorite blogs, because the Beautiful Competition and I love eating breakfast together on the weekends.
  
  Music Blogs
  
• Ceci N'est Pas un Blog. Cover songs, but hasn't updated in a while.
  
• Cover Freak. An awesome cover song blog. Consistently posts great songs.
  
• Cover Lay Down. Another awesome cover song blog that focuses on folk covers. That would be folk artists covering other songs, mind you.
  
• Cover Me. Cover Me has an amazing variety of cover songs, and regularly posts stuff I've never heard before.
  
• Fong Songs. Cover and more covers. If you're into covers, Fong is a must-read.
  
• Hectic City - The Kleptones. Blog for The Kleptones, my favorite mash-up artist(s). This is how I find out about new Kleptones music.
  
• My Old Kentucky Blog. This is basically the be-all, end-all of music blogs online. Pitchfork wish they were this cool.
  
• Sideshow Cinema. Music from the movies. Of interest because of a project I might undertake...
  
  PR and Marketing
  
• HorsePigCow. When I first joined the digital practice, I asked one of my coworkers about good digital marketing blogs and they suggested HPC among others. I haven't looked back.
  
• Bokardo: Social Design. I think this one harkens back to that same request for blogs. Also a great read.
  
• CC Chapman. This is his personal blog, but Managing the Gray was a must-listen podcast before I even joined Edelman. I read what's up in CC Chapman's life here. Hopefully that's not creepy, because it's not intended to be.
  
• Carsonified. I started following Ryan Carson on Twitter, discovered this blog, and continue to read it. Good stuff.
  
• Church of the Customer. A lot of people in PR are coming around to the notion that online PR is a lot like customer service. These guys were on top of it years ago.
  
• Edelman Digital. I thought this blog was supposed to be called 'Authenticities' but hey, there you go. This is my company's blog. I contribute there from time to time. So do many other thought leaders at Edelman.
  
• Fallon Planning. Another of my must-reads, from the same 'what are some good digital blogs?' question.
  
• It's Not A Lecture. I found this through Twitter, and it's a great look at online conversations, with a special focus on American politics and how politicians use the Internet to foster conversation (or don't, as the case might be.)
  
• Jaffe Juice. Joseph Jaffe is one of the big hitters in digital PR, and this is his must-read blog.
  
• Jazamatazz. I met Jaz at the London Twestival, and have been reading her blog ever since. She's a fellow digital PR person, and she gives me serious neighborhood envoy (she lives in Shoreditch, I live in, um, Holloway.)
  
• Magazine Death Pool. I probably shouldn't celebrate the death of the old media, but I probably shouldn't have spent an hour this morning playing Duke Nukem on my Xbox 360 either.
  
• Make Marketing History. More marketing than PR, but a great read nonetheless.
  
• Managing the Gray. CC's podcast. The very first content related to digital PR I consumed online.
  
• MediaShift Idea Lab. A blog about shifting attitudes in media, specifically social media, from none other than PBS.
  
• Musing and Marketeerings. Danacea works for a London-based comic shop and is responsible for their online PR and marketing. She blogs here.
  
• Neville Hobson. If there's an inner circle of great digital PR people, Neville would be on it's leadership council. If you're in this industry and not reading Neville's blog, something is wrong with you.
  
• PR Squared. This is one of those blogs that I cannot remember adding to my read-roll, but somehow couldn't live without. Although I have to say I wouldn't help them with Seth. He's mean.
  
• Richard Edelman - 6 AM. Richard is our CEO, and actually runs a hell of a great blog.
  
• Simonsays. Simon was a colleague at Edelman in London before he joined the Beautiful Competition at Weber. He's also responsible for getting me thinking about anarchism as it relates to online communities, is a fantastic friend and a major rising star in our field.
  
• sizemore. @sizemore isn't really in digital PR in the same way I am, but I don't know where else to classify his extremely insightful and well-written blog. It's a good read on a variety of subjects.
  
• Social Media Explorer. I'm saying this right now: Jason Falls will be one of the major thought leaders in our industry in the next few years. He's already making a hell of a name for himself both on his blog and on Twitter, and I expect only great things from him moving forward.
  
• Social Media Snippits. I just added this blog a couple of days ago and can't really offer a good opinion of it yet, but it looks promising.
  
• Techno//Marketer. Matt Dickman is another big name in our industry, and his great blog is here.
  
• The Bad Pitch Blog. I use this blog all the time, mostly to show my co-workers how not to engage with the media. The Bad Pitch Blog is an amazing collection of screw-ups from digital PR people, and regular PR people who think the Internet works like traditional media.
  
• The Jeff Pulver Blog. Jeff Pulver isn't a digital PR guy per se, but he is an extremely well-respected thought leader in digital sociology (for lack of a better term.) And for good reason: he's ahead of the curve. He's also one of the most positive people I've encountered online, which is a refreshing change from the typical cynical negativity I see so much online.
  
• The Long Tail. Long tail distribution is only tangentially related to my every day job, but I can't think of any other way to classify Chris Anderson's blog - yet.
  
• The Marketing Blagger. This blog is run by Andy Bargery, who also runs the London Blogger's meetup. He also writes a highly recommended blog about digital marketing.
  
• The Pirates Dilemma. Matt Mason's book completely changed my perspective on what we can achieve online, and has helped shaped how I approach PR - and business in general. And this blog is an excellent complement to the book.
  
• The Way of the Web. I can't recall where I found this blog either. It stands out though as a great source for insight.
  
• Web Strategy by Jeremiah. Jeremiah Owyang is one of the brightest stars in our industry right now, and is a living, breathing example of doing everything right online. He's one of those people I look at and think 'hey, I want to be him someday.'
  
  Writing
  
• Authonomy. The blog behind HarperCollins' Authonomy project, which still needs a bit of a push to get off the ground.
  
• Jane In Progress. Jane writes for Battlestar Galactica and has written for Firefly in the past. She offers brilliant commentary on the TV industry, but more importantly she offers brilliant tips for writers.
  
• Permuted Press. Permuted publishes apocalyptic and zombie-related fiction. 'Nuff said.
  
• WEIRD TALES. The horror/sci-fi magazine. I keep hoping they'll publish something other than art, but hey, the art is cool too.
  
• JamesMelzer.net. James publishes a serial called The Zombie Chronicles. Check it out, if that's your thing.
  

And that's my read-roll. It's a lot longer than it used to be, eh? Again, if your blog isn't listed here, hit me up and I'll list it. There area few private blogs I read that aren't on here, so if you run a private blog you think I might read, don't worry.

Thinking About Supporting Great Indie Music? Here's a Great Opportunity

I occasionally check the website for my favorite band, Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers, for information about upcoming shows and CDs and such. They put some cool new t-shirts in their store, but I also noticed that they're offing a hell of a deal on their music: The Whole Enchilada, or all eight of their CDs for only $50.

Eight CDs for $50 is damn good, but eight damn good CDs for $50 is the kind of deal you can't pass up. It's got six out of the seven RCPM full-length CDs (there are two digital downloads you can't get there, but you can score them on the site easily enough if you're a completest; the newest album isn't in the deal yet.) The package includes the full versions of their two live CDs and four of their five studio albums, as well as the two studio Refreshments CDs.

I have followed RCPM/The Refreshments (as they were once known) since I was a junior in high school, and will go to their live shows whenever I get a chance. It's honest, good-hearted southwestern Rock and Roll with more than a little 'salsa' feel to it. This deal will also score you 107 songs - that's only $0.46 a song! - or about 7 hours and 5 minutes worth of music - that's only $0.11 a minute!

Seriously, if you're into the Peacemakers casually and held off buying their CDs, this is your chance. If you're a dirty pirate that would steal from small independent bands, this is your chance to do right. If you've never heard of the Peacemakers before reading this post, I suggest you maybe listen to some of their stuff on YouTube - keeping in mind a lot of it is recorded by fans at shows - or listen to some samples on iTunes.

This is a great deal. Don't pass it up!

Five Years Young

A lot can happen in five years. Your friends can have kids and those kids can be in Kindergarten. People get married, divorced, fall in and out of love. Two presidential elections (almost), stories published, an entire career built on a job I didn't know I'd be doing.

Five years ago - five years and a handful of days, since I miscounted - I started this blog.

I still haven't found a consistent 'voice' or topic. I have started two other blogs, both of which are far more consistent in their voices and topics. I started ranting about politics, and after a long break from doing so the two posts prior to this one are rants about politics.

I'm OK with all of that. I started this blog as a way to keep up my writing, at the suggestion of two people I'm glad to count as my friends, Jeff and Jon. It has succeeded at that, and I never intended it to be anything more, although it's certainly become more. A way to communicate with my friends and family and keep them informed about my life, a place to jot down thoughts, and a place to discuss interesting things about my job, writing and gaming. Sometimes all at once!

I toyed with the notion of using it as a professional platform to develop my own 'brand' as a 'PR thought leader,' but then I realized I didn't really care so much about that - and more importantly, I just didn't have anything all that interesting or original to say that wasn't already being said somewhere else. Which took me right back to the beginning of the blog, and here I am again.

It's been a strange, long trip and here's to five more years of running my mouth on the Internet.

The Invisible Hand is a Actually a Destrucive Three-Year-Old's Fist

Watching the 'economic crisis' in London has been a bit of a trip. On one hand, I feel strangely distant from what's happening in the US, but on the other hand we're feeling its effects along with the rest of the world. Yesterday, the entire nation of Iceland - considered one of the strongest economies in the world not six months ago - declared bankruptcy, taking £20 billion in UK assets with it. Today, the UK is using anti-terror laws to seize as many assets as it can so it's not a total economic loss.

It would be an error to state that this is 'all America's fault,' but seeing how all the world markets affect each other has been an eye-opening experience. News is reported differently here, and seeing the Asian markets affecting the EU's markets, and in turn the effect that the American market has on all of it is sobering to say the least. I'm no economist so I'll save my opinions about what this all means, whether a 'bail out' will work, and whether it will get better or worse for my own personal musings. I will however copy and paste this paragraph from the Wikipedia article on the Great Depression, which I feel is extremely relevant, especially considering the recent announcement that consumer goods purchasing is at its lowest levels since the early 1990s:

The Great Depression was not a sudden total collapse. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April, though still almost 30 percent below the peak of September 1929.[6] Together, government and business actually spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the corresponding period of the previous year. But consumers, many of whom had suffered severe losses in the stock market the previous year, cut back their expenditures by ten percent, and a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the USA beginning in the northern summer of 1930.
In early 1930, credit was ample and available at low rates, but people were reluctant to add new debt by borrowing.[citation needed] By May 1930, auto sales had declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to decline, but wages held steady in 1930, then began to drop in 1931. Conditions were worst in farming areas, where commodity prices plunged, and in mining and logging areas, where unemployment was high and there were few other jobs. The decline in the American economy was the factor that pulled down most other countries at first, then internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better. Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations through protectionist policies, such as the 1930 U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in global trade. By late in 1930, a steady decline set in which reached bottom by March 1933.

My point with all of this isn't necessarily a post about the economy, but the effect that American policies, be they economic, social or otherwise, has on the rest of the world. Many conservative Americans take a 'who the hell cares what Europe, Asia, or anyone else thinks' approach to politics (and I'm not really sure many American liberals are any better, to be fair.)

This attitude is not just inherently ignorant, it's downright dangerous in a world economy where so many things are linked, as I see played out day after day in the media and online. Simply put: we can no longer afford an ill-informed, ignorant and provincial view of the world. The last eight years under Bush have been, as Green Day rather un-poetically put it, a 'redneck agenda' signified by pandering to this exact kind of ignorance. It's the same agenda that leads to cowboy international relations ('you're either with us or against us!') and it's disastrous consequences in Iraq. It is the same agenda that gave the Bush administration and the Republican Congress of its first six years a blank check to get rich from a false economic 'bubble.' And it is the agenda that lead McCain to cynically choose a running mate thinking she'd syphon votes from former Clinton supporters simply because she was a woman despite the fact that most any woman who would vote for Hillary wouldn't vote for someone who is on record as saying dinosaurs and cavemen existed at the same time.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that Americans should vote based on what the world will think, or how the rest of the world will respond. I believe firmly in Jeff's view that all politics is local. But the image of America as a flailing toddler woefully ignorant of the destruction it can cause as it flails its arms without regard to its surroundings is an apt one. It's not that they necessarily mean harm to their surroundings, but when you look at their motivations, they are as infantile as possible. Not mature. Underdeveloped. Child-like. Example:



The only way to reconcile these two things is that Americans (and the rest of the world) need to rethink policies at the local level with an awareness of how they might affect things at the national and global level. The simple fact of the matter is that nothing exists in a vacuum anymore - no town, no state, no county, no country, no matter how much people might like to pretend otherwise. I'm not even saying that Obama is the answer to this, or that McCain wouldn't be. I'm saying that something fundamental needs to change at the most basic of levels in order to avoid a potentially scary scenario should the world plunge into a major economic depression, which seems like more and more of a possibility with each passing day. As I typed this, the Beeb announced that Vienna's stock exchange has suspended trading. Things are literally happening by the minute now.

It is only if economy and policy are re-examined and more importantly redefined at the local and community levels - with full awareness of how policies affect those around us - that we can avoid the abyss now open before us. To cop a line from Clinton's campaign in 1992, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The era of trickle-down Reaganomics, neoconservatism, ignorance of fact, unawareness, whatever you want to call it is over. It was tried, and it failed so spectacularly that it has dragged the world to the precipice and is continuing to do so as I punch the keys on my keyboard.

Something's gotta give, one way or another. Let's hope it's the good way.

Update: Another excellent proof point:



Update 2: I want to clarify that I do not necessarily believe that the majority of the American right are a bunch of ignorant, mouthbreathers. Nor do I believe that people who are religious should be in any way barred from holding office. (I do however have an issue with someone who ignores fundamental scientific principles controlling science budgets, and someone who cannot pronounce 'nuclear' with the ability to fire nuclear weapons - that should be a basic prerequisite.) I have the utmost respect for people of all faiths, and liberalism has a proud history of being associated with religion, be it the liberation theology of South America; The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's own pseudosocialist - yes - vision for a united America; or the Founding Fathers' own preservation of religious freedoms.

I do feel that the American right, specifically the majority of the religious right, has been summarily manipulated and cynically controlled by elements within the Republican party who have used religious principles to ensure their candidates are elected and can pass legislation that benefits no one but the elite that drafted it. In fact, I find it doubly abhorrent that Republicans have repeatedly abused the goodwill of the American religious right to gain votes and win elections.

Update 3: I just can't help myself, these videos are gold. I'm not sure what's more telling, that Obama is a terrorist himself and a Muslim according to these people, or the guy just yelling 'Commie faggots' at the Obama supporters.

Adapting Tradition

London has taken on that particular smell I associate with autumn. The air is crisper, somehow cleaner, and fallen leaves crackle as I walk through the park. It's a hint of the oncoming winter, but there's enough nice weather that I don't need my thick coat yet. It's that back-to-school, raking leaves, harvested corn, pumpkins-on-the-porch time I remember from being a kid. Trick-or-treating isn't far off and the last desperate days of playing outside before winter fill afternoons.

Autumn is my favorite season. It's the time when I feel most alive, and I love the world around me more.

It's also the time for one of the few personal traditions I actually follow: my yearly reading of Washington Irving's short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I'm not sure how long I've done this, but I have a distinct memory of reading it in the autumn in the 9th grade, and I know I bought my current copy in 1995, so it's been about 15 years or so. There's just one problem: my current copy is in a storage unit about 9000 miles away from my flat.

So like other traditions, I have to adapt it a bit. This evening the Beautiful Competition made a gorgeous pumpkin pie because she happened to find canned pumpkin one day at the store; she had not seen it there before, and has not seen it since. It may not taste exactly the same, but it's as close as we can get.

And it's not going to be my well-worn Classics copy, but there are at least two different free versions online, so it looks like I'll be able to read my favorite seasonal story - even if it is on a printout or a computer screen.

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

Ah, autumn.

About the Weird

"You're so weird !"

If only I had a nickel for every time in my life someone told me that.

I know this blog has picked up some new readers recently, not that this was an unexpected development. After all, Google my name - it's the first thing that comes up. Frankly I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. Last weekend my inlaws told me that they found the old Puppet Show, and while I don't know if they're regular readers, I generally assume they are. The thing is, I really don't publish anything on here I wouldn't want my mother (who has been a faithful Puppeteer since the launch) or my grandparents (who may one day stumble upon this blog) to read. But the more in-the-world realization triggered a brief audience review of material (I went back to make sure I hadn't said anything extraordinarily stupid, and I hadn't). But I realized there's some, well, weirdness going on here.

Like all good latticeworks of coincidence, this story continued yesterday as I walked into Forbidden Planet, London's mega-comic-shop, and was browsing while waiting for some friends to finish their business. I randomly picked up an art book about the gracefulness of machines, cables, and circuitry; something I'd never considered 'beautiful' or even 'graceful,' but certainly was as the artist depicted it. Some of the artwork though one could easily have labelled 'weird.' And yeah, it was pretty out there.

But this triggered another slightly existential thought process. I have rarely, if even, apologized for my being 'weird' when I occasionally say some goofy non sequitor at work or described one of my 'wouldn't it be cool if' scenarios to someone who clearly may not have ever considered attaching 'cool' to whatever concept I might be floating.

And yet this is the very bread-and-butter of my existence. It is the root of who I am, my very personhood relies on these 'weird' connections between things that don't seem to go together. I used to turn away from Cubist art because, I claimed, "I didn't understand it." I still don't understand it but I can certainly appreciate it more now as I grow older, because I see in it possibilities and connections that never occurred to me before.

Speaking of my grandparents, for my high school graduation my grandfather got me a carved rock for my desk (OK, a paperweight) with an inscription in it: 'Some people see the world as it is and ask why. Others see the world as it could be and ask why not.' I don't like dualisms and have asked 'why' as much as I've asked 'why not,' but if I had to choose I'd put myself in that later category.

Sure, these things may not go together. But they will. I may not understand how something works within a system now, but that's very likely because the system isn't understood, or the framework is wrong, or the thing misunderstood.

It's a big old world out there, and another thing I realize the more I go on is that it's far more full of wonder than most people give it credit for, if only they'd see and hear and taste and feel and create.

Photo: Grilled Shrimp at Creek Cafe by mamamusings.

Talk About A Pirate Day

In honor of Talk Like A Pirate Day, I wanted to talk a little bit about intellectual property, copyright and a slightly different kind of piracy.

I'm still digesting The Pirates Dilemma and trying to figure out exactly what its implications are but with each passing day I'm becoming more and more convinced I'm working within a broken system, and my attempts to apply a new framework to the old system will ultimately be doomed to failure – at least as far as my career appears to be going at the moment. But's another kind of post.

Before I start to organize my thoughts on piracy, I want to be completely upfront and transparent: I am a pirate. I have pirated intellectual property in the past. Here is a list of offenses. Consider this the sheet they'll hang on me when I'm swinging by a rope on Ratcliffe Highway.

• When I was young, I pirated computer software, mostly because my friends and I couldn't afford to pay $50 for a new adventure game. So we'd all pool our money together to buy one copy and then share it amongst ourselves. More on this later, because it's an interesting concept of shared ownership that I think is being overlooked in the piracy/copyright debate.
  
• When I was a teenager, I owned several cassette tapes that were copies of albums I did not pay for. I can honestly say I eventually paid for many of those albums (and owned CDs of many, many more albums than I had pirated tapes for.)
  
• Here's the hardcore stuff. My sophomore year of college was the year that Napster hit the scenes. Before this, my friends and I would rip our CDs to MP3s and maybe pass them along to each other more out of convenience and curiosity. I was a complete nerd and hooked my stereo up to my computer so I could fully experience playing Quake with a subwoofer, so I could actually play MP3s through my computer speakers and not have it sound like a tinny mess, which most computer speakers still sounded like at the time. But Napster made finding music we didn't own incredibly easy. It also slowed our college's T1 connection to a crawl because of all the trafficking we did with it. I don't have many MP3s from those days anymore, mostly because the sound quality isn't that good compared with modern rips, but I've got a few still knocking around my cover song library.
  
  As much as I'd like to say Napster lead me to buy more music, it didn't, at least in the short term. Before Napster I would often purchase a CD for one or two tracks and never listen to the rest of the album, or listen to it a couple of times only. Typically – and this is important – this was because I was buying a CD for a song that received heavy airplay on the radio and I wanted to listen to it on my own, maybe in my car or in my room. For those familiar with the Long Tail model, this is the ultimate 'short head' model – not even listening to an entire CD, but only the hits on the radio. And I know there were lots of other people who did it too.
  
• After moving to the UK I discovered how easy BitTorrent is to use. I'd used BitTorrent before but purely for legal things. Since moving here, I started using it to grab Season 2 of Jericho because the show wasn't being aired here and while I was available to watch completely for free on CBS.com, I couldn't watch it because I was in the UK. Battlestar Galactica episodes? Ditto, I didn't care to wait a week, especially when an American audience could watch the whole thing online for free. And I admit I have also downloaded movies that aren't available here yet as well.

So I may have just painted a colossal target on my chest but I want to talk a little about how piracy has changed my buying habits – one of the key pieces of The Pirates Dilemma. I no longer buy short head CDs for one or two songs; if there's a hit I want badly enough, I can purchase it for less than a dollar from Amazon.com's DRM-free store. But this isn't a story about short heads, it's actually a story about long tails and legitimately purchasing more music. I don't listen to the radio anymore ever; all my music is discovered through my friends or other recommendations. I no longer buy CDs for one or two tracks, but for full albums by artists I like and have sampled online. I'd say that my music purchasing dropped off in the short term but now that I've started to tap into musicians I prefer and never would have heard on a top-40 terrestrial radio station, it's going back up again. And it's almost 100% digital. The only exception is when I buy a CD at a concert.

I'm not going to generalize everyone else's habits based on my own, but I certainly suspect my story is not unique. It is discoveries of this sort that will eventually reframe the business model as The Pirates Dilemma (and The Long Tail) suggests. Apart from the obvious applications of this principle to digitally distributed entertainment, I'm most interested in where it can go from here into other practices. Communications being a prime example.

There's a meme going around about brand hijacking on Twitter; I first became aware of it last week through this post, which cites an earlier incident this year where someone named Janet pretended to be an Exxon employee for three days. As a PR rep I can say with a high degree of certainty that this kind of hijacking would make even the most Internet-jaded old school communicator lose sleep at night: what if someone out there is pretending to be you online? Or worse, pretending to speak for your company and you couldn't control the message?

So much of how companies are trying to engage online depends on their reactions to these kinds of 'pirates.' People are talking about my brand online? Holy shit, are they staying on message? They aren't? Damn, I better get in there and either a) shut them down or b) make sure they've got the approved talking points!

Someone's hijacking my brand on Twitter? Holy shit, I'd better set up an official Twitter for my brand so everyone knows it's officially official!

Chris Lynn, the blogger who wrote the post above, made an excellent point about this in his post and specifically how to properly address it:

Back in the old 1.0 days of the Internet, you could be pretty much anyone–a 40 year old man pretending to be a 13 year old girl–and no one would know otherwise. In the Web 2.0 world, however, our identities are built on and confirmed by our relationships.

How many companies actually get this? And how many communicators get the why of all this? If we look 'under the hood' to we understand why we're being forced to change, that the rules no longer apply? To use a piratical reference – here there be monsters. The rules are being rewritten, and not by us.

But the rules are being bent and broken elsewhere. I realize this post is starting to get long and rambly and I doubt anyone's still reading, but to follow up on some points I made in a blog post on my company's corporate blog we're at a point where piracy is going to begin to force major changes in the way we think about and do business. It's not going to be as simple as just 'let's make some Twitter profiles and talk to people;' what's going to happen is that companies will be forced to reconsider how they do business from the ground up.

Collective ownerships much like my friends and I going in on expensive pieces of software won't just exist among consumers but among companies as well. Take the cooperative business model: what if this was applied to a games company? What if it was applied to a book publisher – not a giant short-head-based publishing house, nor tiny individuals putting out books for their 1000 Fans, but something in between, a publishing house owned as much by those with the presses as those writing and consuming the books.

Let your imagination run wild on the possibilities there. Cooperative banking? Cooperative real estate developments? Cooperate government taxation structures? It's all a long way away from kids pooling their money to buy King's Quest 5, but in the end it's not so different after all.

Let the revolution begin.

Quote of the Day

I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time, but I can alter its Posture and, as Boys do turn a looking-glass against the Sunne, so I will dazzle you all.
- From Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd

My 2008 Blog Day Recommendations

It's Blog Day 2008, and here are my five recommendations for blogs this year. I'm trying to keep the spirit of the exercise alive and well while focusing on this part of the mission statement:

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest... bloggers from all over the world will post recommendations of 5 new Blogs, preferably Blogs that are different from their own culture, point of view and attitude.

Emphasis mine. So here are my five recommendations to Puppeteers. All are from different cultures, areas of interest or points of view:

• Ace of Spades HQ - Is it a surprise that my first recommendation is a conservative American political blog? It shouldn't be. I'm not a regular reader but I've seen stories from here pop up in my RSS feeds from time to time, and it won an award last year as Best Conservative Blog, beating out Michelle Malkin. The writing still falls into some of the same political pundit pitfalls that many political blogs do, but hey, I challenge any conservatives to recommend Daily Kos.
  
• Knit Jenious - I admit that I've been reading my friend Jen's blog for a while (since I've known about it, anyway) but knitting and I don't exactly go together - so I recommend you take a look if you're into it.
  
• King Cricket - I'm trying like hell to learn about the ins and outs of Cricket, my current home's baseball-like sport. This blog was recommended to me by a cricket coach (!) on Twitter, and is rapidly becoming a great daily read as I try to expand my understanding of the cricket world.
  
• Persian Paradox - An English-language blog written by a female Muslim from Iran. But not just any female Muslim - Masoumeh Ebtekar, the "first female Vice President of Iran" and "the spokeswoman of the students who had occupied the US Embassy during the Iran hostage crisis and ... a critic of the Taliban's oppression of women." (Source: Wikipedia). Why don't you give it a read and see if you can tear down one of your own mental stereotypes.
  
• Mr. and Mrs. Smith Boutique Hotels - And to end on a lighter note, a blog devoted to boutique hotels for couples. If my subscription to this doesn't reflect my changing values as I age, nothing does.

That's it for Blog Day '08. See you next year!

Gustav Rising

Meghan, Karissa: if you're still in the area, please stay safe. Positive thoughts heading your way from London.

John McCain Scores a Critical Hit

How could I not blog about this?

Late Monday, John McCain aide Michael Goldfarb blogs negatively about Obama supporters, saying "[i]t may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement." Cue nerd rage as the (fairly liberal) D&D community screams 'no we're not! This is the same bullshit we've dealt with since high school when the Young Republicans made fun of us there!' (Full disclosure: many of my D&D playing friends in high school were, in fact, Republicans.) Much moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth as real issues were ignored and one aide's flippant and Rove-esque logical fallacy takes center stage in the blogosphere.

Goldfarb later apologies (albeit on a third-party site.) He says:

If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.

And in so doing, rolled a natural 20 for John McCain among the D&D crowd.

My mind was made up long ago, and nothing sort of Obama crawling out of his skin and claiming to be the Prince of Darkness himself would make me consider voting for a Republican. And as Seth slyly pointed out in his Google Reader notes: this is so irrelevant to actual issues facing Americans that it's almost a joke that it became a concern in the first place.

That being said, it's a hell of a case of knowing your audience and apologizing to them in their own language, and putting a human face on something that people tend to dehumanize. So credit where credit is due.

Note: never thought I'd use the 'Dungeons and Dragons' and '2008 Election' tags for the same post...

Quote of the Day

"That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves."

- From Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Existentialism and Poetry

The older I get, the more French Existentialism makes sense. And inspires me. Take the following from Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus:

Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future: 'tomorrow', 'later on', 'when you have made your way', 'you will understand when you are old enough.' Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it's a matter of dying. Yet a time comes when a man notices that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time and, by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. The revolt of the flesh is the absurd.

Emphasis mine. So I have this:

Building by Jason Mical

Stone and brick make this place
My fort.
My tree house.
This thing I cleared with a stick
and summertime persistence.

Time flows oddly here
Days in seconds
or seconds in days.
I'm eighty, wrinkled and out of breath,
I'm ten and can't sit still.

Entropy House I call it,
my carved-rock place,
where I rule as King and cannot be touched.

Speaking of entropy,
I return here more and more
The older/younger I get/feel
I don't want to waste my key after all.

A tower, a cave, an elevator to space.
A roller-coaster.
Magic it is and was, something ineffable,
Least of all by me and I'll be damned if I'm telling you.

I've never left this room,
doorless, windowless,
The way blocked by a triangle
of insecurity, fear and ennui.

Some days I am Spider-Man, climbing walls with my hands.
Some days I just am and call it good.

Live, Crowdsourced Content Creation

Stephen Sullivan, author of dozens of novels and the Origins Award-winning Podo and the Magic Shield, is hard at work on a project called Tournament of Death, a 'live-novel' written entirely during the Olympics. He's also relying heavily on user input and feedback to develop the story. For example, there's a poll on the Tournament of Death blog asking 'Things [you] want to see killed in the Tournament of Death are:' Of course I voted 'everybody' because it's a tournament of death!

Stephen's project combines two really interesting things in a way I'm not exactly sure has been done before: crowdsourcing plot points by asking community members and readers what they want to see happen and allowing them to have a real effect on the events in the novel; and a restrictive writing environment. In this case, writing only during the 2008 Olympics. It's a fabulous little experiment and the first post is pretty awesome.

Also, Stephen wrote a hell of a press release for this, which I'm going to simply copy and paste here because it's so great. I wish my clients would let me write press releases like this for them. It's a short story in and of itself.

Tournament of Death is a special writing challenge conceived and executed by award-winning fantasy author Stephen D. Sullivan.

The writing of the story will take place over the 16 days of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

"I was looking at my schedule and wondering what kind of work I'd get done during those two weeks," Sullivan said. "The Olympics is kind of a holiday in our house. We love it, and we try to watch as much coverage as we can. Then it hit me: what if my work for those two weeks became connected to the games?"

Sullivan came up with the idea of writing as he watched the Olympics and letting his work be inspired by both the games and by interaction with fans during that two-week period.

"I haven't done any actual writing yet," Sullivan said, "though I may work on the prologue before the games begin. After that, I'll be doing one chapter of the story each day. Each chapter will be at least 1000 words long, so, at the end of the Olympiad, I'll have — at minimum — a decent-sized novella."

The episodes will be published on Sullivan's site, www.stephendsullivan.com, and on his blog — stephendsullivan.blogspot.com, and on his author page at GoodReads.com.

"I have an idea of where I'm going with the story," he said, "and I have a few characters in mind, but there's nothing set in stone. Inspiration for writing can come from a lot of places. I know watching the Olympics will really get the creative juices flowing. I'm also interested in feedback on the concept from my readers. They'll be able to comment on my blog and send messages through my email. Once the story gets running, I'll have some lists of characters for people to vote on, too."

Because the project will be the majority of Sullivan's work for those two weeks, he will also have a donation form set up on PayPal.

"I'm a professional freelance writer," he said. "If I don't work, I don't get paid. So it's risky for me to devote a couple of weeks to something like this. I'm hoping the readers will support me in this experiment. And if they do, I'll write them into the story."

Sullivan plans to have a list — a "banzuke," he called it — of people supporting the project. "There will be Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels of participation. There will be a spectator level, too, for small donations, with participants listed on the web site. Finally, there will be a Champion level, where the donor will actually be written into the story as a contestant — though I won't promise that anyone written into the story will survive."

However, "dead" contributors will live on, when the online project becomes a printed book.

"Though I have a small publishing house of my own, Walkabout Publishing, I will be pursuing all printing options," Sullivan said. "One way or another, Tournament of Death will be available in print and at Amazon after it's done. It'd be nice if a big publisher picks it up. We'll just have to see what the reaction is."

Either way, Sullivan hopes to have the book out by the end of 2008.

"Assuming I don't crash and burn," he said wryly. "There's always that possibility. Since this is a live event, it's going to be like walking a tightrope — not a lot of room for error. I hope people will tune in and see how I do."

The live, online version of Tournament of Death will run from August 8th to 17th, 2008.

Full Disclosure: Stephen is a member of my writing group, the Alliterates, and is the editor of the Blue Kingdoms anthologies in which some of my fiction has appeared.

959-Word Movie Review: The Dark Knight

I realize I’m doing one of the single-most boring things a person can do with a personal blog: review a film. But I just got back from The Dark Knight and I wanted to share my impressions, because films often change in my mind and I want to record exactly what I’m thinking now.

I loved it. Absolutely fucking loved it. It’s been a long, long time since I sat in a movie theater and thought, yes, I’m glad I’m seeing this in a theater because I’m having a great time. And it’s been a long, long time since I walked out of a movie theater and though that was an incredible experience.

The Beautiful Competition and I were discussing the film afterwards and I said that I liked it better than Batman Begins and probably better than any superhero movie before. True (at least, as of right now, give me a while and I’ll probably get lost in the film’s flaws.) It wasn’t a perfect movie, but is there such a thing? It was a fantastic Batman movie. I had to check to see if Jeph Loeb had anything to do with it (he didn’t.) It was a great superhero movie, and it was a fantastic film.

One of the things I like to explore both as a reader and as a writer is the way moral codes and philosophies survive at extreme conditions. Oddly enough, the best to cite about this is Elie Wiesel’s Night, a book I did not particularly enjoy but the crux of which was the very absolutist view that no morality can survive in the most extreme of conditions – in that case, the Holocaust. I’ve never thought that thesis was particularly true, except perhaps on a meta level, but lives are not lived and decisions are never made on the meta level. They are individual things. And that is exactly what The Dark Knight addresses, head on.

Spoiler Alert

Heath’s Joker is probably my favorite villain in a comic book movie, because his crusade forces Batman’s hand. At first, it seems he’s playing the same game as the rest of the mobsters that Batman’s been fighting: why else would he want to work with them, to ask for their money? But it eventually becomes clear his motivation really is, well, utterly unmotivated by anything except a desire for absolute anarchy. There’s a brilliant scene where Bruce Wayne and Alfred discuss The Joker’s motivations and how to get in his head and stop him. Bruce says that it’s easy for Batman to stop the other villains because in the end, they are motivated by money and fear. Even dyed-in-the-wool psychopaths like the Scarecrow (who makes an awesome cameo, by the way) are motivated on some level by these same sorts of things. But how does Batman deal with a criminal who is only interested in causing chaos and destruction? Something that’s more of a force of nature than a motivated human being? And is it possible to deal with someone like that in a way that allows you not to compromise your moral principles?

There’s a brilliant bit of foreshadowing, where the characters discuss the Romans and their practice of handing over power to a dictator in times of crisis. In all instances but one, the dictator (eventually, the historian in me says!) resigned his position and returned power to the Senate and People. But it only took one - Caesar – to annihilate the Republic and create the Empire. Batman cannot win his battle without a compromise, and the one he decides to make is just as interesting as the other moral situations in the film. Even better is the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which is ripped straight from Game Theory (and, I should note, Matt Mason at The Pirate’s Dilemma covered quite eloquently.) As Mason notes, that scene is where The Joker slips and where The Dark Knight truly shines as an exploration of morality in extreme conditions. The outcome of the situation (I won’t spoil the particulars) actually left me quite stunned, but in a pleasant way. And it did give Batman the chance to beat The Joker, after all!

But this complexity is the greatest pleasure I can take from a film or a book. It’s simply an abstract form of what I like so much about horror movies, specifically zombie films – which are in and of themselves just the next iteration of post-apocalypse films. It is being forced to make decisions when confronted with the absurd. The day-to-day decisions aren’t so important: decisions made when faced with the most absurd and extreme of conditions – a ferry full of prisoners and a ferry full of normal people, with each holding the other detonator; a motivationless psychopath who won’t stop killing; the dead returning to life to feast on the living – these are all things that remove a person from the norm and force them to look at things in a new way. I use the word ‘absurd’ in a loaded fashion, because it’s exactly how Neitzsche, Heidegger and specifically Camus refer to what life and meaning are in the first place: ways to deal with these extreme conditions that, in the end, are something we must make and be responsible for on our own.

[Note: I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that Harvey Dent / Two-Face actually progresses from being responsible for his decisions to his infamous coin-flipping, leaving choice and more importantly responsibility up to fate as the movie progresses. Which is really an entirely different essay, but adds a good deal of flavor and another layer of depth to the film.]

So there I am: The Dark Knight impressions. Holy freaking crap it was a good movie.

Three Word Movie Review: The Dark Knight

Holy freakin' crap!