Archive for 2006

Writers Online Community

Posted

December 26, 2006

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Update: Websites come and go, especially social networks. It’s no secret. It is a shame, though, that these two online communities for writers have gone extinct. It’s also a reminder to save your work someplace else. If your only copy of something you want is on a website that dies, then your stuff dies with it.

There is hope, though. A new writers’ community, currently in a closed beta, might become something really useful to writers. It’s called Lit4us.

If you know of any good spots for writers to hang out online, please post a comment about it!

I’m excited about a new, and useful website for me to become addicted to for a while. For writers starving for community, there’s a new social networking website out there. Urbis is a bit like Friendster, or MySpace, except that it focuses on writing. Share your work, critique others’ work, and make friends in the process.

Dive right in at Urbis.

From the introduction…

How do I Use Urbis?

  1. Create an account
  2. Submit an item to the Creative Review Engine.
  3. Build a network by inviting friends and fans and meeting new ones.
  4. Connect with Seekers who wish to expose your work.

The Creative Review Engine

  1. Receive as much as you give using the Urbis credit system. Earn credits by reviewing people and spend credits when receiving reviews. Learn more about credits.
  2. Choose whether you want supportive reviews from people you know (in-network) or unbiased reviews from strangers (out-of-network)
  3. Qualify what kind of people you allow to review your work by specifying age range, location, talent, experience, and more. (coming soon)
  4. Hold members accountable for reviews that don’t meet the high standards of the Urbis review guidelines.
  5. Understand the value of the reviews you receive by viewing Reviewer stats.
  6. Receive ratings (algoratings) that are weighted to provide a true reflection of the community’s opinion of your work.

For a complete introduction to the idea behind this website, read the writup, “Judging the Books Without Covers“at the ambiguously named website, “solution watch”.

Urbis differs from many of the other writers’ websites out there, which focus on blogging, or “litblogging”. My favorite of those is MetaxuCafe. Here, writers come together, mostly as readers. Critical response to books and ideas seems to be the name of the game, primarily, in the litblogs, and there are many litblogs out there for you to choose from.

Together, the litblogs and an online community should provide a wealth of useful resources for a writer.

Star Wars Holiday Special

Posted

December 13, 2006

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The Two-Hour Star Wars Holiday Special in only Five Minutes!
Merry Holidays, here’s a stupid video for your stocking stuffin fun.

A Game of Musical Chairs

Posted

December 8, 2006

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I know the rules
the song describes
what steps to take
what choice to make

the game begins
a chair is all the prize they’ve got
the song chimes in
I realize I’d rather not
The odds are low that I would win

Would I win
Could I win
Should I walk in circles again?

The Table of Contents Works Now

Posted

December 8, 2006

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Check it out, the table of contents is actually useful. This little website of mine is growing so much that the search alone wasn’t cutting it.

Stay tuned, more to come…

Noetic Transhumanism

Posted

November 27, 2006

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I attended a lecture at Wham City in Baltimore recently, and I wanted to jot down some quick notes on the subject. “Noetic Transhumanism” was the main idea tonight, espoused by a neighbor of mine, C.K. Our humble lecturer is in the early stages of an experiment with the idea of Noetic Transhumanism. He gives lectures like the one given tonight, to develop his ideas.

Noetic Transhumanism is a kind of transhuminist idea. Transhumanists believe that humans can overcome their own natural limitations, to become more than, or other than the humans we are now. Science fiction cyborgs come to mind with this idea, as well as the science realities of genetic modification, steroid use, psychoactive drugs, etc.

Noetic Transhumanism is a similar idea, although it has less to do with the physicality of the human condition. Noetic Transhumanism is the idea that humans can overcome our inner limitations: limitations of the mind, emotions, and spirit, in order to become more than, or other than we are now. This transition may be a transition away from physicality altogether — but in what sense, and is that possible?

In some sense, as C.K. described, people have been escaping physicality into the realm of ideas, for centuries: Greek heroes, prophets, legendary people of all stripes, etc., but this isn’t exactly the kind of transcending that C.K. seems to have in mind.

C.K. seems most interested in what some people have called the Noosphere, and he describes it as though it were a realm, or a dimension related to ours.

This lecture was pretty much the outset of C.K.’s ideas on the subject. There wasn’t much need, in an introduction, to delve into the details, comparisons and so on. The second part of the lecture was C.K.’s discussion of his attempts to pursue this idea, to address any questions that arise along the way, and to attempt an end result — that being a noetic transition of some sort.

Updated: Spoken Word Page

Posted

November 9, 2006

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The Spoken Word Page now includes:

Quotes

The Truth of a Thing

Posted

November 2, 2006

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The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it.
Stanley Kubrick

Relationship Between Print and Meaning

Posted

October 25, 2006

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I came across an interesting distinction between “writing” and “word processing”.

Writing is getting the words right. Word processing is… processing. It’s taking what you’ve written and doing stuff with it. Either bolding this or italicizing that or centering the headline or inserting a table or tweaking the margins or changing the font and sizes or adding color or… That’s word processing or page layout. … The keyboard and the return key is all you need. That’s writing. Once you’ve got the words right you can take that text and process it in a word processor or page layout program later. … When you’re about to write that’s all you should be ready to do: write. Leave the rest for another day. There are words to get right.

I like this distinction between writing and processing.

What about emphasis? Sure, the italics, or whatever, that display that emphasis are “processed”, but the emphasis itself is written. How can I indicate emphasis — how can I write emphasis, when someone else has determined for me, in advance, that emphasis must “come later”. It doesn’t come later. Later, I might forget. Emphasis is not processed. It is written.

On a similar note, I wonder: what about links? Are they written, or are they processed?

By Popular Demand: Spoken Word Links

Posted

September 29, 2006

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Before further ado, I give you: the Spoken Word page at NoCategories

You see, I got an email from Dan who writes,

I found your website very interesting on the things you have listed for Spoken
Word Poetry. I wrote down some of the links you gave so I can check them out. I am glad that
I came across your website. It seems to hard to find any sites with, or, about
spoken word poetry. Maybe somebody should start a site called the spoken word poets alliance or
something, that way we could all be found much easier.

To that end, I have created a place for that sort of content, a page, for now, on NoCategories.net. I’ll start by collecting resources, for people who want to find out about spoken word. That list will probably grow to include links to podcasts, homepages, and MP3 recordings by spoken word artists themselves. If the whole thing ever outgrows all that, I suppose it coul dmove to its own home, where it can grow to include a forum/bulletin board for spoken word enthusiasts (unless there’s one already?)

Working through Feast and Famine

Posted

September 20, 2006

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The cliché about contracting, self-employment or freelance work is that there are alternating periods of feast and famine. I can attest to that! With this recent “feast” of work on my plate, there’s been an inversely proportional famine of everything else in my life.

About a month ago, I took a six-month, full-time contract for a non-profit humanitarian organization, here in Baltimore city. I love the work here, because they have a use for my various skills, not just one of them. Being a humanitarian non-profit, they avoid the stuffiness common to most office settings. Being an international organization, the place definitely appeals to my wanderlust. My job description is essentially: read, write, edit, and arrange – the stuff I do best.

I jumped at the chance to do this job, but what about my other freelance clients? I was fully-employed before this job came my way, and I couldn’t just drop everything for a new job. When the going gets tough, the tough work overtime, and so I have, to the tune of nearly 60 hours per week for about a month and a half now. A typical day: I wake at seven, commute to an office, struggle with tight deadlines there, all day,Work then I return home, eat if I’m lucky, meet with clients, and work ’till midnight, or one, or three…

What happened to my social life? It now consists of a few passing comments during, or on my way to, work. What happened to sleep? Bah! Who needs sleep! What have I been writing lately? Don’t ask, I’ll cry. Will this manic lifestyle eventually cause me to collapse? Yes, onto a nice bed of money, which will feed me for the immediate future. Don’t get me wrong, I’m working hard, but it feels good to be acomplishing so much.

I can see the light at the end of this tunnel, but I haven’t quite reached it. Websites for my freelance clients are nearing completion, including The Gallery Players, a theater in New York, turtle555.com, a home page for my photog friend back home in WV, and a portfolio for Creative Landscape Arts in Baltimore. That last project, I accepted it the same week as this larger full-time contract, against my better judgment, but hey, it hasn’t killed me yet.

This weekend, to preserve my sanity, I’m heading to the hills. My best friend is hosting a harvest party at his place, far from the city, the internet, and most importantly, far from all this work. I hope to recharge my batteries enough to complete the last of this work, before returning to my life again. Then, I can finish my spoken word project, revise my book of poems, and tart that play I’ve been meaning to get to. When this is all said and done, I should probably have more, not less, time to live with, since I wont be searching for work for a few months.

National Gazette

Posted

September 12, 2006

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Recently, I was duped into believing that I could work for a revolutionary kind of journalism. I should have known better. The terms “revolutionary” and “journalism” are only sporadically related, at times like the French Revolution or the radical sixties, if they’re related at all.

My misadventure with the apparently fraudulent USA Voice is over for me now, and, reflecting back on it, I’ve given some thought to the allure, the idea that suckered me into almost falling for it. It’s a nice idea – democratic journalism. An incredible number of people out there seem to agree with me, and many of them were also tricked, because they, too, were excited about the idea.

So why not do it? Why not actually make the publication USA Voice claims to be? I’ve begun to seriously consider the idea. First, I decided address a call-to-arms to the people I’ve met because of the USA Voice debacle. Couldn’t we do this the right way; couldn’t we make an independent, democratic publication using internet technology? Of course we could! What are your thoughts on the subject?

Then, I decided to see if anybody else is doing this. "Anybody else", I mean, aside from the usual suspects, the major news outlets, the established internet publications, etc. I found one, very interesting project called The National Gazette. The project does seem to be slower in development than the initial plan indicated, but I think the final product will be interesting, worthwhile, and even legitimate! The Austin-American-Statesman newspaper reports:

TheNational Gazette is a new on-line newspaper slated for publication this summer.  Dan Croak, the publisher, states on the paper’s website that it aims to continue the tradition of the defunct paper of the same name started by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1791 to spark public debate.  According to Croak in the Prediction Markets Google Group the publication will include information market coverage.

“TheNational Gazette editorial board strongly believes that goal is best achieved using an ‘architecture of participation,’ the business model best exemplified by Wikipedia, eBay, and Amazon.com,” states the pre-registration e-mail (hyperlinks added).

Coupling modern communications technology with Jefferson’s and Madison’s desire to harness public opinion to influence policy should add an interesting flair to the current offering of user generated news and debate sites like digg, Newsvine, and Gather along with wikis and blogs.

For more information about and to pre-register for the National Gazette visit its website at www.nationalgazette.org.  To learn more about Croak visit his Blogger profile that lists the blogs he contributes to.  Previews of the site’s layout are posted at Jason Santa Maria’s blog post “ In Progress: Site Design” and Cameron Moll’s blog post “In Progress: Logo Design.”

I like that the National Gazette reflects an era when “Freedom of the Press” was popularized. I like its appeal to the people. For instance, on the Gazette’s photography page (hosted by flickr, no less) the Gazette has this to say:

Submit your photos to be published in the soon-to-be-launched National Gazette! We’re looking for talented, original photographs from the community. This follows exactly the philosophy behind the National Gazette, which encourages the best upcoming writers to submit their work to our weekly publication.

We place a high emphasis on design, which is why we hired two well-known graphic designers to build a beautiful, emotionally engaging web site that is easy on the eyes and tugs on the heart. You can let them inspire you at their sites as well: Jason Santa Maria and Cameron Moll.

We place a high emphasis on empathy, as well. Our content at the National Gazette seeks to understand what makes our fellow men and women tick, and we do our best to care for others.

We love playfulness and whimsical prints as well. A central aspect of our publication is its futures markets game, which allows our community to participate in a zero-sum game of predictions and probabilities, pitting everyone’s knowledge and opinions against one another in an attempt to aggregate the collective wisdom of the crowds into a prediction of the future.

Most of all, we love photos that show meaning about the world. Beauty is one thing. Purpose and transcedence are something else altogether.

I am confident that two respected professionals like the designers mentioned above would only be involved in a top-notch publication, and for that reason I’m willing to overlook the long absence of any public developments from this project (the last was 139 days ago). Honestly, I’m also tempted to beat them to the punch, though I think that would be a bit tricky.

I am excited about the prospect that there might be a National gazette, and newspapers like it. I wonder if anyone out there would be interested in starting one, or something like it, or even in partiipating in that one. What would such a publication be like?

A Place with a Creek

Posted

August 29, 2006

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If only I had a place with a creek in it
a place to cool my toes
a place to wash
a place to watch the flow
If only I had a set of rocks to hop on
Not the hard rocks
rocks washed soft
nature-made not placed there
instruments for the path of least resistance
not obstacles
If only I could drink there
and merely be
thirsty then quenched
all in one moment
If only I had a place that rolls
down from the mountain
and on toward the river
and doesn’t fall
but it takes thirty minutes to park there
the banks are paved over
and every person side-walks
I’m alone in my bare feet
used to be, there was nothing better to do
and now, well why would you
its dirty
and squish of sewage between the toes
sewage, unknown how old
used to be, it glittered like glass
and now it is glass
I only wish I had a place to rest my feet

The Most Dangerous Woman Alive

Posted

August 28, 2006

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Last weekend, during a trip to Washington DC, I thrilled to the sight of a sideshow attraction: Charon Henning, The Most Dangerous Woman Alive. She’s able to walk on glass, barely flinching, before stair-stepping on a ladder of swords. Her partner, Professor Otto Knowbetter, chews razorblades live before your very eyes. And the best part, the second act: sword swallowing!

Charon HenningThere’s a small bar in DC called The Palace of Wonders. The local press, including The Washington Post not once but twice, and Baltimore’s Atomic Books have recommended the place, and now, so have I, for what its worth — but get there early to snag one of the choice seats beside the stage or in the balcony. I went to the show with an ulterior motive, of course. I’m writing about this sort of thing. I wanted to see some real sideshow barking, which is what I came for, but I stayed for the heckling, and a good time was had indeed.

Punk Planet: The Revenge of Print 2

Posted

August 28, 2006

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The new issue of Punk Planet magazine is out now, reminding me that, yeah, I guess I did subscribe to their email newsletter, once. I’m glad I did that, because I was interested in the new issue, which promises to deliver some juicy details about the current state of “underground” print. Good old fashioned zines and stuff. And here’s the pitch…

FOR ANYBODY WHO’S EVER SAID “PRINT IS DEAD”. . .

Punk Planet Punk Planet #75 celebrates print media in all its forms with a follow-up to our first, best-selling Revenge of Print issue PP60. The legendary HARVEY PEKAR talks 30 years in comics and shares his original storyboards, CINDY OVENRACK—creator of the beloved Doris zine—discusses independent publishing, and up-and-comer TOM K. contributes an original comics feature. There are interviews with cutting-edge writers MICHELLE TEA and T COOPER, a conversation with Weird War’s IAN SVENONIUS about moving from music to writing, and fascinating peeks into the invaluable PRELINGER ARCHIVES, the world of TRANSGENDER ZINES, and the last decade of BITCH MAGAZINE. We’re also proud to announce exciting new columns by JOHNNY TEMPLE (Girls v. Boys, Akashic Books) and JOSH HOOTEN (Herbivore magazine). Plus, way more!

The Gold Teeth of Death

Posted

August 27, 2006

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Last night I played the game of Exquisite Corpse with a friend. These are the results.

ITS NOT ADMIRE IT, ADORE
RHYTHM

Does not expire
and though it does keep to itself
it will always be unseen

AS THE UNSEEN 14 POINTS OF
                               THE CROSS

-eyed-crook-legged-bowled-over
by the force of experience,
and what a force!

HICK-UP STICK-UP BLASTIN SODA
BEATS OFF THE BUBBLY SUICIDE

and the final
sound
was water.

USA Voice Plagiarizes CNN!

Posted

August 15, 2006

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USA Voice, a fledgling online news service, copied its front page news from CNN.com today.

See for yourself. Here is the lede and a few paragraphs from CNN’s recent article entitled, Three face terror charges after 1,000 cell phones seized

(CNN) — Three men authorities said were found with about 1,000 untraceable cell phones were arraigned Saturday on terror-related charges, and were believed to have been targeting a Michigan bridge, a prosecutor said.

“The targeted issue in this case was the Mackinac Bridge. That is what we have information on,” Tuscola County prosecutor Mark Reene said.

The bridge is 5 miles long and connects Michigan‘s upper and lower peninsulas.

Police in Caro, Michigan, said the men were arrested early Friday and were being held on charges of “providing material support for terrorism and obtaining information of a vulnerable target for the purposes of terrorism.”

And here is identical text from the USA Voice cover story entitled, “Terror Attack Thwarted”

Three men authorities said were found with about 1,000 untraceable cell phones were arraigned Saturday on terror-related charges, and were believed to have been targeting a Michigan bridge, a prosecutor said.

“The targeted issue in this case was the Mackinac Bridge. That is what we have information on,” Tuscola County prosecutor Mark Reene said.The bridge is 5 miles long and connects Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas.Police in Caro, Michigan, said the men were arrested early Friday and were being held on charges of “providing material support for terrorism and obtaining information of a vulnerable target for the purposes of terrorism.”

The only differences between these passages are the location of paragraph breaks.

This is not the first time USA Voice has run afoul of its journalistic integrity. The Saint Petersburg Times recently reported suspicions that USA Voice is engaged in identy fraud activity, mentioning that all 1200 job ads for USA Voice have been removed from Yahoo’s job postings lists. I was also able to determine that At least one report has been filed against USA Voice with The Federal Trade Commission about these allegations.

An Interview with USAVoice

Posted

August 14, 2006

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update:

A job with USA Voice would not be unlike a telemarketing job. It wouldn’t be much like a journalism job, either. I’ve completed the application process for this apparently fraudulant publication (all the way up to, but not including, the contract, which I never signed).

The “interview” was a teleconference, and the “teleconference” was more like a powerpoint lecture. Feedback on the line was so awful that the question and answer portion of the teleconference was promptly cut short. I was able to ascertain quite a lot about the company and the job, so I thought I would share that knowledge for the benefit of anyone else considering this.

More information is also collected in a mediabistro conversation entitled Who is usavoice.org?

Here’s how you get paid if you work for USAVoice

You get a share of some google ad revenue if you write for them. That’s the deal.

Reporters at USAVoice will receive 40% of income generated by advertising on USAVoice. Each reporter will earn a percentage of that revenue equivalent to the percentage of total “page views” generated by his/her stories appearing on USAVoice.

They take the total # of page hits, and the total $ of revenue for a pay period, and calculate the value of one page hit. 40% of that is divided among the reportes, who are paid for each page hit generated by any of their articles. (Obviously, this means that page hits including ad hits are more valuable, whereas page hits without ad hits lessen the value of the revenue. How often do you follow internet ad links?)

You’re not paid by the hour, or paid by the word, or compensated for any of your expenses, or your time, and your “press pass” is understandably worthless — so what’s the incentive?! I suppose I could just get a google ad account and put ads on my blog. That way, at least, I’d get the entire profits.

Here’s the work you would do for USAVoice

To help generate readership, you’re required to, in their words “Create Mailing List of people you know to build traffic to your stories” essentially spamming your friends. (Kinda makes you wonder what else is going on with that mailing list…. )

The other way you’re employed to generate readership, and thus the chances of revenue, is to post your “articles” or links to them on any/all of a huge list of forums that the company has collected. (So, you spam the forums basically.)

If anyone out there reading this is involved in this application process, and would like to ask questions, the address is questions@usavoice.org

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The Moleskine problem

Posted

August 1, 2006

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John, at Joshuaink has a problem with his crisp, new Moleskine notebook. It is too nice to mark on! I’ve experreienced a similar problem with mine. I think the best way to get over it is to do something awful on the last page, and get it over with. That way, everything else will feel “worthy” of such a nice notebook.

Dreaming of Babylon

Posted

August 1, 2006

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http://www.pandora.ca/pictures17/961465.jpg

I’m one chapter into reading Dreaming of Babylon by Richard Brautigan, and I like what I have read so far. Here’s a description from Amazon:

Dreaming of Babylon is a hilarious and delightful spoof of a hard-boiled detective novel. Brautigan’s anti-hero, C. Card, is a poor, not-too-intelligent private eye working in San Francisco in 1942. Early in the book we learn that he is too poor to even afford bullets for his gun, and is hounded for rent by his landlady. His escape from this harried existence is an anachronistic fantasy life in ancient Babylon. This is a really fun book that effectively satirizes various popular entertainment genres. And despite being a lowlife, Card is a curiously appealing narrator.

Super Mario’s Crisis

Posted

July 26, 2006

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Artkrush, the online arts magazine, published a new issue today, about digital art. I find myself asking… is this art? The magazine’s editorial tone seems painfully aware of that question:

While the phrase “digital art” used to evoke thoughts of cheesy Photoshopped dreamscapes and clunky animated GIF graphics, it now applies to an ever-expanding, sophisticated field of interactive web projects, mutated video games, and hacktivist interventions.

Confounding critics who have sounded the death knell throughout its development, Net art has continued to thrive as a conceptual medium for artists and arts organizations.

I decided to side with my personaly interest (bias?), to ignore these “confounded critics” and look for myself, to see whether I liked any of this art.

What do you think? Continue Reading

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