YBLOG ZA

Dissecting a nagging leitmotif and...

...unseating the horseman

I see pieces of men marching; trying to take heaven by force | I can see the unknown rider, I can see the pale white horse | In God's truth tell me what you want, and you'll have it of course | Just step into the arena."

...or balls at the bell?

While we live according to race, colour or creed | While we rule by blind madness and pure greed | Our lives dictated by tradition, superstition, false religion | Through the eons, and on and on...

In the light of my last post and the merciful fading to memory of the Democratic National Convention, a couple of updates. Any notion that David Weinberger would forsake his blog for a week in favour of a newspaper was sorely misguided. I wrote that late at night or early in the morning. Neuronal activity was slow at the time and my nerves were shot. Well, they must've been, eh? David's blogging of the DNC and his links to others have given this foreigner a comprehensive overview of (or grandstand seat at) a time-honoured American tradition. That said, I think attendees and time will be the only entities likely to honour the DNC in Boston.

As forgetful as the event turned out to be, bloggers mentioned in my post below and countless others made what was otherwise a quiet week on the blogs worth following—and, of all the essays, Jessamyn West's essay on Day 2 stood out. Having read countless reports of the event, I feel the DNC has more in common with a Billy Graham revivalist meeting (replete with pamphlets and placards for the faithful, cued applause, tacky advertising and pre-packaged, mass-consumption messages designed to massage the minds of the numbskull masses) than it has with meaningful political change.

Why not send 15,000 reporters to Afghanistan and Iraq?

I found a couple of bloggers today, one of whom is new to me, ML Webb, and the other, a regular contributor to many threads, Dane Carlson, on the Google Forum at Brett Tabke's WebmasterWorld (WmW).

Dane offers excellent commentary on a good Corante story on the relationship existing between Google and blogs entitled 'Google Loves Blogs'. His comments target conventional Web site Search Engine Optimizers and Marketers (SEOs and SEMs) while reinforcing the article's succinct explanation of just how Google works.

As Google continues its inclusion of regularly refreshed weblogs in its news sweeps, will we eventually see a flood of conventional sites adding blogs to their Web offerings in a search for better rankings and increased traffic flow? How will such growth affect relevance and how long will it be before Google starts according diminishing importance to blogs as a source of relevant news?

Dane points out that while he has "...no way of knowing how long Google's love for weblogs will last," it would be foolish for "...the professional webmaster or SEO expert to overlook how Google treats them." Е "Unlike spam pages, weblogs have integrity. They are built on links. Not just links from the weblog to other content, but also on the links to that weblog," he says, before detailing how weblogs, by their nature, offer Google and other engines a means of skimming high-quality content from the blogs.

Of course, it all boils down to links. "Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy." Where the hell have I heard that one before? I can't remember, but whoever coined the phrase was right on the button. Google's focus on blogs rather than the large, static sites of last and yesteryear proves the point

"First, we should enter the discussion with some sensitivity to the problem of criticism in the contemporary culture that many of us inhabit. "Criticism" as a phenomenon is not widely practiced, only slightly more widely understood, appreciated slightly more than that, and attempted less often than one would think. Instead of criticism, which requires some sort of analysis, engagement, evaluation, humility, and intellectual energy, we more typically encounter feel-good mutually support (on one hand) or flame wars (on the other). Both of these are vastly easier than the more demanding practice of criticism, so everyone can play. Both of these express regular human impulses (sticking up for one's friends, or kicking one's adversaries, about which I know since I've impulsively engaged in it recently). Neither of these advances anyone's understanding of anything--they just reinforce boundaries and gratify impulses that may derive some of their irresistible power from hormonal secretions."

And it doesn't stop there...

"Bear with me on this: think of the transition from singing along with friends and relations, to the time when we think, "Why should I listen to myself sing? Why not just put Workers' Playtime on and listen to Billy Bragg?" We gave up our the uneven pleasure of our own voices in favor of the predictable excellence (and otherwise) of recorded musicians. Likewise we have tended to write less and less, less and less well, in favor of letting the really good writers, the published writers, occupy center stage."

And he points to this...

"Hey Hey, my my / Rock and roll can never die / There's more to the picture / Than meets the eye"

Neil Young | My My, Hey Hey

Yeah, there's a devious method to my madness. Everything is clearer now, but is still blurred, as though seen through frosted glass.

My thanks go to Dennis Mahoney for his mature response to my savage criticism of his piece, 'Write A Better Weblog', featured in A List Apart.

Why thank him? I have criticized many things. I am, after all, a professional critic. Two reasons. One thing a critic should never do is launch into someone without substantiating their criticism. Another thing a critic should always do is offer alternatives, as does Jeneane Sessum in her analysis of the same article. I did not offer Dennis any constructive alternatives.

I have my reasons.

Okay, let's get to the heart of this thing. My posting a criticism of Dennis's article served two purposes. The first was to criticize what I see as advice of dubious merit spurred by dubious motives. Dennis refutes these things but, hey, he's entitled to do so. Secondly, I wanted to elicit a response from Dennis, particularly a message or return blog quoting the phrases he did, i.e. "mongrel dogs that teach" and "self-ordained professor". Hence an acerbic review without suggestions for improvement, the only slurs being two ripped-off phrases. I promised myself that, if he did rise to my bait, I would give him the URL to the lyrics from which the phrases are taken.

His response is in the comment box at the foot of my post. He makes some valid points.

Welcome to unending fields of dreams, mountain moonscapes and a diamond sea.

With the small town of Garies forming the southern boundary and the desert solitude of Pofadder in the east, the world's most awe-inspiring floral region is bound in the north by the persistent tide and impassable cliffs of the mighty Orange River Valley. To the west, the heaving swells of the chill, brooding Atlantic chart a formidable frontier. Within these confines lies an enchanted, richly-blessed land.

Annually, Namaqualand, the land of Nama and the San, hosts the greatest show on earth. Each spring, Mother Nature shakes off winter's bite and bursts into song, covering our vast desert spaces with flamboyant symphonies of floral splendour. A celestial artist, she saturates the sunbaked canvas of our deserts with a multihued array of wild flowers. Piling one miracle on another, you will marvel at the tenacity of her many rare, unique and endangered plants. These plants are adapted to a climate defying all life, and survive and thrive in a land of blistering extremes.

Track the Old Copper Way back to the 17th century, when Simon van der Stel's expeditions sank their spades deep into the rich, copper-bearing earth; soak yourself in the colourful histories of towns deeply rooted in a proud mining tradition; ponder, at Alexander Bay, the reasoning of the countless treasure seekers who, during the 1928 Diamond Rebellion, were prepared to die in a foreign land for the chance to stake their small claim to the area's newfound mineral wealth.

Unfortunately and all too frequently, we find those willing to add grist to the mill of numbskulls who derive pleasure from mouthing the fatuous adage, УThose who can, do. Those who canТt, teach.Ф Dennis Mahoney, whose pulpit can be found at 0format.com, is such a person. A 'self-ordained professor' of blogging, the good Dennis offers those who assiduously blog our thoughts to HTML each day, his sage advice in Write a Better Weblog, now doing traffic-pulling duty at A List Apart.

That he succeeds in his duties is beyond doubt. On the whole, Mahoney, through his writing and his profession, seems to be a dutiful chap. I found his article at the top of the Daypop 40 yesterday and read it immediately, seeking pearls of wisdom, insight and, to put it bluntly, something new.

I came away disappointed and dissatisfied. The dissatisfaction rankled. Ostensibly, there's little wrong with what he says. Yet, somehow, there is. There are anomalies here that jar. For example, why on earth, in a published article, does the author shoot himself in the foot at the outset by admitting he has, by his own standards, abused his Weblog? He posted a "...list of things that ought to be banned from weblogs" and now realizes "...a list of things to be encouraged would be more useful..." Is he apologizing for something?

For how long can one last without a copy of EGR? About six weeks, I see, scrolling through to the beginning of 2000. Chris Locke appears to have spent June of that year outside of the bunker, having huddled there for about six months with Ed Yourdon, waiting for the Y2k problem to kick in.

This is a serious state of affairs. I remember the early days of giving up booze, dope, and other exotic substances. These memories disturb me. I trust Locke will empathize with me and give that little shit RageBoy a thorough beating before setting him in front of a keyboard with orders to create, fulminate, or self-immolate.

Before my craving gets out of hand...

"My witness is the empty sky."

Jack Kerouac

Each day, when I get a chance to go a'blogging, I hammer open about fifteen pages and, most often, they're the pages that stay open all day, informing my thinking. Each page fans out into the Web, taking me on my peregrination through cyberverse, stopping here, there, cutting back, etc.

wood s lot is the kind of understated site that reeks of class. I've no idea what Mark Wood is like. I imagine a young recluse, frozen to the Canadian earth, too well-read for his own good, cycling the Web hour after hour, day after day, like some demented geek from a low-grade Hollywood movie.

He turns up an amazing number of fascinating stories and essays from an infinitely varied number of sources. Today he sent me to In A Dark Time and Loren Webster and Diane McCormick, who have taken a week out to discuss Jack Kerouac.

I recently reread a bit of Kerouac (a favorite, Big Sur, in which Ti Jean chronicles his descent into an alcoholic despair from which he was never to recover), the first time in ten or fifteen years that I've dipped into my battered pile of his work.

How does one write of Kerouac from memory? I don't know. I first came across 'The Subterraneans' about twenty-five years ago and my reading habits were changed forever. I devoured everything he wrote, preferring titles such as 'The Dharma Bums', 'Lonesome Traveller', and 'Desolation Angels' to his more-popular 'On the Road'. I hung around bookstores searching for more and, on one occasion, the store owner lent me his 'beat' collection, a selection of books by several authors, brochures from City Lights, and pamphlets containing Ginsberg and Corso poems. I looked after and returned all of them.

I certainly didn't. At least I didn't until I read this piece by Mike Sanders. Of all the comments delivered today on Prince John's latest round of potty tossing, this is the most wonderfully humane and insightful piece I've read on a man who so obviously feels he has his back to the wall.