cheese it, the cops!

live-blogging the death of the blog

andrew sullivan is quitting the dish, and ana marie cox (the delightful original wonkette) is basically declaring the blog over as a medium, or whatever 'the blog' may be. i guess i started blogging - right here - around when they did or shortly after (2004). now first of all, burnout is legit. when i started blogging, i was getting tired of writing a weekly op-ed column, and really after i started blogging i realized i wanted to quit that gig, even if i also wanted back on the op-ed page from time to time. i've often taken a month or six weeks off without notice, although at other times i'm posting like mad. 

but i've got to say: i fucking love the form, alright? for many reasons. i am a much better writer now, i believe, because i've written however many hundreds of thousands of words for 'publication'; some blog entries i've refined dozens of times. i publish, revise, and then publish again, the perfect cure for the problem of suddenly seeing a piece in print and so seeing it from a different or outside angle, and wanting and being unable to fix it. genres like the 700-word op-ed or the academic book or a twitter feed have some rigid parameters; a blog entry can take any length, any form; it is improvisational or jazz publishing. i poach it all the time for academic or opinion-journalist-type writings. i just love it as a place and way to write.

and also...it is an autonomous press that i control completely. there is something to be said for good professional editing (john timpane at the philly inquirer and i worked on a couple of hundred pieces together, i think), and something to be said against bad professional editing (naming no names). but there is a lot to be said for the unexpurgated individual human voice that knows it will not be edited except by the person who emits it. and that is what i think a blog ought to be, even if there are several voices on a blog, you old crusader. i published an underground newspaper starting in 7th grade, which was not unique in my era. my heroes william lloyd garrison (the liberator), josiah warren (the peaceful revolutionist), and emma goldman (mother earth) figured out how to make a free space for their voices, to tiny or big audiences. they had to figure out how to print it themselves. i see the blog as a continuation of that. i've said many, many things here that i could not say at the daily beast or huffpost.

andrew sullivan and ana marie cox were great bloggers at times. but they literally sold out the blog, if i may say so. cox's thing is that there are better ways to make money as a writer. on the other hand i have never myself sold advertising or done anything but pay to blog. i respect professional writers, coming from long lines of them, and i realize i have a nice position as an academic from which to do this (which is not to say i ain't broke). but cox and sullivan wanted to blog for someone; embed their blogs in the atlantic or the guardian or whatever. others were always calculating how to get the largest audiences and thus a good flow of advertising.

they sold their blogs, ok? it's not the worst thing, but maybe that's when they stopped blogging and just became staff writers or wheeler-dealers, with a comments section and a time posted, etc: the accessories but not the essence. this was a pretty straightforward choice for them, because they are people of relatively mainstream views who aspired to the biggest possible audiences. but there are plenty of bloggers for whom that wouldn't be an option, one way or another.

for years i just argued that there were no blogs on the nyt's opinion page, no matter how they were presenting stanley fish or whomever; they just called a column a blog, basically just edited it the same way, and so on. i'm not going to put any weight on the 'real' meaning of the term, but let's say the blog got co-opted and then died. that is ok, because post-collapse it might again become a space of eccentric voices with small audiences; it never stopped being that too: a verson of the diy zine. and it will remain one of the possibilities. at any rate, i've got no plans to stop.

 

How to kill an afternoon when you really don't want to...

Most of my writing appears over on Conspiracys are US.com, and I occasionally feel badly about that. When I recently read a bit about how the Je Suis Charlie thing was really a Mosad false flag operation to punish France for voting for Palestinian statehood in the General Assembly, I felt like sending the managing editor some new and improved tinfoil. However, I didn't. I like writing for and with nutcases; it appeals to my sense of the right of free expression. And, my bizarre background and sense of humor, of course. 

But sometimes thing just overload you. We spend so much time in today's world being bitchslapped by reality and media and what the fuck is that, that we end up confused, and disoriented, So, when I had nothing better to do, except read the comics on line which I have still to get to, I wrote this and out it up over at Veterans Today where the editorix will toss it up later; and over at the Defeatists. 

And in thanks to Crispin for letting me share a better class of wingnuts, here's some British Blues by someone who looks a lot better than Jeff Beck or John Mayall, Joanne Shaw Taylor. 

 

English Comedian Awakens Me from Dogmatic Slumbers

 

Not so long ago, a buddy of mine named Eric Garland tweeted that he didn't think most of Thomas Piketty's critics had read the book. I responded by asking if he had just learned about the nonexistence of Santa Claus. Eric, a somewhat anarchical economic analyst and bass player responded with "No Santa? Next you'll say no confidence fariy." 

But, his ironic comment about the critics and Piketty makes a great point. If you're reading this blog, you probably recognize the name, and have an idea about what the guy has established as a position. Accrued wealth accrues more wealth faster than labor...or, rich people get rich faster than workers.This results in imbalance and is not a positive factor. But, sheesh, it's a thick book and most of it is review of research and a lot of it is boring stuff about calvados and cheese production in Normandy or something -- is there a Powerpoint adaptation? 

Last weekend, John Oliver ranted for 13 hilarious minutes on his new TV show, Last Week Tonight about the problem of boredom. We have the collective attention span of gerbils. So, if you want to sneak something by us, do so in the most boring possible way. In the Senate and the House, they can use their rules to safely put those of us not working n the capital to sleep-deprived fever dreams in no time. With bureaucratic things like Net Neutrality, they can do it with discussions of rules. 

I have Oliver's piece and my thoughts on the mess available here. Short form, they want us to trust the broadband industry to take care of our interests. Sure, trust the bureaucrats (did you know the guy running the FCC is the former chief lobbyist for the Cable industry??) and the lobbyists because...Benghazi? 

still sucking chode

i've been writing eyeofthestorm/cheese it, the cops! for exactly ten years. i was hoping to get to a million page views by now, but it's 968,021 at the moment. in some ways, blogging kind of spoiled me for other writing; i more or less quit my syndicated column simultaneously (well, and newspapers went broke). like i always wanted to be an op-ed columnist so i could instantly comment on whatever. the meaning of 'instant' changed. plus you can't cuss in the los angeles times. sometimes i've been surprised not to be arrested, or have an angry mob show up here at harbold's school or wherever i was huddled/concealed at the time. 

i've felt burned out and repetitive at times or just left it there for a week or three, but sometimes i've on my own account done some very good blogging. one thing i love: write, then publish, then revise, then publish: it solves a problem i always had in newspapers and magazines: aw shit, now that i see it on the page...

anyway, thanks for reading and thanks especially to frequent commenters over the years (and of course the ol' crusader). and just remember that famous, prestigious stuff very frequently sucks chode: kennedys, for example; pablo picasso; james joyce; plato; the beatles; bob dylan; bruce springsteen; hillary clinton; neil gaiman; ludwig wittgenstein; u2; serious art music; willem de kooning; socialism; allen ginsberg; john ashbery; new york; 'literary fiction';  our heroic military men and women; being proactive; jay-z, kanye, beyonce, and kim; the italian high renaissance; neil young; gay aesthetics; the velvet underground; modernism; postmodernism; elizabeth warren; neuroscience; foodies; europe; and human evolution, which has brought us here and dropped us off. i do love many things too, as you must admit.

 

Looking into the abyss, inviting gawkers...

In which Crusader AXE links Charlies Estevez, Mel Gibson, Michelle Bachmann and Bob Dole to reflect Daniel Webster's theory that "God takes care of fools, drunks and the United States..." only not so well. 

 

Bitchslap a reactionary with me for the sake of your health

It's sad, but due to high student loans, exploding tuition costs, costs of text books and the rising pice of Ramen,  this is what our suffering graduate students go through in order to fund their education...well, that and sell sperm and eggs and organs and stuff...

http://madartlab.com/2012/10/02/creative-dissonance-episode-4-trampolarchery/

Now, on a vaguely related topic, I invite you to visit my last post over at Veterans Today which I mentioned here and cross posted at the Defeatists and Vets...the subject of Pussy Riot really dumbfounded some folks...who were already pretty dumb. I managed to offend the anti-semites, the anti-Bolsheviks, the pro-Russian orthodox, the anti-Solzhenitsyn capitalists and the anti-Zionists. Hurrah! A pick five...

The poor suffering Russian Church...which of course was totally subservient to the Czar, did a deal with Stalin and then continued with the bureaucratic-oligarchy of demented old men and signed on with Putin as soon as he showed up on the screen. 

So read or re-read the post but have fun with the comments. What I've found in my reading of various blogs is that a lot of them don't get a lot of comments. There are a lot of smart, informed and interesting folks who write and post over at Vets. However, the comments are far less diverse than the opinions of our readers. Crispin has had the rare success of actually attracting readers who respond and do so intelligently...you folks can be trusted to dangle few particles and not begin sentences with a preposition. In fact, some of you actually show familiarity with the subjunctive. And, beginning a sentence with a conjunction, you are not ignorant, race-baiting, anti-semites and reactionary fools. 

So, should one of the comments so move you over at Vets, please, comment back. I find that my habit of responding to comments produce more comments as well as responses. Of course, these people have nothing to do when they've patched their tin-foil hats, covered the windows to prevent the CIA black helicoptes from seeing them and Fox News has reverted to Laura Ingrahm re-runs and Vegematic-Pocket Fisherman-COMBO!!! infomercials. 

Have some fun with them. 

spam

you know, i actually pay typepad to host this blog, so i get irritated by the absolutely chronic spam in the comments. it's a constant struggle to get it out. it's like kiddieporn, kiddieporn. one of the items i just deleted promised 'children with disabilities.' sometimes it occurs to me that homo sapiens deserves annihilation.

blog design

update: i'm sort of in crisis mode as both my daughter's mom marion and my own mom joyce have been in thehospital the last few days. but i am listening!

obviously i am playing with the design, etc. just needing something new, in every possible aspect of life. tell me what you think, though it's still in process.

for real?

andrew sullivan endorses ron paul. now that is surprising. sullivan may or may not be a conservative or a republican. but he is also not not a libertarian.

roll

new blogroll item: the excellent possible experience (by a fearsomely sharp philosophy prof).

blog fixins

in response to some stuff from montag, i've made some changes for rss feeds (especially i'm trying again to title posts), reversed the order of comments, etc. if people have ideas for other changes (i know you want caps, lisa!) let me know. [email protected]

hey i've been blogging for quite some time: since late 2004, as a matter of fact. but anyway eyeofthestorm has gone over 750,000 lifetime page views. there have been some spikes lately. i should keep endorsing airstrikes here and there if i want more traffic: at any rate there were nearly 5,000 views on april 4 for whatever reason, and though the average over the whole life of the blog is 330, we've been doing quite a bit better in recent months (for a long time it was around 150-200). now a day at 800 or 1000 isn't unusual.

there have been about 3,500 total posts, 8,500 comments.

anyway, thanks for reading and commenting and stuff! i don't know what i'd do without this outlet; probably be even more obnoxious to the people around me. i'm sorry if it's gotten repetitive over the years; obviously i have my little hobbyhorses, limited zones of expertise and so on. but so many comments have been useful, sharp, creative, or gotten me thinking in different directions about different things. i'm not a person with a big group of close friends; this community means a lot to me.

sincerely,

crispy

admirable adam directs our attention to this extremely excellent anti-tax post on unqualified offerings.

just added aboniblog to the blogroll. john herman is an interesting philosopher: personal. original. and remarkably sensible.

ps i'm kinda proud of the most recent attack on quantum physics or hawking's use of it, below. i wonder if i could find someone inside that discourse who'd want to reply?

one reason the world should disintegrate politically rather than consolidate is because we need a much greater variety and many more experiments in sovereignty. the range of actual political systems in the world is mind-numbingly unimaginative. this is itself a problem with sovereignty, which often represents our supposed intelligence at its most banal; if there were a "general will," it would be, of course, an average will, a will with the funk averaged out.

check out this amazing blog dedicated to "new sovereignties": let a thousand nations bloom (mike gibson and patri friedman). they're calling their position "secessionism": well you might notice that i've often been on about balkanizing the world: many more countries would be a good start. more or less, from texas and alaska to kurdistan to the basque region to montenegro to tibet, i support every separatist movement everywhere.

there's a vague sort of picture out there according to which it is self-evident that ever-growing sovereignties are self-evidently desirable, until we end up with a world-state, run by al gore or jurgen habermas. but of course there are opposite forces pulling too: face the flanders, baby.