Admittedly my urge to blog has been lessened these days, and facebook is just one of the culprits. What is the urge to blog anyway? Lack of fiber in the diet? Too much? The thought that you have something to say and a place to say it? The good news is while yes, I've been busy on facebook, I've also been busy finishing my novel. I know, I know, I've said this before, but this time I really mean it... book thermometer reads 120 degrees, which for meta-memoir ficktion hybrid is pretty damn delicious. So anyone out there want to publish it?
Writing a blog is always an endeavor of doubt. It is on the web but "unpublished." You haven't been recommended, edited, bound or paid, the things that most often convince people to read you. At first you wonder why you're wasting your time; but if you're like me, you fret about it for a moment, but you have other criteria to meet: actually only one: did you amuse yourself? I always thought that if I, at a minimum, amused myself, then I am absolved from answering the question, why do it? Why write a book for that matter or create anything? I have written a book. And only because an unexamined part of my psyche said I had to. I had no goal in mind, except of course world domination, ego inflation, gloating and riches beyond my wildest dreams, but those are surface things and don't answer the question with any depth. But is it amusing to skirb? I'm also happy to report (though I'm NOT A REPORTER as my Chron ID keeps reminding me) that the book finally, after years of tinkering, turns out to amuse me quite a bit. Is that narcissistic? Yes. Is it narcissistic to write it here? Yes again. But now I can recommend it to others, as amusing others is another driving force in me, class clown at heart.
But what of the skirblog? These bloggio tidbits, rants and raves exist somewhere between the book and the facebook; yet the little blips I post and read on FB also satisfy the urge to amuse and communicate, and I wonder, maybe that is enough? Why do I also need a blog? (I did briefly try Twitter but it didn't stick. Not because I don't enjoy the mundane as well as the profound in what small sentences people "tweet." In fact I love 'em, I just like 'em better on FB. Sorry, but yes, I think it's interesting when someone is eating ribs for dinner or buying a freakin' donut, or what they think about Obama or the police or injustice or when Obama or the police eat a donut.) I know a lot of you hate the whole idea of FB and Twitter don't you? You seem to be quite offended by the mundane-ities which have blossomed into "narcissism" to you. I'm not sure why this is so since you can much easier ignore them than not, but has probably more to do with feeling left out, which is hard when you're left out of something you don't even really want to do. But you shouldn't get mad, because railing against facebook makes you sound old and curmudgeonly for no reason. So don't get mad, just don't do it (Nike slogan for 2012), or better yet, sign onto FB and tell everybody why you think its "narcissistic," "self indulgent," "egotistical" and "boring." Then you'll enter into irony and that's always a good place. Plus you'll get responses and and comments and will find like minded curmudgeons who also hate facebook right there on facebook and you can form groups and makes quizzes and lists and have a great old time.
By the way, narcissism isn't a problem for me, The skirblog is the most narcissistic things I've ever done. Until FB that is...
But my narcissism is tempered with amazement and disbelief that anyone reads the blog. That you're reading it now is confounding to me and I mean that, I'm not trying to be self-depreciating, or get you to compliment me, I know there are those who read this regularly (prisioners) and enjoy it (my mom) and I'm damn crazy happy about it. But its a chunk of time that not even I have, I mean I don't read other blogs, (unless its yours of course). And lemme gloat about this: the skirblog just hit the 40,000 page view mark. Funny, this is about five years into it. There are youtube videos that get 1,000,000 views in one week. I forget all my web data stuff about hovers and click-thrus and eyeballs and stuff, but for part of my $4.95 a month, Typepad tallies my stats, and they have added up over the years. Mostly due to people still trying to find naked pictures of good ol' Rachael Ray. Nuff said on that subject by me over the past 40,000 screens, but about 20 people a day land on the skirblog. (some are looking for Rachael's boobies; others for "what kind of stove does Rachael Ray use on her show" (really, people, who want Rachel's stove? What the hell you gonna do with it, I know you aren't actually cooking anything); to the next most erroneous search that brings you to me: "upskir," when you were clearly looking for "upskirt," yet you gave me a click anyway, you lecherous old fucks I love you.
Last month I railed about the newspaper's problems and the crap going down there. It's still happening by the way, and nothing has been resolved. But what I didn't rail about was the need to accept when things need to change. A newspaper printed on paper isn't going to stay with us, we all know that, for many reasons, but it might surprise you that the major one isn't the internet in and of itself, it is purely one of profit margins: it is insanely expensive to produce and mass print a paper every day and deliver it; yet when it was one of the only games in town, it could still turn a profit by selling advertising. (which shows you how much money my overlords were actually making in their heyday, and why they are so reluctant to let it go); it's not that "paper" is so passé, or the job the newspaper does for the community is unneeded, its that three forms of advertising found the internet to be better and more efficient: recruitment, real estate, and automotive, classified advertising to be specific, my old and current stomping grounds. And this is ironic because in newspaper land, classified advertising was at the bottom of the status barrel -- the most underappreciated and overlooked department, historically staffed predominantly by women, it was given the fewest parties, the worst offices and equipment, lamest perks, and sparest recognition etc. Ha ha, but when classified went away to the Internet, it was an immediate and irrecoverable death knell. So I can't help laughing to myself a bit, having fought the classified wars, having seen the advertising caste system that existed at the paper, I can't help but to say it serves them right. All the attention that went to retail and national advertising left both paper and advertisers in the lurch. Retail advertisers now don't have an effective place to advertise, and they too are dropping like flies. Is something "better" coming newspaper wise? Probably not better, but cheaper, more efficient for the producer, not necessarily the consumer, and hopefully does a similar job.
We don't initially decide what disappears and what stays, yet can have an ultimate vote by our acceptance or rejection. We have given production of our most cherished "things" to corporations whose bottom line is always its bottom line, but they are often wrong. Some examples:
Camera film - did something better come along with digital that warranted its demise? I might be really sad about it losing camera film, but is my sadness nostalgia, or misguided because something good was replaced by something better? There's a little bit of both. Mostly taking pictures has become cheaper and much more portable, so I count that as good. But pictures have also become ultra disposable, rarely printed or shown in frames or albums. So we don't have to be so careful about "wasting film" that we had to pay to buy and have developed, but we also don't take the kind of care we use to take. Not that you can't take excellent photos with your phone or pen or lapel, in fact, maybe digital demystified the "art" of photography, and once and for all brought it down to the level of mass amusement and communication. But I still feel bad that the hard copy is harder to copy. Printing and displaying an actual photograph is now harder and of lesser quality, and most of our pictures exists only on our computers. Things were gained and lost.
The myth of progress. Often the new thing seems better but after time doesn't stick, like the "death" of vinyl records whence came CDs. Vinyl records certainly died an initial mass death when CDs hit the scene, but they did not disappear, and over the years they have had various resurgences and renewed interest. And ironically, due to digital music, CDs will most certainly disappear, but not vinyl. I doubt when CDs do go bye bye they will ever return. Play a vinyl record today and you will fall in love again with the lovely sound of it and you'll know for sure that CDs were never totally better. They may have been better for storage and transmission but for the important thing, sound, no. They also failed on the "thinginess" factor, a factor that people want to discount all the time, but is undeniably there. We love tactile objects with their accompanying smells, flaws, textures and visuals, because we are sensory, tactile creatures, no? I have my own, rather long and unsubstantiated theories about the sounds of vinyl records, which have something to do with the physical mechanisms that are our ears, and how they are built (evolved) to hear "analog" or physically produced sounds. Yes, all vibrations coming from a speaker are physical, but a needle revolving around a disc inside a groove is something we are simply wired to appreciate. No, it isn't as "pure" or maybe even as accurate as digital, but we appreciate it more, or in a sense "hear" it better. That's why vinyl may never go away, until our ears evolve a digital sensibility. God help us.
Camera film? Maybe it will also come back, maybe people will pine for the "warmth" of film. I know that movies have not really been made "better" by digital, its just cheaper now to do more grandiose things. Is that bad? No, but better? Not sure. A lot of film- films have a richness and texture that is absent from digital films. Look at the Star Wars progressions. I used to wonder if people raised on digital ever missed the analog? But my son hears and sees the differences clearly and that's enough of a focus group for me.
We can lament things because we are uncomfortable with change, or lament things that were honestly better and went away. Will books be next? Probably not until a truly better way to read comes about and satisfies all the aspects to reading we love including the aforementioned thinginess, Jeff Bezos and the Hearst Corp, etc, often fail to realize that the total reading experience is more than just comprehending words, having words fed directly to our brain. A lot of it is ineffable: browsing the bookstore (first casualty of book "progress"), our favorite chair or spot, the right lighting, flipping pages, smells of paper, textures, progress marked by a dogear or bookmark. Maybe they should make the Kindle smell like a book. Even our fondest futurists like Gene Roddenberry had books as treasured items in the future. Even a forward thinking, tech embracing, man about town like your humble narrator prefers to buy books in shops rather than online, and this from a person who recently dumped all his CDs and cassettes in lieu of digital, but cherishes and plays his vinyl collection.
My dad, skirblog Sr has seen a lot of change in his 80 years, and he seems pretty non-plussed by it all. Like he doesn't walk around going "holy shit look at this Internet, just think I had no TV when I was a kid! Or freak about about his flat screen tv, palm pilot, digital picture screen, etc. He's even trying to be on facebook, but only has two friends, my sister and me. We had a party for him last month, at my aunt's house in Pittsburgh. In her li ving room she still has a an antique floor console radio that she has owned for at least 40 years of my memory, and who knows how far back it goes before that. I'm pretty sure it was used as a radio for a long time, it did work when I, as a youngster, and my young cousins used to jam all the buttons and pretend it was some kind of scifi computer or device. Now it's a beautiful object - polished wood, curvy design, bone pushbuttons, and a soft yellow glow from its tubes and indicators. Yes, it would have been appropriate to dispose of this when transistors came around, shit radios became hundreds of times smaller and better sounding, but they didn't trash it because it wasn't "just" a radio! It had a feel and a smell and a place in somebody's life.
So will the blog go away or be usurped by the newer and better? Probably will kids, There isn't really anything too concretely "good" or "better" about a blog as opposed to other internet communications, probably the same with FB and Twitter. I will say that FB is doing a few things that neither blogs or myspace or anything else has managed to do very well or efficiently: connect people in more than one-way "conversations." What I get from FB is response. Profound and mundane to my own mundane and perhaps mundane-plus. Feedback! Actual dialogue often springs up outta nowhere like a leak in a pipe. And even in many fruitful cases of my own direct experience, the connection advances to meeting face to face, a lunch, a dinner, drinks. That's a pretty amazing, noble little app, if it can accomplish that.
But I blog on for now. Perhaps the death throes of a dying form.
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