Notes From A Burning House

If the hosts weren’t free, I probably would never have started blogging.  I get enough pleasure out of it that I would not paying a little bit of money if I had it to spend.  As it is, I don’t, and I am getting what I pay for.

A few minutes ago I attempted to log in to MySpace.  After typing in my email address and password and watching the entire Godfather trilogy waiting for MySpace to accept the login, the screen flashed the following message:

You must be logged in to do that.

Which makes me wonder if the U.S. government has taken over MySpace.

*     *     *

I am actually somewhat partial to Friendster’s blog.  Visually it is easier on the eyes, I think.  On the other hand, the editor has bizarre quirks.  Heaven help me if I incorporate the name of a geographical location.  As soon I hit ‘preview’ it automatically separates the names of places into their own individual lines, destroying my paragraphs and leaving the punctuation marks strewn below like children’s toys left on the stairs.  I have not found a way to persuade the editor not to do this work for me.  I then have to re-edit at least one time to correct all of its, um, assistance. 

On the good days, it accepts my corrections.  On other days, I have actually re-written my sentences in order to avoid the editor’s quirks.  Professional news writers deal with that problem anyway - but not on their personal blogs, for the love of Circe. 

The MySpace blog editor is slightly less of a hellcat, but it has strange habits of its own.  It likes to eliminate quotation marks, apostrophes, and ellipses.  I must ‘edit’ at least one time, go through very carefully, and replace each and every one of them. 

Some cultural genome is sending an impulse to my brain making me think that this is the natural course of a free service, and I might do better to pay a little money in exchange for more reliable service.  A sweet idea but the principle is not guaranteed in practice - I could very well end up paying for what I am currently getting gratis.  While feeling like a bigger fool, to boot (and to reboot, rather often). 

Gloriously, I had a creative day yesterday involving words on paper.  As long as my eyes don’t go, and a tsunami doesn’t soak the books, the technology is reliable.   Met my friend/conspirator in arms/creative partner Mr. Nelson for brunch at one of our Los Feliz hangouts.  It turned into an entire working day of creative work when an idea hatched over scrambled eggs and coffee in a loud room with children uproaring mayhem (and hemming upmay and upping the mayroar while they were at it) segued into an expedition to Skylight Books to procure research material (and some mulch), and a day at Nelson’s apartment to where beer went in and ideas came out. 

When the technology is working more steadily, and the banner ads aren’t making so much noise, I might gather my thoughts and tell you about them.  In the meantime, I’m working on them offline.  In the spirit of a Hollywood pitch, where familiar movies are combined to convey a "concept," I can say it is something like Aristophanes’s Peace combined with Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi and performed by Cirque du Soleil.  (And there’s gotta be a part for me somewhere -perhaps Lady Ubu in a fat suit and kabuki makeup.) 

Wikipedia.org has a great article on Alfred Jarry - look him up.  Note his resemblance to Johnny Depp.  Peculiar fellow.  A very peculiar fellow indeed.

I should talk!  And so should you.  Let’s talk soon.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.