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Michael considered fate at 13:14   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

If I were not lazy, if I were unemployed, if I had the sort of motivation that gets mountains moved..

I would regal you with pictures of my mighty mullet. I would have a digital camera and I would have a webhost with gads of bandwidth even though I would barely be able to cover rent. I would take pictures of my home town - ones you would actually want to see even though you've never heard of the place and couldn't care less - and I would post them up every day in a sorted collection. They would be presented to you in a format you've never seen before but it would be instantly accessible and intuitive. You would move from one picture to the next, and back, and then jump forward three and the interface would be so smooth you wouldn't even notice it.

Like Rum and Moxie.

I would write more too - and about things you want to read about. I would tell you what it is like to careen through the ether with a monkey as your copilot and Wagner blasting over the loud speakers.

Reading this web page would be like watching master piece theatre while listening to the latest William Gibson on audio book tapes.

And cookie monster would be there. Alistair Cookie. If anyone ever got that joke *please* let me know.

*sigh*

But I'm not that person, I am lazy. I am employed which means I have to spend a good amount of time procrastinating over that work as well as over this work and other work too - like hanging out with friends who aren't worth it sometimes and picking my nose in public with no one noticing (that's hard work!).

You get this instead. Crap about what was - could be - might be once you're gone. I really don't know why you keep coming back. Some day you will shuffle off your mortal coil. You will die and your friends will gather and get drunk (because a funeral is a great excuse) and you will be burnt to a crisp or lowered six feet under or even eaten by the fish if you were really naughty... and that day.. that very hour.. this site - morphed into a barely recognizable house of content and extravaganza - will actually be good. You will miss it.

I will too.

People wonder why it's so hard to stick to the original. Everyone complains... and I mean *everyone* complains about movies not following the original. We complain that it was true to the true story - which is blasphemous since that little boy really *did* die of cancer even if he got better in the movie - and we complain that in the book it was explained more concisely. But everyone does it. You think Homer told a good story? Homer didn't tell nothing - he just learned how to write his name on a piece of papyrus - the rest is history.

My senior year of high school - so many years ago - I published a newspaper. I called it a newsletter - the Didactic Reporter. I was cool because I could use big words. If you asked me back then I would have told you I was cool because I could use a dictionary, which at the time seemed like quite a feat if you took my classmates as a barometric. In this letter, which I published three or four times, I derided the administration for poor execution of policy, poor policy development, and even lack of educational standards. I shat on my classmates - calling them sheep and telling them they were a headless mob, destined to flop about in the mud like a mud worm cut for bait.

The first issue was a leap for me and I grimaced as I handed it out to random people. I had a theory that people wanted a voice, that they wanted to expose and express and generally shit on everyone else. They wouldn't care that they themselves got shat on, I guessed, since it was essentially all in good fun.

And I turned out to be mostly right. The kids took it as decent social commentary. They read it and it was discussed in the halls and the ideas were passed around - inflated - deflated - agreed upon - and disapproved of. But it got people thinking and moving and looking sideways instead of always frontways and backways. Some of the teachers got a good chuckle and so I kept it up. I wrote one major diatribe every issue and filled the rest with pseudo-political cartoons and cheap tricks on how to scam the soda machines.

A brief run in with the Principal and her henchmen and things were chopped down to size. My First Amendment right was challenged and the word Slander was thrown about (improperly) and in the end I took the high road even though I didn't want to. They couldn't understand that what I had done was a far cry from illegal. They couldn't understand why I would want to question the decision making process in an effort to improve. It wasn't to improve, in their minds, but to stir up trouble and make enemies. That's all kids want anyway, right? Make a mess of things.

Should these people have been running my school?

In the end I handed the keys over to an underclassman. "I want to take over the paper" he said, promising to maintain it's radical edge and to always question the status quo - to always try for a better result.

I read one issue from that year and it was more bland than a british dinner. He'd compromised what I did. My closer friends heartily agreed that he had failed but no one, not a one, stepped forward to lift the desecrated flag back to it's lofty position. They all continued to march to the same step and from their spots within the ranks the gave sidelong glances at me and winks of knowledge before snapping their heads straight forward, back to attention.

It is hard to stick to the original.. to maintain.. to produce the same level of quality and integrity. Maybe things are getting better or maybe they are getting worse.. but things never stay the same. It's all part of the process.

Bunk. asshole shoulda kept up the Didactic.