“Suck It Jesus” remarks from a not so funny comedian with a badly stretched face are not news, except in pointing out that Fox news reports it as such.
As for blog purity, there are very few blog purists out there these days, including myself. Having said that, the purer you are the more likely I am reading you. The pure attract me even as I dive into the realm of the tainted. Feel free to enjoy my nefarious journey.
Many bloggers, most with alternate non blogging lives, are trying to limit their time online in order to do work and get their other life tasks done. I assume some of them are having better luck than I. I always thought I had a modicum of self control. Wrong.
I am doing a fair amount of work at home over the next few weeks. I find my self control is not what I would like. I also find myself fascinated by the evolving social construct of social networks as they relate to bloggers. I set a schedule for myself today in which I was to stay off line until 1PM. I ran, did a rough draft of a proposal, drank a lot of coffee, wrote a second draft, and at 12.57 PM I went online.
Now why, so close to success as I was at that point, could I not wait that extra three minutes? Who knows. I only know that working in front of my home computer on full time basis would be a situation bathed in doom. The internet stokes the flames of capriciousness, flames I constantly try to to douse with a strict work ethic. As loathe as I am to admit it, I like the fire.
I have nothing to say about Britney Spears — wow aren’t you relieved. Nothing that is except the song is a catchy dance number, and I was disappointed to hear my formerly favorite paid to be liberal pundit Keith Olbermann get a chuckle out of a comment on her weight. Wait, oh right, it’s only certain fucked up individuals and causes that you care about right? Gotcha.
Catch up on what is going on with the Jena Six at Black Perspective Net and keep writing your media.
Don’t forget Darfur is an unforgivable hell on earth; one that China would like to forget while they suggest we have some fun and let the games begin.
Wow, so this is the first time I’m commenting…weird, since I read your blog constantly via feed. =) Anyhow, just wanted to drop a line saying that I tagged you to do the 7 P’s meme because I’m curious about your answers and think that they’ll be really insightful (if not humorous as well). Oh, and I checked out the webhost you recommended, siteground, and I really like it…I’ve decided to use them to self-host. Thanks!!!
Cooper,
You wrote:
“I also find myself fascinated by the evolving social construct of social networks as they relate to bloggers.”
You know, I’ve been noticing that myself, and wondering about it. I imagined myself very late to the party because I’ve really only been making efforts to work on my blog and write regularly since about June. Learning about MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog gave me a big boost, and I’m trying to be very thoughtful about my involvement in both: I have little use for crowds or big statistics unless they are the RESULT of my blogging rather than the motivation for it. So I add contacts and sites fairly slowly and carefully, wanting to be in it for the long haul and not for whatever mental spikes I get out of sudden surges in traffic. That’s hard some times of course. Anyway, what you said suggests to me that this belief I had that I had jumped in so late (which I’ve been getting suspicious of anyway) is false, and I’m kinda pleased to hear it.
Well… rather than suck up all your comment space, I’ll just say that I’m likely to explore some of these themes you mentioned here also. I AM fascinated by bloggers networks, by the fact that they exist and by the fact that they’re becoming an endemic part of world culture. There are so many angles I could look at it from and write about it, it’s almost overwhelming — like looking into the biggest prism I ever saw and trying to find the center.
Thanks so much for stopping by my site and leaving a couple more comments. I’m glad you took a look at the Magnum essay on September 11; I like the work they do there, for many reasons. There’s also an excellent one on Chernobyl; if you go to my site, I have “Chernobyl” listed under “Tags on del.icio.us” and there is a link from there. It’s stunning; it left me shaking.
As to blog purists … eh, I don’t know if I am one or not … but if I look like one, it’s because I’m still finding my way around and haven’t had time to break all the rules just yet. Glad you’re reading me anyway!
Bye for now!
Pure as the driven you are.
Your anthropology knee is showing.
I assume by pure you mean an undiluted blog with a single thrust: politics, cooking, pop culture.
I guess I fall into the tainted category. And proud of it!
I don’t know what qualifies as being pure these days. I take a look at some of the posts I wrote three years ago when I first started my site and I realize how much it has all involved.
Sometimes I worry that it will turn into a parody of itself and I will just be posting things, not because they’re of merit, but because I’ve always posted on a certain schedule.
I would just hate it to become the filler and nonsense
I know it could quickly become if I ever lose my diligence.
When you have a calling it is hard to ignore. I’m surprised you gutted it out that long, (as I sit here commenting at 8 am)… !
On the Olbermann chuckling, I don’t much care for the guy, so I won’t try and defend his actions, but we were just talking in psych class about how people have a tendency to laugh at things that make them uncomfortable. Did he seem uneasy? Or was he just being a stereotypical media meat head?
I can never work at home. If I’m writing, grading, working on any sort of outside project, I have to get out of the house. If I’m at home, nothing gets done. I applaud your self control, your dedication, and your 3-minute self-reward.
I work from an office in my home. This is a fairly new phenomena, I am just now getting the hang of it. i am looking for office space just in case.
I see you as fairly disciplined.
Blog purity, like any kind of purity, is overrated.
Keep the spirit pure.
Oh my favorite girl you are a woman now blogger/person – why did you hit on some of my favorite subjects?
I’m only letting myself comment on a few not-random blogs. used to have an amazing amount of self-discipline. There was nothing like working at home and pulling all-nighters so I could finish pre-deadline and I guess feel superior
Then I discovered the cruelest muse – blogging – it sucked me in and answered the need for immediate gratification
Every writer craves feedback and to deny that – well I envied one of my father’s friends for his success and it turned out he envied me for the feedback I would get. It turned out that most “real” writers I knew did
But I’m scared that I lost the true discipline I need for “real” writing. Which is why I don’t really touch blogging and social networks – though that would make a great thesis
Writing as opposed to blogging is solitary. it’s many hours spent not talking to others, not feeling the need to have five tabs open
I have to not care about my blog or care about the “new” enthused bloggers who ask me to guest post or whatever and when I refuse “call me out” in a very passive-aggressive (hate that term) manner and say that I could be one of the great bloggers if only.…Screw them I think, I need time to write and to have a life – and real writing leaves little time for that – blogging incessently leaves no time for anything and what does it get one? Other than meeting some great people?
I don’t do ads because it’s not worth the time for the small sums involved. I refused sponsorship because my blog is mine alone and I don’t want to be beholden. I guess it’s easier for me than for some others because I can afford to, but I do see too many people too money hungry in blogging and it just doesn’t happen unless you’re Darren – have of course totally researched this – people can’t make the amount of money they claim to for reasons that are too long to go into here
Blogging should be for fun and joy and it’s not for me now. I guess if I really wanted to I could do a money making blog, and might in conjunction with my next career if the book doesn’t work – but have to give it my all
Now that I have written a post on your comments once more – have to go back to my solitude
three minutes too soon is perfect, I applaud you for that
Joanne: Thanks Joanne, I will be over and take part especially since mojo likes to read things other than political namby pamby…
I read you via the reader too. That is the hazard of readers but so convenient.
I’m glad you popped in.
Dale:
Dale, my first venture into any kind of social network was because I contributing to an ongoing study at my school. I was never participatory on my blog log until this spring despite signing up last December. I think each person has to find a place they find useful, and or interesting, and the more focused parts of any network are I think the better they will do, although I have no idea about that in reality.
I was surprised to find some really good blogs over there while digging and am happy to have some of them on my blogroll currently.
I enjoy your blog and was happy to have found it and you know I’ll be over.
John: You sure it’s not the whole leg?
Sandra: That an untainted by link baiting, participating in communities with no real purpose in mind or maybe some vague purpose in mind, using ads, participating in memes etc.
MoJo: You are the picture of a purist mojo.
Dave J: *cough* I did notice that.
Now that you mention it it might have b een an uncomfortable chuckle but the words he used didn’t indicate it to be so.
Coyote: ha ha, I can say that I get more work in a coffee shop with my computer than I do at home on my desktop.
Jacob: The spirit, yes of course my spirit is pure but I am severely tainted. Works for me Jacob. It sounds like your business is growing, and you may need a regular size office anyway.
Pia: It is the thesis of many now I fear. I also have to say that although a blogger is a writer there is a distinct difference, for me, in a blogger like myself who blogs and therefore has to write to do so, and a writer like yourself who writes, but also blogs.
What is a blog purist? Je ne comprends pas.
I’m laughing at 12:57. I’m a 1:02 guy, but it’s the same obsession. I’d have been thinking about 1 from 12:32.
Yes, I did find it hard to believe Brit would get such a bad for being a normal sized girl. From what I HAD to see, since the remote batteries went sour, the Brit thing is overdone.
As far as resistance to doing the blog, I have no answers. Look: it’s like journaling, interacting in social discussions and befriending various people all at once. So it is meant to be addictive.
The fact you still run a bit — and do some work worthy of noting — makes you a little more controlled than say, me. (Can’t comment on others in this zero-one world.)
Self control: if you didn’t have it, it would be far more noticeable by those around you. And you would blog about it…in a negative way. Saying, “Why don’t people understand me?” Since you don’t, it says that you are very controlled in this pattern of behavior called blogging.
Twitney Spears is fair game for laughter. Her set on the MVA’s was so painful to watch that I simply had to change that channel. She’s given plenty of juice to those of us sometimes possessed of the poison pen. I suspect she really, no, really, enjoys the attention — even if a good bit of it is very negative. I am happy to oblige. I guess that puts me more in the pain-in-the-arse type of blogger than a purist. Whatever that is.
Cooper, I find more and more you’re a White lady after my own heart. (no racial condescension, I kid)
But for real, I just wrote a post yesterday (though I haven’t published it yet) about how I’m dismayed with the over load of pure celebrity and fashion blogging; not that I don’t think entertainment should be blogged about at all, but that so many people waste their time copying content from media take out all day when they have this platform, is dissapoint.
I’m also attracted to the more pure blogs, that’s why I keep coming here. And that fact that you keep linking me and my dash board keeps showing incoming traffic from your post
Thanks for the pub; and I’ll be drumming up Darfur more than lately after this Jena Rally.
“stoking the flames of capriciousness”… I love the poetry you exude. purity is the impossible dream; I admire your stretch goal. hey, in my busy RT life I met a woman yesterday whom I thought looked like a younger, pretty Britney and mentioned it to her… she was kinda surprised. hmm maybe it was just me. anyway, celebrityhood is a nasty prize for anyone and we should be thankful for our private anonymity. very few care if I’m overweight, DUI or otherwise delinquent. anyway, keep striving for purity and better luck next time with those last three minutes… dude, those are the important ones!
So many things I wouldn’t know if I didn’t read you. So many things you haven’t said.
If by blog purist you mean someone who writes a blog no one reads, that would be me. You left that land a long time ago.
If you mean something else, and I think you do, I wouldn’t worry about it. Three minutes is better than five. If the work was done it doesn’t matter.
I would like some flames of capriciousness to stoke.
Doug: Look in the mirror my tail wagging long eared friend. Not the looking glass…
Jason P: I so love it when people called me controlled.
SK: She is fair game for laughter — for those who want to bother laughing at an obviously troubled individual who has made some pathetic choices.
The issue here was her wieght and the fact she wasn’t in shape; it was mentioned all over the place, mostly by men. I would like to see the last time men sat around complaining about an over drugged male pop star carrying on an extra four pounds or commenting on the fact that his arms weren’t buff?
Yea it doesn’t happen. You know why it doesn’t happen?
Of course you do.
Yobachi: Original would be nice.
I will keep on the Jena thing until it is over, and it will be over. Unfortunately the injustices are rampant in this land of the …what? Oh yeah… blind.
tomawesome: t’is because I read Doug ‚and Pia, and Illyria, and a variety of other people who actually write, that I appear to have some kind of way with words. I am a sponge.
I think it would be horrible to be famous. I am tired of hearing it though, and men just need to shut up sometimes.
I know those last three minutes are my downfall.
Jake: I’ll send you some.….flames of capriciousness they are on sale this week.
Well admitted Cooper. I admit my online tendencies all the time. I am an onlineholic, spending at least 12 hours every day in front of my screen. that is if I am not reading my friend’s blogs until I hear the sprinklers start doing their morning job outside (that’s 3AM).
I have been connected to the web since about 1995 when I had my first (14,400kbps) modem. The web was a very immature environment back then but I could sense it in the air. It took me about 3 years to realize I don’t want to keep on doing what I was doing anymore (commercial copywriting for advertising agencies) and instead want to make my living out of the Internet and be online all the time.
The Internet brings all sorts of people to meet. But more important, it brings great minds together. Great minds like Cooper’s and like of some other folks here I have been reading comments from recently.
I truly believe a free Internet would change everything. A lot of bad stuff was allowed to happened through history because great minds where thinking apart. The internet can bring them all together and maybe save the planet. If anything is even capable of saving it in it’s current status, that is.
Cooper, another new design? I like it. And I love this post. You are absolutely right. It can become an addiction…not Britney…the computer online. Watch it.
And if you have many lives…many sides to yourself you’ll manage it all. Somehow. And you will. Cause you’re that good…that talented and that smart.
I’m finally back. Wait till you see some of the cool things I did and people I met with and worked with on this trip to Maui. I’ll be writing about it on my blog
Cooper, Congrats to you and good luck on the weeks coming up. Have you cheated yet with the idea of perusing other’s blogs not quite counting as compared to writing in your own? I managed to stick it out for nine hours on only one of the days I said I’d strictly work. But I did finish what I set out to do. Good thing, because I was brain-dead when I was done. Years of bringing work home and having to get it done has tainted me — so the distractions are lovely, knowing that I’ll still do what I have to do. Purist? Is there one anymore? The second someone calls themselves that, they’re suspect.
Off topic: Masterpiece theater? I never can say I’ve watched though I do watch PBS at times, Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley and NOVA.
The BBC world news is pretty decent usually. (I listen in the morning 5AM.)
Have a good one!
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Gil: Considering in past times I spent no time in front of the computer it almost unfathomable that I spend as much time as I do. Most of the time it’s on I am not really on it, but the fact I leave it on all the time and am always tempted bothers me some.
A free internet, and internet to places where it is yet to be, would change many things.
Ev: ha, ha , I’ve actually had this quite some time I think, at least a month. I will be over for sure.
Kelly: No I was really good about that the one day, today not so much, but then I left, went to a coffee shop and did some work on my laptop — the one without a wireless card. I obviously had some success with that.
Jason P: I love me some Masterpiece Theater
“…internet to places where it is yet to be, would change many things.” Cheers to that Cooper. agree. http://laptop.org for example.