i havent updated my sidebar of links in ages. its so outdated its basically election 04 retro. i blame laziness and an extremely/embarrassingly recently-acquired feed reader. if you feel i should link to you, then suggest it. its not as blogwhorey as this massive, glowing url with a video attached to it.
i cant believe i just got so bored i started trolling.
i dont care about the lack of readers, but i am extremely despondent given the fact everyone who reads my blog and chooses to troll me sucks at it and cant do it without bringing up their shriveled little wangs or the fact i dont think we crackers have it all that rough.
if you need tips on trolling, i would like to suggest plato's republic (an entire book on the socratic trolling method) or the peloponnesian war (esp. speechby the corinthians)
i am also shaking my head and fist and tin of anthrax at anyone who is so goddamn clueless about the intarwebs that they think political blogs ought to turn down the vitriol. politics makes people assholes, the anonymity of the internet makes people assholes, and combined this just produces a large cloud of assholicus maximus that hangs over the public sphere like the stench over a bathroom stall.
it has been suggested that i start group blogging with one of my friends. this dude can be a deeply aggravating centrist and i think it will be fun for everyone if piles of posts of me arguing with someone else were prominently displayed auf der intarwebs. what is your opinion on group blogs? should i just continue screaming into the ether?
(ps im not going to follow any of this advice, id just like to hear it)
so, for a while there, i wasnt feeling the "joie de post" and thus did not scrawl much. living in the west end for a week had me within walking distance of so many 24 hr establishments that i didnt really have to resort to blogging. also, i had this one visiting, so that occupied a fair bit of my time. this one returned to canada, so forgive me for temporarily turning my focus inward and not posting on the throne speech or anything.
also, some pawn emailed me asking about why i have to swear on the internet and dont i know its lazy and uneloquent. at least they didnt bring up my infrequent adherence to punctuation and complete rejection of capitalization. still, im from the generation what grew up with 50+ tv channels, the pressure to join one of many subcultures (more to choose from than rocker/mod, hippie/punk), and started usin them internets mighty early. ive been boiled to a formless, gelatinous mass in the pot of this personal identity-driven zeitgeist. where am i going with this? see, as far as i know, there really is something for everyone in terms of media. where the msm fails to stimulate, someone else picks up and starts up their blog. i really do believe that whether its catholic sex tips, msm news with more swearing, langley politics, there is something for everyone out there (especially if youre bourgeois north american).
so in conclusion - dont like what you read? dont email me. change the fucking channel!
the canadian political blogosphere is in an interesting trolls-and-flamewars epoch of its existence. due to my largely shitty online behaviour, some people appear to be angry at me, choosing to manifest their anger via hatemail. this doesnt work, largely because all hatemail is summarily forwarded to friends and results in a hearty round of lolz and guffaws. another trend in the blogosphere has been to out people and put their true identity online. as 80% of my 12-or-so readers know me irl, this wouldnt really be a problem. uber hax may break my pc, but theyll never hurt me, know what im sayin.
if you have a problem with me online, thats just my internet persona. actually, im pretty much the same irl. haha. damn. its not that im proud of my faults, its just that we are all a little bit of scum wrapped around a little bit of a desire to live socially.
lets stop debasing ourselves, kids. this is stupid.
full disclosure - yes, bza is a treasured member of the burnaby wing of my cabal. he has commented here a few times and has decided to start his own blog, so check him out. he needs something to look forward to in life besides schoolwork and being stuffed with left leaner ndp pizza slices from romano's pizza.
the internet is so fast, that this year in review meme is already spreading even though its only dec 9th. the first lines from my first post of each month:
january: it will be held at the chan centre, at noon on wed, jan 5th.
february: i'm a politcally-clueless idiot with an aesthetically-motivated aversion to capital letters and yet i get more readers than him despite the fact he regularly posts more interesting things than i do, including the best post ever (on howard dean and the dnc).
march: according to a story in the globe and mail, the young
liberals got spanked by a few people over their "it's the charter,
stupid" buttons printed for the upcoming convention.
april: gomery = the captain ... canada's stupid obsession with a stupidly-named blogger -
im not linking to the
website i alluded to in the title cos i respect the publication ban
even though the blogosphere has made a mockery of it.
may: the ubc mechanical engineering prof behind the lovely online stv simulation at bc.demochoice.org is now trying to organize a simulated election to be held on the
streets of vancouver with names of real candidates on the ballots to raise stv awareness.
june: tim murphy actually called the liberal party "a welcoming mat that has a lot of nice comfy fur on it" on the grewal tape.
july: as a skytrain commuter, i spend all of five minutes
underground from burrard to stadium station, where the train pops out
and passengers can enjoy the lovely views of east van, burnaby
(represent, yo), new west, and surrey.
august: so terasen is being bought by texans, kinder morgan to be exact.
september: the deuce with martin, and all the politics-playing that is going on with katrina. pierre bourque serves up a steaming hot serving of pablumesque indignation and so does robert mclelland.
october: dear vancouverites, learn to be better filmgoers -
so, my reason for not updating this thing or commenting on your lovely blogs is the vancouver international film festival.
november: basically, the past little while has been a round-up of
stupid shit. i cant sit around and scoff all day long, im tired of
that.
december: cbc canada votes 2006: your blogwatch is lame
not actively lame, but passively lame.
this has been a boring year.
not actively lame, but passively lame. its passively lame, because you discuss "blogs and the mainstream media" purely in terms of kate mcmillan's small dead animals. its a part of the canon of influential political blogs in canada, and i hit up sda on a regular basis.
but why discuss how 'bloggers' feel about the msm by quoting someone who is pretty polarizing? furthermore, as far as most bloggers (besides the punditocracy and journalists) go, sda-lady has had way more airtime on the msm. furthermore, you just referenced a post where she discusses how irrelevant the msm and its ivory tower commentators are by tearing a news article apart. sure, sometimes people do policy documents, but most blog posts wouldnt be written if the msm hadnt published something attention-getting.
yes, id like to throw you the hypothesis that most bloggers dont mistrust the msm as much as they claim to. both of the biggest news aggregators in canada (bourque and nealenews) are frequented and linked to just as much, if not more than, the big blogs. though some blogging can be an orgy of hyperlinking one another, most posts i encounter refute or highlight msm news items hosted online. discussing actual blog content seems to be adequately addressed by the fine art of commenting and replying.
bloggers need the msm because the blogosphere's discourse is parallel to whatever the msm throws at us. the nice thing about getting one's msm news via blogging is that the variety of sources linked paints a more holistic portrait of the media market than just picking up the paper stuffed into your mailbox on a daily basis or flipping between the same tv channels youve always ordered. blogging is fun because nobody on the bus wants you to start blurting out why policy is effed right up or why politician x is a tard, but people on the internet like receiving your rants at their leisure.
perhaps sticking a queen's student on "quote some blogging tories out there" blog detail is some cbc attempt to win right-wing readers who mistrust the cbc, which is clearly and undisputably the media wing of the lieberalano$
am i the only person who finds the idea of the "lesser scandal" kinda funny? i think 'lesser' and 'scandal' are two of the most hot button words in canadian discourse.
you can click for a larger version if youre not into squintage.
sometimes, people think theyre engaging in sheer pwnage of dippers, but theyre actually trolling. i, on the other hand, was just tfading.
update: antonio, dont bother calling my cell to bitch. it rang and i got in trouble. clearly, if im posting, im either a) experiencing insomnia or b) at work. see, im not entirely northerner.
hey everyone, i won an anal. yes, another blogger has just bestowed me with the honour of anal.
yeah, im not doubting the fact most of youse are sporting age-weathered peenees of various sizes, but come on. i get a prize for not having a dick or capitalization? this reminds me of the time they said they would give out prizes at the teddy bear picnic in kindergarten and i spent all this time making my bear look pimp and the teacher just gave one to everyone, even the dumbass who brought a barbie just to show off that she had the new one from the teevee.
ok, fine, im just pathetically grateful for the link. damn. +10 points for slagging perennial douchebag and scourge of greater vancouver, matthew good.
a communist and spam on one thread. we will miss you, philly c 2005. looking forward to philly c 2006.
id like you all to know that i am in the running for "best moonbat blog" at the small dead blog awards. i dont know what a moonbat is. i tend to avoid blogs that use the word. i think that makes me a moonbat. come on, you dig my token pinko behaviour!
i nominated myself and i only have five votes counting myself on one computer. also, my blog is incorrectly labelled as "ainge" instead of lotusland. as if ainge is bigger than lotusland!
can you, like, go vote for me, now? so maybe people will realise this place is called LOTUSLAND, dammit. ainge is mortal! lotusland is forever!
p.s. sasha, you have to vote for me like at least 50 times per day before i take you back. otherwise, it's me and the broomstick 4 LYFE.
dude, you just left? did you get yourself in trouble? are you in engineering and have 7 classes or something? are you whipped by an anti-blogging girlfriend?
YOU CANT JUST LEAVE ME HERE LIKE THIS!
i need some more new blogs. i know i have a big, fat, non-partisan blogroll to pick at, but i want some kind of quality guarantee. i want blogs that do research. blogs with a bitchy slant. blogs by theory buffs.
i would like not to be bored. new blogs ive been frequenting have left me dismayed. how could a vanity press yield such pap?
id list some blogs i loathe, but i think that would be mean. i wouldnt give two shits if someone told me my blog was terrible, because im aware of the state of this url, but i dont want to cause the lamer denizens of the blogosphere to call the waahmbulance.
i have a question for bloggers and commenters alike - do you socialize with people you only know in the blogosphere?
last night, i met commenter bza for the first time. we went downtown for, erm, refreshments, then to casa gelato (136 flavours or something - i had plum pear jasmine along with chocolate macadamia), then to star wars, accompanied the entire time by my good friends creative dissent and commenter fidel. i fell asleep during the film. the last thing i remember is the chancellor using some kind of hegelian dialectical justification for joining the dark side, citing the inevitability of the empire rising again as jedi rule ebbs and flows.
so, youre all cordially invited to hang out with ainge lotusland.
some people (cough. this geek. cough) find this class of post completely obnoxious. generally, i dont blog that much about my personal life here (hello, this aint livejournal), but id like to issue a light/no posting warning.
see, ainge has two jobs. two days a week, she plays receptionist at a law firm, and two days a week, she updates a web catalogue for a vancouver business. then, we have three days of summer courses. youve noticed, im certain, that i have access to sweet, forbidden, enthralling WORK BLOGGING at both jobs. furthermore, school is full of blog-rich computers.
what im trying to say is that the hiatus may come into effect or may not, and it is entirely contingent on my desire to slack off.
now, i must go upstairs and shower and comb my hair and do all those other things i should have done hours ago, so that my invited guests dont find me in dishevelled pyjamacrati mode.
ok, sometimes political bloggers can forget that the emerging pyjamacrati punditocracy isn't the entire blogosphere. a lot of blogs out there belong to creative writers who thrive on readership, depressed teenagers, and quasi-thirtysomethings who regale other technohipsters with tirades about thai restaurants, ipods and other trappings of a newly-acquired disposable income. yes, that, and the foibles of single life. oh, and poignant insights on, like, everything due to watching leftista documentaries or fight club or waking life or reading the back of the genealogy of morals.
(i think the description of the technohipsters warrants a vomit break. go ahead.)
anyway, it's all about the political blogging, innit? yeah, back to my e-crack habit! i'm sure we've all noticed a trend in the canadian poliblogosphere: the formation of cliques, a great canadian tradition dating back, to, er, the chateau clique. there are the well-organized blogging tories, who kinsella and mclelland feel are a cpc liability given the party logo they affix to their sites (who knew those two would be looking out for the good of the cpc, heh). then we have the progressive bloggers, who are non-partisan, yet liberal (bo-ring! ha, kidding. really.) the blogging dippers and the non-partisans (very wtf, but i like the idea of a non-party crew) have also jumped on the trend, not wanting to be left out of the opportunity to network with like-minded homies and bolster traffic.
i think don at revmod summed this fad up best when he said (and im paraphrasing cos curiously, i cant find the post, only this line on bear604) "I don't think the Canadian blogosphere dividing itself into teams is a positive change." i don't think i need name brands to decide what is worth reading. whenever i read a labelled partisan blog, my prejudices take over - cognitive closure to the max! it takes me one second rather than the usual five to discern the author is a freelance partisan hack and not some witty, poignant joe schmo (ie, the romantic ideal of the blogger).
granted, marxian critical theorists such as robert cox would side with bear604, stating that this sort of political discourse thing works best when we stop being naive and universalizing under the pretense of objectivity and everyone's concealed purpose is laid bare.
perhaps this stage in political blogging is inevitable, if one tweaks robert michel's iron law of oligarchy to apply to bloggers and not political parties. broadly speaking, he stipulates that a political party type organization consolidates and evolves into an oligarchical structure over time.
(italicized text stolen from dadalos)
1. Oligarchic tendencies in large democratic parties are, to a certain degree, also caused by a lack of participation on the part of many citizens. Only a small minority of those voting and sympathizing with a party are prepared to become members. (the rest will blog about thai food and ipods)
2. Certainly, the necessity for executive officials, the superior knowledge of the party leadership and the rampant specialization of politics bring about a certain degree of independence for the party apparatus. (big blogs and blogrolls boost traffic in a sphere where a wider readership means greater influence/power. also, party brands enable bloggers to rapidly reach a target audience, since political values are popularly understood/conveyed along party lines.)
3. An improvement in the way in which opinion is exchanged within parties for the purpose of reducing hardened party structures is just as necessary as increased mobilization of party members. (or so affiliated bloggers seem to believe)
i haven't been asked to roll with any of the established crews, nor do i necessarily plan to. id be more likely to affiliate myself as a student, political science major, female, or vancouverite/british columbian than politically... but, if the critical theory pundit in my brain convinces me otherwise, so be it.
i hate posts that go "wow, i actually got hits today because kinsella/instapundit/some other big fish blog linked to my post! wow, i got a lot of hits! oh this INTERNET is such a funny place that way."
stop this. now.
in other news, burquitlam has a green candidate. yay carly travers!
this is a fun idea... let's participate. it's better than studying for history, bien sur.
Bloggers on bloggers:
(inspired by this post by declan)
i've often toyed with the idea of doing grad research on blogs and politics, partly cos it's interesting and partly cos i dick around the blogosphere when i'm supposed to be doing work and wouldn't it be nice if i could turn that into a degree the way i turned my favourite hobbies (european film, continental philosophy, and art history) into a second major in european studies.
of course, i'll probably keep writing about international relations theory because i'm an obscurantist who delights in the methodological obsession of the third debate and constructivism. moreover, i find it hard to come up with original perspectives on blogging because of how rapid the exchange of ideas is. on any given day, 1/4 of the blogosphere is probably blogging about blogging and the media is following suit. most of the time, everyone's making the same claims. any overarching conclusions i make about blogging might become obsolete mid-sentence. heh.
one thing i think could be investigated academically is analysis of the blogosphere as an organ of participatory democracy, applying organizational theory to discern whether the blogosphere will evolve into (or has already become) an oligarchy rather than the widely-diffused grassroots movement people generally perceive it as. then i could analyze the 'oligarch' blogs vis-a-vis the mainstream media and see whether or not they have similar capital and strategies or whether new media rules are emerging. maybe i can title it "la politique du bla bla bla" as a shoutout to trudeau.
(of course this might be a stupid idea altogether and i should do more reading in organizational theory before planning to use it in hypothetical research since simply taking 300-level policy and governance courses doesn't exactly make me well-read or an expert.)
there was a request by the moderator of the livejournal canadian politics community that people keep it clean. this was my comment:
interpret this as partisan hackery if you must, but i think we non-cons
have to cut the conservatives (in the general sense of the word, not
referring to canadian conservative party members) some slack given the
vitriol they regularly consume on 'fair and balanced' fox news. yes,
the socialists have "biased" rabble.ca and the centrists have "biased" warren kinsella - sources which might encourage us centre/lefties to believe that our opinions are indeed right, but
its not like we have a 24 hour news channel that tells us its ok to
speak of our political opposites without according them any respect.
how are people
who have a regular diet of ad hominem bullshit as news expected to
recognize when something is intellectually vapid as a rebuttal or just
plain out of line?
yes, cnn is allegedly liberal-leaning, but
the only show where spewing epithets is encouraged is a) on the
chopping block and b) hosted jointly by a liberal and conservative. and
newsworld and cbc tell us its ok to be hard on america... but thats not
so much an ideology as an issue of nationalism.
so in conclusion, expecting someone who listens to bill o'reilly and his ilk all day to debate in a respectful fashion is about as pointless as expecting a kid not to learn profanity on the playground.
my dad had some kind of conversation with a well-known canadian blogger about blogging. despite being friends with this dude and trusting him, my dad remains blogskeptic and quasi-blogphobic. (the course im taking on the politics of the european union makes me prone to create jargon)
im going to preface this anecdote with a brief overview of my dads relationship with computers and the media. my dad is one of those guys who can access remote desktop functions (because a tech dude showed him how) yet has to yell my name multiple times for assistance every time he needs to shut off the computer. my dad's news diet consists of major canadian dailies, the vancouver sun, the national, and ctv. people have emailed him blog posts, but he hasnt delved into blogging as a source of news discussion. he doesnt even navigate to paul wells' blog-reading-for-beginners blog.
he equates blogging with the whole "there are rumours on the internets" idea - a bunch of soapbox opinions by people unencumbered by journalistic integrity or fact-checking. he wonders whether this blog thing is taking us to some kind of scary land where people accept mad raving as news.
most people who have turned to blogs to supplement the mainstream news cycle think the mainstream news has little to no regard for journalistic integrity or fact-checking. moreover, mainstream news has a tendency to become somewhat of a punditocracy anyway with the liberal use of debate shows/panels. personally, i have no qualms with blogging replace on-air ranting. in addition to providing opinion pieces, bloggers are doing a decent job reporting as well. bloggers 'on the ground' have garnered quite the following reporting during events such as the ukraine election crisis and in the wake of the iraq war.
in theory, i trust blogs because theyre organic and dont presume to be anything more than they are. to paraphrase robert cox, blogging is always for someone and some purpose - there is no concealed ideology and everything is laid bare. i have this romantic ideal of the blogosphere as the habermasian ideal speech situation, although lyotard's critique does apply given that access to the internet/literacy in general isnt universal, further excluding traditionally marginalized groups.
in practice, we have yet to reach an ideal speech situation, mostly for the reasons supplied by lyotard in his critique of habermas. the blogosphere tends to mirror the conventional news cycle in subject, method, and perspective, if not in tone. for the most part, bloggers as a community have tended towards constructing a parallel rather than alternative source of information as many posts are reactions to items already in the conventional news cycle. with the use of links and trackbacks, bloggers also create their own news cycle, which tends to veer towards the trivial/minutiae, or what i like to call 'meme news' (see whizgate, kerry's flower, yglesias and the reality-based community).
when blogs are mentioned in the commercial print/tv media, they are usually those belonging to columnists, professors, or people who are already well-established in the public sphere. warren kinsella's blogging on the gomery inquiry represents another facet of blogging, his posts injecting more detail, talking points, and controversy into the public sphere than the mainstream media outlets. in a sense, he is received as an on-the-ground blogger in this scenario.
this whole blogging trend is also an extension of sorts of our hunger for something that isnt staged. people crave candid, real human reactions so badly theyve started pretending reality tv is actually real and unedited to satiate this need. my fathers fear that people just arent media savvy enough to handle the deluge of ranting is kind of simultaneously bolstered and countered by the way people receive 'reality' and interactive media.
'rumours on the internets' idea bolstered: on one hand, people might reify blogging to the point where the medium and its messengers arent questioned as rigorously as they should be. this is certainly evident in the way people approve of the right-wing bias on fox news or the left-wing bias of rabble.ca. maybe bloggers are facilitating a more partisan, divisive approach to discussing current events.
countered: partisan and divisive isnt necessarily a bad thing. to return to robert cox, we are possibly more media savvy if we seek out a range of opinions as opposed to relying on the mainstream press to "impartially" address issues we find relevant. (that being said, this points strength is questionable if people are only seeking opinions that fit their ideological standpoint). being conscious of bias and ideology is more honest than expecting neutrality from rational actors in the media who ultimately serve the interests of the hand that feeds them.
in conclusion, blogging is good in theory. in practice, it isnt living up to its emancipatory potential cos those who need emancipation the most form a scant minority in (and are basically excluded from) the blogosphere. in the end, its a good thing cos it has consumers and providers in the media market being honest about their bias and ideology.
nb: this post comes up a lot for google searches of 'gomery inquiry blog' etc. i think a lot of youse are clicking here looking for the banned testimony. why dont you try typing other things in the google search bar? personally, i think the guy who released the testimony is kind of an idiot (click here for details).
this is what blogging is for. as much as i like the insight, im more into the bitching, or as we call it, the antoniofication of events. ok, blogging is also for highlighting interesting news and political tidbits and injecting some variety into the oft-lame canadian news cycle.
not that i post memes, but i have to issue this one as a challenge to our favourite MIT geek...
although i think i cheated cos i only chose graphic calculators cos they look cooler and you can use them to pass notes in class. i dont actually know how to make a parabola or anything.
i really couldnt resist another google memepost - someone searched for bc ndp crap and landed here and browsed for a bit. does the fact our little searcher stuck around for a while mean my blog *is* bc ndp crap?
im not ndp, i swear. stop outing me, people.
and now for the requisite post of "ooh look what someone google searched to find my blog" ... i've gotten a few searches of "chantal hebert" +lover - i guess someone wants to know if she is available. to date, that was my most interesting one.
today i got "Tucker Carlson/ my kids"?
dude. google is not a magic 8-ball. you cant ask it weird hypotheticals, like whether tucker carlson is one of your kids.
tucker carlson is an upstanding, bowtie-wearing moderate republican who just lost his job cos of jon stewart (or at least the president of cnn makes it sound that way), who happens to be the hottest man alive. two of two people sitting in front of this computer "would totally get with him" ... the tribe has spoken.
nina hagen live was something else. unfortunately, some old dudes like to get disgustingly drunk and pick a lot of fights at concerts, which almost killed the vibe during a particularly feminist song. i can't say every single one of her onstage rants resonated with me, but it was nice to finally see her in the flesh after all these years. my! gay! husband! opened, and despite the stupid abuse of punctuation in their name, they were quite good as well, if you like the abrasive synths + yelling approach to music.
you might have noticed the design of this pithy web-polemic change 10 or so times in the past day. im really quite sick of my layout and i do not have sufficient html/css skills to put what id like onto a screen. as a result, i will be tinkering with this until the end of time.
some televangelist is screaming about snoop dogg and the internet being the root of all evil. see what you people miss by *not* being awake at 4:33 ...
the internet has become 50% more controversial: antonio now has a blog. in his first two posts, he disses the hillel, calls concordia "gaza u," mentions jesus, porn, and the lockout in the same post title after i teach him about google rank, and promises to blog extensively on the state of the italian diaspora. he seemed pleased when i answered his "can i swear on my blog?" query in the affirmative, so i wouldnt recommend his site to the faint of heart.
antonio lived with me for a month during the election because he decided he wanted to understand bc from the perspective of the campaign war room. he left the comforts of liberal campaigning in st-leo to duke it out for the grits in a close race, a landslide, and a squeaker loss. reading our respective blogs might outline why we argued every night that month.
despite our differences of opinion, im proud of antonio because
1. he is the only ambitious little young liberal i know who jumped OFF the martin bandwagon
2. he is the only st-leonard bachelor who has survived more than 48 hours without his mother or nonna to pick up after him and feed him
3. he bitched back at all the racist toronto/ontario/anglo-montreal people who dissed gagliano for being italian
so yeah. read his stuff and bitch at him, i cant do all the work myself.
THEY WILL ONLY USE IT FOR EVIL!
or enforce their ikea nesting instinct on your online bachelor pad. im sorry, sasha, but im having about of insomnia and i got really sick of your old layout, so i tried to make a new one, (based on one i made for natalie-anne) but this one only works using IE and a big effing monitor. mozilla makes it look like crap and small monitors cant handle it.
does anyone else have issues viewing this layout?
crap - my blog looks better in IE too. CRAP. I STILL LOVE YOU, MOZILLA!!!
***UPDATE***
after nearly a month, he has divulged that he hates the new layout and i changed it back to the sad, ugly old layout he loves. why it took him so long to voice his preferences ill never know.
who is cooler? let lotusland decide.
kinsella: U2 are boring old farts, and so is Wells for liking them
hmm. true. whats wells doing saying nice things about that martinite bono, anyway?
actually, it's lamer to like the lame band. so let's say it's a tie: wells like u2, but kinsella likes kings of leon. they, along with the rest of you, ought to download some gogol bordello and novy svet.
then again, i really love 'what is love' by haddaway... im not kidding. something about that song makes me want to listen to it on repeat - subliminal message? a consequence of my eurotrash roots? i like to throw it on the cd player when i miss woodbridge, gay bars, and other such excellent places to spend a gossip-and-drama-laden saturday night.
obviously im only dating him cos of the quality of his posts. im going to repost it cos it's honestly that good:
Dear Bloggers,
Here are some suggestions for future posts, depending on what side of the spectrum you are on:
Left: pick an issue, articulate a position in precise moral terms, without any supporting arguments, and act as if everyone who disagrees you is morally deficient.
Right: find an instance of some anonymous schmo on the far-left saying something offensive, quote it extensively, and drone on about liberal lunacy. Claim this represents the mainstream of the liberal movement. Repeat ad nauseum. Make sure to ignore instances of outrageous comments from the far right. Alternatively, briefly mention them and dismiss as unrepresentative of the mainstream conservatism.
in canada, i find it's the liberal party people pointing out conservative crazies and the left and right being morally indignant about everything.
mr. warren kinsella had a lovely column in this weekend's national post (which he has posted on his blog for the post-deprived, warren-loving masses) about blogging culture.
like many canadians, i started this here thing during the federal election of 04. i noticed my web diary was weighed down by my little polemics, and some of my artsy friends were beginning to protest. livejournals, apparently, are not the proper vehicle for this sort of thing. to some, political rants are *more* unwelcome on their livejournal friends page than 'get to know you' surveys, personality tests, and other memes.
for some reason, others liked reading my posts on the big vote. two admitted my livejournal rants were their sole portal to the debates which were erupting outside the parameters of a typical twentysomething existence (mr kinsella says "politics is showbiz for ugly people" - id like to expand said definition to encompass "old" and "nerdy" people as well. indie rock is showbiz for the young and perilously cool, but i digress). others explicitly asked me to tell them how i think they should cast their ballots - apparently the ability to churn out a few impassioned rants, combined with my credentials (ha!) as a political science student meant i knew how to do that whole voting thing better than someone who doesnt feel the need to rant.
naturally, this scared me a bit. why on earth did these rants give me any modicum of credibility? i didnt want to be obeyed, i wanted to stir the pot. i started a typepad blog in order to join the exchange between other politically-minded bloggers which didn't exist on livejournal, even in the canpolitik community (with the exception of contributions by a user called manitoblog, a vociferous principled conservative.)
so do i feel truly part of this portion of the public sphere yet? er... yes and no.
since starting my blog, ive been lucky enough to get reciprocal links from many of the excellent blogs in my sidebar (path of the paddle, revmod, sinister thoughts, vanramblings, guêpe, and saving the best for last, detached observer), exposure on urban vancouver, and trackback hits from the public eye, on the fence, and andrew coyne. nevertheless, the scant amount of comments i receive makes me think this exercise is as masturbatory as blog-haters claim. (i used to be a blog-hater!)
well, perhaps it is masturbatory, but whether we are comfortable enough to admit it or not, there is a hedonist lurking deep within all of us that lovingly reflects on the fact there isnt any shame in an occasional wank.
as for mr kinsella's claim that blogging is the new gutenberg press ... sure, but you dont have to go that far back - blogging harkens back to a time when politics was conducted via pamphleteering and bills posted in public areas. perhaps these opinion-driven agents will polarize the public as web users selectively tap into like-minded blogs. conversely, this return to the grassroots may engender a more inclusive public sphere free from the vicelike grip of political correctness the mainstream media likes to parade around as objectivity.
(funny how the first scenario describes the result of fox news while the second was basically the right-wing network's raison d'être. that was totally unintentional. at any rate, watch outfoxed.)
i had a lot of fun on canada day. the fun was had on a friend's roof downtown. as much as she denies containing even a single nationalist bone in her body, she conceded canada was worth finding new leaders. ew, idealists. she still doesn't understand why i seemed to care about the vote results so much. she's surprised i still go to political events given how alternately skanky and sexless the attendees are. i keep meaning to post about the unforgivable quirks of youth wing males of the various parties, but i worry about sexing up my blog.
why worry about being taken seriously when i'm not? i like pink and i don't even use the shift key.
do sex and politics mix? sure. politics = sexy? i'd venture an emphatic 'not really. ' they don't really have much to do with one another, which explains how i've allowed myself to lust after an unabashed clintonite (appropriately, he has charm skills comparable to clinton's). i have no idea what he sees in me but it's certainly not my politics.
nice to hear the rain washing over my house all night.
