People Get Ready

That Michelle. I was going to say, What a firecracker ... But she's so much more than that. Michelle is Authentic. And authenticity is so to be prized in this media-soaked day and age—I'm a writer, yet I find myself so in awe of this woman's qualities, I just fumble.

Who ever thought, in these cynical times, we'd have the privilege of seeing our own authentic concerns—the ones that speak to the genuine needs of the nation—not only represented in the public arena but embodied so beautifully, so well.

I'm watching the video I love most. Her hair is slicked back, her head wrapped in a shining black ribbon, she wears a black top and no apparent makeup. "The girls are looking forward to the Fair," she's saying. "We're going to buy ... stuff on a stick!" Laughter. Audience and viewer alike are drawn in by this pure face, so full of character. We've never seen anyone like her.

Her speeches are miraculous. They speak to the hearts and minds of people who, I imagine, sometimes find themselves surprised to embrace this new kind of woman. Powerful, genuine, who, because she tells the truth, cannot fumble. There is no pose. There is only the person, Michelle.

Secretly, it's Michelle I really want to see in the White House. First Lady. Can you imagine! It's hard, it would mean so many kinds of historic dreams come true. But I think we'd better prepare ourselves. Michelle and the girls, the First Family—and oh, yeah, that Obama guy she married, too

reblogged from Zo Blogs For Obama

And The Winner Is

James Wolcott:  " ... whatever one thinks of Bill Clinton, ranked No. 2 on the hall-of-shame list of America’s 'Five Most Broken Men'  ... ”

There's a list? Damn, I missed this.

Sexual Harrassment By Blog

The Bastardly [cute. real cute]: Remember Allison Stokke? I bet you do! Now she's a freshman at Cal Berkeley and doing well for their women's track team ... Here's her official Cal profile. Well, all we have is this one recent picture but no one will ever forget the first Allison picture that lit up inboxes ...

I don't know how to break it to you, guys ... but that thing in your pants? The one that leads you around like a pig with a ring in its nose?

Try and grasp this: it is of no interest. That's right! Zip! Nada!

In addition, there is nothing clever or funny about being assholes. Hard to believe, I know.

Mostly, besides being disgusted, we feel sorry for you. Horny guys, guys without women (clue) are thick on the ground. Plus of course what you are doing is harassment of another human being. Yes! Another person, like you! Only better.

Now, if you were to become men ...

Germaine Greer: Still At It

Germaine Greer has a new book, Shakespeare's Wife, coming out any minute now. A long and interesting review in the New York Review of Books, where I seem to patch up my education nowadays (having little formal,) gives one a sense of the range of possibilities in life at that time, as well as how history is done. I find this sort of thing, readable scholarship, a relief. From? From the ever-floating body of, er, knowledge that is the Interwebs. Where one can read forever, find anything—yet who shall say what the core is? The canon. Canon in the sense of, say, polar opposite of bone stupid. Which seems to be having what must have been a long awaited field day, because anyone can blog about anything. The pity is that, in some atavistic reflex, we tend to assign some vague legitimacy to that which appears in print. Aha, but here the print is merely carefully arranged electrons, courtesy of your favorite blog service. It's all an illusion. Machine language tells the machine what to make of it so as to become, as they say, Human-Readable. I write it myself, albeit in a simple-minded way, every time I post with HTML, and I can tell you ... count on nothing. Wear your best tin-foil hat. Be careful out there.

No, in the end, it's books we want and need. Books and the Internet being in no way interchangeable. One is a "river of news" with stream of sewage running through it, the other the equal of a lake or still pond. (Water is such a lovely metaphor for Time.) The river, depending on its speed, requires a great deal of thrash and struggle to stay afloat; it is not the purpose of a river to stay in one place. Kudos go to the heroic, the well-muscled, to the winner (yawn) go the links. But a book is a pond, a lake, into whose waters one may dive, may explore the vast and wonderful world of thought and dream outside the diurnal pressure of time.

Ah, literature, Where there are no popularity contests as you read, no page rank. I don't know how the human mind develops, without this contemplative space. For in the act of reading, the mind makes the movie, submerged in the existential space of imagination. Imagination the very essence of the good.

The horror of fascist-state mind is freshly born in on us, just now. Whole great parts of the human experience—Not Allowed. Forbidden. It is forbidden to think, and in this foolish edict, the Chinese government grows within itself the seeds of its own helpless destruction. As does any fool—be it at the level of nations, be it at the level of ex-husbands—whose existence depends on a fantasy: the control of other people.

My fucking god, that this goes on and on and on. One wants to think that humankind progresses, over time. Fantasy, fallacy fascistic oppression, whatever you call it, the thing does not work. It cannot, nor can any amount of force make it so. The fruits of this wrong-headed view the same dreary harvest of death, lies, fear.

"Greer is often unnecessarily, stridently, and self-defensively combative She ends with a gratuitous insult to those whom she derides as 'the Shakespeare wallahs' who 'have succeeded in creating a Bard in their own likeness, that is to say, incapable of relating to women,' as if she herself were not a Shakespeare wallah. But this is an important book in the challenges that it poses to received opinion. It will have a permanent and beneficial effect on attempts to tell the story of Shakespeare's life."

Germaine Greer may well be strident and combative; it is only what one would expect, and possibly what is really meant is, She doesn't take any crap?

Or give a shit, for that matter, what you think? Poor man, poor Shakespeare wallah. Words can hurt, but when they are the stinging truth, only for a little while.

Here's Your Blog, Ma'am!

Not even a good Rickroll, and is there such a thing? Well, yeah, I have dim memories of Rick Astley's rotation on MTV ... and was it any worse than Pat Benatar? The Thomson Twins? Men Without Hats? Or, wait, Dexie's Midnight Runners?

I know you're thinkin' Rock Me Amadeus, but you are wrong. Given enough time on YouTube, I could scrape the bottom of that barrel and curl your hair with what you once watched and thought hip. Tell the truth. You had the tiniest crush on Rick, pompadour and all. And who knows? He could be hugely famous today. Well, he is hugely famous today, but perhaps not in the way he once hoped.

Blogger April 1 Don’t limit yourself to “reverse chronological” publishing. Our advanced Google algorithms put your best content at the top of your blog. Even if your later work goes downhill your previous posts will still shine.

Now, this is where I first caught a hint. What could be less funny than Google. Ordinarily.

But one skims these things. Google issues forth new and oft mysterious features with the regularity of a rabbit giving birth, and the desire here, strange as it may seem, is to have a life.

No more template languages to mess with or sidebars to get right.

A prospect of Heaven that immediately spawned the thought, Gee, maybe they aren't kidding. My, but humans are weak. 

Stop worrying about your PageRank or your search engine optimization. Post directly into Google search results for maximum visibility.

Post directly into Google search results. Oh, right. Even I, least hardiest of techies, couldn't overlook that one. But I bet there were a million SEO guys wiping drool off their shirts.  

So here's the stinker part (I am assuming you didn't get nabbed.) That Pete. 

We’ve put together a quick video tour to take you through the highlights of Google Weblogs. Check it out!

And I suggest you don't click that link.

So, they going to do this every year? Fashion jokes out of what we don't get as Blogger bloggers?  

I'll be waiting for that simultaneous post-and-positioning. 

Just like I am still waiting for last year's promised home delivery of all my digital content, printed out.

They even had photos, guys in brown uniforms, snappy a cheery salute ... Or am I dreaming still.

Larry, Sergey! The Pod Doors!