“I tried reading but I realized that the book I’m reading, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, is not actually about Pakistan, but about how men choose land over women over and over again. How could I be in the middle of this book the week the farmer dumps me? The world aligns itself in shockingly horrible ways.” — http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/12/11/how-to-bounce-back/
“In linguistics, a phatic expression is one whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to conveying information. The term was coined by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in the early 1900s.
For example, “you’re welcome” is not intended to convey the message that the hearer is welcome; it is a phatic response to being thanked, which in turn is a phatic whose function is to be polite in response to a gift.”
•
“Speech patterns between women tend to be more collaborative than those of men, and tend to support each other’s involvement in the conversation. Topics for small talk are more likely to include compliments about some aspect of personal appearance. For example, “That dress really suits you.” Small talk between women who are friends may also involve a greater degree of self disclosure. Topics may cover more personal aspects of their life, their troubles, and their secrets. This self-disclosure both generates a closer relationship between them, and also is a signal of that closeness.
By contrast, mens’ small talk tends to be more competitive. It may feature verbal sparring matches, playful insults, and putdowns. However, in a way these are also both creators and signals of solidarity — the men are signalling that they are comfortable enough with each other’s company to be able to say these things without them being taken as insults.” -Phatic communication
•
“Jerry Michalski and Pip Coburn were recently talking about the puzzle of “exhaust data.” These are data that pass between friends on Facebook and Twitter…as when someone tells me they’re doing their nails, or I tell them I’m entertaining my cat.
Who on earth cares? What kind of communication is this? Can it be that we are using the internet to issue trivial facts about ourselves? Facts? The “fact” that I am entertaining the cat is so staggeringly unimportant it fails to interest even the cat.
But there is another, anthropological, point of view. Exhaust data is, I think, a clear case of “phatic communication.” This is communication with little hard, informational content, but lots of emotional and social content. Phatic communications doesn’t get much said, but it has social effects so powerful, it gets lots done.” -How social networks work: the puzzle of exhaust data
I remember sitting in the room with my father’s body.
My brother had come from Texas as our father’s health was deteriorating. In his final few hours our father would take 2 breaths every minute. Huge racking lungfuls of air, each one a giant intake like a drowning man coming up for air. His whole 75 pound body would move with each one, then be far too still until the next.
My father had a hole in his back that looked like a caveman had thrown a spear into him then yanked it out and the wound never healed. It got there when the doctors removed a 22 pound mass from inside his chest that was collapsing his left lung.
After the brain surgery you could see the tube under his skin that went from his skull down into his body and into his stomach. A magnetic lever could be released periodically that would relieve fluid building up pressure in his brain and empty it into his stomach. He was bed ridden, and could hardly walk.
Right after the surgery I saw him asleep in his hospital bed. Mouth wide open and false teeth removed. I remember feeling horrified.
When he had fallen down before first going to the hospital I had just got back from Texas. I hadn’t returned home yet when I got the call. I got home as they were taking him out on a gurney. I argued with police officers who took my drivers license because I was angry and asking too many questions.
I came home once to find my father with scratches on his arms and face. He had fallen in the backyard behind the shed and it had taken him over two hours to get up and back into the house. I had been with my friends. It was July.
My father would drive me around the lake when I asked, and he’d let me sit on the passenger windowsill so I could be outside the car and feel the wind over me. I used to imagine I was flying.
At the lake we used to live at I would swim for 5 or 6 hours a day during the summer. My father would sit at a picnic table the whole time watching, making small talk with anyone who came by. He always watched, no matter what I did. I never had to ask him to.
When I was 5 I would run from the school bus and to my father who waited in the driveway for me. I would jump into his arms and he’d pick me up and twirl me in the air and over his shoulders and then hold me upside down. The bus used to wait so the other kids could watch before it left. My first time performing for an audience.
I use the same aftershave he did. The same laundry detergent. Sometimes I can imagine one of my shirts smells just like his did.
I remember everything.
“Pretty much everything I do kinda starts out with a plan and quickly becomes “season to taste and then cook with some amount of fire until it’s done but not burned” or “hit it with a wrench until it stops making that noise and apologizes or it at least starts making some more pleasing noise” or “if nothing seems to be working that probably means it’s time to pop open another Red Bull.” None of which really works well for instructions or documentation. Besides, I strongly doubt you want to make things that look like things I made, anyway.” — http://www.arianaosborne.com/?p=716
kel: stick your dick in it?kel: who’s posting that?
me: luxembourg?
kel: why aren’t you reblogging it?
“They copied all they could follow, but they couldn’t copy my mind, so I left them sweating and stealing a year and a half behind.” — Rudyard Kipling (via claytoncubitt)
‘The Truth About Women’ from the pages of a c1950’s book.
“Pornography hits the blind corner of reason. It directly addresses our primitive fantasies, bypassing words and thought. The hard-on or wetness comes first, wondering why follows behind. Self-censorship reactions are shaken. Porn images don’t give us any choice: here’s what turns you on, here’s what makes you respond.” — Virginie Despentes (via nightmarebrunette)
Me: (Upon hearing something awesome and borrowing an expression I had heard earlier that day) That puts blood in my dick.
Her: (Her face contorting) That is fucking disgusting.
Me: Well that’s what an erection is. I mean it’s exactly what’s happening.
Her: Well you don’t hear me saying things like “That puts snot in my pussy.”
Me: Oh god.
POD: Let’s back up a sec, here.
Posted on November 17th, 2009 in making things
Whoo, that last one was a bit of a rant, wasn’t it? But I needed to get that out of my system, because I’m tired, I’m just dead tired of the “everything’s broken/too hard/scary/etc so why bother trying?” nonsense. And I know it’s not new, but a few years back it just started snowballing because here’s the truth of it: It’s a million billion times easier to tell people what’s wrong than it is to try and make something right.
I’m am well self-aware enough to recognize that following a ranty post with that last statement is comedy gold, yes.
But now I’m going to switch gears and go a little hearts and flowers and rainbows on you. Because I do honestly get that it’s honestly hard to start something, and it’s even harder to finish it. Yeah, I know, I really do. But now’s the time to do it, isn’t it? Haven’t you noticed how many people — complete strangers, even – are getting genuinely and creatively excited about Doing Stuff? Part of it’s very likely the end-of-the-decade rush — it’s hitting some people like a ton of bricks, but it’s infecting even more people with cabin fever. Folks are dusting off projects they first started thinking about in 2005 or 1999, or just finally flipping the switch and starting on something completely new.
And if the feedback I’m getting is any indication (and I’ve got comments disabled here because they don’t suit me, but I do pay attention to Twitter and I read everything on Whitechapel) — there are a LOT of you right. on. that. cusp. of taking the first step. So look, I know I’ve been giving you lot a hard time about “just getting it done,” but before I get into my list of Stuff What I Learned Working With POD sometime tomorrow, I wanna back up a step and talk to you.
Here’s what you need to do, right now, tonight. No, NOT tomorrow morning, or this weekend, or once your work rush has let off a little, or after the holidays, or sometime in the New Year: Right. Fucking. Now.
Decide what you want to make.
And I’m talking about the single most complicated and ridiculous creation you can think of…
NO STOP IT I DIDN’T SAY HOW or WHY or WHEN, I only said WHAT.
Just the THING. That’s all. Is it a book? Is it a script? A necklace? A toaster-cozy? A shirt? What is it? What do you want to make?
And oh I mean it when I say ridiculous and complicated. Look, if you want to take 365 photos of your toaster, one for every day of the next year, sometimes with toast and sometimes with a bagel and sometimes with an English muffin and one shot with a Very Dangerous Fork, and you want to blow those images up to 8.5×11” and put them into a monthly magazine with no words and just a picture of the appliance in its knitted cozy on the front and that’s what you want to make? Then that’s what you want to make.
That’s what you want to make.
I SAID STOP THINKING ABOUT THE HOW OR THE LOGISTICS OR THE MONEY OR THE TIME. STOP IT.
This moment, right now, this THING that you’re deciding to make, this thing exists independently of the fiddly bits for now. This, what you’re doing here, is something that back in the olden days — before the slagosphere wasted all your time telling you how not to do things — they called a goal. It’s a beautiful and magical thing that doesn’t need money or time or effort to believe in. It’s only different from a dream in that you made it yourself, instead of letting your subconscious do all the work while you sleep.
Now, okay, here’s the little-bit harder step, are you ready?
Look at that THING you just said you wanted to make. Really look at it. Now, right now, tonight, NOT tomorrow morning, or this weekend, or once your work rush has let off a little, or after the holidays, or sometime in the New Year: Right. Fucking. Now.
DECIDE WHETHER YOU’RE GOING TO DO IT, OR NOT.
Period. This is it. You’ve been putting it off, or you’ve been planning to get around to it, or you know that once you get a little spare time it’s at the top of the list… for HOW long now? I’m looking at you. I know you’re already taking a breath to rattle off the list of all the things standing in your way. and what’s more, I know you know they’re just excuses.
And it needs to end, now. Your life is never going to GET less stressful. It’s honestly not. That’s not how life works. When we put off the things we want to do, the stress of that adds into the stress of life. You’re not going to GET more hours in the day. You’re never going to have enough money to put aside spare time. You’re not going to suddenly have That Moment where it all gels and you suddenly break out and start doing what you want to be doing… unless you MAKE that moment, right here, right now.
Oh I’m making a sappy speech right now, sure I am. Imaginary music should be swelling on my cue. But I’m telling you the absolute truth, okay? If you say, right now: “Oh whatever, I’ve heard that before, but it’s different for me, I’ve got different troubles and it’s not going to hurt me to wait until 2010″ — then you’re already out of the game, and I’m sorry, but that was that. You might get there in ten years, sure, anything’s possible… but it’s going to have to be a different you that gets you there. Because you, right now, haven’t got it. And that’s fine — not everyone does — but it’s really time for you to put your energies into whatever you think is more important than Making What You Want.
The rest of you, well, you just signed on for a metric fuckton of work, and tomorrow you’re going to start realizing how much — but you’re all going to make it. As long as you’re telling the truth, as long as you’ve decided you’re going to make your Thing, as long as you’re not shitting yourself just so you can feel like this paragraph is for you — you’re in. It truly is just that easy — you make your goal and then you do every damned thing you can to get it done. You’re making a THING. What, you think you can’t make a little Time? Time isn’t half as hard as making a Thing! If you can write a book, you can make time. If you can sculpt, you can create the moments to do it. If you can make pictures or music or knit or anything, then a little jiggery-pokery of space-time is nothing at all.
(That’s all a lie. It’s hard as all fuckity, honestly. But you said you weren’t lying when you said you wanted to do this thing, so you’re fucking well in it, now.)
That’s it. Do it, or don’t. Shit, or throw out the pot. Pick one, and stick with it.
And if you come back tomorrow, I’ll be here helping the folks that, just like you, decided to Make Something.
Copyright © 2009 Ariana Osborne
I. Parts Incompatible
We do not fit together;
your shoulder inhospitable.
We try and align
but your hipbones bruise the insides of my thighs
and I am always thinking.
II. Unexpected Shut-Down
There is no room for progress
when every time I make you smile
you overload, require maintenance.
III. Low Battery Life
I’m too tired to finish
and you’re not wired
to recharge me.
Do it yourself;
I am taking a shower
and will fall asleep facing away from you.
IV. Rational Disconnect
We wouldn’t have so many problems
if you could accept
that I am not programmed
to arrive at logical conclusions.
V. Total System Failure
The sound of you chewing
makes me want to destroy everything in the world
that has ever known what it is
to be happy.
“Instead of making a 21st-century apology, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford decided to take it “old school,” comparing his extramarital affairs to that of King David. Why not just say you find Pinocchio’s story interesting? Or, let’s see—Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, John Ensign would have also worked! That would have been a surprising admission in an age where extramarital affairs no longer seem to grab our attention. Americans act so shocked when they hear about politicians, celebrities, and athletes having affairs, but I have to believe that many women who are married to men with power are aware of affairs, and accept it. Don’t ask, don’t tell; as long as they receive something in exchange from their husband—whether that exchange be children, money, material items, or sex. We create our own morals. It’s once the affair goes public that morals change. The wife feels shame and humiliation because of public awareness, yet felt no desire to speak out prior. She allowed this affair to go on, or allowed herself to stay in the relationship. She probably was more ashamed that her husband was such a moron, and thought he could get away with flying to Argentina on a commercial flight and claim he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. We live in one of the most liberated countries in the world, yet we are still conflicted with Bible Belt-infused guilt. Consensual sexual preferences shouldn’t govern our politics, media, or way of life. Ideally, we should all openly have something extra on the side.” — http://2010.newsweek.com/top-10/sex-scandal-details/mark-sanford-appalachian-adventure.html
This is a quick (for long-winded values, I’m sure) segue from my ongoing (and going, and going) POD notes and rantings to a bit that may seem a little ahead of itself: Telling people that you’re Making Something.
Because you’re going to have to, when you’re done, you know. And you’re likely going to have a little bit of an uphill time of it, because the internet’s half broken, isn’t it. Oh, you know what I mean — you’ve got a blog, probably, but (Wil and Warren, you’re not to answer this one, because I’m not talking about you, yet) how many people read your blog? I’m not being mean about it — this isn’t supposed to put you off before you even start, trust me — but how many people do you pull over, and worse, how many of those people do you interact with?
That’s where the internet is half broken, right there, that last bit: Comments are shit.
And people keep trying to find ways to fix what is an inherently crap system is the main problem. I mean, how many fucking ways are there to leave a comment, these days? You can log into a wordpress or typepad blog, only maybe some of your readers don’t have (or want to make) accounts for either, so there are OpenID plugins and trackbacks and ShareThis and Stumble and Delicious and Technorati (and oh there’s one that went to fucking weed, innit) and All Manner of networking and feedback and pingback and chatback and every-damned-thing-else to address a “problem” that’s, honestly? Not solvable.
Most of the time, people aren’t going to have anything to say in response.
But, without that feedback, a lot of us lose steam, because how else will we know we’re being heard, or that anyone even cares?
Which is how the internet’s half broken, of course. Because one half, the Social Networking half, revolves around the idea that he who has the most friends, wins. And the other half, the Individual and Personal half, revolves around the idea that a single person should have a comments form on every page, and somehow the magic of connectivity will fill the lower half of every post with feedback and community.
Hahaha. But no.
I mean, yesterday I asked my 400ish twitter followers a direct question: What are you making? And I got, as expected, about 20 responses. Warren and Wil probably would have gotten about 100 (in fact, you can go look at the comments to Wil’s post on Making Things to see I’m absolutely right in that estimate), but they’ve both got HYUGE audiences. And that’s responses to a direct question. So what hope is there of building an interactive community around just general discussion and feedback?
Well… there’s really not. Not if you insist on using just one bit of the half-broken internet out of the box.
But then what the hell DOES work? See, here’s my crazy thought (and I got it from Warren who’s cleverer than you and me put together, so you know it’s true): We really could try interacting with Internet People like they’re real, you know, People.
Oh stop huffing, I haven’t even explained yet, and when I do, whatever you were about to shoot back will sound retarded.
Look, imagine you’ve got four friends over, or the five of you are out at the pub or whatever. How amazingly awkward would the conversation go if, every time you made any statement, you then paused until each person responded directly. Only once each person had said something could you move onto the next bit.
Like this:
I mean, honestly, that’s a worst-case comment scenario, true — but it’s also just fucking ridiculous to think about EVER doing in “real” life, isn’t it?
Oh, I of course forgot the part where PERSON ONE is obsessively checking to see if weather.com has pinged his phone with a forecast that agrees with his initial statement. And is also staring at the table next to them, hoping some strangers will come over and agree, too.
That’s really just no way to have a conversation, is it?
But we want our blogs and our internet communication to be interactive, so we go with the half-broken system, even though none of us are so socially stunted that we think that’s how it should work — just because that’s the system that comes built on to the tools we’re using.
And you’ll note I’ve lopped that system right off my blog, because I’m no fan of tech that solves a problem that isn’t really there.
Conversations don’t happen in blogs. (There are, of course, exceptions to that rule. There are little networks of the faithful that do hang out in the comments sections of some of the bigger blogs, sure.) Conversations happen in forums, or on Twitter, and probably in GoogleWave while people figure out what to do with it, and in stranger places like FaceBook walls and roll-your-own networks, sort of.
(That last never really took off in the direction I expected, but then again, Cafepress have been around for ten years and we’re pushing for an uptick there, too, so I may just need to be patient)
But blogs aren’t social networks — they’re stations — and no matter how much crap we tack on to try and make them more interactive, they aren’t going to be (that definition of) networks because, ostensibly, a blog is a place where you talk and people dial in to listen.
That was a segue of its own, so let’s circle back to the original point: How do you get people to come listen?
Well, unless you’re very attractive and taking out 50-feet restraining orders on a daily basis, I don’t imagine you’ve got people peeking in your windows to hear you singing in the shower. And when you go out to grab a drink, I somehow doubt hundreds of people walk over to you to find out what you’re thinking.
If you’ve got any friends at all, I’d imagine you went out and found them, or got introduced by other people, or met them at work, or school, or by bumming a light 15 feet away from the bus stop.
If you’ve got online friends, I reckon you brought them over from the meat-filled world, or you met them over on Whitechapel, or someone on Twitter RT’d them, or you went looking for something in particular and found them by happy google chance.
And if you — and by extension, your Thing You’re Making — want an audience, you’ve got to tell those people when you’ve got something to show them, and lead them back.
Which is why, even though FREAKANGELS has been running into its third volume, now, Warren still twitters, blogs, and mails you a link, every week. It’s why I sweep off the sidewalk and tell everyone the new discussion thread is open — and also ask everyone how they’re doing, because it’s a forum that’s tacked on to a comic, but it’s also a forum of people I know and want to hear from.
And it’s why Whitechapel is all everything else the other 6 days and 23 hours of the week, because no community is there for just one thing. They’re there for each other, and themselves, too. And that’s why you can hit 9 out of ten threads on Whitechapel and find links and directions out to other people’s blogs and stores and projects… and you’re far more likely to see comments in the thread than you are on the individual pages, just to hit that point a little more home.
So. How do you find an audience for the Thing You’re Making?
You don’t.
You find people you like. And if you can’t find any, you find people that like the things you do. And you join their community — or, if there isn’t one, you make it and you tell everyone that’ll listen until four people show up — and you find out what they’re doing and you tell them what you’re doing. And you pay fucking attention to someone instead of your Google Analytics page of “unique yet nameless visitors” and maybe you end up buying their project before you even get around to selling your own.
And before you know it, you’ll have five friends who really probably don’t often comment on your blog, but they’ll all RT the link to your Thing You Made when you Twitter it’s live.
Oh, and also, you’ll have five friends, and you won’t be that guy that bitches about how hard it is to make connections online. That’s a win, too.
[video]
POD: If You’re Not Warren Ellis
Oh, I spent some time trying to craft the single most condescending post title I could think of, yes. I also considered “for the common man” and “little guy” and — my personal favorite abandoned only because it was a touch too long — “for all those losers who really have no right even trying.”
Turns out, I only had to hit up the internet comments buzzing around the release of Shivering Sands to find the most patronizing qualifier. Because all sorts of people, it turns out, would just love to try out POD, except they just “aren’t Warren Ellis.”
If you haven’t guessed yet, this post is going to be a little bit mean. But, see above: people were asking for it.
So, okay, yes — let’s go ahead and talk about this terrifying and insurmountable hurdle to publishing/creating/selling through an online Print on Demand service: Let’s brainstorm and try to find some solution to our pitiful state of not being Ellis. We can do it together, I think, if we try really hard — we can shut our leaking cry-holes for a second and consider a kinder world, with possibilities even for us.
All right. Here we go.
We have already, I assume, ruled out the possibility of going back in time to before Warren started his writing career and attempting to become Warren Ellis before he can get there. Time travel is, after all, fiddly business. And, frankly, if any of us had already built a time machine, I’d imagine that using it to get a book published wouldn’t be our top priority. Except maybe for you, over there in the back — I see you’d like to make a DINOSAUR PHOTOS coffee-table book, so yeah, you’re going to need to work on a time machine. And best of luck to you, I’m ready to buy your book if you’re not torn apart by raptors on your way back to the console.
But the rest of us are going to have to think outside the temporal displacement box, bah.
Well, there’s the fake it ’til we make it option, I suppose — which I’d certainly usually advocate… except I’ve been modding Warren’s forums for a lot of years now, and I gotta tell you: there’s few things that annoy me more than people putting on a lo-fi Ellis-lite persona to get attention. In fact, it’s one of those things that makes me hit the ignore/ban button faster than almost anything — and I’ve got a pretty high internet-nutter tolerance, so that might just end up losing you those imaginary book sales you haven’t even made yet.
Oh this is just looking hopeless, isn’t it? I mean, clearly the steps to POD success are as follows:
But what, oh what can we do if we’re not Warren Ellis?
…
… no. That… that couldn’t work.
It’s too crazy. I don’t even want to say it.
What if, what if step one is… be [your name here]?
I mean, that’s just crazy-talk, innit? I mean„ there’s a long list we haven’t exhausted yet. I mean, we could try being Wil Wheaton, or Jamais Cascio, or Lee Barnett, or our next-door neighbors, or that guy at the bus stop. Surely we’re not to the point of desperation that leads to trying to make a go of it ourselves.
Except…
What if the steps were:
Now, I know that mixing up steps 2 and 3 like that just FLIES in the face of internet logic, but I might be on to something here. Because now we’re talking about a fantastic world where, when you introduce yourself to people, you can actually say you’re a writer — and be telling the truth — instead of your usual “And I’ve got a bunch of clever ideas I’m going to write someday as soon as I get an agent and/or wake up one morning in an alternate reality where I’m Warren Ellis.”
How mad is THAT? I mean, the possibilities get really wild after that! When people ask you what your book’s about, you can actually tell them, instead of hinting about how you don’t really want to get into it because they might steal your idea! And then, OH MY GOD, you could — oh this is incredible — you could direct them to the site where your book is ready to be printed and mailed off! Do you realize what this means? They might buy your book! This could… my god this could actually work!!
Yes, I am the biggest bitch you’re going to read today.
I’m also right. And if one person reading this finally got the shake they need to stop talking and start doing, then the massive traffic drop-off I’m going to get now is completely worth it.
And if one person did finally get it, you should come back tomorrow when I’m going to have some not-so-bitchy advice about the POD system I’ve picked up in the past little while. Because if you’re going to actually use it instead of making excuses, then I’ve got time for you.