Category: Meta

Oct 20 2009

Nostalgia

We always embrace our own nostalgia and broadly critique the nostalgia of others. Because our nostalgia is our own experience. And our own experience is not objective. It is personal, painful, joyous, it can be completely mysterious to others and completely clarifying to ourselves. It is at time what can even separate us from connecting to others or be the binding force that compels us to reach out.

Having been here from the creation and I say this not to claim any uniqueness, or superiority. My writing is pretty sporadic. Writing is very difficult for me. But I know why I came here. I was attracted by the personalities and who I knew would be writing. I wanted to watch it all happen and make a smart ass comment or two.

No this is not a GBCW thing. When things don’t move me here I just take a break.

Over the short history here we have had some painful verbal blood baths over issues over which people had intensely held positions, beliefs and experiences. We fought one another pretty fiercely despite the whole “be excellent” agreement. People got pissed. We made half assed accusations. We got defensive.

We retreated.

Then we ever so tentatively reached out to one another. We reached out to people we thought we did not like, people we privately told ourselves five minutes earlier were total absolute morons.

Were things “better” then than they are now? I don’t know.

Can we be better? Yes. Can we be passionate without implying the other person is a tool of such and such.

We have to.

What did we fight about in my nostalgic “good old days”?

We argued race, class, gender, sex and sexuality. We hurt one another at times. We stood in corners and pointed. We sought alliances. Some odd ones at times. The men and the women squared off against one another. Claimed neither of us could understand the other. We had intense rumination about whether white people were just always confronting from a position of racism and just refusing to recognize it. We asked ourselves if the middle class could really truly ever understand class consciousness through anything but the prism of consumerism. We talked about working class racism and sexism and whether it was to be understood as inevitable, experiential, or was it a false designation more properly mediated through certain language usage. We talked about whether words matter and if they can really hurt.

Oct 11 2009

On ratings.

Ex Cathedra.

Yup, Pope ek the first is speaking for the church tonight and you better listen up.

Oct 04 2009

Starting Over: Pontifications From A Nobody

Yesterday, I put up a diary at GOS decrying how our writing had become so completely predictable, so formulaic, so prosaic.  It was derivative, and it was funny.  But it was also extremely sad.  In many ways it was a commentary on the powerlessness of progressive bloggers: we can yell louder, we can scream, we can write explosive rants.  But you know what?  It isn’t changing anything.  And frankly, I’m tired of our dogged, persistent pursuit of something that’s not working.  And, I suspect, isn’t going to work.

Maybe you’re lucky and can write face blistering essays on this site and you can have readers tell you how right on you are.  How smart, how important, how clear.  But if you’re poor and without a job, or if you’re sick and you don’t have insurance, or if you’re running out of unemployment benefits and the next job isn’t in sight, or if your kids are in trouble and you don’t know how to help them out, or if you are overdue to retire and you don’t have the funds and have to work, or your wage slave pay isn’t going to bail you out unless you win Megamillions and you’re not too big to fail, or your kids are in the military, these essays aren’t going to help you.  Not at all. They’re just going to highlight how you have somebody’s boot on your neck.  And you cannot get it off.  And they’re bound to inform you, if you don’t know it already, about how very weak you are and how very powerless we as a group (I’m talking about progressives) remain.

Oct 03 2009

Hi Ho Silver! Open Thread

what the… ? ? !

I don’t get it. (see tags)

I should add… I like it! 🙂

Oct 02 2009

Fuck it. Let’s dance.

Enough with the Doom and Gloom around here.

Let’s dance!!!

Maybe that one wasn’t your speed? Hmmm.

Or we can go the other way.

Whatchoo got?

Oct 01 2009

noise. lots and lots of noise.

There’s too much going on. Too many issues. Too many fuck ups. Too many know-it-alls. Far too many experts. Too much of too little.

What am I left with? Huh. It was more fun fighting George W. Bush.

Cross-posted at Daily Kos

Oct 01 2009

Answering a few questions

I do hope this is the only time I’ll have to address this meta. Over on Daily Kos, a user has stated that I, stormchaser, am both a Daily Kos user that goes by another nick and a sock of former Daily Kos user who was banned.    

I’m writing this both because I’ve been called out on that Daily Kos thread (which I shall not link) and to clear up an over two-year disinformation campaign against someone who is a dear friend.

More below the fold (please don’t jump if you’ve come to perpetuate strife…)

Sep 26 2009

Hey GOP — Time to Get-a-Clue-is-stan!

KNOCK, KNOCK!

Who’s There?

Chuck.

Chuck WHO?

Chuck Doesnt-have-any-Guts Grassley!

Grassley: “go work for the federal government” for affordable insurance



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Great Advice Mr. Grassley! … Yes, ALL of America — Should go work for the Govt, because that way we’ll all get Good Insurance, finally?

Say Chuck, Do you know what they call it, in Countries where EVERYONE works for the Govt? —

They call it   Socialism!

Sep 25 2009

What Are We Up To Anyway?

In the past 24 hours there have been four recommended essays on this blog devoted to the governance and/or publication policies of another, larger group blog dedicated to electing more and better Democrats. I wrote a fifth essay last night about the topic and then deleted it.  I deleted it because it wasn’t quite right.  I wasn’t sure why, and I couldn’t fix it, so I deleted it.

What I wanted to say then, and am saying now, is this:

My Brother and Sister Bloguer@s:

Like many of you, I have written for Naranja for many years.  And I still post there.  Like many of you, I have lived through all of the pie fights, the flame wars, and the bannings, always hoping that blog would continue to morph and change and grow ultimately into a progressive group blog.

Needless to say, it hasn’t.  And I doubt it ever will.  I think it has slowly but surely become part of the main stream and that the level of control there has become unacceptable at the same time that nastiness of commenters has run amok.  I am not going to take the time to chronicle the many events that led to its present senescence.  I will still post there occasionally because, as Robyn pointed out yesterday, that’s where the people are who need to be taught.  And I have some things I would like to tell them.  But I don’t see that blog being or becoming a progressive blog.  Ever.  No matter what.  That has never been its collective intent.

Which brings me here, to docuDharma.  This lovely blog, which I have considered a home for a full f*cking two years now, is so much freer, so much more wide ranging, so much more progressive, so much more interesting, that I don’t want to spend time looking ruefully at disappointing Naranja in my rear view mirror. I want to look out the front windshield at blogging the future, and I want to point out to you, brothers and sisters, what lies ahead for us in the future of progressive blogging.

I have no proprietary or financial interest in this blog.  I know that those who own it and run it and make it continue to operate have allowed all kinds of ideas freely to be expressed here. Including topics that can get you banned elsewhere. So it seems to me that if we really want a progressive, leftwing (am I being redundant?) group blog, and I think we all do, what we need now is to build docuDharma and help it grow.  Then we will have what we want.

How do we do that?  We can build it in two simple ways: first, we put up lots of writing that is as excellent as it can be, and second, we let others know how excellent this blog is.  In other words, building docuDharma, if you’re like me and have no responsibilities at all for the behind the scenes part of the blog or its governance or its technology or its finances, is easy.  All you have to do is write well and let others know that there’s good, progressive reading here.  If you build it here at docuDharma, they will come.

I think Naranja has jumped the shark.  I’m disappointed but not surprised by that. But the best answer to its obsolescence, to its impending irrelevance, is right here.  It’s to build a larger, more excellent docuDharma with your creativity and love.

Hasta la victoria siempre, davidseth

Sep 20 2009

Cat — Meet Nip … Press, Meet President!

Since pulling random Definitions, out of the air, during Presidential Interviews, seem to be topic de jour …

Here’s another Definition we might want to get up to speed on …

catnip definition

* cat-nip (-nip’)

noun

an herb (Nepeta cataria) of the mint family, with downy leaves and spikes of white or bluish flowers that are used in flavorings and tea: cats like its odor

http://www.yourdictionary.com/…

Interesting, cats like the odor of catnip ???

Well what happens if we give the People what they want?

Sep 13 2009

There’s Trouble Dead Ahead — And the Band Played On …

What the band played as Titanic slowly began to sink is never disputed – ragtime, waltzes, specific tunes noted by survivors included ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ and ‘In The Shadows’. But a question mark still hangs over what the last song was as Titanic’s stern began to rise clear of the Atlantic Ocean, and indeed, would it be physically possible for them to play anything in those conditions?

http://www.titanic-titanic.com…

Sep 13 2009

Remember the Bloggers of Yesteryear

Remember back when,

we let them work us?

Because we didn’t know better

weren’t practiced enough

too easily led.

Remember when we used to fight each other

over stupid stuff

not realizing we were like rodents at each other’s throats

while meanwhile, the hawk swooped menacingly

laughing

well, that is if hawks could laugh.

And I like hawks

I just don’t like the people in that hawk metaphor.

Remember back when

we thought we needed them?

The heavies, the big guys.

It was all so attractive, all that action.

And we thought we could really change each other

instead of changing into each other.

Now, sometimes

changing into each other

ain’t all that bad.

In fact, it’s kinda underrated

when it happens as a free-form process.

it’s the controlled version that wasn’t quite so good

not quite so happy

and the built in fighting

and the built in judging

and the built in publicity

that was too often about the fighting and the judging

that wasn’t so good.

Remember when we realized that

we didn’t have to do that

because we really didn’t need that

because what we really needed

was each other?

Pure, unadulterated, each other.

Warts and all.

So here’s to blogging the future

since it got us here

because somebody cared

and then some more people cared

and then a whole hell of a lot of more people cared

and then, one astonishing, amazing, frightening day

We were there.

We’d blogged the future, and it was us.

And none of us were the enemy anymore,

because we’d learned

that there doesn’t have to be an enemy

because life itself is enough of a hassle.

now that we spend our time

with each other

instead of alone

enemies are relegated to fairy tales

They are things to warn children about

lest they become their own enemies

that would be bad

and we understand that now.

We understand the importance of

children, and their strangeness

and how wonderful that is

instead of something to be hit.

So thanks to those people

so long ago

too long ago

who blogged the future and saw these things

and how they must be

because it had to be

because there wasn’t any other

way to do it

that worked.

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