theology&geometry

Remember this bit of strategic foreshadowing? No? Well, that’s why Al Gore invented the hyperlink.

So my pal Ed and I sat down and had a little chat about the social web and what a sticky wicket it is, and we recorded that conversation for posterity and for a time capsule element I will one day beam into my children’s head pods’ humor modules. My one regret is that I was having such a mouth-stuffing love affair with my honey-slathered bagel that I didn’t make some of the points I should have. Good food gives me temporary amnesia, so what? But honestly, if you read this post, you get the gist of where I’m going with my thoughts anyway.

The point is that the social web has such amazing potential for connections that never before could have existed. But I am scared about where we are headed because companies looking to get in on a good thing are hell bent on fucking it all up. The image I keep getting in my head is of an over-eager chihuahua frantically humping a human leg. You are the leg, these companies seeking to infiltrate and control are the chihuahua. They want your attention, they want you to like them, they want your thumbs ups, they want you to opt into the game, but on the flipside, they want you to play by their rules and conduct yourself 24 hours a day as if you are a roaming ambassador for them. What you do is what the company is. Your living out loud on the web means you are subject to constant scrutiny and potential regulation by your employer. Doesn’t that scare you? It surely scares me, and I have a fairly boring life and a fairly lenient employer.

Anyway, listen to the conversation if that’s your bag, and then check back. I was Ed’s guinea pig, so I’m super excited to see where he takes his project once he starts sitting down with the really interesting people he knows.

My friend Ed was kind enough to ask me to blather on and on into a microphone about The Internet the other day. Details on that to come a little later.

Our server at Republic Coffee saw us hooked up to lapel mics and wanted to know what we were doing, exactly.

“This is how we give blood,” Ed quipped.

Good show.

[Project 365]

I have a Tumblr. I’ve had it for a long time, but never done anything with it since I’ve got the blog and the Twitter and the Flickr and the dear god all that other crap.

I finally figured out what to use it for.

Phone photodump!

You know, if you are into that sort of thing.

Here’s how it used to look before computers had all these fancy pixels.

Can’t remember where I first got the link for a proper HT but the site is Pixelfari.

Do you guys know Megan? Well, she is the SHIT-KABOB because she hooked me up with exactly what I needed for my little timestamp, in plain language with easy instructions. She should be a webstuff teacher. Specifically my webstuff teacher.

Anyway, timestamp problem solved. Let’s get that lady a beer!

I’m good at starting stories, but I’m not so good with coming up with compelling conflict and I’m even worse at wrapping things up. Most stories I write get rambly and bogged down in details and go unfinished, and yet opening lines tumble through my brain on a nearly constant basis. I thought it might be fun to put some of them here in the hopes that you writerly types might see fit to use them as story prompts. If you do, just come back here and leave a link in the comments so we can all go read your story.

• When she finally took her hands off his neck, he still wasn’t dead.

• Lucinda Belle Craddock née Van Mott clutched her bucket of quarters and pulled the lever one more time, for Frank.

• It had skidded across the road and landed at the foot of Seth’s lawn chair, and had it had just a smidge more momentum, it would have taken him out with it.

• He hated his name and always had.

• “You said you would show me the scars.”

• Margaret was fairly sure that when she wrote her marriage-counseling book, she was going to include a chapter titled “Sleepfarting.”

• Caitlin had kept her eyes closed for ten seconds, just like Dr. Smoltz had told her to, but when she opened them, it was still there, looking at her and not blinking.

• The things random passersby threw into the gravel pit never really surprised Daniel, until today.

• Hitomi remembered the awful tension everyone felt the year the census numbers showed that cyborgs outnumbered humans.

• His hands, from the right angle, looked like gnarled tree roots, but they knew her body better than they knew anything else in the world.

• The smoke brought him into this world, and now it looked like it was bound to take him right back out.

• The building was obviously alive, the way it sighed and shuddered and sometimes even shrieked.

• Tom left her the day after their fiftieth anniversary, and all she had of his was his gold watch — a memento too bitterly ironic even for her dark sense of humor.

• The so-called invasion was decades behind them.

• Abel had never asked for the visions, never wanted them, never indulged them, but suddenly the entire class was gathered around him, begging him to tell them what was going to happen.

• Tilly had heard the rumors about David — “Doggin’ Dave” they called him — but it wasn’t until she clicked the video link some anonymous e-mailer had sent her that she realized just what he had got up to.

• Mandy sat by the empty crib for three days and three nights.

• The man in the cell was hollerin’ something fierce, his face white as a sheet, but Deputy Mason didn’t speak Spanish and so just stood there, wide-eyed, unable to comprehend the commotion.

I promise there will be less pee-related posts going forward.

I think.

I had a Plenty of Fish profile once upon a time. My username? Hipsterectomy. Yeah, yeah. You wish you thought of it. Anyway. If you’re a girl and you put up even a semi-flattering photo of yourself, you get a shitton of worthless one-word e-mails from dudes (subject line: “hi,” e-mail body: “hi”), even ones who, were they to actually read your profile, would see they are not compatible in any way with you. It’s just how it goes on these sites. The men throw shit against a wall and see what sticks and the women lurk and wait for someone not insane to message them.

Anyway, I got some truly odd messages in my short time on PoF. (Two foot fetishists and one man who wanted to know if I needed someone to call “daddy” stand out in particular.) And then the other day I got this:

I mean, I guess it’s an easy way of saying both “I don’t want kids” and “I don’t read for comprehension,” but still. Fellas, think before you hit send.

INSTANT UPDATE-O-MATIC! Do you think this guy was trying to make a play on words implying that I removed a man from my life recently? IS IT POSSIBLE THAT I HAVE BEEN OUT-CLEVERED AT MY OWN GAME?!

Okay. I am kind of squeamish about doing this, but the way I see it, the best-of-Memphis competitions have for too long been dominated by the same blogger, and it’s time to knock the tube-top obsessed off the leaderboard. Fire sale information and salacious and sometimes clandestinely taken pictures of tanned and tipsy women are great and all, I guess**, but there are other blogs out there that deserve some love too. And no, I’m not just talking about this one, although if you do vote for my blog, I will hug you so hard.

So anyway. Go here and vote! Be sure to fill out the majority of the ballot — write-ins are welcome — for it to count. I’m also nominated for best local Twitterer, so if you want to vote for me for that too, I will hug you twice and both times so hard, and then probably tweet about it.

Thank you. And may the best self-absorbed internet citizen win!

* Hotness and wetness may not be available in your region.

** Not really.

I don’t wanna brag or nothin’ but look what Mz. Melissa Sweazy sent to me for this bit of internet interactivity (seriously, it’s hard for me to understand how that thing is a shoe; I have seriously imprinted it in my memory as a cast). I am super excited to frame this print and pick out the perfect spot for it. That is, of course, assuming I don’t gobble it up entirely.

Thanks, Melissa! And for the rest of you, if you’re not already following her excellent photoblog, might I demand politely but demandingly that you do so immediately? She is the rare photographer who actually makes me want to get engaged.