All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

L’altra sera ero fuori con la mia cagnetta Tania e sono passato davanti all’ex-carcere di San Donnino. Adesso è la pinacoteca civica, ma su un lato della facciata c’è ancora il vecchio portone di ferro con lo spioncino e il vetro blindato.

Una signora appoggiata al portone discuteva animatamente con lo spioncino, ma naturalmente dall’altra parte non c’era nessuno…

Mi è vento in mente, nell’ordine:

Blogger, cosa ci faccio qui? Messaggio nella bottiglia? Psicoterapia? Caso clinico?

The Shining, Jack Nicholson riempie pagine e pagine con la stessa frase: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.

Sono preoccupato.

Volo e punkabbestia

Ieri sera, per errore, la nosta chat aeronautica è stata catalogata sotto il genere “musica”: per la miseria!

Entravano in continuazione visitatori “strani”, punk, metallari, techno, e mostri simili…

Quasi tutte ragazze tra i 16 e i 20 anni, con nicks tipo “UCCIDITRICE”…

Tutto sommato gente simpatica.

Morale:

Stare attenti a come viene registrata la nostra chat. Dare un nome che si capisca di lontano. Personalizzare il messaggio di benvenuto con indicazioni chiare sull’argomento.

Parolacce e volgarità

La chat impedisce di scrivere parolacce. Ma in modo poco intelligente!

Se scrivo “cazzo figa culo merda pipì” il messaggio non passa.

Un avviso in rosso mi redarguisce e mi invita a non usare termini volgari.

Tutto bene, dirai.

Ma anche se scrivo “cazzotto” vengo bloccato.

“Scemo” e “Zuzzerellone” sono passati senza problemi.

La prossima volta provo “Sconsigliato” come Don Giovanni.

Mi piacerebbe sapere se quella bocca sacrilega di Chris “in vino veritas” Locke ha mai partecipato a una chat, lui che ha detto una volta “I prefer a creative pornographer over an internet analist any time”.

Hey Chris, do you speak italian?

Lista ulm

Da qualche giorno, con gli amici della lista www.ulm.it, abbiamo cominciato a “chattare” la sera su MSN.COM, sotto Hobby, con il nome “Un dono d’ali”.

Fantastico! ma vediamo subito i problemi:

Non tutti hanno voglia di registrarsi con msn.com.

Bisogna scaricarsi il software e non tutti ci riescono, la sera.

Quando ci riescono, il software si pianta spettacolarmente.

A quell’ora le linee fanno schifo: se la connessione non è almeno ISDN, cade di continuo.

Una volta dentro, lo scambio è lento, bisogna aspettare che uno finisca di scrivere la sua riga e prema “invio”.

Capita in continuazione di parlare tutti insieme: se ho un messaggio in tre righe e sono lento a scrivere, tra una riga e l’altra ognuno ha inserito la sua e non si capisce più niente.

Se manca un tema preciso, passano le ore e non si dice niente di interessante: tutto il tempo è speso a salutarsi, ciao come stai, da dove vieni, con che cosa voli, eccetera eccetera.

E adesso?

Chris, ho fatto come hai voluto, e adesso?

Ego-surfing sul Web sempre troppo breve!

Dov’è il balzo in avanti nella popolarità?

Se poi guardo il log del mio sito, mi accorgo

che il 99% degli accessi sono maledetti virus!

C’è anche qualche port scanner ogni tanto…

This sedentary lifestyle is killing me

ho deciso di seguire le istruzioni di quel matto di Chris Locke:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Gonzo Marketing: Winning through Worst Practices

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738204080/entropygradientr

http://www.gonzomarkets.com

http://www.rageboy.com/blogger.html

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Do you remember a guy that’s been

In such an early song?

I’ve heard a rumor from Ground Control.

Oh no, don’t say its true.

They got a message from the Action Man…”

bowie – ashes to ashes – scary monsters

Valued Readers:

OK, enough is enough. This sedentary lifestyle is killing me. Time to shake shit up again. Time for a little web action! Remember when we just about brought down sixdegrees.com? If you’ve been on the EGR list long enough, you do. The CFO sent me mail saying, “Who are you and why are you doing this to us?” Or, just this year, how we, uh… sort of “reorganized” Amazon’s listmania lists? As a result, the following query now yields over 900 hits.

http://google.com/search?q=site:amazon.com+gonzo+marketing+listmania

So here’s the deal. I promised The Guardian…

http://www.guardian.co.uk

…that I’d write an article on weblogs. In fact, I promised its computer editor, Jack Schofield, who’s been on the EGR list forever (sorry to out you here, old man; can’t be helped). Problem is though: what can you say about weblogs that isn’t so vague and general that it’s hardly worth saying? Or worse, that hasn’t already been said. Better. By somebody else. Here’s a good example.

weblogs: a history and perspective

http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html

Actually, what interests me most about weblogs is (you should forgive the expression), memic propagation and amplification. And if there’s one thing that EGR (and by extension, or implosion, or somesuch, RB) gets off on, it’s… that’s right, you guessed it: memic propagation and amplification.

For this article, I spent most of yesterday (have to say Monday now, I

guess) talking to Dave Winer of weblogs.com (and so much else; who can keep track?), and Ev Williams of Blogger, and Doc Searls of… well, the now-infamous Doc Searls weblog. Doc doesn’t call it memic propagation, which yeah, I admit, sound like some Media Lab hack on bad meth. He calls it “blogrolling.” Coined the term, he did. The analogy being to this American Heritage Dictionary definition:

logrolling – n.

The exchanging of political favors, especially the trading of

influence or votes among legislators to achieve passage of projects

that are of interest to one another. I’ve never done good things.

The exchanging of favors or praise, as among artists, critics, or

academics. I’ve never done bad things.

[From the early American practice of neighbors gathering to help

clear land by rolling off and burning felled timber. I never did

anything out of the blue.]

You know: your basic influence peddling comes to the web. When you go to Doc’s blog (which you’ll see in just a second if you follow the simple directions coming up any second now), you’ll see what he means by blogrolling. I’ve adopted this convention — as have about 100,000 other bloggers — on the All-New-Chapter-11-Dot.Com-Memorial-Redesign

of…

The EGR Weblog

http://www.rageboy.com/blogger.html

First note the DAYPOP search box (thanks and a tip o’ the hat to Eric Norlin; q.v. in the URL above). We’ll come back to this presently.

Then note that Doc’s site is at the top of the blogroll in the left column. Place of honor cause he shamed me into this. Long story. Anyway, click on that link and check his page. But come back here, you know. Don’t get mindlessly surfing around. We got work to do — the end result of which will put you on my list of bloggers. Maybe we need to get procedural about this. Yeah, good idea. So here’s whatcha do…

1) If you don’t already have a weblog (and you want one), go hook

yourself up at:

Blogger

http://www.blogger.com

…or at any of Dave Winer’s myriad make-yerself-a-weblog

options. Here’s a particularly powerful one — which I’m still

trying to figure out:

Radio UserLand

http://radio.userland.com

Better still, if you have a 12-year-old kid, ask the kid.

2) Register your weblog with DAYPOP by going here:

http://www.daypop.com/submit.htm

3) VERY IMPORTANT: add “RageBoy” (not that slimy fuck clocke) to

your main weblog page. Link him to the EGR blogger. You can use

something like this:

RageBoy

4) Send me the URL of your weblog showing evidence of #3, along

with three boxtops from any breakfast cereal made in Battle

Creek Michigan, and I will…

5) Stick your site on the EGR weblog honor roll.

That’s blogrolling BIGTIME! Tell your friends too. Any number can play! If the EGR Irregulars come through on this one, you should be able to go back in a few days to…

http://www.rageboy.com/blogger.html

…hit the default DAYPOP search (i.e., RageBoy), and see how many hits we got. Yeah: WE. Because, if you follow these directions carefully and nothing screws up anywhere along this convoluted Rube Goldberg maze of twisty little passages, you’ll see…

YOUR NAME IN LIGHTS!

Then, because I’ll also write this little caper up for The Guardian, so will lots of *Limeys* see Your Name In Lights! (If you are a Limey already, please take no offense; this is the way you *have to* talk to Americans if you want to get anywhere with them. Trust me.)

So see? This way, we’ll have produced a lovely little demonstration of memic propagation for the whole world to marvel at, and we can all win one for the Gipper. Even though there is no meme. And no Gipper, for that matter. Which makes it a sort of empty-zen-hacker-bodhisattva thing. One flash of light. Senseless beauty. Random acts of kindness. You know the drill.

Of course, to be brutally honest, I’ll get even more fucking famous in the process, and sell a whole shitload more books. But that’s OK, right? You don’t mind, do you? All for the best, really, isn’t it?

I’m happy. Hope you’re happy too…

Major Thom

_____________________________________________________________________

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