OK, now I'm going offline. Gotta stop this shit and get some sleep!

As of right now, I'm out of here until Sunday, then off to give a talk in DC next week (the base site is here -- what a dumbass use of frames!) Anyway, I probably won't be packing, so I may be invisible for awhile. Fear not, though. I'll still be fomenting plenty of mayhem. News at 11. Blog on...

Julian Bond's Celebrity Blogmatch. I'm not sure how it works, but if I say something about weblogs here, I guess it shows up over there. Is it based on RSS? Julian says not yet, but maybe sooon. Can his server handle the flow? Will his page rise to the top of Daypop? What do the opinions of two bloggers matter in this crazy world we live in? And will the wienerboys show up? So many questions. BTW, the correct motto is "It's even worse than it appears."

By the way, don't forget to VOTE at the bottom of the page. While Winer did give his (increasingly papal) blessing to this page, I have a sneaking suspicion he's not going to mention it on his own blog. If he does, I'm fucked. Dave is the undisputed (until now) 800-pound gorilla of blogspace. If he sends over the 32 billion people who read scripting.com, I'm gonna take a fall. Please do what you can to prevent this unseemly eventuality. The tattered remnants of my reputation are at stake. Oh, and it goes without saying (almost), them what has bloggers should BLOG THIS MATCH!

...and possibly: The Case for Personal Web Publishing

This recent interview with Winer introduces him as "the godfather of Weblogging." Not without cause. He's also a tricky bastard, using this opportunity to articulate some deceptively cogent ideas. This is no doubt to distract from the picture topping the article, in which he bears an uncanny resemblance to either Osama bin Laden or Britney Spears in Hasidic drag. Ask yourself: why is this man smiling?

http://www.google.com
Your search - "Britney Spears in Hasidic drag" - did not match any documents.

I think we can legitimately conclude from this that Winer is running a deeply covert operation.

"Jungian Analyst Wolfgang Giegerich said that the pursuit of profit is today's overarching myth, and Christopher Locke provides an extraordinarily insightful look at the world of marketing, profit-making, and profit-losing -- always with a keen sense of business in changing historical and psychological contexts. His writing is always lively and lucid, and he's sometimes so much fun to read -- and the current is so swift -- that it's possible to miss the deeply layered intelligence he brings to our time and place."

"Within these things called weblogs there are gems of creativity and brilliance that take my breath away. There's writing that's so good that I feel gifted with the words.

Sometimes the people who write the weblogs are known; most of the time, they aren't. Doesn't matter, though. All that should matter is the writing. It's the words that count -- everything else is just fluff, sparkle, and zazz.

I respect the women on my suggested "blogmother" list because they were gutsy, take no prisoners type of women. They blow the doors off a fucking white bread and vanilla custard man like Samuel Johnson.

Sisters, I let you down. I let me down.

Four very key ideas. Let's go through them one by one.

1. "...weblogs are relational writing, that's why it is so close, if you're serious about it, to academic writing."

   There are two things I want most in life. The first is to be taken seriously. The second is to be mistaken for an academic. No wait, there are three. The third is to set my hair on fire.

2. "Almost everything on this page relates one thing to one or several other things."

   Personally, I have never had any trouble relating one thing to one or more other things. In fact, on reflection, I can't think of anything that doesn't do this almost automatically. I like to think I'm helping to create these relationships, but perhaps that's just a form of hubris.

3. "Academic writing is supposed to be that way..."

   I suppose you're right. That is to say, rather than frame an interrogatory, I accept your suppository.

4. "...but it was hard work before the Web."

   And now it's a piece of cake! Good thing everything works like it's supposed to, and I don't have to keep 314 edit buffers open and juggle 95 browser windows and try to remember where I stashed 13 million three hundred and twelve fucking bookmarks while I'm trying to remember why I'm even doing this.