Author: admin

The other day I talked about visitor comments as procedural objects, and my friend Sally took up the challenge by posting a comment that consisted entirely of a link to this lovely teacup. It took me about a day or so to understand what she was getting at.

The key to the puzzle was to remember that such meta-questions are Sally’s cup of tea. In this case the cup in question is slightly skewed, framed in close-up, lovely in repose. And now with today’s post, the comment becomes the subject, the supposedly omniscient blogger willingly following his visitor down the rabbit hole to a tea party.

Which is as it should be. Blogging is an oddly asymmetric form of communication that promises personal empowerment yet delivers fiefdoms of petty tyranny. So in a sense the blogiverse practically begs for revolt. And isn’t that what tea parties are for?

Everybody has at least one epic poem in them. The best way to find it, perhaps, is to begin at the beginning. And this being a Friday, it is time to begin…

   And so Miss Helenius
   Feeling most curious
   Not quite anonymous
   Yet not yet eponymous
   Intent on the spurious
   Though nothing injurious
   In a moment unserious
   Set out on a lark

   Like brazen young Theseus
   Or better, Prometheus
   Whose tales still fire us
   And often inspire us
   To passions erroneous
   If not quite felonious
   But somewhat delirious
   And never too dark

I’ve been thinking about this dynamic of a person writing a post and then other people responding with comments. It’s a kind of asymmetric conversation. It would be interesting to allow that conversation to include procedural things.

Suppose the comment writers could script a program as a way to advance the conversation. Can something that we generally think of as a “mechanism” be used to further dialog between people?The only way to find out is to try.

I once went down to Brazil to see a total solar eclipse.  For an hour everyone watched breathlessly, as the silhouette of the moon gradually ate into the sun – first biting off a little, and then finally swallowing it whole.  Until four glorious minutes of totality when it felt as though we were in another world, with a strange alien light that bathed everything in eerie darkness.  Then there was the second hour, when the sun gradually appeared again.  But nobody cared, nobody was looking.  The gradual march to normalcy went unheralded, unloved.  January 2 is like that.  And yet without it, how would we ever really be able to continue on, how would the new year ever truly happen?

We find this out, we find out everything.

And everything begins again.

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Have you ever wanted to run away to the circus?