April 28, 2022

Hello, internet.

The last time I was “online” it didn’t seem so necessary to point out that we were online. 

Hello, internet. 

The last time I “had a blog,” we were all happy to have elected a black president of the United States that was doing pretty well. The last time I “had a blog,” the biggest political issue was that Flint, Michigan was running poisonous lead-tainted water through its pipes. The last time I “had a blog” the most pressing issue in the world was not the suggestion that “the internet” might kill us all. I guess the last time I “had a blog” the whole world was not so decidedly “post-internet” that everyone’s grandma frets about it. And that’s actually an important point to note for the long haul, here. There’s a thin line between dangerous extremes. Not to fetishize the internet nor to look down on it. That wasn’t necessary to say the last time I was “online,” it seemed. Now we are so definitely “post-internet” that it does seem necessary to at least acknowledge the form. 

Not to mention, the last time I “had a blog” there was a bona fide national crisis to deal with, namely that we were all basically drinking lead-tainted water, to the point that I probably had as well. Not like Flint, but once or twice, because my hometown had that problem in some old buildings too. It wasn’t just in Flint, and yes I wrote about that. But no, it’s not online any more, so don’t go looking for the free sh*t.

ಠ_ಠ

I do love my OSINT researchers, though, so there will be some free sh*t here. I don’t have any deep state knowledge or any zeitgeisty sh*t except for that which I have. Ha. Ha. I’m not here to be foolish or to act foolish. If you work for the government or the Davos world banking conspiracy of the super-rich space aliens (ha, ha) yep, you might know more than me. I know what I see and what I know, and I’m reasonable with what I know. You’re not going to get a whole bunch of stuff you don’t know from me, if you know a whole bunch of stuff already. You’ll get pretty much what you see and hear, if you practice the good ol’ fashioned art of reading aloud or if you can hear the words in your head as you read. 

I’ll give you two commitments and some general interests for if you stay around and see what’s what. The first is for the old-school writing purists and the laypeople that are, yes, old, or old-fashioned. Whatever is here was written in pen and in a practiced hand (a workman’s hand, if you must know). The second is for the young guys. “Hello fellow kids”, yada yada; heaps of scorn; you’re young, guy, you’re not old yet, etc. This is not the product of living like a medieval monk, buried in books and ink pens. If it’s not important to the actual world, it’s not here. (Logically: yes, I’m saying that this is not everything that’s important.) I’ve got the pen I like and the paper I like and (most of) the books I like - I’m not going to write to you about that either, nor in some ridiculous coded way. Who wants nihilism when we live in important times? Or any times. I’m not here to compete over who is “more” online; I’m online enough to not care how online you are, except relative to whether you have the juice. The deets. The sauce. Information. 

I do other writing in other places, on and offline, and I practice it a lot. My union would like you to know that it has value and is not free or a hobby. 

I do have some opinions about the environment, politics and culture and so on that I can’t say won’t make it into this newsletter. I’m a progressive Democrat, an internationalist, identify with working-class politics, and climate change is to me the defining issue of our time, as long as we stay out of senseless wars. So don’t feel betrayed because I didn’t tell you. I do have an unshakeable affinity for Taiwan’s independence and sovereignty, exceeded in loyalty only by my U.S. citizenship. 

There is a positionality, that every writer has, as regards issues vital to the state, and that is a large chunk of mine. 

I’m not sure if the other “kids” feel this, but there’s this huge and inexplicable gulf between generations. Not just the internet and computers; it seems to be everything: politics and culture and all the internal subdivisions of these things. That’s what I feel in public affairs now. The old, old admonitions from the Mabinogion, apparently, is “a fo ben, bid bont” - which means, they say “He who would be a leader, be a bridge.” I don’t claim that this work is the bridge, the only bridge, or that it will make the bridge that is wanted. But within what I like to do, I am not insensible to what we are “losing” when we stop writing with pen and paper, and not insensible to the fact that more people are closer now than ever before to the written word. All I can say is that if this gulf is to be bridged, the work is going to start now. I can’t say that it is only here that it’s going to be tried. I can’t say that it’s not going to look less elegant than you thought. I can only say that I’m going to do what I’m going to do, and I can’t say it won’t help you.