Minimum blogger standards revisited

I wrote a post in May explaining my winnowing three blogs from the applaudable ranks. Others, who will also be missed, now join them. Writing less than twice a month was the issue in my May post; now here are a few other reasons to lose my applause.

Uninteresting writing: Some bloggers become enmeshed in describing daily details or environment up to—and beyond—the point where their writing is as interesting as watching my Hayward AquaPilot suck dead bugs (which is actually interesting for about 23.57 seconds).

Self-promotion: Overly narcissistic blogs have a friends and family niche; unless I'm related to the ugly-in-every-picture I prefer not to see your digital storeroom. Along the same artery, those who seem to have a need to throw their shoulder out of joint with self-aggrandizement: less is more, even when it comes to masturbatory-back-patting.

Jerry's kids: Some blog-reads are very much a romp in Springerland. Although I'm oddly interested when I stumble across the show and may even watch for a few minutes (mesmerized by toothless, mouth-breathers) I don't program the show on TeVo.

By request: Asking to be removed from applaudable status to avoid being listed here if one's writing (or my opinion of it) flagged in the future, seemed—at first glance—abnegation bordering on fatalism. But I suspect it's far more confusing and falls somewhere between 'shouldn't pander approval' and 'control-curtail stressors'. So, although I still applaud their writing, I bow to their wishes.

To these bloggers, I wave a hypertextural goodbye (even though some may have been gone long, long, ago)...

• the uglier house
• sepia tone dreams
• fluffmuppet takes on nyc
• written inc.
• spelunk in the trunk
• unfounded shamanic shifting & powerful foolish wondering [added 11 Jul]
• rezzee's blog [added 11 Jul]

After slip-skipping thru the atmo-blog, I complied an informal census, which indicates all blogs fit into these cubbies:

• 20% - written in a language I could not read (unfortunately)
• 18% - focused on political or religious subject matter (with proselytizeable foaming and rants)
• 14% - advertisement or word-cache for another site
• 12% - yet to be determined, as the blog was too new
• 11% - caught my attention and held it (and were appended to my clap-pending list)
• 9% - fan site (sports, pr0n, celebs)
• 7% - juvenile (creative over-attempts)
• 5% - digital album niche (friends and family oriented)
• 4% - simply dislikable (for various reasons)

vaca-enn-we

digital rendering by veach st. glines, creative commons license 2005

I'll be back for fireworks

I'm actually scuba diving in Mexico's Sea of Cortez, not fishing; unless fishing means 'breathing underwater like a fish'.

In Korea, Butterflying means 'having sex with multiple partners' (like a butterfly flitting from one flower to the next). I heard the word Sharking used in the context of 'obtaining something fraudulently' (like sharks who will steal your hooked catch before you reel it in). Cowing refers to 'frightening someone with threats' (because cows will retreat to hollering and arm waiving).

Maybe I am fishing.

I'll be back not to celebrate the fourth day of next month but to watch the colors in the sky that night.

Until then, check out the blogs listed on my sidebar (applaudable blogs and standing ovational blogs), the sites found by clicking my micro-buttons, as well as my phantastic photos and unarguably, art sites.

Oh, if you read any of my clap-pending blogs, please tell me if they make you clap.
Until next week - enjoy your summer or winter (depending on which shoe fits).

My Tarot Card (how-so-very Sonoran Desert I am - inside as well as out)

You are the Sun card. The light of the Sun reveals all. The Sun is joyful and bright, without fear or reservation. The childish nature of the Sun allows you to play and feel free. Exploration can truly take place in the light of day when nothing is hidden. The Sun's rays fill you with energy so that you may live life to its fullest, milking pleasure out of each day. Such joy and energy can bring wealth and physical pleasure. To shine in the light of day is to have confidence, to soak up its rays is to feel the freedom of a child.

Which Tarot Card Are You?
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Q on Next Generation can do it, right?

          "I'm staunch catholic."  He said.  "I know that I don't come off as being religious because I cuss and stuff but I never say goddamn.  My belief is strong."  He raised a beer can toward his bulging lower lip (which made him look like he'd been punched in the face) and spit into it.  His spit was the color and consistency of baby shit but it smelled like wintergreen.  I wanted to ask him why he used staunch as an adjective, but changed my mind.  He probably didn't know why and if he did, I didn't care.

          "Yea?  I gotta be honest with ya, Jim.  I'd never have guessed.  You hide it well."

          "Well, I don't push my faith on others if that's what you mean."

          "No, it isn't.  But tell me this: Do you believe the bible is an interesting collection of allegories handed down to guide people, or do you take everything in it literally?"

          "The bible is all true."

          "Everything?"

          "Yep."  Another thick brown drool entered the can.

          "We definitely see things differently.  Since I believe it's mostly allegory, do you mind if I ask you some specific questions about it?"  Jim shrugged.  The four Budweisers and his dip of Skoal must be causing a measurable degree of fuckit.  "Do you believe that Adam and Eve were the first people on earth and that they had two sons Cain and Able?"

          "Sure."

          "Then, can you explain how Cain and Able had kids?"

          "The bible doesn't say.  God could have made a women for Cain to marry.  Just because it doesn't say, doesn't mean it didn't happen.  It doesn't say how or when he made lots of things."

          "Ok.  There's a portion of the Bible that lists all the people who begat, beginning with Adam, and I've read where someone added all those people until they came to some person that they could date with some accuracy, which indicated the earth is four to six thousand years old.  Are you familiar with this?"  He was nodding half way through my question, so I added the are-you-familiar part of my question just to be polite.

          "It really is around four thousand years old."

          "What about fossilized dinosaur bones?"

          "God put them under the ground."

          "What?"

          "He wants humans to discover these things."  Jim used his fingers to make air-quotes when he said the word discover.  "He wants us to be able to come up with theories and to become scientists and archeologists and shit.  He put all those fossils and diamonds and oil and other energy sources like uranium inside the earth for us to find."

          "So you don't believe that millions of years ago those bones were actually the skeletons of live animals?  And that oil and coal is formed by billions of years of heat and pressure exerted on organic material?"  My voice was getting higher.  I was either closing on him or losing him.  I couldn't tell.

          "God put all that stuff in the earth when he made it.   Maybe he wanted us to think the earth was billions of years old."

          Losing him; I decided to try a different tactic.  "Do you agree that there are tectonic plates that move the continents around?  Maybe a half-inch a year or so?"

          "Yea, I guess so."  He sounded skeptically unfamiliar so got up and brought us two more beers. I decided I needed more details.

          "Earthquakes are caused by these plates bumping and shifting.  Agreed?"

          "Sure."

          "If you back-track all the half-inch movements for hundreds of millions of half-inches.  The east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa line up almost perfectly.  Which, clearly, indicates the earth is old-old and not only a couple thousand years."

          "Unless God made everything move apart really fast on the day he made the earth."

          With logic like that, why was I even having this conversation?  Oh.  Because of free beer and because I was unable to converse about hunting, WWF, TV, or Sports.  The only other thing to do was engage this wonderfully foolish redneck in some type of verbal poker.

          I took another sip from my can and folded my invisible hand.

          It takes all kinds.  If everyone thought like me, I wouldn't have anyone to banter with, bitch at, disagree with, or despise.  Boring peaceful banality would rule until I found some way to disagree with myself.

cicatrize it

"If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time. Although an ugly cicatrized scar may mark your journey, a dose of joy is a spiritual cure. It transcends all barriers." -- snapperhead misquoting Ed Sullivan.

digital rendering by veach st. glines, creative commons license 2005

Keeper Alert & Film-theme Rule of Snap

KEEPER ALERT
Batman Begins (2005) directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, 2000); starring Christian Bale and Katie Holmes: Snaprating=Keeper, Character theme (all other themes are present to a lesser extent). This is hands-down the best superhero-film. This saga incorporates over-the-top action sequences and chases, interesting fight scenes, and witty rejoiners (with less CGI) as if Van Helsing, Die Hard and Indiana Jones were morphed with the first Batman.

Film Theme Rule of Snap
I've been asked if there is a quick way to determine if a film has a Character, Problem, Milieu or Re-Order theme. This is the 'Rule of Snap':

New sidecar cat: clap-pending

There are a few new buttons in my stack worth a look, however (and more importantly) I've added a new catagory above applaudable, called: clap-pending blogs.

These sites are currently being read and scrutinized. If 'newly discovered', then they have something that caught my eye but I'm uncertain if they are worthy of applause. If they once held a position of Applaudable or Standing Ovationable, something (more than likely: a long gap of writing without a 'gone fishin' sign in the window) has caused me to no longer consider them worthy.

The reason I've added this catagory is that, up until now, I bookmarked sites for future reading; but I'm now interested in your comments and suggestions (and will remain open even when this post drops into the archives). If you think a 'clap-pending blog' should become applaudable or even that the claps should be ending, let me know here or at veachglines(at)gmail(dot)com.

Natunatch 19

"Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself more than nineteen times before the soul, unable to become virgin for a twentieth go-round, gives up; not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another's soul." -- snapperhead misquoting James Joyce.

digital rendering by veach st. glines, creative commons license 2005

Prophet of the blog-as-art aesthetic

          One of my 'official questions', posed to Scoots at Yes but still... was:  In any style, write a succinct review of the blog: snapperhead.  His answer sat me back in my chair as if, mid-dinner, Hedwig just cat-walked over me.  I felt a surge of pride-to-the-point-of-embarrassment.  I, like anyone, appreciate kind words and recognition, as when MontiLee at The Diner [at] Penda's Relm complimented my blog with her post I'm Honored.  What follows is Scoot's answer, for which I feel exceptionally unworthy, because of my most recent feeble attempt at encapsulation-reviews.   Nonetheless, thank you, Scoots.

          On seeing Snapperhead, I immediately thought of Raging Bull.  Jake LaMotta would not be remarkable were he merely a boxer, merely an abusive husband, merely a man played by Robert DeNiro; what makes Jake LaMotta one of film's greatest characters, with an emotional heft distinct from anything his real-life counterpart might compel us to feel, is the combination of those three traits into a seamless whole.

           Snapperhead is no different. To find 'digital renderings' like this one:

          Seemingly surreal but with recognizable details threatening to peak out, a woman behind the yellow wallpaper of Veach Glines's depressed woman who happens to paint is not in itself a stunning revelation.

          To find insightful film criticism, or humorous digs at the French, would again hardly be remarkable.  Indeed, Glines fills his sidebar with links to sites that could provide similar content.  I will return to this point later.

          What makes Snapperhead remarkable is its fusion of these diverse elements into a cogent whole, bound together by the consistent personality and ever-high standards of Glines.

          Yet, also, Glines is remarkable for his attitude about the blogosphere.  His sidebar, with its 'applaudable' and 'standing ovationable' blogs, represents the relatively rare stance the author-artist takes: that blogging can be an art form.  Blogs are not, for him, merely an engine by which politically-minded citizens can effect social change, nor merely a way to let one's friends know what is happening in one's life.  Blogging is neither so lofty nor so trivial that Glines will excuse poor quality; instead, he demands engaging, high-quality content. He is a prophet of the blog-as-art aesthetic.

          Picture me, prostrate, head pointed in a east-north-easterly direction, towards Ohio.