I survived the St. Elsewhere’s Day Massacre, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt!
I don’t know how far back some BBSers go, but I started with bOINGbOING as a print magazine in the 1990s, and it has definitely changed a lot since then. IIRC it was mostly Mark and Carla with Gareth Branwyn, Paco Xander Nathan, Jon Lebkowsky, Rudy Rucker, and generally more contributors. Did BB used to be more punk, or did I just never grow up? Probably a little of each. I love that some DIY ethos is still there anyway.
As for personality clashes, I get along well with the current staff. Early on there were more PMs between Falcor and I, probably trying to probe whether I was trying to cause trouble, or if was simply a natural skill on my part. Probably the closest I got to a non-self ban was from arguing with JLW. I don’t really relate to JLW, but I don’t “have beef” with them, as such.
Much of what passes for “topicality” I find is more aesthetic or ideological than anything else. Like how somebody who composes a movie or piece of music might intend to create a certain kind of association/reaction in the audience. That laughing at a horror movie or moshing to a string quartet comprise a failure to “get” the proper message, or else means that one is a disruptive annoying person. I think that’s debatable, and really pretentious. And doubly-debatable with regards to journalism, where quality means presenting the facts and trusting the readers to make up their own minds about what the significance might be.
Hard to say. I think that, if you moshed to most of my music, I would be quite rightly annoyed, not because you are supposed to feel a certain way or “get” a proper message (I’m not certain what my work is supposed to mean most of the time), but because the music was designed to reward listening (insofar as I succeed in making something listenable), not to reward moshing.
Call it more a matter of function than aesthetics. If I wanted to write something for moshing, then I would write something suitable for that. As it is, most of what I write is a wee bit slippery in rhythm and tempi, and has inner voices out the wazoo, and I suspect most of that would be superfluous to the mosh pit. Now, I can’t very well stop you from moshing to it, but, if I get annoyed, it would be because there’s an implicit diss to my craftsmanship in that. (Maybe a deserved one - not for me to say - but I’m obliged to operate on the belief that I know what I’m doing, or I’d never be able to write.)
Surprisingly, the former. There’s no such thing as music that everyone likes, and craftsmanship may or may not be a criterion for the listener’s pleasure, but is by no stretch the only one. So, yeah, you’re perfectly free to ignore my stuff if it fails to turn your crank - no insult taken.
Here, I’ll put out a couple of examples from works in progress, because they give the range of the work better than the finished stuff I’ve got “out in the wild”. (Spent the last couple of semesters editing papers, so I’m trying to get back in the swim of things now and finish the stuff hanging fire.)
Do you figure that moshing to either is really paying attention, or even particularly satisfying as an activity in its own right?
Hmmm… link please? I don’t remember this. I do remember the pedant pendant thing (or at least I did after searching for it on BBS) but all I found was an 18 comment thread on the pendant itself.
I think it may have been memory holed with the regulars spaces going away. I haven’t been able to find any of it myself. It might have been in September of last year… that’s the timestamp on one of my protest avatar images but I’m not sure if that one was for that specific incident (and, boy, does it feel crappy to be that unsure about which incident was being protested).
From my recollection, a bunch of folks decided to try to be “worthy” of the badge, mostly in a joking manner. A certain author got annoyed by it, and went on a banning rampage in response. I remember being completely floored by it - one moment people were having fun, and the next…
Maybe, Kimmo, but when you get laughter during a “tense” scene in a horror movie, or moshing during a chorale prelude, there has been a failure of function on the part of the “auteur”, and ironically the failure has probably come about because the artist has been telegraphing how you should feel about the function, instead of laying out the elements of the form in a way that makes sense.
Popo_Bawa is right that the intention is probably aesthetic or ideological, but it is failure none the less, and the work ends up appropriated to another function (e.g., comedy, the mosh pit). And yeah, it does apply to other areas like journalism.
Well, not moshing, but I gave the Stride a middle aged boogie and I paid more attention to it than I did the Corale.
But then, I’m not good at sitting and listening to music. I’m not good with minimalism or ambient or stuff like that, I like music that moves, but I’m not sure I process it the same as others. Mrs s is different, she likes that stuff and can get almost trancey listening to it (she’s had people check on her before now to see if she’s okay), so it my be different strokes.
I can live with that, although Stride’s rhythm is very slippery, so I applaud you if you can get the boogie going (because there is some boogie in the music). That’s as close as I get to Minimalism.
I tend to like a lot of harmonic and contrapuntal movement, which is not the kind of strong rhythm I think you respond to, so no worries: my music is probably not going to turn your crank. Very much different strokes, and I both expect and respect that.
You’re a dancer, and there is definitely no shame in that. I like to dance too, usually to music that was designed for dancing - that’s kind of what I mean by function. I just don’t have a knack for that kind of writing.
