Brass Knuckles

I don’t know why (I really don’t), but occasionally while I’m at work and should be producing, I take a walk across the tracks instead and wander the streets of Looneyville Junction. Not so much the bigger establishments like “The Daily Kos”, but more the smaller joints like Fierce Planet or Iddybud, or some other such seedy room like that. Mostly I find howling monkeys, the virtual equivalent of the self-assured hip-bots that you’ll find in any downtown hipster Starbucks, dutifully reciting the lines handed to them by the sit-com de jour or the blue eyed poetry slamming corn-rowed white boy prophet that they want oh-so-badly to like them, but every once in a while I find some real gems like naked jen or The Goddess. Some of them are instantly likeable like naked jen – it doesn’t really matter what she’s saying as much as the way she says it. You can just tell that she’s a blast to be around and that she’s going to be a great mom, if she’s not already.

Some of the real lunatic fringe blogs spout off fiery street preacher rhetoric, weak on logic or content but stong on conviction, kinda like the “Lost Tribe of Israel” guys you always see in Midtown Manhattan, black Israelites in shiny polyester robes and Alladin turbans, one reading bible passages in a metered shout, and the preacher coming up with surprisingly creative and startling misinterpretations of the passage just read.

I like The Goddess. Do I agree with her 100% on everything? Nope, not even close. But guess what? You don’t have to agree withsomebody 100% to like, respect or just enjoy their blog. I like the Goddess because she believes in everything she writes. She’s passionate, fiery, alive and unapologetic. And she’s gentle with commenters that she doesn’t agree with. That to me is class, that to me is sexy.

I think that the biggest misconception about blogs is that you have to agree with them, or you have to fire off flames to baptize them into a new understanding by the power of your conviction.

You don’t, and you won’t.

I’m old enough to remember when there was no internet, and the closed thing we had was faxing poorly drawn gag cartoons to each other that looked like absolute crap after the sixth or seventh generation. I saw early versions of Mosaic, but I didn’t really understand the power or potential there. Once the ‘net came alive, we were excited. It was packet radio, but on freakin’ steriods, this ham operator’s wet dream. I could just picture how this would come alive, buzzing with ideas and conversation and dialogue. I guess we were a little naive, maybe smoked a little too much weed.

I’m troubled by the lack of dialog I’ve seen of late, and I don’t mean troubed in the way that a third grade teacher might be, but in the poverty of thought and reflection. All the internet has done is to help people side up, gather together in their little cliques in their corner of the playground. Anybody that offers up an alternative comment becomes a “troll” and is fair game, and to be fair, with good reason. Why would you go on the NARAL site to scream “murderers!”, and why would you go onto a milblog to scream “facists!”.

As a goof, I read the “letters to the editor” section of my hometown newspaper, the El Paso Times and more often than not, the writers are carping about crap that they read on the internet, but never bother fact checking. Why? Because it supports their arguments. Fair enough, but wouldn’t you care whether or not you have your facts straight? Wouldn’t you worry that maybe if you spout something off theat can be disproven on Snopes in two minutes flat, your wife might realize how big and idiot you are and cut you off completely?

I don’t know where I’m going with this – maybe just to say as my daddy used to say to me, “think, son, think”. Oh, and like my friend Doug’s dad said to him, “son, you can’t go through life fat, dumb and happy.” And maybe I could throw in what SFC Bernard Simmons used to say to us in boot camp – “I ain’t got nothing for you but bubblegum and…”

He would never be able to say that stuff in today’s boot camp.