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Given, most web sites are crap...
...but so are most ads, tv commercials, books, movies, magazines, political candidates, and deodorants. Lousiness prevails.
Things fall apart.
More shocking than this is the continual surprise well-meaning folks register when hearing such news. They must expect that, at any minute, experts hiding underneath the Matterhorn will suddenly produce a theory which will not only explain suck, (our reptilian brain stems are hardwired for it, etc.) but also will give us the key to future solutions (surprisingly, rest cures just about everything). Thus the eternal amazement: Why didn’t Microsoft’s site work in my Firefox browser?
If only the experts would come out of hiding. We could understand things.
One must take a stand against such nonsense. Not only will the experts not save us, but they build stuff like Instant Messenger. A great product to be sure. I love being annoyed every 5 minutes by friends I moved away from with a "watz up?" or better yet, my boss?
All vitriol and good, American cynicism aside, this will be the non-journal. The animus of the personal web site. The post-sub-pop-counter response to all the responses. I don’t have anything to say, but neither do most of these hi-lo, self-conscious, stylishly derisive media fuckers and it’s about time someone said so. The world is hopelessly short and fraught with whatever and such and such. I hope this doesn’t make sense. I’d hate to catalog despair. And do not worry. I won’t put up banners or 500K Flash movies or pictures of my mom or the latest script trick. You can stumble on that stuff elsewhere (everywhere). I’ll post up what I post up and you’ll either read it or you won’t. Most of it will be depressing, horrible dreck.
There are a million sites like this.
The world is full of people like me. Eager to mouth off and justified.
The only thing that makes any of this unique is that I’ve gotten past the point of really caring about whether I’m unique or not. That’s probably not even unique.
I don’t want to give lectures or lead chat discussions or go to conferences to discuss how the Web is transforming community. If it’s transformed anything, it’s the amount of time people spend staring at low-EMF monitors.
And poetry, God help us. I don’t want to talk about poetry or writing or if the latest poem is how I really feel (of course it is) or how my life is going or where it’s going or why. I don’t want to convince anyone that I’m happy or not happy or depressed or recovering from anything. Pop psychology has managed to convince everyone that their experiences are of benefit to mankind. The truth is, we lead a pathetic, uncertain existance that is laughable, at best. We quote from books about chicken soup. I don’t want to propagate more truisms on behalf of the lamebrained. I sure as hell don’t know why I write or do any of this. I don’t want to encourage anyone else to do it. I write this shit because I have to. If it’s art, so be it. It’s probably the great failing of art that it tries to explain itself outside of spiraling like a proper, brilliant light or falling out of the sky onto your head.
Either you get it or you don’t. It either appeals to you or it doesn’t. There is plenty of fraud perpetrated in the name of educating the masses. The masses don’t want to be educated and the ones who do certainly don’t need to be told why shit doesn’t stink when it’s thrown on the Madonna.
If you do have questions, please don’t e-mail me.
Go to the library.
A good librarian can answer just about any question you have. You’d be surprised.
- Josh Magnuson, 1998
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