Creativity fled

Where’s it gone? Have you see in? I had it here. [checks pockets] Where has my creativity gone? Bollocks. I know I had it. If you’ve got it, please, send it back. No questions asked. I could blame Orkut. It might even be true. Adam Rifkin told me the other day that without jail, he’d […]

Where’s it gone? Have you see in? I had it here. [checks pockets]

Where has my creativity gone?

Bollocks. I know I had it. If you’ve got it, please, send it back. No questions asked.

I could blame Orkut. It might even be true. Adam Rifkin told me the other day that without jail, he’d live there on orkut fourteen hours a day.

It’s not the time though. I’m not spending a lotta hours. I’m spending a lotta brain power. It’s like being at a party with all my funniest friends, and we’re all in a vague competition to keep the level of cleverness very very high. When we’re all hitting together, riffing on each other, trading jabs, working like we’ve rehearsed a routine, it’s a thing of beauty. Orkut’s like that, sometimes the jokes are working and sometimes they’re not but either way the brain’s running, the attention tightly focused. And I walk away from the computer fogged like I’ve been playing a video game.

It’s reached the point where it’s work or orkut and then brain’s empty; I must re-fill it with beer, and then sleep.

Fortunately, three writer friends recently unintentionally pimp-slapped me about it (well, one did it on purpose, thanks Fred), one by writing again after a layoff (can’t wait to see when it’s done, baby), one by asking me to help edit a piece, and one just by saying (thanks fred) ‘get fucking writing again.’

All right, fine, fine, I gotcha. At least I’m doing this. I can’t promise on the other stuff, but I’m looking at my stack of stories started and thinking, one of these has to be pay dirt, which one is it?

Ok. So next time I get the orkut urge I’ll try to work on something else instead. I don’t know it’ll work but, really. I will try.

So I should talk about the camping trip I chaperoned on last week – yeah, they put me in charge of ten year olds. The fools. Or I could talk about My Lunch with Adam Rifkin but he made us sign an NDA. So instead let me just say – ah fuck it, I got nothing, is it time to go to fiji yet?


Now Playing: Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part Two from the album The Great Deceiver – Things Are Not As They Seem … by King Crimson

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Blog about Blog

The pusher-man strikes again. Gregg, welcome to blogger-land. You are one of us. Ok, that’s a little pre-mature you have yet to get a real entry up, but you will man, you will. While talking to Gregg (Who has too many gees and whose name I always want to spell with a differing number of […]

The pusher-man strikes again.

Gregg, welcome to blogger-land. You are one of us. Ok, that’s a little pre-mature you have yet to get a real entry up, but you will man, you will.

While talking to Gregg (Who has too many gees and whose name I always want to spell with a differing number of them, Greggggg, Greggggg, Greggg) about this, I also started thinking about desktop blogging clients. I don’t have a strong opinion about the idea yet, I need to monkey with MT a little to get Ecto working. But it seems a worthy idea for some additional functionality that you might get with a desktop client – spell check, a better preview mode, automated html insertion to save me extra typing. But the luddite in me laughs at the idea.

Opinions? Anyone out there using an external blogging client rather than a web interface? If so, why? Particularly MT users, which ones are you using?

And while we’re geeking out, note there’s a new Style in the pull-down menu, Titanium Gold. I rather like it. Again, courtesy of Scotty at movablestyle.com.

Ok, I promise, next entry will be free of geekery, and will contain only very little about orkut. Really. It won’t have any sex in it either. Wait though, we’ll get to that.


Now Playing: Dear Old Dad from the album Death Taxes & Prozack by Prozack Turner

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It’s pronounced “slowth”

Like Peter Cook in “Bedazzled”. “Slowth” Not “slawth“. It just sounds better that way. So once again, Austin Ray and I are on some weird wavelength. See his entry Sloth is the Mind Killer for context. Also, he owes some of you a long email but don’t hold your breath. But we seem to be […]

Like Peter Cook in “Bedazzled”.

Slowth

Not “slawth“.

It just sounds better that way.

So once again, Austin Ray and I are on some weird wavelength. See his entry Sloth is the Mind Killer for context. Also, he owes some of you a long email but don’t hold your breath.

But we seem to be sharing a saturday alone, 1800 miles apart.

A saturday alone. This is one of those ideas that should be wonderful for the harried (ahem) head-of-household. Images of beer and ballgames, puttering around in the garage, hanging out with the buddies. Or catching up on work. Or something productive. A day of time spent usefully, or in satisfying uselessness.

So what did I do? Hell I’m not sure. I certainly didn’t achieve anything, no matter how much I felt like I was doing stuff all day. I had visions of doing a lot of writing, but that didn’t happen. Not even blog writing until now, near midnight. I had visions of errands I was going to run (new turn signal for the one I broke off my Triumph – stupid parking-lot drop, I hate that.) But I didn’t ever actually leave the house until 8pm when I got hungry, and then realized I had nothing in the house but booze and kippers. Actually if I’d started on the booze the kippers would have been fine, but I had enough booze last night for at least one weekend, maybe enough for a couple.

I had this vague plan about things I would do with friends; but timing sometimes seems against me. I was thinking of seeing a band, but that just sort of didn’t happen. And I can’t even blame Orkut for my lack of productivity this time, since my favored account is in orkut jail and I’m not using the old-just-released one on the assumption that they’ll figure out I have two and re-delete that one at any moment.

So what the hell did I do? Well, I watched a really great documentary on hip-hop DJ’s and turntablists called Scratch, which I gottta say, made me wanna go get a couple of 1200’s and a mixer and call myself DJ Freaky E. Ok, so really it just made me wanna play with the gear, but still. Even if you’re not a hip-hop fan it’s a brilliant documentary, and if you’re at all interested in hip-hop or DJ’ing, do not miss it.

Still, it’s an annoying feeling, when you intend to be productive, and instead do nothing. I guess I should have planned to do nothing, and then doing anything would seem like and achievement. It’s all about setting expectations.

At least my people far away are having a good time, but I’d rather have been with them, all things considered.

But I still wanna be DJ Freaky E. Word up, y’all.

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Whoa. Just – Whoa

So if that don’t beat all. Just got this from Orkut. After (let’s see) Oh, about three weeks since I sent it. Hi Karl, We sincerely apologize for our delay in responding to your request to have your account reactivated. We hope you’ll be willing to rejoin the orkut.com community and give us another chance. […]

So if that don’t beat all.

Just got this from Orkut. After (let’s see) Oh, about three weeks since I sent it.

    Hi Karl,

    We sincerely apologize for our delay in responding to your request to have your account reactivated. We hope you’ll be willing to rejoin the orkut.com community and give us another chance.

    At the time your account was suspended, your profile name was listed as “Laser-Guided Elvis” which violated the Community Standards posted at http://help.orkut.com/bin/answer.py?answer=148&topic=-1. In general, users are sent a warning first, asking them to correct their profile name, and we’re sorry that this step wasn’t taken first.

    Your account has been unsuspended; however, your profile name will have to abide by our Community Standards if you wish to continue participating.

    Again, we apologize that a warning message was not issued before your account was suspended, and we’re working hard to ensure that this does not happen in the future.

    Stay connected,
    orkut.com

So now, there’s two of me. At least.

Now. After I’ve completely re-created my Orkut identity, re-built my friend list. Nice timing, guys, that’s real attention to detail there, that is.

At least I have my testimonials back. Seems they didn’t show up on other users profiles, but the text showed in my testimonials list, so I was able to screen-capture them and save them. So if there’s any goodness I can get it back.

And my old postings are back in my name.

There are some confused users though. Suddenly they have two of me. Some may call this a blessing, some a curse.

At least they finally admitted the fuck-up, if a day late and a few simoleons short. Wonder how long til they realize there are two of me?

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I see my friends on teevee

So it’s a singularly strange experience, seeing a person you know well, have known for years, a person you’ve seen go though a lot of life’s peaks and troughs, seen drunk and sober, single and married, with and without kids, a person you know very well, suddenly on TV.

There’s this show. It’s about people on an island, and they’re playing a game. And we’ll just call it Survivor And there’s a guy; and if you’ve seen my picture, and you’ve watched the show, you’ll be guessing already which guy it is, but we’re just call him Lex because it’s a pretty good name, and in fact, it’s his name.

So you’re used to watching a guy you know. Eating, drinking, talking, laughing, angry, upset, sick, happy. All the normal things we see our friends do.

And then one day, there he is on the tv screen.

Ok, so that’s a little weird. A little. But you get used to it.

And then suddenly, there he is talking to Regis fucking Philbin.

That, my friends, is where the line is crossed, from odd to completely surreal.

If you don’t watch survivor, I may lose you here. That’s fine. I love you anyway. Click on over to Orkut and see what’s up on your favorite groups, or fire up a blunt, crack a 40 and listen to eminem. Getcha next time.

Ok, now they’re gone. Who needs ’em anyway?

So I’ve been a big fan of this show since it started. I was down on the idea, and still am, of reality TV. It’s lame. And as a general rule I don’t watch it. There are exceptions, sure. But this Survivor thing looked cool from the previews. And I was hooked from the very first for one reason – it looked fucking great. Great camera work, great editing, all the technical stuff. That’s really what got me. The game – I wasn’t sure. The people all seemed a little annoying. But the look and the idea were cool. So I went with it. I got hooked. Became a fan of the game, and the show, and some of the players.

But it’s all so different when you watch a friend.

I don’t just mean the novelty. That, you can imagine. And it wears off for the most part, Regis aside. I mean – the game changes and the show changes.

Suddenly, you feel it. The misery, the hunger, the stress. When you care so much about who wins. When you care about the person, his kids, his wife. When you know you’re some of the people he’s thinking about out there in the wild places. When you know the expressions and body language and can read misery with a vividness impossible for the casual viewer.

I watched Lex go through starvation, dehydration, stress and terror in Africa. Watched it knowing how sick he was when he came home. Knowing he’d nearly died, knowing, just from seeing him (For he could say nothing that might reveal the game’s outcome) how much of a toll it had taken.

It hurt. It took the fun away, and made it hurt to watch. And watching him fail at the end – not him failing, but his illness and weakness causing his body to fail – it was like a body blow to watch it.

And then I could barely watch the show after. Because for all that it hurt, it was also as compelling as anything I’d ever seen on TV tat wasn’t real reality. So the next season or two; who cared? No one mattered to me. Once you’ve seen a person you love play the game, who wins and who loses seem unimportant. Yet you know they are feeling the pains and stresses, they have loved ones who feel as we do about our friend. So I watched. It’s still damned good TV

And then Lex went back again, for the All-Star show. And now it’s worse.

It’s worse because of all the reasons before; but now it’s personal. Personal because I know some of those people now. I’ve met a few. Know a lot more as friends of friends. But more, personal because they’re all friends with each other in real life. So it’s almost like watching old friends break up on TV for our entertainment.

Deeply surreal. Weird and painful and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. But I don’t dare look away.

And this time, even more, there’s the surrealism. Because last time, no one knew in advance. This time, though Lex could never say, we all knew that this show might happen, and we’d talked it over, ad nauseum, with each other, with Lex, what would happen, how he might play, who he’d like to be with. All well hashed over. And we’re not watching him with strangers; it felt like watching a party I might have in my back yard, but on TV. Oh, but the food would be better at my house and we’d all be cleaner.

And then Lex was voted off. And we won’t talk about the whys here, whatever happened, he’s my friend, I love the man, and I stand behind how he played.
But again, I had to watch the face of abject horror as he realized what was happening, and I felt that pain, could feel him watching it with his family, and – almost couldn’t watch. It was reality TV made too real. It hurt.

And then he’s on Regis. Lex. Showing tattoos I saw him get, and talking to Kelly Rippa about how the tattoos where done.

It’s just – truly, truly odd. Too real. Regis Philbin is a tiny annoying man about six inches high in the TV. He’s not real. So how’s he standing next to all-too-real Lex?

It still doesn’t make much sense to me. But in a silly, giggling, stoned sort of way. Different than watching your friend suffer for a game and for america’s entertainment. Very different.

But it’s all still strange.

I can only imagine how strange it must be for Lex himself.

“Andy Warhol must be laughing in his grave”
–Crowden House, ‘Chocolate Cake’

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God damn the pusher man

I am the pusher man. Ok, not so much. But there are those moments. Where you buy a thing, a concept, a hobby, an interest, an activity. Where a friend pumps you up, gets you interested, and you start thinking, and then doing. Where (s)he is the pusher man, and you are thinking junkie thoughts. […]

I am the pusher man.

Ok, not so much. But there are those moments. Where you buy a thing, a concept, a hobby, an interest, an activity. Where a friend pumps you up, gets you interested, and you start thinking, and then doing. Where (s)he is the pusher man, and you are thinking junkie thoughts.

And then a while later, you are the pusher man and you are telling a friend, go, do, buy, want, use, like, have, be.

It’s a funny thing.

This can be religion for those who do that drug. This can be something scary like a drug or a dangerous habit that could get you killed. This can be a sport. This can be some stupid hobby or other.

But there seem to be those moments where there’s a bump from someone that moves us in some direction.

Peer pressure? I dunno.

Sometimes it’s funny the things that can come from a minor choice; giving in and doing something you’re pushed into. Sometimes bad, clearly. That’s obvious. Who hasn’t smoked a cigarette because a friend said it would make you cool, or done another shot or three or five because your friends chant ‘drink drink drink’. Some of us have gone further, dropping or swallowing or snorting or smoking or shooting based on what our peers do or like or use or think is cool. And while a lot of that is harmless fun, sometimes it’s not harmless.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. We know that story, first hand or second or from a book or a film or the front page. I’m talking about the silly, foolish things that our friends get us doing, or that we get our friends doing.

Here’s an example; “Hi, I’m Karl, and I’m a fish-geek”.

I used to have that bad. I maxed out at fourteen fish tanks. I used to spend my weekends cleaning tanks and hanging out at fish shops, posting on *aquaria* newsgroups, debating about filters, pumps, heating systems, live food vs. frozen vs. dry. You get the idea. Hard-core geekery.

This started because a friend of mine had the bug. I used to drink and party at his house, and stare at his fish tanks. And then one day he said it; “Hey, you should start up a tank, I’ll help you.”

And I did. Went off. Bought a tank. And got it going. And then wanted another. And then he laughed at me; “sucker, I got you hooked!” We called him ‘the fish pusher after that.

And then I needed to get other friends into the hobby. “A tank would look great here!” I’d say. “You need a bigger tank,” I’d say to the ones who had one little tank.

And I was the fish pusher.

Silly, huh? But you know, it all started with a bump.

I started writing the same way. Long, ages ago, someone I was talking to, flirting with, said “You should try to write me some erotica.” And so I did. And started something that, who knows, might never have gotten started.

A lotta years later, someone else said “You should write something for me.” And I did. And somehow, this hooked me into reading blogs of other writers, and started me writing again.

One little bump. And things fall like dominos.

Out of that, I found a slew of new friends, started blogging (another bump, a push, ‘you should start a blog’, ‘why don’t you start blogging’, and somehow I’ve joined some sort of tribe). And somewhere in there found a story I had to let out of my skull which opened new areas of my life, proved to me I am in fact a writer, and has made a couple of friendships that might never have happened otherwise (That story has been talked about before, “Wanton“, an erotic novella).

One comment – ‘You should try writing a story’. The ripples spread.

Recently two friends, after reading my blog, started blogging. I can’t say I made them do so. But with both, I had conversations about the whys and the what I do it for and with one, Austin Ray, I actually said “Dude, you have something to say, you should blog.” And so he did. So with both, there’s the bump.

And I am the pusher man.

I don’t really do this stuff on purpose. But I do it; ‘read this book’, ‘you’ll like this album’, ‘ever heard of of a band called…’. Maybe it’s a compulsion to share pleasures. Maybe it’s the same reason I always want to fuck people I like; ‘This is good, have some!’.

I dunno. It’s a pattern though. Have a hit, catch a buzz, pass the pipe along. We’re all brothers now, man.

It’s not a compulsion to belong. I don’t tend to do things just because my friends do them. I tend not to follow fashions, or to drive what my buddies drive, or watch what they watch (I generally resist when people say “watch this show”), or read what they read. I think it’s more about knowing; that’s what I was doing, I told myself, when I started blogging. Just wanted to know how the tool worked. Curiosity. Maybe, in a tribe of friends physically far apart, it’s a need for shared experience. It’s akin to hanging out on a saturday afternoon, drinking a beer and watching a game. When friends are distributed far and wide, have disparate backgrounds, different tribal language, there’s a drive to find commonality. So we forge a new shared interest to connect our worlds. When one has good, truly good friends that one has never met, maybe it’s a device we use to tattoo on our tribal marks.

Friends far apart. And there I’m veering into another topic, which I think I’ll shelve for another entry.


Damn, right in the middle of this entry, there was a chocolate-fueled child disaster including silly-putty stuffed into a TiVo remote, a screaming jag and a lot of sulking. I wish I had a good joke about ‘…And that’s just what I did…’ but I can’t quite seem to get there. Ah, parenthood. Who decided that certain holidays should be all about stuffing kids full of chocolate and sugar (kid-crack, I tellya) as if this was a good thing? You know it only means someone’s gonna wind up crying and something’s going to wind up broken. Actually it’s sort of like saint patrick’s day or mardi-gras, I guess it’s only fair the kids get one also, but next time, maybe I should go elsewhere until it’s all over.

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Should I stay or should I go now?

A little more orkut talk. Click away now if you’re sick to death. I think the fun, as expected, is leaking slowly out. This isn’t to say I’m leaving. This isn’t to say I’m not enjoying it anymore. But we’re still in that fast-forward state, the evolution of an on-line community, in exaggerated time-lapse. It’s […]

A little more orkut talk. Click away now if you’re sick to death.

I think the fun, as expected, is leaking slowly out.

This isn’t to say I’m leaving. This isn’t to say I’m not enjoying it anymore. But we’re still in that fast-forward state, the evolution of an on-line community, in exaggerated time-lapse.

It’s funny to watch. Parts are falling off the car as fast as we put them back on.

Several isolated things:

-Friends I’ve invited are saying “I just don’t know about this thing”. And I tell them, “I don’t know either.”

-People who were complaining about not really getting much out of it are now dating people IRL that they met on orkut.

-People who were having a blast, just loving this thing, are now getting to the point where they’re leaving, or thinking of leaving.

-A friend who was having a great time being ‘someone else’ is now having a hard time with the way this is at odds with a call to ‘be yourself’.

-I’m suddenly losing the inspiration for writing testimonials. I blame Ray for this, but that’s a dodge. It’s either that I am seeing the first leading edge of a loss of interest, or my muse has simply deserted me again and gone on holiday. She does this, usually just when I need her.

We’re seeing the typical group problems. “Me Too” posting, people who think they need to answer every post in every forum. Fights over stupid shit. On the other hand, we’re seeing some good debate, or at least a little of it. The community format does not lend itself well to good debate when posts max at 2048 characters, but still, there’s some good.

But I think we’re already seeing problems of scale, and orkut is, still, very small. One of the advantages at startup is that it was very, very fast. Suddenly, it’s not, and many times of day, it’s hard to get in at all. More important though is that the communities are suddenly getting crowded and since we’re still seeing dozens created every day, it gets harder and harder to track where your friends are and where the good conversations are happening.

This is all stuff you’d expect. But the interesting thing is, it’s happening so fast. We’re seeing decades of USENET and months or years of some other forums compressed into days or weeks here. And it’s not obvious why.

I had a conversation with my dear friend Squidgirl a couple of days ago about the sudden tide change. We agreed it somehow happened around the beginning of April, somewhere between March 31 and April 5. What exactly the change was remains unclear, but there was a sense that someone let some of the air out of the balloon. It’s still up there, yeah, but not so high, and not so happy, and there’s that feeling that it’s slowly sinking.

I switched metaphors there, but who’s keeping score anyway?

There was a change. The date range that we observed there may not be exactly right or consistent for everyone. But it changed in a tangible way.

It’s still fun though. Old friends are still sparring and flirting, re-connecting after many years. New friends are mixing in socially. Connections are made between disparate friend units. There’s fun and there’s value. It’s a silly, light-weight experience.

Where’s it gonna go? I don’t know. I don’t have much faith in the people who run it, but they may surprise me. They have built a clever, inviting interface that’s easy to use and easy to get used to. And they’re working on bettering it. It’s not clear though, if they’re just tinkering or if they’re really working on the fundamental issues. They’re not saying. It’s not clear if they even know the issues exist.

I hope it settles down, once the freshness wears off, and matures into something useful. It has the potential. But the pull of entropy is strong when you attempt social engineering. I don’t know if these people are good enough to overcome the inherent problems, or if the culture that will grow will be a mature enough one to thrive.

Again – we shall see.

There’s a lotta sex in the air though. And that suits me fine. That alone calls me back, the bee buzzing from flower to flower. “Just one more, just one more…”

But you know, if I could get that muse back, maybe I could chuck orkut and get back to some writing.

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And through the wire…

This started as a comment on an entry titled “Is it wrong?” on the Solipsisters blog. But then I felt an essay coming on (and you know how you know when an essay is coming on? You ears start to go numb, and your smile gets bigger and bigger and bigger), and so decided to […]

This started as a comment on an entry titled “Is it wrong?” on the Solipsisters blog. But then I felt an essay coming on (and you know how you know when an essay is coming on? You ears start to go numb, and your smile gets bigger and bigger and bigger), and so decided to move it on over to my space and not take up theirs.

You might read the above linked entry for context, it’s short. Basically it’s about how odd it is to “meet” people over the internet To play roles and find mutual desire for what are, in effect, pretend personae, but also behind these masks, maybe real people.

It’s an interesting thing, “meeting” people over the internet. The faces turned to the light are, sometimes, only those we choose to show. To quote the old New Yorker cartoon (and I’ve lost my link to the actual cartoon, I must find it), “On the internet, nobody knows I’m a dog”.

Thus can I be, in some forum somewhere, a pirate or conan the barbarian, ming the merciless, the sheik of araby (Well at night where you’re asleep Into your tent I’ll creep), or a master of slaves on some counter-earth. You, you can be the mysterious temptress, the super-villainess with thigh-high boots and whip, the wicked schoolgirl, the willing slave, the haughty business woman, the tavern wench.

Or I can be me and you can be you. And we never really know where one ends and the other begins.

And through the wire I hear your voice
And through the wire I touch the power
And through the wire I see your face
It’s through the wire

–Peter Gabriel, ‘And Through The Wire’

It’s a dance, sometimes. Do we want truth? Fiction? Do we care or want to know? Is the illusion better, or in fact, the real point?

But who are you really?

Some people don’t seem to play this. You get face value. On the internet, they say, I am a dog. really_a_dog@no_really_a_dog.com. But even then, it’s only the words they give, only the side they share. They may not, truly, control what they’re showing, but still it’s a flat two-dimensional image presented over the wire.

It’s different now, year-of-our-lard 2004, where the internet is made of pictures and sounds and video and real-time chat. There was a time when the internet was only words, and our interaction was in a space where we could and did hide, or reveal, based only on words. And where we used facilities provided by employer or school, and thus had an authority to answer to, sometimes, for what we did and said and presented. Now, today, I’m not a name and a set of words, I’m a picture and a web site and an identity that’s as much larger than life as I make it. I’m the devil on fire (thanks, Paul!), I’m the laser-eyed bastard, I’m the sullen kilted warrior. Whatever I want. A digital camera and a whack or two with photoshop, I’m any and all and more.

With all this, though, an interesting thing happens. With all the roll play and unknown ‘reality’, one connects. One finds a point of common ground, respect, shared interest, atraction. One finds a dialog, sometimes public, sometimes words whispered off in the shadows.

Real friendships are born out of the game play and the masks. Which is what makes it worthwhile. Yes, the game itself if fun. The picture one hides behind, the persona made of smoke and mirrors and reality, in a shifting array. The reveal, hide reveal game of internet dialog. But when the game grows old, and it does grow old, you’re left with real connections. Sometimes close, sometimes far, half a world or a continent away.

But then a funny thing happens sometimes. Sometimes you meet in real life.

This was a little different, again, in the old days. There was a time when most of the internet, outside colleges, was here, in silicon valley. Where if you met someone on line, like as not, they were within an hour’s drive of San Francisco in one direction or another. Now, the internet is as global as people are, and my friends may live on any continent, in any time zone.

It’s a funny thing though, meeting people you “know”. Because you never really are sure who, what you’re meeting, how they compare with the fantasy, the image, the imagined person behind the name. Even if pictures have been shared, and today, they so often are, it;s so very different when there’s a voice, a form. People are so much more than what they say in writing, what they show in a photo. They’re body language, gestures, mannerisms. Nervous silence. Skin tone, eye contact, smells and laughter.

I’ve met people who proved to be all they showed on line and more. And others, brilliant in writing, who cannot maintain a conversation or meet my eye. I’ve met people who are stunning in person but fear to share a photo, people with whom I clicked on line but found nothing there in person. Some of these relationships were cemented, permanently, by a meeting. Others were in effect ended by meeting face to face.

One always wonders. If I meet you, will it be like this? Or like that? Will we find the human connection endures when the wire is shortened? Or will it prove to be as ephemeral as the internet itself, elusive and spoiled when the mystery is removed?

And here we are back to me – I will always choose the real over the pretend. The flawed reality over the image of perfection. Live music over the studio, amateur porn over glossy professional. I’d rather know a real person with quirks and oddities and imperfections over the shiny, pretty picture shown to the public. For me, real itself is attractive.

Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

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