Author: shawn

whoopsyduckydoo!

cornucopiae of duckishtness. yabble. orlean described the woncer like the sacky thing it was, and when those tomatters grind between the teeth,, pulsh! goes that tomarrer jooce. ick. but the taste isn’t so, as it were, so so.

yertru had cukes and tommarters in a solid (fist raised) with vinny and a sour beet green, etc. homever, a groce of turkeys keep……

feeling brane slipping further, gripping..?

(i)

Discourse on social software and group moderation

Clay Shirky’s chat about social software and group dynamics.
The way people behave seems so obvious once people set it down on paper or what have you, but it doesn’t seem like people are aware of it much.

For example:
You are at a party, and you get bored. You say “This isn’t doing it for me anymore. I’d rather be someplace else. I’d rather be home asleep. The people I wanted to talk to aren’t here.” Whatever. The party fails to meet some threshold of interest. And then a really remarkable thing happens: You don’t leave. You make a decision “I don’t like this.” If you were in a bookstore and you said “I’m done,” you’d walk out. If you were in a coffee shop and said “This is boring,” you’d walk out.

You’re sitting at a party, you decide “I don’t like this; I don’t want to be here.” And then you don’t leave. That kind of social stickiness is what Bion is talking about.

And then, another really remarkable thing happens. Twenty minutes later, one person stands up and gets their coat, and what happens? Suddenly everyone is getting their coats on, all at the same time. Which means that everyone had decided that the party was not for them, and no one had done anything about it, until finally this triggering event let the air out of the group, and everyone kind of felt okay about leaving.

Also, some neat stuff about reputation and the effects of group moderation (or lack thereof). Check it out.

all the nails in heaven

this, in spite of calumny (or that spice of life, whatsit?) do all things hinge upon the classified or secretive documents of such and such or so and so. and who knows how many file drawers of drearily tedious materiel hide one sharp nugget of deadly earnest? (?can?t find examples? they?re all hidden away?)

my flesh is sunbaked and flaking(soon?) ? will it all blow away in a puff of dried skin? or will the submerged microscopickals do their duty and patch things all together? just because it?s happened before??

my inner brain?s all like ?gotcha!? and i wake up with only a dim glimmering of what?s just past? or even that anything?s just past. and where?d all that stuff go anyway? i?m remembering that everyone has a story and that everyone has a point of view and i?m thinking that 6,302,681,232 is an awfully big number (and i?m even wondering how they even get that number exactly: i mean, don?t they want to round up or something?) and i?m trying to get my brain folded round the idea that everyone single digit of that number represents a personal subconscious dream-memory narrative that they might (or might not) forget upon awaking and not-to-mention all the errata and detritus roiling around in all those heads (and not to mention all those millions of hairs on all those heads)?.

wow?

primary category

don’t let it be said that i’m finished with the good stuff. no. that’s not what should be said at all. only, when i’m done. that’s when. not now or ever until then. but once that triumphalist, etc., is past, then, well, yes.

don’t let me forget to mention the old woman who had sandals that were twice the size of her feet. a longish bit sticking out in back behind. and she shuffled in a formidably slow sort of way. (with those white white socks) and when that one sandal fell off, that boy with the long hair hesitated before picking it up with finger and thumb. and when he handed it back to her, she looked at it as though she had never seen it before in her life. then. she took it and held it. i can’t recall her putting it back on her feet. but. she must have.

or don’t let me forget to mention that rusted out girl, her hair purple, but turning hazy at the roots with some other color like gold or brown. and don’t let me forget to tell about those possibly rose and thorn tattoos curving around what could be seen of her breasts and chest and also don’t let me forget to mention that onion character tattoo on her inside left wrist that i didn’t notice until she reached up. it looked like a small death-in-life (not life-in-death, you tortles).

or and please don’t let me forget that purse-faced young woman with the hair that seemed to be weighing down, pulling itself back and down her head. oozing maybe. don’t let me forget, because it made me think of my own mouth and what it was doing and will it be stuck in some way all the time forever.

and o please o don’t let me forget that brainly befuddled man who once spoke to me for the longest time in a coffee shop about skiiing and who wears thick thick glasses and speaks through a molasses filter and i don’t think he understands anything i say and i wonder where’s the bottleneck? where’s the place where data’s holding up? what place is inside his brain that is like those spartans who fought in the narrow gap and won, outnumbered 5000 to 1? and he is such a womanizer because everytime some slightly attractive woman gets within his bespectacled range, he says hello and i think, man, this guy’s got more guts than i do… and i think that he doesn’t notice me (i didn’t notice him buried in my book at first, until he slurred his hello to that woman) but then he turns to me and he says, “i have to get that 4” and i think that i have no idea what he is talking about and but i wonder what and why and howtofore he flutters his hands like that, distressed. and then i see that #4 pulling away and realize that he had been more aware of surroundings than i had.

and and and don’t let me forget that spite that creeps into my voice on top of things and at the end of the day especially towards the last person in the world it should be creeping towards, you bastard!