Author: Dale

Lichtenbergianism: Building the online empire

Posted on by Dale

Back to work.

When last we looked in on Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy, I was reading through The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published [EGGYBP] and working on all the advice contained therein.  Chapter 2 deals with one’s online presence and how to capitalize on that.

Okay, I’ve read the chapter a couple of times and I have to admit I’m kind of stuck in a little mental eddy.  I know what they’re talking about, of course, and I’ve seen all of the strategies and platforms in action, but where I’m stuck is figuring out how best to proceed.

There are a couple of stumbling blocks.  The first is deciding on who I want to be in this endeavor.  I already have this blog, and accounts with Twitter, Tumblr, Imgr, and Instagram, not that I use them (because I don’t have to.)

But I think it’s wise—and smart—to split Dale Lyles from Lichtenbergianism.  I can post my liberal rants or muse on the aspects of ritual in the 3 Old Men or post my music and William Blake’s Inn sketches—but that’s muddying the waters when it comes to attracting a “permission base” to Lichtenbergianism.  Anyone who heads to the intertubes looking for Lichtenbergianism ought to be able to be immersed in it.

That means a separate website/internet presence based completely on the book and any services/goods I might be offering.  (What, you don’t want to buy a Lichtenbergian brand Waste Book? Or a Cras melior est hoodie?)

So there’s the first stumbling block.  Do I want to go to the trouble of establishing lichtenbergianism.com and @TheLichtenbergian and all that before anyone shows any interest in the book, or do I need to do that in order to attract interest in the book?  Ugh.  Around and around I go.

The second stumbling block is the incredible amount of time/work it takes to establish that permission base of online followers.  I’m going to be posting about the different strategies in Chapter 2, but a lot of them deal with joining one’s online community.

Who, exactly, is that?  I work in a vacuum here in Newnan, and of course that’s my own fault for not looking for my “community” online, but which community is that?  Writers?  Painters?  Gardeners?  Efficiency experts? Creativity gurus?  All of the above?

Thinking that I have to spend hours a day checking on these communities and establishing a presence there just gives me the fantods.

Oh well.  Excelsior.

WBI: 04/20/2016

Posted on by Dale

More imagery of what my song cycle William Blake’s Inn might look like if some enterprising theatre company decided to stage it:

I’m thinking that at their first appearance, the Tiger and the King of Cats should probably be in their puppet avatar.  The denizens of the Inn would move forward, perhaps; at any rate, they would “come to life.”

Musicallyspeakingwise, this is from 0:30–1:00.

 

SPROINNNNGG!

Posted on by Dale

That is the sound of rightwing nutjob’s brains when they are invited to leave a comment on a World Daily Online article entitled OBAMA ANNOUNCES HORRIFYING NEW EXECUTIVE ACTION.

First, a little background.  World Daily Online is one of those nutjob aggregators that take brief snippets of news, rewrite the lead-in, slap a clickbait headline on it, and conclude with “Tell us what you think in comments.”  You will notice, if you take a look at the main page, that the screamy headlines are all a bit similar.  If you believed WDO, President Obama and Hillary Clinton do nothing but PANIC, and you yourself will constantly be either ill or in disbelief with the events of the day.

For your average conservative nutjob, it’s the perfect way to get your angerbear on first thing in the morning, and the comments are about what you would expect.[1]

So what HORRIFYING NEW EXECUTIVE ACTION is Obummer guilty of this time?

Here, go read it.

Right.

Now, I don’t know about you, but an a la carte approach to cable offerings has been a desideratum for this dirty freaking hippie for some time.  Why am I paying for shopping channels or entire channels devoted to the exploits of dead golfers or sitting in boats or college football players who are now more geriatric than I am?

Also—and here the nutjob and the hippie are of one mind—are we not concerned to the point of rebellion over the ickiness of huge, practically monopolistic corporations?

So here the Muslim Kenyan Usurper says, hey, I think we should give the people more choice in how their money is spent, and how do the nutjobs react?

SPROINNNGG!

They can’t do it.  They cannot say, “Wow, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then” or “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day” or any other sequence of words that would give the MKU any props whatsoever.  They simply cannot do it.  The comments are an amazing study of cognitive dissonance.

I love that the article has over 2500 FaceTube shares of this HORRIFYING EXECUTIVE ACTION. I am amused that the authors of the website didn’t bother to recast any of the actual facts, so that their readers get the news that something they probably have bitched about is being supported by the MKU, straight up.

I’m a little concerned that—and this will shock you—the headline and lead are completely offbase in their characterization of the event.[3] The angerbears, who I am willing to bet are not getting their news from any actual news source, now firmly believe that they have one more example of the MKU’s blatant disregard of the Constitution.[4]  If you were to engage one in discussion, their unshakable faith in the perfidy of Barry Hussein Soetero Obama would be an irritating, teflon-coated wall, impervious to actual real Things, and this article will have contributed to that.

Oh well.  As the sage once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  It’s just amusing that some brains can’t process some facts when they don’t agree with their opinions.[5]

—————

[1] Never read the comments.[2]

[2] Read the comments.  They’re a hoot, and a great way to get your eyebrows and jaws their exercise first thing in the morning.

[3]  Here’s the Washington Post article.  See if you can tell the difference. That’s right, Billy, “urging” the FCC to do something is not the same as “issuing an executive order.”

[4] Unconstitutional?  Meh.  It’s a gray area, but most jurists are inclined to give the sitting President the benefit of the doubt.

[5] Actually, most brains can’t, but don’t get in my way when I’m being mean to nutjobs.

Ghosts

Posted on by Dale

Very few alive have seen this:

It is the dot matrix (!) printout of the young adult novel I wrote back in the 1980s as part of my master’s degree in media education.  It was the Adolescent Lit course, and the final project was either read and review 70 of the things or to write one yourself.  Hmph, I thought to myself, if S. E. Hinton can do it, I can do it.

So every Sunday, sitting in the choir at First Baptist, I outlined a chapter during the sermon then typed it up during the week.  Before I knew it, I had a novel.  Odd.

It’s called Twelfth Night, New Day, and it is a completely unremarkable piece of work.  It’s about a bunch of teenagers in a community theatre group—if you can imagine such a thing—and every character in it was based on the kids in my company at the time, all of whom are pushing 50 if not already past it at this point. (The plot was a poor thing but mine own.)

I had a good time writing it, and I even started a sequel, but if the truth be told I am not a fiction writer.  I don’t think I even have a copy of that one, which was called I Love You in Earnest.

Anyway, I needed space in the filing cabinet for this year’s tax documents, and when I discovered that I actually had two complete copies of this it was easy enough to decide to ditch one of them.

Yes, I’ve flipped through it.  No, it’s not worth dragging out and revising, I don’t think.  And no, I didn’t find a copy of the suppressed Chapter 13.

WBI: 04/14/16

Posted on by Dale

I’ve done another 5–10 seconds of visualization for William Blake’s Inn, hereinafter known as WBI.

 

no large version

So, yes, the stars are puppets, in the sense that they are held aloft by performers.  There are probably stationary stars in the backdrop, but these are mobile.  You’ll see why tomorrow.

Again, the music:

The event pictured above is from 0:10–0:15, approximately.

My religious school

Posted on by Dale

It seems that in the sovereign state of North Carolina, your tax dollars earmarked for charter schools are far more likely to go to a religious charter school than not.

I keep thinking that if I work hard and focus on the end result, I can one day kill off my morals and scruples and get in on these Jebus dollars like the shysters to the north of us are doing.[1]

Probably Cthulhu.

But Dale, I hear you asking, what religion will your school promote?  This is a good question and I will now attempt to answer a completely different one.

The philosophical/moral/ethical foundation of the Lyles Charter School will be as follows:

  • The 10 Principles of Burning Man
  • The 9 Precepts of Lichtenbergianism
  • The Big 6
  • The Golden Rule

 

 

Let’s examine the prospect, shall we?

The 10 Principles of Burning Man

Those ten principles are:

  1. Radical Inclusion: Everyone is welcome, all types, all kinds, friends, strangers, and in between.
  2. Gifting: Gifts are unconditional offerings, whether material, service oriented, or even less tangible. Gifting does not ask for a return or an exchange for something else.
  3. Decommodification: Hand in hand with gifting, burns are environments with no commercial transactions or advertising. Nothing is for sale – we participate rather than consume.
  4. Radical Self-Reliance: You are responsible for you. Bring everything with you that you need. Burns are an opportunity for you to enjoy relying on yourself.
  5. Radical Self-Expression: What are your gifts, talents, and joys? Only you can determine the form of your expression.
  6. Communal Effort: Cooperation and collaboration are cornerstones of the burn experience. We cooperate to build social networks, group spaces, and elaborate art, and we work together to support our creations.
  7. Civic Responsibility: Civic responsibility involves the agreements that provide for the public welfare and serve to keep society civil. Event organizers take responsibility for communicating these agreements to participants and conducting events in accordance with applicable laws.
  8. Leave No Trace: In an effort to respect the environments where we hold our burns, we commit to leaving no trace of our events after we leave. Everything that you bring with you goes home with you. Everyone cleans up after themselves. Whenever possible, we leave our hosting places better than we found them.
  9. Participation: The radical participation ethic means you are the event. Everyone works; everyone plays. No one is a spectator or consumer.
  10. Immediacy: Experience things right now. Live for the moment, because that moment is fleeting, and you never get another chance.

Also the 11th Principle, Consent.

The 9 Precepts of Lichtenbergianism

You already know these:

  1. Task Avoidance
  2. Abortive Attempts
  3. Successive Approximation
  4. Waste Books
  5. Ritual
  6. Steal from the Best
  7. Gestalt
  8. Audience
  9. Abandonment

The Big 6

We haven’t really talked about these in a while.  Here’s the main site.  Essentially, it’s a curriculum structure for finding and using information, aka research.

Here’s the original language:

1.Task Definition

1 Define the information problem

1.2 Identify information needed

2. Information Seeking Strategies

2.1 Determine all possible sources

2.2 Select the best sources

3. Location and Access

3.1 Locate sources (intellectually and physically)

3.2 Find information within sources

4. Use of Information

4.1 Engage (e.g., read, hear, view, touch)

4.2 Extract relevant information

5. Synthesis

5.1 Organize from multiple sources

5.2 Present the information

6. Evaluation

6.1 Judge the product (effectiveness)

6.2 Judge the process (efficiency)

Here’s my elementary version:

1. What’s the job?

1.1 What are we trying to do?

1.2 What do we need to know?

2. Where will we find the information?

2.1 Where could we look?

2.2 What’s the best place to start looking?

3. Find it.

3.1 Find the sources of information: books, encyclopedias, Internet, cd-roms, etc.

3.2 Look up the information in the sources: use the index, etc.

4. Deal with it.

4.1 Read through all the information.

4.3 Get just the information we need: take notes!

5. Show it!

5.1 Put all the information we found together.

5.2 Present the result.

6. How did we do?

6.1 Did we do a good job?

6.2 Were we good at finding information?

The Golden Rule

Here.  Read it for yourself.

That’s it.  Unless I’ve missed something.

Wait, you want me to explain all this?  Geez, who has time for that?  What do you think I am, an educator?

Let me put it like this: if people want me to explain how this foundation would make a perfect school, they can request me to do so in the comments below.  So there.

—————

[1] And if Nathan Deal has his way, I won’t even have to move to Asheville to do it.

Confused? Here, let me help

Posted on by Dale

From today’s FaceTube:

::sigh::

This is one of those memes that I call the rightwing “nuh?UH” response.[1]  Is your black-and-white world starting to look a little gray around the edges?  Simply asseverate whatever eternal truth that you think is unraveling.  Rinse.  Repeat.  Sneer smugly.

::sigh::

I presume this is in response to all the backlash to North Carolina and Mississippi’s idiotic “freedomz of religion” bills, the purpose of which is to protect the good Christianists from pooping next to someone who may or may not have the same fiddly bits as them.[2]

Look, I know that I have no clue about what it’s like to feel as if you’re in the wrong body.  I can look in my underwear and feel pretty affirmed, thank you very much.[3]  But I’m not so blinkered as to think that this is true of everyone when the evidence is piling up around us that it’s not.  In a conversation with my lovely first wife just last night, I pointed out that we seem to be awash in gender confusion much in the same way that we formerly seemed to be overrun with diagnoses of ADHD or reports of spousal abuse: society finally made it possible to even recognize the issues instead of hiding them.

So, yeah, suddenly it looks like crazy people have jumped on some kind of gender identity bandwagon, but the simple truth is that they were always there, they just suffered—and I mean suffered—in silence.

And further, I feel compelled to recognize their suffering as legitimate simply because of its disruptive nature.  In a recent interview, Caitlyn Jenner talked about breaking the world decathlon record at the 1976 Olympic Games, and said, “I remember waking up the next morning and looking in the mirror with not a stitch on and the gold medal around my neck, and it being a really scary moment. I was thinking, ‘Where do I go from here? What is my next distraction going to be?‘” She knew even then that she was in the wrong body.

Let us take a moment to remember what body she was looking at:

Yeah.  Tall, handsome, ripped, über-masculine.  Holy crap, I wish I looked even halfway like that.

Here’s the point: if the man in that photo couldn’t look in his underwear and answer the question of which gender he was; if he struggled with his gender for another 40 years; if he then chose to go public with his transition (problematic though it has been); then who the hell am I to discount his struggle?

And that’s just the one handsome man on the Wheaties box.  Rinse. Repeat.  But never sneer.

—————

[1] Why yes, that is the closest approximation in the Latin alphabet to the International Phonetic Alphabet’s glottal stop character.

[2] Because I know that’s what I’m worried about when I poop in a public restroom.

[3] Other than, well, you know…