Tag Archives: Internet

Comment

Comment: (n) a verbal or written remark expressing an opinion or reaction.

Having abandoned journalism, many forms of etiquette, courtesy and basic grammar, the Internet continues to pass along ideas from people who refuse to accept the fact that others have a creative bend and require consideration.

Somewhere in the past two decades we have lost the true definition of commenting. Let me begin by telling you what it is not.

A comment is not you offering an opinion. In other words, if someone writes an article stating that the President of the United States is a great historical figure filled with virtue, a comment would be on the writer’s approach, delivery, information and process in drawing conclusions. A comment is not jotting down, “Idiot, moron, and son-of-a-bitch” with multiple exclamation points. (A single exclamation point is supposed to express great passion. When I see two, I perceive stupidity.)

Commenting is letting folks know how what they had to share, think, or even a meal you prepared was received. It is not replacing their input with your dogma–feeling as if this resolves the issue for all time.

Often my children recommend a movie to me. If I watch it, I offer the following comment:

“I can see why you liked it. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for this movie on the night I watched it, but I did not garner the usual impact or inspiration that I normally enjoy from a flick. It is certainly the kind that I normally do pursue, but this particular one left me cold. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand what the writer and director were trying to communicate.”

This is commenting–a blend of honesty and humility allowing the person who has shared to leave the house without fear of being gunned down by a maniac.

I welcome comments.

I make errors.

But I do not give you permission to ravage my material simply because it busted out the walls of your mental one-room sublet.

 

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Comeuppance

Comeuppance: (n) a punishment or fate that someone deserves.

Sometimes I’m convinced that there are no history books. Matter of fact, I’ve gone on the Internet to make sure they still sell them.

Sure enough, there they are.

So my second supposition is that they just must not be very popular.

Because it does not take too long when perusing a history book, to realize that if you’re going to cheat, lie, steal, abuse or kill, you’re going to get your comeuppance.

You may do it for a while, with authority, seemingly uncontested.

But there is always someone, or sometimes it’s a whole clump of people, who will rise up and stop the foolishness before the human race ends up in the ground with its bones being eventually studied by some other species in ten thousand years.

You just can’t pursue evil and succeed.

That’s enough reason right there to at least consider the option of good.

Yet all of our entertainment, our politics, and even our religions are so power-hungry that they present the illusion that evil might just have a bad enough day to have a good day, and beat the crap out of righteousness.

It doesn’t seem to bother people that it’s never happened.

After all, Adolph Hitler, who thought his Third Reich was going to last a thousand years, fell a bit short. Thirteen years were all he got.

Oh, yes–he destroyed a lot of people along the way and maybe he should have been stopped earlier, but you will notice, he’s not around to take interviews on the subject.

It’s something I need to remind myself of from time to time. I can go ahead and tell that little white lie, and maybe even think I got by with it.

But after a while, the feeling of self-confidence about being nasty catches up with me.

And I do get my comeuppance.

Even worse than that, I end up looking like a fool to have pursued such a retarded, unfulfilling and doomed process.

 

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Come-on

Come-on: (n) a gesture or remark that is intended to attract someone sexually.

Is it just sexually?

When I consider the Internet, I realize there are “come-ons” at every turn.

Of course, some of them can be sexual exploitation, but there is also a great deal of flattery that is thrown around in an attempt to gain a dollar bill.

The problem with every come-on is flattery.

If you’re speaking sexually, it’s highly unlikely you’ll garner the attention, and therefore the pleasure of a partner, by highlighting flaws. No, you have to make it
clear that you are Anthony and she is Cleopatra, or if that reference is too old, you have to pretend that she is Kim Kardashian to your Kanye. (Perhaps by the time this is released to the public, that reference may also be erroneous.)

But also, in business there is the notion that money exists separate from talent, and can be extracted by making people with no ability think for a brief moment that they can be something they never will be.

So rather than becoming a nation which makes products, we have become a nation intent on making ourselves, personally, a product.

Each individual wants to be a brand. So we are susceptible to all sorts of build-up and promotion which causes us to think that if we simply punch this button, in no time at all we will have “thousands of hits and millions of followers.”

It’s a come-on.

For instance, who doesn’t want to “make America great again?” But truthfully, who wants to do anything personally to achieve it?

We think it’s all about plans, maneuvers and business dealings and we’ll pick up a fatter check. It’s a come-on. And it seems to work.

There is an old saying: “There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end of it is destruction.”

There is also a well-traveled axiom in the business world: If people are interested in what you do, they show up with the money. They don’t ask you for it.

You can take a lot of sadness out of your life by refusing to be tempted by come-ons.

Find your heart, discover your motivation, practice your talent, put it out to the nearest market. See what happens.

 

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Column

Column: (n) a pillar or a page division; essay

The columns of our philosophy holding up our suppositions are divided into columns and rendered off for reading–in a column.

Now there’s a twisted path of reason. Should keep you busy for a while.

When I began writing on the Internet I was very uncomfortable with the term “blog.”

I am of the school of thought that if everyone thinks they can do something then no one can do it, because it is never done well.

Everybody has a blog.

For awhile I referred to my etchings in the great “Cloud” as columns–hearkening back to an era when newspapers actually delivered daily information.

No one liked “column.”

So I tried the word “essay.” Then I sounded like I lived in the nineteenth century, having tea with Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. (Emily Dickinson a no-show…)

It didn’t really make any difference. Once I penned something and placed it on the ethernet, it became a blog.

It’s just difficult to believe that blogs are going to sustain the great American experiment and hold up our faith so that insanity doesn’t crash in on us.

But since no one would ever listen to a case made for the value of pillars and justifications of margins, I think we are in the wild, wild West of authoring articles, sentiments and misspelled paragraphs from our six-guns of inadequacy.

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Colloquialism

Colloquialism: (n) a word or phrase that is not formal, typically one used in ordinary or familiar conversation.

When did “fuck” become a colloquialism?

I apparently was out to dinner, and came back and there it was–all over my answering machine, Internet and television.

Was there a meeting?

Did anyone consider that trivializing such a powerful word was taking away the ability to use it when describing murders, mayhem, evil wars and genocide?

If everything is fucked then nothing is truly fucked, am I right?

If you discover that your hard-boiled egg is really soft-boiled, “fucking” that situation removes the potency to rail against some dictator who murders children.

Some words should not be colloquial. They should be saved up for special occasions when we need to rally with just the right word to rattle the room.

And it’s not just the word “fuck.”

I don’t like it when “sensitivity” is overused. Sensitivity is special. It shouldn’t be used when somebody brings you a second napkin.

And how about love? Yes, the word “love” has become a two-bit whore giving a blow job in an alley, or people explaining that even though they beat their children, they really do “love them.”

What? Did I take a really long nap? Am I Rip-van-Something-or-Other, waking up to the world going insane for no particular reason?

If I say “I love you” I want it to mean something.

If I discuss sensitivity, I want you to sense my heart and deep-rooted commitment.

And if I say “fuck,” I damn well want it to be fucked.

 

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Cohort

Cohort: (n) a group of people banded together

I have a son who’s convinced that I am becoming more conservative as I get older.

Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Age has done one thing and only one thing for me–it has insisted that I be practical.

It stands over me, often in a threatening pose, barking in my ear that the plans I had made to do something beyond my physical abilities are not filled with initiative, but rather, reek of stupidity.

I become more and more astounded with the simplicity of the statement, “Those that are not against us are for us.”

Therefore, mankind is my cohort, and I, its.

I am looking for reasons to enjoy the people around me instead of tagging them as enemies to be avoided.

Every time I read something, I find one little tiny nugget of valuable common sense. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Bible or the Communist Manifesto–each document has a golden gleam which makes its writing valuable and worthy of human hearing.

But also, each document is chock-full of filler–statements thrown in, sometimes as afterthoughts and often in ignorance.

So when a Republican talks, I listen for sense. Likewise, when a Democrat shares, I probe the speech for reasonability. In the process of doing this, I find myself making more friends and being far less critical.

Recently a friend asked what I thought about a song that was being touted on the Internet. I replied, “They started on the same beat, didn’t miss a lyric and ended in pitch.”

There’s a lot to be said for that. It is a fine beginning for discussion. But often, humans will find one word within the body of the poetry which they consider distasteful, and relegate the entire presentation to being hellish nothingness.

A cohort of critics.

How boring.

How boorish.

How stubborn

How meaningless.

I found out some time ago that the world never gets anything right. Celebration occurs when the effort comes close.

 

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Circular

Circular: (n) a letter or advertisement that is distributed to a large number of people.

“Shrink to think.”

If you want to get your brain functioning in the realm of creativity instead of repetition, this is better achieved by shrinking what you’re
 doing down to its simplest forms.

There is no evil in technology.

There is no sinister nature to the Internet.

But sometimes if life is not simplified, the complication confuses us into believing that we are not responsible for our actions, but instead, victims of a mass plot.

When I was younger, much younger than today, I sat and read circulars. They were little reports, newspapers or flyers put out by people who wanted to communicate what they were doing, how they were doing it and even the way in which they wished others to become involved.

Usually laid out with a typewriter, they were poor quality–carelessly paragraphed and overworded.

But reading them demanded that I do something I did not want to do: stop.

The main reason we don’t start is because we can’t stop. We spend most of our time skidding into the next project with no idea about whether our passions will sustain it.

Please don’t mistake me for some old codger who yearns for the “good ole’ days.” There was so much bad that it deserves to be quarantined for all time.

But there was the introduction of pieces of paper called circulars, which made you stop long enough to think about what somebody else was doing instead of browsing the Internet, bouncing off subjects like a rubber ball.

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Circa

Circa: (prep) approximately (often preceding a date)

Circa the time that humans discovered fire, they started cooking their meat.

Circa the arrival of iron, swords and plowshares were made. (Unfortunately, our species preferred the weapon.)

Circa the revelation that knowledge could be transferred into manuscripts and eventually books, libraries were built to confirm the power of
our more docile wisdom.

Circa the season when souls from Africa were considered slaves and only two-fifths of a person, the “Abraham of America” came and made us all a great nation.

Circa the arrival of instruments came music.

Circa the introduction of music came soul-washing.

Circa the introduction of a madman, the atom was split.

Circa the dropping of a bomb, we discovered the power we have to destroy ourselves.

Circa one war after another, young men and women have learned to protest the insanity of blood-letting.

Circa the arrival of the Internet with the ability for international communication, there is a scream for moderation and a prayer for personal contact.

Circa this moment, we are in search of our heart.

Here’s hoping we find it.

 

 

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Chewing Gum

Chewing gum: (n) flavored gum for chewing

Early on in my life, I decided there were two types of people I did not want to become: argumentative and complaining. I find that anyone who pursues these two qualities always ends up turning off anyone they know and feeling very alone.

So I am not going to be argumentative, nor do I share this story with a complaining spirit.

One night I fell asleep with a huge wad of bubble gum stuck in my mouth and woke up the next morning with it lodged in my hair. (It was
 back when I had hair. Lots of it.)

The gum, for some reason or another, had managed to distribute itself all throughout my locks. When I went to a barber to ask what could be done, the suggestion was made that I shave my head and start from scratch.

I was twenty years old. This was unacceptable.

So a friend of mine decided to look up in the encyclopedia (since there was no Internet at the time) how to remove gum from hair.

There were three suggestions. Being barely out of our teens, we decided to try all of them.

The suggestions were to smear the gum with mayonnaise, peanut butter or motor oil. We divided my hair into thirds and sampled all of the solutions.

None of them worked.

Except… for some reason, the peanut butter and the mayonnaise clung to the gum, making, if possible, an even worse mess.

I did not know what to do.

Finally, another friend of mine attempted to surgically and carefully cut the gum out of my hair, leaving behind whatever part of my “do” remained.

After this process, my head looked like crab grass with dried-out places in between, apparently caused by drought.

It took six weeks–yes, six weeks–before my hair grew out and all the gum was completely dispelled from my scalp.

I still chew gum.

But never as a nocturnal practice.

 

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Chat Room

Chat room: (n) an area on the Internet where users can communicate,

“Engage.”

Yes, that was the advice given to me by one of the web wizards instructing me in how to increase my presence on social media.

I was supposed to go into chat rooms and converse with those individuals who had accumulated in various clumps based upon their interest level in a particular topic.

I saw no reason to argue with the expert advice, so I found a couple of chat rooms that pertained to my particular writing style, musical interest and overall vision of life’s mission.

I started out slow–just tossed off a couple of ideas.

Suddenly I was attacked. I apparently had said something with an incorrect inflection which came through my writing as offensive.

So I apologized.

My apology was not accepted because it read insincere. I tried to explain my level of sincerity.Then the people in the chat room thought I was being pompous and self-righteous. Pleading with them that I was not pompous or self-righteous, but to the contrary, had set my direction in life to be at odds with such ridiculous profiles, they then wanted to know what I meant by “ridiculous.”

One person mentioned that without some sort of organization, how could anything be achieved?

Whatever way I turned, I ran into somebody who was either offended or was bound and determined to try to offend me.

Attempting to be up to date with the times, I continued for a few days in various chat rooms, pursuing some means of communal relationship.

It was utterly disastrous.

So I was gradually able to back my way out of the conversation and eventually they continued railing each other, unaware that I was gone.

I guess the premise would have to be that if you have enough time on your hands to be in a chat room, you probably have too much time on your hands.

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