Life can endure banality without the mysteries o
I get about 100 emails a day but, like a sap, I signed up to investigate this new manifestation of the converged era, never having gone down the Twitter track before.
It took me a couple of minutes before I realised that this was the same person who two days earlier had sent me by registered post a package including some arty guff and a photograph of herself striding around some sand dunes wearing not very much apart from two bandoliers of cartridges, and carrying a shotgun over her shoulders in the manner of Steve McQueen on the poster for the 1966 western Nevada Smith.
Yes, I was taken in, even though there was a note on the back of that particular print to say it was numbered 162 of 900. Windblown dark hair, a cerulean sky in the background and dark glasses. March out in single file, gentlemen, white flag clearly visible and hands in the air.
But it gets worse. In the name of professionalism I investigated her name via the internet, and found another version of the photograph, which this time made it clear she was also wearing a pair of uggs
as well.
That's it. Enough already, as they say in
I'll be honest and admit I had also tracked down some Twitter material explaining that she was an artist who'd been using some sort of pottery process that produced a chemical reaction that made her nose bleed: the phrase "too much information" roared in my ears.
What's happening here? An artist who's been doing a carpet bombing PR campaign on credulous journalists has ended up with a finance editor who's never knowingly done an art review.
Listed companies, corporate malfeasance, a bit of corporate gore on the carpet, a couple of years in the slammer and I'm all over it, but what's worse is that I'm now writing about this and I still don't know what she's really on about. Marshall McLuhan's line about "the medium is the message" was never more true.
So here's a deal I'd like to put to this lady, now that calm has begun to settle.
One, please explain. That's a much maligned but entirely worthwhile line made famous by Pauline Hanson. Who are you and why are you trying to impress me, of all the benighted recipients of your publicity shots?
Two, isn't being an artist more about art than about adopting captivating poses involving the Sam Browne look, an excess of ordnance, and the absence of a skirt? Is there some animal you really don't like? And for God's sake don't stand near the fire.
Three, what's the thing with choosing some gimmicky new communication system where the maximum message you can express is 140 characters? At the very least, I remain to be convinced. Lady, in a previous life I wrote books and I can tell you that you're not really out of second gear until you get past 100,000 words, each of about eight characters. That's most of a million. If that's an intolerable blast of information, Twitter looks to me to be an unsatisfactory and irritating blip.
I'm not right. You're not wrong. We're just on different planets.
And now (I'm not making this up) someone called Warren J. Matthews, who I can guarantee doesn't have the same 2000BC appeal as Hazel Dooney, wants to "follow my updates on Twitter".
I've never heard of the guy, any more than someone else called Utta Wilson who's also just surfaced, and how can they possibly want to follow my updates when I have no intention of supplying them?
Like most people, my daily existence has long periods of being entirely and comfortably banal. I've walked the dog, mowed the lawn, and flicked a few little canine souvenirs into the nearby bush, and that's all I plan to reveal.
Most critically, who are all these people? AsGough Whitlam once stage whispered toLabor colleagues when he was introduced inrural
Republicans Will Fight the Next Cycle
That was the buzz in
Yet, a group of relentless students screaming themselves hoarse in the town square, daring the disapproval of former President Clinton by showing up uninvited to his rally, and storming the streets armed with literature, captivated the locals. Newspapers and television crews seemed to follow our every move, asking with a detectable degree of incredulity: why did a group of young students come all the way from D.C. to help Congressional candidate Lou Barletta?
Except, what they really wanted to know was why. Why in the revolution of 2008, are all of you teenagers and twenty-somethings voting Republican?
See, despite what you might hear about the Democrats being the party of now, we in College Republicans see it for what it is: a fad, and a persuasive one at that. After all, nearly two-thirds of our generation voted for President Obama.
But we think, with all due respect to our liberal friends, that they were duped. His face was on t-shirts at Urban Outfitters, he had an application for your iPhone, and the DNC looked more like MTV with all of those Obama-crazed stars slinking around the place. Obama was cool, but has he earned our generation’s vote?
While we knew all along that Obama’s message of change, diversity and justice is better promulgated through conservative principles, like competition and self-determination, we also get the trend. We watched with both awe and horror as Obama captivated our peers with his innovation and eloquence.
To give you some perspective here, Republicans view President Obama and his policies roughly the same way guys look at UGG boots
: attractive in the short-run, but ultimately too costly and impractical to sustain.
Admittedly, our Party failed. It neither communicated our message in a modern way nor nominated a candidate to represent those ideals. For this, we are sorry, but before you pick up an Obama pin for your backpack, we ask that you join us, one of the most active College Republicans chapters in the nation, and help us to build a new face for the Party of Lincoln.
Think you can’t make a difference? Consider this: CRs campaign for dozens of high-profile and local Republican candidates every year, rank nationally in terms of membership, knock on thousands of doors, and send our members to intern at some of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
Lou Barletta was ultimately a victim of the Republican massacre of 2008, narrowly losing to the undeserving Representative Paul Kanjorski, but when CRs came to town in the final days of the campaign, where we were outspent and outmanned,
Life can endure banality without the mysteries o
I get about 100 emails a day but, like a sap, I signed up to investigate this new manifestation of the converged era, never having gone down the Twitter track before.
It took me a couple of minutes before I realised that this was the same person who two days earlier had sent me by registered post a package including some arty guff and a photograph of herself striding around some sand dunes wearing not very much apart from two bandoliers of cartridges, and carrying a shotgun over her shoulders in the manner of Steve McQueen on the poster for the 1966 western Nevada Smith.
Yes, I was taken in, even though there was a note on the back of that particular print to say it was numbered 162 of 900. Windblown dark hair, a cerulean sky in the background and dark glasses. March out in single file, gentlemen, white flag clearly visible and hands in the air.
But it gets worse. In the name of professionalism I investigated her name via the internet, and found another version of the photograph, which this time made it clear she was also wearing a pair of uggs
as well.
That's it. Enough already, as they say in
I'll be honest and admit I had also tracked down some Twitter material explaining that she was an artist who'd been using some sort of pottery process that produced a chemical reaction that made her nose bleed: the phrase "too much information" roared in my ears.
What's happening here? An artist who's been doing a carpet bombing PR campaign on credulous journalists has ended up with a finance editor who's never knowingly done an art review.
Listed companies, corporate malfeasance, a bit of corporate gore on the carpet, a couple of years in the slammer and I'm all over it, but what's worse is that I'm now writing about this and I still don't know what she's really on about. Marshall McLuhan's line about "the medium is the message" was never more true.
So here's a deal I'd like to put to this lady, now that calm has begun to settle.
One, please explain. That's a much maligned but entirely worthwhile line made famous by Pauline Hanson. Who are you and why are you trying to impress me, of all the benighted recipients of your publicity shots?
Two, isn't being an artist more about art than about adopting captivating poses involving the Sam Browne look, an excess of ordnance, and the absence of a skirt? Is there some animal you really don't like? And for God's sake don't stand near the fire.
Three, what's the thing with choosing some gimmicky new communication system where the maximum message you can express is 140 characters? At the very least, I remain to be convinced. Lady, in a previous life I wrote books and I can tell you that you're not really out of second gear until you get past 100,000 words, each of about eight characters. That's most of a million. If that's an intolerable blast of information, Twitter looks to me to be an unsatisfactory and irritating blip.
I'm not right. You're not wrong. We're just on different planets.
And now (I'm not making this up) someone called Warren J. Matthews, who I can guarantee doesn't have the same 2000BC appeal as Hazel Dooney, wants to "follow my updates on Twitter".
I've never heard of the guy, any more than someone else called Utta Wilson who's also just surfaced, and how can they possibly want to follow my updates when I have no intention of supplying them?
Like most people, my daily existence has long periods of being entirely and comfortably banal. I've walked the dog, mowed the lawn, and flicked a few little canine souvenirs into the nearby bush, and that's all I plan to reveal.
Most critically, who are all these people? AsGough Whitlam once stage whispered toLabor colleagues when he was introduced inrural