This blog is under attack!
As I speak (write), a few different URL’s have joined together to launch a coordinated effort to overwhelm this blog with spam comments. The comments function is disabled, so these comments are automatically coded to hit the moderation queue. While they’ll never hit the mean streets of the mainline Internet, they have flooded my Inbox with notifications and the queue is seeming pretty taxed. There were 334 this morning, then I cleared another 25 that I watched pile up in the following 15 minutes. 50 more have come in since.
Good thing my bandwidth limit for the BP is almost incalculably high. Thank you HostMonster!
Not so much luck for the APDA Forum. As discussed yesterday, it was taken down by another of my efforts, my now becoming annual summer game of Werewolf/Mafia, this time with 45 APDAites. The theme is the Iraq War. This is roughly the last thing I’ve had time for with the rest of my schedule, yet I’ve somehow managed to clear the decks for this and be very attentive. This is sort of how I operate. Flashes of manic motivation that push everything else to the side. Projects are best when they come like a tidal wave, leaving behind an equal portion of devastation and creative water. Of course, I’m still feeling the effects of tens of tidal waves before, many of which never saw FEMA come in and condemn the awkward structures left behind. Nothing ever gets condemned in my little world, except for in brief moments of wise severance that seem too far, too few, and too late.
Humans are so adaptable and I’m really self-aware. This combination has made me positively stellar at doing just exactly what is necessary to keep me afloat with the status quo. I don’t think I’m unique in this – most of us are breaking our necks to do everything we can to stay exactly in place. The world’s nature is to spin and change and twirl and tumble and the way most of us adjust to this is by getting whiplash by planting ourselves and hanging on for the ensuing torque of the changes around us. It’s devastatingly sad to watch so many people get so rigid and not just give in to the winds. We build our institutions as a society around resistance to the wind – we label things as passive or flaky or impractical. But I have my inspirations and my confirmations. There are people even braver than I, and I salute them for being windier than I.
Today I’m giving a culminative and momentous presentation on what I’ve been working on for the past month. I’ve been working with a consultant who is returning to Germany, carrying knowledge of America and a firm understanding that it’s not the best place (my interpretation of her perspective). We both deal in metaphor and illustration, getting along quite well to craft a story of what the last 40 years have brought to today. Our final analogy is a collective group of over a hundred people all frozen on thin ice, not daring to breathe (let alone move), hoping that not everything cracks through. Of course the only way to survive is to run across the ice as fast as possible before it breaks. The ice can’t handle the weight of the pressures already there – it is destined to fall through. There’s nothing anyone can do to prop up that ice. The only chance, the only solution is to run, to outrun the collapse, to forge a better solution on the other side after changing far, hard, fast.
But it’s scary. And people wonder if they have the capacity to do it. The “bandwidth,” as he who shall not be named might say. It’s his second-favorite phrase, right behind “proceed until apprehended.” That’s a fine philosophy for those who believe fundamentally that accountability will never come. That no one will ever have to take ownership of the decisions that they made. That no one is watching. But another person, one worthy of respect, said “I’m old fashioned – I believe in God’s judgment. And not in the next life, but right here on Earth. Right now.”
Today, I’m inclined to agree. People are throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. The capacity is taxed, the tubes are being jammed to a shut. Everyone’s scrambling, but when the lanes are full, everyone’s stuck. Everyone feels an undercurrent of the need to move, but it’s too scary and there’s nowhere to go.
We need to unplug, to free up the bandwidth, to clear the decks. More tidal waves. More Drain-o. More flushing of the whole system.
Night before last, the cable went down without explanation. Every time a button was pressed on any of the remotes, the cable would go up or down by one channel at a time, stopping on channel 96 if up or 963 if down. It was like a bad horror movie. It still hasn’t come back and I haven’t had the time or energy to call. Am I being passive by letting it go? Or am I listening?
I wanted to close this post with this quote from Jackie Greene, who Fish finally hooked me on in Chicago:
And I see through the windows like I see through the lies
like I see through every useless disguise that
everyone wears but everyone swears that they don’t.
Ah but dont mind me baby, Im only dying slow.
There is an uncanny resonance to just this time, just this month, just this season. But we ought not be dying slow. We ought be living fast. Dying is a slow process. Even when one dies fast, that’s truly living.
Bandwidth is no excuse. There are no excuses. We will not be forgiven. What we do here counts.
Cold water is coming – either over the top or from ‘neath the cracking ice. How you get drenched makes all the difference.
52 more comments while I wrote this post.
