City of Legends

I am letting you all in on my plan to, sometime this summer, retool "101 Great Love Poems" and either put out a similar volume, while dropping the original from my catalog, or re-issuing the book with completely reworked selection.

I have always felt the book was soft, more of a marketing experiment than a real attempt at putting out the truly great love poems.

My editor may like the idea.  Or she may kill me.  Or she may quit.  We’ll see.

But I am telling you all, first.

Oh, and it is not your imagination, I am cleaning up this massive blog…

I think I’ve been pretty good about leaving up even irrelvant and occasionally defamatory comments by those who read (or don’t read, just post comments) on this blog.

But, with the recent influx of spam comments, particularly in Russian, I have moved my comment control to "moderated" which mean comments don’t actually post until I clear them. It’s a pain in the ass for me, but as long as there are people out there who think the world is their cesspool to splash in, I have my legal and moral rights to decline to allow my property to be part of it.

I apologize for any inconvenience.

Despite it’s sagging integrity since being taken over by Bravo (resulting in some interesting partisanship as to which shows get recapped or not), I find Television Without Pity ( http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/ ) a vital resource. Besides it is just plain lowest-common denominator fun to visit.

As busy as I stay, I miss a lot of shows I might want to catch. The forums and the recaps help me keep up with current (and past) goings on. The fact that they even keep recaps and forums on shows that have gone on "Permanent Hiatus" is valuable as well. And if you are looking for spoilers on upcoming episodes of your favorite show, you can often find them here, as well.

And, owing to my speed reading, I can read the full recap of a show in less time than a lot of commercial breaks are anymore.

My dear friend and queen of erotic poetry Mari Laureano has a blog. I would advise you take a look.

Belladonna Dream

I have previous read with Mari during the "Love Gods" tour (back in 2002!) and she has been gracious enough to blurb my books once or twice and to have me reciprocate.

Mari, I have added you to my blogroll (see at right).

If you pay much attention to this site or the Amomancer blog, you may notice something went away. Well, two things.

Just moments ago I took BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog out of the layouts of both blogs.

Why? Well, for me, these were never to be social networking sites, designed to see how many people I could get to do quid pro quo hits to pump up the illusion of my readership. I saw a few people come by every day to either site from those sources. But most of those were either curious onlookers who weren’t likely to stay, or people looking to create a sense of reciprocity so I’d go visit their site about how to turn catfish whiskers into nuclear energy and become a millionaire by 30. Oops! Late!

I gave them their chance, but they weren’t my thing. I’m not the kind to seek reciprocity as an illusion for readership. Ask some editors I have worked with. After they are through cringing at the mention of my name and have a few drinks, they’ll tell you, I am a prick when it comes to my readership and my audience. I have been known to yell at audiences I thought were patronizing me. I don’t like being played out of courtesy. Let’s avoid the next logic swerve, shall we?

The notion that a get-rich-quick artist operating out of Samoa hits my site a few times a day, staying for an average time of 1.5 seconds seems a bit more like hit racking and less like anything of any real integrity. Just my attitude. I don’t condemn it, just not for me.

EntreCard will be next. I get a fair number of visitors from that service, but the vast majority are quid pro quo bloggers looking for traffic. I don’t need to win a game of pickup sticks to feel good about myself. Sure, a few have stuck around and I have made a few friends. But from the beginning, I never meant this site to become blogosphere-centric. So I am throwing out the irrelevancies to my vision, speeding up load time, reducing screen freezes and giving me three less headaches to worry about in terms of maintaining social networks.

I got enough on my plate and seem to be accelerating going into the second half of 2008. Who knew?

So, farewell BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. I wish you and your devotees the best.

I was exchanging gunfire…er email…with my friend who is codenamed "The Roman", when a thought struck me and I prattled out the following. It is a quick write, but to me it may be a bit of an epiphany. I’ve cleaned up a sentence or two for clarity and punctuation.

There are two kinds of people on the web, virtualists and literalists. The virtualists think of the web as a different world, one where they are not bound by normal limits and where they can indulge more outrageous and aggressive parts of their personality. The literalists treat it as an extension of the real world and they behave on the web much as they do in real life. Perhaps even think of them as virtual legalists versus virtual moralists. The legalists think anything they can’t be arrested, prosecuted and jailed and/or fined for is okay. The moralists believe there are standards above and beyond this, think Jimmy Stewart in The Philadephia Story, long a role model for my construct of conduct. Where do you think I get the concept "You were a bit worse for the wine and there are rules about that" that I have used 100 times or more?

I have always been a literalist, always will be…but I understand the virtualist mindset and accept it. The fun part (tongue planted firmly in cheek) is when literalists and virtualists connect. The literalists tend to take the virtualists too seriously, the virtualists tend to think that their conduct on the web is like a video game, not real…

But it’s almost a spiritual dichotomy, like Jesus said, what you dwell upon, you have done. ("I say to you if a man even looks upon a woman with lust in his heart he is guilty…"). I almost went the other way and became a virtualist, it was tempting and I dabbled, early on, there have been those who have tried to get me onto that side of the world, but in the end I realised I am far too concerned for other people’s feelings and well-being to ever presume or assume I am dealing with virtualists all the time…I presume everyone is a literalist, everyone is taking what I do or say as seriously as real life.

It doesn’t make me better, just different, from a lot of the people I meet. And, let’s face it, virtualists are more fun.

So when you see me write something, don’t worry, there is no hidden agenda, that’s me. When I say love I mean love, when I say angry, I am angry, and when I touch people or they touch me, it is as real as in the same room to the same intent. I can’t live my life by any other standard. For good or for bad, whether you want to trust me, believe in me, accept me or even love me, I am what I am, a literalist. I accept responsibility for every action, every word, every implication I engage in online. A kiss at 800, 8,000 or 12,000 miles is still a kiss. The fundamental things apply…as time goes by.

Quick joke. There’s 10 kinds of people in the world, those who can count in binary and those who can’t.

My eyeballs ache.  I have been spending a great deal of time reviewing all 579 poems currently on the Amomancer blog.  Actually, as some are two-fers, it is more than that.

But, I have flagged the year of each piece in the tags, as well as streamlined other tag usages.  The result is a nice index on the side that enables the reader to focus on a particular muse or year.

Some interesting findings so far:

• *157 of the poems on Amomancer were written in 2008, 95 in 2007, 75 in 2006
• *Aubergine is the #1 muse with 114 attributed, 28 to Panther, 24 to Leopard
• *28 pieces are labelled as erotica (which is low, but we weren’t focusing on cleaning up genre as much as year and inspiration.

There’s more fun if you dig, but you can do that on your own time…I have a meeting to go over the cover and packaging for Evangelist

My last task before I can hang it up for tonight is to fulfill my vow to expand my "Recommended Sites" or blogroll to 100.  I better get to work.

While you are checking in on my progress, please observe the music video Catch Me from the German cult film Bandits.  Only the German cinema could combine death symbolism, bad girls and catchy rock and roll.  I love the film and, truth be told, there are times this song dominates my iTunes play list.  This is the tune that turned me on to multi-tracked drums in my work…and I would not kick any of the "surviving" band members (watch the film to get the story)  Jasmin Tabatabai, Nicolette Krebitz or Katja Riemann out of bed for a criminal record.

No, I am not confused, I know today is July 1st.

I am just putting emphasis on that date. It’s going to be a brutal day for me. Deadlines that extend beyond the not-dead and the undead. Impossible goals.

Bring them on.

On that date, at 12 noon, EDT, a select group of people (even they do not know who they are, nor will they, in advance) will receive an email invitation to download and listen to previously unreleased tracks from Evangelist, my new CD. This will be all of the previously unreleased tracks.

They will be asked to give comments and rate them. Not that I take seriously anyone’s counsel but mine own, I just like hearing how other people perceive things (even whack jobs sometimes have epiphanies, you know).

The new protest track, Kitabu, will be linked to multiple sites that already embrace my politically conscious works.

My internet radio station at Live/365 will be getting a major overhaul. You have no idea how arduous that is.

I will also be unveiling a series of new chapters to Tales of the Amomancer on the Random Drafts and Chapters blog.

I will also be announcing the three next book projects being put out by Peacat Press (As such was the first). The Peacat site will be getting a facelift that day.

I will be unveiling my new, mighty 100+ blogroll on this site.

All of this will be accomplished between 0000 hours and 2400 hours, EDT, on July 5th.

On the 6th, I will rest. Yeah, right. Why July 5th? Well, it works with my schedule and it is, believe it or not National Workaholics Day here in the US of A.

I am not as clueless as I sometimes seem.

ThePlanet, a server farm that host an estimated 3 million websites, including some major website support sites, had an "electric fire" yesterday that took down some or all of their systems until at least later today.

The "electrical fire" included an "explosion" that "took out three walls". But several sites managed by ThePlanet have gotten word out that they expect to be restored later today.

Effected sites include EntreCard and StatCounter. I can live without the EntreCard for a bit…but StatCounter? Ack! They are part of my morning ritual.

ThePlanet has reassured their clients that no servers were actually damaged.

An explosion that took out there walls and an electrical fire. Sounds like a slow day in Hades for some, today.

In completely unrelated news, the minor muse known as Suede added herself to my list of FaceBook friends. Wasn’t even sure she was still alive.

And yes, Susan, I am in a good place. My place and space.

Excellent piece in the May 17th edition of NewScientist magazine, excerpted from the works of neurophysiologist Susan Greenfield, about the reinvention of ourselves as we define ourselves to the goal and pleasure oriented stimuli of the web. To some of you it may be new terrain, but to someone who has been a part of the digital renaissance for as long as I have, it is just confirmation and legitimization of the reality: People shift who they are because the normal social cues are short-circuited in a world of instant gratification, murky identities and reboots. "Character is what you are in the dark" said Dwight Moody, and the buffer of the web allows us to transform ourselves in the eyes of others, and eventually that malforms us and our own, internal identities.

Professor Greenfield isn’t selling anything, no book or t-shirt or wall hanging, she is a serious researcher at Oxford, carefully analyzing a trend that has been with us for a while and is only likely to get worse. We lose our identities to build playground avatars and to seek goal-oriented stimulus: Don’t write the best article, join enough social networks to get more traffic. Profundity, indeed excellence, is roadkill on the information superhighway. The good Professor even creates a correlation between the rise of the use of certain psychiatric medications and the popularization of the web and video games.

I originally picked up the magazine because they had a piece on oxytocin and how it plays a role in "love", a favourite topic of mine. Not some dimestore guru in my study of the emotion, I can cite the neurophysiology cultural and subcultural subtexts to "love", but I still believe we have a transcendent calling to it. Great erotic poet Mari Laureano called me "the Einstein of the human heart". Maybe, but only if Einstein lived and did his best work in Hiroshima.

The sacrifices one must make in the name of science. "Even if I give my body to be burned, and have not love…" said Paul (St. Paul, not McCartney).