Thanksgiving Is Ruined

The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?
January 03, 2007
 
Year in Review: January 2006

Review of my backlog of electronic debris from the first month of '06 shows certain constants and similarities with most other months.

First, I saved many, widely various internet links on various topics.

Second, the passage of time revealed most of the saved links to be reassuringly, gloriously pointless.

Third, in most instances, I had the good sense to restrain myself and not blog anything.

Fourth, in a sad, small percentage of cases I displayed no good sense, as shown by the fact that, had I displayed such sense, the number of posts that month would have been zero.

Finally, every month at least one sizeable electronic debris pile usually exists to demonstrate another important constant: That in the TiR universe, the value of anything, be it a cultural artifact, e-mail communication, news story or piece of writing, is measured -- solely, ultimately, unavoidably, and with excessive use of adverbs -- by the extent to which it can serve as a thinly veiled
(usually even from myself)

catalyst for freakish, elaborate, prolonged, autodidactic and obsessive research on the internet(s), to an extent that transgresses
(often because it involves a look at the long dead, forgotten or overlooked)
the boundaries of all that is good, human and normal, and results in the compilation of a pointless list. For TiR's past behavior demonstrates that it considers the "pointless list" to be the highest point and goal to which all of human evolution and history has striven, one which there can be no hope to surpass.

In this case, the catalyst was Harold      Norse's autobiography Memoirs of a Bastard Angel. I found an uncorrected proof copy for a couple bucks at a thift store. Norse's memoir was a delight to read. According to his account, he has traveled everywhere; met everyone; slept with everyone; invented everything from projective verse, to the cut-up technique, to the Beat lifestyle, to the word "Homintern"; and received bupkis in the way of credit or acknowlegement for all this from anyone.

The most critical aspect of Norse's memoir for our present purposes is that it is very gossipy and name-droppy. Thus it resulted, in January 2006, in the following obsessive list:

Who was Rupert Brooke?

Who was Louis MacNeice?

Who was Georg Groddeck?

Who was Homer Lane?

Who was Harry       Herschkowitz?

Who was    Michael    Fraenkel?

Who was Beauford     Delaney?

Who was Karl Knaths?

Who was Valeska Gert and what/where was the Beggar Bar?

Who was Ida    Rauh?

Who was Parker Tyler?

Who was Oscar Williams?

Who was David Gascoyne?

Who was Gordon Heath?

Who was Russell Edson?

Who was Alfred Kreymborg?

Who was Eli Siegel?

Who was Frank Wigglesworth?

Who was Sinclair Beiles?

Who was Norman Rubington?

Who was Edouard Roditi?

Who was Ted Joans?

Who was Irving Rosenthal?

Who is Jan Cremer?


Why post such an exceedingly pointless list now? Or at all?

I have no idea. Except perhaps to toy with the other recurring, half-assed notion here that the true worth of almost any blog, with a few exceptions, might exist in inverse proportion to the number of
a) its actual readers in general,* or
b) its potential readers who would give a rats ____ about what's on there, or
c) its potential readers who would be able to make head or tail of what's there or have the foggiest idea of what the bloguer is talking about or why on earth any sane human would bother to post it in the first place.


This here post's probably of interest to a max of two people.

One of whom is a now 90 year old who once wrote an autobiography.


*[1/4/07 update: corollary, via the always brilliant McLemee]