I'm just about ready to get down into it, just about ready to get back in the game. I've been rambling for the better part of the year and it's just about time to get a drop on the next thing.

Here's a question for you. Drupal powers The Onion. Why doesn't someone make a Newspaper distribution?

And here, to close it out, is most of an email I sent to Frank the other day, explaining my situation.

-----------------------------

From: xxxxxx@outlandishjosh.com
Subject: Fraaaank
Date: September 24, 2005 4:21:45 PM PDT
To: xxxxxxx@gmail.com

What's up? I've been busy. It's a strange place, my old hometown. I've sort of piggybacked off my sister's social network, friends of hers that I have come to know and like and the company they keep now... Last night I went out to a party at some punk kid house. Teenagers with mowhawks, people "off their medication" and the whole deal; it was allright. This girl invited me, a friend of friends who I'd met before and gotten high with on a couple of occasions. No sexual angle (at least not from my end), just good times and comradre.

There's a rock'n'roll mom there, three of her kids at the party, and this makes me feel less out of place even through she's probably pushing 50 and I'm at most a decade ahead of the youngest people there. Also, there was an astounding preponderance of tall girls. What do you say to a 20-year old who's 6'2"? Well, not much really... So it was the armchair anthropology thing but it was really something to see, and in Eugene no less. There's so much potential everywhere, you know?

I'm doing the best that I can to back myself into writing a book. Basically I think if I tell enough people that I'm doing this, I'll be peer-pressured into actually making it happen. That's now Nitewerk got done... What I think I can do is make about a third of a book and outline the rest and get some contributors who are smarter than me to fill in the blanks. Wrap it in an editorial throughline and get it done with some cool pictures and graphs and typography. Then I can use the text as script to go out and perform the ideas. It would also all go online to live and evolve.

Looking for places to start, I've been thinking about trying to do some really simple things with audio. It worked out ok on the road trip and I think it could be kind of bad ass. Put together some essay-type content that's written to be read aloud, a little music, kind of like the stuff I used to try and do at the beginning of every Axiom... mixtapes for the revolution. Work from that to chapters and riffs for the book.

Taking that idea a little further into the theatrical realm, I've been thinking of trying to write (or get others to write) radio plays we can distribute over the internet. It could be fun.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do; this perennial question of what does one want to be when one grows up. The Peter Pan rhetoric is a glib way to talk about it, but I generally find a lack of direction to be crippling. One thought that keeps resurfacing is that I aught to spend more time pursuing my own happiness.

I've never been particularly good at this, partly because I'm wired not to get off on openly selfish things. What that means though is that I'll often engage in seemingly altruistic pursuits for selfish reasons. My first girlfriend/lover Amanda used to call me out on that all the time. "If you do nice things because it makes you feel good. It's not any less selfish." Her point was that I should find more direct ways of making myself happy, that this might lead to greater overall... happiness. Philosophically it sounded a little tautological, but on a personal level it always rang true.

I'm plotting and scheming as per usual. When I get back you'll have to turn me on to a good yoga class. I need to break out the blocked-up chi.

peace
-josh

-----------------------------

Finally, you can now find me on MySpace, because I will follow the lead of Dan Droller.

My first working Sunday in quite a few months. It wasn't all that bad. The next two weeks are going to be a little like a time trial; what it's like to be back in the game full time.

In the mean time, China is cracking down on online news:

The rules are expected to make online news more reliable as many small and unauthorized cyber news publishers will be phased out.

It won't affect major Chinese Internet news portals like shanghaidaily.com and Sina.

"I read shanghaidaily.com and other news sites almost every day because I believe in them," said Shelia Chen, who has been online for seven years. She said she spends about two hours a day reading news on the Internet.

You read the whole thing, and you'd barely know it's propaganda. Why, we heard similar noises coming from the FEC earlier this year. Oh yes, the future is going to be exciting.

This article from CNN on today's peace rallies is some of the better press organizers could hope for. I wonder if they have people who are working with media outlets or if this is another post-Katrina example of the Press reaching past the FoxNews talking points to get their own sense of the story. If t

On the flip side, people who were looking for a break from the past (to my mind unproductive) formula for how the actual protests themselves go down have been largeley disappointed. Too bad. Maybe the broadly popular anti-occupation sentiment will lead to a different coalition forming which more effectively seeks to address the issue of our occupation of Iraq

Politics isn't as interesting without elections on the line, but the latest twists in the narrative of how the People In Charge (DC Republicans) see things may be worth noting.

Personally, I still have some hope for the Press. If we could get over the kind of postmodern "sophistication" that has turned contemporary coverage of Public affairs into an endless series of inconclusive he said/she said accounts, that would be good for all of us. It would also be good if reporters weren't so comfortable with the knowledge that they are manipulated by those in power.

This is where the elitism of the press really shows it's ugly side. There's an assumption by journalists that the most important element of political coverage is in figuring out who is better at manipulating public opinion. The idea that it's more vital to cover the horserace than to conduct an inquiry into the effectiveness (or potential effectiveness) of a public servant is deeply undemocratic.

This article from CNN on today's peace rallies is some of the better press organizers could hope for. I wonder if they have people who are working with media outlets or if this is another post-Katrina example of the Press reaching past the FoxNews talking points to get their own sense of the story. If t

On the flip side, people who were looking for a break from the past (to my mind unproductive) formula for how the actual protests themselves go down have been largeley disappointed. Too bad. Maybe the broadly popular anti-occupation sentiment will lead to a different coalition forming which more effectively seeks to address the issue of our occupation of Iraq

Politics isn't as interesting without elections on the line, but the latest twists in the narrative of how the People In Charge (DC Republicans) see things may be worth noting.

Personally, I still have some hope for the Press. If we could get over the kind of postmodern "sophistication" that has turned contemporary coverage of Public affairs into an endless series of inconclusive he said/she said accounts, that would be good for all of us. It would also be good if reporters weren't so comfortable with the knowledge that they are manipulated by those in power.

This is where the elitism of the press really shows it's ugly side. There's an assumption by journalists that the most important element of political coverage is in figuring out who is better at manipulating public opinion. The idea that it's more vital to cover the horserace than to conduct an inquiry into the effectiveness (or potential effectiveness) of a public servant is deeply undemocratic.

Watching a little TV tonight, which I haven't done in a while (especially not network)... it's kind of a dark zeitgeist. All the ads for sleeping pills, an obsession with criminality, spectacle, constant offers for credit and financing. PBS has that Bob Dylan thing coming up, and that's kind of cool. I dunno. I'm hoping the internet tv deal breaks through soon. Advertisers targeting the high end of the market.

I mean, really: what's the first thing you think of when someone says "Nuclear Power." I know. I know. Obviously, it's funkytown. That's Ariva, fine (and French!) dealers in Uranium-based power, taking a page from the strategy book of Lipps Inc. The thin but steady trickle of hipsters into the ad world is having it's effect.

Watching a little TV tonight, which I haven't done in a while (especially not network)... it's kind of a dark zeitgeist. All the ads for sleeping pills, an obsession with criminality, spectacle, constant offers for credit and financing. PBS has that Bob Dylan thing coming up, and that's kind of cool. I dunno. I'm hoping the internet tv deal breaks through soon. Advertisers targeting the high end of the market.

I mean, really: what's the first thing you think of when someone says "Nuclear Power." I know. I know. Obviously, it's funkytown. That's Ariva, fine (and French!) dealers in Uranium-based power, taking a page from the strategy book of Lipps Inc. The thin but steady trickle of hipsters into the ad world is having it's effect.

Egad! I've been out of the house three nights out of the past four, piggybacking off my sister's social network mostly, but also connecting up with some old friends I haven't seen in a long time who are still around. It feels good to get out and socialize, though running with people in their early 20s has left me more than a little winded on occasion. I find it challenging to stay out until 5am and get back up on my horse three and a half hours later, the old college ways. But I love challenges, so...

I also met the two minds behind Grass Commons; we're collaborating on Alonovo.com (which is going to be cool) and found out that we're improbably located in the same town. So I had lunch with Lewis and Ethan and we whooped it up about the revolution for a bit, then they helped me grok Ruby and Rails and invited me to stay for dinner at the CoOp where Lewis and his girlfriend Darcy (who I know from high school, natch) live.

I'm coming out of my cocoon to find Eugene isn't so bad. It's a beautiful time of year, and the city teems with young pretty people, many of them leading surprisingly fascinating lives. I'll be here for two more weeks to finish up some work before I pack up and head back east. Could be a fun couple of weeks.

Egad! I've been out of the house three nights out of the past four, piggybacking off my sister's social network mostly, but also connecting up with some old friends I haven't seen in a long time who are still around. It feels good to get out and socialize, though running with people in their early 20s has left me more than a little winded on occasion. I find it challenging to stay out until 5am and get back up on my horse three and a half hours later, the old college ways. But I love challenges, so...

I also met the two minds behind Grass Commons; we're collaborating on Alonovo.com (which is going to be cool) and found out that we're improbably located in the same town. So I had lunch with Lewis and Ethan and we whooped it up about the revolution for a bit, then they helped me grok Ruby and Rails and invited me to stay for dinner at the CoOp where Lewis and his girlfriend Darcy (who I know from high school, natch) live.

I'm coming out of my cocoon to find Eugene isn't so bad. It's a beautiful time of year, and the city teems with young pretty people, many of them leading surprisingly fascinating lives. I'll be here for two more weeks to finish up some work before I pack up and head back east. Could be a fun couple of weeks.

It's natural given the magnitude of the last hurricane that people will freak the fuck out over the next, especially as it's by all accounts a more powerful storm. However, we're not going to see a replay of NOLA because not many cities are as susceptible (or, in technical terms, "below sea level") to catistrophic destruction from a gulf storm. Hell, the Carribean get shammered several times a year and life goes on.

On the other hand, as we continue to watch the slow slide of climate change, this might become a more regular thing. Rising ocean temperatures mean more energy to kick up the wind. It's basic thermodynamics. Though the American imagination will likely fixate on the potential for a "Superstorm" of some kind, what's more likely is a rising average strength, a slow grind of property damage. The upshot is that this may clear lowlying areas in advance of rising ocean tides.

After 7 months of living out of a bag preceeded by 18 months of living as a crazed political workaholic who left most of his crap in a locker in lower Manhattan preceeded by 2 years of being an artsy bum and computer nerd in Brooklyn, I find my wardrobe is running a little thin. As it looks like things are ramping up in the "professional" arena, I'm going to have (at the very least) to go out and get something I can wear to one of those meetings where there's a big table and a majority of the other people are wearing suits (though maybe not ties).

This means at a minimum I'm in the market for shoes, slacks, a dressy shirt and probably a jacket. Or something that's equivalently responsible-looking. That's one outfit, but as I hate (hate) shopping for clothes, my thinking is that this might be the time to do a more or less total overhaul. Like a band-aid: one motion; right off!

Some staples like 517s, wife-beaters, boxer briefs are unlikely to go out the window, but basically everything else is up for grabs. For the professional stuff, I'd rather not get something standard. Not only do I find most businesswear to be spiritually crushing, I also have an active economic interest in preserving my image of creativity, eccentricity and rebelliousness. In a word, I need to retain some style.

However, what that style is... that's an open question. My friend Molly Keough had some interesting shirts to which she had sewn bits of fabric that made a graph of average worker's wages vs. CEO compensation 40 years ago and today. I've also seen some cool stuff done with stencils and silkscreens. I'm into the whole DIY ethic, but I'm also not the most crafty at these things, might rather want to support someone trying to make a living.

So. Any suggestions?