(GD anthem!^*)

Wild mood swings lately. Serindipity's been riding high as well, me calling out to people just as they were doing the same otherwise. Strange connections across the lattice. I feel kind of like I'm coming out of a shell; little cracks and breakthroughts and then, oh man, slow down, I'm beat.

It always comes in fits and starts, and my overactive superego isn't helping much. Sans bike I've been reading on the MTA a bunch, picking up The Dharma Bums for a little brain-candy, and C.G. Jung's Modern Man in Search of a Soul for a little more substance. They make an interesting combo, but they're helping, no doubt.

Also a relief: I've been sweating this bachelor thing this weekend, but it all seems to be coming into focus. People piling on to help out, being major sports about getting into the act. It should be grand fun.

Still excited about getting my ass in motion, but starting to think about the people I won't be seeing, even just the neighborhood I won't be able to walk around in. Gives me a bit of pause. It's typical Koenig -- all jazzed up to be on the move and only later on really thinking about what's been left behind. Oh well, c'est la vie.

^*I found that music above -- and clearly that other link to the same artist -- via my old collaborator Johnny Nichols (who's on my MySpace now, natch) who's getting effing married himself. Cheerio there.

Maybe I should stop reading Glenn Greenwald. He's so damn efficient at rendering the insanity. It's a hard time to be an American. I wrote a post a while back called "In it for the Country?" in which I sort of outlined why I still expend the psychic energy to pay attention to politics:

[C]ommunity is life, and community means organizing, and in a networked world organization means scaling and scaling means politics.

Basically, you can't get away from politics without going off the grid -- either as a hermit or in some kind of Pirate Utopia -- and I don't think that's really a feasible way to live for me (or for anyone, but God bless you if you try).

So I'm in, but it gets harder and harder to see how we're going to pull this stuff out, how we can set it right. I find myself so amazingly turned off -- not even angry anymore, just limp and tired and sad -- at how the Bush administration comports itself, at how cheap, petty greed runs the congress, at how what passes for "debate" is almost pure, uncut psychobabble. None of these are things I want to be a part of.

I feel like I'm back in high school a lot of the time, watching people vie for popularity and unfluence under terms that are barely comprehensible. Why do they do it? How did they become so powerful? Why do so many play along?

I want to make a break; not to drop out, but to go forward on my own terms. I think a lot of people feel that way. In the end it comes down to voting and deciding how to use power, but the process for determining how and why this is done seems deeply and (I'm sad to say) irrevokably fucked to me. I don't believe that the late-20th/early-21st century combine of big media and big money politics will ever right itself. We need another way.

They take away our freedom
In the name of liberty
Why don't they all just clear off
Why won't they let us be
They make us feel indebted
For saving us from hell
And then they put us through it
It's time the bastards fell

Don't believe them
Don't believe them
Question everything you're told
Just take a look around you
At the bitterness and spite
Why can't we take over and try to put it right

This is what I hope to accomplish with the summer's writing, video and book stuff.

Big Ups to Franz, the Girth and Melissa for surviving the crucible of law school at their respective institutions. I've always instinctively felt that my social network was an above-average galaxy of connections (world-class, if you must know), but seeing so many friends power through a ritual experience that often results in washout, breakdown and/or general psychosis makes me proud. It's evidence of excellence.

Plus, it's good to know that when the shit hits the fan, I'll have some litigators I can call.

After Friday night's alcoholocaust, I didn't sip a drop of coffee all weekend. That may have contributed to the sensation that I was living underwater -- I don't even try to pretend that I don't have a caffeine addiction -- so this morning I'm having some Earl Grey tea.

I don't have any real desire to quit drinking coffee, but I think perhaps there's something to be said for de-escalating my chemical dependence, even as a little experiment.

This is actually classic addict behavior, by the way. It's a well worn trope for individuals conflicted with their chemical relationships to "take time off" or "dry out" for a week or a month or six, after which they generally return to their previous modus operandi.

I make no value judgements here. My experience studying the phenomena of addiction has left me deeply ambivalent about it's cost vs. value. Individual circumstances vary enormously, making this sort of calculus very difficult to generalize upon. Non-functioning, slavish addiction, the obvious kind, seems easy to judge, but in real terms this often has more to do with the addict's financial resources than with the depth and depravity of their habit. It's another well-worn trope for social elites to decry addiction among the massess, while simultaniously engaging in essentially the same behavior (with premium brands, of course) under the notion that they have their habits "under control."

Subjectively, I get a lot out of caffeine. It makes me feel like me. You might think that's immoral or unnatural, but I don't. It's also not a very large health risk, and it's hardly driving me broke or interfering with my ability to carry on a productive life, so I don't really worry about that fact that I get withdrawl symptoms. Your mileage may vary.

Free Culture

Via: VideoSift

Keeps on getting better.

Pan-European Music Contest Winners Are Hard Rock Monsters From Motherfucking Lapland.

I think that's cooler than anything i've seen from American Idol.

Pan-European Music Contest Winners Are Hard Rock Monsters From Motherfucking Lapland.

I think that's cooler than anything i've seen from American Idol.

The nice feelings continue to roll in as I carry on with the process of pulling up my stakes. I'm semi-resolved not to really worry about it. Why sweat a good thing?

It seems to me that as long as I can say Out Front, things are going to be ok. This is one of the terms Ken Keasy used when he talked about the Prankster way of being open and honest. In his time, a lot of people were struggling with a set of social expectations and roles that were much more restrictive than what we deal with today.

I think our generation faces a different challenge. We have a much lighter set of social norms, but we also live in a civilization which is deeply steeped in the art of manipulation through image/information management. There's somewhat less pressure to fit into an established cookie-cutter role, but there's a lot more temptation -- maybe even an expectation -- to try and manage perceptions, to create a story about ourselves.

A lot of business works this way, and a lot of relationships (romantic or friendly) do too. Getting Out Front in the modern context means dropping the act. It's less an escape and more a surrender, but it's no less important, I think.

In the midst of discussing how disinformation spreads about Iran, and about how he challanged a reporter for misquoting Iranian President Ahmadinejad as saying he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map," Juan Cole drops this perl:

So this is how we got mire in the Iraq morass. Gullible and frankly lazy and very possibly highly biased reporters on the staffs of the newspapers in Washington DC and New York. And they criticize bloggers.

This is what many members of the press, particularly those who cover national affaris and politics still fail to realize: a lot of us out here in citizen-land hold them responsible of the mess we're currently in. Not solely responsible -- obviously -- but many of us believe the Fourth Estate is an important part of how a democracy works, and that the current lot are doing a piss-poor job of it.

I can imagine that people who work in the Press must feel differently. I had an opportunity to speak briefly last week with ABC's Mark Halperin (who writes "The Note" and has a feud with the blogosphere) after his appearance at PDF with Elliot Spitzer, and I pressed this point. He answeres somewhat evasively by saying that news organizations are businesses, and they have to follow consumer taste, and they don't have enough consumers who want reporting that holds people in power accountable.

This is a troubling position to hear a member of the Press take. Journalism isn't like making pizzas. There's a bit more on the line, and with regard to the government there's an important role for news organizations to fill. Copping out to "following the consumer" seems dubious. If that's not a dodge and this is really what Halpernin thinks, it's a remarkably irresponsible sentiment.

It is also a highly fatuous stance for someone so upset with the blogosphere. Halpernin also said he thinks Markos (the Kos in Daily Kos) Moulitsas is "one of the most destructive people out there." Putting aside the normative part of that judgment, where does Halpernin think the power to be destructive comes from? Obviously it's site-traffic. If no one reads you, you don't really matter. Site-traffic means consumers.

Clearly there is an large audience for investigative journalism and a vital Fourth Estate. The hostility between independent internet publishers and traditional news organizations exists precisely because the old-school Press is losing power, influence and attention. They are losing precisely because they are failing in this critical function and dissapointing this critical group of consumers.

We're clearly in a period of change. Power is shifting in big ways. Wheels are in motion. It's a crying shame that so many 20th Century institutions which are supposed to have the Public interest at heart are turning in such lackluster performances.

Meanwhile...

Only last week, U. S. intelligence "czar" John Negroponte said the government was "absolutely not" monitoring domestic calls. Two days later, USA Today learned that NSA has secretly compiled databases of hundreds of millions of domestic phone calls and uses computer algorithms to scrutinize them for suspicious patterns. How do you know they're up to no good? Because when Qwest refused to hand over customer data without a FISA court ruling, the government dropped the effort. The administration wanted not only Americans to be kept in the dark, but the U. S. government's own secret courts. That's probably because a 1986 federal law made it illegal for communications companies to divulge "a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber or customer... to any government entity." (My emphasis ) ABC News has since confirmed that the FBI is scrutinizing its reporters' phone records as well as those of The New York Times and The Washington Post as part of a CIA "leaks" investigation. Leaks, that is, about torture, secret prisons and, yes, legally suspect domestic "intelligence" efforts—basically anything the government calls classified for reasons of political convenience. Possibly you recall the First Amendment, which reads in part, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." But hey, look over there: Some stocky little brown guys are digging a ditch.

That's Geney Lyons, via David Neiwert. I too wish I had thought of that.

In the midst of discussing how disinformation spreads about Iran, and about how he challanged a reporter for misquoting Iranian President Ahmadinejad as saying he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map," Juan Cole drops this perl:

So this is how we got mire in the Iraq morass. Gullible and frankly lazy and very possibly highly biased reporters on the staffs of the newspapers in Washington DC and New York. And they criticize bloggers.

This is what many members of the press, particularly those who cover national affaris and politics still fail to realize: a lot of us out here in citizen-land hold them responsible of the mess we're currently in. Not solely responsible -- obviously -- but many of us believe the Fourth Estate is an important part of how a democracy works, and that the current lot are doing a piss-poor job of it.

I can imagine that people who work in the Press must feel differently. I had an opportunity to speak briefly last week with ABC's Mark Halperin (who writes "The Note" and has a feud with the blogosphere) after his appearance at PDF with Elliot Spitzer, and I pressed this point. He answeres somewhat evasively by saying that news organizations are businesses, and they have to follow consumer taste, and they don't have enough consumers who want reporting that holds people in power accountable.

This is a troubling position to hear a member of the Press take. Journalism isn't like making pizzas. There's a bit more on the line, and with regard to the government there's an important role for news organizations to fill. Copping out to "following the consumer" seems dubious. If that's not a dodge and this is really what Halpernin thinks, it's a remarkably irresponsible sentiment.

It is also a highly fatuous stance for someone so upset with the blogosphere. Halpernin also said he thinks Markos (the Kos in Daily Kos) Moulitsas is "one of the most destructive people out there." Putting aside the normative part of that judgment, where does Halpernin think the power to be destructive comes from? Obviously it's site-traffic. If no one reads you, you don't really matter. Site-traffic means consumers.

Clearly there is an large audience for investigative journalism and a vital Fourth Estate. The hostility between independent internet publishers and traditional news organizations exists precisely because the old-school Press is losing power, influence and attention. They are losing precisely because they are failing in this critical function and dissapointing this critical group of consumers.

We're clearly in a period of change. Power is shifting in big ways. Wheels are in motion. It's a crying shame that so many 20th Century institutions which are supposed to have the Public interest at heart are turning in such lackluster performances.

Meanwhile...

Only last week, U. S. intelligence "czar" John Negroponte said the government was "absolutely not" monitoring domestic calls. Two days later, USA Today learned that NSA has secretly compiled databases of hundreds of millions of domestic phone calls and uses computer algorithms to scrutinize them for suspicious patterns. How do you know they're up to no good? Because when Qwest refused to hand over customer data without a FISA court ruling, the government dropped the effort. The administration wanted not only Americans to be kept in the dark, but the U. S. government's own secret courts. That's probably because a 1986 federal law made it illegal for communications companies to divulge "a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber or customer... to any government entity." (My emphasis ) ABC News has since confirmed that the FBI is scrutinizing its reporters' phone records as well as those of The New York Times and The Washington Post as part of a CIA "leaks" investigation. Leaks, that is, about torture, secret prisons and, yes, legally suspect domestic "intelligence" efforts—basically anything the government calls classified for reasons of political convenience. Possibly you recall the First Amendment, which reads in part, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." But hey, look over there: Some stocky little brown guys are digging a ditch.

That's Geney Lyons, via David Neiwert. I too wish I had thought of that.