Saturday, December 13, 2008

having trouble getting into e-mail tonight; it's probably because I left my webmail on on another computer; i play musical laptops sometimes and things get busy. on my way out the door of work i finally put together two bubbleshares; the one below (bubbleshare pulliams) and the one on my professional weblog, bubbleshare salukis; these are like constant movies, the neon signs of the old route 66 that would say, eat, eat, eat. but it's break, i should be going on a diet, it's like coffee, now that i should be winding down, what's the point? what occurs to me is this: these bubbleshare 'albums' allowed me only ten photos, and random ones at that, to put in a single album; clearly i haven't mastered the genre. but what's stopping me from making a mini-movie? a pop-art bubbleshare movie, where something happens, or where it tells a simple story?

then, webmail still down, i go over into twitter, which, i have to say, is turning into entirely its own world. it is hoppin'. really i have two friends who keep churning it out there, and if you want to know more read this, but my main point is this: it's in a way like being stranded at lax airport, or maybe kennedy, sitting in a booth and eavesdropping on people from every corner of the globe: didn't know the world was this big. didn't know such a lively crossroads of electric little zingin' nerve cells would zip & zap at such a rate, & create such a hoppin place, all on a plain old site whose font looks kind of like an old in-a-gadda-da-vida album or something. i mean, that's one ugly font, that big roundish balloony twitter font that the word "twitter" appears in, did people in the sixties really like that stuff? i never did, but then, i was in high school in the sixties, so i kept my mouth shut.

but, to get back to my point, now i know it's my break, and i should just back off and stop pulling all these resources down off the web, especially that article about how web 2.0 is dead, which it's not, the only thing that should die is the way people keep calling it "2.0" or "3.0" or "x.0" or whatever, good riddance to that. but the question of "what is happening here," i have no idea, of course, being unable to program a vcr out of 12:00, and being brain-dead on account of break and all, the sum total of 49 50+hr/workweeks in a row. but here's my idea....what about a novel, written entirely on twitter, all in 140-character-max snippets, or rather sets of 140-character-max snippets, as of course, you'd sit down to write a chunk, and would have to just use that limit, repeatedly, until you'd said your piece. presumably you'd get pretty good at making each "update" capable of drawing people in, entertaining, making them curious even, about what had gone on before. in this "twit-novel" of course you could drop tiny-url's like ashes from the cigarette of the gumshoe, little clues that lead off to cyberspace or even just off to some bubbleshare neon "eat" sign. flashing on and off, red turning to blue, hoping to stir up an appetite for a western omelette after driving all night. or something like that.

what i have in mind here is a kind of multi-media performance art, whereby a person could enter your "twitter" at any given time (or maybe "facebook"- they could get in your "face"- befriend you so to speak) and then, find themselves in a world of a kind of ongoing virtual novel, which keeps leading them through endless caverns of underground pop-art, link-haiku, bubbleshare movie, or any other kind of media production...the purpose of this, of course, would just be to show that a 140-character-ugly-font media is as good as any, for getting attention, writing a whodunit, putting on a stage performance, or whatever one might want to try. it's something to do- what else could one hope for?

it's late at night, after midnight, but the little guy is having a bad dream, whining back in his bed, as if maybe he wants a grownup to come & give him a hard kidney to rest his feet on. outside, the wind is howling down the road & whistlin' against the window frames & door as if it's bringing a cold wet snowy ice or whatever winter kind of stuff, down from somewhere. as good a time to say, before i pack it all away & get some much-deserved real shut-eye- that in the novel i would introduce this new concept...that cyberspace has four directions, just like reality. there's forward in time, onward, to the next tweet, or onward to the future; there's back into the archives and what's been said; there's linked off into cyberspace which should not be confused with the previous one although in some cases they are quite similar; and finally, there's the off-button, on this laptop a little red square with a white x on it, pressing it begins a process of shutting down the computer & all its functions, and reentering the real world, in all its goods and bads, family, raging storm, garbage cans being blown off into the back yard, stray dogs' beggars' banquet. it's rich, it's life, it's textured, linked, colorful & it keeps changing, "i'm a fan," i like to say when i get on facebook, yet i haven't even touched that place today, now there's a social marketplace, an electronic namdaemun, a virtual giant city, when you're a "fan," you're a cool breeze, an electric buzz, an energy-burner, a slightly dangerous thing but yet, churning like the weather outside. can you put your whole life into a "status?" and if not, why not? if a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe a link can ride that inflationary tsunami into viral euphoria, and stop worrying about the "economic downturn"...and make a living, so to speak, from the google ads blinking "eat eat eat" in the template?...chou

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