Saturday, November 17, 2018

Ist kaput.

This would be a lengthy post, except digging backwards in time led to so many loose ends that it becomes a shorter one. "Short" being a relative term.

In an earlier post, an online item from The Awl was linked; a site that now, ist kaput. How many others we used to read?

Dump Bachmann. There are details, but with Bachmann retired, the site in its way also is.

Ripple in Stilwater, ist kaput because Karl Bremer ist so too, and he is missed.

Etherfarm is a site that was unique, and may yet begin anew.

The list could get longer, but, why? For nostalgia, two items.

FIRST: Here is text of a post from Etherfarm:

Embracing Dude
Evening, Wednesday, July 20, 2005 • 7 responses

I’m approaching my six-year anniversary of moving to California. Given the new job and some new digs, it looks like it’ll probably be close to a decade-long tenure before I and the wife (and whatever other beings for which we become legally responsible) start looking to move elsewhere on the ol’ globe. I have mixed feelings about this; there are many things to like about (northern) California, but in no way do I consider it the pinnacle of civilization that its real estate prices would suggest. The fact that real estate prices in the Bay Area rose 22% last year evinces the kind of self-delusion a place which serves a tofu-everything can induce. It won’t be too long until the only people who can afford to live in the Bay Area are the CEOs of Apple, Oracle, Google, Adobe, Industrial Light & Magic, and Yahoo, all of whom will feast daily on a diet of ego and wheatgrass, and use the houses of regular schmucks like myself as mere parking sheds for their fleet of Segways.

Much has happened to me while in California throughout the last six years. I no longer check the “Single” box on forms asking for my marital status, for starters. My thoughts on the academic humanities were whittled from idealism and passion down to cynicism and kind of embarrassment for the whole profession. I drove a car and rode a couple of bikes. I gained a few pounds, started a little website called etherfarm, made and lost a few friends, developed an almost criminal affinity for Vietnamese food, and um, gained a few pounds.

Most surprising, though, is that in the last few months, I find the word “dude” causing hairline fractures in my anti-California-culture protective shield. There was a point in time when I preemptively asked people not to call me “dude” and when I wouldn’t respond to sentences beginning with, ending with, or containing “dude.” The first postcard I sent from Santa Cruz read something like this:

“Dude,

Dude. Dude? Dude!

-dude.”

I was using the term in jest, of course, but the sad truth is that in Santa Cruz, I’ve overheard whole conversations which consist almost entirely of the word “dude”. It’s said that eskimos have eleven words for snow. Similarly, there exist myriad inflections of the word “dude”, all of which apparently have a specific meaning and appropriate usage, none of which made sense to me until recently.

A month or so ago, I caught myself using the word “dude” without any irony whatsoever. It just rolled off my tongue without shame and without warning. Then about a week later I used the term “dude” in writing during an online chat with a colleague. The last two weeks of my linguistic activity have been peppered with “dude”. Just last week someone told me that they never thought they’d hear me say “dude”, and they told me as if they were proud of me, the way a parent might praise a child for speaking their first word.

Anyway, I think I’ve come to terms with dude. I can’t say it’ll make it into my lexicon as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, a preposition, and as a gerund, as it has for many other residents of California. I can say this, though: if the first word out of any future child of mine is “dude”, dude, they’re going straight to an orphanage.

SECOND: Here is an image posted years ago, Dump Bachmann, an image that speaks for itself. It is between a State Senator and a fan, one with a name and his fifteen minutes of fame of a sort, from the past much as we'd years from now want "Doug Wardlow" to be a comparable quaint relic:


[Clicking the image or opening it in another tab will de-fuzz it, but at its posted/saved size it requires good eyes to read. Using the browser enlarge feature will help, but you lose resolution. At least it is readable and undeniable proof birds of a feather do flock together.]

Here is a way to end the post. Remember how "BLOGROLL" sidebar listings were used; well, let's experiment. Blogroll listings from Dump Bachmann, same 2005 time as the letter/image was posted, (list formatting lost, all run together as a paragraph, but each link preserved):

Blogs


Readers are urged to click a few and see what's still alive, what ist kaput. Here is one from the list; still online, kaput as of 2012, with its own BLOGROLL, so if there is time to play, have a look.

A RETROSPECT IN THE LIFE OF THE WEB, might be an alternate title for this post. Nothing in particular triggered nostalgia, there is no anniversary date to today, but after taking time and looking back, the subject seemed worth posting.

LAST: From the 2005 Dump Bachman blogroll, one site noted now, as a hat tip to Spot, the blog's author, perseverance being its own reward:

https://retiregeoffmichel.blogspot.com/ 

Some readers may remember how Geoff Michel retired himself, along with Amy Koch. 'nuf said?
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