I call it the "Distributed Life," and was first inspired by a new innovation in technology that's become quite popular in the last half-decade, called "distributed computing." Basically, it's a way for an organization to gather up the kind of computer power that usually only comes from a highly expensive "supercomputer," but for a fraction of the cost, namely by convincing thousands of volunteers to run a special piece of software on their home computers when they're not using them themselves. After all, modern home computers have gotten powerful enough to be called legitimate micro-supercomputers on their own; network a thousand of them together in an intelligent way, and they really do become as powerful computation-wise as an average Cray owned by a university or special-effects company. This then allows a group like NASA's Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program to continue the complex work of analyzing trillions of bits of random radio data, even in an age when such programs' budgets are being slashed more and more with each year, precisely through getting fellow geeks and their powerful home computers directly involved. In effect it's using the latest advances in online technology to envision a "grid" of power and connections that already exists around us at all times, and to re-imagine that grid in a new way that an organization like NASA can take advantage of.

In my usual nerdy way, then, this got me to thinking of another invisible grid that's in all our lives, which is the grid by which our day-to-day lives are lived out, with certain "zones" in which certain general things happen, and specific periods within those zones for doing more specific things. For example, it's been a reality for millennia that most people require eight hours of sleep a day; that's an entire third of a 24-hour grid that can be immediately inked out, in that it's impossible to do anything else while sleeping besides sleep. If you're an average corporate employee, then, you might have an eight-hour block of this grid set aside for "work," although that's not really the case when you stop and think about it; that the zone we commonly refer to as "work" actually includes the time to get to that place of work and back, the hour in the middle of the day for lunch, the time spent showering each morning and the time spent winding down when getting home. In reality, then, at least for most corporate employees in the Western world, the "work" part of their daily grid lasts more like twelve hours a day than eight. Combined with the time needed for sleeping, then, this leaves most middle-class Westerners with roughly four or five hours a day for so-called "pleasure," which in our modern world comprises everything from family time to sex, entertainment, intellectual pursuits, social obligations and more. Then on most weekends, corporate employees are suddenly given that sixteen-hour two-day work block of their grid to devote to personal activities instead; and this is why, of course, most pleasure activities as well as family ones occur on the weekends.

But as almost all corporate employees these days know, not even the above scenario is quite true anymore; that a profound rise in technology has created a situation where workers can now be at the 24/7 beck and call of their corporate masters. And this being the beginning of such an age, of course, much like the beginning of the Industrial Age it has mostly been the corporations themselves gaining from such a thing, and workers mostly getting the shaft; the situation as of the writing of this essay, for example (autumn 2007), is that most offices require their employees to still physically be there eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, but then also be at the 24-hour beck and call of cellphones, pagers, email, IM and the like, whenever and wherever Management just happens to want them. But see, this situation is going to change, just like the initially abhorrent Industrial Age eventually gave way to the minimum wage, weekends off, the 40-hour work week, organized labor, environmental laws, indoor plumbing, and a whole lot more. Eventually, although admittedly maybe not soon, the balance of this new technological reality is going to swing towards the benefit of workers as well; that in return for your "work day" now stretching towards 24 hours, you will no longer be required to physically be an office for eight of those hours each day.

I mean, we've been moving towards this reality for decades now; telecommuting jobs have been common since the '70s, and at the millennium there are more people than ever who are office workers half of the week, freelancers and other independent operators the other half. Offices still mostly get away with eight forced hours on-site each day simply because they can; but more and more, smart cutting-edge companies will start offering alternatives, like only having to come to the office 20 hours a week, which all other companies will eventually have to adopt themselves or risk not attracting any decent employees. Yes, this might still take a long time from now to become the mainstream norm -- as long as 30 or 40 years, in fact, although maybe the world will surprise me and transition within a decade; the fact, though, is that we as Western Society are marching towards this new reality little by little on a daily basis right now, just as surely as the pope is Polish...er, German, German.

At the same time, then, the nature of traditional education is starting to slowly change as well, although admittedly even more incrementally than the business world is, or in other words at a glacial pace; this is the institution, after all, that even in 2007 is still determining its calendar based on the idea that their students need the summers off to work on their family's farm. When you strip away all the ritualism of academia, though, all the "we do it this way because we've always done it this way" dogma, you'll see that rising technology is profoundly changing the way that education even works, not to mention the list of useful things students need to know by the time their basic education is over. For example, although computers still can't replace the benefits of human teachers, they have certainly gotten powerful enough to replace some of the duties of human teachers, especially mundane ones; combined with the web, virtual realities, distance learning and more, it's also a powerful enough environment to serve as an individualized tutor for each student, at the times they wish to delve into independent study of an advanced topic. Like I said, human teachers are still very important to education in this day and age, and always will be; in fact, I see this rise in technology as aiding this process, in that it leaves the teachers more free to devote individual time to each student, for the real-time one-on-one tutoring that is precisely the best thing about having a human teacher in the first place.

In both of these situations, then, not only in education but at corporate offices, what I'm really talking about is no less than an entirely new breakup of this daily life grid, one that's been more or less around in an unchanged form since the beginning of the Industrial Age itself, in the early 1800s here in America for example. And this leads to what I call the Distributed Life, an entirely new way of thinking about what we could be doing with our time; that much like the distributed computing described earlier, what if we were to spend part of our time each day in a distributed real-life environment, one that combines personal time with work time with school time with family time? Instead of our daily life grid including an eight-hour uninterrupted chunk of time at an office or school, why not devote just four hours a day to them instead, spending the other four hours of that chunk at home, doing our work and school activities via technology?

My theory is this -- that if you were to do such a thing for both parents and kids, in both a working and educational setting, so that the time at home was the same for everyone involved, it would create a situation much greater and more wonderful than simply working or going to school only half-days. That if you were to use technology to your advantage, change the very institutions which would need to work cooperatively with you to create such a situation, you could literally have a new part of your daily grid that millions cry out for these days -- where you are spending a profound amount of quality "family time" together each day, while still being as proficient or more so at your day job as you were before, while at the same time your kids getting an insanely better education than the current Industrial-Age model could ever hope to bestow. It's not just a more leisure-filled life, but where that leisure time is filled with more important and fulfilling activities than our current situations; where people are more relaxed and in better moods than our current times, able to concentrate more and able to add more of the arts and culture and intellectualism to their lives, where "family time" means not just a shared dinner around a formica table but an actual chunk of your professional life, an actual chunk of your kids' education.

Now like I said, the vision I have in my head is not just a matter of slapping a bandage on the current systems of Western society, but an entire redefining of those systems themselves; that's a big change in both technology and attitude you're talking about, that would need to happen at both schools and offices for such a Distributed Life to be a mainstream reality. For example, for such a new daily grid to work, parents would have to start looking at their children's education as a partnership between themselves and the school district's teachers; that half of that child's oversight and guidance would now come from the school system, the other half needing to come from the parents at home through distributed technology. What this in effect means, then, is an entirely different approach as to how we educate children in the first place; a splitting of what we find important, that is, into a half that's best done with a teacher and a half best done through independent learning. Individualized humanities electives, for example, based on that child's individual interests, would be best done during the four hours each day now spent at home, things like a foreign language or history or literature or whatnot; things that we find important to standardize, like minimum math levels, would be best done at school, where teachers can keep a close eye on each student's progress.

In effect what it does is create a situation where every parent gets to homeschool their child part-time, while creating a work environment that encourages this homeschooling instead of making it a daunting challenge. But at the same time, though, it still preserves all the things that are best about a central location for group educational activities; things like sports, band, a theatre program, a shop program, an A/V department, field trips and more. And meanwhile, this is an extra four hours a day as well for adults to claim a little more as their own; where they're still doing office work, sure, but at least are not chained to a desk every minute of those four hours, in a much more comfortable home environment and while spending part of that time with their kids as well. As I think most office workers will tell you, it's not the actual requirements of their jobs that drive them the craziest, but more the insane amount of time wasted each day within a traditional office environment; that of a typical eight hours being forced to be at an office, maybe only three to four hours of actual work gets done, leaving half a day that could be so better spent by each individual, if only their xenophobic bosses weren't terrified by the idea of not hovering over their employees' shoulders every minute of the freaking day.

Most companies aren't ready to do this yet; most are still stuck in the 200-year-old mindset of the Industrial Age, the one that says that employees are shiftless lazy uneducated animals, ones that will stop being productive the exact moment you physically take your eye off them. In the Information Age this simply isn't true; success in our age requires much more individual decision-making, entrepreneurialism and initiative from the start, meaning that you naturally fall behind through inaction whether or not a boss is watching you. It self-motivates a lot more middle-class workers than ever happened in the "humans as machines" days of the Industrial Age; we now live in an age where workers actually do better when given significant amounts of time to work at their own pace, unsupervised in a comfortable environment. Like I said, this change in attitude will eventually happen on a society-wide basis; it's already happening in the high-tech world, after all, with an increasing amount of employees in that industry already having a work situation much like the one described today. And with such things as homeschooling and Montessori schools becoming more and more the norm, especially among the upper-middle-class bracket that most high-tech workers find themselves in, it creates a situation where more and more people actually can implement a Distributed Lifestyle exactly like the one I just detailed. And this, like I said, is why I ultimately hesitated about writing this up for that futurist website I'm a fan of; that ultimately I'm not really describing a brand-new situation, but merely arguing that this cutting-edge reality is bound to become more and more of our societal norm with every passing year.

Still, though, quite an interesting concept to bandy about, at least in my opinion; an interesting way to think about what daily life might be like for the average Western citizen sooner than we think, of what kinds of new benefits can come to our lives because of the Information Age. As with the onset of any great new age in human development, there are not only detriments to the changes in society going on these days but exciting new opportunities around the corner; that for many of us, we might soon start seeing a life that makes us profoundly happier more quickly than we thought possible. If nothing else, it's at least something fascinating to spend some time contemplating, and thinking about how could be best implemented in your own life.

I know, I know, this makes me sound like a horrifically old-fashioned fuddy-dud! I know! But what can I say? I really am a bit of a horrifically old-fashioned fuddy-dud, and I don't deny it; that no matter how much of a champion I am of bleeding-edge tech and the Global Online Lifestyle, I also remain a hopeless Luddite when it comes to certain subjects. I will always retain a paper notebook for certain tasks; will always prefer face-to-face meetings to virtual ones; and there are certain theories about life developed hundreds of years ago that I still believe in, that I feel are still the best theories to have about life. And among the odd collection of specific issues I in particular am fascinated by, none are more volatile than that of city planning and urban renewal, and that's for two related reasons of course: 1) that the issue didn't exist longer than 150 years ago; and so 2) no real time-proven theories have yet emerged about the subject, and with a whole lot of different theories now tried.

And why am I so fascinated by city planning in the first place? Oh, I don't know; I just find it inherently interesting, I guess, the entire concept that we think ourselves capable of cramming a million people or more together into a tiny geographical space, and that we can maintain the mindblowingly massive infrastructure needed for such a situation, the resources needed to keep these million people in relative peace, instead of the constant state of disease, filth, violence and anarchy you would think such a situation would inspire. And indeed, this is precisely the situation most large cities produced at the beginning of the Industrial Age (late 1700s to early 1800s), as humans progressed from a mostly agricultural society to one that mostly manufactured things in mass quantities, using a rapidly increasing amount of manmade material. This need for massive manpower in small spaces is what led to the premature explosion of large cities in this period, done before humanity quite knew how to handle such situations; and as a result, at first these cities became veritable cesspools, apparent proof (or so the Luddites said) that the Industrial Age spelled the apocalyptic doom of humanity, and is what inspired the now-outdated pastoral movement, where people pined in novels, paintings and song for a simpler life in the country, a bucolic life sometimes so idealized that it could've never actually happened in the real world. And this is the same period, of course, when groups as the Transcendentalists came into being, when people like Thoreau tramped off into the woods to write Walden, when Germany's infamous naturalist/nudist community first formed, and all kinds of other such "back to nature" activities.

All of these things influenced the way people started thinking of big cities, and of the ways they could be improved; and so did the good things that came from the Industrial Age, like the chance for a lot more people to get a basic education (reading, writing, arithmetic, etc), leading to a profound increase in interest in culture, the arts, leisure, sport, etc etc etc. And thus it was that an optimism about technology was combined with an idealized pastoral nostalgia, to produce certain ideas about city planning that really started taking hold; that cities need to contain large interior green spaces, for example, as well as things like libraries and neighborhood centers, for providing culture and athleticism and health to the masses. Or that certain "zones" should be created within urban spaces, for making the venues located there as tolerable as possible; so that slaughterhouses don't get built next to private homes, for example. Or that the very mechanics turning humans into cogs can be used for human betterment as well; that electric trains can be built, for example, for cleanly and efficiently whisking massive amounts of people across relatively far distances.

We take all these things for granted now, too much for granted; so much for granted, in fact, that we've mostly forgotten how controversial these theories were when first proposed, how unproven they were and how warily they were greeted by the general public. The vision these "City Beautiful" urban planners were selling was literally a utopian one, when compared to the sad reality of what those cities were actually like at the time; impossibly rosy statements about how in the future, clean and happy citizens will bicycle and tram their way around well-maintained, sewage-free streets, spending their large discretionary incomes on exotic consumer goods, from a variety of well-lit and well-ventilated stores and cafes right in their neighborhood. A place where people can escape daily to lush, well-patrolled nature preserves right in the middle of the city; where free education for all is provided through public taxes at a variety of modern campuses evenly dotting the city, as are cultural events like concerts and discussion clubs, millions of books and movies, thousands of bike racks and trails.

HA! TOSH! BAH! HUMBUG! Clean and happy bicycling middle-class citizens indeed! But fuck me if it hasn't come true, you know? I'm living proof of that, a person who might as well be a space alien to the average citizen of the early 1800s, living an impossibly luxurious life that most of them were unable to even envision back then. Or, well, like I said, it's true for at least parts of cities these days, if not the entire city limits in most cases; here in Chicago, for example, such a situation only exists mostly on the north side of the city, not the south or west. And this is where discussions of this sort always get controversial; because the fact is that giant sections of Chicago, as is true with most cities, are still a giant shithole, with the citizens there living under the same kinds of filthy, unsafe conditions as those from the average Charles Dickens novel from the 1800s. And let's face it -- no one likes such a situation, and it is one of the biggest focuses these days among contemporary city planners, of how to "reclaim" these apocalyptic-wasteland sections of cities, and transform them into the same utopian visions that other parts of that city already are.

And this of course is why I get called a fuddy-dud by some, and a whole lot worse by others, because I literally believe that certain Victorian ideas concerning this subject should be instituted in such neighborhoods, in order to have the best chance of transforming these neighborhoods into clean, safe, vibrant, exciting ones. Yes, I believe in neighborhoods having lots of small, intimate parks and other public green spaces, places where locals can feel a sense of pride and ownership, and will therefore voluntarily keep those spaces clean and crime-free. Yes, I believe that we need to provide the funds to keep these spaces pristine and freshly mowed in the first place, their trails freshly repaired, their dark spaces well-patrolled and free of vagrants. Yes, I believe in the power of libraries; of smart public architecture; of mixed-income residential zones; of tax breaks for cafe and gallery owners. Yes, I believe in banning certain "immoral" venues from being erected in certain parts of cities; for example, in not allowing liquor stores or check-cashing places within a quarter-mile of a school. Yes, I believe in all of these things, no matter how old-fashioned they sometimes sound (or "preciously optimistic white guy", as the ultra-liberals might call some of my beliefs), and believe that a simple implementation of such things could literally save such places as Chicago's south side, as well as entire dilapidated cities like Detroit and Baltimore.

And so at the end of the day we're led back to a question I've been pondering a lot this summer, as my citywide post-cigarette-quitting bike adventures have had me seeing more of Chicago then ever before in my life; of whether we even live in an age anymore where such massive resources can be dedicated to such things. It's undeniable, it's absolutely fucking undeniable by now, that the United States is in a period of decline these days; that our most glorious days as a country are now officially and permanently behind us, just like Greece and Italy and Britain and all of the other former centers of now-eroded empires throughout human history (or "superpowers," you Americans, if you're more comfortable with that term than "empires"). In fact, when you look back now on what profound things were actually accomplished during this country's height, it can sometimes boggle the mind; here just in Chicago, for example, local citizens did no less back then than reverse the flow of a river, artificially construct over ten miles of new shoreland, as well as create over 500 public parks over the course of a century, 500 public schools, 80 public libraries. It can be stunning at points when all added together, and required a stunning commitment as well; billions upon billions of dollars, millions upon millions of man-hours, a patience among millions and millions of citizens for plans that sometimes took decades to fully accomplish.

It could be argued (and in fact I will argue) that such mind-boggling things can only be accomplished during the "rising phase" of a country's history (in America's case, for example, in the 75 years between the Civil War and World War Two) -- the years when that country precisely isn't a world superpower, when it doesn't have to commit such ridiculous resources towards a permanent military complex in charge of protecting and maintaining this superpower. That you can't convince millions of people to commit to such radical visions unless things are fairly shitty at the time, where even an untested and risky theory is preferable to what currently exists; that when a country grows prosperous and powerful (and fat and lazy), like the US has since the end of WWII, it becomes nearly impossible to get citizens to sign on for anything radical, long-term or expensive. So I wonder, then, if you could even get people in this day and age to support, say, a billion-dollar bond issue in the first place, one that would utterly transform something like the south side of Chicago or the entire city of Detroit, that would demolish thousands of dilapidated buildings even while constructing thousands of new ones, literally ripping up old street layouts and reterraforming entire neighborhoods. There's a lot of people out there who immediately smirk and roll their eyes when I get on this subject, which of course is my entire point; that 100 years ago people not only didn't snicker at such plans, but actually pulled them off.

Do we even have a society anymore that can actively transform parts of itself it doesn't like? Or are we doomed to suffer the fate of all crumbling empires -- a breakdown of the military-industrial complex holding everything together, an implosion of an artificially overinflated economy, a resultant lack of resources for even adequately maintaining what we already have, much less initiating anything new. We're in danger right this moment of entering a backwards period of American history; where, for example, we go back to the days when a huge part of the general population no longer receives a free basic education, because we literally can't afford it, in that we are forced to commit a greater and greater percentage of our dwindling and dwindling gross national product to fund a bloated and outdated Cold-War-Era military structure, that no one is able to transform because of extreme conservatives achieving such a complete and impossible-to-break hold over the governmental mechanisms keeping such a military structure in place, precisely by changing both the law and culture into a more fascistic, authoritarian one, done for no other reason than so they can keep skimming off the top and making themselves and their friends rich and fat. Such things have happened at the end of every empire, as anyone who knows their history can confirm; are we in America going to let it happen here too?

Or...or. Or we can actually learn the lessons that history wants to teach us, cut this slow decline off at the knees precisely because we know now what causes it. We can re-invent ourselves as a country, just like England did at the end of their empire years; we can "rebrand" ourselves, if you will, into something much more appropriate for a post-Cold-War world, into just another piece of the enormous jigsaw puzzle which is the global economy, the global culture. If we can somehow collectively give up the idea that the US needs to be the world's police, that we need to keep dedicating the insane amount of resources needed to be these world police, we will suddenly find an interesting situation on our hands; trillions and trillions of extra dollars, that is, to fund things that we previously thought impossible to fund, like a national healthcare system, an increase in public education instead of continual shutdowns, a transformation of certain urban areas. It's a choice that all of us as Americans face right now; who we choose for President next year, for example, is going to profoundly determine which of these two directions the US will be heading down over the next decade. I hope it'll be the right choice; but given the US population's track record of late, I'm certainly not betting on it.

That's a good question, one I've been pondering a lot too; because believe me, I ain't opening CCLaP for my health, that's for damn sure, but rather to get to a point as quickly as possible where all my bills in my life are getting paid because of it, and hopefully even a little extra, God forbid. Last year I tried opening CCLaP under a ridiculous proposition that a lot of people didn't believe; that I could literally start up all these new programs and cool projects at once, if only someone with $5,000 in spare cash could invest it in the center beforehand. And now under the newest plan, I'm yet again opening under a ridiculous proposition that a lot of people don't believe; that I can actually start raising semi-significant revenue without spending a penny in advance, or let's say just very few pennies (less than $400 altogether, when all is said and done). That's the idea, anyway, to have raised about a thousand bucks by this autumn altogether, so I can move on to the next stage of the revenue-raising plan.

So this is basically how I want to do it, which I don't mind sharing because it's a complicated plan (like always) that I think most people unable to pull off, even if they do know it in detail...

First, like I said, open this virtual photography gallery, all Flash-based and really impressive in that "ooh, that's a Flash site, ain't it" kind of way. And with audio interviews between me and the artist concerning each piece, which you can listen to by clicking a button in the corner, so that if you want it to be, it'll be like actually walking through a gallery with me and the artist as we gab about the work. And then probably creating a 3D virtual gallery as well in Second Life, because hey, I've got the land and it's all paid up until next October, for God's sake, I might as well be doing something there with it. And all of this includes a virtual exhibition catalog as well, in the form of a free downloadable PDF eBook, designed in the super-cool way I've done past books of photography. All of this combined will hopefully give the proceeding just a little bit more gravitas than simply pointing people to a Flickr account, for example, will keep photographers interested in showing there and an audience interested in checking it out.

So the idea, then, is to combine all this mentioned with some of that "print on demand" merchandise that now exists online; the places like CafePress, for example, MOOCards, Flickr's various commercial options, where they merely keep an electronic version of your artwork on file at their warehouse, and literally crank out one more t-shirt or postcard or poster or coffee mug or refrigerator magnet or whathaveyou each time someone orders it. It's not the best option for a small business, because that POD company keeps a significant amount of each sale; but it's a good option for people like me, who are going into all this without any upfront money whatsoever.

Any revenue generated from all that, then, gets split in half between the artist and CCLaP; the artist does what they want with theirs, while CCLaP's gets held as part of a book fund for the fall (but more on that in a bit). And then CCLaP has a Paypal account as well, so the virtual gallery will have a virtual glass box at the end too, in case visitors want to throw a few bucks in after the tour for a good cause. Strictly voluntarily, of course, and non-payment certainly doesn't withhold you from any of the show. Then combine that with a growing series of social events in Chicago, where I'll probably pass the hat once at each, again with about as low-pressure a sales pitch as possible.

So will all of that be enough for CCLaP to raise US$1,000 (500 pounds, 800 euros) by, say, October? That is, by not spending a penny of it, but instead keeping it in digital form where I can't get at it? Oh, and of course promoting all the merchandise through Second Life as well, on top of selling virtually matted and framed versions of the photos for just like a quarter apiece, for other avatars to hang in their own virtual homes, just as a gimmick that will get people talking and visiting the main website. If I can somehow get all of this to equal a thousand bucks by this fall, that'll be enough to publish CCLaP's first full-length paper book, 500 copies, which I'm budgeting right now at a dollar apiece to make, even though they'll be fully bound trade paperbacks (but more on that below), plus a $500 cash advance to whatever writer I sign, as an enticement for signing with CCLaP and not someone else.

So how am I going to pull off 500 trade paperbacks for 500 bucks? Easy; I'm going to make them all myself, I've decided, art-book style, with the pressboards and fabric and glue spindles and all the rest. That's one of the things, in fact, that I'm becoming more and more comfortable with this year, as I transition into yet another new way of doing things with my center; I'm finally admitting to myself plainly how much faster I am than so many other people when it comes to certain things, how much more energy I have for all this stuff than a lot of other people, of all the things I can accomplish that a full-time 9-to-5er can't. Like, I can hand-print and hand-bind, in a complex and high-quality way, 500 copies of a paperback book myself. I can, in my apartment, and bind say a hundred of them at first over a month, then keep slowing binding them as sales slowly continue through 2008.

That will give me a high-quality book at the end, in fact an even higher quality than a normal mass print run, because I'll be able to add covers of harder stock and the like. And that'll let me sell it retail for a decent price, $15 or $16, for only a production cost of a dollar, giving both CCLaP and the author much higher royalties than in most basement- and small-press situations. (That is, once you subtract marketing costs, postage, wastage, cuts for a distributor like Amazon or bookstore, and all the rest of the thousand ways they stick it to you). After all of that's paid off, again both the author and CCLaP split the rest 50/50, a much higher ratio than most presses; and since CCLaP's costs for the next book are getting paid for first, at that point I'll finally start feeling comfortable with keeping half of CCLaP's profits for myself, to actually start paying bills in my life, and re-investing the other half into growing CCLaP's budget for the next project.

Oh, and that'll let me do something else cool, too; to offer a really fancy custom version you can order directly from the website, where I actually print on the front page that that particular book was printed just for you, and leave a space for the author to sign it, and with probably special fancier covers and front leafs and the like. You know, something cool and fancy, a ridiculous $30 or something, specifically for the author's family and friends, as a way of being a little more extra supportive of the author than the usual reader. Just to give people the opportunity, you know.

Nobody does it this way because no one usually has the time or energy to do it this way; I do have the time and energy, which is why I'm trying it this way. This way is actually much better than any of the other ways; it's a higher profit margin per book, a much more intimate relationship between your press and your customers, and a much higher-quality book in their hands too. And that's how I'm hoping not only to eventually start turning a significant profit out of no upfront money, but in a way that will impress other organizations and make them say, "How does CCLaP do it like that?" And even better than all of this so far mentioned, I can do everything I've talked about by myself; no need to raise the money for an employee, no begging for a volunteer if I can't, no need to share the profits. I don't know why I tortured myself for so long, trying to do things the way that everyone else did them. I don't know why I didn't just tell myself before, "Jason, you're in a position to do things in a much different and better way than anyone else."

So, there's the plan. Will it work? We'll see! I'm willing to bet that it will, though. Maybe my numbers are a little off; maybe it'll take me until January 2008 to raise a thousand bucks, instead of October '07. As always, we'll see.

In any case, after a half-year hiatus to get over my anger and recharge my batteries, I'm now ready to take another crack at it, and am still sufficiently spooked enough by the concept of external investors at this point to go an entirely different route this time, and to pay for CCLaP's build-up myself out of the profits of each project done under its name. So that now changes CCLaP's focus as well; that instead of last year's focus on creating a community of artists and fans, with me as a low-profile yet central administrator holding things together, this time the focus is on showcasing the most legitimately brilliant unknown artists I can find, and of outputting as much artistic criticism as possible so that you all will know what I mean by "brilliant unknown artists" in the first place.

In the end it may not seem like too profound a change, in that the center's activities themselves stay almost the same -- as before, CCLaP v2 will have a blog updated multiple times a day, a Flash-based virtual photography gallery, and eventually a publishing program and live-events schedule. The main difference, in fact, is in how I'm approaching these activities as the central administrator of it all, as well as the guy in charge of selling the whole thing to the public: that before, the idea was to publicly de-emphasize my role as much as possible, in that the focus was to be on the community being formed, while now the idea very much is to build a "cult of personality" around myself (like I have with this personal site over the years), and in turn to string CCLaP's activities and featured artists around that. As I've mentioned here before, under this new way of approaching things, what's of most importance now is to establish my credentials as an arbiter of underground culture; to publish a lot of criticism, for example, do a really good job with the virtual gallery, basically convince as many people as possible why they should give a fuck when I recommend an artist they've never heard of (and why they should pay me money for the experience, by buying CCLaP's merchandise and making donations).

That's what my "Movies for Grown-Ups" series of essays at my VOX account right now is about (which will be moving over to the CCLaP site when it opens), is to help establish exactly what I like in my favorite artistic projects, and why I like it; I'll be greatly expanding that then at the CCLaP site itself, including weekly reviews of just-published novels, daily showcases of interesting photographers at Flickr, etc. Pssst -- I'm looking for books to review, especially self-published ones. Drop me a line at ilikejason [aatt] gmail.com to obtain a physical mailing address, or do something even simpler and just email me your electronic book. That said, I won't be reviewing every book I receive, especially if it ends up sucking; as longtime readers know, in fact, in general I prefer not to publish negative reviews at all, but rather concentrate on promoting great artists that most people have never heard of.

I'm hoping, then, to add a weekly podcast to the activities as well, a mix of audio and video reports, that will also be a mix of original interviews and local event recaps, something for example I pray to be even half as sharp as CoolHunting.com (i.e. I will be ripping off their look on a regular basis -- thanks, CoolHunting!). And yet again, this is done for the same purpose as the critical essays, to establish myself more in the eyes of the public as someone whose opinions and tastes they should trust, and should take a gamble on sometimes as well. Hey, I'm sensitive to the various ways CCLaP v1 failed last year, other than the ways that weren't my fault; I haven't forgotten, for example, that I was able to raise barely any money at all through public memberships, and that this can be chalked up mostly to what we're talking about, of the public not trusting enough in my abilities to be parted from 50 of their dollars. As regular readers know, I'm not exactly afraid of failures, and in general see them as an opportunity to learn and grow; and this is simply one lesson to be learned from last year, that I need to establish my reputation as a critic and administrator more, as well as get more actual projects finished and presented to the public.

In fact, that's probably the most basic lesson of all that I learned from last year's experiences -- that even tiny electronic-only plans that cost nothing to produce, but that are actually completed, are much more highly regarded than big plans that exist only in the hypothetical, no matter how many other small projects you've already completed in the past and can point to as proof that you can pull off the big ones as well, if only someone with money would simply give you the chance to do so. It's why CCLaP's goals this second time might seem so much more modest -- to publish only online this summer, for example, to do no live events at all (except possibly a few social-only ones), to concentrate more on things like the podcast that I can do with equipment I already own. In a way it's a disappointment for me, a step down in ambition from what I was trying to do last year, which was already a few steps down from my original grandiose plan in 2004; but then again, the 2004 plan required $100,000 in startup money, the 2006 plan $5,000, and this year's plan nothing. Finally, a budget I can afford!

And of course if you're paying attention, you can spot another big change that all of this means, a change more troubling in nature -- that this time I need to be far more selective over who I feature and recommend through CCLaP, that my job now consists of saying no to a lot of artists instead of saying yes. Which, again, is simply the nature of the beast: that before, this community of artists and fans was going to determine what and who CCLaP considered "cool," with me being the mostly unseen hand gently shaping this vision; but now, CCLaP will be much more a personal reflection of what and who I in particular find "cool," with you either buying into that vision or not (and adding to/shaping the conversation via blog comments, guest entries, social events and the like). So like I said, that's going to involve me having to say no to a lot more artists than before; to refuse to review certain books, not link to certain websites, not publish certain authors. It's not a big deal now, of course, because CCLaP isn't even open yet; as the center develops a bigger and bigger public profile this summer, though, I bet this'll become a bigger and bigger issue.

So anyway, that's the story for now; and hopefully by the time this fall rolls around, the things I just mentioned will have been successful enough for me to have put together around a thousand bucks, which is roughly what I need to publish CCLaP's first paper book (that is, once you figure in the advance I will be paying my first "signed" author, pretty much a necessity if I'm going to attract someone superlatively good). And hopefully at the same time, by then there will be enough of a local audience built up to support a regularly recurring show in Chicago as well; not the full schedule attempted last year, but more like how Jessa Crispin does it over at Bookslut.com, one show a month or whenever I can afford it. You know, just a more organic growth to CCLaP's activities this time, instead of first coming up with a big plan and then saying, "I need a check this big to pull this off, and you'll get your money back in a year." I'm still in theory interested in doing it that way; it's just that I got burned too bad last year to want to pursue such an option again right now.

Okay, so that's the news for now, and I do hope you'll be able to join in starting hopefully later this week, or whenever it is that we can get the new URL pointing to the right server space. Don't forget, that new address is cclapcenter.com; please spread the word!

And some random notes as well, as long as I'm here...

--So yes, all of this brings more official news as well, although I suppose most of you who used to follow along have pretty much already guessed: that I will be putting my Second Life blog, In The Grid, on hiatus for the rest of 2007, and probably won't be having anything at all to do with Second Life again until at least winter 2008, if ever. And this frankly is not just because of re-activating the arts center, although that's a big part of it; and not just because it's summer and I'm spending a lot more time outside, although that's a big part of it too; but also because the SL client software has just finally gotten too big and unwieldly for my home computer, a Mac Mini Intel. And damnit, I just bought the thing brand-new a year ago, a year ago, specifically to play Second Life, and I'm still as unemployed and broke as I was at that point, and I just absolutely cannot justify buying yet another new computer right now just to play, not when my Mini works just fine for each and every other tech thing I do in my life, from BitTorrent to video-editing to podcast creation and more.

And all of this, frankly, presents a huge sticky wicket when it comes to Second Life's biggest selling point, the thing that both its founders and its most passionate users are always arguing -- that Second Life is no mere game but an entire new reality, and a profound new paradigm shift in human interaction, and the Great Leveler of Populations, blah blah fuckity blah. But let me tell ya, Second Life ain't the great leveler of anything if you have to be middle-class and with a ton of discretionary income in order to even be there. If that's the case, then what you've got on your hands, my friend, is a videogame, and you can take all that hippie crap about "new communication platforms" and park it on a shelf at Best Buy next to the latest expansion pack for World of Warcraft. I think there's more and more non-gamers starting to realize this, in fact, and starting to realize all the hidden costs that come with being a Citizen of the Metaverse (the broadband bill, the regular computer upgrades, the endless video cards if you're on Windows); I'm not sure what exactly it means for either Second Life or Linden Lab (owner of the game), but I do know for sure that the MMO Bubble has definitely burst, or at least for me. Anyway, I know a lot of you were fans of that blog, so I hate to have to announce its medium-term closure; but that's just sometimes how it is, I guess.

--Oh, and speaking of special projects....If you're reading this in some other form besides the desktop version, you might not know yet that the special new section of my site just for my bike maps is now open; you can find it at jasonpettus.com/maps/. And that's all still going really well, to tell you the truth, not just the maps themselves but the biking in general; those who read my other personal journal, for example, will know that this Memorial Day I actually pulled off a 24-mile (39 km) ride, now officially the longest I've ever gone in my life, from my place in Uptown to the southside's Hyde Park, almost entirely along Chicago's 18-mile lakefront bike path. Although that might not be the best example, because I actually overdid it on that one; that for the first several hours of the following morning, I couldn't actually get my legs to work, which was quite the creepy little body-snatching experience indeed.

In fact, I can definitively state that the best workouts I've had yet this summer, the ones that seem to have done my body the most constructive good, are the ones for which I took my time and simply enjoyed all the details that came along the way. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, to tell you the truth, because of course when you spend as much time on the bike trails as I have this month, you're bound on a daily basis to run into that other kind of bicyclist; you know, the one with the thousand-dollar titanium racing bike, who spends their entire morning doing endless wind-sprint loops in a Lycra jumpsuit, up and down and up and down the same five-mile section of the path, with this gritty look of torture on their faces and a naked contempt for all those other cyclists actually enjoying themselves at a nice leisurely pace.

And every time I see one of these people, I can't help but to think, "Jesus, how...American." You know? Americans are the only people I know who can take something as inherently fun and carefree as stretching one's muscles under a warm sun, and turn it into a joyless daily chore that relies on external inflated expectations and the spending of obscene amounts of money. I mean, just look at fitness centers, you know? Only Americans could come up with something like that; with taking something that can be done for free with great joy while outdoors, and turning it into a grim daily responsibility done inside a windowless room after paying thousands of dollars just to be let in. But then again, I've been on a bit of an anti-consumerist kick lately, so maybe it's just me.

Anyway, my point is that I'm not one of these people; that as far as I'm concerned, the main point of bicycling to my destination in the first place is to simply enjoy the ride, and to revel in the buildings and people and pets I'm passing, to celebrate the fact that I'm outdoors and part of humanity and a small cog in this immense clockwork we call the city. As my Memorial Day trip proved once again, where things go wrong for me is when I get too ambitious, when I schedule a bike trip for more goal-oriented reasons than to simply enjoy the ride. It's an important lesson to heed, I think, one I'll be paying more attention to as the summer progresses.

--And finally...

Yes, I'm aware that I've recently been much more of a bitter little self-righteous prick than usual at my two personal journals, which was frankly already more than I probably should be. I've been going through a whole struggle this spring and early summer, in fact, a much more striking misanthropic streak than I'm normally used to, which I've been having trouble coping with and getting over -- just this overwhelming suspicion of exactly how idiotic most human beings in actuality are, and how ultimately it doesn't really matter whether the mouth-breathing swarms live or die or get exterminated like cockroaches by a charming despot or what. And in this, my old hero Wendell the Third has come through once again; he's got me reading Buckminster Fuller for the first time, as a matter of fact, who for those who don't know wasn't just the inventor of the geodesic dome, but who was also an eternal optimist about humanity who dedicated his entire adult life to figuring out how people can be happier. And his work so far is inspiring, I have to admit, and actually makes me believe in humanity a little more each time I read another chapter; although I also have to admit, I wince and roll my eyes a little every time he uses the phrase "Spaceship Earth."

Anyway...yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm dealing with a lot of abstract anger towards human beings these days, and I know that it's reflected in what I write about at my personal journals. And I'm also dealing with trying to get over this anger, because it's something I sincerely don't like about myself, and something as well that's a sincere impediment towards getting my arts center off the ground; because let's face it, no matter who you are, no one likes dealing with a bitter little asshole. As always, it's a journey, one with its ups and downs, one with its successes and failures. I feel like I'm failing a lot more than succeeding these days, when it comes to this particular subject; but that when it comes to other subjects, like my almost supernaturally successful attempt to quit smoking this year, I'm doing better than I ever expected. (87 days since I've had a cigarette, believe it or not; and yeah, fuck you too, while we're on the subject.) As always, I'll keep muddling along as I deal with these topics; and as always, even though I don't publicly express this much anymore, I am sincerely glad that you've chosen to follow along, and to check into the site on a regular basis to see how the struggle goes. I know that I rarely respond to fan mail anymore, simply because I don't know what to say anymore, now that I'm no longer pursuing a career as a writer; nonetheless, I'm glad that a certain amount of you still apparently enjoy what it is that I have to say, and I do appreciate you stopping by and checking out what is often anymore just a bunch of insane babbling.

Okay, that's enough for today. See you later.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Here's me in happier times -- right after the first surgery, in fact, two Thursdays ago, when I was all doped up on Vicodin and Novocaine and not caring the slightest that blood was currently gurgling out of my mouth (indeed, taking a kinda perverse pleasure in it). Ah, but Novocaine eventually wears off, and Vicodin prescriptions eventually run out, leaving one with an unpleasant truth; that one has recently had eight teeth rather forcibly ripped out of one's head, and that this is bound to make one's mouth pretty fucking sore for quite some time afterwards. So sore, in fact, that one might find oneself suddenly unable to concentrate for more than about ten minutes at a time, making pervasive work on a central project pretty much impossible. Oh yeah, that's right, surgery sucks, and your entire life tends to come to one big fucking standstill afterwards. How could I have forgotten that?

In fact, this gets into an even larger problem I'm having these days -- that over the last couple of months, I've decided to make some pretty big changes to my life (including all this dental work, reopening CCLaP, quitting smoking, bicycling a lot more, and gaining 40 pounds), and so now tend to get extremely frustrated whenever this process takes longer than I want it to...which tends to be just about all the time. I mean, this clash between my dental work and the CCLaP reopening is a perfect example -- I literally can't tell you how frustrating it is to be to be forced to sit around and do nothing for about a month altogether, for the pathetic reason that my body can't keep up with my ambitions. How dare my body not be able to keep up with all the things I want to accomplish these days! Who the fuck does my body think it is, demanding to take a month to get over having 16 teeth surgically removed, and refusing to let me concentrate on other projects until it's over? Fuck my body, man!

Those older than me, of course, I'm sure are already laughing with recognition; why yes, I am almost 40, and yes I am dealing right now with my first serious acknowledgment of mortality. Because let's face it -- when you're younger, you think you understand what human frailty and mortality is about, but you don't really start to understand it until the first time you try to do something with your body and your body won't let you. Right now, right now at this point in my life, is the first time I've ever had to deal with this, as is the case with a lot of males in their late thirties; the first time I tell my body to do certain things and my body simply replies with, "Nope, ain't gonna be happening today."

It's frustrating, frankly, an emasculating experience to be sure, and a major contributor to the fabled White Male Mid-Life Crisis; more so than even women, I think, men especially hate telling their bodies to do something and having their bodies refuse. And it can be a terrifying experience too, in that it can sometimes feel like someone else has taken over your body, and is making it do things you don't want it to. What do you mean, I'm suddenly not going to have solid stools for a week for no discernible reason? Do you know who exactly the fuck you're talking to? Who are you to deny me, body? I fucking own your ass!

So anyway, that's part of the process I'm going through this spring; not only changing a lot of the details of my daily life, but also learning how to be more patient with these changes, and also to accept that there are some things (like recovering from surgery, apparently) that I simply can't do as fast now as I could when I was younger. And that's probably the biggest irony of the entire situation -- that I'm having a lot harder time accepting that last fact than other more alarming things in my life, for example just the massive amount of physical pain I'm dealing with these days because of all this dental work. Physical pain is something I'm used to, something I know how to cope with; my body not obeying me, though, is a new experience, and one that freaks me out a lot more. Yeah, older readers, I know, I know -- if I think it's bad now, just wait until I'm in my forties and older, I know. Let me have my mid-life crisis, will ya?!

Okay, okay, enough whining already! What's in place for the revamped CCLaP, I hear you asking instead. Oh, I'm glad you asked! Basically it boils down to this -- that after six months of CCLaP being on hiatus, and after me spending the last month thinking intensely about the ways I want to do things differently this time, I think I'm finally beginning to understand what a lot of friends have been saying over the last couple of years, which is that I've been tending to skip over the exact things concerning arts administration that I'm actually best at, and that I could be having a lot more successes if I simply wouldn't do that. I'll explain...

One of the things I've been adamant about with CCLaP this whole time is that it not be a repeat of the other no-budget arts experiences I've already had; the entire point of opening CCLaP, after all, is to start generating a significant amount of revenue, giving me the kinds of budgets for future projects I've never had access to before. And so when my friends would say things like, "Why don't you start with what you know, by putting on no-budget projects that you could charge a little money for, and start building a profit that way?" I'd always respond with, "Been there, done that, now I'm interested in getting a big chunk of change from an outside investor at once, and doing big things with it from the get-go." I've since had that desire pretty much beaten out of me, by actually finding an investor last summer and then having him fuck me over a week before CCLaP's live-event schedule was slated to start. And that almost killed the arts center for good, frankly, which is why I put everything on hiatus for six months to begin with, because I was just so fucking angry and bitter over everything that it wouldn't have done any constructive good at all to keep working on it at that point.

But if I'm no longer going to pursue an external investor, what to do? Well, raise the money myself, obviously, which gets into the crux of the problem, first discovered last summer -- that I haven't convinced enough people yet that I know what the fuck I'm doing, or at least not enough yet to raise the several thousand dollars I need to make an actual serious go at it all. And this (I think) finally gets into what my friends have been talking about this whole time -- that what I'm really best at when it comes to this subject is in pointing out cool artists most others haven't heard of, from the giant slushpile of crap currently known as the public sphere. And my friends are right -- I am good at that, better than a lot of people, for a variety of specific reasons:

1) I have more patience than others for going through the crap in the first place; this is the guy, after all, who keeps on top of 400 blogs a day, as well as over 150 photographers each day at Flickr (both via RSS feeds), who was attending a peak of four poetry open mics every week in the 1990s, etc.

2) I've gotten very good at discerning the difference between beginning crap and beginning crap with potential, because of dealing with the subject almost every day for 17 years now.

3) I'm naturally talented at explaining why the good stuff is good, and why people should pay more attention to it than to the rest of the crap; in fact, you could argue that this was my greatest strength as a professional writer as well, which is why my blog was always a lot more popular than my novels.

And 4), I'm good at looking at all these things in a unique way; of appreciating artists for reasons others might not have considered, or connecting groups of artists in ways that others haven't thought of doing.

And really, if you want to get all Deconstructionist and everything, ultimately that's my job as an underground arts administrator -- I'm in charge of wading through the unending pile of crap that exists in that medium, pointing out the stuff I think worth your attention, explaining why I think it's worth your attention, and convincing you that I'm not full of shit myself. And if I do a good job at this, the theory goes, you all will eventually reward me, by buying the merchandise and attending the live events I end up producing, featuring these underground artists you've never heard of. And so all this, then, fairly profoundly changes the way I need to approach operations at CCLaP; because before, you see, the idea was to build a community around CCLaP who all had an active hand in who and what the center featured, so in that case the quality of the individual artists took a backseat to the building of the actual community.

Now, though, with the goal mostly being to convince people to take me seriously as an arts administrator, and to generate revenue rather than create an activist community, the entire nature of what CCLaP will do becomes different; it's about quality now much more than quantity, of very selectively picking out just the best and most intriguing artists I come across, rather than the "open call" system of last year's Fellowship program. I'm pretty sure that this is what my friends have meant over the last couple of years, expressed in different ways; that what I just described is what I'm really best at, not building communities of strangers and finding outside financial investors and all that, and that they're surprised I've been skipping over the stuff I'm specifically best at, just so I can do things the same ol' boring way that everyone else does things.

And really, when approached from this attitude, it's hard to disagree; and indeed, I'm tempted to call myself for a moron for not seeing it earlier, and realizing that I have indeed been skipping over the very stuff that could most easily and profoundly help me get CCLaP initially established. Although to be fair, my original sentiments still hold true; the entire goal of CCLaP still continues to be to generate a significant amount of revenue, so that eventually I can take on the kinds of projects I've never gotten the chance to take on before, as well as never have to work another day job besides it again. I guess the thing that's changed, upon reflection this winter, is the realization that I can do the things my friends have been urging me to do, while still doing it in a new way and not repeating the experiences of my past.

So in that regard, here's now how things are shaping up as far as spring and summer activities for CCLaP, which I'm hoping to start up in about three weeks when I'm finally fully recovered from my surgery...

--To begin with, good news for those who like my online writing, which is that the CCLaP website is changing quite a bit; it's going to be even more frequently updated than last year, now featuring not only a lot of notices about Chicago-area events (like was done last year) but also now lots of extended critical essays from me, about all the various random artistic crap I'm into at any given moment. In fact, I've already started getting myself into the habit, over at the other personal blog I maintain these days; I just got a Netflix account for my birthday, in fact, and am now writing a thousand-word essay there about each movie I see, which I will be moving over to the CCLaP website as soon as it's open. The theory is two-fold, you see: 1) that if I can get up detailed analyses of the more mainstream artistic things I like (such as movies, for example), this will give audience members a much better reference point for understanding why I pick the various underground artists I do; and 2) that the more regular original content I'm able to get up to the site (especially fun stuff like reviews of weirdo movies), the bigger and more passionate an audience I'll have there. So anyway, that adds up to just a tremendous more amount of output from me there than before -- a Flickr photographer of the day, a story or poem of the day, movie reviews, essays about random crap I'm obsessed with at the time (for example, I recently watched all the 1930s and '40s Max Fleischer Superman cartoons, which blew me away), along of course with lots of notices about local artistic events, as many as I hear about myself.

--Then to augment that, I've decided to beef up last year's original podcast plans -- to start doing them at least twice a week this year, one an audio episode that consists of an interview with someone intriguing, the other a video episode that covers a recent local live event, shot on my cellphone and edited on my home computer, all of it delivered via an iTunes channel among other options. Hey, why not, right? This is another example of what I've been talking about, of something I'm actually pretty good at and for some reason have been just skipping over in my past plans for CCLaP. I've already been doing one form or another of a podcast, after all, for the last two years now, and for a lot of people those are their favorite things of all the stuff I do; for almost no extra effort at all, I could be producing a twice-weekly podcast that could turn out to be really quite popular, all with technology I already own and with almost no overhead costs.

--All the while, then, I'll also be accepting submissions of literary works, and hopefully later this summer will be ready to publish CCLaP's first paper book and actually start generating the organization's first revenue. And again, this time I've decided to go a completely different route, which is to say that I'm going back to the old way of doing things; that instead of getting obsessed with printing CCLaP's first book a traditional way, and finding the big chunk of outside money needed to do so, it's instead going to be a run of handmade "art" books that I design and assemble here in my apartment, or maybe occasionally with friends. I have the experience, after all; Lord knows I have the time; such a method would let me make just as many books as I have the money at any given moment to afford; I can set things up so that Amazon takes care of all the selling and shipping of physical books; and with them being handmade, I'll be able to charge more money than usual as well, while simultaneously keeping costs low. Again, just a situation where I was skipping ahead in my brain to the way that everyone else does it, never acknowledging that I have the means at my disposal right now to do things in a much cooler and more cost-efficient way. Anyway, so this is where my newfound curator skills will be of most use; that is, of all the manuscripts I'm bound to see from now until August or whenever, I can only afford to publish one of them, and owe it to both myself and CCLaP to pick the most absolutely insanely great one I come across in all that time. If I can do this, and avoid picking someone just because of their enthusiasm, this will go a long way towards selling a lot more copies of the first book.

--And then of course, for those who missed it earlier this year, I'm teaching myself Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash right now, or to be honest have been thinking about getting back into my training soon, and that's so I can build an interactive virtual photography gallery at CCLaP on top of everything else. And that's going to be extremely cool, I think; not only this great interface for showing off 20 to 30 photos by an artist at a time, but also with the artist and myself conducting a series of audio interviews about each piece, embedded in the Flash pages in a way so that it feels like you're actually walking through a gallery with us, stopping at each piece and having a little conversation about it. And then I'm going to do this like last year as well, to tie each show with a free electronic book in PDF form, that people will be able to download and print on their own end if they want; and then some merchandise for each show as well, handled this spring and summer by Cafe Press which is a little crappy but whaddya gonna do, it's no money upfront. And this of course is in lieu of a physical gallery I want to eventually own in Chicago, although at this point I estimate I'm at least a half-decade away from something like that, if not a lot more.

--And then last but not least, I also still have plans to build some sort of new piece of software too, as a way of both helping out a community and promoting CCLaP. But which idea, do you suppose?

A) Do I build a new social network at Ning.com, combining Chicago cafes that feature visual artists with visual artists looking for cafes in which to feature?

B) Do I build what I call "Curatr," a way for Flickr fans to present their "Favorites" in a much more sophisticated and powerful way?

C) Or do I build this wiki I've been talking about forever, the "CCLaP Guide to Being a Self-Sustaining Artist?"

But that's a phase-2 project for the site anyway; the main concentration this spring, of course, will be on the three items mentioned previously.

So anyway, that's how things are looking these days; and now, if you'll forgive me, my jaw is just giving me endless amounts of shit again, so I think it's time to gobble down another four naproxen sodium tablets and go take a nap. Damn you, o rusting and clattering shell of a body I inhabit! Damn you to hell!

Anyway, so my connection is finally back on again, and after a week I'm finally almost back to the place I was before it clicked off to begin with, so I thought I'd finally get a journal entry written for here and get everyone caught up on what's been going on with me. As always, it's not a lot, which is why I don't update this journal very much to begin with...

--So to begin with, it was my birthday last week -- I turned 38, which of course is now officially close enough to 40 to see the unholy light it gives off. (I kid, of course -- as regular readers know, in fact, the years leading up to my 40th have so far not been nearly as stressful as the ones leading to my 30th, a fact I'm grateful for.) It was a low-key celebration this year, to tell you the truth; about the only thing I did to mark it was go out to Sunday brunch the day before with my friend Kate (at Holiday Uptown in my neighborhood), which is always fun because it's the only excuse I have for getting drunk off bloody marys at one in the afternoon.

I also spent some time this birthday in quiet contemplation, as I do every birthday, thinking over the last 12 months of my life and how I've decided to consider them. And hmm, where do you even start with this most previous year of mine? That's the question I found myself asking on my birthday, and never quite coming to a satisfactory answer. The last 12 months, after all, saw me accept my first-ever senior-management corporate position, just to quit it two months later after discovering that my boss was lying to everyone about how much money was available. It was the year that saw me get involved with the tech industry for the first time, after spending years mercilessly making fun of people in the tech industry, just to have the whole process chew me up and spit me back out the other side. It was the year I finally opened my arts center, after two years of preparation, just to have to shut it down again three months later -- yet another victim of this lying, incompetent ex-boss of mine, himself the cause of so many of my problems last year. And most ironic, of course, this last year saw one of the biggest public acknowledgements by the media of my work ever, including mentions by Boing Boing, CNN, Reuters, USAToday and more -- but it was all because of the writing I've been doing about Second Life, something I not only consider the nerdiest fuckin' thing I've ever gotten involved with, but that seemingly confirms my critics' beliefs that I am a complete goddamn loser who is actively bringing about the downfall of intelligent society as we speak.

So, you know, how should one exactly react to all this? On the one hand, I regret almost all the tech-industry things I got involved with last year, just because it all ended up doing so much lasting damage to my overall life; but then again, I learned a tremendous amount of stuff about myself because of the experience, positive stuff I had never truly known for a fact before (for example, that I can be put in charge of 20 people and a million dollars, and actually do a pretty decent job with it). I spent about six months of last year looking like a genius in public, and six months looking like a complete fucking idiot -- so does that cancel itself out in the end, and add up to a zero?

I still don't know, to tell you the truth, and still can't quite figure out how to think about the last 12 months of my life. I'll tell you this, though -- I got really burned last year by relying on outside funding for my projects, which makes me really not in the mood to repeat the experience this year, even if that means delaying a lot of the stuff I want to do until I can fund them myself. Now that I think about it, in fact, that's probably the most important lesson I've learned from all this -- that no matter how good a situation seems, no matter how stable or assured, you never know when a person you're relying on might turn out to be a lying, thieving, sociopathic little shitbag. And by making the success of my arts center financially reliant on the empty promises a person like this was making in my life, I took something I had been slowly working on for two years and deliberately made it fall apart. That's the strongest emotion I take away from the last year of my life -- overwhelming frustration and anger over what happened to my arts center, and a determined resolution to never let such a situation ever arise in my life again even once.

This last year confirmed something that I didn't particularly want confirmed -- that if I want to pull off my projects in the way I'm really envisioning, if I want to absolutely guarantee their success, I simply have no other choice but to go out and fund them myself, most likely by doing something ridiculous and corporate during the day that pays obscene, almost illegal amounts of cash. And that's kind of a lousy realization to make, because money is the one thing I don't have these days, which means that my projects are bound to get deferred even longer than before. But man, I'll tell you, I'd rather put off entire projects for another entire year or more at this point, than to have a repeat of The Great Fucking Startup Disaster of 2006.

--So what else has been going on with me? Well, how's this for proof that the world's coming to an end? As of today, I've been cigarette-free for 10 days. Zounds! Glee! Yeah, I know, hard to believe, and is actually the longest I've gone without smoking since I first started 19 years ago. The difference, it seems, between this time and the other eight unsuccessful attempts at quitting I've made in the past, are the nicotine patches I'm using this time; far from being the glorified sugar pills I thought they'd be, they actually do seem to take the edge off the absolutely worst "I'll kill you all in your sleep" nicotine cravings. (For those who are curious, the strongest type of patch [the one I'm on, of course] emits 21 milligrams of nicotine over 24 hours, or roughly 1 mg an hour. A Marlboro Red, on the other hand, typically gives you 20 mgs of nicotine by itself; so if you smoke two cigarettes in an hour, as I often would, that's 40 mgs of nicotine versus the 1 mg of the patch.) Of course, it helps that I'm unemployed right now as well; even 20 minutes in a public location these days, like a cafe or bookstore, is enough for me to want to run around and start smacking complete strangers in the face as hard as I possibly can, FOR BEING TOO GODDAMNED STUPID TO NOT DESERVE A FUCKING SLAP IN THE FACE, YOU USELESS COCKSUCKING MEATSACK. You're on notice, people!

--And so I'm combining this with other big news these days -- I've just started the process of having 30 of my teeth replaced with fake ones this spring, which I already know from experience is going to involve at least 60 dentist visits, enough Novocaine to kill a horse, and more Vicodin than a meth addict can shake his spasmic finger at. This is in fact a Christmas present my parents got me a number of years ago -- and indeed, in 2003 I bit the bullet and had the first six teeth done, but was such a long and painful process that I've been putting off all the rest. Anyway, it's time, it's time, especially since I've now quit smoking as well, and want to start eating a lot more too. So I've got that to look forward to this spring.

--And why am I planning on eating a lot more this spring? Well, because with this cigarette cessation and dental work, I want to also start getting on my bicycle a lot more this year than I ever have in the past; in fact, my goal by Labor Day is to have biked at least once a day all summer, and for my maximum ride distance to be somewhere around 30 miles before getting fatally pooped, versus the pathetic 3 miles it was when I was a smoker. And to pull that off, I'm going to need not only much better lungs but a lot more fuel going into my system, so that my body can turn it into a lot more energy. And let's face it, I'm already dangerously underweight as it is -- around 140 pounds right now, versus my ideal 175 -- which means I still have 35 pounds to gain before I'm at zero. Ugh!

So anyway, the plan is for all this to work in tandem -- the extra food will make me want to bike more, which will give my lungs a bigger anaerobic workout, which will help motivate me to continue being a non-smoker, which will increase both my appetite and my sense of smell, making me want to eat more, etc etc. And the secret hope, of course, is that all this cyclical goodness will bleed into other facets of my life as well -- that the new physique, smile and energy will inspire me to get out a lot more, that that will bring on new business opportunities, or perhaps even a new romantic relationship (although frankly I'm still not in too much of a mood for one). Like I said, last year confirmed something for me that I didn't necessarily want to have confirmed -- that if I really do want to pull off the kind of grandiose projects I'm dreaming of these days, unfortunately I can't rely on a single other person for a single other bit of help, but instead need to literally raise every penny I need myself and perform every action required. And who knows? Maybe that really does start with something seemingly trivial like quitting smoking; maybe the willpower, self-reliance and discipline needed to pull that off will start a whole chain of resulting effects, that in some way eventually lead to me having a good $10,000 chunk of money saved by a year from now, and finally ready to open this fucking arts center without a single goddamn asshole being in a position to stop me. Oops, I'm sorry. Did I mention that I just quit smoking?

--And unfortunately, that is just about all I have to report on from here in Chicago -- the weather here has continued to be shitty, I've continued to be broke, my circle of friends has continued to be non-existent, as has my love life, and so I tend to not have any kind of fun news to report whatsoever. Although, I suppose there's this -- that I'm just about to start a new business within Second Life, a new prefabricated building business to be precise, called "Fabb" and with the motto "Houses for robots and other sentient beings." Yes, I am a fucking loser! Yes, I get that! You don't need to keep reminding me! Anyway, for fellow losers (i.e. fans of architecture, especially Mid-Century Modernism, fans of SL building, and fans of digital entrepreneurism), you can go over to my Second Life blog to read all the details behind Fabb, as well as the latest with the houses being developed.

Okay, that's it. See you later, fucking pussies. Oops, I'm sorry. Did I mention that I just quit smoking?

iPod! iPod iPod iPod iPod fuckin' iPod motherfucker!!! Yes, it's true; one of my Christmas presents this year was a second-generation iPod Shuffle, which unbelievably enough is the first iPod I've ever owned. Yeah, welcome to the modern world, right? The truth, sadly enough, is that I haven't particularly wanted to own an iPod until now, because of something concerning myself and consumer electronics that I know for a fact; that I have a long and proud tradition of losing, breaking, stepping on, and dropping into beer pints my various electronic toys, and I thought it'd be a shame to spend all that money on a full iPod just to see it await the same fate merely a few months later. Ah, but the new Shuffle, see, that's different -- not only because it's only an inch by an inch and a half, and only weighs half an ounce, but because the entire back half of it is a giant clip, meaning that the chances of dropping or forgetting or stepping on it are decreased dramatically. Anyway, much like with the Mac Mini I got last April, I decided to snap a bunch of photos while opening up my iPod pacakaging and setting the whole thing up; they can all be seen at my Flickr account, for hopeless nerds who are into such a thing.

I have a feeling that my friends are going to like the fact that I got an iPod as much as I do; and that's because a bunch of my friends are podcasters, and they've always been pissed because I never listen to their podcasts. And let's face facts -- when you don't own a specific iPod brand MP3 player, podcasts can a lot of times be a real pain in the ass! That's the wonderful thing about iPods, after all, and a big part of why they caught on in such a world-shaking way; that the ease between the device, the iTunes software, the online store and the online podcast directory is just so flawless and automatic, it makes the entire process feel like you're in such some groovy early-'60s science-fiction movie (you know, back when everyone was optimistic about the future and wore Mylar jumpsuits). Now that I'm finally using a combination of iTunes and an iPod myself, I'm constantly amazed by the effortless process involved of having them all communicate; how plugging in my iPod will make it simply show up as a drive in iTunes, and how I can simply drag podcasts over from the Apple Store with my mouse to have them automatically delivered to my device. This is the thing that Microsoft still unbelievably doesn't seem to get, as their recent fiasco with the Zune has proven; that all the cool looks in the world, all the savvy marketing, all the money, all the sweaty Asian labor, doesn't make a hell of a difference in the world, if the thing is hard to use and tries to rip you off at every opportunity.

I'm discovering something interesting about my music library, by the way, now that I own this iPod; that when you boil down all the music I currently own to songs I really, truly want to listen to on a regular basis, I don't even own the 240 songs needed to fill up my tiny little bottom-of-the-line 1-gig Shuffle. Weird, isn't it? I mean, this is something else that's always bothered me about the iPod, to tell you the truth, is this obsession with being able carry around 5,000 songs or 10,000 songs or whatever. Do I really need to be able to carry around 10,000 fucking songs with me anywhere I go? I do not; in fact, as I'm learning, I don't even own 10,000 songs, much less 10,000 that I want to listen to on a regular basis. It's always bothered me somewhat that I was being asked to fork over several hundred dollars, just to have a hard drive that I could never in my life possibly be able to fill; my nice little $75 Shuffle is a great compromise, I think, something particularly suited to someone like me who simply doesn't go out and listen to a lot of new music anymore.

Oh, and another thing became official because of the new iPod; my old CD Walkman officially went into the Magic Shoebox of Outdated Consumer Technology™ that I have here in my Chicago apartment. Ah, the much-loved MSOCT! See, I'm a bit of a tech-toy whore, as long-time readers know (thank God I'm not rich, or I'd own them all) -- and anytime I switch to a new technology, I can't stand the idea of throwing the outdated device away, since it still works and you never know when you might have use for it again. So, into the black shoebox it goes, and back on a shelf in my closet -- along with a cassette player, a micro-cassette recorder, a Palm III, a Treo 600, and various other sundry devices, all of which still work just fine. Salut and a sad farewell to my portable CD player, which joins them in the closet this week; it was a true workhorse, and will be missed.

Anyway, you know what all this means -- I'm looking for podcast recommendations. Just drop me a line at ilikejason [at] gmail.com if you have any for me.

So speaking of old projects that I've decided to finally complete -- yes, it's true, it's finally time for the long-promised Complete Performance Work 1996-2004. For those who don't know, see, it was actually the poetry-slam community of the 1990s where I first gained a big audience for my literary work, not the internet -- in fact, in the six years I was an active performer (1996 to 2001), I ended up penning over 400 poems, monologues and dialogues, each of which were performed in public at least once. This is the main reason I started the website in the first place, back at the end of 1997; because of the growing interest in my slam work and novels, and the desire to cheaply publicize this work.

So it's ironic, I guess, that as important as the slam format's been to my life and career, I've never once taken it entirely seriously, and also have never sat down and actually tried to comprehensively publish all 400 of these pieces. Because let's face it, and I've had this attitude since I first got involved with the slam in the first place; many things associated with poetry slams are pretty damn silly, and much of the work performed in such environments are not really worth republishing in a static format, including a big chunk of my own work. The reasons I used to perform so much back then had little to do with literary aspersions; it was more about being the center of attention, having drinks bought for me, bringing tremendous publicity to my paper-based projects like full novels, and also getting laid on a regular basis. And as long as all these things were still actively going on, like they were up to 2004, my slam work simply took the bottom rung of the priority ladder when it came to the 50 or so books I've now written and published over the decades. That's just how it is, you know? Most of my slam work was blathering bullshit designed expressly to get me attention from cute drunk girls in the middle of the night, and I'm the first to admit that, and as long as I was also writing fiction and travelogues that I took more seriously, it was that work that always took a higher priority.

But of course the situation changed in 2004, when I first decided to hang up the professional pursuit of creative writing, in order to open the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography instead; that became the first point where my body of work could be considered finite, and a "finished" date assigned to when it might all be re-edited and re-published. To be frank, I've spent two years now doing nothing, nothing, but actually editing the manuscripts themselves; after all, I've published over two million words in book form now (and that doesn't even count this journal, which would easily add another million), most of which over the years has been published in first-draft format and with very little editing. It's taken me two years, frankly, just to expunge the manuscripts of the endless typos and grammar errors they had been riddled with this entire time.

With CCLaP getting reactivated later this month, though (see below for more on that), and with a strong desire in my life to finally put that part of my career behind me, I've decided that this is finally the year that I get all 50 of the books republished, in a format that I'm not embarrassed by and that can safely stay up at the site for years to come, without need of updating. And fuck it, since I had to start somewhere, I thought I'd go ahead and tackle the six years of slam poems first, which for publishing purposes I'm referring to as a series called "Complete Performance Work 1996-2004." 18 books! Fuck! How could so much bullshit dribble out of my mouth in such a short time?! I kid myself, of course, for self-deprecating humorous effect; but seriously, yeah, of the 400 pieces I wrote back then, most decidedly do not stand the test of time, and in fact the world has not been worser-off at all for this work not existing on the internet.

It's a funny moral dilemma I've been having to face, as I gear up for the final phase of this massive 50-book project that's already taken up two years of my life; that when all is said and done, a lot of my early literary work is just an endless load of crap, worthwhile only to illuminate the kernels of ideas I would later deal with more successfully. So given the massive amount of work still ahead for me, just to publish the work I'm actually proud of, why go to the trouble of publishing it all? Believe me, I've been seriously asking myself this question lately, and have also been asking it contemplatively regarding other literary estates and "complete libraries of work." Ultimately, my justification for publishing it all is a simple one; that I've decided to merely document what I actually did in those years, to release it all to the public because I can, and let others debate on the merits of the work itself. And let's not forget, as people like Samuel Pepys have taught us, sometimes in the future such work is not best used for literary purposes anyway; that they are much more impressive as large chunks of personal and social history, to be best used to illuminate the spirit of a certain age. That's ultimately the rationalization that gives me the energy to complete the entire 50-book republishing project.

Anyway, so newly edited books will be going up at the GAD website on a weekly basis, all throughout the year; if a particular page has the new black-and-white design scheme, it's the newest republished version, with the color pages held over from a previous version and not updated yet. So enjoy, I guess, although I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone sit down and actually read all 400 pieces, or all 50 books; it's just too painful an experience, and I don't want people out there resenting me for going through it. Oh, and since I was on a roll, I also published a book version of the 100 or so best cellphone photographs I took last year, which I have unsurprisingly enough entitled Cellphone Photographs 2006. I did take over 900 cellphone photos last year, after all, and I know a lot of you don't want to fucking wade through 900 cellphone photos a year; so here are the best ones, laid out in a way for easily sending to a color laserprinter when your boss isn't looking. Yes, I will be putting books like this together for 2004 and '05 as well, at the same time that I'm republishing my old college photography books from the 1990s, most likely later this summer.

One day this whole fucking thing will finally be over, I keep reminding myself. It's hard to see that day right now, granted -- it's been two years of regular work now, after all, and me not even halfway through the tunnel yet. One day, though. I have belief in that.

One of my readers confessed the other day via email that he was anxiously awaiting my thoughts on the Jason Fortuny Affair (aka "The Craigslist Experiment"), given that I had publicly used Craigslist so much in the past to find casual sex partners, and wanted to prod me into writing my thoughts if I wasn't already in the process of doing so. And to be truthful, I hadn't planned on writing about Jason Fortuny, because it's a messy and stupid thing that has no clear conclusion; but, in the spirit of commenting on this subject that this friend of mine wants to see me write about, here are my fractured and sometimes morally-conflicting thoughts on the subject...

--I definitely think that all kinds of strange and subtle things about the "swinging lifestyle" have gotten infiltrated, because of it moving to an online forum and a much larger participant base. One of these things for sure was a certain shared etiquette that took place between these people, when first contacting each other about a possible get-together. Back when it was difficult to find and contact such people, the only people who did so were those who were serious about actually swinging; and since all of these people had a certain amount of humiliation in store for them by a public outing, the community tended to respect the privacy of everyone else involved for the same reason. When you make the process of finding a swinging partner as easy as posting a stolen photo from a home computer, on a site that's been featured in the New York Times, of course you're suddenly going to have a rash of Jason Fortunys; that's what easy access and an easy interface do, is open up that world for all the lazy, mentally-challenged scumbags of the world.

--As great as it is to have an online project suddenly get popular and invade the mainstream, there's definitely a lot to be said about those that remain relatively obscure and underground as well. Craigslist was an amazing place to find sincere, nerdily hot casual-sex partners, as long as Craigslist remained a destination known by only a unique group of sincere, nerdily hot people; its growing failure in this area can be directly and proportionally linked to how much the service has expanded into the mainstream culture. And you know, even as we speak, there's another website out there where a bunch of people are finding a bunch of other people for hot casual sex, that neither you nor I know about which is why it works; and that too will slowly get known more and more, as the success stories permeate in the blogosphere, until it too is so bloated with Jason Fortunys that it's no longer worth even visiting. And thus the big wheel of fate keeps turning, I suppose.

--I think it's pointless to talk about the Jason Fortunys of the world, because they've done nothing worth me spending the time and energy talking about; they are the bottom-feeders of the universe, the people who survive off the puke and diarrhea that dribble out of the rest of us, and I don't think there's any reason to waste time and inch-space talking about such soul-leeches, even if it's to complain about them. That said -- yes, of course a person is a fucking moron if they send a dirty photo and real information to a stranger, under circumstances by which that information could harm them if made public, and ultimately those people deserve any evil that comes their way as a result, even under extremely unfair circumstances like what happened in the Jason Fortuny affair. And I admit it, I too send off personal information with my dirty photos, whenever I respond to an ad for casual sex; but in my case it's while being single and not ashamed, and with there nothing at stake for me if the information was ever publicized. If, on the other hand, you're married and shopping for a mistress, or closeted and looking for someone to stick their dick in you, then yes, you're a fucking moron for sending your personal information to a stranger, no matter how damn horny you might be.

--And on a related note, I think the Jason Fortuny Affair again proves a conclusion I made at the end of my own swinging book, Slut Summer -- that there are a lot of people running around swinging for a whole lot of different reasons, and that those reasons can and will directly lead to you having either a good or bad experience. As my archives will show, not once have I ever just put out a blanket recommendation for all humans to go out and start swinging; I think there are a lot of people, a whole lot of people, for whom swinging would actually be a disaster, not a blessing. I think that there are right reasons for wanting to get into casual and group sex, and a right attitude to take when getting into those things, that almost 100 percent of the time will lead to great and positive experiences; but I also think there are lots of wrong reasons for getting into these subjects as well, the most common being the desire to mentally escape a more troubling issue in one's life. Yes, as long as they were posted, I read through many of the responses to the fake ad Fortuny originally ran, that caused all the controversy in the first place; and if you did so yourself, you can see all the people who responded for the wrong reasons, and how many people out there are actually using swinging for self-destructive reasons. As with everything concerning sexuality, I think there is no inherent right or wrong answer when it comes to casual or group sex; I think the "right" answer fluctuates wildly depending on the individual person.

And that's what I thought of the Jason Fortuny Affair.

I was looking over my personal timeline the other day, and realized that some of the dates are starting to match up in strange ways...

1994: Decide to pursue creative writing professionally.
1995: Spend the year in seclusion, writing my first novel.
1996: First tastes of success in literary community, although nothing that pans out permanently, and with a fair share of frustrations.
1997: First big successes in literary community: first novel published, made the Chicago slam team, took second place nationally, appeared on NPR, etc etc.

- x -

2004: Decide to pursue small business professionally.
2005: Spend the year in seclusion, studying business management.
2006: First tastes of success in small-business community, although nothing that pans out permanently, and with a fair share of frustrations.
2007: ?

Could 2007 finally be the year for me, as far as my arts center and my freelance work and all the other business-related endeavors I first took on three years ago? It's no secret that the pace of all this stuff frustrates me pretty regularly; that 2006 was in general a discouraging year for me concerning it all, even though I had lots of good experiences peppering those twelve months as well. That's always been both the blessing and the curse in my life, I suppose, is that I've always yearned to accomplish a lot of things, and get easily frustrated over what I see as delays in getting those things done. I was just hanging out with my friend Kate the other day, actually, and laughing about this; about how right now, for example, I'm actually getting a new book published every five days, if you can believe that, yet am unbelievably frustrated that I'm not getting two books published every five days. It's difficult for me to stop and appreciate the things that are getting accomplished at any given moment in my life; but then again, that's mostly what gets the new things accomplished in the first place.

As I was going through 2006, I saw it mostly as a step backwards in my life: where in a period of twelve months I not only finally opened my arts center, but also secured my first-ever senior-management corporate position, just to end up shutting both down again by the time the year was over. Looking back, though, at the start of the literary phase of my career (which has been unavoidable these days, since those are the books I'm republishing right now), I'm starting to realize that maybe things are actually just fine. As I'm remembering now, re-editing my 1996 work, that year held a lot of ups and downs for me too; my first big breaks, yes, but also a lot of opportunities that fizzled out at the last second, or that turned out to be nightmares I regretted ever getting involved with in the first place, something I'm definitely feeling as well these days about a couple of my business experiences in 2006. I'm reminded that these were a necessary part of the process back then; that without the humiliating failures, the wasted time and energy, I would've never learned what people and projects to immediately avoid at all costs, and would've never grown both artistically and professionally.

The same can be said of my business experiences last year, I suppose, although a heavier price was paid than in 1996; but then again, about a million dollars more was at stake (literally), so I suppose it's natural that a heavier price was paid when it all fell apart. Like those 1996 experiences, though, I definitely came out on the other end with a much better appreciation for who I need to be getting involved with in the future, and who at all costs I need to be avoiding, and how to detect these people long before you have anything invested in their projects. If history is any indication, this should be the year that everything finally starts going right; that long-term successes are achieved, that a profit finally starts getting produced. Hmm. We'll see, I guess. In any case, wish me luck...unless you hate me, that is, in which case I guess go to hell.

Okay, more to talk about, but I'm tired, so I'm ending it here for today. See you perverts later.

Greetings to one and greetings to all, from a rare night out for me at the Bar on Buena, just a couple of blocks from where I live (Uptown, Chicago, USA), having a Guinness and enjoying a random hour out of my apartment tonight. It's been a summer of a lot of ups and downs for me, as regular readers already know; first two months in a senior management position at this brand-new internet startup; then a disastrous end to that job, including getting screwed out of $3,000 in pay; which then led to me not being able to start the live-events schedule of my new arts center when I wanted, for lack of money, which frustrated me to no end. So then a decision to push off the live events until spring 2007, and to bring the publishing program up to now, and also to finally start a culture magazine about Second Life (SL), an idea I've been fiddling around with for six months now.

And so, at least a little cool thing has come out of all the chaos and frustrations; that even after just a week, I'm discovering that being an "embedded journalist" within SL is one of the more fascinating things I've done in a long time. And that's because SL is an endlessly fascinating thing, an entire virtual city 750,000 strong, with a landmass larger than Boston if you were to display it at actual size. And let's not forget, a place where all means of creating content is not only free but open-source, where creators can charge real money for their creations, and where none of the crap buildings of a physical city (the gas stations, the warehouses, etc) need to exist. And with no laws, an anarchy-based style of self-government, where almost nothing is illegal and there is no way to actually physically hurt a person. So you know, imagine moving to a place like Toronto, but where every building is some magical breathtaking thing, and where just about every vice known to humans has a legal cottage industry supporting it.

It's fascinating to be a coolhunter in such an environment, a reporter of the underground, because there's such a higher concentration of cool, underground things there. And since SL is such a close and complex approximation of reality, it turns out that all the traits of a good underground journalist are of benefit there too; but unlike real life (RL), it costs about nothing extra there to do the things that make for being a good reporter of the underground. Like take this basic lesson about life, for example; that if you want to be a Michael Musto or a columnist for Nerve or whatever, part of the struggle is simply to be seen on the scene -- to attend as many events as possible, meet as many people as possible, get the right people knowing that you're the one they should come to with gossip or interesting new things. But in RL, this involves a lot more than simply being inquisitive, a good writer and someone who doesn't judge others; it involves lots of expensive cab rides too, very long evenings out, hours upon hours of standing in corners of smoky clubs. It involves stamina and an expense account, the willingness (and fortitude) to do coke with the right people in some stinky toilet stall at three in the morning. Sorry to all of you who didn't realize this before; but if you want to be a genuine reporter of the underground culture, someone noticed by the mainstream, all the things mentioned above come with it.

In SL, though, most of these limitations are removed; one can travel there instantly to wherever one wants by free teleport, can safely hang out in their homey apartment all night instead of dark smoky clubs (or trash-filled alleys in some cases). I can be a socialite there, without the trust fund usually needed to support such a lifestyle. I can be Andy Warhol without the Factory, Tristan Tzara without Cabaret Voltaire. Anyone can, as a matter of fact, which is the other big pleasurable surprising thing -- that almost no one does. Given the chance to instantly visit a million cool things for free, most players of SL still stick to a tiny amount of choices, and then have the balls to bitch about how they never have anything to do.

It's this aspect of the human condition, when all is said and done, that keeps journalists like me and publications like mine in business; the desire to always want to know of the new and interesting, but not wanting to wade through all the extraneous crap that comes with finding it. If you're like me, you've probably assumed that this had mostly to do with the aforementioned money and energy constraints; so it's surprising to be in the grid and see the same lack of action among most, even with the money and energy constraints removed. But hey, I'm not complaining! Indeed, this was the final detail that convinced me to open the new blog and mag -- that I love checking out new things and writing stories about them, love interviewing random strangers, and will happily do it for money and notoriety if no one else is going to.

And I am in fact having quick and profound success with "In The Grid" (ITG); over 300 readers every day already, according to Google Analytics. That's after only a week and a half, mind you; it took me six months to gather that audience when I first started this personal journal. It's a role I relish too, I've discovered, being the hipster reporter/participant who's always in the know, well on his way to knowing everyone there worth knowing. It's old territory for me, after all; I always seem to fulfill this role, no matter what community or activity I get involved with, which I guess makes me a "connector" under Malcolm Gladwell's little "Tipping Point" thing. I thrive at being a connector, in fact; of randomly stumbling across a lot of stuff and saying, "Yes, this is going to be the one thing that a lot of other people will be interested in too." That's what makes me a good social bookmarker too, and what also helped me succeed as a self-publisher in the '90s.

And can I admit this? It's weird but true; that being a culture reporter in SL really brings out the queeny, girly side of my bisexuality, on top of everything else. Because to be a good culture reporter, you need to be a part of the culture; to show up to a lot of events, dress flash, be flamboyant, have no fear. Since I can change outfits in literally 30 seconds in the grid, in transit from one event to the next, this is precisely what I do; I burn through five or ten outfits over the course of one evening. Five to ten hairstyles, five to ten tattoos, swapping gender back and forth every other change. I hop from event to event, hyper-appropriate for whatever the situation is; unlike RL, this is what lets me go from a tech event to a fetish club without even slowing down, from a fashion show to a vampire ball.

I do this more as a woman than as a man, frankly; and that's because there's so much more cool shit available for women there. Seriously, it's worse than even RL; there are 10 times the amounts of stores in the grid, 15 times, for women's clothing than men's. And so I find myself shopping like a fucking girl would while there; making sure that I can find things that make me look pretty, that make me stand out, that are different from what all those other bitches (er, my fellow ladies) are wearing. God, I'm such a fag! I never worry about this shit as a man; just slap on a black sweater and black jeans, and you're good to go. So how funny for me to suddenly care about it in SL as a woman, flitting from fashion show to danceclub, half a dozen times over the course of an evening.

I'm glad for all the early successes I've been having with ITG, for sure; but it's also weird for sure that of all the things I've now attempted the last couple of years, the one most quickly taking off is a blog about a virtual city populated by cartoon characters. A little snobbiness on my part maybe? Maybe. More, I think, that is just still seems like such a surreal thing; that one could make one's living by reporting on player activity within a videogame. If it can't be explained to my mom in five seconds, there's still a part of me that doesn't consider it a legitimate career, you know? I think that's a thing that all creative professionals carry around with them, that never completely goes away. Even when you have success in a strange niche thing, you sometimes get tired of having to explain that strange niche thing to every person you meet at a cocktail party. I've been having to do long explanations at cocktail parties of what I do for over a decade now; I guess maybe I was looking forward to the day where I could simply say, "I own an arts center." I'm glad for the success I'm having with ITG; just that it's unexpected, I guess, and takes me straight back to the situation where it takes me ten minutes to explain to people what exactly I do. It's fun to be in that position at 23; you get a little tired of it by 37.