happy Bloomsday blogaversary

Today is the 15th anniversary of the start of this blog, aptly enough on Bloomsday.

It changed my life.

I haven't written everyday.

But the blog provided a blank slate upon which to scribble.

And that got me to limber up any writing muscles I thought I might possess.

Thanks for stopping by.

Onward and upward and sideways and beyond.

happy blogaversary, selfie

Ten years ago, I started The Laughorist, appropriately enough on Bloomsday. I've kept at it. Not every day. I'm glad I did.

Thanks for reading my words.

I invite you to browse backwards into the archives, strolling through the streets of my imagination and the precincts of my world.

Call me Boulevardier.

beauteous Bloomsday blogaversary

Me started this blather storm of laden words in 2006 on Bloomsday, so carry on, keep calm or be qualmed, knickers in pocket, knickknack paddywhack, give the dog a bone.

Bloomsday, the day after

Hope you all yesterday yeast of year had your blossoming sedge of selves a precious opposite of precocious Bloomsday. It also marks the day, aptly enough, I started this blog, in 2006.

Poldy carrying Molly's panties in his pocket, and all that.

As you were.

Carry on.

Eh?

Bloomsday, post-bloom blossoming

I neglected to note June 16; shame on me for two reasons. It's the blogaversary of this space, begun in 2006, and also, quite aptly, the anniversary of Leopold Bloom's fictional wanderings around Dublin, in the early 1900s.

readers

I use to have them
blogreaders
in the days of ephemera
passing dew like
morning burnt off
the backyard
or in the evening moistening my soles

I used to have readers
here
and there

but that was in the days of
salad and conversation
flirtation and flotation
wording and warding
off and on
remember those ways?

who's counting?

I am.

The trend is that I will have posted the least amount of times this annum, on a full year's basis, since the blog's inception in 2006.

You got a problem wit dat?

voice

I confess to a fear. I confess to the fear that I've lost my voice. Not the voice loss associated with laryngitis. Not that sort of -itis. I fear blogitis, the loss of my blogging voice. Having been Tweeting (or tweeting) away like a madman (MadMen? BTW, I await the return of that stellar AMC TV series), I wonder if I've gone to the word-well so often and so distinctly differently that I lost my Kokonuts voice, diminished my Laughorist persona, lessened my serial-comma loving stature, skewed my Kierkegaard-name-dropping identity. Of course, some would argue for marked boundaries of these voices, clear boundaries on the verges of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Blogger. Those "some" may be wise to counsel such; or not. Nevertheless, having glanced at the aforementioned words and having heard their cadence and rhythm and substance, or lack therof, I can rest restlessly assured that this voice is still full-throated. Warbling. Wandering.

Carry on.

As you were.

Laugh. Or...

Else.

wordstream rapture

Dear Blog,
I have betrayed you, been an infidel, been unfaithful to your ephemeral flutterings by being faithful to ever-briefer postings, in the Twitterverse (@kocakwords). What a cad I've been to abandon you, this playground of expansive observations and gymnasium of gerundives, this venue of verbs and pabulum, words and wisdom wattage -- just for 140 characters on Twitter! How cruel of me, to leave your for nearly a month, my longest absence, just for a stream of pithy one-liners or vacuous throwaways. But such is our age. Less is more. Or less is less. It doesn't matter, as long as it's less and quicker. And more and Tweetier.

Anyway? How have you been? I see you, the blogosphere, that is, are still here, shrugging of the microblogiverse, not at all averse to aver that lots of words have their place in the universe. Their place is here, home to more-than-140-character discursive ramblings and rumblings, meanderings and wanderings, pings and pongs, throngs of thoughts, tallied in tons of typing and tappings.

Yours,
The Laughorist

what is a blog?

Blog. What is a blog? Yes, it is a blend of the words web and log. For a coined term of relatively youthful status, it seems venerable, as if it has been around more than its dozen-plus years.

People blog, but who admits to keeping a journal? Or a diary? As for the word's sound, its onomatopoeia, it sounds so blah. Ergo, blahgging is what I do on an off day.

Web, with its notion of weaving, reminding me of one of the world's best book titles, Caught in the Web of Words, a biography of the Oxford English Dictionary and its makers. Interwoven connections, in digital thoughts as well as the surprise of you who came here, now reading this or hearing it, if you use such software.

Log, with its notion of solidity, woodenness; the concept of a ship's log book; logs because, we are told, wooden floats measured the ship's speed. Log: grounded, rooted in the earth. Fecund and possibly crawling with worms or moss or overshadowed by saplings, metaphorical and otherwise.

So, to blend these disparate visions (and not end up too cross-eyed or star-crossed):

Words and images and musings wandering or dancing or strolling along the spidered reality of incarnate bits and bytes, testing the pliancy or durability of imagination; both partitioning and elongating threads of meaning or nonsense; registered and recorded and cast into a faux eternity made up of seemingly infinite particles of ephemera, yearning for venerable SEO ranking, for immediate, pop-up Googled status: the canonization of the quotidian.

Blog, blogged, blogging. To blog. Cf. loc. cit. Ibid. Op. cit. Ad infinitum. Into aeternitas.

Age quod agis.

honesty, examined

"I have tried to keep diaries before, but they didn't work out because of the necessity to be honest." -- John Steinbeck

Mr. Grapes of Wrath, what words would you wrought re blogging?

into the virtual void

I wonder how many posts it will take before I can conjure one legitimate comment from somewhere on the planet, in any language, and without explicit invitation begging for validation? If I were to let loose with a slew of naughty, raunchy words, dub them keywords, would the SEO gods and goddesses, the SEO daemons, vouchsafe to reward me with visitations from kindred spirits? And would such visitation(s) (the Visitation, one of the mysteries of the Rosary, a mystery that salutes hospitality, radical hospitality) be meaningful in any real way, or merely cyber-community masquerading as touching me/them/you in some undefined but visceral, vital way? Too many words, too many syllables. So, into the virtual void, I tap tap tap upon the ivory keys of an off-white keyboard, wondering again that if I typed a string of sex sex sex sex sex sex [that secular pseudo-sacrament that knows no bounds] ad infinitum ahem sex sex sex sex someone in the former Soviet Union or one of its satellites would sneak a peak here and either smirk or confess or more likely instantly skip off to somewhere more scintillating, at least more graphic, photos, images, flash, kazow, kapow, firework crackle of pleasure's boulevards. Wasn't Pinocchio exiled to Pleasure Island? How hellish Disney made it, a Puritan streak running from Nathaniel Hawthorne straight to Anaheim or Orlando, not in bloom or in bloom, take your pick. If I write enough words, enough topics -- say, from Moby-Dick to the San Francisco Giants, from Central Park to Kazakhstan, someone's bell is bound to chime, someone's solipsism is apt to be tickled, don't you think? Speaking of thinking (or thinking of speaking), neurologists inform us that thinking and feeling go hand in hand, they are indivisible, so take that [insert vocative comma here] Mr. Descartes. And therefore as St. Stephen's Day or Boxing Day draws to a close, at least in some time zones, cue up the old anthem of the son, the Saint Stephen ode that the Grateful Dead sang out, the hymn to the sun, as night falls in swirling wintry wolf-whistle wind in the northern climes.

Bloomsday blogaversary sentence

Pawlie, on the fourth anniversary of his blogging inauguration, took a night stroll without the dog, this time, and under starless, clouded cover, taking slow steps with squeaky shoes, soaking in the aftermath (the natural algorithm of I'll Go Rhythm) of this morning's curtain of delicious downpour, wondering where to find welcome in these freight-train-echoing hills and behind these doors, mourning losses unnamed and unspoken, and interrupted by the stray grammar of fireflies.

vacuum

My biological purgatorium event went fine, thanks.

You might infer, from the paucity, nay, the nullity, of comments to my posts that no one reads this, that these postings reside in a solipsistic vacuum, as it were.

You might think that, but, nay, it is not quite so.

I have data showing that people from all around the world visit this blog.

They may be mum, but, um, they're my mums.

how are you?

Dear Blogosphere Citizens (Blogizens),

How are you? How you be? What up? We haven't talked in a while, have we? Oh, you've left a comment here and there, but for the most part you've been silent. Why is that? Am I not provocative enough? Is serial comma serial comma serial comma serial comma just not triggering enough search engines in the same way that, say, sex sex sex adult adult sex adult sex sex adult sex adult sex adult sex sex sex sex does as a string of keywords? Am I too bland? Not, um, sexy enough? Too verbal, not visual enough? (Incidentally, does sex ed. or gender studies garner the same response as the aforementioned verbal string? Probably not.) Ironically enough, does the mere repetition of the word "sex," paired with any word for that matter, mark me as something or someone that I am not? In other words, are we so Puritan that the mere repetition of the word "sex" demarcates one as a deviant -- just the word! - even though our society has a proliferation of images and music -- and words for that matter -- that stretches the bounds of good taste, civility, normalcy, and morality? And what if one were to quote this blog post out of context? A detractor could (wrongly) claim: it's all about "sex"! Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlett Letter" is the quintessential book that exposes America's long-simmering hypocrisy about prurience and prudishness, morality and the public square. Can you weigh in on any of this? It's been a while? Speak up. Eh?

Sincerely,

P. Kokonuts, The Laughorist

pace

I'm on pace for 365 posts in 2010.

Not likely, given my track, or traction, record.

Anyway, who's counting?

Blogger is. As a favor to me.

visible erasure

From the January 11, 2010, edition of The New Yorker, "Top of the Pops," an article by Louis Menand on Andy Warhol:

". . . he painted over 'Thirteen Most Wanted Men' with silver paint--a visible erasure that was widely read as a statement about censorship."

Visible erasure.

I love that oxymoron.

Reminds me of Thomas DeQuincey calling the human brain a palimpsest, which, as you can see from the Online Etymology Dictionary, is a word akin to palin, which is YIKES akin to moron, not oxymoron.

In the long run, I'd say that all blogging is subject to the palimpsest of visible erasures in the Ephemerasphere of cyberspace.

best of the beast

By the count of Blogger.com, this is post number 666 on this blog, The Laughorist.

To some, the number 666 signifies the apocalyptic Beast, a designation of evil.

But here it's a "beast" of another kind; here it's more like the slang term meaning "one who excels or dominates," in a positive sense. As in, "She's a beast at cross-country." Or, referring to San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum: "Dude, he's a beast."

So, I hereby declare myself a beast of blogging.

Words.

They're something.

Or nothing.

Or some thing.

Or no thing.

(Disclaimer: Since my inaugural post on Bloomsday 2006, I've actually written and published more than 666 blog posts, but decorum and job-related issues and rare prudence have dictated that I delete some postulated posts every now and then. Eh?)

a post about posting

I'm well behind last year's volume of posts and behind the number for 2007.

But there's still time.

But why should sheer number matter?

How ephemeral.

And superficial.

If not surficial.

expository exposure

While viewing the fine and appealing "Turner to Cezanne" exhibit today at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, I discovered that art historians are playing peek-a-boo with important works of art. Well, more than peek-a-boo. Scholars have peered at works via x-ray to determine what's under the paint. For example, the commentary on a Renoir with a woman wearing a blue dress ("La Parisienne") reveals that a doorway was penciled in in an earlier version, along with an object I can't recall. (But maybe an x-ray of my brain would jog my memory.)

This is slightly unsettling, this naked exposure of the painter's work in progress; this raw look at creative vulnerability and trial and error.

Imagine if this were done to writers!

Or bloggers!

Or dancers, sculptors, jugglers, orators, magicians, scientists, priests, and telemarketers!?

Yes, Word allows you to save various versions and drafts of a document or to undo or redo many edits.

But what if all this were left bare to see by simple x-ray? (Of course, libraries and archives are filled with fascinating drafts of works. For example, I've seen Ezra Pound's extensive markups of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" on display at the New York Public Library.)

Worse yet, what if our unfiltered or even our censored thoughts were left as on a palimpsest for all to see?

One word:

YIKES! YIKES! YIKES!

(Palimpsest: In college I wrote a paper on Thomas DeQuincey's "The Palimpsest of the Human Brain. Or did I?)