Monday, December 28, 2009

Public Looks Back at Worst Decade in 50 Years

Originally I intended this post this post for Mountainair Arts and have already reposted there. For now and maybe longer, I will also export flâneuse posts to "chez Vanessa" at OS. Comparing reactions from different readerships / demographics should be interesting.

From a report from the PEW Research Center:
"As the current decade draws to a close, relatively few Americans have positive things to say about it. By roughly two-to-one, more say they have a generally negative (50%) rather than a generally positive (27%) impression of the past 10 years. This stands in stark contrast to the public's recollection of other decades in the past half-century. When asked to look back on the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, positive feelings outweigh negative in all cases."
Public Looks Back at Worst Decade in 50 Years

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Have the "aughties" been a transformative decade, a black hole or both? Personally, I find separating the personal from the "larger picture" exceedingly difficult... if not downright impossible

Saturday, December 26, 2009

resolutions of an irresolute flâneuse

flâneuse résolue ~ c'est moi, néamoins plusiers doutes. surveying the list of posts, sad ~  17 in three years counting this one. granted, if I am to continue here, fewer or at least different but more interesting rants and more resolutions - of the practical and realistic variety. last year's blog resolutions worked ~ KISS (keep it short and simple) ~ Blogging English excepted.

resolutions do not have to be the same for each blog. the flâneuse hereby resolves:
  1. customize resolutions (except this one?)
  2. (and this one) blog regularly: set a schedule (i.e. 1-3 week) and stick to it 
  3. don't let regularity lead to mental constipation or banality
  4. the contrary flâneuse is not a community blog ~ shun psa's and lectures
  5. blog à clé: use pseudonyms for any references that could be construed as personal
  6. blog not clog ~ short posts (channel TW)
  7. the niche thing ~ post to a theme even if I don't yet know what that would be
too many for now ~ back in another to trim

Thursday, December 24, 2009

flâneuse revenante

dang flâneuse won't fade away like faerie no one believes in, won't lie down and die. could this be a message to my unconscious that she has more to say? that she needs to speak free, run amok. who knows, resuscitating her might breathe life in the sad flagship ~ blog ship? ship of blog? or be the instrument seppuku. arts needs an id. is flâneuse arts' id? say that fast 20 times...

send out the runners... change the settings. what status then? to publish but not list on profile? to flaunt or not to flaunt, that is the question.

a recent problogger post might be relevant here: "How to Manage Expectations with Your Blog Readers?"

Monday, August 17, 2009

how does your garden grow?

The line runs" "Mary. Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? How very apropos for both fl?neuse and approaching shunflowering.

I've put off the hypeful wording out of that and same poetastering as long as I can and must face both this week. Shunflowering has not been totally neglected - lead in posts on Mountainair Arts in weeks past and ongoing sunflower pics. I am not tired of those.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

As it turns out, the contrary flâneuse does not have to practice misdirection just yet. Thinking cautiously - and that I may have underestimated reader cleverness - even the Publican's - in decoding, I decided to change settings to private. Lo and behold I had already done that at some forgotten point in the past. Unnerving to realize that caution has become so ingrained.

Inspired or at least encouraged by kibrolv, I'm resuming posting on Computers, Language, Writing. Sadly, formerly first among blogs, Mountainair Arts is no fun anymore.

Announcements, on the other hand, is neither irritating nor a creative delight to maintain - neutral, almost Taylorized in its procedures - safer for that. I was enjoying the plog until poetaster effect, eg approaching picnic and consequent annoyances such as the whining of the easily confused and likely dim (simple logic and page scrolling is beyond them) and the issuing of orders - annual flunkification as it were. I published a "guide to the perplexed" to address current and forestall future whining.

If I survive through August, the poetry plog could be fun again. How to take MArts off the critical list is another matter. Time to figuratively and verbally flip the bird at oxygen thieves and naysaying chorus.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Is the contrary flâneuse back or not?

To blog or not to blog? These are the questions. Also, what the hell is a contrary flâneuse anyway? I was about to add identifying locator but remembered plan not to peg this particular blogging persona to a named location. Suffice it to say that our flâneuse lives in a remote rural village, cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, somewhere in the mountains of the Western US. The Place or rather Un-place is as pseudonymical as the persona.

When the pissing & moaning, bitching & issuing of (absurd) directives commence, the contrary flâneuse will claim deniability. Alas, 'tis but fiction. Go suck a cactus. Nobody's claiming she's going to be polite. Fer cryin' out loud, can't you read: she's contrary.

As a chronic contrarian, said flâneuse wishes to take this opportunity to thank the civic minded local publican not just for inspiring this resurrection and also requests that said publican share blame and/or credit equally with the flâneuse.

Definition of flâneuse (to confuse matters):
The feminine of the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Poet and decadent social observer Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it". Because of the term's usage and theorization by Baudelaire and numerous thinkers (notably Walter Benjamin) in economic, cultural, literary and historical fields, the idea of the flâneur has accumulated significant meaning as a referent for understanding urban phenomena and modernity.

A flâneur is a detached pedestrian given to observing and commenting on milieu - critically and analytically to be sure but not without bemusement, even fondness.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Don't tell me I'm not a team player...

I took pissy comments about my not being a "team player" to heart but probably not with the intended effect. While adding to bookmarks I've been assembling for a local marketing campaign of the same name, I came across the new page for a ranch that hosts field trials and noticed that there was only one listing for local lodging - with a couple of motels two towns away. Shame on that local for not sharing - not being a team player. I sent the link to the rest of the local lodging business, including short term & vacation rentals (higher return than HUD rentals).

It all depends on which team you're on. Mine kneecaps neocon bullies with a zest any Canadian LaCrosse player would envy. Figuratively, that is since LaCrosse players think hockey is for wimps

Saturday, June 13, 2009

I can hardly believe it - but must: nearly 2 1/2 years since my last post here. In the meantime, I've started, maintained and kept active a handful of blogs, few as fun as this one promised to be. More dutifully communitarian to be sure. I've discovered other web 2.0 social networking app and am trying to keep au courant about web 3.0, semantic web, etc. Periodically, seeing flâneuse on my blogger dashboard, alone and neglected, I wonder if I should pull the plug on her but cannot.

What to do? Post again before the Society for Prevention of Blog Neglect tracks me down. block access and carries flâneuse off to some virtual shelter for abandoned blogs. Who knows, letting it all hang out here might make me kinder, lower snark quotient on Arts. Local PCTPTB (People Considering Themselves PTB) and Stuffed Shirt Society should but probably won't thank me. There's a significant membership overlap in case anyone is so gormless as not to have noticed.

Reviewing old posts: little has changed, a testament to what Balzac, Hardy, Flaubert, Mahfouz, Pio Baroja, et alia have had to say about village life over the centuries...
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