Sunday, November 26, 2006

Welcome To My World

Well, here I am in blogland.

Funny thing is, I remember a version of blogging from WAAY back in the mid-80s. You used to have electronic bulletin boards (sometimes called EBBSes or BBSes). These were usually maintained by one or two dedicated folks (SysOps) on their own home computers, hooked up via dialup modem (remember those) to a dedicated phone line. You could dial one up, email folks (but only other folks on that BBS), chat with the SysOp, or post random/semi-random thoughts to a bulletin board. Stuff like want ads or collaborative stories (where everyone took a turn), or just musings (sort of like... a blog).

Anyway, all of this got swept aside in the Internet juggernaut. I frankly miss the more home-crafted nature of those BBSes sometimes.

So much for memory lane. Onward then:

This blog is mostly going to be about my state of mind, what I'm reading, and things I catch out of the corner of my eye. As a writer and film person (I work a lot as a producer or production manager on indie films), I often feel like an alien sent down to observe human behavior. Hence the title of the blog.

I'm a guy in my thirties, and live in the greatest city in the world, aka NYC. I'm a lefty, so I'll probably make some very bad statements about conservatives. I apologize in advance... sort of.

I don't have much of a personal life at the moment (that's partly by choice, partly 'cause I work so damn much), but you'll get the picture after a few entries. [If I ever get this thing going past a few entries, that is.]

LET'S START WITH A BOOK
Well, to make this a touch more interesting, here's a book you should be reading RIGHT NOW: it's called "Collapse" by Jared Diamond (the guy who wrote "Guns Germs and Steel." In "Collapse" he talks about the why and how different societies suffer fatal or near-fatal collapses (hint: the environment and our treatment of it have something to do with it), and offers several historical and contemporary examples of collapses. This may seem like dry, academic reading, but I assure you it's not. He's a teacher so he knows how to dole out information in digestible chunks.

Anyway, I want you all to read this book and get back to me with a full 25-page report.

1 Comments:

Blogger CityMinx said...

Hmm, am alien sent down to earth? That may explain a few things......

;P

Welcome to the blogosphere, I guess I'll have to post more often now.

12:02 PM  

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