Rhode Island Representative Daniel P. Gordon, Jr. (Twitter), also known as Rep. Dan Gordon and DiverDan, has drawn interest in the last week for using slogans adopted by the decentralized hacker collective Anonymous (see Quinn Norton‘s series on Anonymous at Wired to catch up on them: Parts 1 2 and more forthcoming). His tweet that initially brought him to the attention of the hivemind was this one against NDAA (the legislation, signed by Obama in the last week, that permits endless US military detention of anyone anywhere without trial based on secret evidence; more from the ACLU):

AnonyOps, one of the most influential Anonymous Twitter accounts, appreciated the representative’s remarks:

Rep. Gordon was sworn in to the Rhode Island state legislature about a year ago, and it’s his first political position, where, among other things, he’s on a committee to study the possible use of ebooks in schools. He’s had three stints in jail and faced 18 charges, including a conviction for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. He was evicted from the Republican Caucus in 2011 and angered supporters of a Rhode Island high school’s Gay/Straight Alliance by telling them sexuality shouldn’t be promoted in schools.

He’s taken backroom politics public and taunted at least one fellow Congressperson.

Rep. Gordon opened up a tinychat this evening and, over Twitter, invited people in. The chat session was planned a little earlier by Rep. Gordon and Anon1781.

I managed to jump into the chat and log it; below I’ve pasted two versions of the log: first, an excerpted version edited a little for readability, and second, the whole thing unaltered. The chat mostly took the form of a conversation between Guy Fawkes mask-clad Anon1781 and Rep. Dan Gordon, who played DJ, selecting, among other songs, Rage Against the Machine’s “Bombtrack” and Corrosion of Conformity’s “Vote with a Bullet.”

Highlights from the chat:

• Rep. Gordon said he planned to participate in #Jan17, which is Occupy Wall Street’s date to Occupy Congress; when I pressed him on his plans, he didn’t give details, citing “many enemies” and the need for “OpSec” (operational security).
• He said “Political campaigns should be publically funded at a set amount”; I asked him what he thought of @USDOR’s 1 vote, 1 campaign donation dollar per citizen idea. He found it “interesting” and said he’d research it.
• He called Lincoln “the worst President ever.”
• His ultimate political goal, he said, is to raise awareness for the people.
• He promised future chats with Anonymous and other netizens, perhaps over Ustream.

The positive part of this, I think, is that it might be the beginning of public officials, particularly local- or state-level ones, engaging or even collaborating with hardcore netizens, Occupiers, and hackers in an open way. That’s a big maybe, but who knows? Life isn’t going to get any less weird.

Here’s a screenshot to give you a feel for the chat’s vibe. Yes, those are Free Topiary graphics. Rep. Gordon didn’t appear on video.

Excerpted log, edited a little for readability (complete log farther down):

[6:53 PM] douglaslucas: Hi Rep Dan, this is @douglaslucas from Twitter.
[6:53 PM] repdan: Hi Doug!
[6:54 PM] douglaslucas: When did you first begin to use Anonymous & net-culture slogans as a public official?
[6:55 PM] repdan: Just this past week, or so. Outstanding network of social media freedom lovers.
[6:55 PM] moose_mario: hey repdan
[6:55 PM] moose_mario: what the hell is wrong with the ri gop
[6:56 PM] moose_mario: and whats with all this movement to close all the voting
[6:56 PM] repdan: Hiya Moose. The RIGOP is apparently a disfunctional group of ‘climbers’ that care not abou
[6:56 PM] repdan: You in RI, Moose?
[6:57 PM] moose_mario: yes
[6:57 PM] repdan: Who is ur Rep. Moose?
[6:58 PM] moose_mario: providence so i guess ciciline
[6:58 PM] repdan: State Rep, Moose. Cicilline is US Congressman, sir.
[7:00 PM] moose_mario: well then i have no idea
[7:01 PM] repdan: NP. Stand by and I’ll show u where to go to find out, k?
[7:05 PM] repdan: Garbage govt web sites…still looking. Hold on…
[7:05 PM] douglaslucas: Which things about net culture & Anonymous make ya identify them as freedom lovers?
[7:07 PM] repdan: Hello anon1781!
[7:09 PM] repdan: Here you go, Moose. https://sos.ri.gov/vic/
[7:09 PM] anon1781: diverdan you there?
[7:09 PM] repdan: Right here, 1781.
[7:12 PM] repdan: 1st time hosting. Tips welcome.
[7:12 PM] anon1781: pretty easy shit, nothing to it really
[7:12 PM] anon1781: alrighty my question before
[7:12 PM] anon1781: money freespeech
[7:12 PM] anon1781: bastardizing what lobbying is supposed to be
[7:12 PM] anon1781: opinion
[7:13 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:15 PM] repdan: Political campaigns should be publically funded at a set amount, in my opinion.
[7:15 PM] anon1781: difine set amount
[7:15 PM] anon1781: define*
[7:16 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What do you think of @USDOR’s 1 vote, 1 campaign donation dollar per citizen idea?
[7:16 PM] anon1781: repdan = diverdan = Rep RI Dan Gordon
[7:16 PM] repdan: @douglaslucas Interesting idea. Will research!
[7:17 PM] anon1781: you mentioned before you distaste for the reactions you got of idgaf when talking about
[7:17 PM] anon1781: ndaa with other reps and such, mind describing more?
[7:17 PM] repdan: what do you guys want to listen to for tunes?
[7:17 PM] repdan: @1781..typing…
[7:18 PM] douglaslucas: Rage Against the Machine works for me!
[7:18 PM] repdan: @1781…Apathy, not even aware at the state level of #NDAA….
[7:19 PM] moose_mario: ohh gordon fox
[7:19 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:19 PM] anon1781: dan, if you can, turn on cam, so they stop thinking i’m you lol
[7:19 PM] repdan: CoC, then Black Flag
[7:19 PM] moose_mario: rep dan gordon fox.
[7:20 PM] repdan: @1781. No cam 2nite, bro! But you are a good rep for ANON!
[7:21 PM] repdan: CoC…”Vote with a Bullet”
[7:21 PM] repdan: The People are so apethetic in this state.
[7:22 PM] anon1781: Have you gotten any beef yet for even talking to us?
[7:22 PM] repdan: One Party rule for 74 years….
[7:22 PM] repdan: @1781. No, but I’m sure that folks are watching. No worries here.
[7:23 PM] anon1781: my state, every fucking senator and congressman voted yes on ndaa -.-
[7:23 PM] anon1781: cept one, which shocked me
[7:23 PM] anon1781: the only demo in either lol, again shocked me
[7:23 PM] repdan: One party rule has rusulted in disaster…RI is bottom of barrel in most aspects.
[7:23 PM] diabloanon: pretty much the same here, even people I never thought would support it, voted for it
[7:24 PM] anon1781: i’m scheming my schemes :P
[7:24 PM] repdan: Roger that, 1781. MMN feeling better?
[7:24 PM] anon1781: he was sick?
[7:24 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan do you know MMN?
[7:25 PM] repdan: @Moose. Roger that. He is also Speaker of the House. Send him email or call him.
[7:25 PM] cruzaders1: 1781 you know what i like about the south
[7:25 PM] cruzaders1: all the gun vaults you see everywhere.lolz
[7:25 PM] anon1781: MMN = MotorMouthNews :P
[7:25 PM] anon1781: who’s the other MMN you were talking about? lol
[7:26 PM] anon1781: guns are crucial here, so many rednecks, love them, they gonna be on front line
[7:26 PM] anon1781: if civil war breaks out lol
[7:26 PM] anon1781: mad respect for the rednecks now
[7:26 PM] repdan: @1781 Flu, I believe. Was in hospital the other day.
[7:26 PM] cruzaders1: i dont think the war ever ended. the north sought strong fed govern and still do
[7:27 PM] cruzaders1: both lincoln and obmama were illinios sentors, comeing from chicgo ” organized gang/crime”
[7:27 PM] anon1781: my governor is one of the top 5 lobbyists in the US -.-
[7:27 PM] repdan: Lincoln was the worst President ever..false that it was about slavery…
[7:27 PM] anon1781: i dunno about worst, but i do believe history is MUCH more interesting, when you don’t
[7:27 PM] anon1781: learn it from a text book
[7:28 PM] anon1781: it’s like a fucking soap opera
[7:28 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:29 PM] diabloanon: ooh is that Black Flag?
[7:29 PM] cruzaders1: look, rob bovoghis got cault selling senate seats. east st louis always has voter fraud
[7:29 PM] repdan: Alright, what do yo uall want to losten too. This particular BF vid is lame.
[7:29 PM] repdan: @diablanon. Yepper.
[7:30 PM] diabloanon: I’m fine with whatever everybody else wants to listen to
[7:30 PM] anon1781: how has your first few experiences in house been? boring? do you feel like your doing
[7:30 PM] anon1781: something useful?
[7:31 PM] chichibonga: some tool?
[7:31 PM] repdan: Good Q’s. 1781..stand by. @Chichi Tool, YES!
[7:31 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:32 PM] chichibonga: anyone heading to dc on the 17th
[7:32 PM] anon1781: :: raises hand ::
[7:32 PM] anon1781: pitched in with about 80 peeps to get a bus
[7:32 PM] anon1781: we’re packing that bitch full
[7:32 PM] repdan: @1781 1st Experiences in the House…awful.
[7:32 PM] anon1781: how so diver?
[7:33 PM] repdan: TThought that good ideas would prevail..reason…not so.
[7:34 PM] anon1781: dan is old fart
[7:34 PM] anon1781: he types epic slow
[7:34 PM] anon1781: so if you ask questions, wait for reply :D
[7:34 PM] repdan: Fiscally sound ideas do not translate to good politics, I’ve found.
[7:34 PM] abc: لا تكن المغــرور فتنـدم ، ولا تكن الواثق فتُـصـدم . .
[7:35 PM] anon1781: sound ideas do not translate to politics lol
[7:35 PM] repdan: 1781 spends too much time typing, lol!
[7:35 PM] chichibonga: i find santorum offensive to the point i wanna kick him in the face ya hear
[7:35 PM] anon1781: santorum, looks like he’s been kicked in the face quite a bit lol
[7:36 PM] repdan: Political Q’s peeps? (Santorum=junk)
[7:36 PM] touchedbypriest: thats a dreary green wall behind you
[7:36 PM] anon1781: greenscreen :)
[7:36 PM] anon1781: useful :
[7:37 PM] anon1781: what are your overall goals for your term in office diverdan?
[7:38 PM] repdan: @1781. Raise awareness is the ultimate goal.
[7:38 PM] anon1781: with people or government lool
[7:39 PM] repdan: @1781. Both. People take priority, though
[7:39 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:40 PM] anon1781: what actions do you have planned in the near future to raise awareness?
[7:41 PM] repdan: @1781 Trying to spread word thru media to the People…it’s a challange.
[7:41 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: You’re on commission to study use of eBooks in RI schools, yes? How’s that going?
[7:41 PM] repdan: @doug. Yep on Text books.
[7:41 PM] anon1781: unless you do something, umm.. highly questionable, you won’t get much word out that way
[7:42 PM] repdan: @1781. Roger that. I think that is in work, lulz!
[7:42 PM] anon1781: :P true
[7:43 PM] cruzaders1: me and peeps are actually gonna clean trash up in towns and talk to people. we care
[7:43 PM] cruzaders1: also planning a peoples library based by donations and not taxes
[7:43 PM] repdan: Tunes,,,what next?
[7:43 PM] anon1781: if citizens wanted to put to trial government officials for treason, what route do wetake?
[7:44 PM] repdan: @1781. GREAT Q!
[7:44 PM] cruzaders1: we get signature and expect the law,courts to up hold the peoples request
[7:44 PM] cryoanon: If you want to prosecute them in the nextfew years i think your options are limited to
[7:44 PM] cryoanon: revolution
[7:44 PM] cruzaders1: if majority of americans feel that way we need to do more then speak but act
[7:44 PM] anon1781: I’m sick of fucking playing around with these asshats, shit’s gotta get serious asap
[7:45 PM] cruzaders1: no revolution, the only solution and conclusion is a resolution
[7:45 PM] repdan: Stand by….we need to do a Skype some time…so much 2 talk about.
[7:45 PM] anon1781: lol
[7:45 PM] repdan: LOL…hold on,..1787 what u want to hear?
[7:45 PM] cruzaders1: ussr was a revolution and lead to 20years economic depression, with still promblems
[7:46 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: For yr textbook commission, might RI use Creative Commons or other open materials?
[7:46 PM] cryoanon: Well i wouldn’t exactly call Russia democratic today
[7:46 PM] anon1781: Rock some FooFighters :P
[7:47 PM] repdan: fOO IT IS…STAND BY
[7:47 PM] cruzaders1: me either. thats why revolution is not the solution
[7:47 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:47 PM] anonrep: Do what do you make of recent artical’s claming the pentagon has sold infomation to
[7:47 PM] anonrep: hollywood for films that they will not release to the public
[7:48 PM] anonrep: basically selling exclusivitey right’s on infomation to hollywood
[7:47 PM] cruzaders1: but back in the 90′s the black panthers walk into congress with ak’s and none was arrest
[7:48 PM] cruzaders1: we need not to gather is groups of hundred but in hundred thousands and storm OUR building
[7:48 PM] anon1781: black panther’s get away with alot of shit lol
[7:48 PM] repdan: It’s estimated that only 3% of the pop, actively participated in American Rev. Trivia…
[7:48 PM] anon1781: i see J17 being a milestone
[7:49 PM] anon1781: or a complete dud, hope it’s the better of the two
[7:49 PM] cryoanon: It’s certainly going to get interesting
[7:49 PM] repdan: #J17 is a day to look FWD too. Also watch for #OpMindCrime.
[7:50 PM] chichibonga: i hope so i hope no one acts like a tool and ruins it or drowns out the causeu know FOX ne
[7:50 PM] anon1781: you going to be there on J17 dan?
[7:50 PM] repdan: Yepper.
[7:50 PM] anon1781: good
[7:50 PM] anon1781: and i’ve got a plan in the works for fox lol
[7:51 PM] douglaslucas: Yes to #J17, Dan?
[7:51 PM] anon1781: pretty much almost all the major news networks actually
[7:51 PM] repdan: @ Doug…Y
[7:51 PM] chichibonga: yes i hope so i hate those haters
[7:51 PM] anon1781: the plan is to have censorship bar carrying activists
[7:51 PM] anon1781: and block the view of their cameras
[7:51 PM] anon1781: and let it be covered by the people instead
[7:52 PM] anon1781: got a team of 30 so far on that, but gonna need more
[7:52 PM] repdan: Do U folks actually realize how bad it is? W/ respect….
[7:52 PM] repdan: @1781. Word
[7:52 PM] anon1781: I’d say some of us are aware, some are close, and most are far away
[7:52 PM] chichibonga: people are so apathetic –lotta dumb folks out ther
[7:53 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What do you plan to do for #J17 ?
[7:53 PM] anon1781: it’s bad enough for me to have already bought a plane ticket to argentina, and have a
[7:53 PM] anon1781: place to stay
[7:53 PM] anon1781: if shit gets too hairy
[7:53 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:54 PM] star_gazer: i have a home in the philippines and my passport ready
[7:54 PM] anon1781: but, do tell us how bad it is from your own words
[7:54 PM] anon1781: will be interesting to hear
[7:55 PM] moose_mario: RI is pretty messed up
[7:55 PM] moose_mario: its like..decay
[7:55 PM] anon1781: MS is fucked up
[7:55 PM] anon1781: think about this, when do you ever hear anything about MS?
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: neva
[7:56 PM] anon1781: exactly lol
[7:56 PM] anon1781: so much insane shit happens
[7:56 PM] anon1781: but they have it so on lock
[7:56 PM] anon1781: nothing gets out
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: but i dont hear anything about dakota either
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: n or s
[7:56 PM] star_gazer: Oklahoma is not messed up …..yet
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: I don’t hear anything but what is going on in Oklahoma
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: unless i jump on twitter and help spread the news
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: dont hear about any states
[7:57 PM] moose_mario: well repdan in ri politics. here its a total one party stranglehold we dont even get 2 lol
[7:57 PM] moose_mario: would like to hear his experience
[7:58 PM] anon1781: tell us “how bad it is” diverdan
[7:58 PM] repdan: REAL bad… zero regard 4 the 10th Amendment…People’s apathy…
[7:59 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What are your plans for #J17 ?
[8:00 PM] repdan: Ok….regroup…we need to do a Ustream soon for talkie
[8:00 PM] repdan: Many important Q’s…2 much typing
[8:00 PM] anon1781: ustreams is cool, just one sided
[8:01 PM] repdan: @1781. Recommendations?
[8:01 PM] anon1781: on here up to 16 people can cam and talk at once
[8:01 PM] anon1781: (maybe more, i’ve only seen up to 16
[8:01 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[8:01 PM] anon1781: but it allows for quick dialogue
[8:01 PM] repdan: Rgr that, 1781.
[8:02 PM] anon1781: next time, i’d like to make it a bit more formal
[8:02 PM] anon1781: i’ll send you a list of questions before we do it
[8:02 PM] anon1781: that i’ll be asking
[8:02 PM] anon1781: so you can prepare your answers mentally structured
[8:03 PM] repdan: Good idea 1781. I’m down. Did an interview 2day on similiar stuff.
[8:03 PM] anon1781: we plan on recording it, and posting it
[8:03 PM] anon1781: and a challenge to any other governmentals
[8:03 PM] anon1781: to do the s
[8:03 PM] anon1781: same
[8:03 PM] repdan: I welcome it, sir!
[8:04 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: who was the interview with?
[8:04 PM] repdan: Station in Nashville…stand by . I;ll get the link
[8:05 PM] repdan: They r anons from Tn…Great interview.
[8:06 PM] anon1781: cool, it’s a date, sometime next week
[8:07 PM] datoneanon: its a date?
[8:07 PM] repdan: Yepper! Date, Umadbro?
[8:07 PM] anon1781: go find ethersec lol, they
[8:07 PM] anon1781: will give ya hugs or some shit
[8:07 PM] repdan: Lulz..
[8:08 PM] repdan: Yay!
[8:08 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[8:09 PM] anon1781: alright, i’m out, tnx for this diver, will set up something better next week
[8:09 PM] anon1781: got some Ops to work on
[8:09 PM] anon1781: peace folks
[8:09 PM] repdan: Rgr that..Ty. Best
[8:10 PM] datoneanon: repdan howd you get elected as a libertarian, isnt that impossible
[8:10 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: Can you tell us any about your #J17 plans?
[8:11 PM] repdan: @Daton….ran as as an (R) w/ Libertarian leanings.
[8:12 PM] repdan: @doug. Not at the moment..many enemies…OpSec
[8:12 PM] douglaslucas: Okay.
[8:13 PM] repdan: Any other Q’s B4 I call it a night for TinyChat, peeps?
[8:13 PM] douglaslucas: Is your eBook commission considering open curriculum possibilities like creative commons?
[8:15 PM] repdan: Thank you all for participating, and giving ur input.
[8:15 PM] repdan: More formal and structured chat soon.
[8:15 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: Thanks for doing this tinychat!
[8:16 PM] repdan: My pleasure, sir.
[8:17 PM] repdan: @repdangordon on the Twitter
[8:17 PM] diabloanon: Sorry I didnt say much, I appreciate you really trying to reach out and represent your
[8:17 PM] diabloanon: constituents
[8:17 PM] repdan left the room.

Complete, unedited log:

[6:53 PM] guest-944707 changed nickname to douglaslucas
[6:53 PM] guest-944719 entered the room.
[6:53 PM] guest-944719 left the room.
[6:53 PM] douglaslucas: Hi Rep Dan, this is @douglaslucas from Twitter.
[6:53 PM] repdan: Hi Doug!
[6:54 PM] douglaslucas: When did you first begin to use Anonymous & net-culture slogans as a public official?
[6:54 PM] guest-944755 entered the room.
[6:54 PM] guest-944755 left the room.
[6:55 PM] guest-944776 entered the room.
[6:55 PM] repdan: Just this past week, or so. Outstanding network of social media freedom lovers.
[6:55 PM] guest-944776 changed nickname to moose_mario
[6:55 PM] moose_mario: hey repdan
[6:55 PM] moose_mario: what the hell is wrong with the ri gop
[6:56 PM] moose_mario: and whats with all this movement to close all the voting
[6:56 PM] repdan: Hiya Moose. The RIGOP is apparently a disfunctional group of ‘climbers’ that care not abou
[6:56 PM] repdan: You in RI, Moose?
[6:57 PM] moose_mario: yes
[6:57 PM] guest-944815 entered the room.
[6:57 PM] guest-944815 left the room.
[6:57 PM] repdan: Who is ur Rep. Moose?
[6:58 PM] moose_mario: providence so i guess ciciline
[6:58 PM] repdan: State Rep, Moose. Cicilline is US Congressman, sir.
[7:00 PM] moose_mario: well then i have no idea
[7:01 PM] repdan: NP. Stand by and I’ll show u where to go to find out, k?
[7:05 PM] repdan: Garbage govt web sites…still looking. Hold on…
[7:05 PM] douglaslucas: Which things about net culture & Anonymous make ya identify them as freedom lovers?
[7:05 PM] guest-945064 entered the room.
[7:06 PM] guest-945064 changed nickname to anon1781
[7:06 PM] anon1781: hello there
[7:06 PM] anon1781: one moment
[7:06 PM] guest-945082 entered the room.
[7:06 PM] guest-945082 changed nickname to s0usanon
[7:07 PM] moose_mario: hold on i think i found it
[7:07 PM] s0usanon left the room.
[7:07 PM] repdan: Hello anon1781!
[7:08 PM] guest-945148 entered the room.
[7:08 PM] guest-945148 left the room.
[7:08 PM] guest-945166 entered the room.
[7:08 PM] guest-945166 changed nickname to cruzaders1
[7:09 PM] repdan: Here you go, Moose. https://sos.ri.gov/vic/
[7:09 PM] cruzaders1: 1781 you still on
[7:09 PM] anon1781: yes
[7:09 PM] guest-945187 entered the room.
[7:09 PM] anon1781: diverdan you there?
[7:09 PM] cruzaders1: how you been?
[7:09 PM] repdan: Right here, 1781.
[7:10 PM] anon1781: good good, OpSpend50bucksOnCarShitCuzItsApieceOfShit successful
[7:10 PM] cruzaders1: know where mc comb use to live there
[7:10 PM] guest-945211 entered the room.
[7:10 PM] guest-945211 changed nickname to diabloanon
[7:10 PM] cruzaders1: moved away. but damnit south is something elese.lolz
[7:10 PM] anon1781: no doubt
[7:11 PM] anon1781: alrighty, i think i’m set up now
[7:11 PM] cruzaders1: so whos hosting, wheres the music?
[7:11 PM] guest-945232 entered the room.
[7:12 PM] repdan: 1st time hosting. Tips welcome.
[7:12 PM] anon1781: pretty easy shit, nothing to it really
[7:12 PM] anon1781: alrighty my question before
[7:12 PM] guest-945232 changed nickname to billrappleye
[7:12 PM] anon1781: money freespeech
[7:12 PM] anon1781: bastardizing what lobbying is supposed to be
[7:12 PM] anon1781: opinion
[7:13 PM] guest-945187 changed nickname to chichibonga
[7:13 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:13 PM] moose_mario: apparently my rep is.. 4
[7:13 PM] anon1781: lol
[7:13 PM] moose_mario: all hail 4!
[7:13 PM] anon1781: 4!
[7:13 PM] cruzaders1: sweet
[7:14 PM] cruzaders1: so whats up tonight? wonder what can do with our time?
[7:14 PM] repdan: Hiya billrappleye
[7:14 PM] billrappleye: nice mask yiou should wear that at the state house
[7:14 PM] anon1781: diverdan here promised some dialogue
[7:14 PM] anon1781: i have
[7:14 PM] anon1781: got pics
[7:15 PM] anon1781: funny shit, got kicked out of walmart with it on
[7:15 PM] cruzaders1: i need mask…thought of makeing a flour plaster one
[7:15 PM] repdan: Political campaigns should be publically funded at a set amount, in my opinion.
[7:15 PM] anon1781: but went to supreme court, senate, and house of reps with it on
[7:15 PM] anon1781: even got to sit in chairman’s chair with it
[7:15 PM] anon1781: difine set amount
[7:15 PM] anon1781: define*
[7:15 PM] repdan: Not my mask, billrappleye.
[7:16 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What do you think of @USDOR’s 1 vote, 1 campaign donation dollar per citizen idea?
[7:16 PM] guest-945343 entered the room.
[7:16 PM] anon1781: repdan = diverdan = Rep RI Dan Gordon
[7:16 PM] guest-945343 changed nickname to kg
[7:16 PM] guest-945355 entered the room.
[7:16 PM] repdan: @douglaslucas Interesting idea. Will research!
[7:17 PM] guest-945355 left the room.
[7:17 PM] anon1781: you mentioned before you distaste for the reactions you got of idgaf when talking about
[7:17 PM] anon1781: ndaa with other reps and such, mind describing more?
[7:17 PM] repdan: what do you guys want to listen to for tunes?
[7:17 PM] repdan: @1781..typing…
[7:18 PM] anon1781: :P
[7:18 PM] douglaslucas: Rage Against the Machine works for me!
[7:18 PM] kg: Yes!
[7:18 PM] repdan: @1781…Apathy, not even aware at the state level of #NDAA….
[7:19 PM] moose_mario: ohh gordon fox
[7:19 PM] anon1781: @cruz, bug MMN to get his ass in here lol
[7:19 PM] cruzaders1: you got any black flag- my war
[7:19 PM] guest-945451 entered the room.
[7:19 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:19 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:19 PM] anon1781: dan, if you can, turn on cam, so they stop thinking i’m you lol
[7:19 PM] cruzaders1: r even online right now?
[7:19 PM] repdan: CoC, then Black Flag
[7:19 PM] moose_mario: rep dan gordon fox.
[7:19 PM] anon1781: MMN is always online
[7:20 PM] cruzaders1: lolz. i shout at him
[7:20 PM] anon1781: kilgoar wanted to witness this too he said last night
[7:20 PM] guest-945451 changed nickname to 6042
[7:20 PM] anon1781: but, i was too lazy to get contacts from him lol
[7:20 PM] repdan: @1781. No cam 2nite, bro! But you are a good rep for ANON!
[7:21 PM] repdan: CoC…”Vote with a Bullet”
[7:21 PM] kg left the room.
[7:21 PM] repdan: The People are so apethetic in this state.
[7:21 PM] guest-945577 entered the room.
[7:22 PM] anon1781: Have you gotten any beef yet for even talking to us?
[7:22 PM] repdan: One Party rule for 74 years….
[7:22 PM] repdan: @1781. No, but I’m sure that folks are watching. No worries here.
[7:23 PM] anon1781: my state, every fucking senator and congressman voted yes on ndaa -.-
[7:23 PM] repdan: One party rule has rusulted in disaster…RI is bottom of barrel in most aspects.
[7:23 PM] anon1781: cept one, which shocked me
[7:23 PM] anon1781: the only demo in either lol, again shocked me
[7:23 PM] diabloanon: pretty much the same here, even people I never thought would support it, voted for it
[7:24 PM] anon1781: i’m scheming my schemes :P
[7:24 PM] repdan: Roger that, 1781. MMN feeling better?
[7:24 PM] anon1781: he was sick?
[7:24 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan do you know MMN?
[7:25 PM] cruzaders1: 1781 you know what i like about the south
[7:25 PM] repdan: @Moose. Roger that. He is also Speaker of the House. Send him email or call him.
[7:25 PM] anon1781: >.>
[7:25 PM] anon1781: lolol
[7:25 PM] cruzaders1: all the gun vaults you see everywhere.lolz
[7:25 PM] anon1781: MMN = MotorMouthNews :P
[7:25 PM] anon1781: who’s the other MMN you were talking about? lol
[7:25 PM] guest-945694 entered the room.
[7:26 PM] anon1781: guns are crucial here, so many rednecks, love them, they gonna be on front line
[7:26 PM] anon1781: if civil war breaks out lol
[7:26 PM] repdan: @1781 Flu, I believe. Was in hospital the other day.
[7:26 PM] anon1781: mad respect for the rednecks now
[7:26 PM] cruzaders1: i dont think the war ever ended. the north sought strong fed govern and still do
[7:27 PM] guest-945694 left the room.
[7:27 PM] anon1781: my governor is one of the top 5 lobbyists in the US -.-
[7:27 PM] repdan: Lincoln was the worst President ever..false that it was about slavery…
[7:27 PM] cruzaders1: both lincoln and obmama were illinios sentors, comeing from chicgo ” organized gang/crime”
[7:27 PM] anon1781: i dunno about worst, but i do believe history is MUCH more interesting, when you don’t
[7:27 PM] anon1781: learn it from a text book
[7:28 PM] anon1781: it’s like a fucking soap opera
[7:28 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:28 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:28 PM] moose_mario left the room.
[7:28 PM] cruzaders1: I personally think chicgo is controlling the countrie
[7:29 PM] diabloanon: ooh is that Black Flag?
[7:29 PM] cruzaders1: look, rob bovoghis got cault selling senate seats. east st louis always has voter fraud
[7:29 PM] repdan: Alright, what do yo uall want to losten too. This particular BF vid is lame.
[7:29 PM] repdan: @diablanon. Yepper.
[7:30 PM] diabloanon: I’m fine with whatever everybody else wants to listen to
[7:30 PM] guest-945790 entered the room.
[7:30 PM] cruzaders1: play some smashing pumkins
[7:30 PM] guest-945790 left the room.
[7:30 PM] anon1781: how has your first few experiences in house been? boring? do you feel like your doing
[7:30 PM] anon1781: something useful?
[7:31 PM] diabloanon left the room.
[7:31 PM] chichibonga: some tool?
[7:31 PM] repdan: Good Q’s. 1781..stand by. @Chichi Tool, YES!
[7:31 PM] cruzaders1: anyone like to read
[7:31 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:31 PM] guest-945829 entered the room.
[7:32 PM] guest-945829 changed nickname to motormouthnews
[7:32 PM] chichibonga: anyone heading to dc on the 17th
[7:32 PM] anon1781: :: raises hand ::
[7:32 PM] guest-945838 entered the room.
[7:32 PM] anon1781: pitched in with about 80 peeps to get a bus
[7:32 PM] repdan: @1781 1st Experiences in the House…awful.
[7:32 PM] cruzaders1: got a good collection of the poor james bond
[7:32 PM] anon1781: we’re packing that bitch full
[7:32 PM] anon1781: how so diver?
[7:32 PM] chichibonga: very nice a bus-debating drive or train
[7:33 PM] guest-945853 entered the room.
[7:33 PM] repdan: TThought that good ideas would prevail..reason…not so.
[7:33 PM] motormouthnews: sup sup
[7:33 PM] guest-945853 changed nickname to abc
[7:33 PM] repdan: Hey MMN!
[7:33 PM] guest-945868 entered the room.
[7:33 PM] guest-945868 changed nickname to diabloanon
[7:33 PM] motormouthnews: hows all
[7:33 PM] anon1781: hey bro
[7:33 PM] diabloanon: hey MMN
[7:33 PM] motormouthnews: sup
[7:33 PM] chichibonga: i love the guy fawkes mask its my pic on FB
[7:33 PM] guest-945877 entered the room.
[7:34 PM] guest-945889 entered the room.
[7:34 PM] anon1781: dan is old fart
[7:34 PM] guest-945889 changed nickname to touchedbypriest
[7:34 PM] anon1781: he types epic slow
[7:34 PM] chichibonga: hahah
[7:34 PM] guest-945895 entered the room.
[7:34 PM] repdan: Fiscally sound ideas do not translate to good politics, I’ve found.
[7:34 PM] abc: لا تكن المغــرور فتنـدم ، ولا تكن الواثق فتُـصـدم . .
anon1781: so if you ask questions, wait for reply :D
[7:34 PM] guest-945898 entered the room.
[7:34 PM] 6042 left the room.
[7:35 PM] touchedbypriest: this place is bumpin’
[7:35 PM] anon1781: sound ideas do not translate to politics lol
[7:35 PM] guest-945895 changed nickname to dallison281
[7:35 PM] repdan: 1781 spends too much time typing, lol!
[7:35 PM] guest-945877 changed nickname to protocol
[7:35 PM] chichibonga: i find santorum offensive to the point i wanna kick him in the face ya hear
[7:35 PM] protocol: supppppppppppp
[7:35 PM] guest-945898 left the room.
[7:35 PM] guest-945919 entered the room.
[7:35 PM] touchedbypriest: joined the group whiteboard.
[7:35 PM] motormouthnews: sup
[7:35 PM] guest-945931 entered the room.
[7:35 PM] abc left the room.
[7:35 PM] guest-945919 changed nickname to motormouth
[7:35 PM] anon1781: santorum, looks like he’s been kicked in the face quite a bit lol
[7:35 PM] motormouth: how is everyone
[7:35 PM] guest-945943 entered the room.
[7:35 PM] motormouthnews: lol
[7:36 PM] guest-945943 changed nickname to anonrep
[7:36 PM] motormouthnews: you cant be meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
[7:36 PM] anon1781: i was wondering how long it would take for a troll :D yay!
[7:36 PM] chichibonga: with those thin lips– and that whiny nasal voice
[7:36 PM] motormouth: I’m not, you must me my news arm.
[7:36 PM] repdan: Political Q’s peeps? (Santorum=junk)
[7:36 PM] protocol left the room.
[7:36 PM] anonrep: hello
[7:36 PM] guest-945931 left the room.
[7:36 PM] anon1781: lol
[7:36 PM] chichibonga: santorum frothy
[7:36 PM] touchedbypriest: thats a dreary green wall behind you
[7:36 PM] anon1781: greenscreen :)
[7:36 PM] anon1781: useful :
[7:36 PM] touchedbypriest: ahhh
[7:36 PM] anon1781: ^_^
[7:36 PM] motormouthnews: i was touchedbyapriest once
[7:37 PM] motormouthnews: then i became atheist
[7:37 PM] touchedbypriest: lol
[7:37 PM] guest-945973 entered the room.
[7:37 PM] guest-945973 changed nickname to cryoanon
[7:37 PM] guest-945838 changed nickname to kazeno_p
[7:37 PM] touchedbypriest: you know kids .. cant keep their mouths shut
[7:37 PM] chichibonga: musta been a bad touch
[7:37 PM] kazeno_p: I can haz destroy planet earth?
[7:37 PM] anon1781: what are your overall goals for your term in office diverdan?
[7:37 PM] motormouth: Follow me on twitter @motormouthnews
[7:37 PM] guest-945976 entered the room.
[7:38 PM] guest-945976 changed nickname to k
[7:38 PM] kazeno_p: Hi there DanGordon Sama! D:
[7:38 PM] kazeno_p: /me licks Rep Dan Gordon
[7:38 PM] touchedbypriest: need some tunes or boobs
[7:38 PM] anon1781: tits/tunes rock it
[7:38 PM] repdan: @1781. Raise awareness is the ultimate goal.
[7:38 PM] kazeno_p: Y u no asian? :(
[7:38 PM] anon1781: with people or government lool
[7:39 PM] kazeno_p: SHOW ME UR EYES? D:
[7:39 PM] k: anything new?
[7:39 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:39 PM] kazeno_p: omg.. my net are slow
[7:39 PM] repdan: @1781. Both. People take priority, though
[7:39 PM] anon1781: learn2net kaz
[7:40 PM] chichibonga: fucking traveler ad keeps cumin up
[7:40 PM] anon1781: what actions do you have planned in the near future to raise awareness?
[7:40 PM] cruzaders1: who knows how to telnet?
[7:40 PM] chichibonga: love sublime
[7:40 PM] kazeno_p: i dunno how to net trollolol
[7:40 PM] cryoanon: And now 4 some boobs
[7:40 PM] repdan: @billrappleye What r u up 2 2nite?
[7:40 PM] cruzaders1: fun anyone later?
[7:40 PM] anon1781: ty cryo
[7:40 PM] anon1781: marry me
[7:40 PM] guest-946051 entered the room.
[7:41 PM] guest-946051 changed nickname to moose_mario
[7:41 PM] anon1781: tits + tunes
[7:41 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: You’re on commission to study use of eBooks in RI schools, yes? How’s that going?
[7:41 PM] repdan: @1781 Trying to spread word thru media to the People…it’s a challange.
[7:41 PM] k left the room.
[7:41 PM] kazeno_p: cruzaders1: i know. is that like some epic game that goes with netcat?
[7:41 PM] cryoanon: What color shall we go with?
[7:41 PM] cruzaders1: you know be great idea. set this video chat up but with doodle like yahoo
[7:41 PM] cruzaders1: could interact and share things
[7:41 PM] repdan: @doug. Yep on Text books.
[7:41 PM] kazeno_p: i’m not from the us. HALP.
[7:41 PM] anon1781: unless you do something, umm.. highly questionable, you won’t get much word out that way
[7:42 PM] guest-946090 entered the room.
[7:42 PM] cruzaders1: telnet, its dos… research and educate
[7:42 PM] repdan: @1781. Roger that. I think that is in work, lulz!
[7:42 PM] anon1781: :P true
[7:42 PM] chichibonga: whos trollinhg
[7:43 PM] cruzaders1: me and peeps are actually gonna clean trash up in towns and talk to people. we care
[7:43 PM] kazeno_p left the room.
[7:43 PM] anon1781: if citizens wanted to put to trial government officials for treason, what route do wetake?
[7:43 PM] anon1781: ^_^
[7:43 PM] repdan: Tunes,,,what next?
[7:43 PM] cruzaders1: also planning a peoples library based by donations and not taxes
[7:43 PM] anonrep: good question anon
[7:44 PM] repdan: @1781. GREAT Q!
[7:44 PM] chichibonga: halesto
[7:44 PM] cruzaders1: we get signature and expect the law,courts to up hold the peoples request
[7:44 PM] cryoanon: If you want to prosecute them in the nextfew years i think your options are limited to
[7:44 PM] cryoanon: revolution
[7:44 PM] billrappleye: joined the group whiteboard.
[7:44 PM] cruzaders1: if majority of americans feel that way we need to do more then speak but act
[7:44 PM] anon1781: I’m sick of fucking playing around with these asshats, shit’s gotta get serious asap
[7:45 PM] cruzaders1: no revolution, the only solution and conclusion is a resolution
[7:45 PM] repdan: Stand by….we need to do a Skype some time…so much 2 talk about.
[7:45 PM] anon1781: lol
[7:45 PM] repdan: LOL…hold on,..1787 what u want to hear?
[7:45 PM] cruzaders1: ussr was a revolution and lead to 20years economic depression, with still promblems
[7:45 PM] motormouthnews: 1787?
[7:46 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: For yr textbook commission, might RI use Creative Commons or other open materials?
[7:46 PM] cryoanon: Well i wouldn’t exactly call Russia democratic today
[7:46 PM] motormouth left the room.
[7:46 PM] guest-946204 entered the room.
[7:46 PM] guest-946090 changed nickname to eman
[7:46 PM] anon1781: Rock some FooFighters :P
[7:46 PM] guest-946204 changed nickname to youranonnews
[7:47 PM] repdan: fOO IT IS…STAND BY
[7:47 PM] youranonnews: please vote for us: http://shortyawards.com/?category=activism&screen_name=youranonnews
[7:47 PM] cruzaders1: me either. thats why revolution is not the solution
[7:47 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:47 PM] anonrep: Do what do you make of recent artical’s claming the pentagon has sold infomation to
[7:47 PM] cruzaders1: but back in the 90′s the black panthers walk into congress with ak’s and none was arrest
[7:47 PM] anonrep: hollywood for films that they will not release to the public
[7:48 PM] cruzaders1: we need not to gather is groups of hundred but in hundred thousands and storm OUR building
[7:48 PM] anon1781: black panther’s get away with alot of shit lol
[7:48 PM] chichibonga: foo fighters always works
[7:48 PM] anonrep: basically selling exclusivitey right’s on infomation to hollywood
[7:48 PM] repdan: It’s estimated that only 3% of the pop, actively participated in American Rev. Trivia…
[7:48 PM] guest-945577 left the room.
[7:48 PM] chichibonga: i love dave grohl
[7:48 PM] anon1781: i see J17 being a milestone
[7:49 PM] anon1781: or a complete dud, hope it’s the better of the two
[7:49 PM] eman left the room.
[7:49 PM] cryoanon: It’s certainly going to get interesting
[7:49 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: For yr textbook commission, might RI use Creative Commons or other open materials?
[7:49 PM] guest-946285 entered the room.
[7:49 PM] repdan: #J17 is a day to look FWD too. Also watch for #OpMindCrime.
[7:49 PM] guest-946285 changed nickname to thaliecat
[7:49 PM] thaliecat left the room.
[7:49 PM] guest-946300 entered the room.
[7:50 PM] guest-946300 changed nickname to star_gazer
[7:50 PM] chichibonga: i hope so i hope no one acts like a tool and ruins it or drowns out the causeu know FOX ne
[7:50 PM] anon1781: you going to be there on J17 dan?
[7:50 PM] repdan: Yepper.
[7:50 PM] anon1781: good
[7:50 PM] anon1781: and i’ve got a plan in the works for fox lol
[7:51 PM] douglaslucas: Yes to #J17, Dan?
[7:51 PM] anon1781: pretty much almost all the major news networks actually
[7:51 PM] repdan: @ Doug…Y
[7:51 PM] chichibonga: yes i hope so i hate those haters
[7:51 PM] anon1781: the plan is to have censorship bar carrying activists
[7:51 PM] anon1781: and block the view of their cameras
[7:51 PM] anon1781: and let it be covered by the people instead
[7:52 PM] anon1781: got a team of 30 so far on that, but gonna need more
[7:52 PM] repdan: Do U folks actually realize how bad it is? W/ respect….
[7:52 PM] chichibonga: hahaha cool
[7:52 PM] chichibonga: i dont thinks so–
[7:52 PM] repdan: @1781. Word
[7:52 PM] anon1781: I’d say some of us are aware, some are close, and most are far away
[7:52 PM] chichibonga: people are so apathetic –lotta dumb folks out ther
[7:53 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What do you plan to do for #J17 ?
[7:53 PM] anon1781: it’s bad enough for me to have already bought a plane ticket to argentina, and have a
[7:53 PM] anon1781: place to stay
[7:53 PM] chichibonga: I love in philly –they are so bad here no one has a clue
[7:53 PM] anon1781: if shit gets too hairy
[7:53 PM] chichibonga: live in philly
[7:53 PM] motormouthnews left the room.
[7:53 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:53 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:54 PM] repdan: brb.
[7:54 PM] star_gazer: i have a home in the philippines and my passport ready
[7:54 PM] anon1781: but, do tell us how bad it is from your own words
[7:54 PM] anon1781: will be interesting to hear
[7:54 PM] touchedbypriest: yanahmean
[7:54 PM] chichibonga: i like big butts and i camnot lie u other fellas can deny!!
[7:55 PM] chichibonga: haaha some mix here
[7:55 PM] moose_mario: RI is pretty messed up
[7:55 PM] anon1781: MS is fucked up
[7:55 PM] moose_mario: its like..decay
[7:55 PM] anon1781: think about this, when do you ever hear anything about MS?
[7:55 PM] touchedbypriest left the room.
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: neva
[7:56 PM] anon1781: exactly lol
[7:56 PM] anon1781: so much insane shit happens
[7:56 PM] anon1781: but they have it so on lock
[7:56 PM] anon1781: nothing gets out
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: but i dont hear anything about dakota either
[7:56 PM] star_gazer: Oklahoma is not messed up …..yet
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: n or s
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: I don’t hear anything but what is going on in Oklahoma
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: unless i jump on twitter and help spread the news
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: dont hear about any states
[7:57 PM] moose_mario: well repdan in ri politics. here its a total one party stranglehold we dont even get 2 lol
[7:57 PM] repdan: ok…BACK NOW
[7:57 PM] moose_mario: would like to hear his experience
[7:58 PM] anon1781: tell us “how bad it is” diverdan
[7:58 PM] moose_mario: ^^
[7:58 PM] anonrep: Anonymous: American Treason Alert
[7:58 PM] anonrep: http://ilegionnet.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/anonymous-american-treason-alert/
[7:58 PM] diabloanon: sexyfawkes lmfao
[7:58 PM] repdan: REAL bad… zero regard 4 the 10th Amendment…People’s apathy…
[7:58 PM] chichibonga: hahaha
[7:59 PM] repdan: We’ll have to do a …whoa…..boobs!
[7:59 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What are your plans for #J17 ?
[7:59 PM] star_gazer: yall boys are easiliy distracted
[7:59 PM] chichibonga: haah
[7:59 PM] anon1781: welcome to legion?
[7:59 PM] anon1781: lol
[7:59 PM] star_gazer: lol
[7:59 PM] anon1781: cryo lol
[7:59 PM] chichibonga: ooh theres titties i got my own set so im good
[8:00 PM] star_gazer: me too
[8:00 PM] repdan: Ok….regroup…we need to do a Ustream soon for talkie
[8:00 PM] repdan: Many important Q’s…2 much typing
[8:00 PM] anon1781: ustreams is cool, just one sided
[8:00 PM] star_gazer: I need a mast stat so I can take some pics
[8:01 PM] repdan: @1781. Recommendations?
[8:01 PM] star_gazer: jokes
[8:01 PM] anon1781: on here up to 16 people can cam and talk at once
[8:01 PM] anon1781: (maybe more, i’ve only seen up to 16
[8:01 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[8:01 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[8:01 PM] anon1781: but it allows for quick dialogue
[8:01 PM] anonrep left the room.
[8:01 PM] repdan: Rgr that, 1781.
[8:02 PM] chichibonga: nice pic
[8:02 PM] anon1781: next time, i’d like to make it a bit more formal
[8:02 PM] anon1781: i’ll send you a list of questions before we do it
[8:02 PM] anon1781: that i’ll be asking
[8:02 PM] anon1781: so you can prepare your answers mentally structured
[8:03 PM] chichibonga: we neeed some prodigy–to get all radical!!!
[8:03 PM] repdan: Good idea 1781. I’m down. Did an interview 2day on similiar stuff.
[8:03 PM] anon1781: we plan on recording it, and posting it
[8:03 PM] anon1781: and a challenge to any other governmentals
[8:03 PM] anon1781: to do the s
[8:03 PM] repdan: I welcome it, sir!
[8:03 PM] anon1781: same
[8:04 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: who was the interview with?
[8:04 PM] moose_mario left the room.
[8:04 PM] guest-946666 entered the room.
[8:04 PM] repdan: Station in Nashville…stand by . I;ll get the link
n
[8:04 PM] cryoanon left the room.
[8:05 PM] repdan: They r anons from Tn…Great interview.
[8:06 PM] anon1781: cool, it’s a date, sometime next week
[8:07 PM] datoneanon: its a date?
[8:07 PM] datoneanon: :P
[8:07 PM] anon1781: jelly?
[8:07 PM] anon1781: lol
[8:07 PM] datoneanon: a lil
[8:07 PM] repdan: Yepper! Date, Umadbro?
[8:07 PM] anon1781: go find ethersec lol, they
[8:07 PM] repdan: Lulz..
[8:07 PM] anon1781: will give ya hugs or some shit
[8:08 PM] repdan: Yay!
[8:08 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[8:09 PM] anon1781: alright, i’m out, tnx for this diver, will set up something better next week
[8:09 PM] anon1781: got some Ops to work on
[8:09 PM] anon1781: peace folks
[8:09 PM] repdan: Rgr that..Ty. Best
[8:09 PM] billrappleye left the room.
[8:09 PM] star_gazer: joined the group whiteboard.
[8:10 PM] dallison281: joined the group whiteboard.
[8:10 PM] star_gazer: joined the group whiteboard.
[8:10 PM] datoneanon: repdan howd you get elected as a libertarian, isnt that impossible
[8:10 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: Can you tell us any about your #J17 plans?
[8:11 PM] datoneanon: and that
[8:11 PM] repdan: @Daton….ran as as an (R) w/ Libertarian leanings.
[8:11 PM] chichibonga left the room.
[8:12 PM] guest-946930 entered the room.
[8:12 PM] guest-946930 changed nickname to chichibonga
[8:12 PM] repdan: @doug. Not at the moment..many enemies…OpSec
[8:12 PM] douglaslucas: Okay.
[8:13 PM] chichibonga: great song o neg
[8:13 PM] repdan: Any other Q’s B4 I call it a night for TinyChat, peeps?
[8:13 PM] douglaslucas: Is your eBook commission considering open curriculum possibilities like creative commons?
[8:14 PM] chichibonga left the room.
[8:14 PM] star_gazer left the room.
[8:14 PM] datoneanon left the room.
[8:15 PM] repdan: Thank you all for participating, and giving ur input.
[8:15 PM] repdan: More formal and structured chat soon.
[8:15 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: Thanks for doing this tinychat!
[8:15 PM] dallison281 left the room.
[8:16 PM] repdan: My pleasure, sir.
[8:17 PM] repdan: @repdangordon on the Twitter
[8:17 PM] diabloanon: Sorry I didnt say much, I appreciate you really trying to reach out and represent your
[8:17 PM] diabloanon: constituents
[8:17 PM] repdan left the room.
[8:17 PM] diabloanon left the room.
[8:17 PM] anon1781 left the room.

RI Rep Dan Gordon Tinychats with Anonymous, Others; Promises More Chats, #J17 Participation by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Attribute to “Douglas Lucas” or “www.DouglasLucas.com” or preferably both. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@douglaslucas.com.

This post is the seventh in a series of ten about my experiences at Clarion West Writers Workshop (Wikipedia) as a member of the 2008 class. I’ll talk about Week 5 of the workshop, when Sheree R. Thomas (New Book: Shotgun Lullabies; Wikipedia; Blog; NYT piece; NPR talk; Strange Horizons interview) instructed. Here are Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the series. In Part 6 I discussed Connie Willis‘s week (Week 4) and ended by noting my hopes for seeing my Clarionites soon. Indeed, in this post I’ll talk some about the #CW08beach reunion my class held in October 2011!

Sheree attended Clarion West in 1999, a year when, someone said (someone — my notes are unclear), the workshop got intense with pregnancies, people not showing up, manuscripts thrown angrily across the room at their authors, divorces, etc. Clarion’s not really for the faint-hearted; yet, deep-down, writers are faint-hearted folks. So the space station (Clarion West takes place on a secret orbital above Seattle) gets very pressurized.

Happens right here

During her 1999 year, for whatever reason, some students begged Chip Delaney to tell them if they “were” any “good.” Apparently Delaney didn’t want to do that, but eventually acquiesced because his experience as an MFA teacher (if I recall Sheree’s comments correctly) led him to believe it was bullshit to take people’s money for years and just feed them hot air the whole time. Delaney gave students the option of not hearing his opinion. (I’d flip a coin. Because you have to learn not to care.)

Sheree R. Thomas (via)

Early on, Sheree said she wasn’t going to “redline” anybody, because just one person’s opinion doesn’t mean jack, and because there’s no necessary connection between how well someone writes at Clarion and how well they do after Clarion.

How did I do at Clarion West? I wrote two great short stories there (here’s the finished Glenn of Green Gables), one kinda bad story, and grew up a lot, learned stuff. How have I done after? I’ve written 50-something lifestyle/infotainment pieces for CBS News, completed 3 really good new short stories and drafted 5+ more, sold zero of them (though they’ve earned a few Euros through Flattr), and blogged about 100 posts here (also earning a very few Flattr tips). I’m usefully obnoxious on Twitter, where manuscripts don’t fly across the room but subpoenas do; I haven’t earned one yet. It’s all a bit frustrating, though fun. In the time it’s taken me to write these seven posts, I’ve gotten married and am getting divorced; the main payoff of the marriage was growing a spine. Especially now as I live with roommates in a cheap, freezing-cold place that resembles some sort of heavy metal dungeon, and forage for necessary medications like a hunter-gatherer going after berries, I have become downright mean in a way I never anticipated.

Once I wrote this!

Back to Sheree. With the possible exception of Paul Park, she was the most blunt of our instructors, which I thought was great. At “infamous Week 5,” most Clarion classes descend into mayhem. Week 5 took our class and amalgamated it into a giant pile of snuggle. Which mostly was great (see below, our reunion, after all), but the quality of the critiquing by classmates went downhill. Sheree, who’s also a freelance editor, gave me a great tip in our one-on-one conference for getting critiques from people while bypassing the need for them to be any good at giving them. You simply hand them your manuscript and watch their faces as they read it. You see what emotions your story strikes, rather than hear their report about what emotions your story allegedly struck. (Obviously written critiques are useful too, yadda yadda yadda.) We didn’t get to watch Sheree’s face as she read our stories, but we didn’t need to. She was blunt, and appropriately so; one of my favorite instructors there, for sure.

Sheree listed a ton of resources for our class:

• PEN International
• Poetry Foundation
• Poetry Society of America
• Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Foundation
• NewPages.com
• Council of Literary Magazines and Presses
• Science Fiction Poetry Association
• State, Regional, and Jurisdictional Art Agencies
• The Speculative Literature Foundation
• Strange Horizons
• Subscribe to Locus Magazine!
• Subscribe to Publishers Weekly!
• Lewis Turco’s Book of Forms for poetry
• Paul Fussell’s Poetic Meter and Poetic Form

Sheree R. Thomas and young person (via)

In response to someone’s story — I forget whose — she suggested the True Porn anthology and the What the Fuck? anthology . She suggested to me Maryse Conde’s novel Crossing the Mangrove and Toni Morrison’s novel Love. When I asked in the one-on-one conference about making secondary characters more autonomous (so to speak), she suggested writing compellingly from the point of view of people who disagree with me would help me create more individuated secondary characters. (Shades of Lacan?)

Week 5 found people guessing about Chuck Palahniuk, the Week 6 instructor, who was the biggest name and biggest wildcard. All the other instructors had either taught a Clarion before or once went to a Clarion themselves — and often, both. But Palahniuk hadn’t done either (though he’s returning to teach in 2012).

Fast forward three years and shift to a sandy orbital above San Diego, where 14 of our 18 classmates showed up for a week-long reunion at a house on (the celestial version of) Mission Beach. That’s more than 75% of the class after three years; that shows some serious bonding. (And our email list is still active.) Our venerable classmate Pam Rentz organized the whole thing — a herculean effort for which we rewarded her with a gift that included a signed picture frame. We all got along really well at the reunion, though the trippy reunion vibe was slightly present, as at all reunions. Same people, but different, but same, so who am I? That kind of thing. We all had dinner together most nights at this huge dinner table. Small groups of us also did some in-person crit sessions, which was really cool.

This place rocked!

What happened there stays there

(Yours truly in black)

Silly as ever!

View from beachhouse! (via Carol Ryles)

You can find more CW08beach reunion pics at Pam’s dropbox.

I’m not sure what to conclude about my writing progress since Clarion West 2008. Though I haven’t finished much fiction, I feel good about my writing overall, but then again, I’m intrinsically an optimist. It’s reassuring to remember Cory Doctorow talking during Week 3 about it taking him several years after his Clarion West student year to finish a lot of fiction. But I don’t have to conclude yet; I still have 3 more posts in this series to go!

Clarion West 2008 – Part 7 of 10 by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@douglaslucas.com.

My experiences help explain why certain friends are unable to persuade me to muzzle myself for the sake of establishment (i.e. non-radical) political causes, though my abilities would come in handy for them, and though they aren’t necessarily bad. The non-radical emphasis on playing socially acceptable, vote- and donation-getting roles strikes me as one way scientific materialism and positivism are incomplete. Politically and socially toxic gadfly behavior, outspoken activism, and self-sacrifice — “where we’re effective is where we get the most pushback,” as Occupy Wall Street organizer Krystof Lopaur put it — don’t make sense from an evolutionary psychology standpoint; of course science might persuade me otherwise — but so far its attempts at explanations for extreme altruism read to me as more than convulted: they seem panicked. Idealism is spiritual. My focus on telling the truth underlies my writing. I don’t feel in sync with non-radical reformers. I feel more simpatico with anti-war protesters who set themselves on fire.

I put this picture here not to draw a comparison but as a reminder:

Mohamed Bouazizi

Here’s How to Really Do It by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@douglaslucas.com.

“YES, MY FRIEND-uh”

This Friday evening a group of maybe twenty folks have assembled at the corner of Berry and Cockrell to proselytize for Christianity; I happened to pass by and jump into live-blogging mode. The speakers from the group, some using English and one Spanish, have been speaking into a hand-held microphone and through a portable PA for easily an hour counting. They’re passing out pamphlets identifying themselves as The Door Christian Fellowship.

The pamphlet handed to me says, among other things, “Are your hopes and dreams unraveling? Are your finances stretched to the breaking point? We Care! and We Can Help! Join us for Life-Changing Services. Find out why Jesus Is The Answer!” It gives an address — 3011 Lackland Rd, Ft Worth, Texas — along with a phone number: (817) 377-1098.

“Douglas-uh, maybe you should move out of Texas-uh.”

They picked this particular street corner for obvious strategic reasons. It’s catty-cornered by the Texas Christian University strip, where clubs, restaurants, and the like entertain students. I don’t know if the group got a permit, or if they needed to, technically, or not. People walking or driving by have expressed various reactions — mostly happy honks and cheers, but a few jeers and some “SHUT THE F*#) UP”s.

“Can we go home yet?”

Here are some quotes from the speakers, 90+% accurate.

• I know there’s [sic] been advances in technology. The answer is not on Facebook, my friends. The answer is not on Twitter, my friends. There is [sic] real answers in God. Before I got saved, I used to look into all those kinds of — Buddhism, and all kinds of new age stuff. But the real answer was right here: Jesus Christ.

• On the outside, we’re dressed-up, my friend, we look like we’ve got it all together, but on the inside, my friend, you’re dying because of your sin. You wake up at night and wonder what will come tomorrow. On the inside, you cry yourself to sleep. You go from relationship to relationship because on the inside, you’re dirty. Jesus Christ will clean you. He wants to do that. The Bible says He will set you free. You can be set free from the lifestyle of drugs and alcohol. You can be set free from living for the next party, the next big thing. Jesus Christ can change who you are on the inside, my friend. Jesus can change you. He can change you, my friend, so you don’t have to end up like your parents.

• Your parents are paying for you to go to college, probably, and you’re wasting that money tonight by getting drunk so you can sleep with someone, maybe. But you will be free for real if you cry out to Jesus Christ!

• Maybe you’re a queer — it takes God to save you.

• God commanded us to go forth and preach the Gospel. We go all over the city and preach Jesus Christ. We’re not here tonight because we’re trying to put something on you. I love Fuzzy’s Tacos, my friend; amen, it’s nothing against anybody, my friend. We really care about you. We don’t want to see God put you in Hell.

• Accept Jesus before it’s too late. If you reject the perfect and living God, he will reject you for all eternity and send you to Hell.

It’s this same group (different day, different place in the same city):

They’ve just now put away their gear and dispersed. As they were packing up — I was typing this from the patio of Stay Wired! Coffeehouse and Computer Services — a guy and girl walked by, dressed up as Jedis, complete with lightsabers. Works for me.

Used without permission; please don’t go after me, buy Star Wars instead.

Sudden Jesus-ing in Fort Worth, Texas, at Berry & Cockrell by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.douglaslucas.com.

Clark Stoeckly‘s Wikileaks Truck Gets Pulled Over (Flickr; Twitter)

Hopefully you’ve read my prior post about searching WikiLeaks cables for literary topics, which WikiLeaks linked to on Twitter. If not, go read it real quick; I’ll wait.

Okay. At the time of that post, WikiLeaks was still redacting the US State Department cables they’d published, in conjunction with other media partners. A redaction is a removal of sensitive information from a document — in this case, mostly the names of informants (sometimes whistle-blowing informants, sometimes ill-intentioned informants). The worry motivating redactions was that bad guys (for lack of a better word) would retaliate against informants for their interaction(s) with the State Department. Just a few days after my post, WikiLeaks published all 250k+ of the State Department cables, raw, without redactions. Whoa, what happened?

When WikiLeaks was originally working with media partners on Cablegate, editor-in-chief Julian Assange gave an encrypted file of the cables to Guardian journalist (and confessed phone hacker) David Leigh, who later printed its password in his book (which prompted x7o to remark “#idliketothink that if JA had given me the password for cablegate, it wouldn’t now be the title of a chapter in an international bestseller”). The Guardian denies wrongdoing, claiming WikiLeaks told Leigh the password was temporary, which is technically impossible and not the sort of thing an elite cypherpunk such as Assange would mistakenly say. Other disasters, some not nearly as flagrant, combined and led to the file’s decryption by the dark sub-floor of the Internet.

Pretty soon all of the unredacted cables were springing up on websites (including at least one with a customized search engine), and taking up residence on popular file-sharing services. Therefore anyone motivated enough could locate them; some debate just how easily non-technical people could locate the unredacted cables, but really, it’s not that hard — especially for foreign intelligence agencies, computer-adept terrorists, etc.

In a surprising response to the rise of unredacted cables, WikiLeaks published the entire set of unredacted cables themselves, now known as Cablegate2. They also published a press statement:

PJ Crowley, State Department spokesman on the cables issue earlier this year, told AP on the 30th of August, 2011 that “any autocratic security service worth its salt” would probably already have the complete unredacted archive.

Two weeks ago, when it was discovered that information about the Leigh book had spread so much that it was about to be published in the German weekly Freitag, WikiLeaks took emergency action, asking the editor not allude to the Leigh book [...]

WikiLeaks advanced its regular publication schedule, to get as much of the material as possible into the hands of journalists and human rights lawyers who need it. WikiLeaks and its partners were scheduled to have published most of the Cablegate material by November 29, 2011 – one year since the first publication. Over the past week, we have published over 130,000 cables, mostly unclassified. The cables have lead to hundreds of important news stories around the world. All were unclassified with the exception of the Australian, Swedish collections, and a few others, which were scheduled by our partners.

WikiLeaks has also been in contact with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty at a senior level. We contacted the US embassy in London and then the State Department in Washington on 25 August to see if their informant notification program, instituted last year, was complete, and if not, to take such steps as would be helpful. Only after repeated attempts through high level channels and 36 hours after our first contact, did the State Department, although it had been made aware of the issue, respond. Cliff Johnson (a legal advisor at the Department of State) spoke to Julian Assange for 75 minutes, but the State Department decided not to meet in person to receive further information, which could not, at that stage, be safely transmitted over the telephone.

This is getting intense

Though these comments seem clear enough at first glance, they left some things unknown. Did WikiLeaks publish Cablegate2 to protect sources, as Glenn Greenwald stated? If so, how does the publication protect sources? What does Human Rights Watch and what does Amnesty International make of Cablegate2, and what did they advise WikiLeaks? Inquiring minds who have been supportive of WikiLeaks (a risky, though legal, thing in the US) deserve to know the full reasoning behind the Cablegate2 publication, I think, without any big steps in the argumentation left for educated guesses.

Some answers arrived today in a New Scientist interview with Assange. He specified three independent justifications for publishing Cablegate2.

• To protect at-risk people. Assange said: “for harm minimisation, there are people who need to know that they are mentioned in the material before intelligence agencies know they are mentioned — or at least as soon after as possible.”

• To establish an authentic version of Cablegate2. Assange “point[ed] to stories published in Tajikistan and Pakistan that have been based on fake cables.” [He said:] “WikiLeaks is a way for journalists and the public to check whether a claimed story based on a cable is actually true. They can come to our site to check. We have a 100 per cent accuracy record.”

• To help reformers racing against the corrupt’s clamping down. Assange: “a race commenced between the governments who need to be reformed and the people who can reform them using the material.”

When WikiLeaks first published Cablegate2, I, like WikiLeaks Crowd-Sourceress Asher_Wolf, had (and have) several concerns. Here are mine:

• WikiLeaks didn’t call for amnesty for at-risk, whistle-blowing informants.

• WikiLeaks didn’t apologize to at-risk, whistle-blowing informants.

• WikiLeaks apparently didn’t request public comment from Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International.

• WikiLeaks had only given a truncated remark about Cablegate2 protecting sources. With the New Scientist Assange interview this concern is now redressed.

You might respond that the first three concerns above can’t be redressed given WikiLeaks’ limited resources and the quantity of the cables, or maybe that redressing the three concerns isn’t WikiLeaks’ proper role as a conduit for whistle-blowing leakers, or maybe that addressing them would cause legal problems or PR problems for their brand (their reputation affects whether whistle-blowers trust them). I can understand those responses, though I’m not sure how to fully evaluate them. I do think WikiLeaks needs to do more for the named, whistle-blowing informants.

But after today’s New Scientist interview, I do feel that on balance, WikiLeaks did the right thing by publishing Cablegate2. I hope, however, that people and organizations of sufficient importance work toward protecting the named, whistle-blowing informants, and that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International weigh in publicly on WikiLeaks’ Cablegate2 publication (in which case I’ll consider their reasoning). After all, WikiLeaks followed the computer security community’s practice of widely publishing threats (viruses, etc.) that are already out in the wild since doing so, despite risk, solves problems more quickly; yet, assuming the same strategy extends to protecting people offline might be a problematic example of what Evgeny Morozov calls Internet-centrism: relying too much on technical knowledge when addressing problems not adequately described in technological terms.

Actually read this

As Clay Shirky says, in the United States, publishing leaked documents is basically legal (see New York Times v. United States as well as the First Amendment); it’s leaking them that’s often illegal (and risky). Today the Internet has lowered the costs associated with publishing. We with Internet connections are all now publishers, though not all journalists. While instituting legal licensing to determine who gets to be a publisher would be ridiculously bad for freedom, our larger bullhorns — especially those of the more prominent netizens among us — come with more serious responsibility than might be first imagined.

Older generations, I think, see publication itself as some measure of approval of the published content; in this view, WikiLeaks publishing the unredacted cables amounts to the organization approving of the lack of redactions. This view makes a degree of sense in the past world where the process of publication was expensive, time-consuming, and relatively uncommon.

But now, to use two metaphors each from a different science fiction writer (William Gibson, then Cory Doctorow), with the Internet the human race has sprouted an information exoskeleton, an outboard brain. If the principle “non-secure, online info available anywhere is available everywhere” isn’t completely true yet, it will be more or less true within a decade or, at most, two. This is the ideology of radical transparency. WikiLeaks is helping to usher in a world where not writing down secrets (or typing them out) will be the only way to keep them. That world, I think, will be one of reduced secrets and, accordingly, a better, more just one.

Concerns about WikiLeaks Cablegate2 Ameliorated by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.douglaslucas.com.

Clark Stoeckly‘s Wikileaks Truck on Flickr, Twitter

This week WikiLeaks published thousands more US diplomatic cables as part of its Cablegate operation. Among many other items, Cablegate has confirmed or revealed the following:

• Referring to the United States’ secret air strikes in Yemen, Yemen’s president promised US general David Petraeus that “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.” (Original Cable, Salon, BBC.)

• Though Canada publicly claimed opposition to the Iraq war “for domestic political reasons and out of a deep-seated Canadian commitment to multilateralism,” it secretly told the United States it was “prepared to be as helpful as possible in the military margins,” using Canadian naval and air forces “discreetly” on behalf of the US. (Original Cable, CBC News.)

• The United States ordered American diplomats to secretly and illegally collect top United Nations officials and others’ credit card numbers, biometric data (fingerprints, iris scans, DNA), passwords, and more. (Original Cable, NYT, Guardian.)

• In 2009 U.S. Senator John McCain promised Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi some American military hardware. (Original Cable, Politico.)

• Texas security contractor DynCorp pimped little boys to be raped by Afghan policemen at a DynCorp-organized party. (Original Cable, Houston Press, Guardian.)

Whoops

WikiLeaks initiated a crowdsourcing effort, #wlfind on Twitter, ensuring its latest cable releases would be looked through. Inspired by Furry Girl (Twitter), who put together a post about the latest cables in her area of expertise (sex work), I decided to do something similar for literary topics. If you’re eager to dig through some cables yourself, try this cablegate search engine, and then share your findings online.

(Also! Watch Glenn Greenwald defend Wikileaks and Julian Assange on CNN with this embed.)

I restricted my work to this most recent batch of cables. Here are the search results, and the total number of hits when I first searched, for: literature (665); literary (334); … wow! This is going to take more than one post.

Reading the below, one should bear in mind Evgeny Morozov‘s astute critique of Internet-centrism, a lazy perspective that ignores the importance of local cultures when interpreting material and instead focuses faith on technology. I’m not at all an expert on foreign countries, etc. I can only fish out cables with some literary significance in the hope others might benefit from them.

• In April 2006, a few months after gun-firing Chinese police in Dongzhou subdued villagers protesting land confiscations (WaPo), the American consulate in Guangzhou invoked a metaphor of Lu Xun‘s (“China’s most prominent modern author”): the Chinese sense, in the area, of rapid economic growth is that it “eats people.” From the cable (my link):

  in his “Diary of a Madman” short story [...] the supposedly mentally deranged narrator has looked at the whole of Chinese history and found its grandeur and power to be founded on the eating of people

  The cable claims

  there is a conscious attempt led in part by Guangzhou’s most progressive and highly influential magazine, the “Nanfengchuang” (the “South Wind Window”), to revive the spirit of the New Culture Movement of the 1920s of which Lu was a key figure

  The cable goes on to advocate for increased injections of humanities programs to teach core American democratic values. These, the cable argues, will make rapid economic growth in the area more humane. After all, the cable says,

  there is a very large audience for American literature and thought. American literature specialist Ernesto Suarez, our Fulbright Scholar at Guangzhou’s Zhongshan University, is in demand not only at Zhongshan but also at other institutions every weekend throughout China. Recently, the Shantou University English Language Department approached the Consulate about strengthening the American literature component of its program in line with the desire of students to learn not merely the language but also the values of the American people speaking that language.

  (Original Cable.)

  The Cold War-style argument that humanities talks and courses (apparently) alone can sufficiently soften the steamroll of global economics makes one worry (especially in light of other cables).

• A 2007 cable from the Beijing Embassy summarizes a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conference that included China’s suggestion that the US State Department study up on its Confucius.

  Spokesperson Qin Gang said at the March 8 regular press briefing that the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2006 issued today by China’s State Council Information Office serves as “a mirror for United States to view its own human rights condition” and “understand why it has no right to use double standards in criticizing other countries.” Qin continued, saying the MFA would give the State Department copies of the “Four Books and Five Classics” of Chinese literature as a guide to good governance. Asked if the report constituted a double standard on China’s part by interfering in the domestic affairs of the United States, Qin referred the reporter to his previous statement.

  (Original Cable.)

  The Confucian work “Four Books and Five Classics” praises feudal values.

• A 2008 cable from Taiwan noted growth in the market for simplified-character Chinese books as government restrictions on the products loosened and more translations of foreign books into Chinese were imported from mainland China.

  A survey done by local book dealers in 2006 showed that 50 percent of simplified-character Chinese books sold in Taiwan are on literature, history, and philosophy; 10 percent on social science, law, politics, and the military; 10 percent on Chinese medicine and art; 10 percent on education, finance and engineering; with the remainder on tourism and other topics. As for the consumers, Chu Fu-ming, head of the Eslite flagship bookstore’s simplified-character Chinese book section, told AIT, “those who buy simplified-character Chinese books are mostly intellectuals and academics. Only 20 percent of the buyers are in their twenties, while 40 percent are in their thirties and forties, and the remaining 40 percent are over 50 years old. Older people are especially noticeable because they come in the mornings and spend a long time poring carefully over selections,” Wu observed, with “history books being the most popular.”

  The cable worries about simplified-character textbooks supplanting US textbooks more and more, since Chinese college professors were finding the former less expensive and easier to assign.

  (Original Cable.)

• In the Chinese city of Zhenjiang, readers of Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Pearl Buck (Mike Wallace interview; Nobel write-up), who spent much of her time in China, worried, according to a 2008 cable, that Buck wasn’t getting enough attention in the United States.

  Comment: Zhenjiang’s fervor for its long-ago American “daughter” points to possibilities for the upcoming celebrations of the 30th anniversary of U.S.-China relations.

  (Original Cable.)

• A 2003 cable cited “the latest Human Development Report on the Arab states” as noting

  The economic, political, artistic, and literary creativity of the Arab states are being stifled by the exclusion of women, among other factors. As an example, the report notes that Turkey alone published more works of creative literature over the past year than the entire Arab world combined.

  (Original Cable.)

  Female Turkish novelist Elif Shafak spoke at a 2010 TED conference on the ability of fiction to overcome identity politics.

• A 2003 cable said although “European public opinion may be skeptical about the politics of GOT joining the European Union, [...] civil society has shown that sharing space with Turkey in the
  cultural realm is as natural as can be.” The cable cited the European popularity of Istanbul-born novelist Orhan Pamuk as evidence of Turkey’s “de facto integration into European cultural life.”

  His recent novel “My Name is Red” won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003; this award was the latest in a series of European honors dating back to his 1991 Prix de la Decouverte Europeenne for the French translation of his second novel, “Sessiz_Ev” (“The Quiet House”).

  (Original Cable.)

• With a 2005 cable, the American embassy in Tel Aviv took note of an editorial referencing Egyptian playwright Ali Salem:

  “We have already seen that both Israel and Egypt generally obey when there is an American scolding…. Why not initiate, for example, the award of an honorary doctorate by an American university to Ali Salem for his contribution to peace between the peoples?”

  (Original Cable.)

  The original op-ed can be found here.

• According to a 2006 cable, staff from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Director-General’s office “held misperceptions” about the World Digital Library, “a project to put rare and remote items on the web.” The staff worried over Google’s involvement, saying it troubled European nations, and that the countries might be more receptive to a UNESCO label.

  (Original Cable.)

Thus far I’ve come away with the impression that the United States strongly believes spreading American culture is an effective way to spread its core democratic values, but other countries often see this as hypocritical given the States’ frequent disregard of those values. If you’re interested in reading more about that, I recommend Evgeny Morozov’s book The Net Delusion. Another observation: writers and their work do make more of an impact in international politics than you might suspect.

Searching Wikileaks Cables for Literary Topics, First of Many by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.douglaslucas.com.

Can your ears “reach into” the chord and pick out all three notes? (Test yourself by singing or humming each one individually.) Or do you just hear the chord as a composite? It’s easier when someone plays the notes together and then separately, as above. If you want a real challenge, go mash down a bunch of random piano keys (a “tone cluster”); then, without releasing the keys, try to sing or hum each note separately.

Do you hear a few huge, blocky piano chords, or do you hear hundreds of individual notes also? Serious music students have a hard time distinguishing all the different notes, too, so much so that they sometimes refer to ear-training courses as “fear-training” or “ear-straining.”

My understanding — and this might be wrong — is that, with chords, the mind (on some level at least) hears both composite sounds and individual tones at once, always. So maybe in your subconscious you’re hearing it all. I’m still leaving out overtones and features such as vibrato.

This is my brain. Not joking; the MRI people copied me a DVD.

I’m also unsure of whether the conscious mind, hearing chordal music, rapidly switches its focus from one individual note to another (and the composite waveform) or if it’s truly capable of hearing multiple tracks at once. (If I had to guess, I don’t think the conscious mind attends to much of anything with perfect simultaneity, when you drill down to individual instants, simply due to latency limitations of the physical nervous system.) For whatever it’s worth, computers can only complete one task at a time — they just switch between them so quickly we imagine they’re “multi-tasking.”

Even when people don’t have good ears for music (by which I don’t mean they’re literally tone-deaf, just that they aren’t highly skilled at perceiving details of audio), we typically say they can identify for themselves whether a piece of music is “good” or not. Of course it’s really their subjective experience of the music that they’re labeling as good or bad.

We don’t extend the same leeway to people evaluating visual art, however. We don’t expect someone with bad vision (and no corrective lenses) to make astute judgments about a painting they can’t see well. (A good way to train the eyes, by the way, is field-guiding.)

Who?

Why the double standard? I think because most of us are more familiar with sight; most of us live our entire lives without wondering about our ability to discern pitches in the audio we take in.

Once, a long time ago, my friend Bryan told me he only heard heavy metal as a kind of static-y noise. He couldn’t identify its pitches; later, after repeated listening, he could hear them. Try it yourself: here’s an instrumental Metallica song, Orion, as originally recorded. Skip ahead to :56 if you want to cut to the chase and get past the quiet intro.

Do you hear the bass guitar and the multiple notes of the multiple guitars? Or is it just one moving block of sound with drums banging away? People do in fact hear it quite differently. Now try the same (well, practically the same) music played on piano (by the fantastic Vika Yermolyeva). Generally people hear pianos more clearly than other instruments.

I think current research says babies are pretty much always born with perfect pitch, also known as absolute pitch — the ability to distinguish and name notes. To someone with perfect pitch (who has also learned the Western musical alphabet), a guitar string vibrating at 440 hertz produces an A, not just a sound. (Perfect pitch doesn’t mean singing in tune; it might help someone sing in tune, but perfect pitch is a perceptual skill, not a skill involving the voice box, diaphragm, tongue, etc.) Growing up, children aren’t taught to associate the notes they hear with a musical alphabet, and so their perfect pitch fades away. Some adults can indeed learn it, though.

Basic ear-training makes music more enjoyable even for non-musicians. Now, go smush down some piano keys.

Intro to Ear Training, Fear Training, Ear Straining by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.douglaslucas.com.

So as some sort of ‘cautious supporter at a distance’ (or whatever) of Wikileaks — and especially of journos and fiction-writers bravely discussing radical transparency, technology, civil liberties — I got excited about what at first appeared, on the Wikileaks Central website here, to be a vague “Global WikiLeaks support rally.” Anyone apparently can claim one of these things, not unlike this or that tea party or this or that libertation front meeting. I put the date, time, and place (16 Feb, 7pm, the University of Houston Main Campus University Center Room 242) on my calendar and waited a good month or so for the day to arrive. I didn’t even research the event, really, let alone its periphery.

Though it was hard to miss this headline on the event(s) webpage at the World Socialist Web Site:

Imperialist diplomacy exposed: Behind the witch-hunt of WikiLeaks.

Really? Some dudes in Houston (and elsewhere!) have discerned the one and only witch-hunt and they’re going to expose it? Ah, but being charitable as I am, and being forewarned as I am about the loose nature of de-centralized rallies/discussions, I decided just to show up, see who’d be there, what’d happen there, benefit of the doubt and all.

A day or two before driving down to Houston, I double-checked the event’s meager webpage at the World Socialist Web Site (not Wikileaks Central) and noticed a name had been slotted in as a “Speaker”: Joe Kishore. (I think I have the timeline of these webpage changes accurate from memory, but if you find any cache or archive discrepancies, please tell in the comments.)

I ripped this image of Joe Kishore off the World Socialist Web Site since they don’t believe in property

I found his Twitter username and included it in a public tweet spanning Wikileaks-related hashtags in search of other people who might be attending. Kishore responded:

I SEE YOU TOO

Not long after this exchange, the World Socialist Web Site added an additional sentence describing the Houston event: “The topic of this meeting has been changed to The Revolution in Egypt.” Maybe I’m imagining things, but it is relevant to point out that anyone can find out with two clicks on Twitter that my wife works as a television producer, and this event started as a political rally seeking attention. As for the Wikileaks Central page, they continued (and still continue) to describe the Houston meeting as a “support rally” and a “discuss[ion]“.

The day of the event, I used one of my school’s faculty restrooms to change out of my Clark Kent button-down & slacks and into a comfortable pair of blue jeans, my trusty O9 F9 T-shirt, and a hoodie-like thing with a “BLAME IT ON THE MEDIA” button in place of a flag pin. (Blame everything on the mediated nature of higher-order human consciousness!) And I got into my little hatchback and off through the Republic of Texas I went.

At about 8:00pm — missing all of the event except the last few Q&As! — I entered the room with my camera around my neck and my briefcase and, as quietly as possible so as not to distract anyone, made my way to the back of the room and took a chair. I decided photography would be rude, since I was such a late arrival, so unfortunately, no pictures here. But from memory, the demographics of the audience: about 15 students of the typical college age, late teens to early to mid-twenties, mostly non-white, males and females equally visible. I don’t think there were any professors in the room, as there sometimes are at talks. There were, however, two middle-aged white guys accompanying the National Secretary, Houston locals I think. Kishore told me later he was thirty.

I really only heard two or three audience questions. With one, a young woman asked about similar events elsewhere in the Middle East, and I was thinking, that’s what Twitter’s for, not really paying attention, as I was jacking-in to Twitter myself, tethering with my iPhone. Also I seem to remember a young man sitting across the aisle from me rising, shaking his head as if thinking this National Socialist Secretary Dude is kind of legit but also kind of wack, and then hastening out of the room, despite Kishore’s call for him to buy a pamphlet or sign up for an email list or something. But again, I don’t remember this all too clearly. I’d just driven about 5 hours and sat down and jacked-in, surrounded by an in-progress discussion.

Kishore asked if there were any more questions, and I asked what his Socialist Equality Party’s take was on the Pirate Party that has had some success in Sweden and is (sorta) beginning to appear in the USA, as well as for his party’s take on reform-minded alliances between progressive groups and libertarian groups, which is drawing the attention of some Wikileaks supporters &tc.?

Well, Kishore replied, incremental reform is window-dressing, coalition-building is white-washing, because we the people need revolution, one undergirded by a no-compromise socialist cultural movement; pamphlets on sale in the back would explain further.

Meeting adjourned, he said.

“The American Student Loan Racket“; at least this image is aligned left

I didn’t quite believe my ears. Revolution? Huh? Seriously, you think you are going to sell that in the ballot box to Americans with food in their stomachs and roofs over their heads, today, right now? That’s your political platform? If you’re really working in politics, you’re not a revolutionary, you’re a reformer. No wonder the Socialist Equality Party achieves only 0.000000000001% of the vote (if that) with their contradictions.

I stayed for a while as the ~15 students trickled out, talking with National Secretary Kishore and his two friends, er, comrades. (So at this point everyone in the room is male and thoroughly bourgeois.) I gave the Socialist Equality Party $2 in cash to get a pamphlet (pictured left) that attacks the student loan industry, as a dark-humor gag gift for Wifely Kate; hopefully that $2 doesn’t count as material support for anything illegal. (It did strike me as goofy that the pamphlets weren’t free, but I decided not to ask.)

I questioned the three guys on their Trostsky-ite philosophy, and they “refudiated” my points each in their own way. Kishore spoke in quotes, often picking up pamphlets to find them, and sometimes ducked aside enigmatically for cell phone communiques. One of the other two just stared at me silently with those all-seeing/sightless eyes I know too well from having interacted with Scientologists (a tiny bit) and with Ayn Rand-ers (way too much). The third seemed very, very nervous, fidgeting, trying to figure out which world he belonged to. Eventually — I forget on whose suggestion — we decided to go to a nearby sports bar to continue talking. Again, I try to be charitable and support everyone’s right to be weird, you know? And, having mentioned this event to so many others beforehand, I felt a writer’s duty to plumb its depths.

Leaving the main of the campus, I started asking the 5 W’s and 1 H: Who What When Where Why and How. That was when the bad vibes I was getting began crescendo-ing; like I said, I can be overly generous and charitable when interpreting others’ behavior. I asked how they got ahold of the room. The very, very nervous man said this was their second time at the University of Houston, and so far, the school hadn’t been ruffled by their Socialist Equality Party name — he seemed to imply, darkly, that such problems were not uncommon in the capitalist United States. (I saw Steve Best, a self-appointed spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Front, give a talk at Texas Christian University; I don’t think the Socialist Equality Party has much to worry about on this room issue besides paying any pertinent bills.) These three guys only mentioned their first names when they introduced themselves. You know, creepy stuff like that. But I pushed forward in the conversation, circling in on the logical flaws of, you know, burning the entire world to the ground and starting from zero.

Like, “You support democratic decision-making, but since as you say that requires an educated populace, how are you going to teach a bunch of people with infrastructure in collapse?” Kishore: “You can educate people in a hurry.” And I should have said, “Yeah, when you have all the bananas and education means agreeing with you.” This was the place where we parted ways.

When I returned home, I finally got to googling some of the event’s periphery:

Not a good sign.

Joe Kishore of the Socialist Equality Party apparently shares the chairperson title with David North, and plenty of stops on the Intertubes, such as this LJ post, this Usenet thread, and this blog post allege David North = David W. Green, rich CEO of a capitalist publishing operation, Grand River Printing & Imaging. They assert David W. Green is making money of these pamphlets and expected donations from members, using Joe Kishore as his (un?)witting mouthpiece. Maybe those posts are wrong. Like the X-Files TV show says, “The Truth Is Out There” — but I’m too disgusted to look for it.

Three things remain. One, when I was deeply involved in the most hardcore of the Ayn Rand groups as a teenager, somebody else inadvertently sparked my getting out of it by means of pranking one of our online meetings with humor, and then, when I messaged him directly to say “Help,” he talked with me — selflessly — for hours, assuring me I’d still find friends once I got out of that twisted group, to which he too used to belong. So I feel an obligation to post this in case any of those three guys (or their associates) are looking for some words to help them find their way out. (Though I do not wish to communicate with the three I met personally.)

And second, it’s all so easy to assume your in-groups are normal, and your out-groups are somehow wrongly weird. You don’t need Foucault or Wittgenstein to see the problem here, you just need courage. Pick your most cherished affiliation — religious, political, whatever. Question yourself about it, in writing maybe. Eventually you’ll learn that human beings fashion narratives to survive; they need story-lines to manage their surroundings. Narratives edit out other possibilities (“this is the story, not that”); they provide absolutes for a while, even for centuries, and you must use them to function. But everything in reality is in flux, so narratives are always deficient. Flexibility with narratives is a life skill essential to writers, and to anyone who doesn’t want to remain locked on their own island, surrounded by a wall, screaming at the world and its groups to get off their lawn as the number of people who will stay beside them declines and declines.

And third: this, I think, is why so few Americans actually participate in local politics, where their actions can make an enormous difference, and escape to national or global politics, where it’s easy to point fingers at situations you *actually* know very little about. It’s so easy to refuse the challenge of interacting with compassion and empathy to understand one another in person, learn from one another’s partisan divides, … and to instead riff on stereotypes about how so many of “those people” over on the other side of the world are, you know, weird. That’s the easy way out, the easy way to become anchored to a nice safe island that has nothing on it.

So on Feb 16 2011, did the Socialist Equality Party take over a de-centralized pro-Wikileaks rally in order to gain followers and money? Yes, just like we all go to de-centralized places in order to profit in various ways. The difference is that, from what I can tell, people in the Socialist Equality Party are interested in cold hard private-property cash, and they’re lying about it. Even down to David North’s very name. Then again, I wasn’t there for the whole thing. None of us ever are.

Sometimes I write essays about brainy stuff I ponder throughout the day, but these often turn out poorly, I think because to say brainy stuff clearly, the writing needs academic rigor or anyway a lot of revision — which isn’t much an option for frequent blogging, as I wish to do. On the other hand, the brainy posts seem to turn out well at times. But what the heck do I know? When people tell me which of my writings they prefer, their opinions always differ, which is actually kinda fun. I try not to pay others’ opinions too much mind unless they point out something I need to hear.

I agree with this comment I received from “Hunny” on a recent post:

Send a fun blog for goodness sake! These last two are so serious my eyeballs are tired!!

Sometimes I write little bits about my life, my and Kate’s life, and people enjoy those.

Remember this one?

I have a hard time sharing personal things on this blog, however — which is surprising, maybe, given how much I babble in person; but, I feel to do justice to the personal stuff, I need to save it for my fiction & my more artistic nonfiction, which I labor over for a long, long time and submit to magazines.

Looking at visitor statistics (thanks, GoSquared!) tells me this blog receives a non-trivial amount of actual-human traffic. I have a bit of a bullhorn here, and could really make it into something important. There are plenty of very serious, very critical things in my personal history and in my daily life — stuff I’ve basically kept offline — that I could write little pieces about and really open people’s eyes for the good. Some of y’all probably know the issues I’m alluding to. I feel reticent to blog about them. The timing’s not quite right (several pieces of my life are settling into place; it won’t take too much longer, and I don’t want to interrupt the process by stirring up any more controversy than I already do). And again, I set a much higher bar for the fiction and artistic nonfiction I submit to magazines — such work incorporates the material I allude to — and it seems these serious topics deserve that higher bar.

I have to say my Clarion West comrade Pam Rentz does a great job writing short and sweet posts about small experiences in her life, employing humor and insight. I could try her approach, though it’d be difficult for me. Might teach me how to focus on just a few things at a time.

Wifely Kate says I have this desire somewhere in me to prove myself as a writer without relying on what I consider too much of my personal experience (the offline items). That I want to fabricate work out of thin air so I feel I’m a good, creative writer independent of my personal experience, that I want to see my writing ability interest people, not just my personal experience. She’s probably right that my mind sets up this stupid dichotomy sometimes.

This is my brain. Not joking; the MRI people copied me a DVD.

There’s another problem. Often I hide behind intellectualizing. My sentences get too long, too many words get Latinate instead of Anglo-Saxon, I beat around the bush. Not that I should dumb things down, but I could be more direct. In my writing this problem shows up because, again, there’s a lot of stuff I feel I can’t say just yet (I will though), and for the same material I want to give it better treatment than a frequently-updated blog can probably handle.

I really, really enjoy writing (and re-reading) my digest posts. Appeals to my aspirational Te, if I remember that Myers-Briggs stuff correctly. Cory Doctorow told my Clarion West class his blog Boing Boing (well, he’s a co-editor there) — mostly an aggregation blog, like my digest posts — serves him as an “outboard brain” where he can keep track of interesting items he runs across. My digests work that way for me, too. I often search it to find items I can’t remember fully. So yeah, the digests make a nice place to stick interesting webpages I run across, rather than bombarding my friends with emails linking to them. Plus I sense the digests expose people of one persuasion to items of related or different persuasions. Which is healthy for everyone. It might be less time-consuming, overall, to post the digests more frequently — maybe once a day, as the New Yorker Book Bench does and as DailyKos somewhat does — but I haven’t gotten there yet. Would be cool if I could set up some shortcuts in my Google Reader to speed up writing the digests. On the other hand, more and more, Twitter is serving the aggregating function for the Intertubes better than feeds and blogs, leaving blogs for long-form posts — monkey wrench in my digests, this knowledge.

I also do these informal sorta-reportage posts, as with this one and this one and even this one. These prove popular, visitor stats say, though popular isn’t really the point. It’s just nice to be able to talk with people via my blog. My posts on my Clarion West experience excite people, for instance.

Some blogger-writers who do a lot of aggregation, such as Maud Newton, sometimes feel a bit too impersonal to me, with their online presence I mean — no offense intended. No matter what happens with my writing, I always want to tweet pictures of my cats and blog poorly written, brainy rambles. Like, leave me alone to do my own thing, you know? I don’t ever want to be a business. Still, focusing my blog would help me post more. Posting is fun and gives me a sense of pride.

I could really use some suggestions here, if anyone has them — even if it’s just mentioning what types of posts of mine you most enjoy.

Randomly I’ll mention that I’ve been experiencing one of my infrequent, short-lived bouts of sadness and aloofness, which, lately, have been sending me to listen to some Alanis Morissette music that strikes me as ghostly. The experiences don’t consist so much of depression as the feeling of anomie, not knowing exactly where I am. Pieces of my life up in the air. Always these moods make me wonder: Where am I? And I don’t even know what that means. Anyway, here’s one of the songs:

This post is the sixth in a series of ten about my experiences at Clarion West Writers Workshop (Wikipedia) as a member of the 2008 class. I’ll talk about Week 4 of the workshop, when Connie Willis (Wikipedia) instructed. Here are Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the series. In Part 5 I discussed Cory Doctorow‘s week and ended with a somewhat bizarre dismantling of my psyche. This post is quite the opposite: I brag. Bear with!

“Total exhaustion is the goal,” Mary Rosenblum said, teaching Clarion West during our Week 2, and by Connie’s Week 4 I was totally exhausted; that’s clear to me now as I read over the emails I sent friends and family during that middle of July ’08. In those emails I also now detect a down-on-myself attitude about my fiction-writing, one that I don’t particularly experience anymore (knock on wood). These days I get dejected or grumpy about my fiction-writing at times, of course, but I don’t feel such negativity, pessimism, or bewilderment about the whole process. I have strong confidence in my abilities, and faith that new stories will turn out right eventually, that I’ll be able to revise them into artworks I’m proud of. That confidence is due in part to Wifely Kate, additional and diverse employment experiences, and other factors; but, a huge chunk of it has definitely come from Clarion West. This benefit from Clarion West took a long time to set in; I’ve had to incorporate what all I learned into my writing and my life, and that took me quite a while.

Outside the Clarion West spaceship: replica of Seattle

The additional confidence from Clarion West hasn’t derived so much from the grab-bag of tips I picked up from the instructors or my fellow students (though these have helped!), nor was it any sort of confirming validation that other Clarionites sometimes mention. I gained so much, I think, from the way a Clarion workshop primarily focuses on the process of revision, not creating an ultimate and spotless draft; and, second, making weird friends who accept me for my weirdness-es was an invaluable gift. As Kate puts it, I found my people, my tribe.

’08 Clarionites L to R: Kira Walsh, Carlton Mellick III, Caren Gussoff, Theresa DeLucci, Pritpaul Bains

About Clarion’s focus on revision — writing and life are pretty much driven by storytelling, or at least by motifs that recur and recur, carrying with them their old meanings and acquiring new ones as they go. I’ll have more to say about how this works when I get to my Week 6 post (the forthcoming Part 8), but for now, the emphasis on revision, the way instructors and fellow students took specific elements of stories and suggested specific changes (with reasons!), gave a real sense that one’s own fiction can work, after all, that the poor draft you wrote does indeed have potential in it. There’s a real feeling of hope there.

Which is why I shouldn’t have been so down on myself. My Week 4 short story was an unfortunately convoluted mystery. I came up with the story from absolute scratch — not even a vague idea of the story before the workshop — which was a specific challenge I’d set myself before arriving at the space station (the Workshop mysteriously floats in orbit over Seattle). In the emails, instead of feeling glad I about actually succeeding at this task I’d set myself, I was all down on how the story didn’t “work.” Well, pretty much no first draft ever works. And, no matter how bungled, the first draft had cool ideas. Why be so negative?

Connie told us it took her eight years of writing before she sold a story; she also asked each of us to tell the group how we started writing. The answers varied; some knew since birth, it seemed, and others were late bloomers. Me? I wanted to be a writer as a kindergartner, but soon switched my hoped-for career to astronaut; in middle school I made up stories often, but then switched to music. When for various reasons I determined a music career was not for me, I tried writing again, and after a few months, maybe even only after a full year, I began to enjoy it. I hope people reading this who are searching for their own directions, whether as a writer or otherwise, come to feel patient with their search. Often — and the psychologist Csíkszentmihályi (gloriously pronounced “Chick-sent-me-high”) makes this point — it can take learning time before you enjoy a career path. For many, beginning to play, for example, tennis (maybe at the behest of a friend) isn’t very fun: all those frustrating, misguided racket swings and terrible serves. But once you can get to where you can actually play not too shabbily, the fun and satisfaction finally starts setting in. If you give up on a career path without giving yourself time to get some basic proficiency, you probably haven’t really tried at all.

Picture stolen from Connie’s website

More about Connie. She’s a frequent master of ceremonies at science fiction & fantasy events, a respected dame in the field. She was one of the instructors who hung around our quarters of the space station in her spare time, answering questions and just visiting. Before I went to the Workshop, I read one book by each instructor; for her I selected Passage. The book was fast-paced and straightforwardly written — and also very moving. Highly recommended. She’s a real expert at plot.

Her advice mostly centered on plot, too. Here are some of her tips I collected; she gave the caveat that her advice was only her advice, that we should feel, like Agatha Christie, free to break any rules.

But I should note first that during Week 4 an anonymous friend sent me a replacement copy of Peter Straub‘s If You Could See Me Now; the copy I brought with me, oddly, was missing a page. I found it helpful to have a book with me that was totally unrelated to Clarion West. Really reading it was impossible, due to the total exhaustion, but being able to dip into a page here or there and disappear from the Workshop was refreshing.

Anyhow: tips from Connie Willis:

• Connie’s definition of plot: “A constantly surprising chain of events with each new scene turning the story to a new point where the logical occurs, unforeseen by the reader.”

• Unremitting horror exhausts readers. Use contrast!

• The perfect title means one thing when you start the story, and by the end of the story, it means another. It should be evocative, it should add something to the story, and it should have both literal and figurative meaning(s).

• PG Wodehouse claimed a 7500 word story needs two big reversals: one at 1500 words, one at 6000 words.

• If some things in the story are complicated, make other things simple.

• Develop a good filing system (for research and ideas, e.g.)!

• Fix one aspect at a time when you revise.

• When you read fiction or watch film, look for reversals, raising the stakes (“things get worse”), foreshadowing, climax, dénouement, interior conflict, exterior conflict. Study extensively the books you know well and admire.

Connie also gave us each a critique coupon to snail-mail her along with a short story or novel opening, if we wanted. Finally, a tidbit: in interviews she’s mentioned that when she was very young, she read the fiction section at her local library in alphabetical order. At the space station I asked her how far she made it through the alphabet. I believe her answer was H, that reading Heinlein made her switch to reading all the library’s science fiction.

As I’ve said throughout this series, writing these Clarion West posts induces in me a unique sort of stress that I don’t fully understand; I feel, maybe, as if I’m just not describing the time well enough, not at all portraying just how transformative and wonderful the Workshop was — that these posts are somehow doing violence to a great gestalt from a time that’s gradually starting to feel like long ago. Maybe that’s why I delay these posts: to hang on to my Clarion West experience.

One thing that continues on, however, are my classmates, our relationships. They’re all people I treasure; mostly we keep in touch, sometimes through our email list, sometimes with individual phone calls, even trips here and there.

One way or another, see y’all special Clarionites soon. ;-)