Giving Thanks

November 26th, 2008, by The Angry Drunk

Tomorrow, in the U.S. at least, is Thanksgiving. It may be dif­fi­cult to tell some­times based on con­ven­tional obser­vance and media cov­er­age but there is a deeper mean­ing to this hol­i­day than four day week­ends, shop­ping and gorg­ing one­self on roasted fowl. Thanksgiving is about reflect­ing on what you are thank­ful for; although given the econ­omy, the two wars that we’re engaged in, and the dete­ri­o­rat­ing envi­ron­ment it may some­times be dif­fi­cult to find things to be thank­ful for.

In the true spirit of the hol­i­day, I want to reflect a lit­tle bit on what I am thank­ful for. There are many things I could write here, but I won’t. It’s too easy to make a facile list of ways in which I may hap­pen to be bet­ter off than the aver­age chump. Instead, I want to focus on the one thing that I am truly and hon­estly thank­ful for.

I am thank­ful for the friends in my life.

That’s it. It’s the bonds that we form with peo­ple in this world that bind us in the world; and true friends are the purest form of those bonds. I am lucky to have a great set of friends; both in

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More Reflections On ‘Social Networking’ and a Shameless Plug

August 19th, 2008, by The Angry Drunk

A cou­ple of posts back I went on one of my semi-annual rants about “social net­work­ing” and the fact that the New Media Douchebag con­tin­gent that most pro­motes “social” tech­nol­ogy is the group that least gets it. The group of friends that I men­tioned in that pre­vi­ous post is a great exam­ple of peo­ple using “social net­work­ing” (in their case MySpace) to enhance, rather than replace actual rela­tion­ships. For us, MySpace is basi­cally noth­ing more than a com­mu­nity mes­sage board, where we can post point­less lit­tle mes­sages or coor­di­nate a happy hour. The real rela­tion­ships are based in the real world.

There is another group of friends that I have that are uti­liz­ing “social net­work­ing” (again in the form of MySpace). This group is orthog­o­nal to the first group I men­tioned, but they illus­trate the other way that ser­vices like MySpace and Facebook can actu­ally act to bring peo­ple closer rather than act as a way for mar­keters to gather vast audi­ences. This group is com­prised of peo­ple whom I have know, who I still con­sider friends, but who have drifted out of my life for one rea­son or another. MySpace is giv­ing us a fairly sim­ple way

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Here’s One for All the New Media Douchebags in the House.

August 7th, 2008, by The Angry Drunk

So, I’m sit­ting here in my office, work­ing dili­gently (seri­ously, for any poten­tial employ­ers out there, I’m work­ing my ass off). I’m also see­ing tweets fly by, and read­ing blog posts by Robert “I have more fol­low­ers that God (lit­er­ally, 31,617 vs 600 as of this post­ing)” Scoble shilling the lat­est New Media Douchebag Approved™ social blog­ging net­work what­ever. Meanwhile, over in my email client a funny thing is hap­pen­ing. People I know, peo­ple I would even go so far as to call friends are email­ing back and forth, plan­ning a happy hour gath­er­ing for tomor­row (and inci­den­tally accus­ing each other of being either hip­pies or red-necks).

Email! I know, it’s fuck­ing shock­ing. I mean, it’s so 1990’s. No Loopt, no Twitter, not even a dynamic group blog lever­ag­ing social net­works. Fucking email. Even worse, and I’m embar­rassed to admit this, some of us will actu­ally tele­phone peo­ple not on the mail­ing list to give them the heads up. We may even use landlines.

The point behind the snark here? This is what actual friends do; and this is the point that the New Media Douchebags fail to miss. Things like Twitter, and MySpace, and blogs, and Loopt are there

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Wisdom From Nerdistan

November 29th, 2007, by The Angry Drunk

Today’s par­tic­u­lar hang­over has blunted the all-encompassing rage a bit; so even I have to admit that this piece by Cory Doctorow in InformationWeek is dead on. It prob­a­bly explains why I have a grand total of 6 MySpace friends; and of those, one is myth­i­cal proto-hominid and one is a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. Or it could be that winos aren’t known for their com­puter savvy.

Note to self…check if drunk​space​.com is taken.

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Valentine’s Day

February 14th, 2007, by The Angry Drunk

And here we are on Valentine’s Day, the national hol­i­day of florists, Hallmark and the cock-suckers at DeBeers. Well, fuck dia­monds, fuck “greet­ing” cards and fuck dead flow­ers. But to my true friends, to the ones that I love and adore.… Thank you for being in my life. May you live as long as you love, and love as long as you live.

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Friends

January 23rd, 2007, by The Angry Drunk

Which is bet­ter, to have many peo­ple you call “friends,” or just a few that you hold dear in your heart? It seems to me that, for ages, soci­ety has told us that we’re not wor­thy unless we’re loved by many. Media tells us that being alone is a hor­ri­ble thing. If some­one dies, and only a few peo­ple attend the ser­vice, it’s sad. It doesn’t mat­ter if the peo­ple who pro­fess to be your “friend” are as phony as a three dol­lar bill, it’s just impor­tant that they all say they’re your buddy. Back when Sail Inn was still open, I would have said that I had lots of friends; and I would have been wrong. The truth is, there are only a few peo­ple in the world that I truly love, that I would call “friend,” and I’m fine with that. For any­one com­ing into this inter­net tide-water via MySpace, real­ize that I’m not con­dem­ing those who’s list of friends counts in the hun­dreds. Everyone is dif­fer­ent, and I’m admit­tedly a sociopath. I’m just say­ing that, for myself, it’s the qual­ity of the friend­ship that mat­ters more than any­thing; and I’ve been lucky to have a very few

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Shit Weekend

June 25th, 2006, by The Angry Drunk

Well, this week­end was utter shit. Let’s keep the pre­am­ble short and get on to the bitchin’

Part The First, Wherein The Angry Drunk Is Fucked By Bureaucratic Fuckwittery

The first hit came Saturday morn­ing at the Motor Vehicle Department. To pro­vide some back­ground, I do not have a driver’s license. There are rea­sons for this, which I won’t go into now, but the bot­tom line is that I don’t have a license. Now, after a year of twice daily twenty mile bus rides I’ve decided to rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion. So, after much wran­gling to set up a time when some­one with a work­ing vehi­cle can accom­pany me on my quest, I schlepp my weary ass to the MDV Saturday morning.


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Invocation of the Light

June 17th, 2006, by The Angry Drunk

Even in the dark­est night there is a Light that shines. A Light that guides us and keeps us and illu­mi­nates that which is Good and Worthy in our­selves. It is the Light that dis­pels fear, and hate, and sor­row. The Light may some­times seem dim; it may even seem to fail entirely; but that is only a fail­ure in our per­cep­tion. The Light is always there, it can­not be extinguished.

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