10 OCT 08 10:50:54

by admin

This entry is cross-posted at net.network. This entry was cross-posted from net/network. It was originally written in response to a post that was addressed to me in an online forum during the last presidential election just after one of the debates although it was never posted to that forum (see below). It was expunged from net/network shortly after it was posted there and it will eventually make it’s way to postdelete.com. I have every reason to have moved it to postdelete.com already, but until I’ve done that, we can assume that I’m still glad to have written it.

[Image drained]

globalstatus follows…

globalstatus:

⎈ net/network: you are here. Updated daily.
ToDo: Decay. Thank you for visiting. I am here because you are here, even though, and even because, you may not be here for me.

♨ Tuttle’s Corner: functioning as a GUI for net/network. Updated daily often.
ToDo: See additional notes below.

✈ Monk Falls: a living fiction. Updated Wednesdays Sundays.
ToDo: See additional notes below.

⌦ postdelete.com: hobotrain network out-takes deletions anomalies. Updated as necessary.
ToDo: postdelete.com will be the next hobotrain network site to go live. Also see additional notes below.

additional notes:

Since we’re all here, I’d like to pass along a post that was addressed to me in a forum last week. It was written in response to a theory I have about its author’s motivation for voting a particular way in the upcoming election. Because their response (copied in full below) entirely avoids addressing the substance of my contentions, I am more convinced now than before that my theory about them and their preference of a presidential candidate was spot on. At the same time, the response I did receive raises some interesting and important questions about both the hobotrain network project and me, which—taken on their own and regardless of the individual who posed them—deserve to be addressed; and so, I’ve decided to reply to those questions for all to see here, rather than reply to them in a sub-thread of a topic in a private forum to which relatively few people have access.

Their post:

Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:23 pm

Now you’re a psychologist?

Tuttle, I don’t think you understand who or what you are. You hide behind various identities. You claim to be an artist (who doesn’t share his art) and a restaurateur (who doesn’t discuss food, service, etc.). You have some websites that make no sense and are incomplete. You claimed to be writing a story and were going to release it online soon (this was the first week of April…or didn’t you say that either?).

Who or what are you? You want so much from others but then you hide.

I’ve tried to reply to that post a couple of times already. At first, I responded with something like ‘I am rubber and you are glue’ which I command-A-Xed. Then I attempted to rebut the argument against me point by point, and in fact, I think I did a drive-by which I’m not sure anyone witnessed and which I also deleted. Now it’s a week later and I still haven’t posted a reply, but because I believe that the questions asked and the assertions made above demand a response, they also provide an opportunity to update you on the status of the larger hobotrain network project, and to provide a re-statement of the project’s goals, I’m going to categorize this under global_status and take another whack at it here (cross-posting at Tuttle’s Corner).

(And I don’t believe this person to be dangerous, if you’re wondering about that.)

Tuttle, I don’t think you understand who or what you are.

What I am is for other people to decide. Who I am is a lifelong question for me alone to answer, but to the extent that I am still alive and plan to be so for the indefinite future, I think it’s fair to speculate that at my time of death, whomever I will turn out to have been will or will not be who I am at this moment. And who am I at this moment, when none of us even knows what the next sentence I type will say?

You hide behind various identities.

Taken alone, my identity, if that’s what you want to call it, is neither comprehensible nor pertinent to most of the people I know, either in person or online. In fact, who and what I am doesn’t matter to very many people at all, although I do imagine the larger hobotrain network project to be an attempt at shaping and synthesizing many of the lives I’ve led into a fictional narrative, always keeping in mind that not all of those lives are fit for a public showing—although a lot of people who know me will be surprised to see some of the choices I’ve made with respect to the events I depict; which tales I do or don’t tell; whom I include in my thinking about my project from moment to moment, and whom I attempt to shut out.

As far as the people I’ve met, but don’t really know (you, like,) may be concerned, it’s not that I have something (anything) to hide, but that there may or may not be anything I want to give.¹


1. Also see: http://postdelete.com/dragnet/

You claim to be an artist (who doesn’t share his art)

(Must an artist share his art? And when you say ‘share,’ with whom shall I share my art, by your lights, and would it be out of obligation or kindness? Or by ‘share’ do you mean ‘sell’?)

And claiming denotes some doubt over propriety, doesn’t it, as if one’s calling is a choice one makes and not a force of nature one must bend to. It is a legal term, which in the ultraviolence at the outwardly barren and unpeopled site of the creative act, is fucking meaningless, and even with respect to itemizing my taxes each year, claiming to be an ‘artist’ only validates my work and its worth in the way that an audience for it might, but that’s not what helps me sleep at night.

Stupid as it is and stupid as it sounds, my life is my art. But there is only so much of me to go around; and as from day to day and from night to night there is only very limited seating in my restaurant, there is also limited access to my body of work. If you are not on my guest list—with special exceptions under irresistible circumstances—then there is room for you neither in my restaurant nor in my heart. I don’t have the physical space or enough hours in a day to satisfy the demand for me, on the one hand, and on the other, I’ve often realized that what I expend socially in terms of sharing ideas and my impulse to create (which is usually motivated by nothing more than psychic [adj.] horniness) is wasted when I attempt to revisit, re-create, those ideas in conversation.

[You claim to be] a restaurateur (who doesn’t discuss food, service, etc.)

All discussion of food and beverages (incl., issues of philosophy, gastronomy, agronomy, animal and human health, food preparation practices and economics) and service (incl., staff hierarchy, floor and kitchen protocol, front-of-the-house and booking procedures, employee expectations, scheduling and other personnel issues) is contained at Tuttle’s Corner (http://tuttlescorner.com/), where your questions and comments are always welcome.

You have some websites that make no sense and are incomplete.

The hobotrain network is currently composed of four sites, including this one, which describes the maintenance and status of the hobotrain network and catalogs changes and additions to content on hobotrain network sites. In the scope of the larger hobotrain network project, net/network exists to log various of the background processes that power the network, including the addition and modification of code, scripts and software, whether feature laden or invisible, on the various hobotrain network sites; descriptions of internal and external events that hinder or enhance the network’s, and my, ability to create, present and transfer content, and up-to-the-minute information about hobotrain network traffic and navigation patterns.

It is true that for many people net/network is unfamiliar looking and difficult to navigate, and that due to mounting code breakages on the back end, the site is becoming more and more inaccessible every day. All of this can become a perfect storm for an author, especially one who is primarily concerned with manufacturing content (and a relative nOOb at Web development), but as I’ve said before, and because nothing can be done about this from my end (not even with money), I’m going to let entropy dictate the fate of hobotrain.net/network rather than go to the trouble of re-theming the site.

Then again, I’m not selling advertising here, I’m doing art. I’m happy to see that people come to visit, but I’m also the first to say that it’s not for everyone.

You claimed to be writing a story and were going to release it online soon…

Define ‘soon.’

End.

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Possibly related:

• Off Saturday (August 28, 2010)
• Topic List (Tentative) (March 15, 2010)
• Sex and Drugs at Tuttle’s Corner (November 20, 2009)
• [UPDATED]Letter to Staff #1 (Why 100?) (November 6, 2009)
• Booked from Facebook (October 24, 2009)