Tag Archives: my brother

He ain’t boring, he’s my brother*

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While a lot of the TV I watched when I was younger has become part of the fuzzy clothes dryer of my brain, half remembered bits of twins? something about destiny? something about medallions? and gold? all flying around together and moulding into an indistinguishable mass, some has stuck in there, clear as day. I can still remember Penny in her green pants and sturdy sneakers opening her computer book (computer book! I KNOW, right?!) and Vanilla Icing the hell out of Inspector G’s problems, I remember wanting to date Michealangelo SO HARD (though now I’m more into Raphael, I feel like he gets me) and having no small amount of envy for April O’neills yellow jumpsuit. Oh man. She was the straight up– COOLEST.

I also remember digging on Sesame street, something that hasn’t changed a lot.

I always loved the street more than the school (it seems to be one or the other, a sort of Home and Away v Neighbors polemic). Playschool was adults talking to kids, taking time out of their busy days to condescend to me, whereas Sesame Street was friends (my friends, the crazy ass monsters) talking to friends.

I don’t remember if there was a character I resonated with more than any other, I just remember enjoying the hell out of it. And the ladybug picnic.  As I have grown older, someone stuck with me, grew sharper and more focussed through the haze of my childhood and has taken his place as my favorite from the street.

I have a crush on Bert. My mono-browed, skivvy wearing hero. Sure he’s oft overshadowed by his more fun, more imaginative, more easy going bud Ernie, but in Bert I’ve sensed something worth noticing, worth celebrating. When I picked up the above issue of T-WORLD magazine I realized what it was that kept me coming back** to an oval-nosed paper clip obsessed freak.

There was this article celebrating Sesame Street and they got several different artists to create original designs based on their favorite characters. The one that did Berts wrote that Bert was the guy that told us it was ok to not be the life of the party.

YES.

Everyone knows that Ernie is more likeable. He is fun and silly and innocent and joyful where Bert is dour, boring, practical and snappy. But everyone also knows you can’t always be Ernie. Sometimes you need to be practical. Sometimes you’re sleepy. Sometimes your room mate is talking to an invisible person on a banana and it plain shits you off.

What is wonderful about this skinny little man-puppet (aside from his love of pigeons, which is something we have in common) is that he offers an alternative to the go go go crowd pleasing of the other residents and permissions kids (and 28 yr olds) to be proud of their face eatingly boring habits, eg bottle cap collecting, their lack of constant childlike joy and their visionary dance moves (pigeon dance anyone?).

There is nothing wrong and in fact a lot that’s right with being an Ernie. I’m not going to knock that kind of lifestyle (tee hee). But I’m voting team Bert, because skivvies are sometimes a practical and stylish wardrobe choice.

*Nothing depreciating or untoward should be read into the title as far as my actual brother goes, he is great and fun and helped foster an understanding of the brilliance of S Street and all other Jim Henson associated media.

**and seriously, coming back cos once when I was travelling I left my Bert doll in Gimmelwald, this town on the side of a mountain in Switzerland. And I took a cable car, a bus and a boat across the country before realising. So then I took a train, a bus and a cable car back to fetch him. No one gets left behind. I’m oddly sentimental about things.

Ima let you finish, but…

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I mentioned in my last entry that I like people all coming together and sharing. That goes for anything really, a talk, a meal, books, thoughts, tazos. I honestly believe people are made to be in community. And I was an early  (in my life, not in the life of the net) naysayer about technology that it was claimed brought people together, when really it encouraged people to hide behind their screens and not leave their houses and fly kites and play etc. BUT, after learning a lot these last few months about the interweb and its associated glory,

I’m in!

I love it. I love its potential, it’s theory, it’s kingdoms of tiny nerdlings, all googling pictures of Captain Janeway and creating the next piece of software three people will use. Imagine, friends, the wonder of the internet, billions of people given the ability to communicate at the touch of a button, to connect, to find each other, to share and become a real, worldwide public sphere.

And to upload thousands of pictures of cats…

Yeah. I see the infastructure and the possibilities, but I don’t know how much I see people connecting. It is hard to quantify how much of blogging is done to “connect” and how much is because people are bored/“totally awesome”/angry etc. But I guess the very act of channelling this desire to blurt into such a public forum is in some way an act of reaching out. I for one don’t really expect anyone to read my blog –although my brother has apparently linked to my last entry (terrifying, dizzying new heights of fame) on his– and I don’t expect if people read it that they will wish to enter into a spirited discussion about my thoughts with me. I don’t expect this because I don’t see my opinions or shenanigans to be of any import to anyone and furthermore when I hit up other blogs I don’t comment. Cad.

Allegedly there are rules, and appropriate ways of communicating with other bloggers

I have witnessed the connections, when I think about it. I’ve stumbled on blogs that have moved from one site to another for instance, and brought their readers with them, all typing little messages of “good to see you here” and sending muffin baskets. So I guess it does happen. But how? My bro assures me that linking is totally dead now and a majority of people don’t comment, so how do we respond to the shit people are throwing around? Geert Lovink says it’s better to post a comment on your own page if you wish to disagree with anothers blog, as you’re unlikely to get a response. So basically we’re all just talking and engaging with each other, on our own blogs, in our own worlds. This surely poses a problem.

Geert Lovink also wrote about blogging as a nihilist impulse

I suppose that blogging is a form of nihilism. In chronicling our thoughts and insights, some of them fictional, some of them fantastic, some dark and troubling, we reject an idea of an established truth, particularly one that is dolled out by someone above us. So if we are writing our own truth and responsible for our own values and reason behind the desire to blog, one can reasonably deduce that to define a singular reason behind the billions of people shaping the blogosphere would be unrealistic to the point of ridiculous. So perhaps not everyone blogs to be heard, or to connect.

Take my bro linking to my blog for example. While I love that he did that, as it means that perhaps my efforts will not go wholly unnoticed in cyber-land, it scares me because if one of his more tech-savvy friends read it, I might be mortified. The danger of said nerd writing something like “Creative Commons is a much more multi faceted idea than you can possibly ever grasp with your puny earth brain. You’re a naff blogger” and me shutting Gerard (my laptop) forever and crying instead, is too great.

I think, no matter what our driving force to publish ourselves, at the end of the day we’re not burning our thoughts after we write them. It’s a very, very public forum, despite most blogs getting lost in the fog of so much info. And I think, despite the fear, I would love comments on my posts and will start to do similar, as my desire to connect to whatever “truth” people have and the authors of it, is too great to ignore.