Yup. Just no.
Faceless on Facebook, faceless on Twitter, faceless on WordPress, on Gravatar, on OpenID (which, it must be said, I’ve never gotten to work anyway) in fact, faceless anywhere is a powerful statement, especially in an increasingly-overpopulated world where everyone wears their MySpace pruneface at all times, lest they be caught on CCTV looking humdrum.
Just ask Anonymous.
With that in mind, here’s your chance to make a powerful statement and reflect on the importance of cultural expression and how much a part of your life it is, whether you think of yourself as a cultural creative or not.
From NativeEarth.ca:
It only took 2 days for our “Faceless” facebook group to reach close to 2000 members.
Here’s what it’s all about:
This is a roll call to all people who believe that Arts and Culture is a part of their lives and is important outside of the political spectrum. This is for artists, families, parents, friends, co-workers, relatives, enemies, neighbors, acquaintances, to all people who enjoy the arts and culture of this country and feel that it must be nurtured and cultivated. We need to send out a message to our politicians to let them know that there are more of us than they think and congruently that we are not going to vote for any person or party that plans to cut funding to arts and culture in the impending election. This is for all of us; people from all sides of the political landscape. This is not about what party you belong to, but how you feel about arts and culture in this country.
So on Monday September 15th (the first day of Parliament) we want you to do one thing. It’s very simple. It will only take a small amount of your time. About the same amount of time it will take to cast your vote for the candidate you feel best represents what you want.
This is it: We would like you to leave your profile picture blank for the day. Use your faceless profile picture as a symbol of the loss of identity Canadians will experience if funding to the arts is cut.
Be a catalyst for change and put your best face forward on election day, but on Monday September 15th leave it blank and send a message so that we can count how many people have joined the fight.
signed
Sigh.
Oh, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. And it’s not like I didn’t expect it to happen again. Actors are … actorish, and this is what they do. They’re like cats on the doorstep…I want in…I want out…I want in…but unlike cats, you can’t exactly stick your foot under their butts and decide it for them. For one thing, most of them are bigger than you, if you happen to be me. For another, the whole virtual butt-kicking thing works much better in fetish DVDs than in motivational emails.
So I’ve heard.
But fame or no fame, actor or no actor, I’ve been down this pixel trail a time or two (dozen) before, and frankly, you can’t push people. They come or they go, and it can mean a great deal to the “audience” or it can mean nothing at all, but that makes no difference whatsoever to whether or not the person returns for the long term. I’ve seen people come back for twelve hours. I’ve seen people come back for just long enough to register a digital avatar trail and say “see, I went.” I’ve seen Brian Atene come and go and come back and go again over the course of a couple of years. But it’s the same process and we are just exactly as impotent.
I could email. I have his email. But I don’t for a second believe he’s playing coy: I think the man is honestly backing off, and that nothing is creepier than opening your email to see a mass of zombie grab-hands springing out from it, trying to draw you back. I’ll leave him be. If he returns, he returns; if he doesn’t, I hope he’s making shitloads of money and eventually sends me that autograph he owes me, which, no, I don’t think I’ll ever see. I’m like that myself, you see, and the list of things I owe to people I’ve never seen in the flesh is longer than I am tall. Even if I were, like, tall.
And if you think this is just about Brian Atene, you haven’t been paying attention at all.
Labour Day isn’t just an excuse for a long weekend. The idea behind a weekend is, some people actually do work hard enough through the week that they need two days of rest at the end of it, or the value of their labour will steadily decline over a relatively short period of time.
I’m no longer (thankfully) in the group for whom that is physically true, but posting seven days a week is exhausting in several rather unexpected ways, and so I’m taking time off the blogs and will see you all on Tuesday.
Of course, quite a lot of people (most people in the US, according to several studies I’ve seen) no longer have full employment with two days off each seven; the average worker has one to three part-time jobs, and substantial difficulties synching up their days off. This, plus the outrageous protests of, say, the fruit industry that they cannot find workers (try having fewer convictions for slavery and assault, more benefits, better wages…you get the picture) to pick one at random, is proof that those battles need to be re-fought. Some day they’ll be won again.
Meanwhile, enjoy this hands across the ocean video of Billy Bragg’s “There is Power in a Union” set to a slideshow of American workers through the 20th Century.
Stolen from Cord at the very good Mollygood, and here you thought gossip blogs were all fluff!
First of all: Steve Jobs is not dead.
Second: Bloomberg posted, then pulled, his obituary today, Gawker picked up on it, posted about it, and into the comments thread on that post I dropped a link to my over Steve Jobs’s dead body post, which has subsequently rocketed to the top of the stats page off of that third-hand high. This has, in turn, lifted the Steve Jobs=Cthulhu post to near the top of the Top Posts, as Steve Jobs surfers see the name in the sidebar and click. And a fine post it is, too (36 painstakingly collected links if I recall correctly)
Third: for no reason I can determine, the Longhorse post is suddenly getting a lot of attention, which suits me perfectly, as I consider it one of my best. And you will, too, once you’ve read it.
raincoaster 