Thursday, March 6, 2014

Not boring live blogging from library!

It has been ages since I live blogged from the library. Perhaps I bowed out because nothing interesting happens during live blogging. Well, that's just wrong! I am committed to a warts and all vision of modern life in America, with a major emphasis on life in a library. If nothing happens during live blogging, not only is it telling, but it is the result of a risk we must take! If you are afraid of being bored here you have come to the wrong place! We taunt boredom here! We bait boredom. We dare boredom to rear its bland, banal face at clerkmanifesto! Oh, sure, it may get the best of us. And, sure, sometimes we might look like we're pinned, but when the chips are down we may just twist out of boredom's tepid snare, fall back on the ropes, and, as boredom fastens its laconic, unmotivated eyes upon us, we might launch ourselves out, crying our special "Book caught in the automated checkin machine" wail, grab boredom in our fearsome "Pull books out of the rollers of the checkin machine" grip, and hurl boredom to the ground in our legendary "Toss a crumpled slip of paper into the garbage but miss" slam. Whether we manage to pin boredom from there or whether we don't is something you'll just have to risk by continuing to read as we


Live blog from the fiction stacks at the library!

3:54:  Is it really 3:54 already? I have got to tighten up my introductions because it is now just about my dinner break time. But fear not, live blogging isn't over until it's over, and there's still time for at the very least one more entry from my upcoming trip down the elevator.

3:58:  Hmm, surprisingly little happening here in the elevator. Sometimes I like to explore the interesting acoustics of the elevator by making percussive noises on my empty cart, but not today because I am


Live blogging from the elevator!

(Still) 3:58:  Elevator doors open. Hallway looks clear.

3:59:  No longer in the elevator. I am now


Live blogging from the hallway downstairs!

3:59:30:  Not much happening in hallway. I am tempted to linger in hopes that something of note happens, but I decide to "keep it real" and walk at a normal pace through the hallway.

4:00:  Emerge from hallway. Dinner time commences.

4:01:  We reflect on our live blogging session. We're think it's one of our best live bloggin sessions yet. Don't you?

9 comments:

  1. Live comment from smallish town on West Coast:

    8:47 a.m. Dog barking across the street. At least seven barks, then nothing. Clearly, stranger passed by house. I elect not to draw the curtains back to verify.

    8:49 Mourning dove announces itself with two three-beat hoots, pause, repeat.

    8:53 I keep meaning to set this live comment aside but it keeps asking for more reporting. I wonder if this is the effect of live blogging as well. I wonder if I were to bring a laptop to work or the coffee shop if I should be more detached and able to proceed with my day. But I try to get on with some chores and such, but always I turn, like a moon drawn to its planet, back to the comments.

    8:53 I wonder if there's a word limit on comments. For that reason, I will go ahead and post this.

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  2. 8:56 All comments posted successfully. Will become more disciplined in live commenting and set it aside--this is determined!--for at least half and hour, starting after the next comment.

    8:57 This is the next comment. I am not going to comment live for at least another half an hour. Starting right...now.

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  3. 8:58 But wait! My wife just asked what I was doing, and I told her. She said, "Oh". I though that worthy of breaking my live comment fast, as it introduced an entirely different realm to the live landscape: another person.

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  4. Replies
    1. Crap. You know how it's great to find a book you love or even a TV series or something, but it's too good, and you become obsessed and your life is taken over for, like, a week until you consume every bit of it? You sort of obsess about it. You share it with everyone you know whether they're interested or not. It's both good and bad, compelling, but all consuming, and it has now happened to me! I am hooked on your live commenting, and though I had laundry and chores and lunch to take care of today, they are all out the window. I will now be here all day hitting the refresh button, hoping for new updates. 10:24 is awesome, but I will never forget "New Person" at 8:58, which I keep going back and rereading! I just keep wishing I had used the "new person" innovation in my blog post above, but, of course, that's obvious now, in hindsight, like Duchamp's Urinal, or the wheel, or the eternal Tao.

      So, uh, I'll be here, waiting on the next installment!

      Delete
  5. 11:34 Reading Feldenstein Calypso's live comment about my live comments, on the other side of working on a poem, where the atmosphere or the words and the new feelings (old?) are still there, like smoke from a settling campfire, knowing that it's time to let it settle more, revisit it with newer eyes and see where the words ring true and where it needs more (or less) to find itself, to be surprised, as Frost says it needs to be, thinking also how reading Henry James a bit recently has made my sentences rather labyrinthine, (OMG did I spell that right?), and how he's hard to read but also not: I mean, I start a sentence, and if I fade at all, any distraction, I have to backtrack to its beginning, but if I stay focused, despite all the qualifications and seeming ambitious pronouns or references, I do get it! I get what he's talking about. It's like a very disciplined stream-of-consciousness and deeply psychological. I like it a lot but I can only take so much. I mean, sometimes I want the language and the story to take me so I don't have to work so hard--but wait, that's not what I mean, I mean I do have to work at reading Henry James, but it's fun work, like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, I mean I have to be kind of in the mood for it, but it's great payback, too, like some synapses have fired that needed some umphh. Okay, so live commenting...let's see...must stop now. stopstopstopstop must get crickets for the lizard...

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  6. OMG! I reread that post and noticed that it said "ambitious" pronouns instead of "ambitious". What a terrific auto spell correction!

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  7. 2:03 p.m. Tea pot is boiling..wait a sec....OMG I reread my reread from above (time not noted) and noticed that I did it again! I meant, "'it said 'ambitious' instead of 'ambiguous'" but it autocorrected again under my watchful eye. I guess those are some of the risks of real-time commenting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You know, I thought it was supposed to be "ambiguous", but was too busy hitting my refresh key to comment!

      This reminds me of an experience I had at work a day or two ago. I was on the phones and my computer was logged in to the instant messaging system under someone else's name. This other person was super popular! I was kind of jealous to tell you the truth. But so many people were writing her to excitedly say hi and chat that I became so busy writing back and explaining I wasn't her, that I was unable to find time to actually LOG OUT! I kept having to explain to the new people and so couldn't stop the flow of new people coming in. It was a busy hour! Anyway, that was just the same with me and refreshing my computer looking for updates.

      I like the tea pot thing at 2:03 with the OMG and all.

      I better go back to my refresh key! See, this is why it's a mistake to step away, god only knows what I may have missed!

      Delete

If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.

I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!

One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.