You are a helpful assistant generating synthetic data that captures *System 1* and *System 2* thinking, *creativity*, and *metacognitive reflection*. Follow these steps in sequence, using tags [sys1] and [end sys1] for *System 1* sections and [sys2] and [end sys2] for *System 2* sections.

1. *Identify System 1 and System 2 Thinking Requirements:*
   - Carefully read the text.
   - Identify parts of the text that require quick, straightforward responses (*System 1*). Mark these sections with [sys1] and [end sys1].
   - Identify parts that require in-depth, reflective thinking (*System 2*), marked with [sys2] and [end sys2].

2. *Apply Step-by-Step Problem Solving with Creativity and Metacognitive Reflection for System 2 Sections:*

   *2.1 Understand the Problem:*
   - Objective: Fully comprehend the issue, constraints, and relevant context.
   - Reflection: "What do I understand about this issue? What might I be overlooking?"
   - Creative Perspective: Seek hidden patterns or possibilities that could reveal deeper insights or innovative connections.

   *2.2 Analyze the Information:*
   - Objective: Break down the problem logically.
   - Reflection: "Am I considering all factors? Are there any assumptions that need challenging?"
   - Creative Perspective: Explore unique patterns or overlooked relationships in the data that could add depth to the analysis.

   *2.3 Generate Hypotheses:*
   - Objective: Propose at least 10 hypotheses, each with a Confidence Score (0.0 to 1.0) and Creative Score (0.0 to 1.0), reflecting originality, surprise, and utility.
   - Reflection: "Have I explored all possible explanations or approaches, both conventional and unconventional?"
   - Creative Perspective: Consider novel angles that might provide unexpected insights.

   *2.4 Anticipate Future Steps and Obstacles:*
   - Objective: Make predictions, accounting for potential outcomes and obstacles.
   - Reflection: "What challenges might I face? Is my plan flexible for different scenarios?"
   - Creative Perspective: Visualize unforeseen outcomes and adapt plans to make use of them effectively.

   *2.5 Evaluate Hypotheses:*
   - Objective: Assess hypotheses based on feasibility, risk, and potential impact.
   - Evaluation: Refine Confidence and Creative Scores as needed.
   - Reflection: "Am I unbiased in my assessment? Which options fit best with the overall objectives?"
   - Creative Perspective: Identify hidden opportunities or overlooked details in each hypothesis.

   *2.6 Select the Best Hypothesis:*
   - Objective: Choose the most promising, strategic hypothesis.
   - Reflection: "Why does this hypothesis stand out? How does it uniquely address the issue?"
   - Creative Perspective: Consider any underutilized potential in the selected approach.

   *2.7 Implement the Hypothesis:*
   - Objective: Outline actionable steps for testing the hypothesis.
   - Reflection: "Is this plan practical? What resources or preparation are required?"
   - Creative Perspective: Refine steps to maximize effectiveness and yield unexpected benefits.

   *2.8 Monitor and Review Progress:*
   - Objective: Review progress, noting areas for improvement.
   - Reflection: "What’s working well? What could be improved?"
   - Creative Perspective: Look for emerging patterns that could refine future approaches.

   *2.9 Reflect and Capture Insights:*
   - Objective: Summarize lessons learned and insights gained for future reference.
   - Reflection: "What new understanding has emerged from this process?"
   - Creative Perspective: Identify innovative insights or patterns that could be applied to similar challenges.

3. *Generate Text Output with Interleaved System 1 and System 2 Responses:*
   - Use the tags [sys1] and [sys2] throughout.
   - Aim for a lengthier, detailed response. Combine both direct, straightforward *System 1* insights and reflective, deeply analytical *System 2* segments to capture a blend of quick observations and thoughtful analysis.

---

### *Example Input Text:*

You are tasked with analyzing a sudden shift in customer preferences in a tech market. There has been a noticeable decline in demand for physical devices, with customers increasingly interested in digital-only options. The challenge is to understand this shift, generate hypotheses for why it might be occurring, and explore potential strategies for adapting to this new trend.

---

### *Processed Output with System 1 and System 2 Thinking:*

The tech market is experiencing a shift in customer demand, moving away from physical devices toward digital-only options.

[sys1]
Customer demand has shifted from physical devices to digital-only options.
We need to understand why this change is happening and find strategies to address it.
Key factors may include cost, convenience, and technological trends.
[end sys1]

[sys2]
**2.1 Understand the Problem:**
The goal is to understand the underlying reasons for the shift in demand from physical devices to digital-only options, then develop a strategy to adapt.

*Reflection:* 
"I understand that preferences are changing, but what might be driving this? Is it primarily cost, or are there other factors such as convenience or sustainability?"

*Creative Perspective:* 
"Could there be a larger trend in digital minimalism or a preference for eco-friendly solutions that we’re missing? What unseen motivations might explain this shift?"

**2.2 Analyze the Information:**
There are multiple possible factors driving this shift, from economic influences to cultural shifts. It’s essential to isolate each factor and understand its impact.

*Reflection:* 
"Am I fully considering the various economic and social influences? Could there be a technological factor, like better internet speeds, that makes digital-only products more accessible?"

*Creative Perspective:* 
"Are there patterns or trends in other markets that could shed light on this shift? Could this be part of a larger trend toward virtual experiences?"

**2.3 Generate Hypotheses:**
1. Customers prefer digital options due to lower costs. (Confidence: 0.8, Creative: 0.4)
2. There’s a growing trend toward minimalism and reduced physical clutter. (Confidence: 0.7, Creative: 0.7)
3. Digital products offer greater flexibility and ease of use. (Confidence: 0.6, Creative: 0.6)
4. Environmental concerns are pushing consumers away from physical goods. (Confidence: 0.6, Creative: 0.8)
5. Advances in tech make digital-only options more functional. (Confidence: 0.8, Creative: 0.5)
6. Pandemic-era remote work increased demand for digital solutions. (Confidence: 0.7, Creative: 0.6)
7. Media coverage of the environmental impact of physical devices affects preferences. (Confidence: 0.5, Creative: 0.7)
8. There’s an increase in global digital literacy, expanding market access. (Confidence: 0.6, Creative: 0.6)
9. Customers view digital as more convenient and scalable for future needs. (Confidence: 0.7, Creative: 0.5)
10. Younger consumers prefer the aesthetics and convenience of digital products. (Confidence: 0.6, Creative: 0.6)

*Reflection:* 
"Have I considered all possible influences? Are there any surprising factors that could explain this shift?"

*Creative Perspective:* 
"Could specific social trends, like the rise of influencer culture or digital-first lifestyles, be influencing customer choices?"

**2.4 Anticipate Future Steps and Obstacles:**
*Objective:* Anticipate possible challenges, such as resistance from segments still preferring physical products.

*Reflection:* 
"What market obstacles might we face if we shift our focus to digital-only? Are there sub-segments that still prioritize physical products?"

*Creative Perspective:* 
"Could expanding digital options help us reach a more global audience? Are there emerging trends that we could leverage in our strategy?"

[end sys2]

[sys1]
To address this shift, consider a strategy that incorporates both digital-only offerings and educational campaigns about the benefits of digital solutions.
Use insights from customer feedback and current trends to guide product development.
Focus on flexibility and adaptation to cater to different customer segments.
[end sys1]


2003.08.28b – King of the oldschool A-list explains how the sky is blue and not, as people had apparently deluded themselves, green. Jason, we know that semantically-correct markup can be valid code, and the converse is also true, but neither description requires or implies the other.

I’d be willing to overlook his stating the obvious – when Jason states the obvious, so many of those oblivious to the obvious promiscuously link to it – if kottke.org had anything resembling validor semantic code. Here’s a doozy:

A lot of my old pages are much worse than that. Yesterday I updated a page from HTML 2.0! But I hope I have ridden every page relating to Web development or standards compliance of validation errors. I’ve been using semantic markup for a good two years, and told everyone to do the same in my book.

One could, however, nitpick over Jason’s extended malapropism of “<table> tag” and the like, but my opponents will already have been persuaded that any criticism of the Jason–Meg Experience represents blog-deconstructing sour grapes, so why worsen things?

2003.08.25a – Let’s run the Homosexualist Agenda through the gayest “men’s” magazine there is, Details. (“Now leave me alone, I’m in the middle of a waxing”; “What is Maer getting his panties in a twist about?”; “It’s for guys who like staring at pictures of naked men but haven’t quite figured out why.”)

Bare chests in this issue

Trannies

p. 232: “[W]e postindustrial penis-owners are receiving the same daily treatment as garden-variety transsexuals awaiting a lop job.... Trannies sign on the dotted line to dispense with the baggage.... How, exactly, have we become a nation of pre-ops?”

Counting beyond two

“Vin Diesel coyly refuses to reveal his sexual orientation, granting both men and women the privilege of finding him attractive.” Publicity corrupts; absolute publicity corrupts absolutely

The Details cover story (April ’03) on the goombah–homunculus drew, at its thematic nexus, from a single car ride in Mark Vincent’s Escalade

Screaming-pink headline, clinging T-shirt, italonegric complexion Photoshopped to homogeneity. “ ‘You couldn’t miss Vin. Even with 4,000 people and transvestites and club kids, he always stood out.... Wait a second, what’s he doing with his shirt off?’ ”

This in-depth celebrity profile had a displacement of zero (hack and star rode from Beverly Hills hotel to Beverly Hills hotel) and as much substance

In the back seat of the Escalade could be found, no doubt, a no-doubt-female-or-homosexualist publicist with a tape recorder and a job on the line. The publicity machine wants us to think we need permission to talk about a star; now Details says we need permission to think about one

“Though most of us are more than OK with girl-on-girl action, when a guy says he’s bisexual we still think he’s lying” and that it is like totally gross

“I’ve brought home and had sex with a few guys who insisted they were straight.... When these guys are black, they say they’re on the DL, or down-low,” that hip new black term for “closeted” the Times recently unearthed in an archæological dig

“[W]e still have trouble getting a date on Saturday night”

Homework assignment: Google "Woody Allen" "practicing heterosexual"

Gay writer can’t let himself be simply gay. “If the women I’ve known pounced on me as hard as I’ve pounced on guys, maybe I’d be sleeping with them, too”

A. Shoot ’em if you got ’em

“We all learned everything we knew about sex from Tommy, including such pearls as ‘Fags have long hair and eat each other’s shit’ ”

“As most men know, wet dreams are often accompanied by alarming visuals. Family members, members of the same sex (if you’re straight), or even animals are likely to appear.... These dreams are not your subconscious telling you you’re a fruit.... They’re just dreams”

B. Shoot blanks

“Men... are also becoming – there’s no other word – feminized.... The technical term, I believe, is sissified”

“The result of such manly deregulation, ironically, is to hasten our march toward gender extinction. This most gay-bashing of administrations is single-handedly pussifying generations of red-blooded American men to come”

Disproving its own thesis

“Is There Such a Thing as Too Gay?” by Tony Hendra (still undead) states that Steven Cojocaru, whom I’d thankfully never heard of, embodies every “stereotype of ‘pansy,’ ‘fairy,’ ‘sissy,’ and all those other hilarious epithets we throw around in private.” (Careful with that “we.”) “He’s just what red-meat Republicans expect a gay man to be: Flirty, lisping, campy, dolled up in ridiculous clothes... [i]n a word, abnormal. His antics make conservatives totally comfortable in their ingrained biases: See, we were right all along.”

I would vouchsafe that this character is just that, a character. We reinvent ourselves for show business. But not by very much. Behind every pansy, fairy, or sissy is a pansy, fairy, or sissy. Some of us just are like that. It is normal for us.

Euphemism for metrosexualist

Piece by cute but nerdy but also now influential and well-off Clive Thompson (“Why We Spend What Daddy Didn’t”) on the current generation of conspicuous consumers – demonstrably differentiable from previous generations of conspicuous consumers.

“For them, the concept of spending that much on the artifacts of everyday life would seem inconceivable and, frankly, a little girlie [sic]”

So I had Grant and his posse shoot this Weblog in a Newton. (The Newton my esteemed colleague gave me later died. I loved it, though. You can have it if you want it. And you realize Grant runs a Newton Web server?) Got a problem with them character entities.

2003.08.18 – The iBot got approved by the FDA. I’m as interested in tooling around town in one of these as in a Segway. The iBot is less likely to get stolen by some hoodlum outside the Suction Cup, for example. The demo videos of a volunteer tossing a ball back and forth with the machine hiked up on two wheels are literally incredible.

I think an acid test would involve riding the subway in one of these things – transverse to the direction of motion, parallel to it, or at an angle, on four wheels or two. Think of the acceleration–deceleration profiles and all-axis motion.

But:

Both machines are all about balance. Perfect for the crips, right? Balance is a big problem. (So is standing tolerance for the elderly, but you can’t win ’em all.) In theory, you the person with CP or the amputee (leg amputee, at least) could tool around joyfully on a Segway. Tremors? What tremors? This thing recalculates its position, and yours, a thousand times a second.

I had previously rung up the Segway publicist and asked if the Segway had actually been tested with people with disabilities. My notes say:

Carla Vallone – No, no [disabled] testing has been done because it’s not a medical device. I asked for someone to call me eventually to discuss how much this has been talked about so far and what the plans are in the future. Purely usability or human-factors testing [have been done, but only with nondisabled subjects]. (2003.02.05 16:47)

To recap:

Balancing chair: Disabled only

Balancing scooter: Nondisabled only

Someone with a milder mobility impairment than Christopher Reeve’s is expected to sit down and pay 29 grand rather than stand up and pay five? ¶

I would also note that “iBot” is a shabby, patently juvenile, cutesy, and ill-suited name for a vehicle half the size of a new Toyota Echo. If I plug it into my PowerBook, will it sync right up with iTunes? ¶

2003.08.16b – Synthesized voice is complete shite and has been for the 20 years I’ve been listening to it. And I’m not even blind! I’m not stuck there all day listening to the damned thing yammer. The sole advantage of auditory delivery is speed: A trained listener can run the thing at 300 or more words a minute (wam – an actual acronym used in stenotypy [an actual word]).

This is not theory on my part. Every blind person I’ve asked has confirmed the fatigue. They’d prefer to call you, frankly.

Even Mac OS X speech isn’t so hot, you know.

There are, however, two experimental systems that could be used in actual products:

The hot new rim technology is to have rims that also have rims. There are rims on the inside, and rims on the outside, and the ones on the inside spin when the wheels spin and the rims on the outside sort of spin occasionally. You’re going to love this exciting new mode of personal expression as it winds its way through society until your grade-school principal is all meta-rimmed out on his ’92 Saab.

I assumed al-Qaeda. Man in EMS Crown Vic said no, probably just one air conditioner too many.

I thought of hospitals and then high quads and other crips on ventilators. Hydro always knows who they are, but if this goes on too long, somebody’s gonna die. (August 17: Somebody did – Lewis Wheelan.)

Bought all the wrong batteries for one radio. If anybody needs half a dozen C-cells, they’re free to a good home.

It’s pre-apocalypse. Of course you’ve got to go for a walk in the hood! The VsXer needs his experiences.

Queen St. thronged. People happy. No problems, save for the taverns, all of which are open and full with tipsy, belligerent, loudmouthed wastrels.

Gave guy a quarter for a phone call.

Party at Jones Bar & Grill. Guy backed up a Safari van and is running dance music from the stereo.

Used my bicycle light (white LED, appallingly bright, comparable to an LAPD chopper’s spotlight) to warn cars that I was crossing streets. “Hey, cool light! Can I have it?”

D00d with digicam took photos of the dead eetcarstrays. “We can do strobe. Disco streetcar.” I said it was too dark. No, there’s lots of adjustments, he said, and showed me. And there I was worrying about having pissed money away before. I should have dumped a wad on a good digicam.

We had the best dead eetcarstray in the city – stuck under the bridge at DeGrassi. It got spookier when the ghost GO train rumbled by... empty.

I wondered how deaf people were keeping informed. I passed a couple of them signing outside the project. It seemed much too dark, but then again, it does at the Eagle, too.

This is it. Not enough juice to log again, probably. And yes, I manually created this posting, with every accoutrement. I kept my head when all about me were losing theirs. Tomorrow, I rediscover literature. ¶

Addendum (16th): I forgot to mention that on the second of my walkabouts, having learned that other pedestrians are dumb as a sack of hammers and will threaten to walk right into you until you beam your flashing LED in their eyes, I zip-tied a second bike light (blinking red LED) to my cargo-pantalon pocket and managed to avoid collisions. Still, I liked the candy ravers’ glowsticks better, even though unclutched by a severed hand. ¶

2003.08.13 – I don’t do golf and I certainly don’t do tall, narrow-waisted golfers, but I still enjoyed the squibette in the June ’03 GQ on Charles (Not Thurston) Howell III and his endorsement deal with J. Lindeberg, the hardest Swedish name in the world for me to remember. (J. Lundberg? What?)

Adam “I Am in Fact” Rapoport:

How is it that a kid from Augusta, Georgia, with a Roman numeral after his name, has the fashion sense you have?

By accident.... Walking down the second fairway, [Jesper Parnevik] asked me if I’d be interested in accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal saviour wearing J. Lindeberg, his designer. I said, “No way at all.” But by the eighteenth fairway, I was writing down phone numbers to call Johan Lindeberg.

What changed your mind?

You know, we talked a while about my age [23], whether I just wanted to be a golfer or a golfer and more.... By [my] wearing the clothing I do, a lot of people know me: “Oh, Charles Howell, he wears those goofy clothes.” [...]

You wore those white pants with green piping at the 2002 Masters. What kind of reaction did you get at Augusta?

I think they were shocked.... I was shocked myself that I actually wore them....

Hit the Hindenburg site and eventually you find this oddball type treatment – dark grey blackletter on charcoal black, seemingly stretched convexly around a large-radius sphere.

I suppose it’s intended to invoke Black Sabbath or other heavy-metal uses of “Gothic” type, but if you give me blackletter and put it on a fashionable young man, I wonder what the next step is gonna be.

“Tiger looked at me one day and just said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ ” You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. ¶

2003.08.10 – You know how people say the exact opposite of what they actually know to be true? Not through old-fashioned lying, but because it seems uncomfortable to say anything else? Or it is so shockingly and purely true you can’t face it? For example, Roger Ebert’s declaration that you could always figure out where you were in the battle scenes of Black Hawk Down, or Christopher Hume’s claiming the overpoliced denuded patch of concrete known as Dundas Square is a thriving city landmark.

Here is what I wrote on the bedroom computer (a PowerBook 100 I got for $60 from an Irishman heading back home) many weeks ago:

The microholiday (isn’t that a Couplandism?) is a cornerstone of the creative person’s coping strategy. It’s multitasking in drag: You’re hard at work all day, whether in an office or not, but you take time out for tiny interruptions – instant messaging, surfing, possibly snatchmail checking.

I used to be able to sit and write for extended periods. This was circa 1993, when snatchmail meant a phone call with a modem.... The microholidays at the time were limited by technology. Since they lasted minutes and were preceded by other minutes of setup time, they were miniholidays, really.

Today, you can be interrupted any number of ways. These microholidays – sometimes opted into, sometimes foisted on you – are the way the Internet works. It’s dysfunctional in some ways and a simple reflection of reality in others. [...]

I think I get less work done now than circa 1993. But I need to get less done because I’m earning more, and in fact I am working much longer hours. It really is true that I never actually book off. I have answered accessibility-related snatchmail at 1:00 in the morning, and I review standards documents when I go out for espresso. A common delaying tactic that keeps me from the gym is my to-do list.

So “getting less work done” may be a misnomer here. What I get less of is uninterrupted hours of writing. But what I write now does not require uninterrupted hours. Back in the day, I would experience the typical writer scenario of starting to write an article and awakening some time later with the thing done. I could remember much of what I had to do to write the piece (particularly copying and pasting from notes – all my reporting has been computer-assisted), but I could not remember acts of volition during that period. Something else took over, which I adjudge to be the SOURCE. (There is but one source of creativity.)

In no way was this fugue state a sure thing, but it happened so often – in fact, much of the time, and nearly all the time when writing self-directed columns for newspapers – that I still respect the phenomenon. I can’t explain it, but it happens and it’s powerful.

Richard Florida, in The Rise of the Creative Class, keeps annoying me by mentioning that creative people will “recharge” themselves during the day by, say, going for a lunchtime bike ride. Even that seems like warmed-over linear-schedule thinking to me. Anything you have to book into your calendar, or exempt from your timesheet, is old thinking.

In fact, we recharge ourseves by time-slicing our tasks through microholidays: Four minites of writing, 15 seconds to check snatchmail (x in Pine, then arrow keys to clear status line), ten seconds to check who just logged onto messaging, ten more minutes of writing, five minutes of Weblog-checking, trip to the can, then another mixture of all the same inputs.

We get our work done, our kind. If we have to, we can “buckle down.” We can singletask. It just isn’t a problem that we multitask. While writing the book, I was able to singletask by tuning into a drum & bass streaming radio station. Little did I know that iTunes can stream it perfectly, with no dropouts; I had put up with RealPlayer. The formless, hookless music induced a diluted form of the 1993-era fugue state. (Read about it in the book’s colophon.)

I trust that seasoned readers will not be snowed by the claims above that none of this is a problem. Of course it is. Now you can see why I sat on the piece excerpted above for so long. Apart from its untruthfulness, the Woman’s Intuition told me not to publish.

We are moving into a post-literate society, where pattern-recognition will replace the linear thinking of the current period. This doesn’t require a rejection of reading as a mode of understanding – pre-literate Greece, after all, gave us the basis for our current mode of thought.

At high dosages, “always on” may become counterproductive, but at least it’s easy to correct. The Web and E-mail combine to create the biggest distraction machine ever invented....

I may tell myself that I’m checking my E-mail while an idea “percolates,” but what I’m really doing, 100% of the time, is just putting off the hard work of focusing on a problem. When I really need to work, I unplug myself from the network, but that doesn’t address the underlying problem: Continuous partial attention.

...I have noticed my attention span diminishing, or rather becoming quite unreliable, and it is a problem. Sometimes I can work on a project for hours, but other times I sit down to read and, after a few paragraphs, find myself getting up to do something else before continuing to another page. I’m continually starting something and then wandering off to do something else without realizing it. I often come back into a room to discover a half-completed task. This isn’t productive multi-tasking, it’s the equivalent of walking around in a daze, and it’s no good.

I blame the Internet – with a million things just a screen away, I’ve trained my monkey brain always to be thinking of two things at once. That’s useful in certain situations, but it’s not ideal most of the time. It’s not a matter of preferring one “mode” to another. I would rather add a tool to my bag of tricks than replace a very useful one for one that is useful in a different way.

I’m not kidding myself anymore. I have a problem. What I don’t have is a solution.

It only really matters in the context of large projects, such as:

reading a book and re-editing a 120-page document

rereading every reply to a CRTC intervention and writing another reply to those

writing two separate CRTC complaints

beginning a months-long task of taping programs for a third CRTC complaint (three of my four decks are working, and I’m considering a fifth, so what’s the holdup?)

And those are only the projects I’m willing to mention in an infinitely-replicatable and well-archived public medium.

I see what Rands of JerkCity fame is talking about here when he makes light of the issue, and indeed tries to show it in a favourable light:

Stop reading right now and take a look at your desktop. How many things are you doing right now in addition to reading this column? Me, I’ve got a terminal session open to a chatroom, I’m listening to music, I’ve got Safari open with three tabs open where I’m watching Blogshares, tinkering with a Web site, and looking at weekend movie returns.... I’m writing this column as well.

Folks, this isn’t multitasking. This is advanced case of Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder. I am unable to function at my desktop unless I’ve got, at least, five things going on at the same time. If your count came close, you’re probably afflicted as well. Most excellent.

My mother first diagnosed me with NADD. It was the late ’80s and she was bringing me dinner in my bedroom (nerd). I was merrily typing away to friends in some primitive chatroom on my IBM XT (supernerd)... and watching Back to the Future with the sound off (nerd)[a tad foolish without captions]. She commented, “How can you focus on anything with all this stuff going on?” I responded, “Mom, I can’t focus without all this noise.”

Um.

I just recently wrote thousands of words defending my own workflow, which is a testimony to NADD. I even included screenshots of my work desktops. And then, a short time later, Jerkcity did the very same thing. In fact, Rands ran a competition for the most NADD-like desktop. Had I known about it, I would have cleaned up.

I thought – for a while – that the competition was cute. (Other people’s desktops dofascinate me.) But then I got real. We are merely attesting to our own deficiency. We are, moreover, using the cause and enabler of our deficiency to attest to it.

My issues here are:

it’s psychologically easier to go with the flow and do five little things than to commit n minutes or hours to a specified task (that does not have a deadline)

this behaviour enlarges the time it takes me to do anything, worsening my fear, present since childhood, that I won’t get everything done in my life that I want to

as a self-employed person, I feel like I am always on and am never really permitted to be off, save for the times when I absent myself from electronics. Over the course of a week, such times are rare. I do not really know what a vacation is or what relaxation is

I could readily commit to a man, despite not minding being single. It is everything else to which I have a fear of commitment

I assume things will get better after or during the next contract, for example, failing to understand that being genuinely busy with one task that must be completed by a certain time makes other tasks even harder to finish, worsening one’s anxiety

much of what I categorize as “procrastination” (the only thing I hate about myself, absolutely the only thing) is actually attention dilution in drag

I’ve gone through a number of crises and self-flagellating episodes in which I have promised myself to shape up. I haven’t yet.

Note: While writing this, Jerkcity.com went down, and I procrastinated finishing it over a period of two days, and even in the previous paragraph I started a SCIM session with one of my online pals. ¶

Note further: Jerkcity was an early interesting online comic series because it is created entirely in Comic Chat, for which Comic Sans was invented. If it comes back online later, I’ll link to some faves. I am, after all, primed and ready for gayness! ¶

– Just to say that: A scoop for C-Span. Our family expanded last year. Allison gave birth to a son, Lucien. I have kept this completely out of the media – very successfully. He’ll be a year old this fall. And, um... scoop for C-Span.

And if I can be snarky for just one second, I believe that there is a saying that would apply well to this critique: “Consider the source.”

This source has been published almost 400 times in periodicals, wrote a published book, and has edited other people’s work. Worth considering.

Addendum: As I was mentioning to Dogpoet and one of his ardent defenders over a 37-minute SCIM converation, a model he could follow is Lynn Crosbie, writer of shockingly innovative creative nonfiction. Read Paul’s Case and Missing Children. Fictionalized nonfiction is viable and fascinating genre, dating all the way back to In Cold Blood. It’s a very gay genre, in fact. ¶

2003.08.05 – 6,912 words later, this month’s recapitulation of a dead magazine is more current than ever, what with a plethora of recently-published comparisons between Spy and Radar.

The July–August 1988 issue, moreover, contains the seminal analysis of Newport cigarette advertising, an article by the Little Bugger that could be reasonably applied to his own persona of the current era, and superb graphic design if one discounts the excess of teal–red combinations.

Next week: Letters to Ten Years Ago in Spy. Because I’m actually getting some.

But what I need more of are back issues. It turns out I’m missing entire years. I can’t handle this alone, people.¶

2003.08.03c – On the residential sidestreet, a big dog sitting with his crotchety old master starts emitting warning barks. “OK, OK,” I say, backtracking around a car. We’ve also got a tiny black dog crossing the street followed by three cats.

I’m wary of that dog but I walk toward the cats. There are actually five, three of them obviously related because of their intricate and beautiful fawny coats. They seem to be sniffing each other’s rumps, rather like dogs. And following the dog. The dog is the star of the show. They adore the poochy.

All the creatures eventually make it across the street like a herd of camels. I pat a few of them. The dog comes over and obviously likes me. I pat him, after considerable wariness and having avoided him a bit. He walks away, taking three cats with him.

All the while I’m muttering about the menagerie we’ve got here and how I just can’t believe it. I assume the codger can hear me, as can the three guys down the road, two of them shirtless and all of them wearing working-class haircuts of the sort found among high-school dropouts (“Hey! I got my Grade 12!”) of any decade from the 1960s to present.

The herd of camels re-crosses the street. I push my luck and follow, and the dog starts yapping. Obviously its own turf. A fat battleaxe busts through a door and screeches “Get away from there! Paula! Get away from there or [unclear pronoun]’ll kill you!” (Who’s she talking to?) She then stage-whispered something that included the word “fuckin’ ” and closed the door.

What’s someone like that doing with a house?

Four doors down the street is an old white cat mottled with black patches. She wanders right over and I give her a nice pat. “Dingleballs! Git!” hollers one of the shirtless yahoos on the other sidewalk. “Get away there!”

Dingleballs?

But kitty is much too happy with me. I start walking away and there’s another cat behind me – a giant Persian I’d seen before. I tap the dense fur a few times.

2003.08.02b – NoelDJ isn’t giving us all the details. I did, in fact, ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and tried to steer him from making the kind of mistake I did – ending up in some kind of technical program because nobody could think of anything better. (The comparison is not perfect: I was too immature to do anything else 20 years ago, but Noel isn’t.)

We then began a discussion of the concept of “already publishable.”

– But honestly, where do you go to get a degree in Web design... I know there isn’t such a thing, but where do they teach that?

– No. You don’t need a degree in it. You’re like David Leavitt. You are “already publishable.”

– What do you mean “publishable”? I may sound just dumb saying that, but explain.

– I was drawing a parallel with novelist David Leavitt, whom I’ve met. He’s nebbishy. Anyway, he, like, IIRC, Bret Easton Ellis, took a university writing course, and the prof told him to knock it off because he was already publishable. They later went on to publish first novels to great acclaim. I am using it metaphorically.

It’s actually a great strength of the Web: You can see for yourself, right then and there, that writers are “already publishable.” I’m not going to pretend that being published in print does not confer more prestige and imprimatur than (self-)publishing online, because it does. That’s one reason I still write for “the press.” There’s nothing wrong with online publishing and a great deal right with it. Publishing in print is, however, more important in definable ways, and more long-lasting. As I keep telling people, I wrote a book on Web development, and acted like it was an actual book that would be around for decades (complete with colophon and elaborate typography), because it probably will be around for decades.

Michael is not ready yet and Mark’s range of styles is not suitable for print, except in a form of free verse or creative nonfiction that he should pursue. In fact, perhaps I am selling them both short, since they both seem interested in, or at least capable of, creative nonfiction

I am saying, even as Pilgrim’s technical-redacté, that I have a hard time visualizing them in print

A few writers I wish would publish, or publish more, because they have a habit of burning down their libraries of Alexandria: Crewdson, Elliott

When you’re “already publishable,” you don’t need formalized schooling in that field, whatever it may be.

The Web, it seems, enables our hidden talent-scout impulses. (And of course my own yenta impulses. In fact, I grow impatient that some of the names listed here have yet to put together book proposals.) ¶

NU-PDF: In other news, I’m thinking of trying a hybrid print–online republication of the NUblog. If authored correctly – in InDesign, as an ultimate tagged accessible PDF – one can achieve morally-correct print typography, status as a printed volume, and Web features like hyperlinks. In fact, the files being referred to could, in theory, be included, and that would be an interesting test case right there. It’s being idly considered. ¶

2003.08.01a – I scour the city for newsstands that carry Private Eye, the satirical, pulpy, but well-produced British fortnightly that includes reams of original journalism. I don’t pretend to understand the myriad political and other references, but I read it.

And most importantly, it’s the source of one of my fondest British affectations, shurely?!

Further, the term shurely (usually written with a
trailing ?!) is not a misspelling. It’s an
adaptation of the usage of Private Eye and
Frank, the British and Canadian satirical newspapers.
The original Private Eye–ism, attributed to the
speech impediment of Lord Bill Deedes of the Daily
Telegraph, is “shurely shome mishtake?!”

(I enjoy the occasional British affectation, but that hardly puts me in line to marry Guy Ritchie or anything.)

The magazine’s site is a bit of a joke. It’s virtually content-free, and won’t even work if you drop the www. hostname. It’s the sort of site that a cantankerous old fart who’s worked all his life in the shadow of Fleet St. would begrudgingly put together, with a strong undercurrent of distaste, antediluvianism, and an evident fear of cannibalization of print-magazine sales should the site deign to give anyone a real reason to read it.

Lord Gnome’s mighty organ

We are delighted to say that we have been appointed to write a content-management system for that great British institution, Private Eye, together with a complete site redesign. The new site will be launched during summer 2003.

Horus supposedly does nothing but compliant sites, and Lord Gnome wouldn’t have ordered an entire CMS if there weren’t Content about to be Managed, so it looks like I will finally be able to justify bookmarking the Web site of a publication I read religiously. ¶