moerstaal update: 'Het Internet als stofzuiger'
As a reply to the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant's Friday 26 May article (based on an interview with the new associate professor, for the feminist magazine Opzij chair, at the Center for Gender and Diversity, at the Maastricht University), on the backlog of women in Internet access and use, I sent a prompt 1035 wrd letter to the paper's Forum editors. It is in Dutch, on NQPAOFU's sister moerstaal, since this morning. Dutch readers/publishers please forward/link to its URL http://nqpaofu.com/moerstaal/mtnl2000/mtnl1.html#31mei2000.

a female principle
As part of my above argument in the Dutch press my intuition has it that (contrary to what said article argued) there's no backlog in female Internet use, when you consider using it as a means of communication and publishing, rather than as an unlimited entertainment channel. In other words: girls use the Internet/www in a more medium appropriate way than boys. They are less impressed by hybrid public space and less scared by unverifiable identity, less focused and therefor less dependent on reputation and status, they have a superior understanding and appreciation of the delicate mix of private and public expression and discourse. OK. This is my intuition, and by far no outcome of research, yet I experience these qualities, certainly in (parts of a) weblog community. It is not about my personal content preferences, it is about where I think female principles count and make a difference. It is used as an argument against very far fetched and banal pseudo-academic, yet officially chaired feminist academic discourse, in a Dutch context. To explain the exact context here is beyond my ambition. But I need some feedback to further develop the argument.

I asked Brig Eaton whether she had any numbers from her long weblog inventory, on woman/man ratio in the weblogging community. She hadn't but was so kind to put up a poll at her site. If you have a personal site, or weblog, in the very wide definition that this phenomenon has, please use the poll and provide us with some feedback on my simple intuition that no, there's no backlog in intelligent, committed, personal and envelop pushing use of the Internet/www by women. Oppose popular belief and Dutch academia's disinformation. Thank you for your vote. Give us some indication. I'll use the outcome of the poll at my best capacity.

FYI: figures used in the article counted 'being online' (undated, not specified) for 14% of Dutch female and 28% for Dutch male population. Numbers... jeez.

Watched the votes come in at Brig's until late. Like watching election results. Blogger linked to it. Thanx. Around 40% of the respondents is female, little under 60% is male. So far. Which makes the f/m ratio roughly 2/3, instead of 1/2 as was given in the Dutch press for general access. To be honest I would have expected a higher number of women turning out, we'll see how it settles over the next days.

this morning in my dream...
P. called me at home and asked me if I had a moment to listen to something extraordinary: L. had sent him a spoken letter, which he played for me over the phone (since my side was a kind of a booth, at home, with a speaker to receive the call, I plugged the door with a towel, as to not be disrupted by the kids' noise, or to spill the tape outside the little wood panelled room). The next moment we found ourselves somewhere outside in some Dutch suburban context, with a couple of (as I supposed would be) L.'s friends, who were celebrating the fact that two of them got reunited after a split. Then L. announced another recording she had made, for P. and the others to listen to, which was played from a car, or bus stop, on the other side of the street. P. and I exchanged a knowing glance, surprised, and indeed as soon as the tape started L. sat herself closely next to P. in what obviously seemed like a desire to make things up for the two of them as well.

It was a very serene scene.

Listening to Unkle's 'Psyence Fiction': I'm a rabbit in your headlights

Le Moulin du Merle
Auberge de la Severie rolled out a great party from 8pm. Under two red cross tents, at the windy and rainy waterside of the Varzy plan d'eau, we enjoyed Gérard and Stéphanie's marvellous hospitality and the company of their singing parents, musette playing godfathers, jabbering regulars and chic customers, the restaurant's neighbours, of all ages and two of the village's policemen, in plain clothes. The 50kgs(!) superb Charolais beef had been roasting over an open fire, in occasional showers, for 12 hours in a row and turned out juicy, tender as anything. Gérard had hired Madame Lulu, the duo that also enlivened the Aurore party at the moulin, two weeks ago. A memorable event, new friends, this is what we're here for.

more two-faced modernization
- We hear about the wonders of the coming digital age, and also about its terrors. It could intensify the totalizing side of modernization at the expense of its critical side. The digital age has great potential for panoptic control and productivist consumerism. Its expansion and its flattening of freedom and autonomy.
(via Alamut, from The Culture Machine/Hypertext as Subversive, by David Kolb)

Meanwhile... I'm updating my new format at the usual URL. Public in a while.

Another update (no re:design): the index to previous issues, now all on the nqpaofu.com server (mind some broken links and non sequiturs, it'll all be fixed asap).

Le Moulin du Merle
Woke up with a virus, 'funny tummy'. Discussing the guest season and why we want who, or not, and if, for how many nights and where... G. and I differ a lot on the subject. Like in everything we correct each other's fears, sometimes the hard way. Things have to work for both of us, even if this means radical moves (like if moving here wasn't radical enough? I like to think it was only the start, and we're moving ahead). Boogie or bust.

Listening to Home, 'IX'. Collage, around 1995. Very little (textual) information on the box. Too lazy to search after them. Saw them once compared and preferred to Ween.

Le Moulin du Merle
Visited the Talon vide greniers this morning, after the Fête des Mères breakfast. R+r competing for G.'s attention. Schools had prepared them with poetry and bricolage. Yesterday the three of us added some Photoshop to the presents. Talon (50 inhabitants, 60?) was a classic small flee market. The buvette was situated in the Mairie and served coffee, croissants, coke, wine and fries and sausages. We had wind and sun and some rain and a very nice temperature. The scene was totally enjoyable. Family affairs. Jacques Tati 2000. Two boys on top of a wall, giggling over a Gameboy. At home I hypnolapsed into half sleep for a few hours. Later I successfully tried the homegrown rhubarb on a tarte tatin variation.

I feel kinda suspended indeed. Not wanting to continue the old, not knowing where, when and how to start a new, getting used to just loving the life. Still a workaholic very much. I gotta do stuff. Then again, visions of total uselessness of human effort. Tonight listening to Jean-Luc Ponty's nervous 1970s electric violin. Up and down. I owe people re:plies. Later. Sudden déja vu, a real one.

Le Moulin du Merle
Stone picking. Put a new handle on the muck fork. Tough to get the old one out. Weeded the hotbed.

a-monumental
To build a new age, eg. of 'information', we have to become deeply a-monumental. 'Building a new age' already seems to counter this suggestion. To construct beyond the model, beyond the ideal, answering to the true affordances of networked media, nothing monumentally, but open connectivity, should be our goal.

To be post-modern means to be post-monumental, post-idealistic, post-authoritarian, post-imperialistic, post-colonial, post-global, post-local—but old habits die hard.

Art and design have been model making traditions, grotesque for their own sakes, to keep a safe distance from 'life', at times competing it, building alternative realities in the passing. To maintain a distance, to thrive in crises, yet to be answerable to information modes, is the only challenge to today's symbolic trades. Experimenting new habits. Un-finish.

Has Modernism Failed?, Suzy Gablik (1984)
- In his book The Gift, Lewis Hyde claims that the way we treat a thing can sometimes change its nature. He also argues that in its fundamental nature, art is a gift and not a commodity. So it is hardly an accident, given the detached nature of commodity exchange (in contrast to the bonding power of gifts), that we have called those nations known for their commodities "the free world." The phrase doesn't seem to refer to political freedoms; according to Hyde, it merely indicates that the dominant form of exchange in these lands does not bind the individual in any way -- to his family, to his community, or to the state. It is only that when a part of the self is given away that community appears. Commodity systems have their own sort of growth, but they bring neither the personal transformations nor the social and spiritual cohesion of gift exchange.

(...)

To be of one's own time, as far as the painter Ingres was concerned, was a measure of failure rather than an achievement.

Art & Discontent; Theory at the Millennium, Thomas McEvilley (1991)
- Art became the emblem of the soul of Modernism, its spiritual validation -- a highly focused realm of evolution-like advances that seemed to guarantee that history was indeed processing toward some goal. Early post-Modern art -- such as the quotational and appropriational work so common in the '80s -- with its deliberate confounding of historical sequences, was designed to deconstruct the Modernist myth of historical inevitability. It argued that the artist now must find his or her way to meaning without relying on a providential ally, an hypostatized History which barely conceals the presence of a guiding deity who can no longer be trusted. Art after aesthetics (that is, after the overthrow of the Kantian theory) is, like science or philosophy, a quest for answers (which may come in the form of questions). Leaving the faith of Modernism behind, the post-Modern artist tracks the future, seeking a face for the unknown.

Le Moulin du Merle
Hold. Later: dirt digging, stone picking, dumping.

bag lady
Gilberthe contributes to the Couture Locale exhibition at the Amsterdams Historisch Museum, opening 18 October 2000.
I published her selection on the site, to communicate to the curator. She's just such a good designer.

dad double sleep
When searching the archive for a print of the 'et si omnes ego non' inscription above the entrance portal to a garden on the Murano island(?), I came across a photo of my dad sleeping, superimposed with some scene including his parents on the far right.

re:reading
Suzi Gablik: 'Has Modernism Failed?' and Thomas McEvilley: 'Art & Discontent; Theory at the Millennium' (see quotes on NQPAOFU#29).

optical age
Got my Pentax LX (*1985) out of the safe after a year, and inspected after many more of idleness. Screwed the filters on and off the lenses, flashed the shutter at 1/60th second (its battery is depleted), changed the view finders etc. Love that optical/mechanical FEEL. Focused all around me. Have to buy film.

Le Moulin du Merle
Vegetable garden uprooting. All there's to it: weeding and watering and weeding etc. We put the potatoes. And lent the 3 party tents which remained of last Saturday's Aurore bouffe to the owner of the Auberge de la Severie, for his own party, next Tuesday.

So was he. Semper Idem.

blog brevis
Telegram style might do the trick. This is no attempted suicide. I'm not begging for attention. Just need time to ponder (1) Le Moulin Du Merle, (2) the work in general, (3) the online format, (4) economics of attention and other currencies. I'll think out loud as much as possible. If I start to lag you can always send an email to be notified for updates. Remember the come back blog.

Le Moulin du Merle
Weeding in the morning. Former moulin owner Follope came to lunch and stayed till 8pm. When rounding the garden they showed us new tricks, like how to open the garage when the remote refuses. He reminded us to rinse the fresh water source's upstream filter. Again he had to show how to trim the roses. 'Every night we go to sleep less stupid', as a passing friend of Follope put it.

I wanna be like: a red tin bus... see how that makes sense? (David Thomas)

20000523 links
10th Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy (www.cfp2000.org/program/full-program.html)
CFP proceedings soon (www.cfp2000.org/papers)

freedom and privacy by design
JTLYN: Neal Stephenson was a 'dinner speaker' at the Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2000. There are some interesting links on the conf's site and probably his keynote (which Adam C. Engst reports on, over at TidBITS#532, in 'Threat Models and Domination Systems'), will be online.

what the blog
If you die to know what today was thought to be about, take a look at the source (a habit I would advise you surfers to cherish in more cases). The unfinished and unconcluded rap in comment suspension has been on my mind and screen all day, until I gave up on it. Dunno. Something's lacking in urgency. Or: off-line seems to be more rewarding than on-line. I'm missing out on Generosity completely. My identity is where I am. My thoughts about the Evil Eye and browsing of Felicia Goodman's Ecstacy, Ritual and Alternate Reality; Religion in a Pluralistic World followed up quite naturally on spending hours in the sun uprooting weeds, cooking, listening to Bongo Fury, an the Sound, and wondering about the gift of Sight.

Include me out for a while.

aurore
Two slices of cold toast hang out of the toaster which is sitting on the radiator in the dining room, the head of a big salmon with some green on a small plate in the garden, waiting for a lazy predator, the mown grass on the lawn turning yellow, a blanket blinding the garage window, Gil and Anne and Zita and myself watching a 1992 Tina Turner documentary, drinking water and wine and water again, eating left-over (there's so much food!) rice salad in front of a fire, wild flower bouquets (marguerites and buttercups that Rolf saved from the mower, dark bluish purple columbines picked in the prairy behind the vegetable garden) losing their petals everywhere, R+r watching the video shot yesterday, and god-knows-what to find in places where we don't want to look yet, like more dishes. Otherwise the house is in tip top condition, the six of us having lived in the attic for two nights, with 6 guests in the main bedrooms. As a direct result of the Aurore party (our broker celebrating with his Dutch owners of French property), the bureau is cleaned out, and some prints (birds; the cricket and the ant) hung in the library, all but 4 remaining boxes containing primarily archival material fit on its shelves. Some 50 people wined and dined and some danced around the house. We had a wine-tasting (I have to pay attention again when I dispose of the bottles, but already can recommend the Vedrenne Crème de Pêche de Vigne, pure peach to mix with almost any sparkling wine), food catered by Auberge la Severie in Varzy, the chef and his daughter attending all afternoon (we got invited to their private anniversary on May 30) and two musicians from Nevers. Gil had arranged for everything, not with my full consent at first but later I contributed a short talk and of course seconded G. and A. and Z. where-ever I could. When I saw the house hosting all this activity and got all the compliments and especially experienced people having a great time, it all started to work for me. It was interesting to sleep in the attic and see the main rooms as hotel rooms, with their flowers and bottles of water and glasses. Then Mr. Aurore Hugo Versloot's team is a remarkable mix of young and old girls, all with interesting habits and histories, he has an equally colorful clientèle and a very sweet friend, Air France commercial manager Jerôme. Charlotte (Le Mazot goat farm Delphine and Philipe's daughter) did an excellent job entertaining the kids, both visiting and R+r. Seeing the latter, and certainly Rolf, changing very quickly now, growing up to be this boy, talking French fluently all of a sudden since a few weeks, even to us and then switching French and Dutch at whim, is a blessing. Moulin possibility space yesterday was pushed to new limits. Just what I needed. Then finally (I mean 36 hours is a long time) checking mail again I find this great link from Paul, inviting me for a visit to some French garden I knew of but never saw the site, nor the website, much like the ones that could serve as an example for our 1.7 hectares as a Gesamtkunstwerk, if ever we would decide to go in that direction, like Little Sparta, or the facteur Cheval's or Furka Pass or Merz or Eben-Ezer, or Schulthess', or D'Annunzio's Vittoriale, or Güell. I hear Paul's compiling a list, for Alamut? Places of the ideal. Then to actually people these places is a damn fine art by itself.

later
This afternoon I pumped up the Shelby Lynne (I like that voice a lot) volume while G. and Z. were off for a stroll and A. was reading and tanning in the garden. R+r drew castles and built traps for crooks respectively. Now we are putting together another left-over dish, with prefab fries. I set up the dining table in the salon, in front of the fire. It's 10pm. The freezer contains enough remains of yesterday to serve our guests and ourselves several more helpings, a choice from salmon and taboulé and rice salads and crèpes cake and whatnot. All frozen directly after having been prepared. To top everything, Anne had brought the walnut filled dough made by her friend from Amsterdam's café-restaurant Zeezicht, to prepare with an apricot filling. Desert in an hour or two or so. With coffee and a shot of Poires William, or Calvados. This was an intoxicating weekend de bouffe.

20C travel
From a box I recovered most of my collection of several hundreds of last century's travel brochures and flyers and guides and other printed matter. I set up this collection maybe 15-20 years ago when I could still afford material like this. So if someone needs like the timetable and fees of sea travel from Amsterdam to Batavia, in 1930, ask me.

an ear for an ear, you're jinglin' baby
There's all these tiny bits that fire up in my mind while living the life: cleaning the house, taking the kids places, mowing the grass, emptying the plates, chopping the woods, doing to do's. Then the urge of publishing is announcing, I think, but I'm blank, unintentionally, not even blocked, just blank and amazed at finding myself without them earlier bits lining up for narration. Where have they gone? Are they left where they were fired, missing in the action, hovering over clean rooms and washed dishes and freshly mown lawns? (I know, re:turning there I might find them waiting for me). Do I want them back? I'm no reporter on lost bits. When you're reporting you remember the bits and fiddle around with them. When you're writing you re:construct them, and then some. Ex Nihilo—not quite perhaps, but Ex Embarrassing Little, most of the time. QED. There was nothing on my mind.

clock wise
Not only all devices and commodities look like they have been manufactured by the greatest misfit of evolution named homo faber, the cutifier, worst is he makes them all sound same. So even if you close your eyes to all the formporn that is around, the soundporn remains. Which BTW reminds me of a story I once heard about some far away civilization where at the movies, at the upcoming of a scene considered harmful to some by some (the essence of censorship), a light at the side of the screen would start blinking, upon which some of the audience would shut their eyes until an alarm sounded for them to let them know they could re:open them. Indeed (and only) alarming are the bleeps and jingles of electronic commodities. Maybe they tell us to close our eyes, beep, never to open them again. Until you hear like wooden cranks or copper bells or steel strings, or air being blown into a pipe or onto a sail, or the ruffle of feathers, or an empty stomach, or sucking mud—which' sounds tell time, and space, not just sweet bits. So truly hating the age of electronics, for its missing information, I wonder if this is the price to pay. What could be the resonant front-ends to the bitstream, that would return space...