bicyclemark

To Get My Groove Back

I’ve been a blogger for over 5 years. So you figure lots of things happen to me, my life, my general mood, and the obstacles I face, that don’t always come accross in text. (maybe audio.. and probably video!)

Despite the fact that I tell stories and give my personal opinions. I don’t always write “Im sad” and that sort of thing, both, because I don’t think it is important, and because I think there are bigger fish for me to fry on this site. (thats actually the same reason, i love how i can write in circles) But here’s a rare revelation… I’ve been on a down cycle lately.

That’s a wishy washy way to say I lost my inspiration.. my will to fight and write and plan and plot and whatever it is that I do as a fledgling personal media un-pire. There was sickness. There was aging. There was job loss. And somewhere in there all manner of emotional bad stuff. All of which made me question every single act of my daily life and my lofty goals.

I can tell you this now because I’m starting to return to what I think is.. good form. It will be a long road.. but step one begins Thursday:

In order to get my groove back, I will return (for a visit) to my roots.. my ancestry.. my other country and a large chunk of my family and friends: Portugal. Most importantly I will spend days with 2 people who together made an enormous difference and influence on my life and personality.. my grandparents.

You may have seen the videos in the past. I’ve been working on a modest audio and video archive of them and their stories.. to keep for future generations and for my own personal enjoyment. And yes… to share, sometimes, with the internets. So stay tuned, thursday I make that oh-so-familiar trip to Lisbon, and for two important weeks, I’ll be travelling on that road… towards getting my groove back. (no matter how corny and cliché it sounds).

3am Thanks to Fleur

Hello Im 27.

I didn’t think it was a big deal. And then… my friend Fleur called.

You may remember her as Dolphin Girl, as Ive admirably referred to her work with marine life in the Azores.

Well she first called me to dinner, my last meal as a 26 year old, she called it. And that alone left me happy as larry, whomever he is, and then, along with another old friend from way back in my Amsterdam life, these two wonderful ladies took my out to a most unlikely place. And proceeded to make a birthday celebration out of it.

I was shocked. Im still surprised. I cherish my beatiful, pocket-sized gifts. Moreover, I cherish the friends that make up my family here in my most favorite city on earth. After dancing til 2h30.. I decided it was time to come home as I was still able to walk and unlock my bike. I gave them all the biggest hugs and whispered endless praise into Fleur’s ears.. which she shrugged off like it was nothing.

This beautiful nothing made my 27th birthday.. and the day is barely 3 hours old.

Dank jullie wel! Fleur, Barbara, and the boys that would later join us. I don’t normally use the blog for name dropping, but you filled me with joy… and liquor, i think.

bmtv31 Long and Boring, Yet Important

Click To Play

A vlog from a man in his bathrobe at four in the afternoon. My two topics of earth shattering importance: 1- The vlogger foundation. Or something like that, which is an idea I need help developing. 2- socially conscious ad network links: evilvlog insanefilms Drinking Mochas Makes my Kidneys Feel Better

Always Learning From Comments

In all my sickness, I was somehow at some pub tonight celebrating an old friends birthday. And perhaps because Im dillusional, this brave soul listened to me go on and on about the power of personal publishing (blogs in on their forms) and the people who read them.. the comments especially, how good they can be.

Well.. as soon as I arrive home, ready to pass out… the evidence is here waiting for me. So without further adue… this post is from the comments, from you out there, on the topic of what was the constitution meant to do and what has been done with it. Even some discussion about an old white dead guy I like very much by the name of Madison.
Some might say — “oooh politics” but I ask that you get beyond that cop-out. This is about lives.. people’s lives and what they can do with them.. what they are allowed to do with them. (among other things) Here we go, picking and choosing paragraphs:

The problem with ALL democracies is parties. The only thing a party does is work to arrange the advancement of that parties agenda irrespective of the number of people in that party. Since the constitution was written before parties, it is defensless against them. They are like a filter that everthing must pass through before it gets to the system, thus rendering the system ineffective. –RogueGenius

…I’m more tempted to understand the constitution’s main intent is to protect the people from the government and to ensure the right to private propoerty. The success of that is a whole other bag but these were men whose freshest memory of government gone wrong was persecution from the King of England. On the surface this leads people to believe that their main intent was to create a government that would prevent any one man from having that sort of power……
Man…the more I read Madison, the more I realize how much they already knew and how little we learned from them. They had the flux-capaciter and we let Biff build his hotel anyways. – van stratt (with the bonus BTF reference!)

The Constitution is far more about sausage-making government and is covered with correction fluid from all the parts we have had to edit out of the Founder’s vision, like the fractional representation of people owned as property and the lifetime appointment of senators. Still lots of room for improvement there IMHO. — Nick

Thank ye friends, those who comment on other stuff, or even rarely. You remind me of why the two way street of blogging is important.

Albania Fever

Since I think I might be sick, it is a good time to mention Albania!

Jim Belushi is Albanian.

My cousin was just on the skypes telling me all about his recent work-trip to Tirana, Albania. Now I’m convinced I should have gone there and I need to go there.

Richard kept mentioning during our recent journey, that we should head to Albania because no one is there yet and there’s probably still this feeling of chaos and rebuilding. Seems alot of that is true. I’ve been reading up (wikipedia unfortunately); Albania was in a very unique kind of catatonic isolation til the late eighties, early nineties. The history is amazing, dating back to prehistory in fact. If I didn’t feel sick I might have more to say about it.. but maybe you’ll look it up yourself sometime.. or visit there, like I will! (whenever that will be, I have no idea)

More Wikipedia Trouble

Longtime readers, listeners, and viewers of my humble communique may recall my fued with wikipedia. For those who don’t remember, use the search box; but basically I got banned from touching information on my own life and work, and then the entry about this blog and related activities was completely deleted. Course, then came the podcast with the editor from wikipedia where we officially learned that they do alot of picking and choosing about what IS important and what ISNT.

I decided it didn’t matter. I like wikipedia for some information, and I don’t like it for other things. I figured life would go on this way, but they’ve shown more signs of poor judgement. Read Tony Pierce’s experience; a man who has been blogging and blogging hard, forever. He’s had aventures, and all sorts of trials and tribulations, he has groupies, and all sorts of run-ins with trouble, but somehow wikipedia decided he’s no good and they’ve banned him too, I think. (update: madge weinstein is on their target list as well!?!)

I went back to look at what happens when you use my name as BM or simply my fullname, and what comes up. It seems, apart from having been part of Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution, more of my past projects have been deleted, including the big entry that was up for over 3 years about One Cool Guy, a once beloved third wave ska band from New Jersey.

This bothers me not only because it is about me, though I will confess to being too nascisitic with this stuff.. but hell.. I am a blogger. But what really bothers me is being erased. I can’t remember half the stories that were compiled in those entries, and with my birthday coming up on Sunday, I’m sure to forget lots of the small details that are so fun and interesting to have recorded and reported on the internet. I can imagine others will suffer the same fate, because this hugely popular and highly useful site is so plagued with counterproductive rules and incompetant editors.

What do to? Many will say — dont use it! And I like the idea, but Ill still use it.. its much too handy for some things.

I am interested in an alternative. So i googled… alternative to wikipedia. And what do you know… I present to you.. Citizendium! Odd title. yes. And yes.. it isn’t quite ready. But it has some important differences, I think. Actually I still don’t know what to think. But Im ready to sign up to participate in the pilot project. In their founding text it states:

we want to create a responsible community and a good global citizen.

Sounds like my kind of project.