tony_pierce – Citizen Reporter

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.

Because He Can

I crossed 5th Av. as quickly as possible and headed towards the car that had just pulled over to pick me up. Out popped the great Tony Pierce, who just happened to be passing through NYC on the same day I was visiting the Trippist people. I glanced at the California plates and took note of the sirius satellite radio, and off we drove towards Union Square.

We walked the streets and caught up on what each of us has been up to. In his case, driving across the United States. I couldn’t remember, though I’m a loyal reader of the busblog, why he was making this trip. When asked, his response was simple: “Because I can.” He even tried to convince me to delay my return to Amsterdam and drive down to DC with him. Tempting, but I’m falling way too behind on my life in Holland to delay my return this coming week.

photo by Tony Pierce

Manhattan is just as it always was. Which at some level amazes me; so many cities are heavily pursuing traffic limits, congestion charges, car-free neighborhoods and pedestrian centers. New York City still lets any clown drive his or her jalopy right into its heart. Somehow the streets don’t completely clog like Dick Cheney’s arteries… allowing for some traffic to flow in between very long pauses and holdups.

We passed by the Voice but didn’t go in. Went by Yaffa but didn’t stop to eat. Looked towards Washington Square but didn’t stop to sit. It was and has been my whirlwind visit, and as usual I’m not doing half the things I intended to do.

In Cold Blog

I’ve not yet read Truman Capote, but I’m going to. Like so many media consumers these days, I had to first see the recent movie about his work on the book “In Cold Blood” to get inspired to read the actual book. Sad but true.

In Cold Blood was about the murder of an entire family in some middle-america, dustbowl state. More specifically, it was about the accused and later convicted killers; their lives, their childhood, everything about them up to and including the crimes and later on death row. Capote was able to gain/buy access to sit with one of the two men everyday for I don’t remember how long. And just based on what I saw in the film, you can see through Capote and for yourself just how human and how fragile and lost these men are. Though some might say it was an act, there’s something very familiar and perhaps even endearing about the one particular guy. And of course this makes for a very grey sort of outlook on things: there you sit talking to someone who killed a whole family, yet there you sit sitting with a very polite, scared, confused, and damaged human being. Naturally many people don’t ever want to hear such a thing, a killer is a killer is a killer is a killer and they are terrible and must get a chair or an injection or gas etc. I’m aware of this reasoning, but clearly I’m not of that opinion.

I present all this to you today because I’ve been reading and re-reading blog posts by Tony Pierce, Emmanuelle, and this other blog I just randomly searched for; all about the blogger from Oklahoma, Kevin Underwood, who recently murdered and planned to eat a 10 year old girl. I’m actually not sure if he’s been convicted yet so I should rephrase that, but it seems the authorities are quite certain about this. So all day long I’ve been reading his blog, which I think everyone should continue to have a right to read. You may not find it exciting. In fact, it’s downright boring. But considering what has happened, I’ve been skimming it looking for real posts where he talks about his feelings and thoughts, and as Tony said in his post – he clearly has a great deal of social anxiety. As you read, you see that he was extremely depressed and went on medication, but then stopped taking it for some reason. He was also constantly tormented with the desire to be close to someone yet the inability to get near anyone. He frequently mentions not feeling like a normal person and the headaches and the extreme boredom with life. – All things you will find in blogs anywhere on the internets. Which is about where I start to think of Truman Capote and In Cold Blood.

There will be no great conclusion to this post, as I’m still pouring over the entries and trying to look behind the words and understand what was going on. I suspect lots of things, including mental illness. Now being mentally ill doesn’t mean you’ll murder a little girl and want to eat her. But can it go that far, that someone becomes psychotic? Judging by his writing, the familiar themes the blog contains, I would say this blog could be his In Cold Blood.

To Be Continued — Im going to consult some mental health experts and report back.