What a bullshit title for a blogpost, yeah?  But I am intending to write a little bit about POD and Lulu for the next little while, here, and I know it’s not going to be terribly interesting to about 99% of you, so a figure a nicely boring title might serve as a warning to folks to steer clear for a bit.

To the one percent of you that are interested: I’ve really no plans to write up any how-tos.  Lulu’s FAQ and Help sections, frankly, cover everything you could possibly need to know from start to finish.  I don’t know how well the other POD services out there have documented their upload/process/etc, but I imagine there are probably about a billion resources out there if you’ve got any skill with google. 

But I am– via twitter, blogs, Whitechapel, general internet chatter– seeing a lot of “Well, how’d this-or-that work?” comments and queries, and since I did just put Shivering Sands together (read: Warren did all the work, and then I made ‘er pretty), I figure I’ll try to answer some of those.

(And you can twitter at me if you’ve some burning question you want answered, too.)

So, today, to go ahead and get this one out of the way, I’m going to address the– well it’s not so much a question as it is a sentiment– thing I’m seeing the most: Apparently, there’s a bunch of folks paying close attention to how Shivering Sands does so they can figure out if POD is “worth their time.”

And I have absolutely no fucking clue what that means, so I’ve just got to talk about it.

The time spent on this book is a really simple equation: (Warren wrote some stuff) plus (I fed it into book format) plus (we uploaded everything into Lulu’s super-simple book-maker) equals (Tada! Book!).

Now, I have to assume that anyone asking about “worth the time” already has at least 32pp of content they want to do something with, right? Because, if not, the question that’s really being asked is “Can you give me some excuse to make something?”– and really, fuck those people.  Because if what you want to know is, if you get your thumb out of your backside and actually do something, is someone going to pay you for it?  Well, you’re looking at the wrong career, kiddo.  You don’t actually care about publishing so much as you wouldn’t mind a no-risk game that gets you a book and some money at the end of it.  If, you know, someone can assure you there’s a book and some money at the end of it before you do anything. 

If you’ve already started hyperventilating and thinking about typing up a scathing blog retort about how nothing’s worth doing without an advance (if only someone would pay you to start writing it) then I’m really very likely talking to you, and lemme just save you some time: your pingback isn’t even going to show up on my blog so I can pay you attention, so don’t bother.

But, okay, for the rest of you with 32pp of something– and that’s art or notes or blog entries or a story or recipes or instructions or your manifesto or anything– 32pp is what you need to make a perfect-bound book with Lulu, and that’s most of the time you need to put in, right there.

Lemme repeat that:  If you’ve got 32 pages of stuff that’s not doing anything else right now, you could have a book ready to start selling on Monday.

Now, granted, you’ll have to put in a little time telling people it exists after you’ve hit the “publish” button.  But time left to publish?  Depends on how fast your internet connection is: you’ve got to make a Lulu.com account, upload your content into their bookmaker, type your name and title into their covermaker, and hit a button to push it live.  Could take a whole hour.

And, of course, that’s just running with the pre-made templates on Lulu.  I’m a crazy mechanic that hasn’t used a template for anything, ever (and I’ll probably get into that in later posts) so it took me a leetle bit longer to put together Shivering Sands, yes. But, let me ask you: what’s your blog running on?  A pre-made template?  Something someone else made but it works so well for you that you don’t really think about it?  Well then, there you go.  Lulu’s got you covered.

(If you made your own blog install out of magic and popsicle sticks, then you’re a crazy mechanic, too, and we’ll talk later.)

So, I mean, you can watch Warren’s book for the next couple of months to see if he can somehow convince you that your time will be well spent putting together your own book, I guess.  But I really don’t know what the hell you’re looking for.  You just spent more time reading this than it’d take for you to get started on Lulu, so your measure of “worth it” is obviously a more complicated equation than mine.  Because my time was well spent the minute I got my proof copy in the mail and Warren and I both went “Ooh lookit yay!”

You’ve just got to figure out what you’re really waiting for, is what.

it is the role of the artist to challenge society. no one who lives within the system and makes conventional choices is capable of expanding the box we find ourselves in. that?s why it?s called, ?thinking outside? of it, and to do so, you have to be aware of it first. I believe ?artists? are people born with the dubious skill of acute box-awareness. I say dubious because, if they are anything like me (and I suspect they are, or I am like them), once aware of the confines placed on our existence it becomes increasingly difficult to tolerate them.

there are a lot of assumptions made about what constitutes a successful life. there is, I think, a certain amount of gender-based difference as to the specific expectations on an individual, but the checklist as I understand it runs: stable job, house, car, children, and subsequently future generations. all as expensive as possible. these things equal security, and if yours is like mine, your family says they ?just want you to be happy,? but what they mean is, ?I just want you to be safe, secure, and never take risks with your future.?

the laughable thing, the thing that keeps me from settling happily into the box, surrounded by wood-chips and a little exercise wheel that keeps me running constantly, going nowhere, is an underlying inability to believe that the checklist is actually working out for anybody.

As of right now, my little brother is 21 years old.* I wish oodles of happy natal felicitations to the lad — who can be found right here online. May he have many, many more gleeful, productive years ahead! And even though the occasion veritably cries out for me to tell embarrassing stories about him as a wee nublet of a boy, I will do no such thing.

At this time.

---

* He’s … um … rather significantly younger than me, yes.

My day was actually similar to:

G’night.

(I have no credits for the shot. Please add them in comments if you know.)

So who can tell me what the Deathfall is? Has anyone in the class ever heard of that before? ... Yes, um, Bladeflake? Yes? ... Well, sure, that's one way to put it. It *is* a sort of "crazy blizzard", I suppose.

You see, when you are all grown up and you have done all the grown-up things you were meant to do in your life, and you begin to hear the icy groan in your limbs - the creak and crack that happens as your crystalline bones weaken with age - then you will gather your strength one last time, along with all the other Ice Lords of your age, to make the trek over the mountains, across the plain, all the way around the world to invade and besiege the fiery tropical realm of the Fire Princesses.

Yes, of course it's very hot there! Blistering! The Princesses live in eternal daylight, the sun forever above them, their homes built right into the thousands of sputtering, shaking volcanoes that smolder in the bright, scorching light. And the Princesses themselves run red-hot with the boiling fluid that runs through their veins.

Yes, Stormhammer. It does sound like a dangerous place and yes, in fact, it can kill you. It *will* kill you. It *does* kill you. The Deathfall is the last thing you do in your life: You invade their land and you slake your desire on any and every Princess you can. Their flesh will burn your eyes and splinter your skin but your icy seed can survive - and it will. You will leave it in as many of their boiling wombs as you can before your body can take no more, and you melt.

That's right. You will melt. All that is you will eventually fail to hold and you will break into pieces and vanish as steam off the body of your final conquest. That is how we Ice Lords die. And that is how we make new life.

Yes, babies. This is where babies come from. The seed's stony case will melt and fertilize and the Princesses will bear new children. Those who are girls will be, of course, Fire Princesses, to be raised under the bright and scorching sun. Those who are boys will be Ice Lords, to be raised here in the comforting embrace of night.

How? Well, of course the newborns cannot travel all the way back around the world on their own, and they cannot survive long among the volcanoes. So they must be brought to us. Each year, at the Birthspring, the oldest among the Princesses - the ones who have done all the grown-up things they were meant to do in their lives, who no longer feel the heat of their own blood, whose skins have begun to crack from the smoke - gather their strength one last time to trek across the plain and over the mountains, all the way around the world before the last of their life-spark expires... to bring us our sons.

------
For consideration: ...it's like MARCH OF THE PENGUINS meets a Ralph Bakshi cartoon...

a visit to Doctor Beef?s Storm Troopin? set on flickr is always a worthwhile activity.

For those folks who are interested, here's the Slideshare version of the presentation I gave last week at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute annual meeting. I was asked to talk about foresight thinking, as the event theme was "The Big One of 2056: What Went Right?" a look at a fictional 7.8 quake in the SF region that was handled as well as they could imagine possible.

My goal was to offer a bit of reassurance to the audience that there is some real utility to thinking about the future, and to spell out (in a cursory way) the kinds of big picture issues they should keep in mind while looking ahead forty-six years.

Inflection Points

View more presentations from Jamais Cascio.

By and large, it was a successful talk. The post-talk questions were engaged, with little push-back, and I'm told that the overall response from the audience was quite positive.

The talk was video recorded, and I'm told will eventually be available to the public. I'll link when that happens.

• Keynote: Bruce Sterling (us) on Atemporality | transmediale
  "If progress is to go beyond the banal indulgences that give rise to a never-ending array of car shell designs then we need to analyse our present time with regard to its aesthetics and its media. The second conference session is being introduced with Bruce Sterling's Keynote on Atemporality."
  (tags:video )

Jack Bauer saves the day... with AOL 3.0

unhappyhipsters brings me a special kind of joy.

unhappyhipsters:

At the art opening, he?d been convinced the blank canvas symbolized endless possibilities. Back at home, it was just one more reminder of his own desperation.

(Photo: Raimund Koch; Dwell, April 2009)

true story.

bigworldsmallvictories:

Sentimentality follows preservation.

A

Good morning! Fancy A Fierce Pancake for breakfast?

HOW MUCH IS THE FISH? HOW MUCH IS THE CHIPS?! (Lara! Thank you!)

Egads, how could I have forgotten about these freakwads? I once loved their one-and-only studio album, A Fierce Pancake with the same passion reserved for exceptional goofballs like Primus, Billy Nayer Show, Mr Bungle, Idiot Flesh, Violent Femmes, Fishbone, and Adam the the Ants. But it’s been a long, long time since I last listened…

Is it just me, or does Mick Lynch look uncannily like Siege (yanno, if Siege were crossed with Ed Grimley and a lemur)?

Formed in London in 1983, Stump were a legendary Anglo-Irish indie/experimental/rock group inspired by Captain Beefheart. The lineup was Kev Hopper on bass, Rob McKahey on drums, Chris Salmon on guitar, and Mick Lynch on vocals. They toured a lot in the mid 80s on a couple of brilliant, bizarre EPs, and their energetic live shows quickly earned them a cult following. Then they got signed to a major label, apparently squabbled constantly during the production of AFP and broke up soon afterward, a quarter of a million pounds in debt to their record company, and never to be heard from again.*

The entire album is cracked fucking genius. It’s also very difficult to track down anymore. Beg, borrow, steal a copy if you can.

Read the rest of Better Than Coffee: A Fierce Pancake

---

Post tags: Better than coffee, Crackpot Visionary, Dance, Geekdom, Music, Punk, Silly-looking types