{"id":141,"date":"2008-07-07T08:15:13","date_gmt":"2008-07-07T13:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=141"},"modified":"2018-10-31T12:41:29","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T16:41:29","slug":"revisiting-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=141","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting Roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

I started Greatsociety in April of 2001 and had big plans. One of those big plans involved regular series as opposed to random rants.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Back then, Greatsociety was called Dirty Freaks, and there were other authors involved who would each lend their unique voices to the front page.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cRotting Corpse\u201d is the only other author who has survived from those days.\u00a0 <\/span>He now runs with his real name \u2013 Lonnie Martin, filmmaker extraordinaire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Originally, the front page was to see a small percentage of random rants, and a large percentage of ongoing series such as The Boble, Notes from the Margin<\/a>, Yesterday\u2019s Weather, Cat Diary, and others I\u2019ve now forgotten. <\/o>The random rants soon became the dominant form.\u00a0 <\/span>They were easy, quick, and fun.\u00a0 <\/span>A series needed discipline.\u00a0 <\/span>The drive to try and find that discipline splashed over into the random rants, though, and I introduced recurring themes and characters.\u00a0 <\/span>There was the multi-part time travel adventure, “Nacho Sasha and the Knights of Saint John”\u00a0 <\/span>and, after 9\/11, I introduced Texas Billionaire Oscar bin Laden<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A friend from <\/st1>Sri Lanka<\/st1> became the alcohol-fueled template for \u201cJames,\u201d described as my old college buddy (though I met my Sri Lankan friend at my old high school job, not in college).\u00a0 <\/span>Traits from various ex girlfriends led to the creation of \u201cNatasha.\u201d Both featured in vaguely-connected article, acting as a sort of foil for often fictional rampages. <\/span><\/p>\n

I dropped out of the writing habit in late 2006, and throughout 2007.\u00a0 <\/span>Many reasons for that.\u00a0 All now, strangely, unimportant.\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/o>\n<\/p>\n

With the 2008 revival of Greatsociety, I\u2019ve not tried to place any controls on my writing.\u00a0 <\/span>Part of the resolution that led to more activity on the front page was to just treat it more like a blog and less like a writing journal.\u00a0 <\/span>For most of the life of this website, I\u2019ve approached it with the old school zine mindset.\u00a0 <\/span>How I would love to slave over some Xerox piece of shit that you can buy for a dollar at the used record store\u2026<\/p>\n

Of course, those days are over.\u00a0 <\/span>And Greatsociety has seen far too much in my personal life to really be treated with anything other than vodka-addled, dismissive familiarity.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t care what I post these days\u2026
\n<\/o>\n<\/p>\n

All that said, I\u2019ve decided to introduce a few regular series.\u00a0 <\/span>Simply because I have the material sitting around, so there\u2019s no point wasting it.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s post<\/a>, from my Gmail archives, was the first.\u00a0 <\/span>Every Sunday, until I run out of shit, I\u2019ll be posting unfinished drafts, notes, and interesting weirdness from my overloaded Gmail account.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s mostly stuff from 2004-2007 that I\u2019ll recycle, but I\u2019ll also move into the deeper email\/computer\/moldy cardboard box archives, I think.\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/o>\n<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve given Tuesdays to Rotting Corpse, where he\u2019ll recycle his Women\u2019s Studies blog<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>Just for the folks who hate to navigate off the site.\u00a0 <\/span>Lonnie and I have been on the same sort of creative path \u2013 me with publishing, and him with a movie \u2013 for years now, so I\u2019ve become addicted to his blog.\u00a0 <\/span>It makes me think that I, too, can be successful.\u00a0 <\/span>Or maybe I\u2019m just waiting for him to have a public nervous breakdown\u2026<\/p>\n

On Wednesdays, I\u2019ll start reposting the Boble.\u00a0 <\/span>Again.\u00a0 <\/span>I first wrote The Boble in 1989.\u00a0 <\/span>And, yes, I actually did sit down and write a satirical take on the Bible, starring God BOB, Bob Jr, False Rob, and others.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ve never managed to print the whole thing\u2026 A few chapters showed up at 3am Magazine, I got a bit further with Dirty Freaks, I made a stab at an earlier incarnation of Great Society\u2026 Someday, I swear, I\u2019ll post the whole damn thing.\u00a0 <\/span>But it\u2019s over 300 pages, so I\u2019ll split it up into endless unreadable posts.
\n<\/o>\n<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I\u2019ll continue with my regular ranting updates where I threaten to stalk down the aisle of a Metro car with a machine gun.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t intend for any of the above series to replace the content, or provide a crutch.\u00a0 <\/span>It really is all about cleaning out my Gmail, and doing something with all the archived crap on my hard drive.\u00a0 <\/span>Call it OCD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I started Greatsociety in April of 2001 and had big plans. One of those big plans involved regular series as opposed to random rants.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gs-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}