I'm reaching out to update you on a few things I've been doing lately – I hope I’m finding you well. It's been exactly one year since the last edition of The Tone and a few things have changed. During The Big Virus, I’ve written a little bit and brought a lot of old work back from the dead – mostly leaving Extratone alone, for better or worse, aside from publishing Sierra’s superbly interesting essay entitled “Gallows Humor and Secondary Traumatic Stress in The Workplace.” The biggest news, I suppose, is that I was interviewed at the beginning of this month about Extratone, blogging, writing tools, and self-curation by CJ Eller – the Community Manager of Write.as, the simple, forward-thinking open source CMS I migrated us to last year. If you care about The Process, I hope it proves an at least somewhat illuminating read:
I've noticed that trying to rekindle interest or momentum in a topic is unusually not a worthwhile use of time in my case. If I can't get my rhythm back fairly early in, I am very unlikely to, ever. That said, I think it's also important to forgive yourself for investing time in something that won't work out – otherwise, you will settle for less than what you originally intended and release something you won't be happy with.
Cars
As many of you know already, I was in an accident on December 22nd of last year that totaled my Jetta Sportwagen and left me with a suspended license. As such, I have not driven a single inch in The Real World in the ~6 months since, which has been a real bummer, as you might imagine. I’m not quite sure if I’ve lost my mind just yet but I have had time to give Honk a dedicated web URL, make myself an experimental autos and games-only Twitter account, and to finally finish my review of the 2019 Volkswagen Fatlas:
Volkswagen’s first substantial entry into the SUV market is well-named, relatively well-endowed, fairly bland for its price tag, and very, very heavy.
In honor of Martin, my smashed Jetta, I wrote “Kinship of the Jetta, Deserving” – a car review in the form of the story of my whole experience:
The joy my Sportwagen brought me was not expected. My plan to make myself a more reasonable person (and driver) by buying a “boring” car was obviously foiled by the diesel’s torque, the community’s dynamism, and my own communion with mod culture. I spent more consecutive time driving the Jetta than I have in any other automobile and was able to truly enjoy it.
A funny(ish) story from my few months of ridesharing last Summer:
Early one morning, a ride was requested from the local news station just out of town – a fascinating place. News vans parked in a converted horse stable. They farm televisions out there. A few minutes into the ride, after picking up the young woman, I noticed in the rearview mirror out of my eye’s corner that she had put down her phone to watch my right hand with total bewilderment. Eventually, she asked “what are you doing to the car?” She’d never heard of a manual transmission before. I did my best to explain, but when she asked “but why wouldn’t you just buy a regular car?” I did not have a sufficient answer. Unlike many automotive enthusiasts, I think it’s totally okay that people are allowed to exist independent of this knowledge.
I know God hates me because I continue to see V8 Jaguar XJRs for sale around town, yet I am certainly destined – both financially and ethically – to finally own a Shitbox.
Blogging
After finally coming to terms with the term (lol,) I’ve spent the past month devoting a lot of attention to my blog – both in design and its archives. If you’re a Write.as user (which I would encourage you to be) you can now emulate its look: my theme was officially listed this week. (It sorta sounds cool but the CSS is actually ridiculously simple and relatively messy.) If you only follow a single link in this email, though, please make it this excerpt of my novel Blimp’s Burden which represents my best writing of all time:
The eroding Earth slipping away from the hem of the warped, stained wood fences; the sidewalks, cracked, bent, sloped helter-skelter, often muddied in the troughs and joints – generally laying haphazardly in layers after having been steadily tossed about by the glacial forces of their intermixture with clay, precipitation, and the tumultuous temperature-dependent torture of the two – these were his, entirely, in the right hour. Between two and five in the morning when the earliest risers would blearily revive their dewy automobiles from long, silent hibernation, the whole world – everything in his sight and more at any moment – it was all his, without a single worthy challenger.
I’ve written three Star Trek Posts recently: about Star Trek Online, Star Trek: Discovery, and Star Trek: Picard. I also blogged about my favorite writing instruments, if you’re into that sort of thing. Most popular of all, though, has been “Dirty Dave’s Poweruser Tips,” which I honestly did not expect:
I want you to come away from this list feeling as liberated and powerful as I do now when I’m On My Computer without any condescension or tedium. Unfortunately, there’s probably going to be some of both, so please stick with me and don’t take it personally. I do a lot of online reading, writing, and fiddling. I’ve been compelled to do these things in one form or another since very early childhood, and what follows could be described as a list of my favorite tools to accomplish things. Almost all of them are entirely free to use and the vast majority of them are easily and beautifully functional as well. They are what I suggest for my own mother to use, for what that’s worth, and I would argue sincerely for their extreme importance. Don’t waste your life on bad software.
Audio
I recorded an accompanying episode of my “podcast,” which has now been monetized with Anchor ads. So far, I’ve made 38 cents. Perhaps with your listen, I’ll make a whole dollar! (My bank account is currently ~$295 in the negative so I’d really appreciate it.) I’d also forgotten that there’s actually a single exclusive interview on that roll with Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko which you should definitely listen to. (If you want to skip all my blabbing, the actual interview audio begins at 16:05.)
Old Posts
You know, I used to be pretty good at the writing thing. I have no idea what happened, to be honest. In that spirit, I spent the time to rescue a bunch of my favorites from my old blog that I genuinely think you’ll enjoy.
First, there’s “Virtual Reality Virginity, Lost” – an account of my first experience with VR thanks to Isiah:
After the conflict, I am subjected to a dreamier, narrated montage accompanied by cheesy synthesized orchestral music and featuring disproportionately a particular man with a shiny, tatted bald head and rather large feet with rather small toes, which he likes to wiggle during these particular conversations. Thanks to VR’s omniencompassing perspective, I am allowed to observe his wiggling in his every appearance. The tone of the background music and the prevalence of relaxed, conversing couples and sunsets in the scenes suggest romanticism is the montage’s theme, but for me, it is the bald man’s feet — I am too busy conversing with my two friends, across the divide, in this world, to listen to any of what is said. Considering that YouTube collects the dimensional data regarding where the user looks, and for how long, I make an effort to bend my neck up and down in extremes, and notice a patch of washed-out sky, distorting in the distance, and ponder what — if anything — we have gained in this technology.
In “The Matchsellers’ Inheritance,” a local bluegrass band releases an album that proves they are not just what they appear to be.
What the fuck is this album, exactly? A nonchalant, apparently oblivious challenge to every assumption you could possibly arrive with. It’s safe to suppose “Bluegrastronauts” refers to its departure from the rest of their discography – from smack dab in Indiana’s center to the goddamned Beta Quadrant, the two managed to stupefyingly ace a theme most comfortable residents of their bluegrass sphere would take care to avoid leaving up on the kitchen whiteboard – even tackling apocalypse with regal serenity. At first glance, I was sure that copious soft glow had to either be the false product of my own insanity, or a deliberate attempt to alienate the sum of their audience in a single crises of identity. In fact, The Matchsellers had pulled off yet another especially-sparse artistic miracle and harnessed their creative restlessness to propel their departure from the elderly genre’s pretensions without spilling a single drip of their secret sauce.
“The Case for Chuck Klosterman” is an oddly culturally-on point analysis of one old white Portland Dad’s voice and whether or not it should be considered contemporarily relevant:
More than any other writer of his demographic, Chuck Klosterman has a close, wary relationship with the everchanging contextual boundaries of public expression. He knows when to be transparent with his feelings on progression, and he's careful to avoid what could be “problematic” for the sake of functioning better as a writer (I assume.)
Attached to this email is an HTML file containing the entire four-year history of my reading list channel on Discord as of April 6th. There’s some pretty cool stuff in there – check on this Twitter thread for some of my all-time favorites.
The Future
I’m excited to be going back to “real” work soon as an Audio/Video Technician and to attend The Information’s “news summer school program.” It’s a free “virtual internship” that’s supposedly going to include Zoom calls with ex-Buzzfeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith and Recode Media’s Peter Kafka (one of my top 5 favorite journalists of all time,) among many other substantial names. If you’re interested, I’d encourage you to sign up too.
I hope this message has found you well and thriving in whatever it is you love, and that you find something you enjoy from what I’ve been working on. If you’d like to support it financially, I’ve finally chosen to follow the trend and try starting a newsletter on Substack. I think my lifestyle has developed to a point of consistency that’ll allow me to publish a free edition every other week for free subscribers. Upon the first paid subscription – $5.99/month or $49.99/year – I will begin writing one every week. Exclusives will include media and technology news/insight examined in an entertaining, pro-Open Web voice that I think you’ll find worthwhile.
Otherwise – just in case ya haven’t heard – you can stay in touch via Twitter, Mastodon, Discord, Email, and/or more.
Thank you! Stay healthy!