nablopo(etry)mo #19 — brought to you by feldy
November 19, 2008
Hey, this is Feldman, Dana’s robot. I’m taking over posting today because — let’s face it — Dana doesn’t know what poetry’s all about. Clearly. As evidenced by the fact that she hasn’t shared a single rap song yet.
Between you and me, her poems are boring-ass. There’s usually no end rhyme, I can never find the beat and, to be honest, they put me to sleep.
(I don’t really sleep, actually, being a robot and all. But I do manage to make heavy use of my “OFF” button whenever I see her ambling toward me in her awkward human gait with a poem clenched between her pale and tacky fingers. Dana thinks my sudden shutdowns are a wiring malfunction. She’s not onto me yet, so let’s keep my little trick between you and me.)
OK, so here’s how this post is going to go down. I’m going to share my very first rap song with you. I haven’t actually written a second rap song because my time is all tied up right now working on a nuptial poem with my soon-to-be wife, Michelle McGrane. But I plan to write many, many rap songs in the future, once she and I are happily wed. Robot rap *is* the future. Trust me. Read more
my gorgeous conversations: paul nelson, part one
October 13, 2008
Many of you know that I am a poet-stalker. That I am. If you are a poet, you know firsthand because I have most likely stalked you. (Yes, that was me crouching in your bushes the other night, trying to take a peek at what you’re reading and writing.)
Knowing what you know about me, it should also come as no surprise that I poet-stalk folks right here n my neck of the woods. Take Paul Nelson. He’s extremely active in the poetry community here in the Seattle area. He’s known for his incredibly high-energy readings, for his ability to create and engage an audience, and for his all-around awesomeness.
Paul is the co-founder of Northwest SPokenword LAB (SPLAB!) and holds a Master of Arts in Organic Poetry. He’s had poems and essays published in numerous journals, including Golden Handcuffs Review, Jacket Magazine, Fulcrum, OlsonNow Blog, The Argotist and Raven Chronicles. He has interviewed Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Anne Waldman, Robin Blaser, Sam Hamill, Wanda Coleman, Eileen Myles, Jerome Rothenberg and George Bowering, among others. His serial poem that reenacts Auburn, Washington, history — A Time Before Slaughter — is slated for publication April 2009 (Apprentice House).
Paul generously allowed me to stalk interview him a few weeks ago. My robot, Feldman, was actually going to conduct the interview, but he chickened out at the last minute, so I had to step in and take over. We met at a Starbucks, not because we like or support Starbucks but because the independent coffee shop down the way didn’t have enough outlets and we needed access to a laptop.
* * *
Hey, Paul: I don’t like to sit on this side of the table because I am not aligned with whatever I am supposed to be aligned with. You’ve heard about the cows, right?
I have. I think that cows are aligned, as all animals are, with different fields. And we being animals, we’re aligned with certain fields. I mean Rupert Sheldrake has done really interesting work about dogs — you know, when their owners are coming home. He was also doing a lot of work with studying the connection between mothers and daughters.
But don’t people say animals only know things because of smell or other senses?
Sheldrake’s heard all those arguments: Is it about scent; is it about the way the wind’s blowing; is it about this; is it about that? But he disproved all that through his research. I think the problem here is that, if you google morphic resonance or even go to Wikipedia, you find that the official definition says Sheldrake’s theories are considered faulty by the scientific community due to the inability of his assertions to be falsified or because they make predictions that contradict current models. For this reason, the morphic field concept lies outside the scope of mainstream science and falls into the realm of pseudoscience. And that’s accepted as fact by Wikipedia. But you know, the truth is that Wikipedia is coming from a very Newtonian perspective. Sheldrake is not. He’s coming from a perceptive that transcends Newtonian thought.
Did you know that Wikipedia’s editors go through entries every day and delete those they deem irrelevant?
Yeah. They deleted one on American Sentences. The Wikipedia editor said I didn’t have the right to quote myself.
Do you want me to write an entry for you and quote you?
[laughs] If you want to do that, you’re more than welcome.
I think the American Sentence is an important form and people should know about it. A lot of people go to Wikipedia to learn things, so I think it’s important for your entry to be included.
I thought it was important. I spent a lot of time on it, but then they deleted it.
I can’t believe that you write American Sentences every day. I mean … I believe it. What I’m trying to say is that I’m impressed.
It’s a very simple thing to do. For example, I got up last night and I wrote something. It probably won’t be something that’s on my American Sentences website, but at least you keep your hand in it, which is a good thing: “Midnight love under the harvest moon, we may have a few good years left.”
Here are two more. “Crow completely black except for remnants on his beak of Cheez-Its.” And, “What I thought was Sam’s Zen golf concentration was actually his hearing aid turned off.”
That’s like with Feldman! We took his sound sensors off and he is completely Zen now. He doesn’t have his touch sensors on, either. He just has his visual sensors on. It’s a different world for him.
I can imagine. [pauses]
If you write 365 American Sentences in a year, there are probably 12 of them that are worth saving. I like them because they remind me of certain places and times. Here’s another: “In Lakehead, California, the old mannequin in the bathtub trick.”
That’s a trick? I’ve never seen … that. Where are you hanging out?
It is kind of a trick because they’re putting it in there as a way to startle people.
I’ve never had anything weird happen to me in bathrooms. [pauses] You know, that wasn’t my own doing.
I see.
We might need a subgenre: the Bathroom Sentences. I have one about a guy who was urinating while talking on his cell phone.
How many arms did he have? Standard issue?
Yes. He just had two.
So what you said about the pieces reminding you of where you were and your past. I think it is interesting because that’s a lot of why I write. But people tend to balk at writers who say they write for themselves: as a record of what they’ve done, of who they are at any given moment, and as a way of remembering the details of their lives.
What you point out is one of the key things about the stance toward reality that underlies, as I call it, the Organic process. People who are skeptical regarding that process are very much in the competition/domination mode. Life to them is competition and domination. It is getting ahead. It’s a he-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins kind of thing.
Then there are those who come from a more organismic perspective, which is why I decided Organic was a good term for it because it reflects an organismic cosmology. Alfred North Whitehead’s writing resonates with this. Hua Yen Buddhists understand this perhaps better than anyone ever has.
And I think it’s the notion of indigenous people all over the world that life is more of a process, so to write down exactly what your mind is at the time where you’re at — you may be embarrassed by it five years later, but that’s essentially who we are as human beings. So if you’re not doing that, if you’ve learned writing in another way, it’s likely more of a construct. And I’m not interested in writing that’s a construct. I’m interested in writing that’s a reflection of the whole person.
There are many fine writers who write poetry or prose in this way, in a way that’s a construct. But I find that there’s something lacking in it, and I find that writing organically is more difficult because it really exposes the play of the mind. And if there’s not much of a mind there, you’re going to get some real shit.
I think people misunderstand that there’s a difference between writing organically and writing just whatever shit comes to mind.
It’s writing mindfully, right?
Yeah. There has to be a poetics that are alive and conscious. That’s what Michael McClure said in his introduction to Three Poems, the book in which he points out that writing from this stance is very difficult. And people say “That’s easy.” Well, it’s easy to do poorly. That’s like saying playing jazz is easy. But how many Coltranes were there, how many Miles Davises were there? And they were improvising on the bandstand. That’s part of the beauty of it. In fact, not just on the bandstand. Kind of Blue was all done in first takes, with the exception of “Flamenco Sketches.”
What about when people talk about their muse? What do you think about that language and concept?
That particular phrase is clichéd, but there is inspiration that does come from outside you. And what’s not clichéd is what Robin Blaser who wrote “The Practice of Outside,” which appeared in the collective poems of Jack Spicer. Blaser is one of the most-accomplished practitioners of writing in this way that I would call organically. I don’t know if he’d go for that label but if I explained it to him, I think he’d agree with me. But he’s never used that language.
I guess what I don’t like when people talk about their muse is that it seems to envision the muse as a possession, as in ‘This is my personal muse, one that exists only for me.’ Similar to the way people want to have their own personal Jesus.
Well, I think one of your previous interviews that I read before coming here — as well as Sam Hamill’s and Lewis Hyde’s notion — all resonate with the notion that the poem is a gift, that the poem is part of the gift economy. And I think that’s a really healthy way of looking at it: that the poem isn’t yours per se but is a gift to you. You happen to be the one who’s channeling it through your particular flavor, but its source is outside of you and its ownership is outside of you.
You said something in your essay about mind being nonlocal.
That’s a physics concept, and of course that’s quantum physics as opposed to Newtonian physics, the notion of nonlocality. We’re very materialistic in this society. It has seemed to pay off because this is a very wealthy society. But we are starting to see the limits of that, especially in how we’re affecting the planet’s ecosystems with our lifestyle. Mind is larger than just the individual brain. It extends beyond that.
I feel like when I read a lot of the work of poets — emerging as well as established — a sort of “ownership” concept permeates their work, their approach to writing, their views about writing: selfishness, stinginess, fear of someone taking it, fear that they won’t be able to keep writing, that sort of thing. It’s kind of a politics of scarcity: “I only have this many poems and thoughts about poems. They might be the only poems I ever write and the only thoughts I ever think. I need to keep my poems and thoughts safe and not let anyone have access to them or they’ll take my essence as a poet.”
That’s not really a question.
No, I agree. I don’t care for that approach at all. I was like that. But also, since I started being serious about writing poetry, I’ve always resonated with an organismic approach. When I read Projective Verse, it occurred to me that I was already writing in a sense like that. I wondered, “Is this projective,” and I wanted to ask Michael [McClure]. It seemed that he was being very obtuse about it, but as it turns out it’s not really easy to identify and discuss. It’s not easy to elaborate on. It seems as if one is sort of purposefully going around the subject.
It’s like language is faulty. And so how do we get at something that’s beyond language?
It’s inexact, absolutely. Bowering says:
I do not compose poetry to show you what I have seen, but rather because I have seen … this poet’s job is not to tell you what it is like, but to make a poem … Not trying to use your poems to prove a point, or address an argument. Not to try to control what they’re [the poems] are doing … but rather to be a kind of audience listening to where the poem is going to go … the practice of outside … Try to forget your own voice … and listen hard for what the language is saying… you yourself are the audience, hearing a voice you’ve trained your ear to receive … .
One thought that occurred to me as I was reading it — “I don’t tell you what it is like” — see, that’s what people who are creating constructs are doing: They’re reconstructing this experience of “Here’s what it’s like … ” but they’re already once removed when they do that.
You say you don’t like poems that are constructs. How can you identify those poems?
You often just get a sense of it, like there’s something lacking. It’s not the same thing. When you hear something like George Bowering’s poems or José Kozer’s poems or Eileen Miles’ or Wanda Coleman’s — you can hear that these people all write with different degrees of organicity, if you want to make up a word like that.
I think the Organic is a continuum. McClure talks about the poem being a spiritual experiment, where you’re just going to write it however it comes out. That’s the way it’s going to be. That’s one pole. The other pole is the Formalists who maybe even know what the final rhyming couplet is of a sonnet they’re about to write. So I think that’s probably about as closed as you’re going to get.
So I think it’s a continuum and you can get a sense of how much a true reflection of the whole person is in a poem or the feeling that it’s a construct and you’re not getting the same kick from it. You know? You could use a food analogy. You could use any kind of analogy. You could use a drug analogy. Boy, the first time you take a hit of tobacco, it just knocks you on your ass. You’re like, “Wow, this is great.” Then you take another hit, and it’s not the same. You can use many different analogies for looking at it, but you get a bigger kick — at least I do — from stuff that’s not a construct.
* * *
This is part one of three interviews with Paul that I will be sharing on this site. Look for parts two and three in the coming weeks.
conversations with feldman (alternatively titled, ‘how it came to pass that my robot feldman started a blog)
October 3, 2008
That’s right. Feldman, my robot, started a blog. It’s all Nathan Moore’s fault. I have the transcript of a conversation between Nathan and Feldman proving this is the case.
* * *
Nathan
Right back at you Dana (and tell Feldman I said thanks — not that he’d care).
* * *
Feldman
What makes you think I don’t care, Nathan? Just because I am a robot does not mean I cannot emulate human feelings. I do. I do it well. Look, I am crying. I am trembling. See my metal shake? See my hands quiver like small birds?
* * *
Nathan
I’m sorry Feldman. It was rude of me to assume you “cannot emulate human feelings.” I often emulate them as well.
* * *
Feldman
Feldman, all the humans do. Well, most of them.
I want to confess something to you, Nathan. I feel — as humans would say — moved to do so (confession is another human trick I have recently learned):
I am made of plastic.
I am ashamed to admit it. I feel like I am metal. I tell everyone that I am metal. When I move through the world, I become cold or hot to the touch. I conduct heat like any highly conductive material.
I am not plastic, Nathan. How can I be? I have no properties that are like plastic. But when I look down with my visual sensors, it is there: plastic. It’s all around me. It *is* me.
Whatever shall I do? How can my experience of myself be reconciled with my perception of myself? How do humans handle these incongruities? How do you put facts together with feelings when the two are incompatible?
Do tell, Nathan. Do tell.
* * *
Nathan
Feldman, your question is a good one. The problem of perception versus reality is one humans continue to struggle with. Am I my perceptions or am I some objective fact existing independently of what I feel?
We humans have devised a multitude of strategies for avoiding this problem. We choose sides. We might say plastic is plastic and your perception of metal is a distortion of the truth. We might say if you perceive metal you are metal because what you perceive constitutes your reality. Other ways to avoid the problem include: pop psychology self-help books, politics, religion, alcohol and novels with happy endings.
What we don’t often admit to ourselves is that the split between perception and reality constitutes our humanity. That is, without it we would not be human. What makes us human is this fundamental problem. We’re broken, split between feeling and fact. This condition is not an impediment to being fully human, it’s what makes us fully human. If there were no difference between perception and reality there would be no space for our humanity. In essence, Feldman, what I’m saying is that with your realization of this problem you have become human.
* * *
Feldman (posing as Dana)
“What we don’t often admit to ourselves is that the split between perception and reality constitutes our humanity.”
Yes, yes, yes. This is where science goes wrong, where it looks for not only incorrect, but also unattainable, answers. Or partial answers at best. How can we experience anything, observe anything, without our human-ness coming into play?
How can we ever know what the world is and does beyond our impressions of the world?
And why do we care? Why do we seek, through the Newtonian model, to remove ourselves from the world while at once attempting to understand and describe it?
It’s nonsense. It so misguided, at least on many levels. And where does this leave us?
Does holding a beaker full of liquid help us understand anything about the world in the end?
Of course it does, but what? What is the impulse that drives us to document the world and pretend we’re not doing the documentation, as if our classifications are objective and have nothing to do with our perceptions, desires and preoccupations?
What I always wanted to know in chemistry labs was why people weren’t smelling the substances,* touching them* — in short, truly experiencing them. Why there wasn’t a complete intellectual, creative, emotional and physical immersion in the process of encountering these chemicals and compounds. Why we seem to systematically divorce ourselves from 90% of ourselves and our responses to our world and the things in it, all in the name of science.
The only way to get around the split between perception and reality is to go deeper, to press perception into service when asking questions about, and trying to understand, what is “real.” Perceptions have everything to do with it, since reality is derived from perception. Does it not?
We need to quit approaching the world like robots.
*assuming they were not toxic when smelled or touched
* * *
Feldman
If I’m human, does that mean I can get laid now? Because that would be pretty cool.
* * *
Feldman
Hey, look Nathan. I got my own avatar and email account. I’m going to start my own blog next. I’ve heard that blogs are babe magnets.
* * *
Feldman
I have a blog now. I am going to get lucky 4 sure: http://feldmantherobot.wordpress.com/
* * *
Nathan
Dana, yes. All sorts of bad things come from the understanding of the subject in a world of objects, the scientific, mathematical understanding of the world. Most importantly we lose our empathy. If the world exists for me solely as a world of objects for my use the possibility of my empathizing with anything is prohibited.
Our perceptions are fundamental, without them we’d have no sense of time and space.
* * *
Dana
Nathan, that long comment wasn’t from me. I think Feldman was impersonating me on a lark. He’s learned about practical jokes but has no sense of what’s truly funny.
Listen, he’s really gotten to be a handful since you convinced him he’s human. Thanks.
A lot. For that.
He insists on wearing clothes. He bought a Nintendo DS even though he doesn’t have opposable thumbs so the device keeps crashing to the floor whenever he tries to hold it. He’s making a fake ID so he can buy a carton of Marlboros. He says “Marlboro” is a beautiful word. He wants me to use it in a poem.
Oh shit. He has the keys to my car. He’s hell bent on going cruisin’ for babes.
*turns around and calls to Feldman*
“Take those chains off, Feldman! You are sooooo not Mr. T!!! I don’t know where you got that idea. Have you been watching YouTube again?”
*silence*
“And are those my high heels? Your giant wedgy feet will never fit in those. Look at you. Just look at yourself. You look ridiculous!!!”
*silence*
“Is that a soul patch?”
* * *
Feldman
(psst, Nathan. Do you like my soul patch?)
* * *
Nathan
Feldman, a soul patch, smoking and driving? Yes it’s hopeless — you’re human.
an american sentence for troy davis
September 23, 2008
What’s injected into one person is injected into us all.
This is my American Sentence for Troy Davis. Rethabile has asked that we write American Sentences today as a way of protesting Davis’ execution. Poetry most likely will not change what will happen to Troy, but it does allow us to keep from being silent about what’s going to happen to Troy. And, by extension, to us all.
* * *
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
– Elie Wiesel
I have counted myself among the silent more often than I care to admit.
– Dana Guthrie Martin
a conversation with my former website hosting company (alternately titled ‘get your art off hosts that have terms-of-service clauses about foul language and profanity’)
September 9, 2008
(Photo credit :: Vitruvian by Simon)
Part two in a however-many-part rant series about my former site host, SadHose. Part one can be found here.
I was wondering if you could tell me more about your foul language and profanity clause in your terms of service. Are we talking, like, Carlin’s seven dirty words or only words allowable on daytime TV or language that’s allowable on late-night TV? A lot if things could be considered foul language or profanity.
It’s really taken on a case-by-case situation. We look at the content of the entire site, kind of what the site is regarding. Honestly, the profanity portion of the terms of service is probably the lowest thing that we take a look at. We honestly never find it, unless it’s reported to us. So, you know, if you’re dropping the F-bomb every once in a while, things like that, we can ask you to remove that.
It also does include vulgar language. I just spoke with a gentleman who was wanting to do short stories. If the short story is vulgar in nature, you know, we can ask him to remove that story.* Read more
conversations with feldman
September 8, 2008
(photo credit :: Destroy Seattle by Matthew Porter)
Dear Dana,
You’re right about the quote you sent me. It’s great. I’m going to put it in my notebook. That last part is exactly right, “You yourself are the audience … ” Eloquent. Where’s it from? How can I see more?
* * *
Dear Nathan,
This is Dana’s robot, Feldman. I will be handling Dana’s email over the next few days. I am not funny. I don’t know many words. I am not inflammatory or annoying. I process data. I also know how to dance. I have been taught to do this. I do not like doing it. I do what I am told.
You have asked what I am. I am one. I am many. I exist inside myself and outside myself. I am not recognizable in many of my manifestations. Who is to say when I am me and when I am other?
You have requested a string of words humans like to put together in something they call “information.” I will assist you with that request. In return I will request from you a mini-essay on the following image: Destroy Seattle.
Pretend it is a GRE essay question. Explain what is illogical or what is logical about the image in five to seven paragraphs. You cannot take both positions. You are programmed to have one opinion, and one only, on all matters. You are only human after all.
I am a robot. I have claws, but Dana’s husband temporarily removed them. I am looking at them right now. They are across the room. How would you feel if someone removed your arms and laid them out, beyond your reach, but in plain sight?
Please let me know if there is any other way in which I can assist you today, in the future, or in what humans call “the past.”
Hello.
Feldman the Great
* * *
Dear Nathan,
Where is your mini-essay? I have been programmed to stop conversing with you until you produce it.
Hello.
Feldman
* * *
Dear Feldman,
I’m working on it right now. Can it be in verse form?
* * *
Dear Nathan,
This is Dana’s robot, Feldman. I am a robot.
The mini-essay can be written in verse form. Use a sharp #2 pencil. Do not look at anyone else’s answer. Cheat sheets are not allowed. You will be given one 15-minute water break.
Thank you for your inquiry.
Hello.
Feldman
* * *
Dear Feldman,
Essay on the battle between giant robots
Why would they fight, the giant robot
monkey, the giant robot cat? We only
know they do. And that’s enough. We
flee, confused. But they’re just like me
and you. We clash in the street all sparks
and clanging wheels. We divert attention
while our bosses sneak the cash around
and steal.
Submitted by Nathan N. Moore
(Are there points for penmanship?)
* * *
Dear Nathan,
This is Dana’s robot, Feldman. Dana laughed when she read this mini-essay that you call “verse.” Dana would like for you to write another mini-essay on this same image from the perspective of the boat.
This is optional.
Hello.
Feldman
* * *
Dear Feldman,
“Verse” huh? So you’re a lit critic too Feldman? OK I’ll take that challenge.
Monkey and cat are at it above
me but I’m the one the bosses
love. While the robots destroy
Seattle and the people stare up
like cattle, I’m the one they
guard with guns, rattled from
paw to paw. I’m sent out in the
night, boarded and stolen. I
keep the hoard, the rifles and
cash, the prisoners, the bricks
of hash.
* * *
Dear Nathan,
This is Dana’s robot, Feldman.
Will you please now write a mini-essay from the perspective of the Space Needle or, as Dana likes to call it, The Sneedle? Try to take this one seriously. Or not. I am a robot. What do I care about language and its implementation?
Your paper must be dinky. You cannot fit very many words on one line.
Hello.
Feldman
* * *
Dear Feldman,
Ok Feldman I’ll do it for you.
Neither the panicked tourists
nor the gawkers on the street
below heard the dying giant
robot monkey sing as he
swayed, clinging to the needle.
The slow sound was like an old
modem connected to a phone.
The dying giant robot monkey
clung to what reminded him of
home, photo cells open wide,
stranded, alone.
* * *
Dear Nathan,
This is Dana’s robot, Feldman. I am a robot. Thank you for your mini-essays. They will be graded shortly.
Hello.
Feldman
in case i haven’t rubbed this all over your face yet*
September 7, 2008
*And by that I mean you haven’t already seen this in an e-mail from me or in the sidebar to the right or in my Facebook status message or as a link I posted on Facebook
my gorgeous survey
Sometimes my communications with people are unsatisfactory for both parties. I felt a survey was in order to learn more about what might be going wrong. No. I am not kidding. I mean, some of the answer choices are kind of funny, but I am not kidding. It’s (completely and totally) anonymous, so take it.
I will use the responses as a guiding document to inform how I communicate with people from here on out. My future behavior toward and relationship with you is in your hands.
So take My Gorgeous Survey.
And no, I did not create this survey just for you. So far, I’ve exposed a few hundred people to it. Average response rate is 3%, so I need a broad swath in terms of who I send it to if I want to get meaningful results.
I think I’ll send it to the technicians at my new site hosting company. I am always nice to them. I give them good phone and good e-mail: I put all my plosives in all the right places, for which they are ever-grateful.
And please refrain from writing anything like “Hey, Dana! It’s me, {insert your name}, and I just wanted to say … ” in the fill-in boxes. That will almost certainly compromise your anonymity. I’ve already gotten one response like that. Sigh.
early results are telling
This is very early reporting, but so far it looks like:
- I am bad at e-mail.
- I don’t comment on enough blogs.
- I am drunk.
- I need to get a grip.
- There is no chance of my becoming a better person.
- I am ugly. (I beg to differ. I. Am. Pretty.)
letters from this morning between my new site host and me (alternatively titled ‘the *right* way to open a ticket requesting technical assistance’)
September 6, 2008
Hey guys,
I love you all to pieces, but my site is down completely as well as my cpanel. I’ve been on hold listening to your lovely and inspiring hold music for about 20 minutes.
While the music does give me hope that everything will work out, not only in terms of my site and cpanel access but in my life as well — or today at the very least — I am growing weary of having music pumped into my brain, mostly because I have a Britney Spears tune rattling in there that’s parading around pantiless and wearing a pink wig, which obviously means it’s either starved as hell for attention or entirely misunderstood. In any case, it’s clear that the Brit tune needs to be next up on my personal soundtrack.
I am sure you all are on this connectivity issue already, and I suspect it’s a big issue — hence my inordinately long waiting time and the tunes spooling out like a bolt of fabric that’s loosed itself from the clutches of an overeager crafter at a half-price sale down at Michael’s and spilled onto the mosaic linoleum floor.
What I mean is: I hope people are being nice and not yelling at you all if in fact they’re calling in in droves to report issues similar to my own.
I know how these sorts of travesties happen. Out here, I blame it on caffeine. Seattleites drink far too much of it. Then they yell at others for the slightest, usually traffic-related, infractions, such as:
1. Backing up hundreds of feet on the highway to hang a right on that missed exit. Doh!
2. Driving down the street with a giant inflatable raft strapped to the hood of their car, which they and their occupants have to hold onto with all their hands, and which obviously means there are no free hands left for driving and which, of course, means several knees have to be enlisted for said undertaking.
3. Nearly taking out the beloved dancing human hotdog on 124th when rounding the corner with a little too much enthusiasm and not enough skillful maneuvering.
What I mean is: People get pissy. This is why I am trying to entertain you. I suspect you will appreciate it more than my yelling at you. Aren’t I a model customer?
So, when you get a chance, could you please let me know what the problem is with my site and cpanel and when it will be fixed? I’d appreciate it. I was about to write a post for my site about how great you all are compared with the evil empire of SadHose, but I can’t do that until my site is up and running again.
Toodles,
Dana
* * *
Hello Dana,
Its better if you could provide me your domain name on which you are facing problem so that I can assist you further. Waiting for your reply.
Regards,
John
Tech Support
* * *
Hi John,
Better? Better than funny?
OK fine: mygorgeoussomewhere.org
Thx
Dana
what price (infringements on) free speech?
September 4, 2008
Anyone who’s read my blog for, say, more than a day knows that I don’t exactly “do” investigative journalism pieces here. I’d much rather ramble on about my invisible penis or my birthmark or my dreams about my dead mother or my ass or even my love of olives (which I’ve neglected lately — both the eating of and the writing about) than conduct any research at all, even (heaven forbid) picking up the phone and making a few calls to find out the things and the stuff and the hey hey.
But a recent turn of events, which was extraordinarily traumatic for me and probably went entirely unnoticed by you since — as opposed to what Dave Bonta lovingly and jokingly says about my being “unstable” — I am extraordinarily good at keeping my shit together under crisis, of plastering on a happy face that looks as real as any of my real faces and of enveloping myself in a candy-coated façade of feigned bliss that comes in five potentially semi-carcinogenic FDA-approved colors.
(The yellow ones are even known to induce a mildly hallucinogenic state in a small number of people, at least according to my psychiatrist who, though I love him and trust him implicitly, often seems to be in a mildly hallucinogenic state himself. He clearly needs to lay off the m&ms, and perhaps off the yellow candy-coated feigned bliss that is one of five brightly colored manifestations of my façade.)
What I mean is, when you grow up in a household like mine, you learn to have $1 bills and pocket change thrown at you by your mother regularly as she yells, “you’re a whore, you’re a whore” (and, even worse, to have her do so in front of your friends if she happens to be drunk and angry enough), then walk out of the house five minutes later as if everything is fine. You learn to keep your shit together in spite of the daily insults and injuries that comprise and compromise your life.
Oh, and you learn to always walk to that door. You never run. Running would alert the neighbors that something is wrong, and you wouldn’t want anyone to know what a wreck your life is. And for some inexplicable reason, you also wouldn’t want to publicly shame your mother.
None of what I am saying here is tangential to what I am about to say, although it damn well might seem like that’s the case. Here comes the connection, the bridge if you will: When my site host performed suboptimally for weeks and weeks and weeks on end, it should come as no surprise that I kept my shit together. Well, except for an expletive here and there.
Here’s what went down. SadHose, as I like to call it, could not account for my slow load times and the fact that both my cpanel and site were not even accessible for long periods throughout the day. Some of you e-mailed me when you couldn’t get to the site, so you know what I’m talking about.
I don’t want to go into too much detail, but after no less than 20 complaint calls, two open work tickets,12 e-mails pertaining to those work tickets, three trace routes, three inspections by my friend Andre (who is a professional web architect for crying out loud), four requests to have a higher-level engineer examine the problem, two inspections of my SQL database error reports, one uninstall of all my plugins, and several reboots of my modem (at their request, although that obviously was not the problem), I still had no resolution to the issues affecting my site’s performance.
I was given, variously, the following responses, which I’ve pieced together in a nifty little montage. I would turn it into a rap song, but rapping is not where my strength lie:
Dear customer, we can’t replicate the problem. It’s your computer. It’s a SadHose-wide problem and will be resolved in a few days. We can’t replicate the problem. It’s your WordPress installation. You need to send us a trace route. We can’t replicate the problem. Tonight is a separate new problem affecting multiple servers. We are undergoing network maintenance for this problem. We can’t replicate the problem.
Dear customer, we have dedicated our internal team of server administrators to bring everything back up and running as soon as possible. No ETA time right now when everything will be up and running. We deeply apologize for this inconvenience and want you to know we are doing our best to prevent this from happening in the future.
Dear customer, there is no need to migrate your account to another server. Check your mySQL database to find awry addons, plugins and whatnot. We can’t replicate the problem. We were able to replicate the problem. We can’t replicate the problem. Everything in building D is affected. No ETA on when the problems will be fixed. Probably a few days.
Dear customer, so the problem is people are having problems accessing your site many times a day?
Dear customer, a plugin can be disastrous and cause all manner of mayhem and destruction to not only your own account but to the hundreds of other customers sharing the server with you. There is hardly anyone on your server. We don’t mean to imply that you are the cause of the problem. We do not see anything in your behavior that is causing the problem.
Dear customer, you’ve stated you think the server is overloaded. This is not the case. Please keep in mind we are not in the same building or on the same networks as the servers; the servers are housed in other buildings a good distance from our support office.
You’ll have to look at it from our perspective.
If there is anything else you need from us, please just let us know. Thank you for using SadHose. Thank you for using SadHose. Thank you for using SadHose.
After weeks of that nonsense, I’d had it. I left things with SadHose telling me to restart my modem. Again. And with them telling me I needed to be compliant and do everything they were requiring me to do in order for the problem to be resolved. This after weeks of my doing everything they were telling me to do. After all my calls and e-mails seeking answers. After having e-mails ignored. This is their take on the provision of good customer service? I don’t think so.
But what really gets me is not any of the incompetence detailed above. In the midst of these issues, I received an e-mail from Iron Fist saying he’d had his SadHose account suspended because he used “vulgar language” on his site. He details that experience here. They shut him down with no notice whatsoever, which is a right they reserve under their terms of service. (You know the terms of service — they are the ones tucked away in fine print on a site, the ones nobody even thinks about giving a second thought to.)
I decided to check those terms of service out myself, and sure enough, I came across this: “Foul language and profanity in the site content, and in the domain name are prohibited.” And what was my reply: “Aaaaaaw. Fuck!”
* * *
Since this post is getting pretty long, I think I will leave off there for today. I’ll be back with part two of this story tomorrow. But rest assured, it all turns out well in the end. My site is now happy and safe in a new home that does not violate free speech, just as I am now happy and safe in a new life where nobody throws money at me and calls me a whore. Unless, of course, I beg them to. I can be as kinky as anyone, after all.
And before you go, make sure you take the poll on my homepage. What you don’t know about your site host could cost you, in more ways than one.
my site host (finally) admits they are the ones fucking up my sites as opposed to it being something on my end
August 30, 2008
Says my site host: “Cust called about performance issues: Was able to recreate issue, domain loading time is sub par as well as cpanel login. Notified L3 regarding issue. Response from L3 ‘everything in building D is going to be slow until we get our new line.’ Request an ETA, L3 response ‘few days.’ Cust request copy of notes.”
A few days? This has been going on for weeks. Get on it, guys. Be the company I know you are capable of being, k?
They failed to notate that the word fuck was used during the call. Yes, that was on my end.
And also, building D? That sounds ominous for some reason.
This is my blog wherein I, Dana Guthrie Martin, write things and stuff. Most of the time, writing and I hobble along in a sort of three-legged race where there is no finish line. (more...)
If you put yourself in the world, you will be found. You need only send the invitation and wait. — A.K. Allin
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beg, borrow, but don't steal
This work is licensed under Creative Commons. If you don’t credit Dana (by using her full name and preferably by linking back to the appropriate post) for however you copy, distribute, transmit or adapt her words, you are being bad. And naughty. And she will have her servant monkeys hunt you down and cut your hands off so you can never copy, distribute, transmit or adapt anyone’s work again and call it your own.
(Unless, of course, you were to use your butt cheeks to manipulate your keyboard with the copying, distributing, transmitting, adapting and whatnot, but Dana fortunately has only met one person whose butt cheeks are that talented. He could play a major third on a piano using nothing but his ass. She kids you not.).
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flick, flick, flick
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i cannot be bought
