I sit in awe this morning of the interwoven discussion going on regarding truth in blogging. I started with this post on Jill’s site, and then worked my way back and forth through various links. Not only is this a fascinating conversation, but it is a perfect demonstration of the power of linking and trackback.

I’m all too aware that my own blog entries have not been as carefully thought through or as dense with content as they could be. I’m torn, like everyone probably, between my desire to write in my blog and my need to take care things going on in my personal and professional life. Lately I’ve been leaning towards material life concerns and away from those of my online, electronic life.

Update: 7:45 p.m. – Here’s what Samuel Johnson, writing in 1759, says about these issues:

The writer of his own life has at least the first qualification of an historian, the knowledge of the truth; and though it may be plausibly objected that his temptations to disguise it are equal to his opportunites of knowing it, yet I cannot but think that impartiality may be expected with equal confidence from him that relates the passages of his own life, as from him that delivers the transactions of another.

Certainty of knowledge not only excludes mistake but fortifies veracity. What we collect by conjecture, and by conjecture only can one man judge of another’s motives or sentiments, is easily modified by fancy or by desire; as objects imperfectly discerned take forms from the hope or fear of the beholder. But that which is fully known cannot be falsified but with reluctance of understanding, and alarm of conscience; of understanding, the lover of truth; of conscience, the sentinel of virtue.  299

The Idler, Saturday, November 24, 1759. from Samuel Johnson: 1709-1784. ed. by Donald Greene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

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• It’s the end of the day on Friday, and perhaps I should be using my blog time to continue the conversation with Chuck about All the Real Girls, but instead I give you some goofy and unrelated thoughts. (More on All the Real Girls later.)
• In a little more than an hour I’ll be eating yummy Ethiopian food on 39th Street with Jeff, Monique, and Sam to celebrate L’s smashing dissertation defense.
• We’re up to the last work of the semester in my Shakespeare class: The Tempest. I once saw a musical production of this play in Atlanta. Wait, it gets weirder. The part of King Alonso was played by the former (?) lead singer of the “classic rock” band Kansas. I’m not sure he knew he wasn’t the main character.
• Today started off rainy and cool, which was nice because we’ve had dry weather ever since I moved here last summer. This afternoon, however, it’s sunny and cool, which is not bad, either. I spent a little time today trying to add a feature to this page that would show you the current weather conditions in KC (because I know you’re dying to keep up with that), but I couldn’t get it to work.
• I never imagined myself living in Missouri. Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, New York, Florida, California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, even Wyoming. Just not Missouri.
• The night before last, for the second time this semester, I was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of gunfire in my neighborhood. At least this time no one was murdered.
• I work not far from a fairly large Frank Lloyd Wright building: the Kansas City Community Christian Church. Apparently, there are at least two other buildings by Wright in the city.
• When I was a little kid, I always wanted a surprise birthday party, but (Surprise!) I never got one. When I turned 16, however, my friend Doug threw one for me, and it was a complete success, one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. This was in a small town in Belgium (which also doubled as the military headquarters for NATO, where both our dads worked). Twenty years later I move to Kansas City and Doug is working as an architect practically within walking distance of my office.

FYI, faithful KC readers:
Anatomy of a Documentary in Action
a community forum on at-risk youth and arts collaboration
featuring visiting filmmaker Lexi Leban and the documentary Girl Trouble.
Friday, April 25, 10-11:30am
UMKC Belger Arts Center
2100 Walnut Street, KC MO
Women and girls are the fastest growing incarcerated population in the United States. Girl Trouble, a work-in-progress documentary, is an unflinching portrait of several at-risk young women in San Francisco struggling to get out of the system.
Anatomy of a Documentary in Action brings together the filmmaker with Kansas City artists, youth, educators, students, parents, professionals and non-profit organizations to explore the intersection between making art and creating change. Participants can record a video postcard to be sent to the girls in the documentary.
For more information contact: Daven Gee – 816/235-1708 – geed@umkc.edu
(Free parking is available in the lots across from the Center.)
Organized by UMKC Professor Daven Gee with support from the UMKC -Belger Arts Center for Creative Studies and assistance from UMKC Communication Studies Dept., UMKC Women’s Center, UMKC Dept. of Sociology/Criminal Justice and Criminology, and the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee.

I saw All the Real Girls the weekend before last. I enjoyed it a great deal, and it’s stuck in my head for a while now. Chuck provides a thoughtful entry (as usual) on this film and finds in it a “nostalgia for a lost past that threatens to disappear irretrievably.” [Blogspot’s permanent links to individual entries seem to work only irregularly, so check out Chuck’s main page if the above link doesn’t work.]

Abandoned buildings, broken down cars, busted pianos — images of materials that have outlived their usefulness seem to permeate this movie. The dreamlike music of artists like Will Oldham and Sparklehorse parallel the seemingly slow lives lived by the characters, who aren’t ambitionless (or bored) so much as thoughtful and unhurried, if vaguely dissatisfied. Chuck writes

[J]obs have either dried up or the town’s residents are forced to take work that dehumanizes them (Paul’s mother for example works as a clown, and Noel works in a textile plant).

However, I’d like to argue against a negative reading of the advanced entropy evident in the town’s surroundings, and the seemingly dead-end work that occupies the residents. The film seems to aestheticize the worn-out objects that we see rather than portray them as ugly or useless. And the characters seem to enjoy the time they spend — somewhat aimlessly, perhaps — trying to repair the old pianos, in the case of Paul’s mother, or the cars, in the case of Paul and his friends. Granted, no one ever seems to actually get things back in working order, and their competence is called into question by the fact that Paul and his friends think putting moth balls in the gas tank is a sure way to rev up a car’s performance.

But this doesn’t seem to be the point. Like Paul driving the beat-up old station wagon slowly around the dirt race track while the hotrods race by him, no one is in a hurry, and the goal is not to be the first one over the finish line.

It’s true that Paul’s mother, who dresses up like a clown for children at the hospital, does not seem thrilled with her job. But the scene where she and a reluctantly clowned-up Paul dance for the children and get them to laugh and dance along with them is hypnotically compelling, with no soundtrack except for the quirky-sounding instrumental music playing. She may be a clown, but in this scene at least there is clearly meaningful work being done.

If you’ve posted a question or comment and I haven’t responded, it’s not because I’m ignoring you. Today’s my 12-hour day (or 14-hour, depending on how you figure it). I don’t get out of class until almost 10 p.m. tonight. Then my mom is in town for the weekend, so I don’t think I’ll be very active online for a couple of days.

If you have any spare mojo lying around right now, you might vibe it my way today as I still have a little over 6 hours to go.