Nooses and neck ties....

.. is there a difference?

The neck tie is a symbolic noose. Those who sport them, do so to announce their willing complicity in their own hanging.

... or, with sufficient ironic insouciance, to say, by pretending to play the game, that they're not.

A subtitle business, not likely to be understood by more than a few.

I keep adding to my previous post, and in doing so, I realize that that's the sort of blog I'd like. A kind of Leaves of Grass approach, where the beginning is always at the top and you endlessly (well, not really... we all die in the end) add and revise the one long evolving post... sort of like ... you know... our lives?

No...not a diary. Not a journal. Go back to Leaves of Grass. A composition. A single composition that we endlessly (figure of speech) improve and change and revise.

This is an editorial comment on recent (late and soon) critiques leveled at literary blogs.

There are modes of expression that you cannot do--with all the mediating interventions and yes, those interventions have been set up to protect us from a lot of dross.

Tell me about it. Tell us about dross. Go to a bookstore, take a look around, and tell me about dross. Look at the reviews in newspapers, and tell
me about dross.

It's not fear of dross...it's fear of making real judgments, judgments that aren't pulled out of some sort of prepared guide--a list that tells you, without looking, what's good and what's not--the fear of standing before something that doesn't pop up when you click your auto-index... that you will have to be responsible for... on your own.

That's what's lacking in the established media...not altogether. But damn hard to find. And what you get from blogs like Black Garterbelt...