Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Why You Can't Have Your Say



From the words of the BlogSpeak operator...

BlogSpeak is currently down because the bastards that host it (not the one you got the hosting offer from, those guys are wonderful) decided to suspend my account. I do not know as of yet when this situation will be resolved. If you don't want any JavaScript errors on your pages, take the code off for the time being. If you're pissed off because your comments don't work, I would be, too. Believe me, I'm not too happy about my account being suspended either. I do have a backup of the DB from an hour before the suspension occurred. So if the server comes back up, or I have to get a new server, of even pass the duties of maintaining BlogSpeak off to someone else, everything will be intact.



If you'd like to donate to the cause of most likely having to move hosting to a new locale, click here. If you have tons of extra bandwidth and storage available, and would be willing to host BlogSpeak, or take over all BlogSpeak duties entirely, email me and I'll tell you what it would entail.



BlogSpeak will also soon become open source, with both personal and server editions available. Those of you with your own servers running PHP & MySQL will be able to run comments on your own server instead of relying on one controlled by a building full of douchebags. Also, those of you with the brains and [brawn] that want to start your own commenting service will have a good start with the server edition.



Thanks for your patience during this time, and I apologize for this bullshit.

Oh, well. As they say in Lo-oc with such kargador flair, C'est la vie. But really, don't you just love the silence of a rapt audience?



[Thanks to Veronica for first showing me the reason for the silence.]



... Which reminds me of an Angelo Suarez poem about the disappearances of things:



      Benches Missing



          Item: 25 newly installed benches are stolen

          from the recently restored promenade along

          Roxas Boulevard in September of 2002.



      How bizarre for benches to disappear just like that—

      all twenty-five of them, according to a witness,

      stuck in a truck like they were nothing      A plate

      number is disclosed and next of course comes

      the hunt for the darned pick-up      Darned cunt



      makes the police proceed to Pampanga

      then Nueva Ecija      The truck is traced to Talavera

      where the owner’s relatives claim it has been sold

      six years prior to the theft      What else is left

      in the world that is yet to be stolen      A year ago



      it was Bonifacio’s leg reported missing

      from his own shrine      Every week a sewer lid

      disappears someplace      Each night barangay

      tanods fail to trail that bastard that keeps scraping

      emblems off the hoods of cars    Even the chocolate hills



      in Bohol have started vanishing one by one long ago

      in thin air     Look at that guy     No hair     See     No hands

      He drives his car to a corner where it promptly

      Disappears      Soon the guards with the funny hats

      by Rizal’s monument disappear      In a while



      Mount Mayon’s perfectly curved shape disappears

      Coconut trees vanish from scenic Pinoy postcards

      Krip Yuson’s hair-tail’s been cut off      Ophelia’s

      make-up is gone      Manuel Legarda has no guitar

      Oh a sitar with no strings!      Alas who sings



      for the Cradle now      Barbie Almalbis is gone

      KC Montero is gone from MTV      (But who cares)

      See      See      No more fake Nikés at Greenhills

      Shopping Center      No more pirated CD’s

      After 25 benches who knows what else can disappear



      in a night      Hell      Whole cities might disappear

      Entire municipalities      Next thing we know Luzon

      has disappeared      The rest of the country

      Even poverty disappears      War      Famine      Violence

      in video games      Whole continents dissolve into mist



      In the void sleeps one of the disappeared

      and dreams of God wearing shades and a trench coat,

      roaming      strolling around the aisles of the grocery

      of space till He eyes the sun      slips it into His pocket

      looking around as if shoplifting an orange



What if my tagboard disappears next? What if Blogger soon follows, disappearing into cyberspace air like pixels blown away as pixie dust? What if Xanga goes, too, then LiveJournal, and all the rest of these shameless online confessionaries we call our lives? Will we even manage to live through a day without telling the world how anonymously we crave its attentions?


[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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