curious about this no depression of which you speak, as a long time member of the no dep mailing list/ discussion group and a reader of the mag....the web site as i have seen is more just an electronic version of the mag....do they have something else brewing? something outlandishly creative? curious in seattle.

The plan is for the on-line version to be ad-supported and the annual traditionally-published volume to be as self-sustaining as possible through retail and on-line sales. So the goal, whether the ND folks fess up to it or not -- thus far, they don't -- is to produce verifiable hit numbers, visits, and through-the-ether sales in order to collect enough meager ad lineage rates to keep the boat afloat.

Sound familiar?

I was pretty well baffled by being asked in among the beta folks (the word 'team' is one I avoid) because no one thus far has paid a lick of attention to my thinking about what the nature of new-era publishing will be. Probably because my speculation is based on mainly old ideas and historical trends. There's a sneaky little truth for you: despite my loud protests otherwise, I remain a hidebound scholarly sort (but there's a delight there as well: I have no scholarly credentials whatsoever).

ND's great strength, so far as I could point to it, would lie in the utter devotion of its readers. Those fucking people seem to me to have sworn some sacred vow in order to become acolytes. Creeps me out, but they're allowed. Will I stop fucking with them? Not a chance in hell. But their (the readers') fanatical devotion will (I say) produce return and predictable visits, and the visit is the first of the new-minted coins.

Anything outlandishly creative? No, I'm sorry to report., good friend. ND is most definitely turning the knob up on reader/contributor control and they've made the rag easy to use -- my definition of which is pungent and simple: if _I_ can't use it easily and with predictable results, then this hog ain't going to be easy to skin. I'm a bright and sophisticated man and my computing skills are probably just a pussy hair above average. Seems a fair standard to set.

But when I'm snarled at for my Windows 95 gear and my Commodore 64 thinking, I'm afraid I want to use somebody's face in an experiment with asphalt abrasives. To do so is beneath me yet very much a part of this nature I resist.

No, in other words. ND shouldn't be expected to produce anything clearly new by design. Most of the brilliant new steps yet to be taken will be lucky staggers anyway.

Splendid gimmicks -- as in Facebook's tossing the campus over its shoulder -- aren't all that likely to last anyhow. (Disagree? Look at the shoddy and usually offensive banner ads on your own Facebook page.) But certain coalitions will survive and flatly dominate. I tried, but perhaps failed to make that clear earlier.

A seldom but utterly valid observation of an economy in contractions -- or, for that matter, in the Marx/Engels thinking which led to _that_ tragic experiment, is that collectivism inevitably follows a collapse.

Because it's just plain old motherfucking necessary..

"Jesus! Fuck me! I can't make the rent, what in God's name possessed me to buy that SUV? And those school loan Feds are meaner than wolverines!" So one moves back home and (if one's pride isn't so huge as to preclude other fashion doom) discovers the imperatives and the _delights_ of collectivism.

All I was trying to point out before -- and again now, because you fools are a good crowd to work before I have to work the harder-nosed crowd in the lecture halls -- is that making clever alliances right now is all you need to know about survival followed by an explosive and exponential growth of how we distribute information.

But wait! This is the computer age, son, hadn't you noticed? What silliness. It's been the computer age all my life and I'm a white-haired carcass furiously recombining with the -- our-- atmosphere. Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn acted in a computer movie I watched in my cowboy boots and hat. Yet now, it's somehow supposed to be the dawning of a new age. Only a fool would consider such a thing. The dawn broke while everyone was still asleep quite some time back.

And consider that newspapers, most certainly at one time our commonest means of tapping into mass communication, are dying pronto not because of a rain of computers but because of old age. The marketplace no longer supports the -costs+profit ratio required to run a daily newspaper. Nobody reads them and it for damn sure ain't because they're glued to their monitors shooting up the evening news (apologies to Jackson Browne).

Some things blossomed from the fierce (and they_were_ fierce) contractions of the so-called Great Depression. Think about some of them -- and think about the new Information Age at the same time. What came of age back then and is highly likely to survive the departure of the print era? The Associated Press, first and foremost.

Collectivism in as nearly pure a form as could be described.

And it won't die in this age of print dinosaurs and passenger pigeons.

The well-thought coaltions will thrive.

(And there's an East Coast pinko smiling with satisfaction. Oh which I cain't get no.)

Rock -Paper-Scissors. Silicon-Steel-Testosterone. Where can I go to get my poodle clipped in Burbank?... Where can I go to get my stomach pumped?

RoShamBo.(Quickly slurred in Japanese.)

Rock paper scissors. Sorry, Reno, but that small game unleashes still a buttfucking flood of tears for me. Women, women. Do we ever learn any god-damned thing?

Looking back, I realize that I saddled you pitiful fools with way too much horseshit, but I've got to talk basically all day and I've always figured you dudes were nice enough to listen (or to quietly log off) while I worked through some more of my lunacy.

I know I've got a laugh bit here (one I can toss in like a LifePreserver -- spearmint -- whenever needed) about the silliness of prime numbers, but I really really really really really want to steal "Where can I go to get my stomach pumped?"

Please can I have it?

I'm thinking: 250 economics profs and 250 communications profs and me, smoking furiously, stalking the stage lke a really psycho-pissed-off panther in a cage wanting a big old glass of whiskey, sweating, trying to sell my ideas as being worth considering.

I need the line, pal.

those damn newspapers, cant figure them out, seems they would want to sit down and figure out what they really have of value.....the ability to investigate, go deep and look long.....shit, lets just keep cutting people and complain that ads are down and make the paper smaller and less relavant. why not work on being relavant and developing their valuable resources....you may really have it nailed with AP.....in this time of diminishing clients, one of my few is actually the seattle times and they are not doing anything but hiding from each other fearing the next round of cuts while the seattle pi disappears....

>>>>>"Where can I go to get my stomach pumped?"

Please can I have it?<<<<<<

Zappa says "sure no problem"

They say you reap the whirlwind, but what if it was a collection of belches from the postulate of Reaganomics? Wait, better yet, what if the plan all along was to make money and if, coincidentally, news was reported, it's a bonus for somebody... the people reading the paper, perhaps. Doesn't matter, when big biznesses buy up sweeping fields of newspapers to create conglomerations of sameness. My local big city paper has been on the suck side of blowjobs for as far back as I can remember, and I don't think Cox Communications' ownership helps anything. What does that have to do with my news hunting and gathering? Not much, since I don't gather the fruit from that paper's loins at all anymore, preferring to go online for it all. I never had the great urge to read the morning paper in bed with a cup of coffee since I don't drink the tricky stuff and don't sleep. I grew up in your computer age, although my first experience of The Desk Set was a school play. This appliance upon which I type is in the minority of computers, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but it's a constant companion at work, in the studio, and in front of me on the couch this moment. That doesn't qualify me to be a reporter in the 1980's-and-earlier definition of the word, but now I can be anything at all because the internet has set us free from all of our limitations, like a mutant offspring of Lincoln and Moses and MLK, jr. Hallelujah, all ye miscreants! Let us rejoice in the lack of stability and watch progress steamroll o'er yon short-sighted capitalists who thought they could carryon with the way things had always been!

On the other hand, we could be just witnessing the beginning of the new dark ages. I won't rule that out, but I won't play an active part in bringing it along, either.

One thing I think that needs to be acknowledged here is this new beta version of No Depression is simply the death knell of the magazine. It's not even a web-zine anymore Grant Alden is out of a job and I feel sorry for him because I've enjoyed his writing over the years.

Yeah I went over and signed up. You know what? The new forum looks alot like something I'd envisioned starting myself if I had the time, money and talent. Come to think of it, It looks a lot like the old brink, only bigger (they had an existing readership base to draw from) and more polished.

I'll always have a big soft spot in my heart for the brink though. Those very first brinko bucks hitting my PayPal account? Dan Vinik, you shocked me with that one.

Best wishes to all of you