Sorry to do this in public, but I just got a very nice private message from someone and could not reply to it because of the privacy settings on that person's messages. I'm not ignoring you, honest! Also, welcome and if you feel like adding this journal to your friends-list, please feel free.

And, because it is actually relevant--Gloryhound & the Skyhawks are great, and are playing an all-ages show at the firehall in Fall River on July 25th. You should try to get there.

(Okay, that last bit applies to everyone, but particularly the person whose private message I just tried to reply to.)

It's an international list with a distinctly international flavour, to the extent that the members seem to keep in mind when they recommend products or trainers that the person they are speaking to may be halfway across the world.

It also has a couple of Russian members whose English (all posts are in English) may not be up to lengthy discussions--but they participate with images. One has a gorgeous grey gelding named Horsk, and she posts fairy-tale images of him. The fact that her captions are very brief just adds to the glamour by giving him a little air of mystery. The other posts images of her own stylized and astonishingly beautiful artwork. Here's an example. I swear, if I was going to get a tattoo, I would want her to design it. (Her journal is in Russian but it's open and she posts images of her other stuff, horsey and not. I think I'll ask if I can friend her just so I can see more of her art.)

Anyway. God bless digital cameras. And an otherwise sometimes rambunctious community's willingness to let members participate in ways that they can.

And someone, walk me home in case I pass a tattoo parlour and lose control entirely!

And not in a bad way, either.

I may have ranted, once or twice, about a certain LJ community related to horses, of which I am a member. I apologize for the sidelong nature of some of these rants--I think it is appropriate to rant about Stuff That Bugs Me over here, but I don't generally like linking directly to the drama because that feels less like venting and more like ratting out.

With that said.

This community (it's equestrian, I guess I don't need to be that coy) is high-volume and often heated. There are a lot of great members, lots of stories and pictures of and about horses I would love to know personally, good advice and suggestions.

And, because it is a community of people, and because it's a community devoted to a pastime that requires a certain level of skill and commitment just to avoid mental and physical injury, there are always those people who either do know better than others... or think they do.

And because it's both horse people and the Internet, some of them are not a bit shy about expressing this opinion. And like any group of people you do get those folks who think they are being the outspoken, no-bullshit salt of the earth when in fact they are being bullies. And you also get those who are just plain bullies, although they consistently claim they are only bullying for the good of the horses belonging to those they bully.

Because it is always the fault of the victim.

Anyways, last week I posted a snotty little post here about the moderators not moderating, and there was a spectacular blowup over there when a moderator post went nova and people started hashing out some of the community's issues. (And fighting over icons, but that's neither here nor there.)

I got there late but made the same point there that I have made here: I don't pay any attention, or assign any weight, to the advice or opinions of bullies. I mean, there are people in that group who would mock and denigrate you for saying the sky is blue. In return, if they posted "your horse should receive food and water at least once a day for its health," I would turn up my nose and ignore it as a prelude to more obnoxious self-serving asshattery.

In other words, if you cause people to think you are always being a jerk, they are going to start to ignore your posts because they expect more contentless, pointless jerkery.

I only say that because this week one of the group's hot-button issues came up again. And to my astonishment, a number of the biggest asshats in the whole asshaberdashery responded strongly (as expected) but also (and as I had not thought they could) with something approaching fairness and common sense. I mean, the discussion got heated, but for the most part posters refrained from trying to hurt and score points off each other. And some of the people I thought had no room in their heads for anything but malice actually made good points, or at least half-sensible ones with thought behind them.

I'm not saying my comment made any difference, but if there is a movement afoot for some of these members to try to be, you know, useful, I will be shocked, astonished, and really very pleased.

Fingers crossed!

Okay, I know it's a hard and thankless job being the mod/maintainer/whatever for a large Internet group. I know you can't please everybody.

However.

If your moderation style is hands-off, say so. Don't offer excuses for why you don't crack down when members go all Lord Of the Flies on each other. Just admit that you have no interest in doing so.

Also, if you have made it clear that you're not interested in appointing another moderator to help out, it's pretty pointless to counter complaints with "do you want this job?" Maybe, if the question were not rhetorical, the answer would be "yes."

With all that said, I'm now comfortable with my own approach of "consider the source." It's pointless to get all bent out of shape because a few assholes who attack everyone are attacking someone. They're assholes. That's how assholes behave. I need to scrape it off my shoe and move on--not "grow a thicker skin" or whatever non-advice the mods offer to get around the fact they don't moderate (which is fine if that's their approach, just be honest about it), but just not stress about the fact that some people are a complete waste of skin. Fuck 'em.

Heh. You being to see why I spend a lot of time in my own company. I don't tend to be overtly mean, but it occurs to me that I am probably condescending!

No, not for the punk rock recs and Mitzi videos. Those are good for you.

But look, I've been reading my f'list lately and thinking, "I must come back and comment on this or that post," and then I forget. I always feel like a f'list should be interactive, especially since a bunch of you have made really thoughtful replies to posts of mine, and lately I have fallen right down on that. I'll improve, honest, it's just that lately I've been tired and distracted (busy at work, sleeping kinda badly, blah blah blah) so by the time I get my own post written I'm sort of ready to retreat back into my head again. All mammals are self-centred but recently I have been going to hell with the joke.

So, I apologize for my recent bad LJ-friend manners.

Well, two.

Up on the top bar, why is "manage friends" so close to "flag journal"? A couple of times I have started to create a friendslist and nearly ended up reporting someone's journal to LJ by mistake--not very friendly!

Likewise, when you mouse over someone's userpic and get that little list of options, they are all so close together that one day I am sure to "Remove Friend" when all I wanted to do was go to their journal.

I apologize in advance if I pull either of those on you.

...it stands to reason I am imperfect, too.

You may have noticed I rant a bit here. The other day I went nuts about an incident in which I thought someone was being treated disrespectfully in a community of which I am a member.

And yet I have also been known to post other rants about what I consider silly-arse and self-defeating behaviour by aspiring writers... and I am not so sure I occupy enough high ground to rant at anyone else.

I might defend myself on the grounds that, while the second type of rant generally has a catalyst, it also tends to be about a general situation. And I don't go around directly mocking people, although I have been known to suggest that perhaps there is a reason why Situation A results in Outcome B.

I don't know if that's good enough, though.

With that said, I am a natural ranter and I don't really think that's going to change.

Comments on other people's journals have caused me to think a bit about posting about something going on elsewhere, though. If I am all pissed off about something in the news, I tend to post the link. But if I'm really annoyed about the behaviour of, say, someone on an email discussion list, I tend to summarize the issue as I see it and then discuss it, almost always with names redacted. I do the same thing when I rant about LJ communities: I tend to summarize the issue and then give tongue. Which can lead to relevant but unrelated issues getting brought into the discussion, which reminds me of that Sorrys' song about passing it around, we all have the same issues.

The thing is, I post those slightly-oblique rants because in my experience it's considered not-cool to take a discussion out of the forum it happened in and put it up for public view among people who are not members of the originating community. Obviously I am to some degree violating the spirit of that prohibition by talking about it at all, but I don't think a total cone of silence is reasonable. Protecting the actual participants is the best I can do.

And in that spirit I'd like my f'list to know that I do not quote from other people's locked posts over here, at least not if I noticed they were locked. (If I make a mistake please let me know.) I sometimes link to what I think are public entries, and sometimes I take the outline of an idea I ran into elsewhere and talk about it here, but I try to be circumspect where appropriate, and give credit where that seems called for.

In terms of my own locked posts, if it's really personal I don't post it here. The posts that are f'locked are usually only that way because for some reason I don't want someone who's not on LiveJournal to stumble over them. (Lousy way to find out about your Christmas present, for instance.) I'm not greatly concerned with the security of my posts because as I say, if I don't want it out there I don't write it on LJ. But I do make an effort to respect other people's privacy, and also their intellectual content. And if I screw up it's almost certainly an accident, so please, do tell me so.

Because--well, see subject line.

This is probably further to the rant post from a couple of days ago, but this morning I found myself thinking of something that's occurred to me before: this business of blogging, while certainly a significant time-waster in some cases, is really a very good thing for a writer. This journal, and an email list I'm on for mystery writers, represent the major way I talk about writing. And it's certainly not a bad thing for a writer to express herself in writing.

What I hadn't thought about clearly until this morning, though, is this: most of you folks don't know me. I mean, of the people on my friends-list, less than half a dozen of them have ever met me in person. To everyone else, I am the sum of my words and how I use them.

I am, in fact, the protagonist of my own blog. My own main character, if you will. And the comments I get in reaction to my post give me an idea of how well I'm doing, in terms of creating this character--her personality, motivations, wishes.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not creating a fiction here. The me I present on my blog is, as far as I am concerned, me. It's just that the character whose voice you are reading is created entirely by the interaction between my words and your reality.

I know I've thought about this before, because on the infrequent occasions when I post a picture of myself I sometimes think, "I bet that's not how some of my friends-list pictures me!"

So I guess, if I want to know whether I can create a character, what I need to do is review comments here and see what proportion of commenters seemed to understand the intent of the post they were commenting on.

I am either onto something that will prove really valuable to me as a writer, or I have taken too many pain pills this week.

An article from a quarter horse site about roan and roan genetics.

(I apologize to all new friends for the number of messages today, and also for the punishing amount of horsey content. My journal isn't always like this.)

(No, wait. I think it is.)

(Except when Matt Mays does something new, I mean...)

I just added everyone from the Snarkfest friending frenzy, so "hi!" to anyone dropping by to see who just added them. Feel free to look around before you decide whether you want to do the add-back thing. It gets a little silly in here sometimes...

I've had an unusual number of visitors today, and according to my sitemeter the majority of hits are on either the post about The Eye Of Argon--or the one with the pictures of the Grateful Dead on horseback.

And now I feel guilty so--yes, I stole the pictures in that post from the Grateful Dead's Web site. I couldn't help myself. They were too cute not to. I mean, the face on Jerry Garcia's horse! The expression of common sense on Weir's Appaloosa!

(Although it could have been worse--when I noticed my first recorded visitor from Oakland, I started to feverishly wonder whether I had said anything to really piss off the Hell's Angels!) (Not that my brain has been warped by the videos I've been watching lately or anything.)

Ahem. As you were.

In case anyone has missed it, bluesenough has created a sparkly new LJ community called downatthekhyber, and if you recognize the reference you know who it's dedicated to.

Joel Plaskett, that's who.

Okay, so he deserves garlands of flowers and baskets of muffins, but the community is good, too.

In the most recent post, bluesenough reports that Joel has won the Billboard World Songwriting Contest.

It's a short step now to world domination. Although really, who would bother resisting?

It's sort of like a sneeze, only I have to think about it.

That really bad vampire story I linked to earlier? I think it has something going on it in that causes me to, among other things, think I will not be watching Dexter (I've already concluded that I don't care for the Dexter books.)

I need some more time to think about it before I write anything, though.

In case anyone is wondering, for purposes of this journal the "local music" tag may be taken to refer to performers from any of the three Maritime provinces. Thus covering both Chucky Danger and David Myles. I'll make a decision about Newfoundland, which is more of a schlep for a band, when the need arises. Perhaps I'll need a poll.

It occurred to me a few days ago that I should probably have some sort of tag for local music--I have one for gigs, and I usually identify the band by name in the tag, but I think I'll go back and add a "local music" tag to the first entry on any band. That way it won't get buried under a snow of entries on one or two bands.

Heh. When librarians have hobbies.

Found via my friends-list, here is cmpriest's awesome Things I've Learned Since My First Book Got Published.

After reading this entry, I immediately placed both her current books on hold at the public library, and if they're available in my local bookstores I'll probably buy them. That's how much I enjoyed this post.

(The point about acquiring fans/who may be annoying/but mostly it's thrilling may be applicable to bands as well, and it's occurred to me I might want to consider it for Kowalski. After a certain amount of field research I have developed a theory that very early in a band's career, it's exciting for them to learn of the existence of actual disinterested fans, who are not friends or relatives, who just like the way they sound. Kowalski is probably still in the stage where it's cool for them to discover that total strangers far from home like their music.) (It is also possible that being a fairly early adopter grants you temporary immunity from ohmigawdnotyouagain. I'll let you know when it wears off.)

Also, in snooping around the above journal, I found the writer has a userpic of Kermit the Frog waving his arms in excitement. But I'm not going to steal it, because such dishonestly inevitably comes back to bite you. I'll have to go looking for the image for myself, though.

...and soon, is create a tag for "ideas" and add it to all the bits and pieces I've been posting here. That would be a much better way to keep track of random notions I might use one day than scattering them among my notebooks.

This layout is "Expressive/ Savannah" in case anyone is wondering. My last few layout changes have been to different options under "Expressive." Very flexible!

As to the flamingos, I just remarked on another post here that really, what you post on a public journal is a bit like what you choose to decorate your lawn with. You can pretty much do what you like, unless you've gone completely nuts, but since it's out there in public other people might see and choose to comment about it. And that's their right, too. (Or I think so, which is why I don't screen comments. Mind you, I've never had a nasty one.)

I like the title of my journal but for about five seconds there I was really tempted to rename it "The Pink Flamingos Of My Mind." Luckily, there is no "Expressive" layout that incorporates lawn flamingos... yet...

I'm nearly out of room for new userpics, but these kids are worth one...