David, The sun has got around to rising here on Long Island, and I did wake up in the middle of the night thinking I would add to my writer's blog a few comments on my 1^st unwritten novel. I did something else, regardless, and in a while I will have to get myself together to go to Manhattan and take lead shields out of limestone. I have got used, for some reason, to responding to online correspondence by starting at the end of the correspondent's message and working backwards. So here goes... the manner in which BP comments degenerate into attempts at humour I have figured out is a significant activity in and of itself. It is not solely a signal: noise problem, it is a dynamic element of the ongoing community of conversation. There are several important elements to this process. 1. Is that this is a thin stream, this sending out of words to be read in sequential order and it is difficult to pick up nuances of meaning, or to express them, 2. Play is a means of development of social context, it is difficult to verify as in 'peer group review' the veracity of the information, the 'serious' answers how grounded they are in either experience or reality but when we play together we learn together and 3. Humour is a product of a keen intelligence, and the least we can do is try to look to each other as if we are intelligent... and if not humorously, then at least with respectful courtesy to at least respond with something as lame as it may seem, and 4. The degeneration of the thread is a sign of respect, particularly when one wants to cheer on the shared sense of community when one has nothing particularly substantive to say, but when a BPr does have something substantive to say in response to a query because of all of the 'noise' we have a feeling for where they are coming from and it helps us to gage the value of their 'serious' response. This media and what can be done with it. A majority of my contacts online these days are young 20-30 year old creative writers who are not too long out, or in the middle of MFA programs (and I have a total aversion to creative writing programs). For the most part these young writers have very little life experience and the things that they write, that they are spreading all over the internet into literary e-zines like wildfire are in many ways not very satisfying to someone that has been doing that for like 45 years. When a young writer gushes how they just got back to writing last November and they are so ecstatically happy that they got their 247 word flash in Prune Juice Bee Bop, a literary e-zine blog started last week -- well, I kinda wonder. But there is certainly something going on, at high energy, and they are running stuff all over the internet and tripping over each other to find the next best media gimic. Some famous writer Michael Martone, from Indiana, whom I had never previously heard of in my life, I think he is a creative writing teacher -- another person recently auctioned off on eBay a water bottle, partially filled, that Martone had drunk from at a reading. The hitch was that Martone had been over many years siphoning off sips from the left over water bottles of famous writers who gave college readings and to have a sip of this water would be the writer's equivalent of a sort of DNA transfer Holy Grail. It went for $20.50 US. "You are bidding on approximately 8.3 ounces of Dasani water (plus backwash) in a 20-ounce plastic Dasani bottle (lot number NOV0909 TOC0931L3). This was left by *writer Michael Martone* on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009, after a reading at Brigham Young University, during which Martone read the "Contributor's Note" where he talks about his mother writing his school assignments, "G# Minor 7th in the Second Inversion", and "Seventeen Postcards from Terra Incognita."" http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150335870168 <http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150335870168> As another example: I am on Twitter now, and there is this fellow who seems to be above the 30 year mark, who has 8 followers. That is like nothing much to speak of as far as attention goes in this world. What he is doing is twitter by twat one line at a time posting a narrative... reminds me of Gab & Eti only one sentence at a time. He only has 8 readers, he had 9 but when he started his story one dropped off. He twittered us about that. I have no clue who this guy is, or how I got connected to follow him, or what his story is... even his fictional story leaves me a bit befuddled. But I am curious what can be done with that. As to conferences. I have attended many presentations at conferences over the years and I have to say that very rarely am I able to sit still long enough to get through any of them. Some of them are repeats of what I heard 20 years ago, some are simply irrelevant to me, and many of them are muddled and simply weird or plain boring. On the very rare occasion someone comes out with a spectacular bit of information and I carry it about for decades after... but that is quite rare. One of my inspirations in my adventures is that I have always found it more interesting to stand in the lobby and simply listen and talk with people. I feel that conferences would be much better off if they could do without the bother of long winded presentations, but then there needs to be some sort of attractant to get people to gather in a large enough mass of bodies for person-to-person social networking to occur. If it were solely advertised that we are going to have a big party in Atlanta next October -- if we are not compelled by the idea that there will be an opportunity for folks to stand up and gas off about pet projects, then why bother? The young writers that I mention above a while back went to a conference in Chicago and what it seems to have been is a party, though I think the marketing idea was for small press publishers to sell books and for writers to connect with small press publishers. I do not see the presentations as the media of the transmission of knowledge as much as the attractant to gather a crowd that can then party. Our Polish presentation at the 40th APT anniversary, though we did work real hard on our presentation we got a whole lot more mileage out of saying that we had done it than we have got out of actually doing it. It was not very well attended, as IRT will attest, but our being 'special' guests as 'presenters' to the conference gave us a bit of verve to go around and talk to the conference attendees on a one-to-one. Frankly we had our own incredible party off the premises that went on for four+ days of intensive relating with each other and talking, talking and talking. It was a learning experience without podium, and a good deal of it walking around looking at the old buildings, and stuff. When we happened to wander through the fashion show it was also very interesting. Having organized a few conferences, particularly ones where nothing was written down or ever intended to have been written down either before or after, I think that to learn to organize and stage conferences of any sort is a really good practice. I admire you for doing it, I commend you for your stamina, and I will support you when you decide that you have had enough of it and want to do something else. I am sorry to make such a brief response, but I do need to get ready to go to work for the day. Oh, yeah, waiting for your 40+ questions to return. Anxiously awaiting... each time that I get back an interview response it is a little bit like Christmas. Best, ][<en -- To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to: <http://listserv.icors.org/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html> *Please vote for ICORS every 24 hours* <http://www.lsoft.com/news/choicevote.asp>