On Tuesday we were settling in to discuss literature in our Writing Fiction class when we were interrupted by a dance party in Ordean Court. We glanced out the fourth floor window to see that a shiny Coke trailer had unfolded like a lotus flower to reveal metal petals of amplifiers, speakers and radio personality rejects. The bass rattled my fillings and my Vanilla Coke I had picked up five minutes earlier from the same trailer.

Apparently Vanilla Coke is such a uniquely ubiquitious product that it cannot be contained in silent billboards, magazine placements and television adverts. On this momentous day they were dispensing both free sugar pop and infectious dance grooves. Normally I wouldn’t mind, as I’ll be the first to praise the cultural advancement inherent in pushing products via association with hip youth interests. However, this was during class, in the middle of the fargin’ day. We were trying to learn something, which, as far as my impression goes, is the point of college in the first place. We did close the windows, which managed to drown out all but the loudest hollahs from below.

“This poem by Dylan Thomas-”

“COME ON OUT AND PLAY, GUYS AND GIRLS.”

“has six stanzas written in Villanelle for-”

“WE’VE GOT VIDEO GAMES.”

“…”

Steven Den Beste lays out his case for Iraq, which strangely enough sounds like a thorough analysis of root-causes. Those poor, poor liberals, who still think that answering the question “Why do they hate us?” will avoid any spilled blood and make the world embrace in green fields lined with oleander.

Soon. There’s some business that needs taking care of, first.

We must attack Iraq. We must totally conquer the nation. Saddam must be removed from power, and killed if possible, and the Baath party must be shattered.

“Put the hanky down, it’s clobberin’ time.”

But Saddam isn’t our enemy. bin Laden (may he rest in hell) is not our enemy. Iraq isn’t our enemy. al Qaeda isn’t our enemy. The Taliban weren’t our enemies.

Our enemy is a culture which is deeply diseased.

We’re everything that they think they should be, and by our power and success we throw their failure into stark contrast, especially because we’ve gotten to where we are by doing everything their religion says is wrong; we’ve deeply sinned, and by so doing we’ve won. They are forced to compare their own accomplishments to ours; we are the standard of success, and in every important way they come up badly short. They have nothing whatever they can point to that can save face and preserve their egos. In every objective way we are better than they are, and they know it.

And since this is a “face” culture, one driven by pride and shame, that is intolerable. Nor is it something we can easily redress. The oft-proposed idea of increasing aid and attempting to eliminate poverty may well help in South America and sub-Saharan Africa, but it will not defuse the hatred of our Arab/Islamic enemies, for it is our success that they hate, not the fruits of that success.

They face a profound crisis of faith, and it can only resolve one of three ways.

First, the status quo can continue. They can continue to fail, sit in their nations, and accept their plight. By clinging to their culture and their religion they may be ideologically pure, but they will have to continue to live with the shame of being totally unable to earn the respect through achievement that would be the only thing that actually would satisfy their grievance. Solution one: they can stagnate.

The second thing they can do is to accept that their culture and their religion are actually the problem. They can recognize that they will have to liberalize their culture in order to begin to achieve. They can embrace the modern world, and embrace western ways at least in part. They can break the hold of Islamic teachings; discard Sharia; liberate their women; start to teach science and engineering in their schools instead of the study of the Q’uran; and secularize their societies. Solution two: they can reform.

Some Arab nations have begun to do this, and to the extent that they have they have also started to succeed. But this is unacceptable to the majority; it is literally sinful. It is heresy. What good does it do to succeed in the world if, by so doing, you condemn your soul to hell?

Which leaves only one other way: become relatively competitive by destroying all other cultures which are more capable. You level the playing field by tearing down all the mountains rather than filling in the valleys; you make everyone equally tall by shooting everyone taller than you are. Solution three: they can lash out, fight back.

We’re facing a 14th century culture engaged in a 14th century war. The problem is that they are armed with 20th century weapons, possibly including nuclear weapons. And they embrace a culture which honors dying in a good cause, which means that deterrence can’t be relied on if they get nuclear weapons.

Why is it that the US is concerned about Iraq getting nukes when we don’t seem to be as concerned about Pakistan or India or Israel? It’s because those nations don’t embrace a warrior culture where suicide in a good cause, even mass death in a good cause, is considered acceptable.

It’s certainly not the case that the majority of those in the culture which is our enemy would gladly die. But many of those who make the decisions would gladly sacrifice millions of their own in exchange for millions of ours.

It may sound strange to say, but what we have to do is to take the 14th century culture of our enemies and bring it into the 17th century. Once we’ve done that, then we can work on bringing them into the 21st century, but that will be much easier.

I am forthrightly stating that it will be necessary to destabilize the entire middle east, which puts me exactly counter to European foreign policy. No bandaid will do. It isn’t possible to patch things up with diplomacy because the rot runs too deep. Diplomacy now would be treating the symptoms and not the true disease.

I am forthrightly stating that no amount of aid to the poor will stop the aggression against us, angering liberals everywhere. It isn’t our wealth they hate, it’s our accomplishments. The only way we can appease them is to ourselves become failures, and that is a price I’m not willing to pay.

I’ve parsed his argument down severely. It really is quite a nice piece of work in full.

I really don’t like to write about writing my webpage, as it ends up being as exciting as telling my friends how I fold my laundry. I cannot even imagine visiting such an evil upon my fellow man. “Well, I take my socks and turn them inside out, and fold my boxers in half lengthwise before rolling them in a little ball, and then I feel the cold barrel of a gun on my temple and-”

No. It isn’t worth it. They’d be mopping giblets off the walls for weeks.

Even narcissism doesn’t justify an open forum on my hack abilities at web design. And yet I find the topic strangely alluring, like the sparkly models in Seventeen magazine showing off their ultra-low-ride pants that really only amount to a pair of denim garters. Filthy, foul, just plain wrong… and just what I’ve always, always wanted.

So with that, I introduce you to danesbored.com-transitory-version-something-or-another. The last week I have spent three hours a day FTPing files, writing entries and installing server-side scripts. I got all my entries exported from Graymatter and imported into Movable Type, my new and beautiful blogging love child.

And now I’m tired. The main weblog page looks nice, but it is merely the default Movable Type template and lacks moxie. The extra nonsense that existed on Cromlech still exist on danesbored, but in changing blogging tools I broke my links to them. Additionally, the ‘nonsense’ needs to be updated so it uses my new stylesheets and is consistent with the rest of the site (which still needs to be made consistent… er… still needs to be made existent, really). I have a desire to generate a photo album that runs parallel to the main blog, but to do so I need to know how to make the Movable Type templates sing and dance at my beckoning. The main template references a horde of sub-templates, which results in a mess of cross-referenced code that looks to me more like Elvish than HTML.

No worries. I can figure it out. I always have. I always will.

Just not yet.

For now, enjoy the pictures.

I’ve found it! I have discovered the secret of weblogging, and will now type it here for the betterment of all! No more sorrowful days will be whiled away hacking at lines of code and prying words out of the Ether! These habits will prove to be dead ends when they are met with the shining light of my Great and Terrible Secret!

In just a moment I will stop with the introduction and start with my Great and Terrible Secret! And here’s the best part… I will print my discovery for free! No charge to you, the faithful and faithless reader, for perusing this delicious bit of genius.

Are you ready? Are you ready to be enlightened by my Great and Terrible Secret to Successful Weblogging? Perhaps you should pause a moment and grab a soda, and come back with your mouth full of soda so when you read about the discovery you can spit soda all over the keyboard and buy a new keyboard!

But wait Dane, you say! I don’t want to buy a new keyboard, as my current keyboard works fine covered in syrupy beads of old orange juice, candle wax all over the F- keys and only 99 of its original 101 keys.

But wait Dear Reader, I say! Once you have read my Great and Terrible Secret to Successful Weblogging and Getting Chicks you will be able to buy yourself a NEW keyboard without juice and wax and the unlucky number 99!

So without further ado, I will venture into the mighty realm of the Great and Terrible Secret to Successful Weblogging and Getting Rich and Chicks!!!!!

I read the following!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Site traffic multiplies in proportion to outbound links. Of course quality, focus, information-density and presentation are essential. But all else being equal, a site that links religiously will attract orders-of-magnitude more traffic than a site that ignores the rest of the web.”

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I got this from an entry on Dane Carlson’s weblog, for which I will provide a link right here. He has these neat little purple dots that you click on and they’ll take you right to the entry!

Let us all revel in the reflective glory of Dane Carlson, who was ever so wise to link to a website containing such moving scripture that was originally right over here by the smarty mans of Blogads! Today’s Blogad on Blogads.com is: “Advertise on this site to hit a passionate, influential audience right between the eyes!”

OOF! I feel like I have been struck right between the eyes! The influence and power of Ricky Bruner cannot be underestimated! What does he title his masterful thesis on traffic development!

Peak flow: attracting readers by sending them away

WOW! When I worked at Summer Camp and we had this thing called Super Kids for kids with asthma my kids had to blow ‘peak flows’ every night! Ricky is so efficient at breathing he only need utter it once to revolutionize the blogging world!

But let us not forget the Great and Terrible Secret, which is to LINK AND LINK RELIGIOUSLY. I would not have stumbled on this genius had I not found Dane Carlson, who was a wise man to exercise the Secret and link to it! I will be sure to visit Dane Carlson every single day to make sure I don’t miss another link of incredible significance! I will also link to everyone else Dane Carlson links to, as that way I will gain many more readers who will be attracted here because I send them away!

But with all that aside, let us further analyze the Great and Terrible Secret to Successful Weblogging and Getting Rich and Chicks!

“Site traffic multiplies in proportion to outbound links.” Just like how sunburn multiplies in proportion to beaches and Napster multiplies in proportion to crime rate and rabbits multiply in proportion to EVERYTHING.

“Of course quality, focus, information-density and presentation are essential.” Har, har, har, of course!, har, SNORT.

“A site that links religiously will attract orders-of-magnitude more traffic than a site that ignores the rest of the web.” Nevermind the obvious effects religious linking wil have on quality, focus and information-density… THIS IS WHERE THE ACTION IS. ‘Orders-of-magnitude’? Good fucking god, that sounds so vague it can’t possibly be wrong!

And speaking of god, keep in mind that we’re not linking atheistically, here! With religion as the cornerstone of the Great and Terrible Secret to Successful Weblogging and Getting Rich and Chicks and God on your Side, you can’t possibly go wrong!!!!

Just look how far you could go! There’s this awesome site called Weblogs4Hire where they’ll hire you to write a weblog for FREE!

As more organizations realize the value of providing timely, relevant and unique content to their prospects and clients, it is only natural that they turn to weblogs.

Wow! I’ve gone from a useless college hack to an in-demand hipster for organizations in the information-technologies community in a matter of seconds!

There hasn’t been an easy way to connect those people with both the weblog writing skills and specific knowledge and interest to generate a relevant weblog with the ever growing demand for their expertise.

Until now.

Can you hear the trumpets going off in my head! Why the heck have I been doing this for free when I could obviously get hired by a rock and roll company! Who could possibly have come up with such a cutting-edge business plan that is so cutting-edge it went live only two weeks ago!

Guess.