two stew

T N D:

two stew
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 02:37:44 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Hall 
To: tnd-sf@bud.com
Subject: 1/11 TND: two stew

January 11th, come to Cyborganic's Thursday Night Dinner cuz...

MacWorld'll be in town, the geekgeist will be runnin' strong -
we're going to celebrate community with TWO STEW.

One,

plan to chow on some VEGGIE STEW I'm whippin' up
   and on the SUGGESTED SIDES I encourage you to bring:
 *hearty breads*, *savory spreads*, *courageous cheeses*,
 *fruity potables*, *leafy greens*, *meat if you want it*,
 and anything else you feel goes

Two!

-) feed your browser (-

        Unlike the edible stew, this one's purely potluck, so...

BRING to TND, or mail to 
a digital dish, some virtual vegetables

- anything you've created on a computer, or that can be thereby transmitted -

gifs, tiffs and aiffs you'll throw in the mix
intersploven with your textual tidbits,
brewed as a WEB SITE STEW,
partywhile prepared by your short order chef zJoosteen.

-) way new potluck (-

celebrating existence with stories and art,
whipping through our computopia like a svengali buffoon,
commodifying content and communication and community

as terminal slaves grope for the booze button

what it is  ---->
     is up to us to take responsibility for our media.
less pringle, more boise,
drink lots of water -
purity of essence
no, Ian, what are you smoking?


our DJ, the masterful Matt Brown 
Swab is kindly, Wanda Webb 
I am chef zJousteen Hall 
bryna or cool @cyborganic.com handle the other stuff, ask them.


Thanks for your bandwidth,
Justin
six, errr, seven vegan stews - allow me to tour you
All from Veggies Unite!, except for one from Margie
carribean squash and sweet potato stew
margie's winter pheonomenon
mushroom barley soup
green potato onion soup
Moroccan Stew
Mediterranean Stew
Barley Stew - burnt like I remember cleaning scarred pots for Chandra - so I added blue food colouring to make it look as sickly smoky as it tasted.
Endless thanks to Aimeee Cardwell, Vagabond Jim, Christy Cober, and briefly Caleb for helping chop stuff!
Alita is radiant, glowing, streaked hair and an orange top I remember from the night I met Annette. She's in love, loved by Jason, eloquently, "been in love before, never enjoyed it."
Emilio, Swarthmore graduate, appears with a dislocated shoulder from rock climbing.
He left before Dina arrived, a dramatic Sag friend of Chandra. By dramatic, I mean she described my mushroom soup as sublime. Why does she cover her mouth when she talks to me?
Talking more to Joey of Suck. Smart cynics are enticing and depressing. He called me a hypocrite for going to a Wired VIP party after holding forth on elitist party practices when I worked there. I ran this by Jonathan, he sez what's important is what you do with the party.
I thought so too, sort of reminded me of getting out of jail early, cuz I'm from a family of well-to-do lawyers, I was set free before 279 other arrestees. So I spoke about the arrest and the circumstances within the jail to whoever would hear - I thought, my freedom is a responsibility to speak for those who are not free. So my attendance at the Wired party is to make it accessable for people who did not attend.
At the same time, I was giving Joey shit cuz he thinks he can take ads without it compromising his integrity. Like Suck works out of HotWired, and they have no qualms about talking shit about them.
freedom to talk shit about anyone, equality of negativity
Joey envisions the same thing with advertisers. Or, get advertisers who care only for Suck's wealthy demographic (who's poor on the web?) who Suck wouldn't care to write about anyway.
I called him naieve for thinking that he could take money from them without them influencing his content. He thinks he can take what he want from them, and do his thing, his thing not compromised by advertising.
And I think, later of course, who am I to think I can take Wired's or-dervs and they won't influence my content? I gave him shit, now that I think about it, I was probably just projecting my own insecurities onto him.
I haven't written about the Wired party yet, but I found it intoxicating and thusly dangerous. Kevin Kelly telling me "You are the elite!" and me trying to figure out how I can both go to that party and not be an obnoxious digital elitist. Either I am right walking both worlds (?), or I should choose.
On the other hand, I connected with some folks, one woman who was groping for direction found some inspiration in my counsel.
One thing I said to Joey, and Chris of BiancaTroll agreed, you make your web site as you envision the net. Bianca, community. My page, Links from the Underground. So I apply that thought to my qualms with other people, people I love, wanting to advertise on their web page. Rather than bash their means of making a living, rather I will try to make a better way work for me, so that they might find faith in it.
Joey the cynical sucker was one thing, talking to Chris and Dave Thau of BiancaTroll quite another. For one thing, they shut down chat on their site for two days, and unsolicited recieved over $1800 from their users.
HotWired, it was recently reported, gets around 19k domains a days, 600k hits. Bianca beats them by 10k users and 200k hits. They are contemplating advertising, I'd like to see them try to rely on their users. They seemed to think it too unreliable, but so far it seems so good. It takes a little faith, to be sure. Joey of Suck had faith in $32 donations in my first month collection.
Ken Goldberg, speaking with Joey, recognized the value of an entity of creation divorced from self promotion.
Between the disbelief and hypocrisy, I was runnin' a little low. I did make connection with Judith at MIT, the Electronic Postcards woman. We had a chat about my Humanist Technology major plans at Swarthmore, she said I could write her for a bibliography, since we didn't get to get too deep. She did say she gets an offer a day to buy her site, to put paid links up, etc. An academic, she said getting involved in that would prevent her from making her site cooler - putting her energy into product improvement instead of marketing.
I walked around the party with a video camera - I've got about four hours worth of tape. Maybe I'll put up some quicktimes tomorrow.

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