What's Going On Here? Welcome to Antmanifesto.

Once upon a time, there was a thing called Myspace. Everybody loved it. It was pretty great.

I had a Myspace page, just like everybody else. I used it for all the inane things everybody used it for. I can't even remember what all of those things were. This is all ancient history.

But, one thing I do remember is my Myspace blog.

It was a strange period of my life, and many factors contributed to the way I used that blog.

I wrote and wrote and wrote in that thing. I started out with opinions about the current events of the day (I'm talking like 2005 through 2009 or so). But I often backed up my opinions with anecdotes from my own life.

Somehow, I managed to build up a fanbase there. I made some friends from all over the world that way.

These friends would leave comments on my blog entries, encouraging me to continue, so I did. But, after some time, these friends mentioned to me that they were more interested in the anecdotes than the opinions. I was happy to oblige them.

I continued to write and write and write, but I shifted my focus mostly to just stories from my life. For reasons I may never understand, it was a hit. More people came from all over the world and read about my life. I do have lots of stories, for sure, but it was never clear to me why people were so interested in them. It didn't matter to me though. I'm pretty much totally wide open. I'll tell you anything. (That may not be a safe thing to do anymore, but it's how I am, so, you know...)

Anyway, I did this for quite a while, and then one day it all went away. Myspace went away and my blog went with it. Most of those new friends disappeared too. The ones who stuck around migrated over to Facebook with me, but most of my Myspace friends and fans just vanished into thin air, sadly.

But, I had the forethought to back all of my blog up before the site turned to mush.

For many years, I have intended to port that blog somewhere, but I'm the kind of guy who has fifty projects unfinished at any given time, and that idea got put so far on the backburner that I forgot all about it. Until now...

Today, I realized that I had set this page up long, long ago and never did anything with it. That's about to change.

One requirement for migrating the blog that I wasn't sure I could find anywhere was that the site give me the ability to change the dates on entries to match when I actually wrote the things. So very much has changed since I wrote this stuff, and it would be weird as hell to have the dates on the entries indicate that I had just written this stuff now.

Turns out, that's no problem here, and so now I feel ready to do this.

I will do my best to preserve the integrity of these posts. If I expressed opinions then that aren't my opinions now, I'll leave it as it was. I'm not going to censor my much younger self.

Also, Myspace's blog had some features that I'll have to recreate here in some way that works (for instance, each entry included the music I was listening to as I wrote, and I'm sure I can figure out a way to embed some youtube or spotify links here to mimic that).

So anyway, welcome to Antmanifesto. It's just a little self-indulgent garbage from a different age, but maybe people will still be into it as they were then. Maybe not. Whatever.

I hope someone will get something out of it. Maybe that someone is you?

Enjoy.

(This is going to take a while, so if you find yourself interested in this at all, check back from time to time to see what's been added. I assure you, there is PLENTY of material here. I wrote my ass off back in the day.)

Love, as always,

Josh

What am I doing?

Current mood: serendipitous

Ok, so what I've decided is that I will actually start writing in this blog, despite any potential alienation it might bring.

So, I've been having a weird couple of months, reconnecting with my childhood and realizing that I was a strange, strange kid. I was able to actually get into my old childhood worldview, and it was pretty scary. I'm surprised I didn’t become a serial killer or something. 




So, there were these two plastic spheres of existence, normalcy, and celebrity.

Celebrity had nothing to do with being rich and famous; it was an existence in which you could pluck the Art from the skies and make it your own. 

So - most of us live in the normal sphere. But the thing is, we are supposed to be in the sphere to which we belong. In my case, and many others I know, we are supposed to be in celebrity, but we are trapped in normalcy. The opposite happens too, that is how we get people like Alanis Morissette, Huey Lewis and the News, Steven Spielberg, etc. Those people were supposed to be in the normalcy sphere, but they were misplaced. They were able to use the status their inadvertent dislocation brought them to gain fame and fortune. It is unfortunate. 

There are also people who live somewhere in between. These people are your Neil Diamonds and your Michael Jacksons and such. What happens to them is that they pluck the Art and present it effectively and become the celebrity they are meant to be, but then they shift, but they don't realize it, and they start making "They're Coming to America" and "Man in the Mirror." They are no longer plucking from the Art, but they think they are. The normals don't know any better, because they are so damn normal, and we end up plagued with their likes forever and ever. 



Interestingly, there are lists of names associated with normalcy and celebrity. They don't actually have to do with stuff I like and don't like, which is probably your first assumption. However, I don't know the connections between them definitely, so any help you could give me would be appreciated. 

Originally, I was going to make the list only of the people who had been pigeonholed in my brain one way or another as a child, but I think it is more meaningful perhaps, and definitely a lot funnier, to list current people as well. 



I will post updates as they come to me. If anyone sees the connection, feel free to post a reply.

Celebrity	Normal
Donovan	Rick Springfield
Leonard Cohen	Katrina and the Waves
Beethoven	George Lucas
Stanley Kubrick	Foo Fighters
Pre-1979 Neil Diamond	Post-1979 Neil Diamond
Morris	Garfield
Blue Oyster Cult	Steve Miller Band
REM	INXS
Salvador Dali	Andy Warhol
Tool	Tiffany
Pat Benatar	Jim Carrey
George Michael	Stevie Ray Vaughan
Clive Barker	John Grisham
Barbara Billingsley	Willie Ames
He-Man	Jesus Christ
Freddie Mercury	Nathaniel Hawthorne
System of a Down	The Black Eyed Peas
Lewis Carroll	Andie McDowell
Mike Patton	Mariah Carey
Really early, pre-reggae, bebop Bob Marley	Dave Matthews Band

I'm going to stop for now, because my brain is frying. I will add more when I hear what you folks think about this. Again, I am not intending to be offensive to anyone, it's simply the characterizations of a childish mind. I cannot be held responsible for fisticuffs that may ensue upon the realization that even little children can recognize your fraud. 



Thank you and have a nice day. 



On the morrow! Old chap.



-Josh



Currently listening:

Call of the West, By Wall of Voodoo

Release date: By 25 October 1990