MISCmedia for 1/2/01
The Future Is Now
(Well, Not Quite Yet)

BARRING ANY UNFORESEEN year-2001 computer bugs, this will be the first MISCmedia entry for the year of "Also Sprach Zarathustra."

So what might you, my loyal (in your own fashion) readers, expect here over the coming months?

• Some more fiction experiments like the one serialized last week (starting with this link).

• Even more fun at MISCmedia Radio, our 24/7 streaming Net-music service. Perhaps even a second channel, devoted to the eclectic and exotic from all over.

• Attempts to play around with the online column's currently standardized format (a single topic a day, running about the same length). Maybe I'll return to my former threat to turn the daily site into something closer to a "weblog" or something close to the multi-topic format of the old Stranger column.

• Pieces of the new MISCmedia book (a photo-essay look at the city I have a lifelong lover's quarrel with) as they emerge.

• Either more or fewer attempts to turn a financial profit from the site. It's pretty clear the site's current business model (or poor excuse for one) isn't gonna work; but no new schemes (which might involve ads, subscriptions, special merchandise offers, etc.) have gelled in my viscous head.

  Many folk these days are claiming pure "content" websites, as business propositions, are molding corpses from 1998. I believe, now that the stupid money has largely abandoned the field, we can all get back to the work of figuring out just what might work in this crazy, still-new medium. Remember that broadcast radio was around almost a decade before the first national commercial networks started; and TV's developers spent the whole of the 1940s working out the medium's operational shticks.

• Possible new directions for the MISCmedia print mag. Scrapping the free distribution has put the print mag more or less in the black, but without real growth opportunities as it's currently constructed.

  To make it more than a "personal zine," albeit a professionally written and designed one, will require a move up to a thicker, slicker, and possibly more infrequent format. Perhaps something along the lines of the great old humor magazines (Punch, the original New Yorker); though for that I'd need some outside investment and a lot more content contributors.

• More of that "fun" factor, so easy to spot yet so elusive to define. Looking back at the past year's entries, I see too many that, in retrospect, feel as if they were filler items, laboriously ground out to fit a self-imposed quota of work. There'll be far less of that this year, I promise.

• More stuff by other people, adding the ever-valuable variety of points-O-view. Send your stuff in today. (Yes, we're still picky and won't run everything.)

• More chocolatey goodness.

TOMORROW: Two books, two different "radical" interpretations of the WTO protests.

ELSEWHERE:

• "Gore cared more about chads than about blacks...."
• That unsung savior of western civilization, beer! (found by Fark)....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• What's Insville and Outski for 2001.
• Parts one, two, three, and four of 'A Dot-Com Christmas Carol.'
• Some of the biggest local spectacles of 2000.
• Point, click, organize.
• One man's favorite videos and worst job.
• Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics-- or is he?
• Lars von Trier's dander in the dark.
• Smart black people on TV-- something you've gotta pay extra for.
• A parable in how not to deal with a new boss.
• Parts one and two of a guest columnist's memoir of growing up with fetish-influenced TV sitcoms.
• The next MISCmedia book, a photographic tour of our formerly-fair city.
• Remembering the Japanese economic threat.
• Remembering the good old days of computer nerddom.
• A guest columnist tries to not get arrested.
• Parts one, two, and three of our WTO-anniversary piece.
• The pioneering electronic music of Raymond Scott.
• A parable in how not to face potential unemployment.
• A short list of of people who aren't automatically better than you.
• A short list of of Things I Like.
• The Net newscast of complete disclosure.

ARCHIVES:

• 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
• Reviews of literature & art, nonfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise
• Longer articles and essays
• The origin and future of MISCmedia