Pimp no more

Brad Schmidt’s decision to resign as editor of Technorati’s technology channel gave me the excuse that I guess I’d been waiting for to retire as sole contributor to the UFO feature that I began at his invitation six months ago.

Pimp My Reality will remain archived at Technorati, all 25,000 words of it, drifting through cyberspace, comments and retweet scores welded to it like digital barnacles, growing quaint with the passage of time. It’s also possible that somebody else will pick up where I left off. Or that I might reconstitute it elsewhere. The smart money, however, is on neither thing happening.

So goodnight, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

My triumphant return to the Coffee Underground this week after several months’ self-imposed exile at the Main St. Starbucks was greeted by a new barrista who doesn’t know me from Adam. It’s good to be back.

An arts advocate friend and I debated arts funding today. A good-natured debate that reminded me of how much I dislike the more-important-to-society-than-thou posture that we (yes, we) assume when asked to justify our place at the public trough. I’m not even sure what “the arts” are, except that subset of human activities for which the vast majority of humans have little or no enthusiasm. Why should “the arts” be less subject to market forces than carpentry or auto repair or carpet cleaning? If a ballet company founders, we cry foul. But if a restaurant founders, we chalk it up to bad product or timing or marketing. What gives?