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I'm back! Where is the board?

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Disco is My Class War

09:21 / 21.09.07

The Gathering was always about drinking.

Closed for Business Time

09:22 / 21.09.07

Maybe not all about drinking, but about a third of the threads on the 1st page do seem to variations of "The [insert place-name] drinking thread", with the slightly less alcohol-focussed "Gigs" threads a close second methinks. But the main point is it's slo-ho.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:28 / 21.09.07

(Actually, scratch my original comment - it's picked up again recently, like a lot of the board.)

Nolte, I think you may be a) getting a false impression of what the board was like back when people did regularly meet up at protests etc, and b) over-emphasising the alcohol-related nature of the threads in the Gathering now. The top six are currently about:

Live music.
Art/music/readings.
Someone relocating.
A thread in which people pretend to have a drink, or report back on actually having had a drink, or vaguely think about organising to buy a drink for the founder and programmer of the board.
Watching political election coverage.
A short story reading (despite misleading pint-related title).

The only one of those primarily about drinking probably shouldn't even be in the Gathering. I think it's a bit much to say that gigs are only barely less alcohol-focused than being in the pub! People usually retired to the pub after they went on a march too, y'know...

Closed for Business Time

09:53 / 21.09.07

It's me projecting Petey! And yes, I might have a slightly camo-tinted view of the so-called Golden Age. Nonetheless - there's not that much in the way of direct, or even indirect action, is there?

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:12 / 21.09.07

I guess what I'm saying is that there has never really been a big protest/demo culture on Barbelith apart from those periods in which protest/demo culture temporarily itself expanded to encompass people who were not part of it hitherto. There have always been individuals who are an exception to that - although for fairly obvious reasons, not all of them have wanted to talk in detail here about everything they've been involved in.

Way way way back when, there used to be a bit more discussion of, ah, what one might call ontological action if one was being generous: discordian prankster antics, and so on. I'm not sure even that used to happen so much as it was just talked about in theory, though. Apart from that time I kidnapped someone, and made them happy.

10:21 / 21.09.07

Well BioDynamo, since I joined I've been lurking in the background building creepy little maquettes of all of Barbelith's posters (yours is a potato with googly eyes and snapped toothpick ends for teeth) that are linked together in elaborate family trees by bits of string soaked in the juice of heinz baked beans and then rolled in hair collected from the plug in my bath. It explains every Barbelith relationship and interaction since The Nexus but needs an index the size of a phonebook to read, which I haven't gotten around to writing yet.

If you wanted, y'know, you could come around and, I dunno, I could show it to you?

13:19 / 21.09.07

There have always been individuals who are an exception to that

I think the starter of this thread was one, actually - I remember him talking about being at (organizing? reporting on?) the Gothenburg WTO protests.

Now that I think of it, before 9/11, it seems like all the rallies were about the World Bank and free trade vs. fair trade.

20:04 / 21.09.07

Yes. BioDynamic was out trying to make the world a better place while I was on my fat ass eating Cheetos and watching cartoon network.

So my calling him a lazy prick is entirely unwarranted, and I apologize.

Maybe I have changed. Christ, I hope so.

Closed for Business Time

20:12 / 21.09.07

You mean you've gone from eating Cheetos to now there's a bottle of bourbon permanently lodged in your fist?

20:27 / 21.09.07

Well, I didn't say changed for the better...

20:29 / 21.09.07

Day Three.

Bumzit count: nil.

You're my lucky charm!

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