Google has just announced that Blogger can now display comments submitted by your Google+ contacts. Blogger already provides the option to automatically post your new blog posts to Google+; as best as I can tell from the screenshots of the new service, comments made on your Google+ post can now appear on your blog.
I don't yet know if comments made directly on your blog by people who aren't on Google+ will appear on Google+. The new option hasn't yet been enabled in my Blogger dashboard so I can't check for myself; my older cross-posts with comments in Blogger do not show up on Google+ as having comments, but that doesn't mean that it won't work that way moving forwards.
This move is doubtless in response to the shared Facebook comment streams that are finding increasing use. Bloggers posting a link on their Facebook page to one of their blog posts can set up a similar two-way interaction. It solves the problem of where to comment - on a friend's blog directly, whose archive they control? Or on their Facebook page where the interaction might be seen by more people?
I haven't spent much time on Google+, but I know people who do. A truly integrated comment stream would be a welcome addition, and might actually get me to connect with more people in Google+. At present, my blog has trimmed back down to much like what it was in 2008: public but unadvertised, read by only a few family members and local friends. I still co-organize a blogger group, but my outreach died down with the decrease in activity of the Cleveland Social Media Club. That could change.
The Black Angels at the Beachland, v2.0
There's a certain transcendence I reach under the correct conditions of alcohol, volume, and other undetermined factors. I almost got there last night. Almost - but not quite.
I first saw the Black Angels at the Beachland over three years ago. I had only a passing familiarity with their recorded output and was on the fence about going to the show. I did, I enjoyed it immensely, and the group became one of the columns supporting my developing fondness for low-fi retro indie rock. The genre reminds me of the searing, overdriven stride of Weld-era Neil Young and the big blues-rock bands I listened to in college.
Maybe it was a case of high expectations. Maybe it was my ears; I've been seeing a doctor about wax buildup. Maybe alcohol, as in not enough of it - the show was sold out and it was crowded enough that if I'd gone to the bar, I wouldn't have been able to get back to the spot where I could see the band well. I can't blame the venue; even at its worst, the sound is good and the concertgoers are well behaved.
That transcendence, that sudden and radical shift of perspective, is why I go see live music. It's an epiphany machine. I get stuck, and I need all the help I can get to see the proverbial forest. It honestly doesn't matter if the music is atonal classical pieces, or bluegrass, or metal, or something I'd actually choose to put on. It's allowing myself to be carried along with it that sheds all my assumptions and preconcieved notions, showing me the world fresh, as if after a spring rain. Or maybe it's just vibrating my synapses loose.
I'll keep trying.
Humor impaired
"Been watching Game of Thrones and I think I've figured out why people like it. It's a medieval fantasy with office politics but they get to stab annoying coworkers."I posted the above as a Facebook status update because I thought it was funny (after all I amuse myself better than anyone else does). But then it occurred to me that posting the phrase 'stab annoying coworkers' on a public site might have unintended consequences. So I deleted it.
I'm posting it here, where I can crack a joke while making it clear that I don't intend to actually perforate anyone. Here, I can provide context, because I can write more than two sentences without people's eyes glazing over. I hope.
In a world where an eight-year-old can be suspended for pointing a chicken finger at someone and saying the word "bang", discretion is the better part of comedy.
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