Everything Went Black

I wanted to take a few moments to pay tribute to a few of our compañeros in blogtopia who've gone silent. I chose today for a reason: it marks the last date that an old blogging friend, Ductape Fatwa, posted so much as a comment. After that point, his blogging stopped and he stopped answering his emails, leaving many of us who had grown to consider him a dear friend to wonder about his whereabouts and well-being. Anyone who knew him will recognize him as a rather unique presence – at once a radical gadfly tweaking the noses of Democratic and Republican bloggers and a folksy elder gentleman telling anecdotes of his grandchildren; a devout Muslim with a keen intellectual curiosity and fascination with pop culture; a storyteller weaving dystopian narratives and yet unwaveringly optimistic; a stirrer of controversy who yet built something of a community among a diverse and divergent cast of internet characters. Words outlive their authors, and although he may have been just another obscure blogger among obscure bloggers, his words – scattered as they are throughout blogtopia – continue to live on and inspire.
This goes out to Ductape Fatwa and other bloggers whose voices have gone silent.

New Free-speechiness-like Blog

Former Pffer, Jack's Smirking Revenge, has launched his own little experiment in free-speechiness: The Free Speech Zone

From his maiden post: (not that I'm calling him a maiden although he's now taken on the job of being the collective Pff rejects' - including the various pinches, of course - handmaiden...)

Give me your banned, your poor, your huddled masses yearning for free speech in the blogosphere!

In the blogosphere there are sites that wish to discuss political matters in a civil manner.

Here, I want that discussion, as well as other kinds in which the community will take care of the trolls and people deemed "assholes" rather than have them banned for their opinion.

Say what you want, post what you want*.

*Note: No Child Porn unless you want the real world to come to your door.

I'm not quite sure what "take care of" means in that context. We shall see, I suppose.

In the meantime: meet the new blawg, same as the old blawg. Same as it ever was. Lipstick on a pig. [insert next cliché here]

Have fun, little hamsters.