Ken Layne at Desert Oracle Radio throws a bonus bone to his Patreon supporters now and then, and the latest was a podcast about his early adventures in bloggery, with one of his old running mates, Matt Welch of Reason magazine and the podcast We the Fifth.
Back in the Day™, when Layne and Welch were building their online presences, they were basically trying to find a new way to do The Work, have fun, and still get paid. They may still be looking. The experience “left both of us semi-internet famous and broke,” quipped Welch.
Me, I was just looking for a publisher-free zone where I could have the occasional public argument with the Voices in my head without frightening anyone’s advertisers.
“That? Oh, that’s just him being him. No, we’ve looked into it, and the Constitution and the ACLU both say he can do that. It’s kind of like the smellies at the off-ramps waving their cardboard signs, except he spells all the words right and he’s not asking for money.”
I’ve lost track of the precise timeline, but the Wayback Machine shows examples of prehistoric TrogloDogS(h)ites dating back to 1998, when I was but a baby blogger cooing and gurgling at the world via satellite Internet from our hillside hideaway in Crusty County.
But there were even earlier versions, long gone off the back and into the broom wagon. I know this because their URLs are in the copyright notices I attached to everything I wrote for the paying customers back then. The hosting outfits were small-timers in central Colorado, most of them no longer with us, and not even the Wayback Machine can find their bones.
I first mentioned a Mad Dog Media website in a 1997 column:
My very own Mad Dog Media Web site lets me slip the leash of conventional publishing and run at large, watering all and sundry with no regard whatsoever for the dictates of good taste or profit margin. Stuff that no one in his or her right mind would publish finds a home here.
—Patrick O’Grady, “Mad Dog Unleashed,” Bicycle Retailer and Industry News
In addition to wanting my own pot to piss in, there was an issue with boredom. The hours can pass very slowly indeed when you’re perched on a rocky hillside 10 miles from a town with no stop lights, more cows than people, and more churches than bars. I was traveling less than I had been when Herself and I did our first tour of Bibleburg in the early Nineties. Back then I’d dash off to Boulder to help VeloNews and Inside Triathlon with production, or venture further afield to cover races, trade shows, whatever. And the races were a lot closer when we lived on the Front Strange. Moving to Crusty County added about 150 miles to every round trip, so I made fewer of them.
Finally, the Crusty County cycling community was basically me, myself, and I. The Voices needed more of an audience than that.
So, yeah: Blogging. My toolkit included (in addition to the attitude and analog-publication experience): PageSpinner, Netscape Navigator, Photoshop, and Fetch; a series of analog and early digital cameras from Pentax, Canon, Sony and Epson; and Macs of various shapes and sizes, among them one of the ill-considered MacClones, a Power Computing PowerBase 200 that I described as “possessed by devils,” because it was.
I taught myself some extremely basic HTML and bounced the blog around those bush-league ISPs before killing off that model in February 2000 (bloggery from the remainder of that year and all of 2001 has gone walkabout); sampled just about every free prefab blogging package available; even tried a self-hosted WordPress build for a while. Then you lot decided you wanted to be able to comment on posts, and on comments, and on comments about the comments, and the simplest way to get all that was to hand the whole shebang over to WordPress.com.
So here we are.
It’s been a fair amount of labor just to run my mouth to no particular purpose for 26 years. But unlike a lot of other refugees from straight journalism, I never thought about trying to make it pay, not really. That would’ve added a whole new degree of difficulty: charging a membership fee; selling advertising; signing up with (and giving a cut to) Patreon, Medium, or Substack; doing some tip-jar beggary like Charles Pelkey and I did for Live Update Guy; and relentlessly self-promoting on social media (“Hey, lookit me, lookit me, LOOKIT ME!!!”).
Anyway, I was already earning something resembling a living by acting the fool for VeloNews, BRAIN, Adventure Cyclist, and anyone else who could stand the gaff and write a check that wouldn’t bounce. And some days that could really feel like work. I felt that if I started to charge admission to the blog, it would turn into a job, and I already knew how that sort of thing ended. Badly.
I may not get paid for this, but I derive other benefits from the work. It keeps me engaged with the world, however distasteful that may be at times. Some people like it, and even say so, in public. And it keeps the rust off this old pen that some folks think is mightier than the sword, possibly because they’ve never fallen afoul of an angry dude with a sword.
At times blogging feels like a training ride on the bike, taking photos that never make it out of the iPhone, or thumb-fingering my way around some John Prine tune on the guitar. How do you get to Carnegie Hall, or anywhere else? Practice, practice, practice.
I’ve been practicing bloggery for a quarter-century now. Who knows? One of these years I might just get it right.
Mad Blog Media 
You have it right this very minute. You remind me of many talented folks who won’t tolerate the restraints of “the business side” of art of most kinds. Mr. Prine finally slipped the noose and created Old Boy Records so he could do it his way. Carnegie Hall is overrated.
On the flip side, when you gonna start that novel?
Ay, Chihuahua … a novel? Talk about a job of work. Aren’t there enough bad books out there already? Lawd knows I’ve read plenty of them.
Speaking of books, I’ve been rereading bits of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72” lately and it seems to be helping me a little with The Fear. We’ve been here before. Maybe not quite as close to actually going over the edge, but close to it. I wish he hadn’t shoved himself off. If he could’ve eased off the throttle just a little he might have proved very useful on the Campaign Trail ’24.
The trouble with being close to the edge is that it doesn’t take but a slip of the foot to go over that edge. Just because you did it once, doesn’t mean you will land it again. The day I jumped a set of railroad tracks at 70 mph and caught big air, but caught a crosswind that time, cured me of trying that again.
There is nothing in the Handbook of Democracy that says you can’t screw the pooch and end up with an Orange Schicklgruber. As the Germans found out when they let the real Schicklgruber back his way into the Chancellorship, shit can happen. Nazis never had more than about 33% of the vote but the left and center was too busy setting up a circular firing squad to notice they were being played. Same sort of thing happened in Spain, as Orwell wrote in Homage to Cantalonia. I think that is where Python got the People’s Front of Judea idea.
In my paying job (I’m about 85% retired and go in a few hours a week just to mumble thinks to the younguns and pretend I am still relevant), we tell people to either go whole hog classified or stay far from classified. Too many have tried dancing with that fine line to sound like they are actually earning their keep, and end up getting called to the Principal’s Office.
I’m not looking forward to November. For that matter, I might have to flee New Mexico between now and June or end up either a felon or bury those consarned Weapons ‘o War in the back yard. Politics is the art of giving one heartburn.
The Pythons probably had the same experience with various socialist/communist groups in school that I did. Marxist-Leninists vs. Trotskyites vs. Stalinists vs. Maoists. In my day it was Mike Klonsky’s October League, which later became the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), going at it hammer-and-sickle with Gus Hall’s hoary old Communist Party USA. Basically Maoists and Stalinists squaring off against “social-fascist” and “revisionist” Soviet apologists. “Splitters!”
Just distractions this November talk. I wanna know if Taylor will be at the Superbowl. That’s important shit right there.
When d’ye think her 15 minutes will be over? I only see two mentions of her on the NYT homepage this morning, but they’re both pretty high up on the page.
Fairly soon I think. She is a very good musician and songwriter, and that part of her will last. But, I don’t think that glitzy and overproduced tour stuff will go much longer.
Prompted by an email from Herb, I watched her tiny desk performance again. Not as much talent there as I thought.
Mr. O’Brien you are a tough judge. I agree that putting performers up on god like pedestals is ridiculous, and comparing young ones with those who we may consider great may not be accurate, but I’d say Ms. Swift has some talent. I’d sure be proud of her (without the touring adulation and net worth), if she were my daughter and had written just a portion of the music she is credited with. As for Ms. Swift’s opinion on politics, I’m glad she has one but it won’t affect what mine is.
You’re right Shawn, kinda sorta. Comparing Taylor Swift to Bonnie Raitt or John Prine ain’t fair. Three different artists aiming for three different audiences. And, she is talented. I didn’t say her music stinks, just not as good as I first thought. Herb did a deep dive into her songs, lyrics and melodies, including some covers, and didn’t find a master. Writing songs ain’t easy, I have tried once or twice and gave up. Effective story telling is what I like in lyrics and songs, and Taylor is not in that lane. Don’t even know about her politics and that doesn’t affect my opinion of her music. There is a piece on the NPR website today about her. And it made a point that she is selling her life to teen and pre-teen girls. Kinda Britney all over again. And, I ain’t interested.
Gus Hall used to be on the ballot in NYS when I was a young brat. Good college friend of mine who became a union activist and union academic loved him.
OG you are the blogging maniac and thank you for years of entertainment. Don’t stop, never change, and keep scribbling. I even read it to my dog who whines and grimaces with glee.
Isn’t that animal abuse? Like me making my cat listen to Tom Waits?
I continue to see the image of Bill the Cat with headphones on. “This is what happens when you let your cat listen to Tom Waits”. Ack!
“Thbbft!”
Speaking of words, N. Scott Momaday just left for the far shore.
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/ap/national/n-scott-momaday-giant-of-native-american-literature-dead-at-89/article_5b503621-ba8b-55e5-9364-238ed61756ca.html
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve never read him. I’m gonna have to check him out. I was surprised that the NYT went to Sherman Alexie for a quote; I thought he had been canceled. (They also misspelled “Santa Fe.”)
My wife used to teach him in her literature class back at the U of Hawaii. She saw the news bulletin and was pretty bummed. Full disclosure, I never read him either.
Please inform your lovely bride that I am helping to keep his spirit alive. Just dropped by Page 1 Books and scored a copy of “House Made of Dawn.”
Worth a read. Matt Welch interview with Bill Maher.
https://reason.com/2024/01/29/the-last-liberal/
A heartfelt thank you. Cheers
You’re welcome, SL. I’d do it even if nobody was reading, but it’s always nice to have company.