Tango

Creativity and the Rebirth of the Lamented Phoenix.

Great, here it comes...

Shush. This is my choice of topics today, not yours.

Which strikes fear into my very heart, let me tell you.

Voice, shush. This is important to me and I'd appreciate it if you didn't derail it.

Suit yourself then. Hopefully, it won't end in utter confusion and 'false internal wisdom errors' like Sierra did.

SHUSH.

Recently, you've seen me shamelessly plugging my friend Bill's adventures in South Korea. While I've heard the deafening silence of the masses (thanks in part to our allowing the QTV website to languish for so long; therefore losing most of our visitor base) for the most part, I have to say that I'm still pretty damn proud of it anyway.

First of all, this collaboration has a lot of happy fun times in it for me. I'm back to work on the website, almost on a daily basis once again.

Secondly, this collaboration is quite challenging. First of all, Bill is 15 hours into the "future," so that every update he sends at 7:00 PM his time, I'm still snoring away at 4:00 AM. Apart from a few short AIM discussions, we've been relying on e-mail to update each other on his and my goings on.

It gets a little tricky because the computer that he is using is mostly displaying Korean symbols in programs (Windows XP, Explorer, etc), leaving him to try to do everything by memory. I hooked him up with Babel Fish a couple of days ago to help with translations from Korean to English and in reverse, which seemed to help some, but he's still relying on his knowledge of what usually goes where on his systems back here.

As a result, his e-mails to me usually are fairly short and direct when it comes to describing everything that he sends along. To help him out, I've been doing some behind the scenes research into some of the places that he visits as well as some of the customs. I usually send this info back to him to confirm and cross check, so all he has to do at that point is just to say "yes, that's right on," or "nah, not sure if that's right. Lemme check that and I'll get back to you."

What results from this is that he sends me the raw content of what he'd like to say and then entrusts it to me to effectively 'ghost write' his entries for him. I use pretty much everything he sends, sometimes spicing up a phrase here or correcting a typo there, but mostly I attempt to help him plug up the gaps. It's an asset in ghost writing if you can attempt to write in a close approximation of your friend's voice beyond a sentence or two without letting your own totally take over.

Luckily, I've known Bill for a number of years and while I may not be dead spot on 100% of the time on how he'd say it, I've been able to, as he has said, "do him justice." The interesting part in this is that I can read through the earlier entries and be able to see where Bill's narrative begins and ends and where "Bill's" narrative begins and ends. Sometimes, I can recognize where both mesh together.

While I haven't yet told him this, I'm actually grateful to him for proposing this feat of around the world cooperation in the first place as well as being honored that he's letting me share in the discovery in some measure. I'm back to Photoshopping again. I've dusted off ol' Dreamweaver. And my brain? Waking up again.

I'm back to thinking about "how cool can I make this look?" and also having a good time doing it. That's more progress than I can say I've had for a whole year now and that means a lot. A. Lot.

I started fiddling with other parts of the website, breathing fresh life into the poor languishing creature. I only hope to keep the momentum going and I have a certain redneck to thank for it. I told him I'd buy his first beer when he gets back, but I really owe him a keg. And that, my friends, is awesome.

Just posted his latest batch of updates over the past few days, including today's. Share and enjoy!