My apologies to my readers here on Blogger for the confusion of the past nearly three months. I purchased the domain name "Dispatches from Dystopia.net" earlier this year and applied it here, only to learn that it is probably technically illegal for me to use it outside its original source, the Rolls-Royce-class blog server Typepad that -- in recognition of my former working-press status -- has so kindly provided me a lifetime subscription since 2009. Hence -- to avoid any possible legal complications in the Internet world (a realm wherein I am hopelessly ignorant of the applicable laws) -- the change here at Blogger back to the original "Outside Agitator's Notebook."
Beyond that, my apologies also for my extended absence, the result of the fact I have been extremely ill. First was a bout with flu that obliterated all my February -- apparently a subspecies of influenza somehow omitted from the 2016-2017 flu shot -- with the result I was bedridden for 21 days and in a severely weakened state for about 14 days after that: by far the most devastating encounter with flu in my entire life. Then the last week in March I was hospitalized for five days by sepsis, and now I am coming down with another chest cold the cough and congestion of which suggest something considerably more severe. Such is the beginning of my 77th year and another reason -- this in addition to Trump's assumption of Hillary's former role as the personification of thermonuclear apocalypse -- I am starting to question whether I will live to see 2018. Indeed never in my life -- not even with childhood diseases -- have I been so relentlessly, seemingly incurably ill. But then never in any of our lives have We the People -- not just of the USian Empire but of the entire planet -- been in such apocalyptic jeopardy, so perhaps my aged body is only behaving as a microcosm of the broader human condition. In any case, though Trump has reduced me to the resigned hopelessness of utter nihilism, be assured I will continue writing and photographing and working to resist Capitalist tyranny as long as I am able.
Thus the following format change:
I began posting here during the relatively brief period my avowedly Marxian politics got me banned from Typepad, and after Typepad restored my subscription, I have posted the same material here I post there primarily because -- for reasons I do not understand -- my European and Asiatic readers are seemingly more readily able to access my work here. However in discussions with a couple of comrades who are both friends and Nurds, it was pointed out to me that perhaps all I need do is post here a link to Typepad -- especially since the latter URL also accesses my photographic portfolios. Hence, as an experiment, here are the URLs to my two "Dispatches from Dystopia" posts on Typepad, the first, dated 23 March 2017, and the second, dated today, 13 April 2017:
http://www.dispatchesfromdystopia.net/2017/03/new-name-new-urgency-as-capitalism-bares-its-nazi-fangs-.html
http://www.dispatchesfromdystopia.net/2017/04/notes-on-the-trumping-of-planet-earth-how-prosperity-gospel-christianity-capitalism-and-moron-nation-spawned-the-fourth-rei.html
My hope is this approach will enable my European and Asiatic readers to more easily access my work, and for this reason I would appreciate whatever feedback might be possible via this site's comment thread. If this approach does not work, I will go back to posting the complete text of my essays here, never mind the fact it requires about two additional hours of precisely the sort of computer drudgery I despise and therefore prefer to avoid.
Meanwhile thank you all.
Loren Bliss
13 April 2017
