First Impressions...
Created | Updated May 2, 2002
are sometimes lasting and sometimes valid.
When I first cruised in at the suggestion of my good cyberbud, Magnolia, I found a confusion of inbedded links concealing a confusion of content. That wasn't a very good first impression, as you might already have figured out.
Then after I'd submitted an entry for review greeted by some preliminary raves and rants but mostly raves, I got a better first impression of people wanting to help others, maybe just for the fun of it. Bossel in particular was very helpful and understanding with patience that would challenge a saint's.
So I pressed on until I came up against THE GUIDE STYLE, which sort of turned the drizzle on my parade into a cloudburst. Like a wall it stretched in front of me challenging me not to storm it but surrender in order to enter the gate of the limes and taste of civilization. Well, to make things short and blunt, I passed... and not through the gate but just passed... on the deal.
Because I know what a travel guide is supposed to look like ok? And I know the style of those things, which is probably my problem here. Because I know the style has changed since the namesake of this place first burst on the consciousness of the public.
You only need to read a few chapters of something like Midnight in Sicily to understand that third person accounts are no longer rigorously insisted upon. Probably because people are weary of reading such patently fauxobjectivist bilge.
And who knows what might have brought on this change? Perhaps when Rick Steves started promoting Europe through the backdoor? Because the face and facilities of the tourist changed a little from the pompousity of the Grand Tour to a more egalitarian approach with tour package buying retirees packed on motor coaches or eclectically heritaged student backpackers with Eurail passes.
And people began discovering that the lectures echoing in the hallowed cathedral vaults were just as subjective as anything else you could consume in an information age. Take it for what it's worth because all the footnotes and attributions only evidence the ability of human parrots to repeat what they've read by somebody else.
Maybe what people began to yearn for was the authenticity of personal experience not the rigorousness of theory.
'I've been there and this is not only what I saw and heard but how it felt to me.'
Now that's interesting in a world overwhelmed with boredom and neglect and more or less dedicated to creative, conspicuously consumptive apathy.
'So what's happening dude?'
That's the question isn't it? And you would think in a tour guide ostensibly dedicated to hitchhikers that the question would have enough relevance to maybe encourage somebody to get a clue about stylistics among other things?
But maybe like Americans, the British aren't about to get a clue when it might pose an unacceptable risk on their investments. It's easier to buy the creativity of others than to work on it yourselves.
I suspect there's probably not a few people in London who think the cultural center of gravity has shifted west from Paris because Londoners are more ingenious than Parisians but if that's really what they think, they obviously don't appreciate the power of the cash flow or currency current.
And the only reason the commercial center of gravity in Europe doesn't shift even farther west is because you have to catch a boat or a Concorde to get there and, particularly with regard to the latter, the cabin pressure is a little too low for some people to tolerate without experiencing minor symptoms of hypoxia.
When traveling, the airliner is more of an incarceration than an initiation worth sharing. It brings on a jet lag in more ways than one because it's really an interruption in the seeing and hearing and feeling that draw us onward in our travels.
So for these reasons, and maybe even a few others I don't have the time or inclination to discuss right now, I think it's time THE GUIDE considered allowing styles that don't quite conform to the third person motif. Otherwise, a lot of hard work by thousands of selflessly dedicated hobbyists might be trashed in the next merger.
When I first cruised in at the suggestion of my good cyberbud, Magnolia, I found a confusion of inbedded links concealing a confusion of content. That wasn't a very good first impression, as you might already have figured out.
Then after I'd submitted an entry for review greeted by some preliminary raves and rants but mostly raves, I got a better first impression of people wanting to help others, maybe just for the fun of it. Bossel in particular was very helpful and understanding with patience that would challenge a saint's.
So I pressed on until I came up against THE GUIDE STYLE, which sort of turned the drizzle on my parade into a cloudburst. Like a wall it stretched in front of me challenging me not to storm it but surrender in order to enter the gate of the limes and taste of civilization. Well, to make things short and blunt, I passed... and not through the gate but just passed... on the deal.
Because I know what a travel guide is supposed to look like ok? And I know the style of those things, which is probably my problem here. Because I know the style has changed since the namesake of this place first burst on the consciousness of the public.
You only need to read a few chapters of something like Midnight in Sicily to understand that third person accounts are no longer rigorously insisted upon. Probably because people are weary of reading such patently fauxobjectivist bilge.
And who knows what might have brought on this change? Perhaps when Rick Steves started promoting Europe through the backdoor? Because the face and facilities of the tourist changed a little from the pompousity of the Grand Tour to a more egalitarian approach with tour package buying retirees packed on motor coaches or eclectically heritaged student backpackers with Eurail passes.
And people began discovering that the lectures echoing in the hallowed cathedral vaults were just as subjective as anything else you could consume in an information age. Take it for what it's worth because all the footnotes and attributions only evidence the ability of human parrots to repeat what they've read by somebody else.
Maybe what people began to yearn for was the authenticity of personal experience not the rigorousness of theory.
'I've been there and this is not only what I saw and heard but how it felt to me.'
Now that's interesting in a world overwhelmed with boredom and neglect and more or less dedicated to creative, conspicuously consumptive apathy.
'So what's happening dude?'
That's the question isn't it? And you would think in a tour guide ostensibly dedicated to hitchhikers that the question would have enough relevance to maybe encourage somebody to get a clue about stylistics among other things?
But maybe like Americans, the British aren't about to get a clue when it might pose an unacceptable risk on their investments. It's easier to buy the creativity of others than to work on it yourselves.
I suspect there's probably not a few people in London who think the cultural center of gravity has shifted west from Paris because Londoners are more ingenious than Parisians but if that's really what they think, they obviously don't appreciate the power of the cash flow or currency current.
And the only reason the commercial center of gravity in Europe doesn't shift even farther west is because you have to catch a boat or a Concorde to get there and, particularly with regard to the latter, the cabin pressure is a little too low for some people to tolerate without experiencing minor symptoms of hypoxia.
When traveling, the airliner is more of an incarceration than an initiation worth sharing. It brings on a jet lag in more ways than one because it's really an interruption in the seeing and hearing and feeling that draw us onward in our travels.
So for these reasons, and maybe even a few others I don't have the time or inclination to discuss right now, I think it's time THE GUIDE considered allowing styles that don't quite conform to the third person motif. Otherwise, a lot of hard work by thousands of selflessly dedicated hobbyists might be trashed in the next merger.
