July 25, 2006

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  Who Am I? I am My Website: A Short History of AllThingsMike

  
  

  
  

  I‘ve been blessed with a charmed life, unaffected by the tragedy and mistrust which govern most lives. My life has been present during a rather turbulent time from a historical perspective, and I’m attempting to make sense of it all on this website. My electronic experiment in art is always expanding, to chart the course of this life, and the lives of my fellow humans trapped like me in a reality they never dreamed up or asked for.

  
  

  My actual “life” began in 1953, but the website, while it would attempt to chart that life, would really start to chart the current, or “electronic life.” It all started back in 1999, when I hit the age of 46, and developed an interest in the power of the computer to bring people together over the internet. I wanted to document my words, my art, my musings, and felt that the promise of the internet to enhance and stimulate creativity and the desire to create would eventually bring my art and musings to the masses, and in return, help me to find the muse which would stimulate all my misdirected energy into a “webpresence”. I signed on to the budding GeoCities and Homestead web hosting sites (The charge was “free” in 1999) and began creating this “webpresence”. My original overblown intentions were to archive my “complete works”, poems and prose dating back over thirty years. In addition, I wanted to present “art” created with imaging programs and display my “video” movies.

  
  

  The poetry never completely got transcribed, but the attempt is being made again. In 2004, I began the second incarnation of the ElectricPoetry website, and have transcribed a good many of my nearly 750 pieces of poetry written from 1967 to the present.

  
  

  I was too far ahead of the curve with the video yearnings. The digital videocamera I purchased was in 1999. It is ancient by digital standards and does not input digitally to the computer. I got it before firewire and USB. I only recently purchased a video camera with a digital input for the computer. This has fueled my love of photography and videomaking. Photography is featured on my Webshots Gallery, and is always being updated. Lately, the “MikeVideo Internet Movies” and my latest video feature, the “Video Blog” can be found on my YouTube “channel”.

  
  

  The many urges I have to write are never completely satiated, and when I do write, which is seldom, the computer screen stares back at me and laughs like those blank pieces of paper staring from my typewriter so long ago. Now, thanks to a somewhat largish readership for my every-other-daily blog, WhenWordsCollide on the Xanga service, I am writing more than I have in a long time.

  
  

  I keep paying for the privilege of keeping this site up and running, however, and every year there are more promises to myself to add some more content. When I began this present introduction, it was late 2003. It is now well into 2006, and another probably misdirected attempt is abrew to chronicle, to journal, to wax poetic and to philosophize. The New Year always brings promise, and I have always vowed not to break any promises. This year, as I promised last year at this time, I feel the need to wirte, to archive past writings, and to create art, in whatever form it feels it has to take.

  
  

  Also, not to be forgotten, is my attempt to prophesize the Universal Truths which will sometime take root in the Universal Mind. This site grew considerably in 2004 and is slowly being added to in 2005 and 2006..

  
  

  The segmentation of the past forms of this website are slowly coalescing into something else, especially as I seem to use the Blogger programs like Xanga for the written word these days. If there are broken links, I vow to fix them. If there is a purpose, I vow to soon let myself know what it is. If I somehow, miraculously gain the readership I crave, and if I somehow start writing like I have vowed in the past, then perhaps I shall find fulfillment. If you, dear reader, feel like you want to journey with me, to the past forms, the present musings, and the future of AllThingsMike, then click one of the clouds on the right of the main AllThingsMike site, and come with me.

  
  

  MFN,poet,philosopher,fool 12.27.03 (perpetually updated, most recently 7.25.06)
  

  
  

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  The AllThingsMike website never mentions my career, or my aspirations in the business world. Unlike some people who have crafted websites over the years, I don’t flaunt my resume, or attempt to make money hawking any skills I might have. I created my webpresence to showcase my art and my writing. Instead of watching my volumes of poetry and prose mildew and attract dust, I have been using the internet to slowly but surely showcase the words I have written in the past, and to add the words I am currently writing. My website is, finally, a feeble attempt to “chronicle” my past life, to share my thoughts and feelings in my present life, and to act as a legacy for this life. At the top of the AllThingsMike main page, there are a series of tabs. The first, History, contains my essay about our world’s history, without using dates or identifying countries or belief systems or movements. The second, Half Century, contains my series of reminiscences on Growing Up in Los Angeles. Other tabs contain reminiscences and future promises, and my ongoing chronology of My Sexual History.

  
  

  There are parts of my website which have not been updated in a while. I used to write movie reviews and had great plans for the ElectricMovies website. The Cultural Blender is the place where I was going to write the present “cultural history” of the world. You can find 2005′s “website in a weekend” Robots, in the Cultural Blender, along with my “Personal History of Television” and the Cartoons website. Most of the Cultural Blender has been online since 2003.  The section of my website which always gets the most hits is the Betty Boop Pages, a labor of love consisting of some of the earliest composite art I created. None of the sites in the AllThingsMike Universe are merely “tributes” with copy/pasted info and images. Each section of my website contains for the most part my own art, photography, and words.

  
  

  As long as I draw breath, my website will be a large part of me. People who know me “in real life” are always mentioning how personal and honest my website has become, a real offshoot to my personality.

  
  

  AllThingsMike, ElectricPoetry, and WhenWordsCollide, plus the many many smaller websites littered among the AllThingsMike Universe, serve as my “electronic webpresence” and constitue this ongoing “electronic experiment in art.”

  
  

  From the very first AllThingsMike front page: (still online)

  
  

  First shall be blocks of text,
  And here an imported jpg file
  The additions and mergings
  shall take on a life of their own.
  Text boxes shall begat theme pages,
  Which shall begat thumbnails,
  whereupon clicked
  shall give the viewer an unparalled sense of purpose.
  I shall find purpose in the work.
  On ongoing artwork
  incorporating those elements
  which make up my being.

  
  

  Who am I? I am my website.

  
  

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  This article is a companion article for the Internet Island topic post: Who Are You? The original version of this essay can be found at the bottom of the main page of the AllThingsMike website.
  

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  EDIT/UPDATE: 7/26: 6:34 a.m.This just in: Xanga now has a Beta Video Page for Premium users. Mine is HERE. I basically put this link up for me, since I’m at work. I’ll be uploading my WhenWordsCollide Video Blogs to the new video page. Nobody visits my PHOTOBLOG, on which I try to post photos I don’t already have in Photoposts here. So far, I have been posting the video blogs at the bottom of my regular blog page. Now I’ll post them first as a blog entry and then “store” them on the Xanga server on my Xanga Video Page. I still haven’t seen any of the sites I read post regular video blogs on their sites. Hopefully, this new feature will allow me to find more videobloggers like myself. (I just hope they have content and aren’t just people talking or lip synching like on YouTube! MFN 
  

  • 11:37 pm
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