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s purpose over the years look the guy s done everything he set out to do with this blog said one long winded muse machine insider go back to the guiding principles he laid out here he wanted to comment on important issues he did he wanted to see if he could maintain the discipline of a blog over time i d say 1 600 posts checks that one off and he wanted to do the whole thing in a way that reflected what he thought was the best of himself and of the american character not the worst read it and judge for yourself i don t think he s got anything left to prove muse machine was never one of the best read or most commented on blogs on the web averaging 50 100 independent viewers a month at its peak in 2010 according to wordpress statisticians from the blog s beginning in april 2007 tucker steadfastly denied that he was interested in vast legions of chatty readers often noting that many blog commenters were vile foul mouthed and far less articulate than george w bush even as his readership dropped tucker maintained that his real interest in the blog was as a proving ground or incubator for ideas that often made their way into magazine pieces or radio commentaries i m a writer tucker told small blog daily in 2008 i like to take an idea and work with it see where it goes and see what the process teaches me i don t need a grandstand full of people to do that but blog watcher herm simbitz author of how facebook killed the little blogger says that despite his brave front tucker must have been keenly disappointed to see his efforts ignored by so much of the public a fate suffered by thousands of small bloggers since the astonishing rise of facebook in 2009 let s face facts said simbitz your typical web browsing person who used to check in on a blog like muse machine just doesn t have time for that anymore i mean who cares about some unknown guy out in texas with his finely tuned sense of irony and his references to a bunch of dead authors when you can be facebooking about that great new thai place and liking your old high school boyfriend s post about the new labrador puppy he just bought simbitz also noted that the very qualities that tucker prized in muse machine fair mindedness the exaltation of reason a general sense that despite the constant presence of evil and the perplexities of existence each day truly is a gift may have proved fatal to the blog in the end come on seriously does anybody care about that stuff anymore asked simbitz what really delights people is conflict profanity violence humiliating people and rhetorically ripping their guts out the whole jets vs sharks thing of american politics nobody cares about some nice guy with a degree in english and a bunch of opinions i mean look at the name muse machine that says it all for god s sake we ain t got time for musing baby for his part tucker denies that muse machine is no more citing naturally mark twain s line about those exaggerated reports of his death i m just taking some time to think about what the blog should be tucker said i want it always to be an adventure even if it s just an adventure for me i don t want to just do the same old thing just because i m good at doing the same old thing we ll see stay tuned posted in uncategorized 2 replies day 31 registered with love posted on december 31 2011 by ctddd reply so concludes the promised 31 days of cheer and with it a happy new year to all a note of happiness rings through updike s prose and draws us to it makes us happy when we read it it is not a fatuous happiness or a happiness unaware of death a preoccupation with death and dying was a steady feature of his work but neither does it cede too much to mere mortality one has a sense of someone who as much as though with more wit than andy warhol has spent a good deal of his life liking things women s clothes their hair the hybridization of american accents the way that the hyper cold of the airline baggage compartment can be felt like a secret in the bag as you unpack all these images and moments recalled at random from his work are not just reported but quietly rhapsodized registered with love it is his affections that rise and that we recall adam gopnik the new yorker posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 30 success in life posted on december 30 2011 by ctddd reply every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us for that moment only not the fruit of experience but experience itself is the end a counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated dramatic life how may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses how shall we pass most swiftly from point to point and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy to burn always with this hard gem like flame to maintain this ecstasy is success in life in a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits for after all habit is relative to a stereotyped world and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons things situations seem alike not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their ways is on this short day of frost and sun to sleep before evening walter pater from the renaissance posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 29 giving the devil his due posted on december 29 2011 by ctddd reply as we near the end of the parade of positives that has been muse machine s 31 days of cheer i ve got to admit that ny times man ross douthat has out happied even me by finding at least one thing to like about each of the far too numerous republican candidates for president seriously there is quoth he at least one worthwhile idea in each man s head and if you doubt check out his inventory here posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 28 the whole of life posted on december 28 2011 by ctddd reply reason gentlemen is a fine thing that is unquestionable but reason is only reason and satisfies only man s reasoning capacity while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life that is the whole of human life including reason and various little itches and though our life in that manifestation often turns out to be a bit of trash still it is life and not just the extraction of a square root i for example want to live so as to satisfy my whole capacity for living and not so as to satisfy just my reasoning capacity alone which is some twentieth part of my whole capacity for living what does reason know reason knows only what it has managed to learn while human nature acts as an entire whole with everything that is in it consciously and unconsciously and though it lies still it lives fyodor dostoevsky notes from underground posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 27 as the new year looms posted on december 27 2011 by ctddd reply everybody s thinking about how to make the new year a better year in other words we re talking change and as longtime readers who have not abandoned mm for facebook know mm is all about change and the thousand picky particulars that prevent it here as we prepare to launch into 2012 are some change related classics from the past workin on the change gang new year s renewal posted on december 27 2009 by ctddd okay new year s change gang as you wonder just how you can make this year s resolutions stick muse machine is here as always to fan the flames of growth and renewal below you ll find a number of posts from the past on the subject of change whatever you re trying to overcome or do better at or banish from your life you ll find helpful advice here august 30 2007 the carnivore s dilemma january 2 2008 are your change muscles in shape april 5 2008 more on will power and change muscles may 16 2008 strategies for change start itty bitty june 18 2008 fighting the puppet masters of habit january 5 2009 new year s changes gradual or radical posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 26 happiness and how you get it posted on december 23 2011 by ctddd reply point counterpoint words to live by or at least muse on in 2012 happiness is desired by all men and moments of it are probably attained by most men only moments of it can be attained because happiness is the inner concomitant of neat harmonies of body spirit and society and these neat harmonies are bound to be infrequent there is no simple harmony between our ambitions and our achievements because all ambitions tend to outrun achievements there is no neat harmony between the conscious ends of life and the physical instruments for its attainment for the health of the body is frail and uncertain there is no neat harmony between personal desires and ambitions and the ends of human societies no matter how frantically we insist with the eighteenth century that communities are created only for the individual reinhold niebuhr the irony of american history but still gatsby believed in the green light the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us it eluded us then but that s no matter tomorrow we will run faster stretch out our arms farther and then one fine morning so we beat on boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past f scott fitzgerald the great gatsby posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 25 orwell s reflections on gandhi posted on december 23 2011 by ctddd reply if i ruled the world i d have every person who aspires to be a writer politician or any kind of thought leader read this essay at least once a year it should be posted on the walls of all newsrooms and magazine offices in this piece orwell models clarity honesty and humility while performing what for many is an impossible task he takes the measure of a man who in many ways is his polar opposite and gives this complicated man his due rather than begin with some cheap political agenda that must be served orwell sets out to evaluate gandhi in his own terms here you find none of the thundering blustering certainty that makes most political discourse today unbearable instead you see a great writer trying to follow the truth wherever it seems to lead key quote his character was an extraordinarily mixed one but there was almost nothing in it that you can put your finger on and call bad and i believe that even gandhi s worst enemies would admit that he was an interesting and unusual man who enriched the world simply by being alive whether he was also a lovable man and whether his teachings can have much for those who do not accept the religious beliefs on which they are founded i have never felt fully certain the full text of this great essay is here posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 24 lennon for christmas posted on december 23 2011 by ctddd reply i ll be heading out for a few days of holiday visiting but don t worry the 31 days of cheer pledge will be honored here s a favorite christmas song by john lennon and the inexplicable yoko ono the lyrics are hopeful but tinged with just enough reality to save it from the too sugary pile posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 23 a christmas memory posted on december 23 2011 by ctddd reply truman capote seemed to make a mess of his life in many ways and in his late years became almost a parody of the boozy neurotic writer but one of his earliest stories a christmas memory is perhaps the most heart breakingly beautiful story i ve ever read you can read it here posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 22 actors in the same tragedy posted on december 22 2011 by ctddd reply one by one as they march our comrades vanish from our sight seized by the silent orders of omnipotent death very brief is the time in which we can help them in which their happiness or misery is decided be it ours to shed sunshine on their path to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy to give them the pure joy of a never tiring affection to strengthen failing courage to instil faith in hours of despair let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits but let us think only of their need of the sorrows the difficulties perhaps the blindnesses that make the misery of their lives let us remember that they are fellow sufferers in the same darkness actors in the same tragedy with ourselves and so when their day is over when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past be it ours to feel that where they suffered where they failed no deed of ours was the cause but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts we were ready with encouragement with sympathy with brave words in which high courage glowed bertrand russell from a free man s worship posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 21 toward the winter solstice posted on december 21 2011 by ctddd reply here s a nice poem for the shortest day of the year toward the winter solstice by timothy steele although the roof is just a story high it dizzies me a little to look down i lariat twirl the cord of christmas lights and cast it to the weeping birch s crown a dowel into which i ve screwed a hook enables me to reach lift drape and twine the cord among the boughs so that the bulbs will accent the tree s elegant design friends passing home from work or shopping pause and call up commendations or critiques i make adjustments though a potpourri of muslims christians buddhists jews and sikhs we all are conscious of the time of year we all enjoy its colorful displays and keep some festival that mitigates the dwindling warmth and compass of the days some say that l a doesn t suit the yule but ups vans now like magi make their present laden rounds while fallen leaves are gaily resurrected in their wake the desert lifts a full moon from the east and issues a dry santa ana breeze and valets at chic restaurants will soon be tending flocks of cars and suvs and as the neighborhoods sink into dusk the fan palms scattered all across town stand more calmly prominent and this place seems a vast oasis in the holy land this house might be a caravansary the tree a kind of cordial fountainhead of welcome looped and decked with necklaces and ceintures of green yellow blue and red some wonder if the star of bethlehem occurred when jupiter and saturn crossed it s comforting to look up from this roof and feel that while all changes nothing s lost to recollect that in antiquity the winter solstice fell in capricorn and that in the orion nebula from swirling gas new stars are being born posted in uncategorized leave a reply day 20 mark twain on mankind posted on december 20 2011 by ctddd reply the 31 days of cheer continue with one of the great american satirists hal holbrook as mark twain i ve seen this superb show three times going back to the 70s and we ve got tickets to see it again next month holbrook jokes that when he first started doing twain almost 50 years ago it took several hours to ...