OGUNQUIT, ME.

Aaaah, stretch, beautiful day at the beach. Before you get all jealous and all, people -- the damn beach is posted : NO DOGS! Grrrrr, think I'll just trot on up to Kennebunkport and potty on Pappy's lawn.

Pre-ramble:

(What the hell was the bit above, then?)

Before I metamorphosed Gregor Samsa-like into a dog, I used to be human. Somewhere in my yout (Danny DeVito - My Cousin Vinnie) I realized Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus could only be understood in a purple haze -- which, true, I was in much of the time -- but was damn hard to explain sober. As a consequence, after dodging the War of 1812 --at least I think I did, I might have been too stoned to know or care --I went to a well-known Eastern Business School (didn't everyone?), with such famous draft-dodgers as HIM and HIM (who, ironically enough as it later turned out, had been dogs all along). As strange, at what is sometimes fondly called the West Point of Capitalism, I did not run across a single person who had served in the War of 1812. But I ramble.

I subsequently spent a goodly number of years dedicated to the proposition "whoever dies with the most frequent flyer miles, wins". It's a long story how I went from those rarefied heights to pooping on people's yards (material for a future post -- hahaha, not a great hook, but might work). Right now I want to delve into my pre dog-dotage memories of when the entire world could be mapped into a 2x2 matrix and (clears throat here) ahem, try to analyze what turns otherwise normal bipeds into dogs chasing their tails seeking the bubble reputation on the cover of Open Salon.

(Clears throat) Ahem, I would like to suggest that panting after Cover Girl status is part of broader strategic issues facing Open Salon.

Open Salon is attempting to effect a New Paradigm (yes, I know, barfy -- but I'll try to minimize jargon as much as possible). This new model is essentially trying to merge old-style publishing with social networking.

The question is whether such a venture -- so noble in conception, so infinite in possibilities -- can fulfil the loftiness of its ambitions.

Problem #1 : Publishing. In days of yore, when chopping down trees led to such tangible benefits as books and newspapers, magazine issues were actually "put to bed". It was a bounded task -- repetitive, but at finite intervals. But in this Brave New World of electronics, a magazine like Open Salon, literally, cannot be put to bed the old-fashioned way. The publisher has the Sisyphean task of putting out THE MAGAZINE THAT NEVER SLEEPS (along with apparently half its readers and writers )!

Sure, the publishers think they've managed to cut the task (no, not the trees) down to size a bit by publishing "only" the Cover, automating a whole bunch of other stuff, and neatly finessing the question that dogs (can't we find a synonym for this?) tyke publishing ventures: how the hell do we get readers, writers, photographers and all, at the lowest cost?

Voilà, said the Jabberwock, they're all the same to me, Bundle them in a social network and -- it'll all work for free.

But, read on (pleeeeeze), like so much in life, the solution becomes the problem.

Problem #2: Social Networking. In the publishing context, this bit is like sending out an old-fashioned Open Call for articles, except in this Brave New World, it’s the MOTHER OF ALL OPEN CALLS : endless, they keep coming, those shadowy figures on the Activity Feed with names like Minke Whale Watcher or Caveat Canem Scrotum (my cousin -- but he has BALLS), they won’t stop, they keep coming ad infinitum.

And, dammitall, they are (or think they are) writers; so they write. The publisher's inventory keeps growing. Yes, Martha, this is normally a gooood thing, except when your inventory is fresh fish. You gotta eat the fish or put it on ice. Freeze this writer's fish? No way, Josephine.

So you've set the stage for a classic conflict : the Minke Whale Watchers of the world are both your production people and your consumers -- picture Lucille Ball in the Chocolate Factory.

The book answer (at least from the book according to Pointy Haired Boss) is: "Sell More Chocolates". Who, me? Who else? So now, amidst all this clamor and confusion, while divine Lucy has goo splattered all over her face, she has to run out to the street to hawk her wares and run back into the factory as her overflowing conveyor belt runneth over.

Problem #3: The finest teacher I had, Prof. Barbara Jackson as she was called then (and who was refused tenure by the well-known BS because... well, just because) taught us to ask: " What's the "promise" of this organization?" Note, promise, not premise.

The pixelated (please, please, I hope someone got this one) corpora of Open Salon embodies at least two sets of promises.

The first is the traditional one of publishers: a good product for the reader and exposure (money and fame will follow) for the writer. A bit complicated in this cyberworld what with readers being your writers, writers being your readers -- sort of like a snake swallowing its tail.

The second is specific to Open Salon.

Salon implies a getting together of people of a certain intellectual depth and breadth -- organized in a refayned way -- but organized. Think Madame de Staël with Benjamin Constant paying homage.

But then the Open blows the door wide open: you've just invited in a ragtag bunch of writers, for Chrissake, probably a whole bunch of not so ex hippies and hopheads, anti-establishment malcontents, cybergeeks and cross-dressing, Harley-riding, gumball fetishists and who knows who else they're gonna be bringing in (there goes the neighborhood -- glad you didn't say "to the dogs"). And many of these freaks believe in, like, communitarianism (a different shade of pinko) and they've been out on the lonely open highway and are lured by the promise of something better than hanging out your shingle at blogwhore.caninescrotum.com.

Or, in the words of the immortal Vladimir Ilyich: "What is to be done?"

This is usually where the typical well-known BS case ends, not often quoting Lenin -- nothing to do with politics, everything to with the fact that no economic thinking after 1790 is allowed to occlude impressionable minds. So we'll end here, too.

(Class will meet again, same time, same place. next week. Prof. Caveat will post his solution then -- the hook, the hook! In the meantime, Class is encouraged to attempt to crack the case. Group study allowed, but please, no Groupthink.

(The author is indebted to the redoubtable Rob St. Amant whose seminal post "Ten Rules......" got this hare started, and who promised to read this when published -- wow, that's simultaneous plugging and blog whoring, sort of like a cyber-soixante-neuf, no?)