PLEASE don't mess with edscan!
Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 11:03:30 AM PDT
There is a small but rabid following here of the prophet currently known as edscan. Many of us edscan addicts, sometimes known as edheads, actually lead normal dailykos lives when we are beyond the walls of the edscan cathedral. We are your friends, neighbors, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, even third cousins twice removed. We put up with candidate wars, pie fights, pootie vs. woozle conflicts (some of us even thrive in those environments). But we do, perhaps emotionally and irrationally, hold our time with the master as holy and sacrosanct. So I am only gonna say this once.
Do NOT fuck with edscan's tags.
I don't know who's undertaking this project. I don't know his/her/its motivation. But we edheads really don't appreciate it.
The last six edscan diaries, The Co-Conspirator?, Iraq'ing, The "National Debt", The Fourth Estate, What's Happening?, and Extreme Evil, have all had the original tags replaced with "officially sanctioned" tags.
How can you go from
It's "dissing" time
to
Wolf Blitzer, rant, Iraq (all tags)
???? Honestly, is this an improvement? Only a dailykos John Ashcroft would cover a beautiful edscan tag work with such a sad loincloth.
The artistry of the title/tag combinations here is undeniable:
A New Bag of Worms: it's McCain--not McAbel
The Addiction: You're It
Think : survive
Nostradamus Revisited: dum de dumm dum
License to Steal: Just Barrowing
Perhaps many of you kossacks have not attempted to appreciate edscan. There are four components to an edscan diary: title, edku, tags, and comments. The first three of these are edscan's medium, and he works each of them uniquely. For (N-edscan) of the diaries on dailykos, the tags need to conform to certain conventions in order to make diaries searchable. edscan, however, is beyond search.
The tags of edscan are indeed a high art form. The "grand dame" of edscan, our own mem from somerville, has diaried quite eloquently on the tags of edscan.
There is a community of people who enjoy diaries by edscan. In my opinion edscan is seriously misunderstood. edscan has a brevity and style that is often mistaken by the uninitiated, and has been characterized as troll diaries, open-thread-comments, and such. But for the devotees they are more than that. We like to think of them as ed-ku--think of extended haikus. They are written often in a Kōan-like manner.
And you need to absorb the edscan for a while to really get it. I have described edscan as the the love child of the X-files + Jack Handy + Twin Peaks. And the regular readers are something of a text-based MST3000. I hope from this you get an idea of the gestalt which is edscan.
And the tags. People have been admiring the creativity of the edscan tags for a long time. For those of you who are new to the edscan oeuvre, you need to know that the text/koan is usually paired with a great tag. I have been wanting to do a retrospective of the tags for a long time, and decided that the end of the year was the right time for the review.
But please: do not think of this as a call-out diary. I really enjoy the edscan diaries and the edscan3Ks. I think edscan has been around the block and that he does have some real insights on where we are today. I think of him as very much like my dad with better typing and a bit more intrigue.
Some of you will not appreciate the edscan, I know. But I wanted to shed some light on the collection, though, because he often gets chided in the comments by those who aren't familiar with the material.
I leave with with a masterpiece of edscan edku, in its entirety.
The Addiction Hotlist
by edscan [Unsubscribe]
Mon Feb 04, 2008 at 12:15:28 PM PDT
Well...Are you over it yet ?
Are you over your addiction to fear?
Have "they" turned you all into blithering cowards?
Are you a subject of the International Organization of Corporate Fascists?
Or are you still Americans....real Americans.
You have to pass the test.
* edscan's diary :: ::
*
The test is to be able to see past your greed to the
possibility of losing your heritage...
Your heritage is our American way of life.
I realize that some of you have never had that feeling.
Your life has been "restricted" by those "fears" I've
been talking about.
You have been stunted in your growth of being an "American".
Americans have been loved by all of the peoples of the World.
More recently, Americans have been led to believe that we are
hated by various ethnic groups.
Not true.
Our current leaders are the ones that are hated.
It was done purposely....to conduct a profitable war.
The "oil maggots" are responsible for this.
They will pay for this action.
When?
The 21st of January 2009.
Tags: You're It (all tags) :: Add/Edit Tags to this Diary :: Previous Tag Versions
We must preserve this unique form of political performance art!
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