UNBELIEVABLE! You'll Never Eat Raw Cucumber Again After Reading These 7 Incredible Recipes from Korean War Veteran and Former Army Line Cook Ziggy Sims and (Wow! Get the Tissues Ready) You'll Cry Uncontrollably When You See the 16 Heartwarming Pictures Taken by Ziggy's Blind 3rd Grade Daughter in her Tri-County Art Fair Submission Entitled "Hero Chef Dad In Action!"

photo credit: mumsmonkey.blogspot.com

Hey, it's your fault; you clicked this. I love "good" news just as much as anyone else. Given that it's real news. I love to be uplifted. I attempt to click "like" more than casually, and I hope you appreciate my occasional affirmative judgments of your re-repost's worthiness. <animated smiley>

Also, I, like you, get tired of "bad" news pretty quickly. Especially gory, graphic bad news. And I hide people who repeatedly post stories about robberies and beatings and sex crimes and then add their equally uncivilized commentary about the various ways they could themselves serve "justice" to the perpetrators. <animated angry smiley>

What I'm not so sure about lately is the "no" news. And I'm not talking human-interest stories here, because, emotionally-charged as they may be, these have a rich, journalistic history of being well-written and help us at least consider other people's heights and plights. No, what I mean by "no" news is this stuff masquerading as news... unverified... undocumented... maybe even accidentally-public... posted on an aggregation site that doesn't care about the credibility of its source... and rebranded with clever headlines that, well... make me and you want to click!

I didn't realize just how bad this was getting. But then, I turned off my drive-time NPR a few weeks ago because I just needed a break from all news, period. What happens? Go figure, super-typhoon Haiyan hits, and I don't event realize it until days after the fact. Let alone did I realize that it was probably one of the strongest storms ever recorded to make landfall. Shame on me, truly. (aside: if you haven't given towards relief, here's a place to donate where all your money goes to actual disaster aid on the ground, per your designation - www.umcor.org)

What's bothering me is that maybe not even two years ago, I am pretty sure I would have seen a flood of commentary about Haiyan on my Facebook homepage. I don't rely on Facebook for news, per se, but, I can safely say that my withdrawal from news has been covered in the past by the trending compassion of something that we're beginning to rely on: the social consciousness. Maybe I speak too generally, but it seems, to some degree or another, we have begun to trust this flighty entity to inform us of what we need to be paying attention to, praying for, and giving towards... at least I have!

But in this instance, it didn't work, for me. Instead, for the past several months my Facebook "news feed" has been littered with this kind of pseudo-viral, "click me!" no news crap. And it's just getting worse and worse. What. The. Heck?

Listen, I'm not out to judge or accuse. What I know or don't know is certainly not your fault. If you have enough time to spend hours a day on BuzzFeed or Upworthy or Mashable or Gawker or Huffington Post looking for the latest heartwarming editorial or YouTube discovery, go for it. If it makes you feel better about the world around us, that's really great. I am glad that you feel better, and I completely understand why you want to (and how easy it is) share the feely-goods with everyone.

But, please. Monitor your time. And check out your sources. This latest obsession seems to even be - and I didn't think this could happen - overtaking the memes, escalating our non-status updating to new heights of incredibility.

I have been closely, purposefully observing this phenomenon for the past week or so now, ever since my Haiyan ignorance sort of snapped me to reality, and, I'm just gonna say it once: it's getting really, really - to borrow a word from a good friend - bizarre, folks. One day, it quite literally took me a minute of scrolling to find an actual status update. That's an eternity in internet time! Everything on top was, quite literally, memes and shock-shares. That's nuts. I'd rather see Twitter ads!

To be fair and honest, I'm the chief clicker. Seriously, I've clicked more than my fair share of these (great pun, right?) <laughing smiley>. I've read a lot of them and I must say that most of them are just plain not worth posting, in my book, even if they are true. Some of the stories are borderline sweet, but I think you'd find something sweeter in the world around you, today, in this moment.

I've had to start narrowing my baseline. Flash mobs: great fun. Over-the-top wedding proposals: inspirational. But... little girl writes hidden I love you message to dad on the bathroom mirror? Homeless people are only scruffy-lookin' because they haven't had a makeover? Come on. Is this the kind of social consciousness that brings us a greater awareness? I don't know. I fear it just dulls my senses.

The most pesky of the unworthy lot are the endless lists of overstated generalities about people who grew up in the 90's/people you were friends with in high school/things you should do before you turn 40/stuff every driver should have in their car (and every passenger should ask about)... complete with animated GIFs and links to three other similar must-read lists...

In moments of clarity, I have found myself thinking: what is the point? Who are we validating? Ourselves? The authors? The social consciousness? And who has time for it? I do, I guess. But I digress, how long did it take the un-credited "them" to come up with it, anyways? It's often creative, and I've no problem with reminiscing, on occasion. But these are hardly academic. Not even insightful, really. And there's no selfie-help here - we don't click links like this to learn about who we have the unfettered potential to become, we click to read about the people who click to read about the people who click to read about... we are the superficial content consumer we want to be: we already know who we are, so we click! How boring! How like us!

Then again, maybe I am generalizing all the more... maybe you don't click... and your self restraint is truly admirable. But I click! Over and over, in my utter weakness... "Yea, verily" I think, "this oddly odd-numbered list will totes be better!" Ugh. God help me, please. <forehead-slap smiley>

All in all, I embrace Facebook's link-sharing capabilities. I utilize my news feed for, well, a whole new category of news, I guess. I get a lot of current pop-content and discover a lot of new ideas, blogs, campaigns, and sites via Facebook. I am, in fact, really intrigued by this concept of the social consciousness. Bring it on, world; we're in this together! And I know I can't be in the minority of people who still appreciate real links, to real thoughts, by real people, about real topics. Links to the kinds of posts where even the comment threads restore your faith in civil discourse. I'm not in the minority, am I?

So all I'm asking is this: for my own personal sanity, if you care about me at all, if you call me your friend, and if you want me to read your posts... if you're going to "contribute" to the social consciousness, please, for the love of Pete (whoever he is), contribute something legitimate... something of substance... something challenging. Or, at least something truly extraordinary. I would even go so far as to suggest a return to being dramatically self-focused; it is your status, after all. And I assure you that the 19 funniest things that these total strangers/completely made-up people said/did/wrote/tweeted/texted is not funnier than your last several guffaws... and I would know... I've got a list going... I'm going to post it soon, and it will go viral.

Oh, "life hacks" are also OK to post, but only if they really work. You should try them first and let us know. And if all else fails, please just post articles from The Onion. Especially if you think it's real news. You're the very, very best.

K? Thx. <double smiley, maybe two smileys hugging>

--kory // www.korywilcox.com

Poetry: Awareness

I've written a few poems lately reflecting on scenes in my life, moments when God has been steeping me in an awareness of my wealth and excess, showing me how I look to others, revealing to me the ways that I judge and behave.

These are the rare moments.

As I was rushing around last night in a tired daze, just trying to get the kitchen clean so I could feel good about eating an ice cream cookie and then going to bed early, I began thinking about the scene in the kitchen of Luke 10 and the story of Mary and Martha. I could hear the voice of God whispering to me... "Kory, you're the Martha who masquerades as a Mary... you want everyone to think you're a Mary... why?"

I don't know. Because when I stop long enough to be a Mary, God reveals things to me. Things that I don't deserve and never have. Abundant dreams. Song and verse. Secrets of the universe.

But the danger of being a Mary is that whatever you get doesn't get taken away from you. So, when Jesus starts prodding at your image and identity problems, you can't really do anything about it... you've chosen to sit very close, right at his feet. That's a dangerous place to be.

So, hopefully these lines that I've written in the rare moments are vessels by which I become more aware of what needs to change within me. And maybe they'll say something to you, too. Peace on your upcoming week.

---

Godliness

Whir, whir, whir, whir
rising
back to godliness
buying (expiring) gas station hoagies
and real-sugar Pepsi for Billy Larry
but "no, no cigarettes."

I could just feel your skin there
kneeling at your stoop chair
cold, elastic
exposed.

The judge decrees to vacant flesh beneath
tight, black leggings
begging
for cigarettes.
"Sorry, Billy Larry. They're no good
for you."

Membership

You're like the brand name
carefully positioned between the Great Value
and the Always Save.
Looking straight ahead
arms crossed
tight shouldered:
you
can handle it.

Because love
covers
a multitude of sins
and you love them,
their no-name generic labels
can't conceal the truth
blemished and dented from lack of care
poorly marketed
cheap. Not you.

Thank God you're all the same on the inside
under the package, under the skin
you belong
together.
You're mixed fruit with
mixed reviews, and we'll occasionally buy
the other two,
but (surely you know that)
the one everybody really wants
is you.

--kory // www.korywilcox.com

Entrenchment

I've been "blogging" definitively since 2004, and probably earlier in some form or another. But I really picked it up during college, naturally, because when you're in college, you know, you have things to say.

Some people go on to write theses, getting published and the like. My writing strayed towards the poetic and reflective (some might say "self-absorbed"). I've no doubt chronicled some of the most defining moments of my life, sometimes overtly, but often coding into songs and sermon-like pastiche my more intimate struggles, my more complex relationships, and my more liberal convictions.

I've written a lot. And then, it was gone.

What's funny is that Xanga, the blogging site I used, was notably the outlier in my deeply-entrenched internet lifestyle, and I've been riding the techno-current pretty well for almost 20 years now...

Forget AOL; Prodigy chat-rooms were my gateway drug. I had a killer GeoCities mansion in junior high, which was shortly replaced by self-coded pages on my own local ISP's user directories.

Yea, it was the golden age of dialup, barely amid the dot-com boom, and I had my own dot-net domain name that I shared with my techy friends for personal emails. In high school, acting in what must have been a boredom-induced stupor, we frequently used this web space to store and transfer pirated music, movie rips, and cheat sheets for our English III vocab tests (sorry, Mrs. C!). When I wasn't wrapped up in our digital delinquencies, I found myself moderating wannabe-Honda-street-racer web forums, where coaching people not to buy cheap aftermarket parts was considered seasoned mechanical expertise...

A few years later, I fled Missouri to a prestigious, first-50 East-coast university for the holy advent of THE Facebook. And when I procured korywilcox.com, well, I was basically unstoppable. My only, lingering e-regret is my late adoption of Twitter, a move that has left me coveting prime korywilcox real estate (my name was claimed by some lazy, ten-post poser who quit squawking after just a few short days. My standing assumption is that he dropped his COM class.).

By the time I reversed course and returned to the pragmatic economics of living at home and attending the hometown state school (where I was then among a super-elite few in Missouri to even have a Facebook), WordPress and Blogger were really starting to make their mark as the go-to standards for serious blogging. And social-blogging hybrids like Tumblr were on the immediate horizon...

I wonder now, what on earth possessed me to stay with Xanga so far past its obvious prime? Filled to overflowing with angst and sprinkled with nerds, it was a six-year fad, at best; by the time the 7th graders who gold-rushed it had themselves gone on to college, they would have forgotten all about Xanga and how it subtly pioneered the now-ubiquitous "Like" concept (remember e-Props?) or the much beloved "I'm Listening / Watching / Reading" feature (which I might contend was really a primordial Amazon.com "app").

In a moment of clarity, several years ago, I even paid Xanga for a premium "membership," because I knew it would give me the ability to download my "archives." Thank God. But I only utilized this feature once, way back in 2008. Luckily, it was around this season in my never-ending cycle of self-promotion that I began trying to RSS import my hapless faux-pas of a blog into Facebook, too, redeeming another few years of posts (but only up to the point in 2011 that Facebook shifted towards its status-centric model and disabled automatic imports).

So, the bright side for me is that, despite the sudden, silent demise of Xanga, my dear digital diary is not lost in cyberspace. Perhaps just a handful of posts between June of 2011 and the present. And I'm certain that this was a truly tiny handful by comparison to "my early years." A few songs. And I have good records of those.

Still, the deletion of... me? It jarred me a little. Offended me a little. Highlighted how the past few years have been filled with a marked lack of concern about my long-standing internet entrenchment. I guess I've been a little focused on the day-to-day. Some would just call it "busy." But my ambivalence towards living the lifestyle of a semi-professional musician has led to the inadvertent cancellation of my GigSalad account, too (I still love you, Mark!); my good intentions to turn koryandelizabeth.com into a well-to-do, suburban family blog are still just good intentions; and mulling over the idea of ever recording another album makes the late, great "french fry song" seem like a distant, comedic prophecy about my rapidly-fleeting twenties.

This week, I've honestly been trying to dig myself out of the internet a little, but everywhere I click, I keep finding little pieces of a younger me with what seems like a lot more time, or else a lot less wasted time than perhaps I remember. For better or worse, my dearly departed Xanga blog was a "crown jewel" of this rather abundant decade of my life. I thought out loud, wrestled with God quite publically, and rarely, if ever, settled anything with myself.

And that settles it. Here's to the next ten years, internet. Hopefully, I'll find some way to drag myself along with me, wherever we go.

--kory // www.korywilcox.com