IDEA TWENTY-TWO: "Plainsong"

The song by The Cure thundering thru the speakers at Imax theaters while footage of the destruction of the World Trade Center plays on the screen in super artsy colors. Possible slo-mo of towers of smoke rising in place of steel.

No faces...at most only silhouettes.

"i think it's dark and it looks like rain" you said

"and the wind is blowing like it's the end of the

world" you said "and it's so cold it's like the

cold if you were dead" and then you smiled for

a second.



"i think i'm old and i'm in pain" you said

"and it's all running out like it's the end of the

world" you said "and it's so cold it's like the

cold if you were dead" and then you smiled for

a second



sometimes you make me feel like i'm living at

the edge of the world like i'm living at the edge

of the world "it's just the way i smile" you said

--"Plainsong", by The Cure

IDEA TWENTY-ONE: Learn how to see with more than yr eyes

There are a thousand shades of black.

IDEA TWENTY: Netwerk 1417

A new "chaperoned" on-line social community in which underage teens (ages 14-17, hence the title) can sign up for all the usual networking goodies plus free s/w and virtual tutelage by the world's best bloggers on how to create killer templates that they can then save and upload (using handy conversion tools) to blogger, or myspace, or any other social community when they "graduate" from 1417. The kids will also get tips and pointers and training on how to vlog and the ability to borrow from a library of donated cameras and laptops. Ideally there would be an innernet radio station attached and maybe a handful of local access cable shows and maybe bricks n' mortar spots like the scratch academy could integrate with us offline in various cities and provide dj training and the history of hip-hop to those with musical aptitude...

1417 would form the intersection between underage and underground. It would be a training spot for future activists and poets and programmers and philosophers as well as a place where more older, accomplished bloggers could give back to up and coming youth via the innernet.

The theme of this network is that it is a station along the way--a place to create the template of the way to be specifically famous on-line, with guidance and words of wisdom on everything from dealing with creeps and indentity theft to free downloads of cool movies and books.

(like a wrinkle in time and nietzsche and gandhi's my experiments with truth and tolstoy and doestyevsky and the art of war and the illiad and...)

It would be an on-line education of an alternative way of being. By being invite only (perhaps only to the top students in every school?) there'd be an exclusivity to the network that would make membership highly coveted. As well, unlike other social communities this one would actively push out every member as soon as they hit 18.

Just like Menudo!