Now that Mel Gibson's latest movie seems to have lost steam, I think it would be a good time to remind my readers that In Sequence is one of the top destinations for "Mel Gibson Sucks" searches.

There was brief period this summer when In Sequence was in the #2 spot on Google for "Mel Gibson Sucks" searches but sadly that was not to last. It appears the Mel Gibson Sucks search space is a highly competitive one and it would be folly for anyone to assume they could stay on top for long.

Nonetheless, here is a review of this blog's top Mel Gibson Sucks offerings:

The worst intentions
This was my first foray into the Mel Gibson Sucks content space. In addition to the pleasing graphic, I give a brief recap of Gibson's history with gays and lesbians. Recently, Wired touched on the same subject in a nice overview called "Apocalypto: Myths and Facts":

MYTH: Mel Gibson is a homo.

FACT: Mel Gibson directs movies about mostly-naked men smeared in oil and blue paint who often run really fast so we can see their muscles flex or bend over and show off their ass cracks. Source: Apocalypto.

Have we all been blind? I feel I broke new ground in Mel Gibson Sucks searches with this entry, which provides concrete evidence of the largely unexplored Mel Gibson/Evil Bert connection.

This summer, during the heyday of my #2 position in Mel Gibson Sucks search results, I surprised myself by feeling a brief moment of sympathy for him. Gibson had just been arrested for drunk driving, and the press was going wild with it.

As I considered the pain Gibson was most likely going through, I turned to the Cute-Little-Red-Headed-Girlfriend and asked, "I wonder what Mel Gibson is doing right now?" We both looked northward towards Malibu, pensive.

After a minute of quiet contemplation, we both suddenly realized there was no need to worry ourselves any further. We knew exactly what Mel Gibson was doing right then. He was sucking.

I've just turned comments back on, so please feel free to comment if you would like to. As you may recall, I turned them off several weeks ago in order to do some upgrades. My regular commenters have been hotly complaining about this outage, and I am happy to again provide them with this outlet. For those of you lurking, I hope you enjoy the contributions of some of the regular commenters.

I am a naughty blogger. Since this blog has been active, I've made a concerted effort to be aware of and adhere to web standards. However, since upgrading from Movable Type 3.2 to 3.3, many of my efforts have gone out the window. I'm in the process of trying to set things right, but certain things are broke and, sad to say, they are staying broke.

I have recovered most of my lost archives, though some posts from 2006 are still missing. In the process of recovering my archives, I chose to use Movable Type's new archive naming scheme. As a result, the permalinks I had have changed. That's one of those unfortunate elements I've decided to live with, though I realize it's not recommended practice.

Another thing that changed is my rss feed. I turned off my rss feed during the transition and have only just turned it on again. If you would like to subscribe, the link is: http://www.insequence.org/feeds/home.rss. Several Movable Type default feeds were turned on when I upgraded to 3.3, including an Atom feed, and I have since turned those feeds off and they will stay off. Please switch to the above link if you would like to stay subscribed.

Did I just say something about these tests being accurate? I guess I did. I have Chris Puzak to blame for these results; he's the one that got me started with this infernal quiz in the first place. But look, the interpretation says "not really 'Satan.'" However, I'd be less troubled if this card didn't continually come up in my readings.
You are The Devil
Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild--or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

I've got a piece up at The Horror Blog that I hope my readers will go take a look at. I was asked to participate in a Halloween celebration featuring contributions from non-Horror bloggers about a "favorite scare." I wrote about an album from the punk era called "A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die." For graphic art fans, you might want to look at the original punk flyers I scanned to go with the article. Also, there's a picture of me as a little kid dressed in a Halloween costume that I think is at least worth a click.

I was a featured guest on my friend Joe's podcast this past week. In this edition, Joe is very depressed about the state of the world and he's looking for me to cheer him up. Let me tell you, if you think anything I say is going to cheer you up, you are in a very dire situation indeed. Nonetheless, I do try to shake him out of it, sharing my new and brilliant idea to replace all the cars in Los Angeles with litters. You can listen here.

I've recently moved my site to a new host and in the process I've managed to botch things up. I can see now that it's going to take awhile to put things right, but since I want to continue to post, you're going to be seeing a different In Sequence until I get everything worked out. So welcome to In Sequence: Unplugged.

I'm closing comments for approximately one week while I take care of some backend stuff on In Sequence. I'll let readers know when they're open again.

I've just upgraded the entire site, due to the release of a mandatory update to the Movable Type blogging system. If you're running MT, go check it out. I find these updates usually break something, so if you're a reader and run across something that doesn't look right, please give me a holler.

Today O'Reilly Radar writes about changes in publishing brought about by new media. Although the particular medium being discussed isn't mentioned by name, I assume Tim is talking about the Internet. He writes, "Many of our popular series, like our programming cookbooks or the Hacks series, are actually collections of shorts, rather than full-length connected narratives."

The shift Tim sees occurring is from long-form composition to short-form collections. I'd noticed this shift in my own reading patterns lately. In the past, I had never been a big fan of short story collections, especially those by a single author. Now, I find myself downloading short stories, articles and pre-published book chapters that are made available for free on the Internet, composing my own mixed fiction/non-fiction reading sampler as I surf.

Tim predicts, "I think we'll see this phenomenon all over publishing: the rebirth of short-form content and collections, with the user in charge of the playlist." I'm not sure how playlists would work in print, but I load the material I download onto my Zaurus PDA, which I use as an e-book reader, among other things. I think that as people adopt new reading habits, this will build demand for devices that make these new styles of reading possible. That device may take the form of a dedicated e-book reader, or it could very well turn out to be something else.

I've mentioned before that my friend Joe has a podcast that has earned him a bit of notoriety, especially in the Quaker world. For while I was a bit worried about Joe's rising celebrity among Quakers, because naturally I wondered about the effect his microcelebrity would have on me. What if I was with him and he was mobbed, could I be crushed by Quakermania?

Fortunately, Quakerism is only one of Joe's many facets. There's also his gay facet and his gothic facet and his Madonna facet. The Madonna aspect took over not long ago when Joe decided to move on from the whole Quaker identity thing and remake his podcast as a personal journal. And what could be more personal than sitting down with me for a little chit-chat?

It doesn't matter if you don't already listen to podcasts or if you don't have an iPod. You can just click the link on Joe's page and the .mp3 file will play right in your browser.

So my friend Joe invited me once again to be a guest on his Beppe Podcast. You can listen here if you're interested. Joe calls the episode "Tee and Doe discuss." We started calling each other Tee and Doe a long time ago, based on our long-standing desire to start our own religious cult. When the Heaven's Gate tragedy occurred, we thought, "Oh look, there's a gay man and a lesbian who successfully started their own cult." Of course, they were celibate then and are dead now, but still. And their names were Tee and Doe, so close to Teresa and Joe. That's how it all started.

A few weeks ago, I downloaded the full text of the speech Harold Pinter gave in accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature. It made very worthwhile reading. I've excerpted one of my favorite passages below, wherein Pinter describes the process by which the United States's crimes against countries such as Indonesia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, and others, have been made invisible.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

It was a strange relief to read these words. It is a relief because it reflects the facts of U.S. history as I understand them, and not the fantasy that is constantly projected here in the U.S.

Although the media often discusses the political frustrations of the Democratic party, I have rarely seen any examination of the daily frustrations of ordinary individuals trying to live in a culture where one is lied to every day. A place where lying is glorified, through the elevation of people who lie boldly, such as the Enron millionaires and our own President.

It is confusing to live in such a culture. One thing that I have been surprised to discover since 9/11 is how ideology can be extremely blatant and still work. Previously, I assumed that ideology was most successful when it acted surreptitiously, almost as an unconscious effect. But ideology must work hardest when the facts diverge most jarringly from "the official record" that is being offered. It is this constant presence of ideology that becomes so tiring, because it becomes such an effort to remember, day in and day out, what is real.

It is possible, I suppose, to be too tapped into the zeitgeist. That is what happened to me yesterday when the Cute Little Red Headed Girlfriend and I went to go see a matinee of Munich. We showed up 45 minutes early only to be met by a complete mob scene. By the time we had sized up which of the many lines to join to buy tickets, the movie was sold out. Who knew so many people would want to see such a solemn film on December 25? Not me, or I would have bought my tickets ahead of time online.

My dear friend Joe has interviewed me for his most recent podcast. Although Joe is still a pretty steady blogger, he's been getting more and more involved with podcasting lately. You can hear me on Joe's beppepodcast here.