The Downing Street Memo and the Big Brass Alliance

BARBs,

Our esteemed colleague Generik yesterday alerted me to the existence of After Downing Street, a site you should visit immediately if you haven't already.

Back so soon? Good. Earlier today I received the following from Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister:

Hello, fellow bloggers.

In response to the move by After Downing Street, who are looking for additional groups to support their formal inquiry into the possibility that Bush committed impeachable offenses in making the case for the Iraq War, and as a follow-up discussion that took place in response to this post at Shakespeare's Sister, we're forming the Big Brass Alliance of bloggers in association with Big Brass Blog.

There is a post here listing the bloggers who have noted their interest in participation; I'm emailing you because I thought you might want to participate as well.

Leave a comment at Shakespeare's Sister if you're interested in joining the alliance. Ang, Paperwight, Hellblazer and Yr. Mst. Hmbl. Mnrch. are already on board.

Bay Area Bloggers Meet-Up

Anyone else get this invite?

From: KRON-TV
Location: KRON-TV
1001 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA
When: Saturday, June 11, 12:00pm

And if so, are you going???

FYI: Drinking Liberally

For them as may be interested:

Drinking Liberally will now be at Zeitgeist (located at the corner of Valencia and Duboce). DL's new home features outdoor picnic tables, many a beer on tap, a full bar and a BBQ pit. Share a pitcher or two tonight with San Francisco's Progressive happy hour.

Zeitgeist
199 Valencia (at Valencia and Duboce)
7-9 PM every Tuesday

IMO, this is a vast improvement over Doc's Clock.  If you want to sign up for the Drinking Liberally email list, you can do so here.

Law and Order: Special Missing Bloggers Unit

As someone who has up and left entire cities (Hello Portland, Oregon and Bridgeport, Connecticut) without letting large groups of friends and ex co-workers know anything about my new whereabouts, I suppose I'm the last person who should worry about bloggers that disappear into thin air with no explanation. In the case of leaving places, usually I just didn't want to raise a fuss and make people feel obligated to throw a party or whatever. And since blogging at times can feel like talking into the dial tone of a phone, I can totally see a day of saying, "screw this" and just stopping at some point.

Still, much in the same way that my overactive imagination caused me to think that something terribly sinister happened to The Token Reader, I now find myself concocting 'grassy knoll' style conspiracies in regards to Swash-blogger Scaramouche.

I know there's no shortage of blogs out there that have been inactive for long periods of time. Hell, just click on the Next Blog button on the upper right and chances are you'll read some 15 year old's take on how much they hate Jessica Simpson that was written sometime in 2003. It's when a blog is extremely active and then goes dark that I begin to think that men in dark suits showed up in the middle of the night to pull the plug on their cable modem.

Another good example was Dark Window, but at least with that there was a corresponding tragic event that seemed to profoundly effect the author into a bummed out stage of ennui and lack of interest. But in both Token Reader's and now Scaramouche's cases, it seemed to be business as usual and then nothing.

Anyone want to round up a posse, check the files at Guantanamo and see what underground pit these guys are being held in?

Of course, if there is some tragic event tied with either of these cases, I completely apologize for making light of the situation.

Sincerely,
Your slightly concerned internet buddies.