No Snark Sunday: Get a Clue, Get a Plate

So this week’s no snark is a pair of important announcements brought to you by two people who are prominent among the reasons we have nice things:

Number one, brought to our attention by community improvement powerhouse Maggie Rosa is that David Weinberger, one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, is speaking Monday, November 17 at the Cruiseport on how libraries should remake themselves for the digital age.

What, you’re not falling over yourself to go to this because you have important ear-hair grooming to conduct that evening? You are a FOOL my friend! Cluetrain broke open the way we use the Internet. It was the piece of writing that showed the conversation we’re having here, here at our beloved Clam and millions of other places, is where real decisions get made instead of through paid advertising. Back in the day if you wanted to tell people something you just tossed some dough at a bunch of flacks and they got told. Now you need to have a conversation. The unintended consequences have been bullshit like the anti-vaccine people, climate deniers and 9/11 truthers, but overall the level of connectedness has given us, the average persons, immense power that we’re just learning how to wield. Think of how Good Morning Gloucester took away the conversation from the sad, misspelled, thrift-store-puzzle-missing-several-dozen-pieces of information that is the GDT. That’s happening everywhere.

Cluetrain also pioneered a lot of tone you read here: simple, short, not afraid to be crude or hyperbolic. Like we’re talking in a lively bar after a couple of drinks, rather than the stilted parlor-speak of old media.

I’m really curious to hear what he’s going to say about libraries, I’m sure it will be awesome and it benefits the Gloucester Education Foundation who are also responsible for so much awesome. In short: will be awesome.

Ok, Next. License Plates.

Brought to us by Ruth Pino another person who’s hand is behind so much good that happens around this little berg.

This is about the special Cape Ann license plate you can get.

Right about now you are thinking, “Holy Shit Jim, you’re talking about vanity plates? On The Clam? Aren’t you about angry challenges to “The Man”? This should be more about how to make your own illegal license plate out of tin foil, hot glue, spray paint and Sharpie-brand markers. You suck now, The Clam!”

Shut the fuck up.

This is important because we get screwed. Cape Ann generates tons of money for the Commonwealth and we get shit back. We generate huge tax revenues out of E. Point and other places and we get screwed in our education funding. We play the lottery at rates orders of magnitude higher than other parts of the state and Gloucester and Wellesley get the same percentage of distribution. We’re got all kinds of salty authenticity and all the Beacon Hill attention is directed toward that other cape where they happen to have cottages. The same with tourist promotion dollars. More gets spent trying to bring people to Lowell than here (remember the coin fiasco?). Fucking Lowell. Tourist Mecca (though they have great Pho there, just sayin).

This is a way for us to directly spend on something that comes back to support our community. So if you’re getting a plate, get a Cape Ann Plate, here is the link:

Fill it out online here (scroll down slightly)

or

link to the paper form you can just drop by the chamber

That’s all this week peeps, I have a more challenging couple of pieces coming up in the days/weeks to come and stay tuned for The Clam’s War on Christmas, or at least the shitty parts of it.

-Jim