ManicDDaily

Please don’t be alarmed. The above painting/picture of a dog in clouds is part of my ongoing experiment with iPad Apps and, although it depicts my sixteen year old dog Pearl, is no sign of Pearl’s past or upcoming demise. (At least, I hope not.) I just like painting Pearl and I thought she’d look cool in clouds.

The spectral quality of Pearl in this painting came to mind today when I was reading about Tom MacMaster, a male graduate student blogger, who has, for the last four months, been posing/posting as “Gay Girl in Damascus.” Recent posts, which implied the detainment of the “girl” by Syrian authorities, had led to increased alarm and activism among followers. This, plus some detection work by more suspicious readers, led to MacMaster’s confession and posted apology.

It’s a long, weird story and cautionary tale: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/gay-girl-in-damascus-blogger-admits-to-writing-fiction-disguised-as-fact/?scp=1&sq=Gay%20gal&st=cse

MacMaster insists he did not intend to harm anyone but rather to “illuminate” the story of the Syrian uprising. He ended up not only writing 137 posts, but hundreds of emails “in character” to sympathetic followers (a few of whom now feel considerably harmed.)

Hard to know quite what motivated MacMaster. (Hopes of a book deal?)

My point here is assure all that Pearl, above, really is Pearl, and that Manicddaily really is me, manic-d-daily (but not, as sometimes depicted, an elephant.)