Where have gone Julie Tarp,
OS turns its lonely eyes to you!

Open Salon doesn't have real dust ups anymore, not the kind with dead and wounded laying by the thousands across the battlefield. These old style wars costs us some mighty fine people and OS will never reach those idealistic heights again. All we have now are basically spitball fights and people sticking their tongues out at each other.

That's why I no longer complain about OS. It is what it is and nothing more. We once had grand hopes of a beautiful and flowering writer/artist community emanating light and joy throughout the universe - before we tore each other eyes out. Lord knows, I live with that regret every time I logon and it weighs upon me.

Our first and best wars however were with the OS management under the reign of error conducted by Zerry and Zhomas (I kid!, I kid!). When Zhomas took over he maintained a stance of only showing the top rated for the past three days which caused a lot of lost exposure for 90% of the posts out there. Thus was born my first OS drama: Einstein grills Zhomas about the feed:

But that only caused a retaliatory video by Zhomas as the OS Empire struck back against its critics, wiping them out with the Ride of the Valkyries! Tensions were at an all time high between critics and defenders of OS. Darker times have never been known by mankind.

Finally, Zhomas cracked with an albeit grudging return to the four hour feed mixed into 12 hr and 1 day feeds on a rotating basis. Thusly, he was forced to apologize for his Napoleonic high handedness just as Patton had to apologize before the troops for slapping a soldier. Celebration ensued as in after the destruction of the death star in Return of the Jedi.

But then we were united against a new and evil invading enemy: SPAM! That's right, there was a time when OS had no spam and many still lament its presence. In a war that cannot be won, the great OS Spambot battle was engaged against the onslaught of Chinese spam flooding the feed day and night. Alas, poor spam-free OS, I knew thee well.

Unfortunately having lost that war we were left only with ourselves(!), turning on one another like a backstabbing community theater pretending to be on Broadway: who are the real actors and who are the wannabes? OS minds demand to know! Just as in the Civil War when brother fought brother so did blogger fight blogger in a raging debate never full settled. Are you a real writer??

But like all wars, nothing really gets settled. So as the Salon turns, the drama endures in endless cycles of self-projection, complaining and word wars signifying nothing. In the end, OS - like life - is what we make it. And that's a good thing!