Bad Teen Poetry, Part 3

Paige started it. Laurie dared to add hers. Worthy of a blog of its own, add a link to your bad teen poetry in my comments box. Lucky for me, I think, I was more interested in horses than boys as a teen. So mine's not mushy. I'm still digging for those.

Okay okay. Here you have it--my first ever words published nationally:

The Horse
by Jeneane Dimino
Age 14
Published in Horse of Course Magazine
May 1978

They can run like the wiind, or walk slow and sure.
They can be firey hot, or gentle and pure.
They can be black as the night or light like the day.
They can be a chestnut, or even a bay.
They can be strong and hard or have legs long and thin.
You can ride them for fun, or race them to win.
They can be well taken care of, or left in the stall.
You can love them a lot, or care not at all.
Don't ignore them, they need us so much!
They need our affection and tender touch.
If you don't believe me, go right to othe source,
Don't take my word for it, go ask a horse!


I got ten bucks for it.

Shut up, all of you!

Locke and Load

"Locking and loading and finally going postal from the high bell-tower of a mind at once unhallowed and unhinged."

What are these multi-cortex posts of his, the words and pictures and tables and colors and links, this visual juxtaposition of madness and guffaws?

Something.

Oh, she's gonna kill me for this link...

Laurie has a most excellent post that reminds me why I love blogging. She has shamelessly (well, maybe with some shame) unearthed a very "moving" poem she wrote as a high school teenager with a crush on Andrew McCarthy. Oh geeez. If you were one of those incredibly deep high school kids--I know I was--who wrote heavy poetry in a composition book clutched to your chest, complete with far-out doodles on the covers and spine, don't miss this.

Laurie is every girl.

To salute Laurie's courage, I suggest that we ALL try to dig up some high school--or better yet, middle school--poetry this weekend. It's only fair not to leave the lady hangin' out there on her own.

{she pads off to bed giggling softly.}

off to the movies

The Sessum family is looney, but you knew that. We're off to see the new looney toons movie tonight with jenna. I never liked cartoons as a kid (yah, I know, weird), but I'm hoping to enjoy better the blend of real-life characters with those annoying cartoon characters.

that's all folks!

How Spy Sweeper Saved My Life

or at least my laptop. Spy Sweeper from Webroot has changed my life. And I'm not kidding. And they're not paying me to say so. Though I wish they would. Or at least throw in a free subscription for George's limping-along PC. How did I miss all the spying goin' on round here?

For the last few months, my laptop had been getting sicker and sicker. I had no idea what was causing the fluky problems I was experiencing. They were random and therefore not easy to replicate. Some of the things that were haywire included: 1) After browsing about a half-day's worth of sites for work (and blogging of course), I'd start to get pages appearing with broken image links, broken text links, and things would get worse and worse until I couldn't access a page at all. 2) When the browser got completely hosed -- the only page it would bring up was a search page, or a page from my cache that had nothing even remotely to do with the URL I'd typed in -- I would have to shut down completely. 3) Usually on the way to shutdown, things would short circuit even more and the system would hang, requiring a hard shut-down and reboot. 4) Scan disk would activate on startup, and the whole sequence of events would start all over again.

This continued, until it got SO bad this week, I couldn't view TWO web pages in a row without having to restart.

I was ready to throw this thing into the driveway and celebrate its screaming demise.

I started thinking and reading up on spyware, which I knew was out there, but I didn't really realize that it can be more of an obstacle to hassle-free Internet use than viruses. That's what webroot says, and I believe it. I was near insanity, not being able to blog or google or shop or ANYTHING!

Anyway, I installed the trial version of spy sweeper and it located 145 instances of spyware on the ol' Dell and 440 traces, all of which it quarantined nicely.

And I haven't had a problem since--pages come up, no broken links, no annoying search pages begging me to reach inside and strangle them.

If you've been having problems like this, check it out. They seem reputable--if anyone knows any different, please let me know because I think I'm gonna buy the $23 subscription.

Back in b'ness....

-jeneane

a boy, his blog, and his mom.

"With the raw materials in my blog, she could actually construct an accurate picture of who I am. This is fucking serious."

the evolution of archetypes

I've been meaning to tell you about the dream I had two nights ago. It referenced the new terrorism archetype we get to pass down to our children as fodder for their dreams. Cool!

I'm walking down the street (not my street or any street I'm exactly familiar with) and all of a sudden I see crowds of neighborhood folks (not my neighbors exactly) who had been talking, maybe having a neighborhood barbeque or something, running for their lives. Screams, oh my god's, and eyes to the sky as they ran back to their given homes. I stood in the middle of the street and saw a man looking skyward, his hand shading his eyes, and even though I couldn't see his eyes, I saw terror.

I looked up and there it was. A plane disguised as a giant rectangular birthday cake, so innocent looking, like one of those planes that pull the silly banners behind them, and out from the bottom layer of vanilla frosting, the plane was spraying something that looked like white flour (but I knew it was poison) over the neighborhood.

oh shit!

I ran to my car with a single mission on my mind--FIND JENNA! I realized at that moment that when the birthday cake of death comes, I won't have time to both duct tape and plastic sheet the house AND go get my kid. There won't be time. I'll have to choose. And in my dream I chose to get my kid.

I woke up with the alarm clock as I was racing to find Jenna. I remember exactly how the flying birthday cake of death looked. I wish I could draw it for you. I now understand that the duct tape and plastic sheeting were a waste of money, because poison flour waits for no woman.

Jung spins in his grave.

computer hell

I didn't just abandon you--please know that. I was writing up a storm when my computer became unworkable. I still don't know what's going on. Although I use virus protection, I think I've been put under the control of alien spyware or some such hijacking phenomena which renders my browser useless. Today I installed some spyware killer utilitiy--we'll see if it helps. I ran a check on my drive and it found about 30 instances of spyware and 400 traces. Whatever the heck that means. So I had it quarantine those buggers and we'll see what happens. I'll be happy if I can visit more than two web pages in a row without a page of broken picture links, lost designs, and generally scrambled up non-workable (even after hitting refresh several zillioin times) pages staring me in the face.

ugh.

anyway, I got a whole post in before the laptop lost its marbles again.

this is progress!

ooooh cool.

I've long been anti-aggregator because I think it disturbs the eyeball-to-brain-to-blog-to-comments-to-brain-to-post flow which I think is at the core of good blogging. Then Shelley clued me in to bloglines. Sheesh. Color me a convert.

Pretty nifty and well integrated within the blogging experience. Gimme a week. I'll report back. And let me know if the lil' subscribe button over there on the left works, kay?

Authentic Dog*

I think it's risky business when people own dogs they don't license.

Dog licenses are necessary for several reasons, not the least of which is that to get a license, your dog has to be vacinated against rabies, and this practice reduces the incidence of rabies and the associated health problems the disease poses to other animals and to humans. Many wild animals can carry rabies, and leaving a pet--especially a large dog that roams--unvaccinated and unregistered is simply irresponsible.

It is with some hesitation that I point to Frank Paynter's dog, Fang, as an example of an accident waiting to happen.

Fang remains unlicensed and has not been vaccinated. At the same time, Frank has posted about how prone Fang is to roaming, and about how unpredictable Fang can become on occasion.

What if Fang were to happen upon a child collecting pine cones in the woods? What if Fang, having recently killed a rabid raccoon, bit the child? That child would then have to undergo a round of very painful treatments, and just as devastating for Frank, Fang would have to be destroyed.

That is why I am urging Frank to have Fang vaccinated and to get him properly licensed in his township. I also urge the Towns and Counties across the U.S. to do a better job enforcing the laws that are already on the books. They should be following through and fining the scofflaws who refuse to license their dogs.

I'm sorry, Frank, but sometimes an intervention is required.

*

Dedicated to shelley.

further reflections on meeting bloggers in person.

no two bloggers are alike.

all bloggers are alike.

I thought everyone knew me.

Everyone does not know me.

I thought I knew everyone.

I don't know anyone.

Allied sounds weird when said outloud as part of my identity, as in, Jeneane Sessum of Allied.

I don't know whether to pronounce it UHlied or AHlied or AAHlied or even Allaheyed.

I gave little thought to my blog's name when I picked it in 2001.

I think maybe I should have.

Blogspot is viewed by some as the low-rent district.

I'm glad I live in the low rent district.

More people know Blog Sisters than Allied.

I'm glad more people know Blog Sisters than Allied.

What the fuck does Allied mean?

I don't know.

I thought a blog gathering is where everyone hugs and weeps with joy to finally meet siblings separated at birth.

Not all bloggers weep.

Not all bloggers hug.

Not all bloggers were separated at birth.

That's probably a good thing.

Some bloggers are very serious about blogging.

Some bloggers are not very serious about blogging.

I sometimes giggle when I see bloggers handling money.

There is no good reason for this.

So Many Shamans, So Little Time.

I'm a shaman, you're a shaman, he's a shaman, she's a shaman, wouldn't you like to be a shaman too?

feeling palley like Halley

When I think of bloggers meeting bloggers, I think of Halley. Who doesn't? My guess is that Halley holds the world record for blogger actually greeted in person by another blogger. Across the country she goes, carrying the blogworld in her designer handbag, having no qualms or reservations about encountering bloggers in their realworld flesh. We are all Halley's friend in that respect.

Last night I channeled Halley, using a tiny piece of her outbound energy to get my behind out of the house--which required asking my sister to watch Jenna overnight, packing her up, fixing her several medicines for the p.m. and a.m., and dropping her off on my way to the Atlanta Blogger's Gathering, hosted by the super-personable Greg Greene at the 5 Seasons Brewery on Roswell Road.

I got there late, something I've consistently been for the last six years, as they were paying the check, but it was fascinating to meet some real, live, in-person bloggers. I only wish I'd gotten there in time for the lively discussion it seems they had.

The best part of the evening for me was meeting John Adams. What an amazing human being John is. Rather than talking about blogging and bloggers and bloggers blogging about blogging, John told me really cool stories. He has a blogger's heart. Conversation with John is musical--you play something, he takes that and turns it around and adds to it, then he passes it back to you to inform with your voice, and suddenly together you've created this amazing dialogue.

To me, that is blogging.

Pleasure to meet you, John.

After that it was off to see George play the late session at Hueys, which has some spicey n'awlins food peppered with sweet jazz all weekend long.

We finally departed at about 5 a.m. Hit the sack at six, up at 1:00 with a phone call from my sister that Jenna was ready to come home, off to grab her, home to the keyboard, with an urge to tell you all that after two years, I met some realworld folks who blog.

Don't worry Anthony--you'll always hold the spot as the very first co-blogger I knew outside our house. Come to the next get together--would be great to see you guys.

See also:

Photdude

Ricky West

Kelley