Jeneane Sessum writes about Loss, Love, and Life, not necessarily in that order.
Jack says that Gartner says the odds will be 1 out of 10.
Do you like those odds? You sitting in a cube right now? You looking around?
I searched google to find some other 1 out of 10s, to help us put this news into perspective:
1 out of 10 people in nothern Ireland goes swimming for exercise.
1 in 10 people with an eating disorder is male.
1 in 10 people in the world today is over age 60.
1 in 10 people say they read better without computers. (I guess they're safe.)
There's only one thing that matters with Orkut in this stage of its evolution: Orkut's elegantly simple user interface. Technologists never seem to get it. Look at Blogger. Didn't matter that it was down a lot in the early days. Didn't matter that sometimes stuff didn't work, especially beta features. People came by the boatloads from the Internet land of the previously overlooked.
Blogger was and is push button simple, and that's what gets the most people playing online. Quick and easy gets the entire web lower and middle class every time.
Orkut's got that. Doesn't need anything else yet. Soon, but not yet.
There's so much more it can be.
Must make the social networks folks' fingers itch.
Makes me giggle.
What the hell is up with the elitist approach to invitation? That's just outright insulting and an attempt to pre-configure the masses through what the technorati are doing. Social networks are not just a product of technologists. Everyone has a social network and what they do with it is quite diverse. To demand that they behave by the norms of technologists is horrifying.
man, when I said something like that about misbehaving.net, i was just being negative.
If you stay around for it long enough, life sure is funny.
Ms. Powers gives us a stunning State of the Human address, in nature, with her camera, where she does some of her best work, and with people, not subjects but people, who are open, I see them being open, and I want them to come here and talk with us on all the things Shelley mentions, and on all the thing she doesn't.
Beautiful photo, beautiful post.
I'd have my babies. Lots of them. I'd love them all. Maybe I'd never have a great job. Maybe I'd never see my name in print. Maybe I would. Maybe I'd bake bread with them. Maybe I'd teach them how to milk a cow myself. Maybe they wouldn't have all my attention, but maybe they'd have enough. And maybe they'd have each other. And maybe they'd be 18, 16, 15, and 14. And maybe I'd be 45 and all my kids would be grown. And maybe I'd have grandbabies. If I survived it. And maybe I'd write a novel or go on vacation. And maybe I wouldn't know what to do. But I'd have my babies. Lots of them. And I'd love them all.... Just as much as I love my only baby. The only baby I'll ever have.
Vacummed, dusted, sprayed, de-garbaged, wiped, mopped, shopped.
zzzzzzzzzzz.
I'd so rather be looking at this view.
That's the view just before you step out into the water to snorkel.
(Hi Carly! Hi Jeff!)
oh. i'm so depressed.
I was talking to Halley from the grocery store parking lot today, on my way to buy soy milk, Halley at home looking out the window with her new eyes, and I was telling her about the liberal use of the word "Troll" I'm seeing in comments these days, and well, actually, I was bitching at having been labeled one of those pesky trolls for some honest yet negative comments I've left on a deserved site or two recently.
People, people, people: Someone who disagrees with you, or even who thinks you're being dishonest and selfish and says so on your site, isn't a troll. Just a blogger with nothing to lose. Trolls are looking for attention, usually with a pseudonym or "anonymous" signature. Trolls don't tell you where they live online.
On the other hand, smart mouthy bloggers don't much care about getting attention (at least on Tuesdays and Thursdays), are usually trying to engage you in stepping off your bully pulpit and getting real, and will usually be happy to tell you where they live.
I said to Halley, "For crying out loud--I got called a TROLL! What's next? Anyone who says anything negative about a post is a fucking troll now?"
And we start laughing and come up with The Troll Patriot Act, which enforces support for all blog posts. That's right. From now on, if you disagree in blog comments, you go straight *not* to Gutanamo Bay, but to Runaway Bay.
See you there!
rad. how fast how many have gathered there. the "now what?" doesn't seem to matter. no rush. just hangin'. scoping out communities, pulling up a chair in some. see my old friends there--you and you, and especially you. Oooo--seeing all our faces plastered together in a net mosaic, little tapestries of white people all linked one through the next.
Would be good to have a shared file space--like e-room--that a community could use to place documents, etc. not sure if scrapbook works this way. I could see a business-side offshoot with e-room functionality and the ability to tap into shared knowledge ACROSS communities over time--strategic linkage and knowledge across areas of shared interest.
So fascinating.
My sister digs artificial flowers. I don't. I don't do well with real flowers (or anything green) as evidenced by the complete lack of plant life inside this house. Silk flowers only remind me how badly I do with real flowers, so I don't like em.
Tonight I took my sister over to the dreaded Walmart. She had surgery recently and can't drive, so Jenna and I had a fun afternoon taking my sister to the store. I had to take a phone call while we were walking around, and of course since Walmart is the size of a very large prison, and with as much mortor and steel as one, I had no reception and took the six-mile hike outside so I could hear.
When I caught up with Jenna and my sister, they were in the pretend flower isle. I was blown away by how far pretend flowers have come since I stopped even passing by the fabric and flower sectionl tucked in the back of the store. Damn. These pretend flowermakers have gotten serious.
Do you know they even have fake water droplets on the fake flowers now? It's like hyperreality. Freaked me right out. My synapses were flying fast and furious--it's a real flower, no fake, no it's real water on a fake flower, no it's fake water on a real flower. NOOOOO!
So then I went and picked out toilet paper.
I'm getting closer to "being in the moment" as they say in a nonsensical way that basically makes sense. You know how I can tell? I can feel it--every now and then I find myself NOT thinking of the last thing or the next thing. Just being, or if not being, getting really close to being in that very special special place (or so I hear) called the n-o-w. When I get there, I assume time will stop and I won't know it, because I'll be smack-dab-right-there.
so cool.
i'll email you and let you know how it was if I ever get out.
If I had known then what I know now, as they say, I mean before I knew it, I would have known what to do and what not to have done. But I didn't know. How could I have known? I only knew what I knew and not a smidgeon more. I could not have known what I didn't know.
And even if I had known, how much would knowing matter? I mean, would I have known enough not to?
Maybe, if I had known myself, and if I myself had known, I wouldn't have. But I didn't know myself, and I certainly didn't know that I didn't know myself.
I'm not trying to fool myself here--just trying to figure things out.
It's amazing how many folks unass this place when I'm sick for a couple of days and writing boring shit or nothing at all. Not really amazing, 'cause I do it to other people all the time now. Like, hey, wow, so-n-so isn't posting....click....off I go to another blog to giggle about some rare newsbit.
Blogging is now cable TV with 400,000 channels.
Of course, it wasn't always this way. I just wanted some of you to know that, and to remind others--well, remind myself. Used to be if you went quiet for a few days, the emails would start coming from friends, some funny, some sad, some comiserating, and most of them urging you back.
Not that it needs to be that way. But when you think "community," don't you kind of of think that way?
Apparently not for the majority of drugs, according to this.
But even better, check out this great post from a blogger whose dad knew all along.
In fact, Feet First looks like a cool blog. And I like Feet's Dad too.
Okay, you all have provided such great advice for types like me (and some of you) who get on that cycle of sicky-sicky-sick-sick one after the other. I actually had an eight-month stretch where I took my vitamins every day and stayed relatively well (i.e., 8 months without antibiotics, steroids, and the like).
Then this month. Ugh.
I'm sick now, but it hasn't turned up to full volume like usual, so I'm going to try to combat this with the wonderful tips I've gotten on this blog during Jenna's strep etc. episodes the past year. Also using the kid-friendly stuff on her. So here's the regimen I began in full force this week to see if I can kick this cold before it turns into sinusitis or bronchitis or our friend strep:
Acidolphilus Capsules, empty the powder into a cup with tepid water, gargle it, swallow it. Thanks to Elizabeth!
Goldenseal Echinacea, from personal experience and Elaine of Kalilily.
My favorite brand Super Nutrition Women's Blend vitamin (and Perfect Kids for Jenna), AND some Super C Power.
And, SinuSave followed by saline nasal spray.
While sick with this cold, I'm using my old standby which I still think is the biggest innovation in OTC cold "medicine" in the last 20 years, Zicam, (even though everything tasts rather bizzarre while using the throat spray).
AND, lest I forget Biotene for gargling after teeth brushing.
Add to that, my own blend of disinfecting spray, consisting of 1/2 tsp of tea tree oil and a touch of antibacterial soap mixed in a spray bottle to mist all over this joint.
You've got the picture of the army I've assembled to beat the enemy.
Down, but not out.... -j.
Blogging as evolution of Iranian toilet graffitti.
niice.
Actually, the other day I was considering the realworld parallel for what the comment spammers and crapflooders are doing to MT Blogs. At first I was thinking it graffitti, but graffitti is in many ways art -- street art, performance art, subversive art, whatever -- and is usually not anonymous. How many graffitti artists spray their initials as they go?
But the comment spammers and crapflooders, I think they're more like vandals, or maybe even arsonists. I think arsonists because they're trying to drive bloggers out of their home. And if they organize, then perhaps a malitia. An army.
But right now, arsonists.
I am not really coherent right now as my right ear is throbbing.
well shit i see google page ranking has behaved just like a corporate massa by knocking me back down to 6/10 from 7/10 today. Kid's got strep, I'm all a feverish, been busy with suppositories and pills. Ain't it just like b'ness to kick ya when you're down. Mofos.
No worry, I'll be back.
[[You do know, by now, I know you do, that despite my knowing that this means nothing, I enjoy writinng countless rambling posts regarding my google page rank, which to half of those reading means nothing, because it only shows up if you have the google toolbar, and I'm fairly certain from previous comments not everyone does. But to me, it's my double-sworded sabre-toothed nemesis.
let me have my fun, will you?
off to wallow now.]]
Sorry I haven't been writing--sorry more for me than for sparing you the gory details. Jenna is turning round for the good. Hopping about the house. Predictably, bathing in her throwup and catching her cough spray with my eyes, despite my best efforts NOT to, has left me, um, sick.
So I got nothing to give. Instead, read the folks I read on my blogroll, or check out the bunch I've run upon recently in my list at the left, or for the directionally impaired, right here:
Classic Values
RowBoat
Weblogsky
Net Warriors
RadioFreeBlogistan
Snappy the Clam
Reusability
Dong Resin
Leuschke.org
Mike Whybark
Telescreen
Andrew's Life
Helga
Blogjazz
Colleen
John Kuraoka
Kevin Walzer
Monkey Span
Dr. Bill Koslosky
Ben Silverman
Peking Duck
Darren Barefoot
PR Opinions
Jeremy at PopPR
Elizabeth Albrycht
IzzlePfaff
Stowe Boyd
The Jer Zone
One Good Move
NetWoman
Kevin Walzer
Guff Depot
Yule Heibel
Ken (i always want to say champ) Camp
Xeni
J-Mo
David Hoggard
Java Mama!
Boy, in 1993, they'd do anything to keep us working, working, working. That "how can we help keep you here" business model turned out to be less strategic than today's "talk to the hand" business model.
Been cleaning up throw up today.
101 fever, headache, sick stomach, pokies (hairs that hurt all over her body) and sore throat.
And the ability to keep tiny pieces of french fries down, but nothing else.
more soon.
This was a weird show. Remember? I remember it. Thing is, I was telling Jenna about it last week, remembering the feeling of watching Pufnstuff--a mini acid trip for kids in my day--and then I found a copy of the movie at the library today--oh witchiepoo, where have you been, babe?--so tonight we're hanging out watching HR Pufnstuff, and it's as weird as I remember it.
And for old time's sake, the theme song...
H.R. Pufnstuf, who's your friend when things get rough?
H.R. Pufnstuf, can't do a little, 'cause you can't do enough
Once upon a summertime
Just a dream from yesterday
A boy and his magic golden flute
Heard a boat from off the bay
"Come and play with me, Jimmy
Come and play with me
And I will take you on a trip
Far across the sea"
But the boat belonged to a kooky old witch
Who had in mind the flute to snitch
From her Vroom Broom in the sky
She watched her plans materialize
She waved her wand
The beautiful boat was gone
The sky grew dark
The sea grew rough
The boat sailed on and on and on and on
But Pufnstuf was watching, too
And knew exactly what to do
He saw the witch's boat attack
And how the boy was fighting back
He called his Rescue Racer Crew
As often they'd rehearsed
And off to save the boy they flew
But who would get there first?
But now the boy had washed ashore
Puf arrived to save the day
Which made the witch so mad and sore
She shook her fist and screamed away
H.R. Pufnstuf, who's your friend when things get rough?
H.R. Pufnstuf, can't do a little, 'cause you can't do enough
Ending Theme Lyrics:
Whoa, I got, you got, everybody do got
Someone who cares by the name of
H.R. Pufnstuf, where'd you go when thing get rough?
H.R. Pufnstuf, well, you can't do a little 'cause you can't do enough
I asked jeeves tonight how I could get rich quick. I need to be rich, specifically, by mid-April, at which time it appears I will have a certain bill due that could do me in. I had to live on what I made after getting laid off last April. Lo and behold, time flies when you're living a couple projects at a time. And well, there's nothing in the old nest egg. So, I thought maybe Jeeves would have some ideas.
Anyone know about this survey taking stuff? Sounds easy enough for some extra cash. Sure sign it's bullshit, huh.
Perhaps I could become a con artist.
Dag. I don't live in Boston, or maybe I could be an anti-racism trainer. I'd bring in lots of funk, talk about what President George Clinton has done for this country (before he got arrested for pot possession) and stuff like that. I'd make up a snappy slogan. "Racism Sukkks." Something like that.
There must be something.
Hmmmmm.
I am ready to embrace the current dadministration's decision to invade mars. Not because I care one way or the other, but because I'm fantasizing about being on the rocket ship, around all that glorious white smoke. I picture myself riding underneath, sucking the burning snow-white smoke right out of those big rocket exhaust pipes. Let me bathe in rocket fuel, run inside the fading cloud puffs, walk the stream of smoke for miles, an endless tight rope.
To come down, it took a whole bag of Lindt Milk Chocolate balls, the ones in the red foil; ask for them by name.
I'm not talking about two or four. I'm talking a whole bag. I can't seem to stay awake. I am drowning in fine chocolate. And I don't care. I would have more, but they're all gone.
I'm fussy about my chocolate. Usually I hate the expensive kind. I like the milky kind, like the old Nestle bars in the red wrappers (not crunch, smooth) that I can't seem to find anymore. Like Dove milk chocolate. To me, no other candy bars are worth the effort it takes to chew them. Don't like brownies. Don't like chocolate ice cream much.
But oh lord, those Lindt balls tonight.
Lindt's milk chocolates are the closest thing I've found to my favorite childhood chocolate, which I also can't find anymore.
Ice cubes.
Do you remember them? Can you find me some? They were wrapped in foil, little squares of chocolate, and the dime stores sold them cold, out of the freezer, you'd take them home and put them in the freezer, and when they melted in your mouth, you were transported. Simply transported. Liquidy milky chocolate that plays with your tongue and toys with your teeth. WHAT MORE IS THERE?!
And tonight I was transported, I tell you. By those little red balls.
Tonight I thought I was the only freak on the planet who remembered Ice Cubes, craved them even. Then I checked Google and saw that there's a whole retro candy market. And a quick look at chocolate health facts tells me my Lindt balls might even be healthy for me.
Sweet justification.
The net is magical that way, isn't it?
So I decided to cut down today. Way down. Stopped at the drug store and checked out the different things available to help you quit. Never tried any before. Always cold turkey. But that's not so easy once you have a kid. Got to keep your senses about you. Can't lose your wits.
So I picked up $49 worth of gum. I dunno. Something like penance.
Was afraid of the patch. Direct line to the bloodstream and all. I don't understand it. Why not a valium patch? So you won't give a damn? Or why not sodium pentathol so you can just tell the world you have no intention of really going through with this, so forget about it.
thought of all the bad things it does to you.
had one on the way home.
got home, did other stuff. Tried to work. Got afraid of the gum. Afraid to unwrap it. It comes with an interactive CD that I was pretty sure I didn't want to see.
had one.
made more coffee. Did some more work. Coffee. Work.
had two.
went to sleep. Slept for almost four hours.
woke up feeling dead. Is this what it will be like? Thought if I had one it would help.
had one. Didn't help.
got jenna, took her to get her hair trimmed. She had a blast. Special conditioner, getting to sit under the dryer. Girls are lots of fun for moms.
had one.
got dinner, came home, played around, got jenna ready for bed, set up her bed tray so she could draw for a while, then laid down with her while she fell asleep.
leg pains. oh god this hurts. my stomach hurts. my thighs--owwwwwwwch. ouch! wtf!--twitch twitch. youch! arrrrgh.
still no gum. afraid of the gum.
why? still want to have a few more.
had two while on the phone.
feel like a rowboat in sludge.
feel like sludge.
will have one and then sleep.
Thanks, Mike, you made me laugh.
And in this post, you made me catch my breath because I thought it was beautiful:
Sometimes, when I'm driving alone at night, I still see the face of a girl that I had in the truck with me once. We were going somewhere to have fun... talking and laughing, listening to the stereo. I can see her face bathed in the green glow of the instruments, and it's almost like a part of her is still there, riding with me. It's a sad thought though, because I know that she'll never be there again.
But then I looked at the penguins and started cracking up again.
Deanies, take a look at this Edwards guy, and women voters especially, take a look at his interesting wife, Elizabeth. A recent article by Georgie Anne Geyer from the 16th discusses feminism and the 2004 election. A snippet:
Elizabeth Edwards, the outspoken wife of hunky Southern senator and trial lawyer John Edwards, for instance, is known to be most candid, whether giving forth on education or on critiques that, to many, she looks older than her boyish-looking husband. "I don't want to walk around and hear people say, 'Oh, look, there's John Edwards with his mother,'" she said recently.
Elizabeth Edwards' forthrightness does fit into the patterns of contemporary feminism. She is there with her man, but she is her own woman with her own ideas, her own jokes and her own digs at her critics.
As I said in my previous post, I liked Elizabeth's post over on the Edward's site. We'll see if she does more of that.
More importantly--there is no other Democratic candidate running who can make a dent against Bush in the South. None. Certainly not Dean. He can't win here--he blew it even before the confederate flag and rednecks comment. If the Democrats have the slightest chance of nudging Bush out, they must win the South.
Kerry can't win here. Dean can't win here. Clark can't win here.
But Edwards could.
The potential U.S. First Lady Edwards is penning her own posts and is not afraid to have comments turned on.
The children were still asleep on the pullout sofas, and he picked up his lazy wife (I got to sleep in until 7), kissed the children, and we went (with our nieces, Laura and Jordan) to Top Value Foods, an African-American owned business for a Martin Luther King event with Representative Wayne Ford, who, I have to tell you, gives one heck of an introduction.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. The lady is blogging. And pretty ballsy, considering the current state of the Dean fiasco.
Stavros, get her an invitation to the party forthwith!
declassified
I've never actually met the man
seen him in three dimensions.
Dream a little blog with me.
waxing and waning.
I've figured it out.
Not me alone.
You know.
But I think I figured out
the problem with the planet
Have your mute button ready.
My Dear Jenna,
I was reading
through my archives,
the posts that I've written here
I noticed something
that made me very sad.
There are days
when they should take
my laptop away.
this is one of them.
before any pain medicines
hit my veins, I wake up.
Between fits of laughter,
I think I heard him say something like,
"Help."
He asked
me to keep an eye
on his blog.
Okay. Well.
There's no telling
where your blog will wind up.
So. Then.
I have
a confession to make.
I hate feeling like I have to blog,
when I don't feel like it,
that the blog takes time
away from my family,
that blogging doesn't pay
that I have to blog so often
Still others are mere copies
of what we hear
on cable news
and talk radio,
which, in my mind,
is a waste
of good blog space.
Think about going
to the grocery store
Find anything else to do
instead
Blog Stop blogging
Get off the fucking couch
Get car keys and purse
Walk down the steps.
But the blog tugs at my pant leg.
Comeon, baby,
blog some more.
say something else.
So I gotta D+ today in getting along well with others.
Guess what. I'm doing the right thing. And you know how I know? Because I'm going to a PARTY!
And it's a wondercchickenparty, yes a wonderchicken party, and a wonderchicken party don't STOP!
Come on, come over. Go read Stavros TWC this minute. If you never read another post in your natural briefcasecarrying life, read this one.
You want to know what a weblog is? Risk.
Blogging IS risk. If you have $omething riding on blogging, $omething hanging on the words of others besides your soul and sweat and tears, then you lose. You lose. You aren't a blogger.
TELL IT TO EM STAVROS!
Risk it.
Otherwise this place becomes another safe, sanctified institution, controlled, where top takes control and voice takes a seat at the back of the bus.
And no one's allowed to turn it into that.
No. One.
Stavros took me back, today, to what it means.
TO WHAT IT MEANS TO BLOG.
And it couldn't have come at a better time.
If we had a web museum, this post would be there. This should be required reading. Link to it. All of you. Anyone with a fucking soul left in your body, link to it.
At least, Go. Read.
It was, for a while, as if we were all fans of the punk, you see, together out there on the floor, drenched in sweat, pogoing, hurling beer cans, singing along, not really caring which band was up on the stage, just loving the hum and the throb and the tribal feeling of it all. Now it feels as if many of us have become fans of various specific bands, or have started our own and are struggling to gather our own crowds, or have decided to just keep it in the garage where it belongs, and damn having an audience. We don't have time to go to each others' gigs anymore. When everyone is in a band, there's no one left to watch the shows.
Let him tell you.
STAVROS on weblogging then and now:
The weblogging gangs of old, the ones I felt a part of, well, they still are loosely bound, but the threads are so thin now that they are almost invisible.
It's only punk rock, but we like it.
I had, at the age of 18, though, not yet discovered that there were tens or hundreds of thousands of others with the same sorts of unpleasant societally-discouraged aberrations, and they'd been gathering together and making this mad, loud, ramshackle, gloriously angry music for years already.
STAVROS SAYS, "These people will destroy your soul. Classification is for insects" THAT'S WHAT STAVROS SAYS.
Weblogs are a party, damn it, and sometimes they're publications too, or instead, and sometimes they're diaries, sometimes they're pieces of art, sometimes they're tools for self-promotion, sometimes they're money-maknig ventures, sometimes they're monuments to ego, sometimes they're massive wanks, sometimes they're public services, sometimes they're dedications of faith, sometimes they're communities. Always, they are a public face, one chosen and crafted to varying degrees, of the people who write them. They are avatars, masks, or revelations of our deepest selves. They are political or philosophical, merrily inebriate or sententiously sober. Do not listen to those who would tell you what they are not.
Look for your teachers among the thorny trails and pricker bushes, people.
Although its public face may suck pretty bad for a while, and you may need to dig a bit deeper to find its soul, there will always be those in the Fields of Blog who will tell you what they really think, and some of those will move you while doing it, regardless of how well they write. And they'll do it without having to look over their shoulders. 'cause it's a fucking party, pops, and you're invited.
And in the swill of an empty bottle.
I will post later though.
in the mean time see shelley, misbehaving, mamamusings, and rageboy for context clues.
and stavros too.
but more about him later.
sorry--gotta RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
--zardatha, the badass witch of the south.
This is just wonderful, Halley. I'm so happy that you see and that you will tell us more and more stories. I'm so happy for that!!
You don't want to. But you just have to.
Microsoft's got a job with his name on it.
Ballmer, for old time's sake.
Having fun searching my site tonight. oh the simple joys of blogging. When we were rounding the corner, coming out of 2001, I made some wildass predictions for 2002. Well, they didn't all come true exactly as I planned, but some were pretty close:
Some iteration of instant messaging and chat functions will merge with blogs for folks to talk amongst themselves--taking 'blogback' to the next level.
--now known as Joi Ito's IRC channel.
More idiots will begin blogging, annoying the hell out of blog pioneers and increasing the velocity of insult hurling.
--I cop.
Doc Searls will announce the first blogger wedding mid-year, when friends who met blogging decide to tie the knot. The conception of their first child will be bloggerized. RageBoy will be all over that shit.
--Well, at least the first part was right. Still waiting for part two (or else send me the link).
More celebrities will jump on the blog bandwagon.
--Holy cow, just take a hop over to my favorite campaign blog to see how far we've come down that road.
RageBoy and Winer will go at it again, likely using biological and chemical weapons this time. There will be no winner, but lots of memes.
--Does "that asshole dave winer" ring a bell?
Corporations will get wind that employees are blogging during work hours and issue anti-blogging policies.
--Check. And even fire bloggers (or the more popular option, send them to lepper colonies).
Smart companies will get wind that employees are blogging during work hours and imagine the possibilities.
--Well, there's always 2005. But seriously, I'm sure some have. Leave me a link.
A major motion picture will feature a character who blogs. The character will be a psychopathic alcoholic intellectual head case. The part will be offered to Jack Nicholson, who will turn it down because bloggers don't get cute chicks.
--shhhh. i'm working on the novel. shhhhh.
Some company, somewhere, will take Gonzo Marketing to heart and underwrite some blog, somewhere, somehow. Please.
--see above. shhhh.
Community blogs--or "party blogs" like Gonzo Engaged--will grow in residents and in numbers, morphing into their own form of blogging. These forms will separate from one-man blogs, which will lean more toward journal and journalism than community.
--Oh boy, that's a loaded gun right about now. No comment.
David Weinberger will stop blogging again, only to start again in 2004.
--My crystal ball must have broken. David's STILL going strong! (...you see, you kind of had to be there. when david started blogging again, he had this funny award he gave himself for being the winner of time between posts or something... anyway, it was funny. This was before his template was all about oranges and browns...)
That wraps up my psychic abilities in a nutshell. All in all, not too shabby I'd say.
That's right, you see that big google tool bar up there? well, I don't know fancy code, and I don't know any other way of doing this without the google toolbar--which I don't think all the folks who come here have--so I'm putting a big-ole "search this site" box at the top of this blog. Do you like it?
I do.
Last week, folks were remembering the post I had about the blogger's place in the woods I once wrote about--a year and a half ago now? more?--but there wasn't an easy way to go find it. I don't have categories for my posts. I don't have fancy archives. And when I look at my archive page now, it feels impenetrable. Lots of dates, but are dates what make what I've written important? No. Not for any of us. Its what we said, to whom, when, why, and the state of the state at the time.
Now, the next time I want to remember that place in the woods, I just search up "woods" and "pond" (two memorable things from that "sweet world" post) using the simple-dimple site search up top, and I get what I was looking for, and more.
There has to be a better way, or a consistent way, for new bloggers and blog readers in general to refer to what us blog elders have written over the last two or three or four years. Can we encourage this? And if so, how?
It's frustrating to see cogent discussions come up on some of the newer, and very popular, weblogs without those doing the discussing referencing anything cogent from one of their more aged brothers or sisters. Instead it's a circle-jerk-link-fest among those involved. And that's cool, if that's what floats your boat. For the historical context of these discussions alone, though, I think we should start making the effort to thread conversations backward every once in a while, to give layers to our context by referencing some of the thinking that has already been done (and re-done) on a given topic. Otherwise the blogworld starts to sound like this:
"Blogging helps us connect with others in new ways; the blogworld is a web of connections built upon conversation."
"Blogging helps us connect with others in new ways; the blogworld is a web of connections built upon conversation."
"Blogging helps us connect with others in new ways; the blogworld is a web of connections built upon conversation."
"Blogging helps us connect with others in new ways; the blogworld is a web of connections built upon conversation."
Okay. That's nice. That's fine.
But why not see what those of us who've been around here for a while have said about it. Why not look back at some of our posts on women and blogging (gender issues), technology, PR, love, hate, debate, weblogging, whatever the topic of the moment is.
Just something I've been thinking about. In our race forward, I think we've forgotten--me included--to keep an eye on where we've come from and how our thinking and voices have evolved. To do that, we have to be able to track back in a larger and more meaningful way.
But I'll start with my little google search box, and take it from there.
"hey, he called me," and "what invitation?"
I love Jimmy Carter. I was thinking earlier today, before I saw this, that if Jimmy Carter were king of the world, the real world would be like the blog world (once was), with everyone just talking things out like plain folk and solving what problems we could or agreeing to disagree and talk another day.
More...
I googled carter on dean and found that Jimmy's been pretty consistent. That's because Jimmy's never been political, but honest. Those two things don't jive.
In a snippet from this interview, blogged on Clark's site, I'll grant you, Carter said this about Dean and the South--a topic that has been close to my heart. Jimmy knows:
MATTHEWS: And so what is your feeling about a possible Democratic nominee who voted against you?
CARTER: Well, Chris, I can forgive Wesley Clark, but my wife can't.
(LAUGHTER)
CARTER: So that's the difference.
(CROSSTALK) CARTER: But all I want to say....
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: That sounds like a deal breaker. That sounds like a deal breaker to me.
CARTER: Well, next year, as the thing comes to a close, whichever Democratic candidate seems to be the most likely to marshal the support to defeat George Bush next November, that’s the one whom I will support. Right now, of course, it does look like Wesley Clark--excuse me-it does look like Dean is going to prevail. But nobody knows yet what is going to happen when you get to the South, when you get to South Carolina and other places. I think Howard Dean has got a long way to go down there. After he made his unfortunate statement about pickup trucks and the Confederate flag, he called me and asked me my advice, which is not very good, perhaps, how to get out of that quandary.
And I'll bet you a pig to a penny that Jimmy said, back then, you ought to get your lilly white behind down here and see what not-vermont looks like. Then I'll tell you how to get yourself out of that jam. And I bet you a pig to a penny that Dean tucked that away in his politician's billfold like a fresh twenty. And as the campaign churns, it becomes, "Jimmy invited me--I had to go." Lying sack of excrement.
The best thing about Dean is is wife, and even she doesn't want to be around him much.
Dedicated to the Yo-Ho-Ho of JOHO, this post from RB today is exquisite in unwrapping the AI-Mind-Heart-Fibula connection and then throwing the wrapping paper all over the living room.
As I suspected I would, I loved David's response, especially where he calls RageBoy "sly boots."
What's not to love about that? AI can't love. But Chris and David can.
Shelley's a hurting unit, both from her physical fall and attacks by weblog-disdaining hackers. That just isn't fair. But she's out and about with her camera, which is one good way to fight back.
I'm not sure if she noticed the progression, or if it was intentional, but I like how Halley followed this post with these two.
She brought a little love into her day after all.
AKMA might agree?
Think of Halley tomorrow when you hear some silence in the blogworld during her eye surgery. I can't believe she won't be posting under anesthesia. Can you imagine the links we'd have to follow?
Anyhow, I'm rooting for you, girl.
An editor's editor, Sol Stein has provided advice to writing giants. Wouldn't hurt us bloggers to incorporate some of it either.
I like what Stein advises here:
Stein's formula, 1+1=1/2, designed to remind writers that conveying the same matter more than once in different words diminishes the effect of what is said. If the same matter is said in two different ways, either alone has a stronger effect.
I liked this advice.
ooops.
;-)
Dean Landsman has a dilemma, along with a case of whiplash of the heart I'm familiar with. Dean has had a long-time business relationship with a particular business partner, who, in the midst of a heated argument with Dean a few days ago, resorted to racial slurs. Dean, thankfully, spares us what the guy called him or told him, but gives a good description of how it feels to find out that someone you've known a long time thinks about you in a way you never thought they would. In other words, the insult is all the worse because you like the person, or you thought you did:
From a source so surprising. A friend, or so I thought. A colleague, someone I?ve known for years. Done business with him, shared war stories, considered a friend, an associate, a colleague. Always had a sense of trust, of him being a person of substance, of honor, all those worthy things. Respectable. A decent guy.
It's a betrayal of a special kind. It has happened to me, has happened to George more overtly. It is a particular form of racism that I think is more prevalent in the north, especially the northeast, than in the south, where they call a spade a spade, so to speak.
Dean is looking for feedback, because, as misfortune or fortune would have it, his livelihood at this moment is entwined with this one-time friend.
I have to think about this myself. I hate remembering this kind of bullshit. It enrages me.
Saturday morning humor-reality break. BLAHAHAHA!
The only reason I haven't written about this latest insanity of the current dadministration is that I thought my head might explode. They ought to just put me in charge of the national budget. What's the diff? I don't know where zero is either.
I was thinking about my old neighborhood tonight. Not "old" as in the last place we lived, but old as in when I was a kid. After my father died, my mother had to sell our farm in Penfield, New York, and we moved to a modest surburban house in Irondequoit. Actually, right here. Wow. There it is. Star marks the spot.
I lived there from age 6-16, my growing up period. Tonight I'm thinking about some of my friends in the neighborhood. My elementary school on Briarwood. Riding my bike up to the plaza on Titus Ave.
They're really close tonight, these remembrances. I wonder why.
Heather and I met when we were in second grade. By fourth grade we were smoking at the school playground anytime we could sneak there. She was my best friend. I haven't seen her in 25 years, but I remember her from the platform sandles to the bone-straight hair. I remember when she permed it--I thought that was so cool. I remember when her acne went insane, and years later when she got skin treatments that made it go away, I remember our clothes, her cotton shirt, I remember teaming up to take packs of cigarettes from the grocery store, I remember the way she walked--that kind of walk some teenage girls have where they swing their arms like they're bowling with both hands.
I hope she's doing okay. I miss ya Heather.
We were in fourth grade. I had gotten creative the night before, borrowed my mother's driver's license, and made such a presice replica--even pasted a little photo of me on it--that when I showed it to David Hartman in Mrs. Bush's class, he screeched. Out loud. In the middle of class.
"She has a license, Mrs. Bush! She can drive!!!! Look! Look! (turning to me) show it to her!"
I stuffed it in my pocket and looked innocent.
David got yelled at and I was glad I had my license.
She was bigger than me in fifth grade and could punch harder. She was the only one who could make me wince from a punch in the arm. Buckle at the knees even. Sue. The only kid I was ever afraid of. She was a born leader. I wasn't easily persuaded as a kid unless it was to do something I wanted to get in trouble for anyhow. But when Sue said "this is what we're doing," then that is what we did.
We were more mature physically than our classmates. We both had our period in fifth grade. She showed me what tampons were and told me how to use them instead of cumbersome pads and belts. Yes, young ones, they didn't have stickum on the bottom 'back in the day.')
I lost touch with Sue once we moved to Virginia when I was 16. We moved back to Rochester a year or two later. I called her on the phone once, but we didn't have much in common anymore. Sue was still bossing people around and looking for trouble. I never ended up getting together with her.
I wonder where she is now. She was a born leader. Probably in some consulting firm someplace getting there early and staying late.
Maybe she's blogging.
Life is strange.
remember earlier when I was all swoony over the sleep I got this morning? Yah, well, it turned out to feel more like a nap after all. I found my dark place after all.
I was talking to a friend yesterday who has baby number one on the way. Four more weeks. I remembered what that time was like, and he confirmed what I remembered:
what on earth will we do with a baby?
like right here--it will be right here with us, all the time.
right now I'm getting the cream out of the refrigerator--but pretty soon a baby will be here too. what? how does that work?
what if i screw up. what if i screw up bad?
what if i never sleep again?
Of all the things I worried about, sleep is the only one that's turned out to be the bear I thought it would. Sleep. Restful sleep. Sleeping in. Not being woken up, but waking up.
That goes away, unless you have a night nurse or nanny or something. I didn't. Just a baby, now a child, who doesn't like to go to sleep and doesn't like much to stay asleep, unless, I have now discovered, it's a school day.
Today after I dropped Jenna off at 8:00, I did something I haven't done in years. I came home, went back to sleep, and slept til noon. Now here's the thing. I could have stayed asleep all day. My skin, my brain, my muscles, my breathing--so relaxed, so happy for numbing-nothing-soft-movies-playing-in-my-brain daytime sleep. It was wonderous. It felt like a Bills-game Sunday from my pre-mom, pre-hussle-and-bussle Atlanta life. All that was missing was a tray of nachos in the bed.
Don't get me wrong, I've taken an afternoon nap or two in my day, but I'm a very poor napper. I usually wake up suicidal. I don't know why--it has always been that way. Sleeping in = good feelings. Napping = hurl-self-off-building feelings.
This morning was all good feelings.
Nice. Soft. Pillowlicious sleep. Covers and pillows and comforters. Cotton and flannel. Quiet. Shh. Move in and out of dreams as I wish, twist dreams from sad to sweet, then wake up slowly, a little at a time, think about it, tease myself awake, no jolts, just peaceful waking.
Now I'm ready for anything.
But what I want is to go back to sleep.
You all know by now of my frustration with Jenna's school and the kindergarten class and teacher. They've made me so angry over the last several months that is difficult for me to view incidents through a fair and balanced lens--like I would if the school didn't suck, for example. But it does suck. Anyway, let me run this by you.
The last two days the students in Jenna's kindergarten have been talking about Dr. Martin Luther King. [[my bias voice--yah, the teachers are all excited about it because they get monday off]]. I would estimate that discussions about Dr. King have totaled a maximum of 20 minutes--10 each day--and that's being generous.
Yesterday when I picked Jenna up and we were driving home, she asked me about Dr. King. Told me how he wanted everything to be fair, for brown people and peach people to respect each other, and that they put him in jail for his good ideas. She began sobbing, weeping.
"Mommy--did you know that a man shot him with a gun and killed him? He's dead because a man shot him. Oh mommy, when the teacher told us that I wanted to cry, i wanted to cry all day but I couldn't because no one else was sad, and a few minutes after the teacher laughed, but I still felt soooo sad. Why? Why did that happen?"
Sob, cry.
I comforted her, told her it was okay to be sad and to cry about it. I told her how his ideas are still with us and about how his family lives right here in Atlanta (a detail the teacher didn't provide) and that the King Center is here--how if she wanted to learn more we could go sometime, and stuff like that.
She stopped for a while, and then started asking about the man who killed him, and why did he do that, and what happened to him, and did I ever meet Dr. King or the man who shot him?
Bottom line, she was in tears on and off during the evening when she'd start thinking about what she learned. I didn't make a big deal about it, was just careful to walk the line between "it's okay to let it out" and distrating her with other things to do.
SO, my question is, am I insane or are there a WHOLE LOT of things you could teach in 15-20 minutes on MLK besides how he died. I mean, maybe you MENTION to kindergarteners that he died but his ideas live on. But do you REALLY need to tell 5-6 year olds--especially my idea-filled kid--that he was killed because of his ideas? Could we save that, maybe, for second grade? Do you NEED to tell them about the gun and being shot? Could you not spend what little time you have to teach it on what peace means, draw what a peaceful world looks like, talk about love, talk about equality, talk about other heroes of the civil rights movement?
COULD YOU LEAVE OUT THE PART ABOUT HIM BEING SHOT TO DEATH BY A MAN WITH A GUN?
Or am I the one with crazy ideas?
That's all I can figure. In reading and thinking today, I decided that the Deanies' rhetoric, phrasing, and tactics feel more like a high control group or cult than a campaign, I searched for Dean and Cult and found this article in the weekly standard (lower case on purpose).
I agree with it.
My life is a wash.
Shelley is right--the noise is too loud.
The day I agree with a two-page article in a conservative rag like the weekly standard is obviously the day I should start watching the sky for the grand finale.
It's okay. I'm ready.
Are you?
In the event that the world does not end in 23.6 seconds, and that Dean loses in November, trust me, there will be Nikes and Kool-Aid. I am ready to start a poll now on the number of building jumpers.
Proof to you that I've gotten very ill from all of this.
Talk about a double bind: dean or bush, dean or bush, battery acid or death by fire. There is officially no answer. Except to move. Far. Away.
If I live to see the 24th second after this post, I am going to go spend a good deal of online time here in Georgia's virtual library. With free books and free databases that reconnect me with the minds and words and voices of individuals. I took Jenna back to the realworld library tonight and came home with a tote bag of books. I'm so excited. There is something comforting these days about the static page. At least to me.
I'll see you in the stacks.
Shelley's back, sounding justifiably frustrated by threads and cords that are winding together on the net in a way that is choking the written voice of the individual.
I can't disagree with a word. While I haven't been plagued by the comment spammers who seem to have found their new killer ap in MT's comment system, I understand what Shelley is saying about seeing in them something we can envy -- their twisted spin on an ability we as bloggers used to have.
They watch, they interpret, and then they do their dirty deed. They're paying attention.
Shelley is right about the current state of weblogging, where the roar of the blog collective is drowning out our individual voices. Just as we numbed out after decades of bombardment by mass media (and so we came here), so too the blogworld goes bigtime. It's not good enough to simply read and write and resonate. We've come to look for the next sensation, thrill, influencer, conference, must-do, must-attend, gotta meet.
Yes, I do think a divide is emerging within a medium that attracted us initially by its flatness--no one really weilding any more power than another except through the quality of their writing and ideas and the strength and power of their individual voice.
You see, there was nothing to gain through blogging in the early days. It was my voice informing her voice informing his voice: our whole was greater, but our parts were pretty cool too. There was nothing to lose, specifically, or to benefit from. There weren't as many pundits and VCs and CEOs and politicians and top dogs playing. WE were all top dogs by virtue of being someplace those types weren't.
Now bloggers fly hither and yon for conferences, for meetings, to campaign for the latest answer to humanity's (that's US humanity, of course) ills. And the physically connected bloggers create this new hyper/physical space where they talk and move and network and exchange money--and where does that leave our online space and those of us who choose not to ride the blog train?
I have met two bloggers and one lovely blog-spouse: Halley and AKMA and Margaret. I wouldn't trade meeting them for the world. They are unique and individual and wonderful. There are also bloggers I talk to by phone, some regularly and some once in a while.
Equally as important to me, there are some webloggers whose voices I've never heard but who are in my thoughts frequently, some who I may never meet. And yet I know them the way I always have, and I like something about the constant of those relationships--the lack of expectation that they ever be anything else. In this world, that is nice.
Part of my recent voicing of my distate for Howard Dean, I confess, has everything to do with electing him as President of the webloggers association, and my fears over what it will do to blogging if he wins. I can already hear the weekend political shows, the nightly news, and their spin on how the Internet, a weblog particularly, elected our next President. Instead of a partnership among human beings who also happen to have professions, we will become a "target market." What do bloggers like to drink? Try Mountain Dew for Bloggers!
What do you think that will do to our neighborhood? Mainstream media and advertising will be parking on our lawns, running over our pets and kids, and creating mainstream mayhem out of what used to be a beautiful path through a secret forest.
Neither Shelley or I can change the things we wish we could. Not saying we'd change the same things, but in our inability to even make a dent in what is becoming the "establishment" of weblogging rests a common frustration. I recognize my frustration when I read of hers.
It can make a broad grumpy.
So, Shelley, I hope you'll stay for a while and keep writing and saying what you think. You always make me think a little deeper. I just wish it didn't make me so sad sometimes.
I was thinking today as I put the dishes in the dishwasher--have I mentioned our garbage disposal has been broken for a month or so? the perils of life in suburbia--anyway, I was thinking about how long it will be before we have to clean up after all the abandoned blogs on the net. Confess--even you've started blogs you don't post to anymore. Right?
I must have about a dozen. I mean to clean them up. I think about deleting them sometimes, but I'm attached to some of them. I like the names of some of them: humansfirst.blogspot.com, hyperlinkedmom, instapoet, webeyes. I like the templates I fiddled with on some of them. But there are at least five of them that I know I won't post to again. I don't need them. But I don't delete them either.
What am I waiting for?
I'm waiting for the blogspot amnesty program, like those gun amnesty programs when folks with spare firearms hanging around can turn them in, no questions asked, and get ten bucks or a certificate for a free pizza.
What say, google? When will you be ready to make it worth our while to tidy up your servers, the web, by turning in dead and abandoned weblogs? What if we narc on a friend--do we get two free toppings on our pizzas? Hey, I wouldn't complain.
Either that, or I'm waiting for ICANN to ad a .blog extension for domain names. I mean really, we have .TV for crying out loud. How bout a .blog?
Or might that be redundant in five years? Will every site be a weblog? Or will every weblog be a site?
Whatever happens, I'm hanging on to my dead blogs for now. I'm holding out for extra cheese, mushrooms, onions, and banana peppers.
Something I've been stewing about (without writing about it) regarding Howard Dean made a showing today, (see here too) and doesn't it color me red to see Al Sharpton take the words right out of my mouth on Dean not having clue one about America's other half.
Really, it was this article on Africana.com done the day before Dean appologized for the confederate-flag-waving-redneck-in-a-pickup-truck comment that made me say: This dude sounds like a New Englander who's never been anyplace else.
In the Africana.com interview, Dean was asked about his redneck comment this way: "To a lot of people your comments about being the candidate for the guys with Confederate flags on their trucks seemed to be about catering to white southerners at the expense of black democratic voters."
[[Here, let me tell you what Dean might have said if he hadn't been trying to sound like Dean being "way cool" on the race issue: "What the hell are you talking about? Are you implying that blacks in the south are equal to rednecks, and that somehow I've elevated rednecks over blacks because I said I'm the man every redneck should vote for? Are you insane? What I was SAYING was that I'm the guy who can BRING conservative gun-toting rednecks and the blacks they despise together to vote for me, because I have a weblog."]]
The fact is that Dean has no clue about the southern half of the U.S., as evidenced in his confederate flag comment, and in his case the south means anything located geographically below Massachusetts. He ran a state that is 98-percent white, and had no diversity on his cabinet, and thinks it counts that he had a lone member of one minority group or another sitting somewhere on the fifth floor during his administration.
OH BUT WAIT! He wants to take America back. (That's not black, that's b-a-c-k.) I forgot.
Anyway...
What Dean did say is this:
That's mostly people twisting around my words. I gave a speech last February where I said it's time for white guys from the South who drive pick up trucks to vote with us because their kids don't have healthcare either.
Okay folks. Let me run that by you again. Ready?
I gave a speech last February where I said it's time for white guys from the South who drive pick up trucks to vote with us because their kids don't have healthcare either.
Either?
You mean because all blacks in the south are uneducated, unemployed, and are without health insurance Howard?
Holy! Only a Vermonter can get away with saying that. Okay, let's move on:
What I'm trying to do is rebuild the alliance that Franklin Roosevelt put together of working class white southerners and working class African Americans in the South, because all the progress that we've made in this country had to do with when black voters, white voters and brown voters vote together.
Typical deanspeak, which when translated means: "What I'm trying to do is get elected. I'm trying to get elected."
For white voters in the South to be voting for a president who gave $26,000 in tax cuts to the top 1% when they don't even make $26,000 is abysmal. The Democrats have got to bring in white working class voters. I think the biggest misconception is that that this will be at the expense of African American voters. I think that's completely false."
Exactly who's conception is this? Does anyone think that 1) conservative working class whites in the south are the ones driving pickup trucks with confederate flags in them? Please tell me only Howard Dean thinks this. Please tell me you don't think this. and 2) That southern blacks would run screaming from the polls if they saw confederate-loving white boys voting for howard dean?
African American voters have supported this party to the tune of 92, 96%. Nobody in my administration is ever going to turn their back on African American voters, but we have to broaden this base if we're going to start winning in the South and there's no reason not to win in the South.
Deanslation again: "I'm trying to get elected here. I would never turn my back on any constituencey that votes democratic 92-96% of the time. But blacks and browns alone aren't enough to get me elected. I need poor whites too. Asian? What's an Asian?
Another question--check this out: George W. Bush filed an amicus brief in the University of Michigan case regarding affirmative action ? how would you respond to attempts to end race as a factor in educational and hiring decisions?
I'm a strong supporter of affirmative action. I say in my speeches that I think it's important for white politicians to talk to white audiences about race and I do that in a way that nobody else does. I understand that's a controversial comment, but I stick by it. What I talk about is the unconscious bias that everybody has toward hiring people like themselves. I talk about the Wall Street Journal study that showed that a white person with a drug conviction is more likely to be called back for a job interview than a black person with a clean record. As long as that kind of behavior goes on, we need to have an open dialogue on race in this country and it needs to be led by white politicians because it's often white people who are unaware of their own biases ? as everybody has ? I mean, black people have unconscious biases too, but since white people do most of the hiring we need to have a nation-wide dialogue including everybody about the unconscious biases that we have. Since there's a disproportionate number of white folks doing the hiring, it results in institutional, if unintended, racism.
Again, one more time with feeling:
I mean, black people have unconscious biases too, but since white people do most of the hiring we need to have a nation-wide dialogue including everybody about the unconscious biases that we have. Since there's a disproportionate number of white folks doing the hiring, it results in institutional, if unintended, racism.
Did he just say that having more blacks in HR would solve joblessness among blacks? Does this guy live in America? And has this guy worked--I mean, like, in a job? I guess since he's a doctor, maybe not. Because, you see, he thinks that because white people do most of the human resources work in American corporations, if we can just make White HR Managers more sensitive to their biases, that might help blacks get jobs?
Does he know how many minorities work in HR? Does he know that, um, HR isn't making the hiring decisions in most organizations? That their job is to get folks in for interviews with people who do make hiring decisions--you know, the ones who don't want to hire blacks? Does he have any idea of the depth of these issues aside from what they mean to his campaign?
Come on!
And the worst part--and I do mean the worst part--is that the interviewer didn't ONCE challenge him, make him back up, make him explain. That's when Dean gets in trouble. When he has to explain what he means.
Look, I don't have time to go through this point by point. But you blacksfordean and africanamericansfordean need to have a talk with your man, maybe take him around the south for a while before he gets here. Something. ANYTHING.
Otherwise you'll never get those whiteguysinpickupsfordean where you want them.
(BTW, did blacksfordean and africanamericansfordean move up to featured sites on blogforamerica today, in light of the Sharpton comments, or have they been up there all along--I don't remember. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. Or is it.)
Others weigh in here and here. But it gets way better over here.
as yet untitled
Talk, would you?
Mahogany legs
thick, sculpted
and just enough
of an edge
at the base
to slice a finger or
passing toe.
At six, seven, eight
nothing seemed wrong
with breaking off
the aging ivory tops
from the keys,
a square chip here
a triangle there,
amazed at the
configurations
I could make,
each one
its own way
of reminding me
which note
to play,
make
my own song
where shape
and sound converge.
At the end
of my afternoon lessons
I'd close the top
around the keyboard
so no one could see
the damage I'd done,
how many keys
I'd deformed this day
by picking off
the pieces.
That need I had
to snap
just one more edge
of white.
High C
shouldn't have been
that hard to
find.
The imprint
of my father's fingers
etched into the
end of every key,
where they yellowed
and tapered
to a thousand points
like teeth
or the serrated edge
of a knife.
Once ignited
the compulsion was
its own fuel.
Just one more
to even things out.
The notes I never learned,
but something more:
To take what his hands
had touched,
take it for my own.
And another:
the beauty of
smooth things made rough
and then smooth again -
the beauty of a solution, a cure.
It was after all
a kind of surgery.
I kept the broken tips
in a small box
like pieces of a puzzle
that would never
resolve.
In this way
a child makes sense
of her world.
That's how an indie networks. Yes, yes. These are the first weeks of the year, and it's slow as molassass around these parts, so Jeneane's puttin' on her networking shoes and saying hidey-ho to all the folks she ignored while she was so busy she couldn't see straight except to be crabby at night and fall fast asleep once her little girl was tucked in. Or blogging. Whichever.
There's nothing like checking in with the folks from whence you came to kick the new year into gear. And there's nothing funnier and more predictable than phone check-in's among the one-time laid off.
If you heard one end of the conversation, you'd hear something like this:
HELLO YOU! How are you? Happy frigging New Year! THANKS! Oh they're fine. Hanging in there. Too damn cold. What have you been up to? Oh it was busy--slow now. Yah, no kidding. Mmmhmm. Feels like August was. February's gonna suck. What do you have coming in? Daaaaag. I know. Heard from anyone at Ketchum? Is there anyone left? Ha ha ha! Oh shit. I know. Yep. Me too. Oh, no WAY! Yep. You too? Did you hear Drobis retired? Yah, well... That's for sure!!! He did what? She said what?! BLAHAHAHA!!!
Good for the soul.
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, looks to have some very interesting tidbits, including the O'Neill's rendition of events on how the planned invasion of Iraq for oil exploration (oh, yah, and to get rid of saddam) was in the works from day one of the Bush Dadministration. (dadministration is my word, not O'Neill's.)
In other words, we were going in with or without 9/11.
Which makes you go hmmmmm.
Here's some of what's in the book, according to the article:
"There are memos," Suskind told the network. "One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.'"
Suskind cited a Pentagon document titled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," which, he said, outlines areas of oil exploration. "It talks about contractors around the world from ... 30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq."
In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting asked why Iraq should be invaded.
"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'" O'Neill said.
Well, someone did. And now they can't find the guy.
Makes you go hmmmm.
Eight floors up
the balcony
wraps around
the stucco framed
building
like two small arms,
a child's hug.
You can see
the sun stretch
awake at dawn
if you stand
in just the right spot
at the left edge
where nothing
blocks the rush
of wind.
It's dusk,
move around
to the other side
push the forest green
lawn chair
pocked by cigarette embers
up against the cool rough wall
recline,
lock your heels on the edge
of the railing,
watch the sun kiss
the gulf goodnight.
Call me crazy, but I think I found a book cover for Halley in my spam.
This wonder drug lets you have sex up to 20 times a day.
I wonder what happens if you go for 21?
Okay. Well. There's no telling where your blog will wind up. So. Then. I have a confession to make to anyone who finds my blog through this page. You can probably guess what my confession is. So I'll keep it to myself. Until I have some good news to report. Soon.
Nobody does it better.
There was also, naturally, some typically lo-fi attempts at snowman construction; we passed one that was about three feet high, with a jaunty scarf and a carrot nose that, due to the slight melt, had fallen out of his face and landed in the thing's hands, giving the little guy the look of an albino dwarf suddenly stunned with the discovery of advanced syphilis. It was delightful.
Of course, skipping the trip into work might have been better.
The Rabbit gives the Rambler some writing advice, and I think they're both so super swell I want to squeeze them to pieces.
Some real good advice from Rabbit: "You write what you can write about in specific terms and leave the vague, big feelings for people who write and write and don’t get distracted by pizza constantly."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Dervala writes in her glorious style about migration's effects on the locals in her town in Ireland and about her own experiences as a non-resident alien in the U.S.
Gordon Cole has added another section to Griff's story on Electric Edge. Report #6 is here. If you haven't read through Griff's writings, you should. It's a piece of history captured through the art and the journaling of a gifted storyteller.
I find a beautiful sea snail shell and stow it for my little girl's cabinet, back in New York. Snow puts on his goggles, wraps our blankets tight about us, and we are off again at 55 m.p.h., all having the same unspoken feeling of wanting to Get the Hell out of here. Run through empty valley with high ranges of Sinai Mountains on either hand. Climbing all the time through the drifted wastes that some times sweep like tides across the black tarred road. 1430 reach the border of Palestine at El Auna Sbeita.
How Gordon hasn't been swooped down upon for a book deal on the life and legend of Griff, I don't know.
In blogging, as it is writing, we would do well to consider this instruction by example from Robert Louis Stevenson in The Art of Writing and Other Essays:
"Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself. In every properly constructed sentence there should be observed this knot or hitch; so that (however delicately) we are led to foresee, to expect, and then to welcome the successive phrases. The pleasure may be heightened by an element of surprise, as, very grossly, in the common figure of the antithesis, or, with much greater subtlety, where an antithesis is first suggested and then deftly evaded. Each phrase, besides, is to be comely in itself; and between the implication and the evolution of the sentence there should be a satisfying equipoise of sound; for nothing more often disappoints the ear than a sentence solemnly and sonorously prepared, and hastily and weakly finished. Nor should the balance be too striking and exact, for the one rule is to be infinitely various; to interest, to disappoint, to surprise, and yet still to gratify; to be ever changing, as it were, the stitch, and yet still to give the effect of an ingenious neatness."
I have to turn this from prose into poetry, becuse I can't help myself:
Communication may be made in broken words,
the business of life be carried on with substantives alone;
but that is not what we call literature;
and the true business of the literary artist
is to plait or weave his meaning,
involving it around itself;
so that each sentence, by successive phrases,
shall first come into a kind of knot,
and then, after a moment of suspended meaning,
solve and clear itself.
In every properly constructed sentence
there should be observed this knot or hitch;
so that (however delicately) we are led to foresee,
to expect, and then to welcome
the successive phrases.
The pleasure may be heightened
by an element of surprise, as,
very grossly,
in the common figure of the antithesis,
or, with much greater subtlety,
where an antithesis is first suggested
and then deftly evaded.
Each phrase, besides, is to be comely in itself;
and between the implication
and the evolution of the sentence
there should be a satisfying equipoise of sound;
for nothing more often disappoints the ear
than a sentence solemnly and sonorously prepared,
and hastily and weakly finished.
Nor should the balance be too striking and exact,
for the one rule is to be infinitely various;
to interest, to disappoint, to surprise,
and yet still to gratify;
to be ever changing, as it were,
the stitch,
and yet still to give the effect
of an ingenious neatness.
Now that's georgeous. Thanks to Project Gutenberg and Marek.
Aren't they? Thank goodness we have them blogging and shaping the world of Politics for us Girls.
Bush turns on the love juice for foreigners (the ones he doesn't want to kill) with his new immigration reform plan, which lets illegal immigrants legally work and live in the U.S. as long as they have a job that no American wants. Comments from political pundits have been mostly supportive:
Sean Hanity:
"Yes! Yes! Let's import the underclass! The more lackeys the better!"
Al Sharpton:
"You damn well know none of us will run drugs for Rush Limbaugh. That's right. Let them bring in Mexicans to do that job."
Rush Limbaugh:
"I've been looking for a new housekeeper to do my errands--the cooking, the cleaning, the scoring...."
Howard Dean:
"Trippi, check that blod thing--is it blod?--and let me know what I'm supposed to think."
Wesley Clark:
"I'm a GENERAL, dammit. A four-star GENERAL! Want to see the waistband on my new briefs?"
Dick Cheney:
"We have intelligence that leads us to believe that Mexico is harboring Bin Laden, and we're pretty sure he'll try to cross the border disguised as a construction worker. The key will be to screen every immigrant for kidney problems and dialysis machines."
Chico Melendez:
"I'm not scoring drugs for Rush Limbaugh or cooking Hepatitis Fajitas at O'Charlies. I'll stay here."
I hadn't seen this press release announcing Ford's newest SUV on steroids, the Exorbitant, before. The Exorbitant comes with a spare Explorer, for all those times you need a spare car in your car.
It's a hoot.
Thanks for pointing it out, Anthony.
On the seeming inability to bring Eastman Kodak Company into the future, Tuesday's article called Photo Finished on Slate hits several nails on the head. I wish it hadn't.
Among other things, the article says that Kodak never achieved leadership in the digital film era because It would also have required some imagination, which seems to be in short supply in Rochester.
Ouch. Sometimes the truth doesn't just hurt, it stings for a good long time.
As a former Rochesterian who spent nearly four years at Kodak, I can say this:
You had to be there.
It's difficult to describe the cultural phenomenon in that town that gave birth to and/or nurtured giants like Kodak, Xerox, and Baush and Lomb, and then failed to sustain those powerhouses into a connected world, a connected economy. It's tough to explain to outsiders. It really is. The reason for the resistance to progress isn't so simple. There are many layers, including the culture of Western New York, which bosts a population of hard working, resiliant citizens who still save for rainy days, of which there are approximately 362 each year.
Slate isn't new at Kodak bashing, and they're good at it. But they lack that thing I mentioned--an understanding of what made industry tick in Rochester for a very long time, and an understanding of the dynamics beyond statistics and strategies that have made them flounder.
For one, they never spent six months dragging themselves to work in six feet of snow and 20-degree weather. But that's not what I want to talk about in this post.
I will tell you one secret that Slate won't: The Kodak spinoff mentality of the mid-1980s was really ahead of its time.
Creating the venture capital arm called Eastman Technologies in the mid-80s meant that Kodak generously funded some innovative startup companies, like the one I worked for, Edicon Systems Division. The entrepreneurial design teams for the (dozen? I think--can't remember) venture companies were made up of thinkers, hard workers, scientists, patent-holders, and really brilliant, mostly passionate people. The brainpower and spirit of innovation at Edicon and the other Ventures in the late 80s and early 90s was real. I saw it. I felt it. There was, in truth, a dot-com spirit pre-dot-com, in those days. Ventures were staffed by the brightest and best from in and (more importantly) outside of the company in the beginning. Out-of-the-box (pun intended) thinkers who thought they could make a difference in the world, or at least in the world of technology and digital imaging.
If Kodak had launched Eastman Technologies ten years later, something would have popped for the old red and yellow box. I am 97-percent sure of that.
As it was, not a single one of those original venture companies lasted beyond the mid-90s. During my years at Edicon we had the distinguished honor of being the sole remaining Venture company. And when George Fisher took over--I remember meeting in the big conference room on State Street for his company-wide address when he joined--things got much worse. I remember when he came to Rochester from Motorola, he had to buy a house in Rochester.
Although none of the CEO-recruits wanted to live in Rochester, it was a requirement. Fisher sold his house in Chicago to move to Rochester only to find he couldn't find a house that cost enough initially to save him from capital gains. It's hard to find a house in Rochester that you can dump a couple of million on. That's not how we live up there. It's not practical.
With his citified ways, Fisher was a Rochester oddity who brought some fiscal discipline to the company at the expense of any remaining imagination, innovation, and spirit. It was innovation he was hired to bring, but he began with layoffs. So much for the "we can do it" attitude.
For me it was heartbreaking.
The layoffs in 1993-94 saw too many of my colleages--my friends, my collaborators, my co-conspirators--let go. Renegade GM Dave Rusin left, and in his place came Gary Clarke, a long-time Kodak insider with no good ideas I could discern.
And so, I took a job in Atlanta. In a sense, Kodak's inability to sustain or embrace change, to nurture the imagination of the talented, committed team at Edicon (where we still did care) is the reason I'm in Atlanta today.
It was clear by the late 90s that George Fisher hadn't turned out to be the panacea Kodak had hoped for.
I noticed that Kodak was giving the spinoff idea another shot in 2002 with Appairnet. I have no idea how that company is doing. But with a name like Appairnet, I have to wonder if Kodak is just now catching up with passe dot-com strategies of good ideas past. Or at least the branding.
I want Kodak to succeed. I really do.
But it's a tough culture there.
To move an inch takes, it seems, a decade.
Maybe by 2014?
The poor in this country aren't really that poor. And addicts in this country aren't really that addicted either, eh El Rushbo? 
You know, given that 90 percent of those now addicted to prescription drugs, illegally spending tens of thousands of dollars on them each month, illegally "doctor shopping," illegally obtaining them through the black market, and then hiding them under their mattresses so their wives don't find them, lest they end up publically humiliated and ordered to rehab, aren't really that addicted.
Mirror Mirror on the Wall
Who's in the most denial of all?
The entire state of Florida has just splashed into the sea of the absurd.
First, this story about a mother of four from Daytona Beach, who, thinking that the orange stains on the floor of her appartment, made by liquid dripping from the ceiling, were rust stains, completely missing the fact that there was a decomposing body in her attic, that is until three intruders ran into her attic while fleeing police and discovered the way-dead body.
Sure. Okay. Happens all the time.
Next, a 49-year-old music teacher from West Palm Beach is arrested for having a 19-month-long sexual relationship--read rape--with an initially-eleven-year-old boy.
In Sarasota, a nuclear scientist comes home to find his parents blown away, and, of course, in Winter Springs a woman is kidnapped, stuffed in her trunk, and driven around Seminole County until a call on her cell phone rouses her from her state of unconsciousness inside the trunk. She has better reception than I do.
All this while a Tallahassee Police Officer decides to play target practice with a deer in his yard, lies about it, and loses his job. He should have been shooting at this guy: a Cocoa, Florida, father who was arrested on Aggravated Child Abuse-Caging charges (Caging is a new one on me) for locking his three kids--2, 3, and 4 years old--in a bedroom by tying the door shut with a rope while he left the house for an hour or two or three or six.
In good news, a Gainseville man beat a sexual predator with an axe handle for touching his son. Unfortunately, the dad went to jail too.
If you live in Florida, run, don't walk, to the state line.
I have no real inclination--not probably even a right--to talk about politics here. I live as much as possible outside of the machine of politics and government because I don't see anything positive powering that machine, nor do I see any way to change or influence that machine. To me, its dysfunction is inherent. Call me names, hurl stones, whatever. Power and Greed thrive at the hierarchical top. Commander and Chief of a mighty nation is way up top.
I liked Jimmy Carter. I still do. I believe he was the only leader in my lifetime from outside the machine who remained outside. A kind, moral leader which rendered him a fairly ineffective leader. Funny how that works.
So, from someone who has only her own impressions to go by, here's my overview of the current political race for President of these disunited states:
I don't like Dean. He uses the Net in a way that scares me--or I should say, he has persuaded others to use their online influence and voices on his behalf in a way that disturbs me. It feels dirty. Sorry Dean lovers. Plus he's shifty eyed.
I don't like Clark. I think he's insane. I don't mean his ideas are insane. I mean I think he's insane. I think that Bill and Hilary think it would be easy to pull the puppet strings hanging down from Clark's arms and legs, and that he'd be easy for Hilary to unseat as the Democratic nominee in 2008, but that doesn't make old Wes sane.
I don't like Kerry. I think he's a statue impersonating a person.
I don't like Sharpton, although he's growing on me, and that is really, really scarey.
I don't like Bush or his conservative, hawkish agenda. I think he has some serious grandiosity issues related to what he believes his role in the world theater, Biblically, is. Self-annointed people bother me that way.
I don't see an answer here. Because answers are hard to find at the top. Only down here. And please don't tell me that's why Dean's down here. Because I won't believe you.
We have reason to be fearful and disappointed.
As you were...
That's what I wanted to say to the shopping cart lady at Publix.
It's like 40 below here (or it feels that way to me), and I'm trying to get into Publix (that's the grocery store), and she's got this plot to block me, screeching her empty cart to a halt right in front me so I have to slow down to an inch-at-a-time crawl as I'm trying to make my way INTO the store, and so I go to the left, and I guess she's trying to get out of my way, but instead she goes to the left too, and she's looking at the sales flyer instead of paying attention to the other customers who would like to, before they freeze into ice statues, get INTO the store... And WHY is she so adamant about looking at the flyer before she even gets into the store? Can she not wait to be, perhaps, all the WAY into the store to peruse the sales? And so I go to the right, and she's like DRUNK DRIVING this shopping cart because she's too busy trying to see how much half-and-half will cost her this frosty evening, and so, of course, she blocks my way yet again, and all I want to do for crying out loud is get INTO Publix and over to the ATM machine so I can withdraw a lousy $20, which I'll now probably have to spend as a Co-Pay when I go to Emergency to have them sew back on my FROSTBITTEN FINGERS! So FINALLY, mind you AT LAST, I get around Ms. Queen of Publix, and I start making my way to the ATM machine just in time for her to be all of a sudden in a hurry and decide that the best place for her to be at this moment is ON MY ASS all the way to the ATM.
For crying out loud, Lady, get a life!
I silently wished her a terminal case of agoraphobia, got my money, and hightailed it to my car.
I'm glad to be HOME.
why on earth did I find myself humming this five minutes ago? WTF? And why "an Indian chief" anyway?
car wash
Ooh ooh
You might not ever get rich
But let me tell ya it's better than diggin' a ditch
There ain't no tellin' who you might meet
A movie star or maybe even an Indian chief
(Workin')
At the car wash
Workin' at the car wash, girl
Come on and sing it with me
(Car wash)
Sing it with the feelin' ya'all
(Car wash, girl)
Ooh!
Some of the work gets kinda hard
This ain't no place to be if you planned on bein' a star
Let me tell you it's always cool
And the boss don't mind sometimes if you act the fool
At the car wash
Whoa whoa whoa whoa
Talkin' about the car wash, girl
Come on, ya'all and sing it for me
(Car wash)
Oooh oooh oooh
(Car wash, girl)
(Work and work)
Well, those cars never seem to stop coming
(Work and work)
Keep those rags and machines humming
(Work and work)
My fingers to the bone
(Work)
Can't wait till it's time to go home (?)
(Hey, get your car washed today)
Fill up and you don't have to pay
Come on and give us a play
(Do the wash, right away)
(The car wash)
Talkin' 'bout the car wash
Car wash, girl
Come on, ya'all, let's sing it with me
(Car wash)
Sing it with feelin', ya'all
(Car wash, girl)
Whoa whoa whoa whoa
(Car wash)
Never seem to stop comin'
What'd I say
Keep those rags and machines hummin'
(Car wash)
Let me tell you, it's always cool . . .
Frank had to put his longtime companion Maggie down this week. What a wonderful portrait of her he paints with words and stories. Respect, Frank. I have a fondness for pet owners who return the wonderous, unconditional love of their pets by making the kind and selfless decision that's the one of the hardest to make--deciding that it's time to say goodbye.
It's cold here. I know, lows in the 20s and highs in the 40s doesn't sound cold to those of you stuck in the Northeast, Midwest, or Northwest. But relative to my now-too-thin-southern-style blood, it's freeeezing.
When did I turn into a whimp? I can't pinpoint it. It happened when I wasn't looking.
I think it was sometime during the summer, maybe around June of my 9th year in Atlanta. Swimming and sun were the order of the summer, and suddenly for the first time in my life I didn't get hot in 80-degree weather. It felt pleasant. Warm. Nice. Soothing. Sometimes even chilly.
Growing up in Western New York, making human chains with neighborhood kids so we'd get to first grade without any of us falling into a seven-foot snowbank, left undiscovered until May, I liked the cold, the snow, the layers of clothing, the three pairs of gloves so one dry pair was always waiting, the standing on the heat duct itching the hives on my legs which plagued me after a morning of sledding.
But no more. I've turned Southern. It's just a fact. The heat's been on 75 all winter and I still can't get under enough covers. I'm dreaming of a retirement villa in Florida. Or better yet, a lotto win and a year-long reservation here, with home schooling in the mornings and an endless supply of nannys and friends and water and sun and fun for Jenna.
You want to go too. I know you want to go. So who's buying the lotto ticket this week?
Last one into the pool is a rotten egg!
No, not a spam headline. This is from the land where truth is stranger than fiction.
Over on Monkey Span there's some creative advice you Corporate Comm types might want to consider.
Now, the guys at Monkey Span think the creative of the breast feeding mom with one arm cradling the babe and the other hand on the keyboard isn't the best way to market a Web hosting business. I suppose it really depends on what demographic they're going for. Unless they're going for the overworked, overtired, milk leaking, diaper changing, web surfing, ear-plug wearing, thirty-something women, I think the monkey spanners might be right.
However, for blogging software, the latest nursing bras, or for the world's first new-mom laptop -- which has a swapable breast pad dispenser/CDRW for the CD-ROM bay -- the ad might be just perfect. At least, that's what I was thinking when I was in that particular new-motherly state.
Denise, any thoughts? ;-)
All About George's recently de-locked George did me not only the pleasure of reading the Running with Sicssors post below, but sending me a link to this fanfriggingtastic NYT read on my new favorite author, Augusten Burroughs, which details how he quit smoking.
Like everything else about this twisted (Augusten, not George, err... well... skip that) writer, the story is richly witty and funny, and a little bit frightening. All the more fuel to my firey craving to keep reading him this evening.
I have no idea if the story is behind the annoying NYT firewall or not, so here's the text, just in case.
So sue me.
Possessed: Getting Even With Nicorettes
January 4, 2004
By DAVID COLMAN
Thinking about quitting?
It's not easy, in case you haven't heard. The latest news is that nothing less than a trinity of aid - an antidepressant, nicotine replacement and some form of counseling - gives the best odds of helping a smoker quit. Still, the North American common smoker is a suspicious creature, notoriously difficult to domesticate and wary of cures devised by humans. Take the patch. It may steamroll one's nicotine levels into a nice even line, but it does not address what happens when a smoker wants a cigarette anyway. Now.
After all, addiction is an antidote to monotony, not vice versa.
When the writer Augusten Burroughs decided to quit smoking, the patch didn't stand a chance. "I used two of them," he said, recalling his maiden voyage into the sea of nicotine replacement. "But the patch is passive. It administers the medication, and I want to do that." Mr. Burroughs, who recounted his experiences getting sober in wicked and dark detail in "Dry," published last spring, knows all too well that much of life today, addict or no, is about honing one's flair for that modern art known to press agents as damage control.
And so, five years ago, when Mr. Burroughs met Nicorette, he started chewing and never stopped. It is now his favorite thing on earth. "You're supposed to start with a certain number of pieces a day and taper down," he said. "I did the opposite."
Now he goes through three 168-piece boxes (at $53 each) a week, or 72 pieces a day. If that sounds like a lot, bear in mind that by age 33, when he quit, he had been smoking for 20 years and was up to three packs a day. (Mr. Burroughs's teenage smoking is one of the more wholesome adventures detailed in "Running With Scissors," his best-selling memoir about his bizarre childhood.)
Beyond the gum's fairly obvious advantage - you can essentially smoke in airplanes, theaters, bars and other places where lighting up is verboten - there are other aspects that Mr. Burroughs fetishizes. "There are three flavors," he explained. "There's orange, which tastes like a mix of Bayer aspirin and mercury - it's like a dessert gum. Then there's mint, which has a soft, passive, slightly refreshing flavor. That would be good for preschoolers."
The flavor he prefers, though, is the one he calls Original Chemical. "It's the taste of DuPont," he said.
Like a wayward cat that, having been declawed, finds more perverse routes to mischief, Mr. Burroughs rejoices in the peculiar ways that the gum, devoid of the Bogie and Bacall allure of cigarettes, can still set off smoke alarms of a sort. "I'll be at a party," he said, "and someone will say, `Oh, is that Nicorette?' and I'll say, `Yes, do you want some?' They'll say, `Oh, I don't smoke,' and I'll say, `Try it anyway.' There's this excitement and curiosity, and then on about the fourth chew, this look comes over their face that says, `Oh God, why are you giving me lead?'
"It's like prank gum. It's like going to kiss your grandmother and finding her tongue in your mouth."
And much like the little cliques of smokers that spring up outside restaurants and bars or the tobacco chewers who can spot one another by the circle the tobacco tin wears through the back pocket of their jeans, there is a secret society of Nicoretters. "You'll see people chewing, and you can just kind of tell," Mr. Burroughs said. "You'll say, `Nicorette?' and they'll nod. Then you say, `How long?' and they'll say `four' or `five.' It's never weeks or months they're talking about. It's always years."
Studies have yet to demonstrate serious adverse effects to chewing the gum longer than indicated, but even if that were not the case, Mr. Burroughs said he would not quit. "You get a little reason to live every few minutes," he noted cheerily.
It bears noting that for all its staid and upright associations, the word sober comes from the Latin for, simply, "not drunk." There is nothing about "not twisted." So when it comes to giving up your old bad habits, it's best not to aim for perfection. Just make room for some new not-so-bad habits.
It's what they call progress.
Running with Sicssors by Augusten Burroughs is the kind of book you want to eat. You want to rip the pages out and chew them, read the book from your stomach outward.
How often do you read this:
We were young. We were bored. And the old electroshock therapy machine was just under the stairs in a box next to the Hoover. "C'mon you guys, it'll be fun," Vicki said, pulling at the stuffing that was leaking from a hole in the sofa's arm."
What an amazing tale, I'm sure some fiction some non, despite its "memoir" moniker, that is blended and sewn together using rich metaphors and bizzarre events as threads. Burroughs, whoever he is (and who is he?) writes in a way that tickles and abhors simultaneously -- the kind of thing very few writers can achieve. Ever. And he does it page after page.
Quick--someone buy me his next book, which looks ultimately as fascinating and well constructed.
Gotta love a writer who can really write.
Damn.
It's an illness in reverse. You know, the one-click phenomenon. I think I've spent a couple thousand dollars on books the last two years, which to some won't seem like a lot, but because I've probably read four of them, actually comes out to around $500 per read. I can't resist finding everything I need or think I need or never knew I needed on amazon. It's way too easy. One click, a visa debit, and that's all she wrote--or read.
So last night I took Jenna to the big public library by the YMCA we joined. I remember posting two years ago about walking into a library and being amazed at how I'd forgotten the beauty and simple joy of a library. The dot-com-gimmes wiped away all previous recollection of walking in the door to the public library, smelling the books--old and new--, spying the volumes of newspaperes, feeling the smoothness of those plastic book jackets, thick and crinkley, the way it feels to open a fat hardcover, the sound of the platic cover bending at the spine--like opening the best present in the world.
And it's free.
How did I forget?
Where have I been when walking into a library feels like walking into a time capsule? LOOK at all the books! Everything, right there, touchable, readable, and yours for the taking. Videos, audiotapes, research volumes, kids' books galore. Cubicles--remember them? I haven't sat at a cubicle since New York State Regents exams, when we took our tests in wooden cubicles with tall wooden edges, students lined up like bookends to keep us from cheating.
I had to update my library card. I almost had to pay a $30 fine for losing the Sesame Street "To tell the truth" video which we apparently checked out from another library in 2001. But we went home, scoured the house, took every video out of every shelf, and finally we found it. Off we went back to the library, where they were nice enough to charge us a $5.00 extended late fee charge. Only $5.00 for being three years late. I wish my creditors were that understanding.
I love those people at the library. They get to open and close dozens, maybe hundreds, of books each day. Taking the little cards out, putting the due-date card in, and thumping the cover closed. They smile and talk softly. Very calming. I paid them $10 and bought a "Friends of the Library" tote bag.
You can have 75 items out on your library card at one time. 75 items!!! You just can't beat that.
Go to your local library.
TODAY!
Those of us glued to the net to make a living know how it feels to long for a journey of substance on dusty back roads and railroad tracks, to want to untangle ourselves from this Web, unhinge our minds and begin feeling again, feeling not with our heads, but with the soles of our feet.
That's how it was walking on the sand last week. Even though it was COLD sand, it was delightful simply to feel.
Ring around the double bind, the monkey eats the weasel......
Went from Primary Select - $950/month, rising to $1,300/month for 2004...
...to Blue Choice PPO at around $504/month, plus added a rider at $117 a month, for a total of $621/month.
Used the first savings to join the YMCA....
...only to forget we have a $500 deductible.
Went to the pharmacy for my antibiotic and paid $98 for ten pills.
felt sicker.
Just before New Years. Better nate than lever. Money already gone. Looking for a great writer and messenger of all things strategic? You know where to find me.
Actually I had two assignments that took a lot of work to get done last week. So today, I'm a vegetable.
I really enjoyed this post from netwoman on blogging moms. I haven't had a chance yet to follow the bouncing links, but am excited about tomorrow, when Jenna returns to school ((yes, they have a student holiday/teacher "work" day today--WTF?--after being off since 12/19) and I have a free second and a half.
It's been nice sleeping in. I'm no good at getting up at 6:50 and find it fascinating how quickly the whole household went back to late nights and late mornings over the holidays. Tomorrow will be a rude awakening to the cadence of the rest of the world, which I do a pretty good job of forgetting about and avoiding every chance I get.
We joined the local YMCA over the holidays and have been having fun swimming. Mostly that's all I've had time to do since Jenna loves that best of all. I'm so happy to be back in the water, and the WHIRLPOOL, and the SAUNA that the rest of the place with those fancy exercise machines could disappear and I don't think I'd even notice.
Look for us. We're the ones using the elevator. Let's not get too carried away with this idea of getting fit.
;-)
build sandcastles, take pictures, gather sand in a bottle, sprinkle like salt, run in and out of the waves, make sand angels, watch the clouds come in, at dusk watch the sun sit on the horizon, almost forever, pulling red and yellow down behind the water, the moon sneaks out from behind the clouds, and you say: I saw it! I saw it! I never saw the moon rise before! Wake up before daylight for more, more autumn wind ripping the surface of the gulf into walls of wet sea salt and foam.
to be six on the beach.
Some pics from Sandestin, Florida. Warm up, warm up. Actually, it was cold, but that didn't spoil the scenery....
come. take a walk with me.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. there are days when they should take my laptop away. this is one of them. and I don't know who they is. darn if I'm not in a funk. I will endeavor to spare you all. Off to clean the kitchen.
I need to be near water. I hate being landlocked. That's just that.
happy new rear everyone!
Anyone seen Brother Bear yet? Well, don't. What a crappy movie. Despite Phil Collins' lovely voice in two or three of the songs, the movie was disappointing.
What's with Disney and Death these days? What's with G movies where family members get killed left and right? I remember Bambi being an exception--having to be "old enough" to see it without being too sad. Old Yeller too. And those were animal movies!
Now we've got Nemo and Brother Bear within a couple of months of each other with happy little characters smacked with the death of their wife/mother (nemo), and eldest brother and bear mother of koda (brother bear), not to mention Kenae's turning back into a bear forever. And what's with these dead-folks-turned-spirits that can come back and play, roughhouse, and hang out with you?
Yeh, well, it ain't like that.
Geeze louise! Give our kids a break. Make a sweet animated film without the carnage, would ya?
For the record, I think Nemo was excellent--the death in that movie was integral to the plot and handled well. As for brother bear? don't waste your $$.
