Next Generation Gonzo

I consider myself some kind of default expert on team blogging. I'm pretty sure that Gonzo Engaged was he first team weblog on Blogger. It's a first I've claimed and no one's disputed. So have at me if you know differently.

The fascinating thing about team blogging is the ebb and flow of voices in concert. The energy within a team blog is dependent upon the spirit and conscious condition of its individual members, and conversation as a whole is incredibly interdependent, much more so than with the in-and-out linkage of solo blogs. More on that, sometime, soon, probably not during Jenna's awake time. More likely in the middle of some future night.

For now, I'm thinking about how we started this conversation on October 7, 2001. In the time since, we've wandered through some brilliant, rediculous, fulfilling, empty, sacred, profane, eloquent and fart-ladden, human exchanges. The blog itself went on a quiet hiatus for some months, the energy leaking out--there must have been a hole in the template, or a hole in our collective heart.

And then, without saying a word, silently and oh-so appropriately, in fitting style, Marek began writing there again, shortly after turning his blog into an anti-spam collection plate. One of us stumbled upon Marek there--a place where he felt no responsibility other than to be real and funny and human and outrageous.

Tom Matrullo, after finding Marek posting away on the old homestead, quietly joined him. Tom didn't tell anyone either. They hung out in this abandonned warehouse of a blog, meeting up to exchange spoofs on Nigerian spam, sheep farming (or something), and get-rich-quick schemes.

It was a while before anyone knew Marek and Tom were over there. All but the occassional "anyone out there?" post had subsided months prior.

Fittingly, Gonzo came alive again kind of by accident.

One day, as I understand it, RageBoy was talking to Marek J. on that other thing that plugs into your wall, and RageBoy said, "Marek--why did you stop blogging, man?" And Marek said, "I never stopped; I've been blogging for months over on Gonzo Engaged," at which point Rageboy called Marek a "Blog Squatter," and laughter and vibing on other profane new blog terms ensued.

So he told me, and I jumped in, and he noticed the activity was picking up and started posting in earnest, and then he showed up, and then she reemerged, and then he asked to join. And now look at us.

Voice. Play. Outrage. Love. RGE 2.0.

The Blogosphere is so amazing.

[blogger's note: if I forgot anyone involved in re-baking Gonzo, please bring your paddle and meet me in the agora. That'd be you, Frank. See you there.]

Jeneane's plan for peace: Are we really so different?

Collin Powell recently said that there will be no war if Saddam steps down.

But what could convince Saddam to step down?

We all know that Saddam's a non-democtratically-elected dictatorial madman who bucks UN resolutions without giving them a second thought. He is a war-mongering egomaniac who doesn't give a hoot about the wants and needs of the people in his country. The Iraqi economy is a joke--there are simply haves and have-nots.

Not much to dispute about that. But how to fix it? How to get a man like that to agree to leave the country he thinks he has a legacy to rule?

And then I had an idea.

We too have a non-democratically-elected leader! We have a President who doesn't care what the UN says, a war-mongering egomaniac with a personal vendetta and no real concern for the will of the people who elected him (oh, wait, right, he wasn't elected either!)

Both of these men would rather throw us into World War III than for either one, individually, to admit that there's probably a better way.

My plan is this: What if BOTH men agree to leave the office that neither ligitimately holds? What if we offer that up--our leader will go if yours will.

I think it could work! We could have a global webcast of Saddam and W. and their administrations together at the White House offering their joint resignations. And we could all join in a virtual kumbaya celebrating peace--or at least how we succeeded in avoiding the destruction of the entire human race.

I offer it up--I think it could work. Our imposter for yours. A plan for peace.

Overdue

Ever feel like you're due for another really big blunder--I mean the really big gaff that comes around, say, once every 7 years?

I can just feel myself preparing for the red-cheeked recognition that I've inserted profanity into a client deliverable completely by accident (I'm so sorry; I meant can't--the u is a typo!" Or forgot about a critical deadline, or sent an email with some seriously private jpeg attached. Any of these are distinct possibilities. In fact, resistence is futile. Something big is going to go down. I'm overdue.

I remember the last biggie--it was in fact 7 years ago, and after proofing and having everyone within 2 feet of me proof the company brochure before sending it off to the printer, the first one I pulled out of the box had a typo in our company name. "Sytems Techniques." None of us had seen it, but I took the mea culpas because the buck stopped with me. It was ultimately my job.

Of course, there have been more. But I hate remembering them. Especially when I know something's coming. I can feel it round the bend. I just hope this one's not ultra-mortifying--or worse.

And more to the point..

And I have felt
a presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth . . .

--William Wordsworth

Moving on Up?

Tom points to this amazing amazing place, which is offered for sale by Sir Stavros' parents.

I am already in love with the place; I am reminded of this.

I have decided the place is perfect for us.

And why couldn't we? Really? Stavros--can you get fast access to the net there?

It looks like maybe 40 bloggers could live there comfortably, what with four cabins and two 20-man bunk houses, plus a main lodge and an owner's house (If I read it correctly). So, $265K divided by 40 is $6,500K and change a piece. Bought and paid for.

Instead of the Biosphere II project, we can create the Blogosphere 2003 and Beyond project.

From this:



To this:



And our motto, of course, would be:

"We don't need no stinking lid."

Because...

"if you change the rules, you can change the world."

I was hoping it wouldn't take so long...

But thank goodness they came through. To keep me going, laughing.

A brilliant parody of Ready.Gov by idelwords -- time to put on the Depends. This line for the now infamous dead fish and bird graphic: "Piles of rotting animals may mask the odor of a chemical attack. Clear your home of dead animals frequently." Finally, some advice I can use. Kieran Healey's parody is funny too.

I love it when bloggers remind me I'm taking life way too seriously.

Someone with bandwidth needs to host these images and let us do that remote linking thang to them, passing on our own essential information as we go. Or something.

oh, for crying out loud

I need a vote--do i fix all the typos from last night/this morning or leave them in for "flavor"? They're driving me crazy.

well, that wasn't such a good idea.

been up, slept an hour, wondering how and why I managed not to sleep more last night. Was it Jenna stirring? Or something else? It felt other worldly, actually.

I still haven't read the posts from my early morning meanderings. I don't remember much after the piano post. This ought to be interesting. Off to read now.

Disclaimer: I have no idea if the following series of posts makes any sense at all

I wrote the next many posts in my sleep. forgive errors please. can' wait to see what I said and/or meant. In another couple of hours.

time to go pick out school clothes now.

yeha.

This is where I go

You see, this is where I go in my rest state. I always come back to death and loss because they are comfortable. i am not saying this is unique to me, or special, or that it's a good thing. It's just, that's all I know to do.

That's where I find my warm memories, and although they are jarring, they are the only memories I own.

It's okay. we did the best we could. It's okay. Better days ahead.

I feel like time's running out.

Does anyone else feel that time is completely out of synch and the cadence is off by three beats and time ignores us as if we were chasing it down because it owed us something.

does it owe us anything?

putting my head down.

slap slpat tattered jeans hiding unseen from the scene
that delivers the green
the cat in my flat has a big stinking bat
to crash, crush, rush
you.

there is no sense to make
of things
where love meets death.

stream of consiousness - more

My eyes are closed again.
I should be blogging from bed, you know, with my sidekick, but there are too many words waiting to come out. Too many words for the sidekick. These are laptop words, not sidekick, not tonight.
I'm thinking of the little girl who had the organ transplant two weeks ago, and something went terribly wrong, and she got organs that were type A blood; she was type O. Her body began rejecting the organs immediately and she has been critically ill since. I guess yesterday they found an appropriate donor heart and lung, and last I knew, last night, I'd link but my eyes are closed, she was having her second transplant--this time with the right organs.

I think how human the surgeon sounded in all I read. How he took full responsibility for not having a fail-proof pricess in place to proect against getting organs of the wrong blood type. He said that he was devastated. He didn't try to cover up, and neither did Duke--I think it was Duke. The were so human in the face of the very acceptable rage of the girls family.

It's a situation I've thought about a lot this last day--what I would do, how I would feel if that were my daughter, and such a grave mistake were made. Who would I want to kill--what would I do--would I be able to focus on step two (getting her back on track with the right organs) or be so consumed with anger that I would lose myself to that anger.

And I just don't know.

Kids aren't supposed to get that sick. How frail are we. We are so frail and so human.

My grandfather was killed as a result of a hospital mix up. Three weeks after my father died. He was in for what was a pretty routine treatment--he had bronchitis or pnemonia or some sugh thing, but he was scheduled to go home the next day--or maybe the day after. I saw him. I was in Illinois then, where my grandparents (mother's side) lived, apparently sent out of the disaray of my dad's funeral and burial to my grandparents. And with my grandpa in the hospital, well, I was already uneasy.

So when a nurse came in and administered medicine to my grandfather and failed to note it on his chart, and when the doctor came in and administered what was to be an overdose of that medicine, he went into cardiac arrest and died before they could get my grandmother out of his room. Gone in an instant.

That wasn't supposed to happen either.

And yet we are human. And it does. Damnit.

The difference is, in my grandfather's case, the hospital and the doctor knew they could appease my grandmother--It'll be best Polly if you just forget about this trauma and get on with your life--your daughter needs you--your grandchildren need you--there's nothing we can do to bring Frank back.

And that doctor retired, and he moved to Florida, and I think if I could find him I just might. I just might.

Because I'm human too.

eyes closed blogging

Okay they're closed. My eyes I mean. I love writing with my eyes closed. The first time George saw me do it he got scared. You can type like that? I said, yep. And carry on a separate conversation.

It's relaxing to write with your eyes closed. At some point your fingers take over from your mind, and you're just along for the ride.

I've been seeing a lot of windows in my sleep these days, small panes of glass divided into little squares.

I don't know what that means.

The day I learned my dad died, me at six, I asked if I could go out to play, but I couldn't, my mom said, because we were in mourning. But having been removed from the dying process--yes I knew he was sick, but was never told how sick--having to rely only on my instinct to tell me just how sick he was, I learned at an early age that your instinct can fail you. It's hard to trust your instinct when your earliest memories are those of a big surprise that probably shouldn't have been a surprise at all.

Would it surprise you if I told you my eyes are still closed?

So, in removing me from the dying process, I really wasn't prepared to mourn. And then in a sense, the house full of dread leading up to my dad's death--I could feel that too...

My mother gave me a wonderful gift once. I was about 22 when I expressed to her how unsettled I felt about having never said goodbye to my father, how if I had known--if they had told me--I would have told him I loved him before I ran off to catch the school bus that day. And then, at six, maybe I wouldn't have. You know? Maybe it would have been a matter of course in my mind, having known no other course.

As I was feeling tragically guilty for not having known my father was as sick as he was--that somehow if I had known I would have behaved differently, my mother told me this: You were the only one who didn't look at him with eyes that knew he was sick. You were the only one he could be himself with. You were joy to him, you brought joy to him at a time when no one else could because you were a sweet, innocent, loving child.

I think that made me feel better.

For a while it did.

Eyes closed--opening to pos now.

Writing myself to sleep

I love that space, when I le down, relax, know that I could find sleep if I want to. I'm there now. The last couple of posts have taken that nervous energy from me. Where does it go? Maybe it's yours now. Maybe it starts swirling around the blogosphere.

Sleep writing is the most amazing thing. Sleep writing is me here, as I am right now, with my eyes closed. My fingers know where to go. I don't have to be awake to type really--just semi-conscious. It's a dream state, where, if I were to stop talking about the "state" and start talking about what I feel and see there, might get interesting...

shall we see? why not...

The Piano

I blog from my couch. I guess if you saw the picture in the NY Times article, you've guessed that. I write on a laptop in what has to be the most unhealthy position for a spine you can imagine. I am the anti-ergomatic. I never had a choice really. Four years of simultaneous child rearing and working from home puts you in some precarious positions. A deadline is a deadline, and so, you work around the the general household insanity until one day you surrender to it, sit down on the couch, and say, Okay, I'll work from here.

Across from the couch is our piano. It was my father's piano--he bought it when i was three I think. An Ivers & Ponds baby grand. And while you may think, hey, nice that you have a baby grand, anyone who has had the responsibility of a piano for more than 20 years as I have can tell you--it's like owning a baby elephant that sings. I don't play--I goof around on it. George, of course, gets much use on it as he sometimes writes on the piano.

But the thing about pianos is moving them.

It's no small task, a huge expense, something you have to plan in advance for, and something you have to design one entire room of your house around.

I have moved this piano no fewer than 9 times since it officially became mine at age 18. There was the apartment it barely fit in. There wasn my English teacher who gave it a foster home for a year because no moving company would take it up the winding stairway framed with stained-glass windows. There was the house where it had a living room all to itself. And many more journeys.

When I think about moving, I think about the piano. And when I think about the piano, I think I'll never move again.

And yet, because it is something that touched my father's hands, because I have tapes of him pulling chords and notes so beautiful from it, I can never let it go. I can get back to that place in an instant, me on the piano stool him kneeling beside me, me stretching my legs down trying to reach the pedals, and finally being able to.

There is something about instruments, especially those made of wood. I have seen and held many, played a few (badly), and I know when an instrument is special. I have felt the presence of pre-played notes, that tingle that lets you know a piece of someone who touched it has been absorbed in the wood. If you listen very closely, you can almost hear the echos reverberating from 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. It is a primal and joyous thing.

I'm tired, it's 5:13, and sleep won't come, my eye keeps driftin gover to the baby grand.

And I swear I can hear something.

Words I Want to Keep

I marvel at the words my daughter creates--expanding her vocabulary every second of every day, and I'm sure in her dreams she learns new words.

But sometimes she utters words that aren't and I wish I could turn them into words that existed.

Zabreer is one of those. A zabreer is what mommy's wear under their blouses. A zabreer is something she can't quite fathom the use for.

"Mommy, I can't wear that undershirt with the straps--everyone will think I have a zabreer on!"

I don't correct her. Those are her words and they mean so much to me that there are several I won't correct. Maybe she'll pay the price later, when she utters it in gym class, or maybe I'll tell her before then. But for now zabreer is just fine.

And so is elligator, which, if you're wondering, is what carries you from one floor to the next.

Smile. It's 4:56.

Up all night.

I don't know why I've been up all night--there's no good reason for it. I'm wiped out from being sick, from Jenna being sick, I'm steroid and antibiotic infested, and maybe feeling better - maybe getting a second wind with no where to put it but here. So here. wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeshhhhhhh. For all of you who need it, that was my second wind, just for you.

I'm going to post myself into morning, post into a new day either to hope I find the sense of things there, or if not, numb myself with tiredness so that it doesn't matter.

I came here a year and a half ago because there was no reason not to. And that's why I'm here, hoping around between allied and stir and gonzo engaged, with a read through blog sisters too. What have I done? I've somehow unfolded worlds here, me and my teamblog obsession. Worlds of voices weaving in and out from one another, sometimes colliding, sometimes we make music, sometime only dissonance.

I don't know. Nothing makes sens at 4:51 in the morning when you saw day at 7 a.m. the day before.

7 to 7

lucky sevens maybe.

click.

A Ghostly Feeling - Indulge Me Please

Shelley has some interesting thoughts today about the good, bad, and ugly of writing professionally. In typical blogerrific synchronicity, I'd been sitting here thinking similar thoughts--differently--when I came upon Shelley's thoughts.

Here's the thing.

Like Shelley, I've been writing professionally for a long time. Some days it seems really long. Really really long. I've been on the corporate side, I've been on the agency side, and I've done things for and by me-myself-and-I.

But unlike Shelley who has quite a list of credits to her name, I have earned my living--a good living--as other people's voices. Snatched up early by smart CEOs who recognized my ability to get inside their heads and say what they would like to say how it should be said, I became the perfect ghost writer. When you perfect this kind of business writing, it is more science than art. Mostly, you're a sponge.

During the tech boom, I had the opportunity to be inside some giant brilliant amazing galactical heads, to speak with and for these people through my writing. What I absorbed from them--from everyone I've worked with--goes right into the old file drawer in my mind. In essence, I get their smarts; they get my voice. We both get paid. Fair trade.

When I was in my twenties and thirties, though, my husband used to ask, "Doesn't it bother you that so much of what you write has other people's names on it? I mean, it's yours. Why isn't your name on it? You just wrote this 200-page book, and you let them put their names on it." And I would answer, quite truthfully, that no, it wouldn't be PR if my name were on it. And it didn't bother me at all. They got my anonymity; I got a good paycheck.

Interestingly, with blogging something has changed for me.

During my part-time day, I write in my paid-for voice, and then, like Clark Kent, I sneak into a phone booth and slip out of my silly work clothes into my super blogger crime fighter outfit -- it's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's me.

Lately I've been feeling a little bit ghostly about my ghost writing. Part of it is, having gotten used to the ownership of my own voice in blogging, it's getting harder to put aside my "jeneane" voice and do the daytime switcheroo with the person I'm writing for.

Fascinating. A little unnerving too.

The other part of my shakey-ground feeling is that I've never had the person whose voice I've channeled go away. Bare with me. This one's tough for me. And I'm writing to try to figure out why.

A few weeks ago I found out that my boss has decided to explore some new career opportunities--i.e., he's leaving. And, he's leaving me. I've only recently recongized that this is a pretty big thing for me, a pretty big thing for a writer who's been writing closely with and for someone for nearly six years.

Surely, I've parted ways with other boss/clients, right? Well, yes. That's true. And that's why I've been knocking my hand against my head trying to figure out why this feels so different. Why I feel abandoned.

I think I've got it: In every other job, I've done the departing. Three times by choice, once not. Nonetheless, they stayed and I went.

Sounds weird doesn't it?

Oddly, this way, I feel vulnerable and left without anyplace to put my voice, and I get teary eyed thinking, he's going. He's really going.

We writers who write for other people, the connection we develop with those people from climbing around inside their heads--absorbing their thoughts, learning their cadence, understanding their triggers, what matters to them, what doesn't, why, how their phrasing works, their inflections, how they think when they're tired, how they sound when they're jazzed, how to be them without being them--that's a hard bond to break.

In my case--I don't know how it works for everyone--I really have to like the people I'm writing for. There are degrees, sure. You can write for a corporation (read: client) and write professionally with flair and passion because you know that voice--you have it down pat. You've won awards for it. It's not too difficult once you've done it for a couple of decades.

But writing for someone -- really connecting with that person, locking eyes with them and grabbing at their synapses with yours until you achieve nothing short of a mind-meld -- that's really special. It bonds you in a very unusual way. Words unspoken, for some minutes or hours, you share a brain.

And so my boss--a friend and colleague I respect deeply, and with whom I've achieved this kind of voice/mind connection--is moving on.

Going. Away.

And I feel like a voice without a mouth.

Wandering. Alone. Quiet. Ghostly.

ev, dude, where are my posts going?

Guessing there's a little house cleaning going on over at bloogle. Someone keeps packing my posts in a box and then taking them out again. Every time I turn around, they're gone. Then they're back. They're all sticky with duct tape--maybe those guys know something we don't.

That's okay. I'm cool. I'm cool. growing pains... yah. that's all.

Winer Speaks

Dave on the Google Pyra deal here. He makes one of the points I was trying to make in a much more eloquent and concise way:

"In other ways, the Blogger-Google deal may signal a change possibly as deep as the personal computer revolution, where huge glass palaces controlled by technologists were routed around, by software and hardware that did the same thing, for a fraction of the cost."

And that's saying something.

Meanwhile, Stir grows.

Ready.gov - Polished PR for Preparedness

If ever there were a fitting domain name, this is it. Ready.gov is the homeland security site that tells us all how to pretend that we won't die if a nuclear bomb or some other means of chemical or biological warfare arrives at our doorstep. Dig the images. Wait, first grab your air-sick bag.

To me, in this instance, "Ready" means more than just "be prepared."

To me it's saying, ready or not, here we come. Which is, of course, what it's meant to evoke. To lull us into acceptance. We'll just wait right here while you decide when to start the party, Mr. President. Have my duct tape. I guess that means I'm "Ready" for you to go ahead and start World War III. Okay. Ready. Ready.gov. Everybody Ready? Not prepared mind you. But READY? Ready to roll? Didn't Todd Beamer say something like that before taking on the terrorists? He was a hero, right? I wanna be a hero too, so I'm ready. Yeper.

You ready.gov, Gary? You ready.gov, Farrago? Hey, Marek, you ready.gov? Shelley, are you ready.gov?



Checkout the tagline: "Don't be afraid, be ready." This is polished propoganda that makes me feel afraid, not ready. And yet, wait for the praise to come rolling out, for big media to pick up all the tactics and tidbits and tips and report them as is from the site, as if they were gospel, filling their three-minute slot and directing you to ready.gov for more information.

For Ready.gov's information, I'm not ready for this. Yes, I bought duct tape and felt like an idiot when I came home and looked at my house. I can't even clean the sliding glass doors. What on earth will I do with duct tape? I guess that's why my little visit to Ready.gov made me feel less ready, less willing, and less able than ever.



We've got to hurry before it's too late. Don't ask me what, where, when, or how--pick your things to hurry toward and hurry. They're ready.

"P.S., for our Spanish-speaking friends, you're shit out of luck."

while I was wandering through the voting booths, look where MOC sees bloggers + Google News adding meaning

Michael O'Connor Clarke has it here--and Tom has it over here, via an email exchange, good blogging, and some conversations earlier today.

By the way Tom mentions stir in his posts from today too. He says some nice things about me and puts my portrait in the post below... but seriously, Tom is in this with me. Stir isn't mine. It's Tom's and yours and everyone's. Let's make of it what we will. It's starting with Mr. Matrullo and I. And I'm saying it here, for the record, that I owe Tom a pint of Ben and Jerry's Peanut Butter Me Up ice cream for saying, "Okay, let's do it." Actually, everyone with a comment box owes him a ton of thanks, because now we can release our enthusiasm where it makes more sense instead of romping through comments far and wide spreading good cheer and dreams for the future.

That's so annoying.

google blogger and more on my perceived romping through the streets

Wasn't that a nice interlude? Pizza and kids and the giant rat? Ah yes. It's all good.

I don't have much left to explain over here--I'll do more so on stir. But I want to make a couple points.

1) I am not saying that as a single event, Google buying Pyra will change the world. If you've been reading me and my thoughts about what we're doing here--let's drop the blogging word because, like I say, once Dave sells, if he does, and whatever happens to MT--stay as is or some other plan--and with all the me-too blogging apps coming along, even on AOL I hear, the blogging "thing" will become less the point than what we're all doing here-------and, on what we're doing here and what you know about me, you should know one thing: I believe the most important characteristic of publishing to the net via weblogs is fluidity. fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity fluidity. Okay, more on that on stir soon.

So, the event/moment/deal/sale/acquisition/laptop-pop-open-holy-shit-from-doc moment is just that--a moment: a glorious wonderful well-deserved amazingly-timed, perfect moment that I celebrated and will be proud to have been witness to all the days of my life. (you think I'm kidding, don't you--but I'm not.)

But it's about how we make ourselves responsible for where we go from here. Movement. Fluidity. Forward. Leap post leap post leap post. AND It's about what this single event will spur to unfold. I see 96.5 percent good for all the reasons I've already laid out. And that has me excited. Really excited. I see the future so clearly--or what it will be if it continues to unfold in the way it has the last 72 hours--and there isn't a single reason I see why it shouldn't.

My frustration with the nay-sayers is that by poo-pooing the elevation of our voices (and that's what this is) you are, in my mind, an accomplice to the status quo with which you take such issue. That's what I'm having a hard time with. By not letting your brilliance run through this new door, it seems as if you're shutting that door.

With ya'll or without, I'm going through the door.

2) We just arrived. If things unfold the way I think and hope, it's our best chance to take away the option for corporations to ignore us. You remember corporations, right? The ones who are laying off your friends? Giving you suck-ass customer service? Yes, them. And, the power structures above corporations are not that far behind in having to accept that we have arrived. I imagine if I lived in Florida, and I imagine if I had been blogging on some google-on-steroids-enabled-blogging-platform, mobile even, during the last presidential election. I imagine the voices and the m-blogging pictures and from the polls, inside the voting booths, the ballots real time out there for all to see while things were going on AND as a record afterward. Look--this is just one example that popped to my mind this very second. I can't help that my mind is exploding with possibilities. It has been since before I wrote the thing about how we all have to move REALLY fast now--before this deal even went down. I feel something is breaking free. Not just this. Things are starting to move, but things need US to keep moving. Okay, so step back. Imagine the polling-place-hanging-chad example above, but two years beyond that. How much less fucking with us do you think there will be? THERE WILL BE LESS FUCKING WITH US HUMANS, I'M TELLING YOU.

3) What we can accomplish/learn/grow from/face/dance to/love with/recover via the order of magnitude of global voices linked, as I imagine, is staggering to me. I posted over on stir about how I was driving Jenna to school today and, because of my exploding mind now high on the possibilities of bloogle, I thought I'd like to take some classes to learn other languages. Now how am I going to fit that into my life? You know? And which language do I start with? Me, Ms. three years of Latin in Catholic school.

The point is, I want access to the Jeneane's that live over there and there and there. I want to hear them, feel them, know them. And then I thought, well, there's Google's existing translation tool. It's not great, but it's helped me read about three dozen things that I wouldn't have otherwise understood since I've been blogging. So, why couldn't google really rev that up, add more languages, put it on the google bar or in blogger so that I can click and read and share and talk globally with language no longer a barrier. Our language is common. Our world shrinks into neighborhoods.

Imagine.

I said I wasn't going to go on and on here. To Shelley, I'm sorry I said you are wrong instead of "I think" you are wrong. To anyone who can see what I'm seeing, I'll see you here and there (and everywhere).

chuck-e-cheese, where a kid can be insaneaka: crappy pizza and killer germs

what do we do when something matters to us?

eventually, we put up or shut up, and if we don't shut up, we start a blog.

more later--motherly duty calls. look at it this way, or I do. Stir is a place for agitation you can live with, is the opposite of spin--at stir, maybe we mix it up, see what happens, what floats from the bottom to the top. I want to learn, if nothing else, to develop a place to aggregate the blogworld's hopes and wants and ideas for the google/blogger-to-be. Dreams, wish lists, hopes, how we see the future, what we fear--in essence: this is your world, this is your world on weblogs. The only difference is, I woulda swapped the images around. ;-)

more to come...

Fuck, I Should Be Sleeping

Shelley didn't like my war metaphor. She said she tunes out when she hears me talking about what we're doing here having the power to change the world, to stop wars. Respectfully, she's wrong.

It's not about blogging per-se (the word will be so mainstream as to not even be used in the near future if Google does good). It's about, and this sounds trite thanks to Cluetrain-come-before-us, conversation.

Don't tune out yet...

It's about who is heard (now) and who isn't (now). It's about what are now bottom-rung ideas and dreams, plans and movements, art and science, poetry and music, flip-flopping to the top. It is about ending the spin of Bush and Blair and companies that trickle down from them. It's about voice and choice.

It is precisely about war and peace and global understanding and shrinking the world down to neighborhoods.

I didn't choose the war metaphor to be cute. Let me explain more, just a little more tonight. I'm gonna borrow from the comment I left at Shelley's place, as I think jenna's strep throat is taking hold in me and I feel like shit.

Still, I have this current running through me about the potential of voice-given-wings through the Google/Pyra deal. I have that energy. I'm not NOT going to talk about it.

When we got here, I thought we could change the world. That's why I came. Not for technology or writing or to meet new and interesting people. I came to blogging because I had read a book called Gonzo Marketing, and I wrote as I read it realtime, and I believed the promise of Gonzo and it's predesessor. And I still believe it just as much.

I believe that conversation can stop war.

There, I said it.

And I believe that what we do here is have conversations.

We also create. Creation, the opposite of destruction and ruin. Get my drift?

I believe that flipping the current power and spin structure can happen. And I think the Google/Pyra deal is the closest thing I've seen to enabling it to be so.

Unlike Shelley, I think this is precisely the step needed to stop war. This war? I don't know. Depends on how fast/how deep things happen. Google, get busy. But it actually, mostly, depends on us.

What if one day soon it's not about Bush and Blair and they-who-come after.... what if it's not their view of the world, controlled and told to us by Ari/CNN/ABC/NBC/BBC/NYT/WSJ/LMNOP?

I'm not saying the pyra/google thing is a sliver bullet that will cure the cancers of the world.

But to me, it is the biggest advancement toward global understanding, and yes, potentially peace Shelley, to have taken place in my recent memory. As powerful as the peace marches. Do I really think this? Do I put so much credence in a guy flipping open his laptop at Live from the Blogosphere, and Doc uttering the yikes heard round the world: "Holy shit!"

Yes, I do.

Voice to Voice, things CAN change. What if we can do more than marching. What if it's me and you and gary and golby and tom and farrago and MOC and everyone we know and don't know yet (too tired to add links tonight..)--AND--what if our voice is at least half as loud half as often as the bush/blair spin machine and media puppets?

You don't think that you and us and them talking and linking and listening have magnitudes of power, and have momentum to power change? If not, why are we here? Or maybe it's just me.

Shelley, what better plan is there? What advancement has the potential to bring voice = humanity up a notch or two or ten to where people are hearing each other? Where big media sits down and we stand up?

You better believe I chose the war metaphor for a reason. For the precise reason that winning in the Google battle means we have at least a chance of winning at peace.

sleep on it. dream on it. I will be.

good day.

the fight to be free

It may surprise you to learn that I’m pro-war. It comes down to what I see as a greater good that can come from destabilizing the current power structure, ultimately turning more control over to the repressed and abused at the expense of the leaders who have been doing the repressing and abusing for decades.

Okay, in a word, it comes down to freedom.

Is freedom worth fighting for? You bet it is.

That some may not live to see the end realized—many will die before this is over, unable to relish in the benefits of our noble effort—that is a fact of life and death and the fight to be free.

As I look around at the human toll, human beings ravished by the current state of affairs, I see the obvious: to do nothing ensures that more people--some our loved ones, some strangers--are sacrificed to an inhumane regime, that more families are ravaged, that more death and destruction occur.

To fight at least gives them, gives us all, a chance.

The way to win this war is not to drop 800 bombs in 48 hours—what is the benefit of that? Certainly it’s easier to control something by completely disabling it, but there is such a word as “overkill” and if 800 bombs in 48 hours isn’t over-killing, then I don’t know what is.

No, this war will be won through stealth means. Although individual battles—all part of a strategic campaign—will likely be spectacular, bursts of color and light awakening the dark night skies, the real progress will be nearly invisible, so inherent to the overall mission as to be almost indiscernible from one moment to the next.

And one day, not too far off, we’ll look back and realize we’ve won. And what a feeling there! What elation!

What humanity: the day that millions of moments come together in a single, quiet second that makes complete sense of everything that made no sense prior. That’s how we’ll know we’ve won.

It may also surprise you to learn that I’m not talking about Iraq.

I’m talking about this.

It’s that big.

"If you change the rules, you can change the world."

Burn Down The Mission

You tell me there's an angel in your tree
Did he say he'd come to call on me
For things are getting desperate in our home
Living in the parish of the restless folks I know

Everybody now bring your family down to the riverside
Look to the east to see where the fat stock hide
Behind four walls of stone the rich man sleeps
It's time we put the flame torch to their keep

Burn down the mission
If we're gonna stay alive
Watch the black smoke fly to heaven
See the red flame light the sky

Burn down the mission
Burn it down to stay alive
It's our only chance of living
Take all you need to live inside

Deep in the woods the squirrels are out today
My wife cried when they came to take me away
But what more could I do just to keep her warm
Than burn burn burn burn down the mission walls

Music by Elton John / Lyrics by Bernie Taupin
Tumbleweed Connection

and Tom here too.

Link.

tom says this...

...here.

Thank You, Google. AKA: If you change the rules, you can change the world.

jenna has strep throat. I'm sick too. And still I'm running--if only in my mind--charged by yesterday's news of Google and Pyra. I hope you can all understand. I have to go get my baby to sleep now, but if you haven't taken out your copies of Gonzo Marketing, please do... Google's Gone Gonzo.

"Mass media works top-down. Like Aztec temples, they concentrate power and ownership atop steep pyramids based on command and control, using broadcast as a form of human sacrifice. To the teeming millions massing from the bottom up on the net today, this is not just an overburdened metaphor. Having been treated their entire lives only as eyeballs, as fodder for this impersonal, inhuman media mill, they have no allegience to the gods of broadcast and their unholy rituals of content licensing and windfall profit. If you change the rules, you can change the world. And the only real question becomes: Why not?"

-From Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices, Christopher Locke

more later...

Hello-ello-ello-lo-lo-o

I don't post six posts in a row and not hear a single peep. Not even on a Sunday.

Something is up. Something's wrong. I can smell it. Where is everyone?

Did Google suddenly lay off a slew of bloggers with the Pyra acquisition?

Hmmm. Still have a connection... publishing button is working... I didn't get a pink slip.

Does that mean I'm the last one here?

I hate it when I have to carry my own boxes to the car.

dag.

Blizzard of 03 in D.C.

George went off to D.C. last week when terrorism and missle shooters were the big news. That news has been supplanted by other emergencies. I know they went to a gig last night--but haven't heard if they made it back. Hopefully they already picked up those extra cords and DAT tape.... George was wondering what to call the sessions before he left. May I suggest the whiteout sessions?

With Google's Boost to Blogging, Can an The Gonzo Model Be Far Behind?

Along with some really smart people, I take a shot at going further on what the Google/Pyra news could mean over at Shelley's place. For those still pondering the big news of the day.

shhhhhhh! it was all me....

I'm pretty sure that the guys at Google read my post yesterday on creative chaos and that's what sealed the Google/Pyra deal.

Shhhhh. I'm sure they don't want anyone to know they got the whole idea from me.

Glad I could help though.

;-)

NOW is everyone ready to start working like mad and screwing all existing processes?

Bang--and they're off!

buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Slashdot is all a flutter with the Google Buying Pyra news, as it should be.

So far, this reply by neotrex is my favorite:

Internet connection ......... $30.00
Getting a blog .............. $10.00
Highest Google rating ....... $250.00
The whole word seeing my daily rants about how my life sucks and how the world is out to get me ...................... Priceless.

heh.

I couldn't have awaken to more exciting news than this...

If you haven't heard already, you will.

Dan Gillmor reports that Google is buying Pyra, aka Blogger and Blogspot. There are already differeing opinions on what the news means, and what it will mean to blogging. Shelley says she's glad she's an MT user--if I understand her right, Shelley sees the development as, maybe, a move by Google to centralize data, or maybe she means voice? She writes: "Seems to me that Google is centralizing the data in addition to centralizing the data search." I don't think so.

A one-stop-shop for voice? Maybe. Weighing search results in favor of the common-voice news and opinion and entertainment offered by us bloggers (as opposed to big media)? I hope so! Google already does this--they've been doing it for at least a year. God bless them.

Anil Dash speaks for me in what he writes: "Congrats to Ev and the gang for pulling it off, and for broadening Google's vision. It'll be interesting to note what effect it has on Blogger's reliability and scalability."

Personally, I am thrilled for Ev and team who, in blogger, created for me the most important killer app of my lifetime. I'm thrilled for me, because it won't be long before I don't have to launch into an impossible-to-do-justice-to conversation and a "here's what I mean by 'blogging'" email, everytime a colleage asks me what's the big deal about blogging. Google just made us all 20 times more legit. Finally, we may all be able to stop talking so much about blogging and really focus on voice and content.

Ev, in case you read this post, this is the spot where I give you a very genuine and personal thank you. Blogger has changed the way I live, think, breathe; it's changed every part of my world as my husband and daughter have come online with me. It's changed my world as blogging friends have become realworld friends. Like Google, Blogger has been an incredible conduit for expanding my universe, for igniting my brain cells after a long spell of dormancy.

And that Ev made it available for free, to anyone within reach of a browser, puts him on par with Thomas Edison in my book. Congratulations to all involved--I can't wait to see what happens next.

Don't let the world change your mind

Love.
...
What I wanna do,
and what I'd like to tell you
may not be
as you see.
As you live today,
what I want to say
is be ever wonderful
in your own sweet way.
...
from Be Ever Wonderful, Earth Wind and Fire

It's time to abandon all processes. creative chaos is the RX

I think I have everything figured out. Really. No, I mean it. I think I know how to get the economy back on uppers, you know. Get us all feeling that feeling again. I know how to get the business world high. I'm ready. Are you?

Okay, stick with me here.

Think THEN, circa 1999-2001. What were we doing? Flying by the seat of our pants. Pumping stuff out--stuff, you know--be it code, product, software, architecture, white papers, corporate brochures that made it look like a company actually existed, articles on things we knew nothing about, business cards with three different company names on it, titles that came from fortune cookies--STUFF. Remember?

Whatever we pumped out, we pumped it out fast. It wasn't always great. Yes, that could be construed as a problem. But I don't think it was. And we need to get back there.

The point is, the difference between now and then (and don't give me the money argument--enough of us are still gainfully employed (she looks over her shoulder) for that not to hold water. put money aside for now...)--and yes, I'm rambling because I'm excited--the most important difference between now and then is s-p-e-e-d.

We ran. We didn't walk. It didn't matter if it was right, it mattered that it was done, out the door, in someone else's hands. We all exchanged things at lightning speed.

Process took a back seat to NOW.

Process? We didn't care. You sat in a meeting where the client told you they needed 12 separate brochures, 2-4 pages each--copy/design/production--in just over two weeks, don't give me a plan and a scope and a content map; just do it. 10,000 of each, please. No, we don't have a logo. No we don't really know what we do yet. And no, we don't have a name--can you do that too? And you looked across the table at your cohorts. And you all got jazzed at the challege (not exhausted like now), and you knew it meant money, and you said, "Okay."

Many of you will want to pull the money thing back into the equation here. Don't. In the begining of it all, the money wasn't there yet. And we started running because we believed. Then the money came. And then it got absurd. But in the beginning--when the match hit the flint--the problem of funding was no different than it is right now.

So, you pumped out what the customer wanted, and you did it FAST, and it looked fan-fucking-tastic, and you got really sassy with the voice, with the writing, with the software, because you could. You had free reign. The only parameters were: get it done fast and make it look and sound like we're for real.

If we all believe we're for real, then we're for real.

For three years we all ran. Didn't walk. We ran ourselves into a new reality. We tossed process out the window and followed our guts.

Specialists didn't do well. Generalists ran this race. You had to be able to do everything. And do it fast. Remember? (and how out of practice are you now?)

I remember the business process freaks having heart attacks. Even knowledge management folks got knocked into the ditch, or the Coke machine, by those of us running back and forth to the printer, to the VCs, to the white board to draw more dreams we could turn into reality within the week.

Then we hit a bump. Then we paniced. Then we accepted that we should WAIT for things to improve.

Since the day BushCo took over, they have had us waiting. Waiting for war, waiting for tax breaks, waiting for a rebound. WAITING. This has been one long administration of wait and see. Talk tough, go nowhere.

Fuck waiting. Screw processes. We've slow-paced the entire market into the shitter. And it has to stop.

I say that the days of buckling down and get our processes in order are over. I say we aren't going to put our ties on. We're going back to t-shirts. We're going to stop caring about what we wear again, what we say, and who we say it to. We're going to allow ourselves to create and we're going to do it so fast that the first thing we create is chaos.

I propose this. For the next two months, every blogger start churning out stuff as fast as you can, just like it mattered again.

I don't care what you churn out. I don't even care if you think it matters. If you don't have any real work to do at work, if your customers won't let you invent because they're afraid, if you're stuck on one long engagement where there isn't money to do anything well, if you're busy shoring up business processes so the business runs smooth as silk and costs are contained and resources are adequately utilized and you get five fucking stars on your forehead for doing a good job, Bobby, well then STOP IT! This isn't who you are. And if it is, will you please go on vacation and get out of our way?

Please start running again.

Put your sneakers back on, start dreaming, start believing, start working really fast and not caring what you churn out first or next because eventually something really beautiful and important is going to pour out of you, and the faster you work the faster it's going to pour out.

Light your own fire.

Don't WAIT another second.

And if you start scaring them--if you go to your boss and say, I just built this, and she asks, why? you tell her why, and if she doesn't use it, or like your attitude, then you remember exactly how you did it and go back and do the next thing even faster. IF you can't do it at work--then do it here. If you blog, then blog as fast as you can, as much as you can, for as long as you can. Don't worry about what, just start writing, start running.

If you write books, write more of them; if you write software, then write something completely simple and stupid and get it done fast, and then do it again. I don't care what you do--just please start doing it faster, for the next eight weeks.

If we all start running really fast, we can pull the fucking economy along with us. I know we can.

And our brothers and sisters who are out of work will have jobs again, even if those jobs are fixing what we've messed up (remember, we did a lot of that when things were good), and all of a sudden, companies won't understand what's happening. The CEO's going to stop in the hallway and say, "Why's that guy running--what's he photocopying, what project is he on?" And no one will know the answer, and by the time they get around to actually asking the guy who's running, he'll be done and on to the next thing.

It doesn't matter if no one's buying it right now. Do it anyway. It doesn't matter if you have permission. Do it anyway.

The shere momentum of us is what matters.

Fight on, entropy. Are you with me?

On your mark, get set, GO!!!!!!!!!!!

I knew he couldn't do it...

I knew that he couldn't be quiet for long.

bad pennies and mike.

trip down memory lane

I don't know why I saved so many magazines from the tech explosion and subsequent demise. But I did. And last night I was reading an old Industry Standard. For fun. Yes, wierd. Well, I miss those days. I remember telling my younger colleages at the time that this was the most exciting time in history to be doing what we were doing. And it was true. They didn't know. They didn't know what it was like not to have a quarter-million dollar budget to do a web site. They'd been in the business for a few years, during the early days of the climb, when everything seemed possible and money was no object. sigh.

So, every now and then, when I get nostalgic, I whip out an old Industry Standard or a 400 page Business 2.0 and read back on where we were.

The particular issue that caught my attention was the April 16, 2001 issue of the Industry Standard. By then, the decline had already started. It was engaged. Nothing to be done but watch the fire burn.

You could measure the damage by the absence of pages in the top pubs. This particular issue was only 85 pages. Suddenly, top tech publications were taking human interest stories and spinning them as tech, instead of taking technology stories and giving them a human interest angle.

There are some pretty funny things, looking back two years in time, in the magazine. It's interesting for me to remember what I was focused on then. And to think, I hadn't heard of blogging. Wow. It feels like 100 years ago in some ways.

Anyway, let me get to the funny part before I start feeling old.

On page 24 there are some statistics. These stats demonstrate what a difference a day makes---well, a day or the death of an industry. I repeat them here, and take a shot at updating them for 2003, based on nothing more than my instinct and what's left of my sense of humor:

April 2001: "48 percent of U.S. workers say a pay raise would encourage them to stay with their current employer."

Feb 2003: "48 percent of U.S. workers say they would like to have a current employer."

April 2001: "9 percent of workers said stock options would encourage them to stick around."

Feb 2003: "100 percent of workers said, "Stock what?"

And from another page...

April 2001, correcting an error from the previous month's issue. The editor writes the following in Errata: "According to e-marketer, 29.7 percent of the email the average user receives in 2003--not 97 percent as previously reported--will be marketing messages.

Feb 2003: Errata to Errata: "Um, no, actually, our Errata was in error. We were right on on that 97 percent number, 'cept we shoulda called it spam."

That's all for tonight. More when I can stand it---you know, after I wipe away the tears...

happy mofo valentines day

okay, so you know by now that george is off recording in Washington, and while I was worried about terrorism when he left, I now wish I'd sent a fucking shovel with him because the lead story on drudge report is that Washington's expecting the most snow it's seen in seven years--when? of course, this weekend. Great. That gig tomorrow night? who wants to bet me--none of you. you blog, which means you're way too smart.

sonofa.

On a completely unrelated note--thank goodness I'm getting off of the previous topic because the hairs on the back of my neck are itching--okay--calmness--okay--so, on a completely unrelated note, Gary call-from-his-car Turner is doing some spectacular thinking and writing over on his lapses blog.

I don't know if Gary absorbed some of Halley's undeniable positive energy while she was over there, in which case he would now qualify as "mental" (as he lovingly calls Halley), or whether Halley slipped something into Gary's milk when he was changing Cameron--either way, he's positively glowing. Check him out.

Gary writes in one post about just what bloggers are doing meeting and greeting and loving one another in the physical world as we back circuit this blogging pastime into real-world personal relationships that--in many of our cases--are stronger than most real-world friendships that came before them.

That's entirely the rub.

Gary discusses so eloquently his 'take-away' from his family's time with Halley, who, on her own dime and of free will, flew across the ocean meet her fellow bloggers-become-friends. Halley's met more bloggers than anyone I know. She's like the Julie McCoy of Blogaria, for crying out loud. And it's simply beautiful.

The first day Halley called me--it's been almost a year ago now--she blasted me off my couch and through the roof with her energy--energy I would never, ever, have come across if not for blogging. Because Halley and I, and Chris and I, and Elaine and I, and Marek and I, and Tom and I, and Shelley and I, and Gary and I--we were all strangers a year-and-a-half ago. And now, we don't just write here--we talk out there, in actual brick-and-mortarville, on the phone, through packages. We're not pen pals. We're really in one another's lives.

And in Halley's case, she's actually touching human flesh--she's written friends into real, tangible, physical existence. And it's been an incredible joy to watch her do it.

Gary says it better than I:

"Self-elected representatives of strangers the world over, they sought each other out. Driven only by the instinct to reduce the number of strangers on the planet by a small number, the strangers threw themselves at the scenery of life and stepped out of their stranger free comfort zones. The strangers became friends to one another proving, if nothing else, that they were alive at that same precise moment, that they were steering their own ships, ships which this one time chose not to pass in the night and that, above all, they proved that there exists a unique aspect shared equally between all humans who just need to make the effort to discover it. The fact that we are."



How beautiful is that?

Happy valentine's day.

Turn Signal Truth

The good Lord knew what he was doing when he made children. We could have all come into being some other way--you know, arriving here all grown up, having skipped childhood altogether. But we didn't. No cloning; instead rites of passage. And thank goodness. Cloning would cheat the world of that beautiful cherry-chapstick flavor of children.

I was driving Jenna to school this morning when something caught her eye in the car that she'd never noticed before. We were making a right turn, and for the first time she noticed the blinking arrow on the dashboard, better known to you and me as a turn signal.

"Mom, why is that arrow blinking?"

"It's a turn signal. It lets other drivers know we're turning up ahead."

"How? How do they see it?"

"Well, it's connected to the lights on the back of the car, and when I turn it on, a light blinks on the back of the car so everyone knows we're turning. That way we don't all crash into eachother--mostly."

"Wow."

"Yah, pretty smart, huh?"

"Do all cars have them, or just ours?"

"All cars."

"Whooo."

Then we started looking up ahead, playing a new turn signal game, yelling, "There's one!" every time we saw a car with its blinker on. "Look, he's turning!" she'd say with nothing short of glee, having figured out for the first time how all this car turning stuff works.

It was simple, you know? Simple, beautiful connecting of cognitive gaps. I helped her connect this one, and she'll have it from now on. This morning we sewed together one of life's little secrets: the turn signal truth.

What a wonderous morning for both of us.

been around the block

I've been all over the Web tonight, and I can't find a damn thing to write about. Tired of myself and my wandering mind, tired of this doomsday-feeling-duct-tape-wrapped mood I'm in. Tired of houses and yards and people who try so hard to be what they're not, so hard in fact that they become what they are, and that's way worse.

I'm at a standstill.

No forward, no back. Just here, where nothing seems to be backlit.

No glow, no light, no lemon-fresh scent.

sheesh.

The highlight of my day was stopping at the new dollar store with Jenna, where I dropped a quick $75 on what, I'm not sure. A manic minute where it felt good to be alive and spending. Welcome to Atlanta. Buy now, pay never.

I have this itchy rash thing above one eye lid, and seem to have developed a patch of eczema on the palm of my right hand, which sits, for I'd say 9 hours of every day, on my laptop keypad. And I guess I'm paying the price. I had eczema so bad as a child that they had to put tube socks on my hands and arms when I slept. Inside my elbows and the inside of my knees were the worst. I itched myself into a bloody pulpish mess every winter until I was through 7th grade.

The treatment of choice back then was zinc oxide, which did absolutely nothing but make the rash itch more. By the time I was in eighth grade, real dermatologists were coming out with real ointment for eczema and other skin conditions. That, and a lot of sunshine in the summer, somehow zapped it out of my system somehow (or maybe puberty had something to do with it), and I haven't had a problem since. Until now.

That ought to say something about my stress level.

Breaking out. Sometimes breaking out is just that: the stress is breaking out of your body through your skin.

It's time to sleep. I'm making no sense. This is what I mean--my voice is on the other side of the room and I just can't reach it from here.

g'night.

Mobile Power to the People--FREE SIDEKICK!

Amazon is PAYING YOU a penny to buy a T-Mobile Sidekick! The Sidekick is free, and service is about $35 a month. For that, you can have more blogging fun than you should be legally allowed to have. I'm just bummed I paid $49 for mine after rebates. Free is even better.



If you've been waiting to try mobile blogging, this is a pretty easy and handy device. The keyboard is da-bomb. It's simple as pie to blog at Hiptop Nation, pictures and all, and blogger even has an email interface now that's also quick and easy (you can't send pics with the blogger email though).



Browsing is a snap. The camera is handy and adequate, though not great as far as quality; the phone is a little awkward, but it works fine--you'll love the lights and ringtones; you can add your other POP email accounts to the email application; AOL Instant messenger's included; it's got a calendar, to-do list, and note pad; and it's got a cool little game that makes the Sidekick vibrate when you shoot a meteor.

If you can front the $249, it's FREEEEE!

m-blogging power to the peeps. get it.

Now playing...

This was a really good movie. See it. You will dig it.

duct tape dismay

The last time I bought this much duct tape, I was rennovating my first car, a 1976 Pacer that I bought for $100.00 in 1984. New York winters had taken their toll on my big blue bubble; the sides, undercarriage, parts of the hood, and hatchback had been mostly eaten away by rust. Still, I was happy to have it.

I did my own body work, which meant I pretty much wrapped the car in duct tape, constructing parts of doors where none existed, and creating my own half-silver, indestructable ride--a sculpture on wheels--and it made me really proud. As a finishing touch, I bought six cans of blue Rustoleum paint and sprayed the entire body. Amazing, how from a distance, the car looked better than new. Held together with duct tape and Rustoleum, it was still running and looking snazzy when I donated it to charity four years later.

Today I bought into another machine. I went out and bought six rolls of duct tape. What's wrong with me? I know it won't make a bit of difference. It makes no sense.

Yet I thought about it for two days, and finally decided to go get some. That, plastic wrap, and a utility knife. I stood in Home Depot looking at their cool disaster display, and I couldn't help myself. I found myelf thinking that I should have used plastic wrap when I had my Pacer. I could have stuffed it in the rust holes for reinforcement before slapping the tape on. Talk about indestructible!

So I spent $60.00. And I'm not sure if my motivation was some hankering for my youth and my half-taped car, or fear of what's coming and some lame attempt to assume I have any control whatsoever.

I do have some advice for anyone thinking of heading out to get their own 72-hour kits. If you decide to jump on the duct tape bandwagon, pay attention to the conversations in the checkout line.

This is where the really interesting stuff is going on. My checkout lady was telling me that they can't keep the $40 respirators on the shelves, that people are crazy for batteries, but that anyone who knows the Bible isn't bothering with all of this stuff because they know what's coming. The guy behind me, a two-roller (I'm not sure if that makes him a whimp or brave--I mean that he only bought two rolls), told us he's building his cabin in the Georgia mountains so he won't be bothered by a nuclear blast--you see the mountains diffuse the fallout.

Meanwhile I'm standing between them wondering again, what am I doing? Part of me knows I'm buying into terror just as surely as the terrorists and our government want me to. Another part of me does believe that what's coming is coming, destiny or prophesy--call it what you will.

And so why am I at the store buying duct tape? Duct tape won't circumvent the apocolypse, and it won't get me up to the two-roller's safe house in the mountain any quicker. I'm basically hosed with a pile of tape as my legacy.

By the time I got home, I came to the conclusion that I don't need this stuff at all.

Now what?

Anyone have an old car they need me to work on?

i am so sorry and 72 hours

i have been focused on me-me-me. how petty. i am sorry. i will write more tomorrow with links to my reinforcement projects.

i am also busy perseverating on whether or not we really need to put together these fucking 72-hour kits for when small pox is blown into our air ducts at home. in atlanta they are going crazy for duct tape and plastic sheeting. This isn't good news at the Sessum house. George is going to the Pentagon to play music and all I have here is chewing gum and a baby grand piano. will these items work? If so, how to fit into a backpack?

I must get instructions for using household products I already have. Lint. Dust. Mr. Potato Head. Electrolux. Someone help. I am confused. I am hearing we need these 72 hour kits by thursday of this week, which is like 72 hours away, so I'm not sure if they are 72 hour kits because we have 72 hours to put them together, or because you might need stuff to eat for 72 hours before you die of smallpox, or because it just sounds cool. Anyone?

Meanwhile, I found Marek--and he has a message for you. Marek, please send instructions for the 72 hour kit asap.

thank you.

when someone steals your brain...

Oh dear. Plenty bad enough. Doc's laptop was stolen this weekend, and his brain was on it. Where have I been? Man. Poor Doc. He's put out a reward. Let's hope the thieves are scared by what they see of Doc's brain and abandon it at a nearby Starbucks. Here's hoping.

hugely important

There's enough meat to chew on over at BB's--in the discussion and follow-on-comments related to Clay Shirky's Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality article--to last all of us three days a piece. So if you haven't started, get gnawing.

And me, with nothing to wear.

in other words...

WWJB?

uncharacteristically quiet and blog conscience

Uncharacteristically quiet as ass reinforcement continues.

I was thinking today how blogging is circumventing some of my previous less than desirable behavior--you know, some of my pre-blogging behavior. When I find myself thinking poorly of a "real world" friend/colleague/relative now, and, let's say, I start badmouthing them in my head, or to those within twenty-five yards of me, I find that I trip my little blog-conscience mechanism.

Once tripped, a little voice asks me, "Would you blog that about them?" And then I answer myself, "Well, no. I wouldn't blog that. They'd feel shitty if I blogged it and they happened upon it a year from now. So now. Great. Now what am I supposed to do with my time?"

Aside from taking all the air out of my once-fun maniacal rantings and plots for revenge against my fellow man, there may be an upside. This blog conscience ripple effect may, in the end, make the world a little nicer. Or at least me.

When does school start for you?

I know Halley is proud to wake up at 5-o-damn-clock in the morning and start stair steppin' at the side of her bed, pilates, karates, or whatever such hellacious way she chooses to greet the day. She can do that stuff. She's Halley.

And I know they say morning is a great time to get work done, to meditate, to load the dishwasher--whatever it is THEY say to try to convince you that real people actually enjoy the crack-o dawn and don't whine about it.

I'm here to tell you they are a bunch of liars--conodolisaliesalot liars--that there is no conceivable way they can enjoy morning before it is officially morning--especially hearing an alarm cut through the silent sleepy bedtime land that should be sacred.

Waking up before nature is sick.

It's twisted, it's wrong, it's industrial age nonsense.

And it's what I've had to do since Jenna changed schools in October--her new school starting an hour earlier than her old one.

I know--I'm in my 40s. The last five years notwithstanding, I've done the 12 hour a work-day job thing, the commute, the early push down I-75. Fine. That's fine. That was then. And even then, there was no way to get me out from underneath the covers before 7:20. Usually 8:20. Then once they couldn't live without me, 9:20.

I compensate for it--I work til midnight. And I'm more than happy to.

But 6:00 a.m. crap is beyond even the birds.

What are we training first graders to be--besides miserable and over tired? GM trick workers? Is that what public school is about--is that all we have left?

I hate it hate it hate it hate it. Four times each day I think about how I cannot possibly wake up in the dark one more morning. How much I want to stay curled up under the comforter. How right the song "Is that all there is" sounds when you're brushing your teeth in the moonlight.

I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it for four more grades. It's mind numbing and it's spirit killing for me and for Jenna.

I am so lame. But I'm telling you true.

I am not a morning person.

Toward Hipper Times

HipTop Nation makes The NY Times.

I can boil the article down for you: we do it because it's fun.

yard blogging

blog in the place where you live.

Is this getting closer?. The problem is I had to strip out the navigation down the page to get it to work... It's too long like this, isn't it?

argh. thoughts welcome.

shout out for help on htmlllllllllll

FARRAGO and I are getting into trouble. She has been the best friend ever by helping me get my online portfolio into order. But I know just enough HTML to get myself into trouble. And I think I've hammered whatever work FARRAGO's tried to help me out with, maybe because I'm stuck with Adobe Pagemill as my html editor.

drat.

The first problem was with this verson, which I did based on a template RageBoy let me use (don't worry--he's fine. you'll see.) Then I sent it to FARRAGO asking, do you know WHY the text hangs off on the right side, to which she did so much great work to fix it, but then my adobe pagemill says it doesn't support the character set and it comes out looking like this one, which is closer--it doesn't have text hanging off the right--yay! But there must be something crossing the wires of my HTML editing because the fonts do wierd things... see?

aaah!

Rather than sending us off for another global round of why/what/how to make this look good in a format that my stinky Pagemill can support--and lest I email FARRAGO every time I want to change a word--can anyone help us get my credentials in order? I think I like a seriff for the body--i don't know. I like FARRAGO's color scheme. I'm open. This isn't my strength. Concepting, content, linkage, page layout, basic HTML yes. Beyond that, I'm in trouble.

Promise to put "page designed by" at the bottom with a link to you. Be creative, go nuts, or just ignore me. Before I go insane with this. And begin to drive FARRAGO insane in the mean time. (Did I say begin?)

p.s, don't you love my name she did for me? weeee!

economatopoeia

booo. hisss. splat. crap.

Busy reinforcing my own ass right now. working on getting my life's work of work in order, because, well, we all need to do that right now. Which means a revamped about me page coming soon.

In the mean time, I thought yesterday about m-blogging and how I'd like to be able to take my HipTop into my dreams with me. It's fine to run around the town and the house snapping tinsy pictures and posting your life as it unfolds. But wouldn't it be special if we could take our little blogomatics into our dream world to capture what's going on there. Ultimately more interesting as new archetypes of the apocolypse emerge from the dream place. At least from mine.

wooosh, boom, crash, hush.

Fresh Fish Alert

whaa ha ha ha ha! the man is a genius.

When Gary Met Halley

Halley's hit the UK, taking it by storm, by the sounds of her-who-just-called from the front seat of Gary Turner's car. For his part, Gary sounds as well as anyone who's had Halley storm into their lives taking their heart, family, and phone line hostage. It's never easy.

I've told Gary for weeks to hide the silverware and the baby. He just doesn't know Halley. But now he does. Between fits of laughter, I think I heard him say something like, "Help." He asked me to keep an eye on his blog--if he doesn't post soon I'm supposed to "alert the authorities."

Halley had her own welcoming committee at her hotel. Apparently the South African Rugby Team is staying there too:



I'm not sure where this will all end.

Halley, you're voice is still ringing in my ears.

Gary, you're in my thoughts. Hang on.

my name.

Can someone out there with the artistic/graphical talent I lack please make me a nice logo type design of my name? As a jpg? You know, just a nice type face or something creative or not that says "Jeneane Sessum" that I can use online? Promise to link to the site of the artist whenever used. Oh, my name? Jeneane Sessum. Yes, but you know that. I sure would like to have it. Much thanks.

Nothing more to add

He keeps doing it!

why bother blogging when Tom's doing it so well?

Let us pray.

You see, it goes something like this...

And a picture paints a thousand posts.

Uh hu--dat's what I'm talkin' bout

Burning Bird does her usual great job of boiling down what's gone down. What I've expressed as my lack of emotion/grief/loss/tragic dismay/empathy over the Columbia Shuttle mishap has had some bloggers wondering if they know the real me. And now they know a little more of this me than they knew before. It's gettin realer and realer. Does real = ugly? Sometimes. Yep.

Welcome to my soul.

Infrared night vision gear advised.

hypothetical relationships?

Liz was angry about my saying that yes, I'd keep a piece of metal from the shuttle debris if it fell in my yard. She writes of her disappointment about my slimey side, saying:

I was shaken, deeply, by this. I'm appalled by the belief that profiting from tragedy--no matter how removed you feel from that tragedy--is a legitimate expression of "capitalism." I'm trying to imagine how Jeneane's daughter would feel, years from now, if her "money for school" was acquired through the sale of this debris. I'm wondering if Jeneane's belief that 'anything that lands in her yard is hers' extends to human remains--heck, those are probably worth even more, right? Likely to fetch a bundle on ebay from collectors.

Why this makes me so angry, I'm not sure. I suppose it's because it comes from someone's whose writings I trust--someone who writes so beautifully about her relationship with her daughter, her frustrations with injustice. It's hard to reconcile this self-described "slimey" statement with the person I feel as though I've come to know through her writing.

I like Liz and I have a deep professional and personal respect for her. Plus she lives in my old home town. (I wouldn't be the only one walking around Rochester with a less-than-popular response to this particular hypothetical dillemma--I'll bet you that.) So we can shorten this up by saying, I like Liz and Liz either liked or likes me. But I wrote something that made her feel "angry" and gave her trouble reconciling all the parts of who I am. And yes, I assure you, this is one of those sides.

However, I'm not stupid. I said I would wait a few years.

I wrote a comment over at Liz's place explaining how I came to my hypothetical decision. But it didn't go far enough. Whether or not it's capitalism (we find or earn, we barter), barbarism, or some other ism, the point is that because I fessed up I'd probably do it, Liz seems to be grappling with feeling differently about me. Because I told the truth, and that truth was ugly to her. I could have lied. I could have just gone offline for a day or two. But why? Why is my truth any less tolerable? What would be a "non-appalling" response to my hypothetical situation?

If you found a piece of the space shuttle in your yard five years from now--or if you move to Texas and buy a house and are planting a garden one day and you find a chunk--what do you do then? You going to give it back? Not touch it? Pretend it's nothing? Does it carry that same grave weight for you now that it's not front-page news?

You're going to keep it. And if you're not emotionally attached to space flight or related to one of the crew, you're probably going to sell it. Or save it so that someone else in your family can sell it one day.

Why is it so different that I said so from day one?

Because when I experience loss, definition and constraints around that loss remain consistent, forever. From loss-day on.

I've actually been queasy at the myriad in the realworld and online throwing themselves on the media's neatly arranged tombstones.

Tom wrote something great about how the media--and in this instance I think blogland responded much like mainstream media--is leading and controlling our grieving, and the decision of whether we grieve at all or not. For anyone to whom this has a ring of truth, I say this: It's okay to question your grief, your sorrow, and where it's coming from. Because letting outside forces control your grief means that they can control you in any other way they choose.

Now, the next question, is to not grieve someone else's loss different from capitalizing on it? Where's the line? Where's your line? The proper response would be...

For me, at least, it's not all as cut and dry as it seems.

To Shelley, I'm sorry for commenting on what were such beautiful tributes on your site. I know this is a deep loss for you because you believe in all that is space exploration, and because you have a deeper heart than you like to admit. I should have kept my insensitivity over here.

To Liz, I am sorry I fell short for you on this one. But I was being me. Am I passionate and dispassionate, sometimes at the same time? Am I as empathetic as I am brazen? Are there some things I don't care about with the same amount as my caring? You bet. And I still like and respect you, just so you know.

I've been described with a lot of favorable adjectives online. And I appreciate all of those. But don't paint me as a hero and expect me to fit in the frame. Save that honor for the Astronauts and other deserving recipients...

can you tell...

I'm gearing myself up for something big?

My 100 Reasons to Quit Smoking.

Disclaimer: This statement claims that the material in this weblog is a combination of fiction and non-fiction, and I'm the only one who knows which is which. If I were a smoker, I wouldn't talk about it with just any soul online. Not with b*ig b*rother watching.

1) The smell on me, clothes, car, stuff
2) Costs too much money
3) Takes time away from my daughter
4) Takes time away from my husband
5) I get sick too much
6) How can I tell my kid not to when it's time if I do
7) Painful lungs
8) Cough
9) I'm asthmatic, and even if you aren't, you probably will be
10) Lung cancer
11) Throat, mouth, and related cancers
12) Heart disease
13) It's digusting
14) No place to smoke at work
15) Smoking outside in the winter and the rain
16) Not being able to watch a whole movie without at least thinking about one
17) Not being able to go to the mall without stepping out for one
18) Yellowing of skin, fingernails
19) That little frown and wrinkles that come lots sooner on a smoker
20) Want to see my daughter grow up
21) Don't want to die on her
22) Want to grow old with my husband
23) Don't want surgery
24) In the humidity of summer, the smoke sticks to you
25) Hands won't get so dry if I'm not washing the smell off them all the time
26) Sinus infections and ear infections
27) Knowing that teachers, co-workers and boss can smell your habit.
28) It sucks being an addict
29) To learn to be able to say, No.
30) The Creator didn't put me here to kill myself
31) Sore throats
32) To be able to focus on just one thing--to live in the moment
33) To not always be "escaping"
34) More restful sleep
35) Less angst during air travel
36) No more having to ask at restaurants and then getting the worst table
37) No more lying to doctors
38) No more doctors
39) My daughter's school tuition
40) Vacations - money to go on them
41) Vacations - not always picking a 1st floor room so I can step out the door to smoke
42) Vacations - the long car ride to our destination, during which I can't smoke and therefore bitch a lot
43) Having to remember to get enough cigs to last the weekend.
44) Having to remember to take them with me everywhere I go
45) Tobacco all over the bottom of my purse
46) Freaking out when I don't have matches
47) Having to buy the fifth lighter in a month because I lost the other four
48) Smoking a hard-to-find brand like American Spirits means driving 5-10 miles for a pack
49) If Dave Winer can do it, I can
50) Don't want my daughter to have to push me around in a wheel chair with an oxygen tank
51) Bumming from others is embarassing
52) Self-esteem: get some
53) Fewer breaks from writing = more writing done sooner
54) To smell the wind outside my door instead of the smoke
55) My husband telling me not to drop the butts in the driveway
56) Dropping the butts in the driveway anyhow
57) My daughter staring at me when she catches me
58) Dread of the day she asks me, "What is that and what are you doing?"
59) Feeling like she's already figured it out and I'm a liar
60) Feeling like a criminal
61) Knowing I would resort to stealing them if I had to
62) Walking upstairs without breathing hard
63) More energy to work out, to care, to get inside the day
64) Wheezing
65) Prescription and non-prescription sinus medicine: costs and side effects
66) Wouldn't have to wash my coat so often - less money on water and laundry detergent in general
67) No worries about the cordless phone running out of batteries and having to cut calls short, because coming inside means no smoking
68) More money for phone bills to talk longer on regular phone
69) Blue Book value and resale potential of both cars would be better
70) To be able to complain about smokers, or at least feel sorry for them
71) Because I know it's wrong
72) Because I hate that it controls me
73) The lady I buy my cigarettes from has no front teeth
74) I hate giving money to tobacco company
75) RJ Reynolds just bought American Spirit--I'm giving my money to people I hate.
76) I'm giving my money to liars
77) Soon employers won't keep/hire you if you smoke
78) Some doctors won't even see you if you smoke
79) There are lots of new aides to help you quit
80) I've always felt better as a non smoker
81) I can get a good buzz off of coffee
82) I've quit before; I know I'm capable
83) I've stayed quit for years and know I'm capable
84) Losers won't take 20 cents off me every time I comply with their request to bum a smoke
85) Living
86) Dying
87) Being able to sit still for an hour
88) Not thinking of the next one before I finish the first
89) Not having to stash some away so I know I'll have them "just in case"
90) To be able to say, "I quit" and mean it
91) To be able to see a pack, or someone smoking, and not care
92) Those terrifying "oops! I smoked!" dreams don't last forever
93) To be able to tell others how I did it and maybe they'll decide to quit too
94) To be able to tell my husband how I did it and maybe he'll decide to quit too
95) To be able to reward myself with the new shoes I want
96) So that I can tell my daughter, in all honesty, it wasn't worth it
97) Because it's not my life to take
98) No more breath mints
99) Flicking my non-filter out the window and wondering if I'm going to blow up my gas tank
100) Because "It's Time."

i'm sick

And trying Zicam. Just saw it in the store tonight and it looks pretty for real. I'm assuming it's something to do with zinc, which has been proven to help with colds, but Zicam is a nasal gel which you kind of shoot/glob on the inside of each nostril, then pinch your nostrils for five seconds. You use it every 2-5 hours, then continue for 48 hours after symptoms get better. The research shows that people get better three times faster--colds are supposed to last just over two days instead of nine.

Consider me the human guinea pig. I'll let you know.

And um, how do you buy stock?

writing myself to sleep

When she woke up in the basement, it was the image of the buzzards circling over the bare-branched oak that greeted her.

She had no present moment, only recollections of things that mattered in the instant before she lost consciousness. But how? Who? Why was she face down on the cool cement?

She fought hard to remember, but the buzzards were all that came.

Her sides ached; this she knew. Somewhere on the back of her head, enormous pressure was building--was it pent up fear or a bloody gash waiting to explode?

And then the searing stripe of pain through her right ankle. Yes, I remember this, she thought, as she wiggled it gingerly hoping that the next movement would prove her wrong. Flash, more pain.

Why am I in the cellar, hurt, alone? Comeon, brain--she closed her eyes against the darkness and summoned her memory back.....

More later.

And then I'd hire everybody

And I'd pay us bloggers to do some kickass thing that would change everything--kind of what we're doing, but with money.

If I got a lump sum of money...

...you know, a good lump sum that helped pay off bills so creditors would stop calling, you know, THAT kind of sum, then one of the first things I'd do is shell out the $12 a piece it would take to buy the ads off the blogs I enjoy reading. Ray and David for starters...

usually don't do these, but felt the results of this one, well, speak for themselves...

(1292-1358) At first, Isabella was a perfect princess: accomplished, pretty, young, and the oldest daughter of the King of France. But an inept, uncaring, homosexual husband (edward ii) pushed Isabella a bit too far, and she led a rebellion with her lover against Edward II. When it succeeded in putting her son on the throne, the ungrateful child put her in prison for the rest of her life-- 28 years.


which edward ii-era historical figure are you?

this quiz was made by Caitlin