Why gonzo engaged is the coolest place on the web

because no one knows that it is.

This is really hard

trying to post 30 posts in 30 minutes is really hard. (hee hee--that one was easy.)

more about the farm

Sometimes the horses would get loose. That's the thing with horses: Fencing. Keeping up a fence in those days meant almost weekly repairs. If you forgot, the horses reminded you. Most often by galloping away down Atlantic Avenue headed to who knows where. Ancient instinct telling them, RUN, FIND THE REST OF THE HERD! Only thing is, the herd was now station wagons and trucks. But they didn't care.

I was five and no one believed me when I'd tell them the horses were loose. I was at the kitchen table one day, the only one who looked up in time to see three horses trotting past the picture window.

"MOM! The horses are loose!"

It stinks being ignored as a kid. I saw the looks, "she's trying to get our attention again."

Okay fine. Don't believe me.

Four minutes later the phone would ring--"OH, OH DEAR, we'll be right there!"

And off my sister and parents would go after the loose horses, leaving me in the kitchen at the window waiting for the rest of the action.

what else I liked about the farm

The big thick rope that hung from the top beams of the barn was the best thing about living on our farm. We could climb up on top of the hay loft, grab the rope, and swing forever. We had to be careful not to let go when we were above the trap door though. Once my brother did and bounced down the steps to the concrete below where the horse's stalls were. My mother would always tell me not to let go when the rope was swinging toward the trap door. Once I saw my brother disappear down its mouth, I never did let go. I think I'm still on that rope.

snakes

So on our farm we had snakes. BIG honkin snakes. Not little garter snakes, but big big big long long fat fat snakes. That's a special breed that grows on farms. The snakes liked our farm very much because we had oodles of big boulders in the pasture, and because our barn had a stone foundation. Any time you wanted to freak my sister out, she's phobic about snakes you know, anyway, all we had to do was push the boulders around, and out they'd come. Four or five at a time, like boa constrictors etching their names in the tall grass.

My sister would scream and then go motionless. True phobia, I learned very young, is something like paralysis. Then my brother would come with his shovel to our rescue and chop the snakes in half.

Farm life was really cool.

nose bleeds

From the time I was born until after puberty I suffered from severe nosebleeds. Me and my brother both had the problem. I ended up in the ER several times having my nose cauterized, them wondering what's up with this kid with the nosebleeds. They thought maybe I was a hemopheliac, but I wasn't. Turned out that my brother and I both have very very fine blood vessels in our noses that made something as ordinary as, say, sitting in math class a catastrophic event. It's so embarassing to be a kid who has to run out of class holding a bloody kleenex when three seconds before you were cheerily answering, "46!"

cha cha

When I was four I had a pony named Cha Cha that no one could ride. She was so mean spirited we had to hire a jockey from the racetrack in Canadaigua to ride her. I tried several times to ride my pony. I stopped after she threw me into the poison ivy patch. A bloody nose was one thing, but poison ivy was no fun at all. That little pony was a pain in the butt.

Blunt Girl

when I was pregnant, I said whatever I thought at any given moment. It wasn't on purpose, mind you; I think it was hormonal. I didn't realize what I had said and to whom until well after delivery. It's the same hormone that lets you think it's okay to nurse in public, or around your family, or neighbors. There's some hormone that kicks in--I think they call it the "what the fuck do I have to lose" hormone. Because you're losing the life you knew to this new life coming forth, and so, suddenly, there's really nothing left of the old life, and you have no idea who you're supposed to care about, suck up to, be careful around, be nice to in this new world you're entering. The result is that you say whatever you want to whomever you want whenever you want.

it was a great way to live.

it scared the people I worked with.

that was the most fun of all.

rain in spain

falls mainly in my yard. it's a torrential downpour tonight. don't feel bad for me. the northeast is still burried and frozen. i used to live there. I know. I don't remember much. On purpose. Come to Atlanta. The weather's nice. Not many jobs left, well yes, sure there are, but we want to keep them all for ourselves. So stay where you are, on second thought.

Speaking of which

I don't understand how Technorati does its cipherin'. inbound blogs, inbound links, i still don't get it. how do I lose and gain from day to day. where's the grand total live? why don't I ever make blogger's blogs of note? all of this bugs me.

technohuh?

I'm gonna drive technorati crazy with this. hey, look, a gazillion fucking posts in a row. who's your link babe now? HUH??? Who needs focus when you can type like the wind.

non sequitur moment

Today was progress in a month full of illness. I went to the grocery store today and got some lunchables for Jenna, some drinkable yogurt -- her favorite -- and the Schwans man came, our favorite.

Did the chimney always have that many stones on it?

Is this how halley does it?

Sometimes halley breezes through like sixty posts in three seconds. I've always wondered how she does it. This is my time to play, tonight. I'm trying to post 30 posts in 30 minutes, and make some of them actually enjoyable. The only problem is, I didn't figure a smoke break into the equation. That's okay, I'll write extra fast next post. Halley, where'd the juicy stuff go? Halley writes that she's being stalked. The stalker should be afraid of Halley. Very afraid.

no one stalks me. that's okay. I don't want to be stalked. George won't let me.

Should I be making fun of this? See when you decide to try to post 30 posts in 30 minutes, you don't have time to tidy up thoughts that you really shouldn't have in the first place. Perhaps we should all go through life this way.

We really should be reading

google bought blogger and then everybody--well, I--started writing writing writing, I was going to write it into a good thing. And I still am, but I'm going to take some time out tomorrow to READ people. I forgot to be reading. We're not remembering to READ like we should. Reading each other is what keeps us going when times are tough, which, well, these times are, pretty much, yah, I guess they really suck, and Malcolm's convinced me they're about as bad as times get, and Farrago's thinking of going and Shelley's over there perseverating about something.

oh fuck it, never mind.

redneck simile moment

she was as pretty as a shiny new pickup with chrome wheels, oversized tires and a truck-bed cover on her backend.

analogy moment

stretch pants are to models as collars are to dogs.

metaphor moment.

sixteen three by fours stood straight up against the north side of the barn, waiting for the slightest wind or the brush of a farm boy's hand to set the whole stack falling like a box of opened toothpicks from the top shelf.

what?

flaky disinegrating mud pies unyielding to eyes that have yet to open.

bada-bing.

(the bada bing part is always Marek's)

no, you first

you first.
no, you first.
no, you.
no, you.
no, you first.
no, you first.
no, you go first.
no, you first.
no, you first.
no, you first!
no, you!
uh-uh, you first.
no way, you.
no, you first.
no, you first.
not me, you.
no, you.
no, you first.
no, you first.
NO, you!
No way, you!
no, you first.
no, you first.

okay, is anybody still reading these things?

need a logo/title thingy for stir

if anyone's interested in playing around with graphics today, we could use a logo thingy for stir.

thank you.

i think jenna's going to go to school today. i think she's getting better. I'm afraid to type these words in black and white. afraid they are capable of erasing reality. please hold good thoughts. this kid (and other asthma kids like her) have had one sick winter.

i don't know what it means

sessum.com.

thanks to Farrago for the design assistance and moral support. And she better not go away...

I'm sounding a bit unwell, aren't I...

Off to get strep baby's bath and bedtime happening. I think I need to call it a day after that.

Hold down the fort.

I'm still amazed

I remain amazed that doctors aren't doing what the lawyers are doing in blogland. Why are so many skitish--is it the lawsuit potential? Shoot, there are plenty of lawyers out here who could help them out in a pinch! Besides, a simple disclaimer would solve all that--no?

Am I missing it, or are our professional MDs suspiciously missing from this world?

I hate insurance companies and every medical facility who claims to hate insurance companies and uses them as a scapegoat to define policies that enable these facilities to treat only the very wealthy.

Hey, medical world--and all its affiliates--you suck.

Get me any madder and I'm going to start a blog and name names. Try me.

10 Blog Things I Don't Like

I don't like emoticons in blogs. Most of the time. ;-)

I don't like entire blogs devoted to re-posting what other people post without some value ad--I dunno, pop-ups of the original posters with interactive boxing figures that can punch back and forth or something.

I don't like when Shelley tapes a "Do Not Disturb" sign to her blog.

I don't like it when people don't post for a month and then post like crazy and get me all going and stuff and then they stop again.

I don't like that Mike Sanders put me back on his blogroll or that he spelled my last name wrong.

I don't like too many links in one post. I get confused. Too many is more than four or five.

I don't like teeny tiny fonts.

I don't like the the blogs as journalism conundrum.

I don't like when Blogger's down.

I don't like that this doesn't pay. Pay me. Sorry, to clarify, that this doesn't pay *me*.


Coming soon, 10 Blog Things I Do Like.

Stop it. Don't get so excited.

this is a question for the entire U.S.

will this winter ever end?

just wondering.

sicky sticky world

Jenna has been home sick for what seems like 6,000 years. Today I took her to ballet to burn off some asthmatic energy. While she was in her tap class, I watched the baby ballet class, which she was in last year. I found myself crying. Gone. I'll never have it again. Too big. Too tough to absorb. It has to do with being a woman. She grows, I shrink. She voices, I grow weary.

George has the bug too. Finally got him to see the doc, and he has antibiotics.

A sad, depressed bunch of shut ins. And worst of all, I have no time to write. Blog posts fly through my head all day. And then the breathing treatments, and then dinner, and then the medicines, and then the mess, oh yes, and work.

in a word, ugh.

Five minutes ago I had painted in my mind what business will look like in five years. I was going to tell you what I saw, how what we think is bad is actually good, and what we think is good is very bad news indeed, about how if the net has taught us one thing, it has taught us how networks work; I was going to talk about about how small pockets of once-redundant workers are slowly but surely constructing sophisticated roadways among their virtual homes and talents, functioning in many respects like a web across knowledge bases and out to customers--no not an extranet--this is human talent assembling across neighborhoods and buildings, people who owe allegience to no one but themselves (another lesson they've learned); they are practical and organized and nimble and cheap. They are, and this is the good news, unstopable.

but more about that another time--my chicken is burning.

it ain't all about text

Finding voice through the backdoor--arriving at voice through imagery. You know, Voice isn't all words. Voice isn't all about text. Sometimes I search google because I'm feeling a certain way--I'm not looking for sites or blogs or healthcare pages. I go straight to the Images tab to see if something finds me there. Tonight that happened.

I searched up "Dark" and found this image:



With the image is voice:

If you have never glimpsed [the darkness], or have forgotten the terribleness of that view, how can you even think to judge those who have lashed out against others, or themselves, in a seemingly mad act of violence or destructiveness?....

The difficult task is not to judge, but to help. Not to condemn, but to reach out. ... And not the least, to remind ... there is Light that is apart from the darkness, which does not judge, does not condemn, does not patronize and lecture, and in which mistakes are forgiven, wounds are healed, and once-forgotten joy can be rediscovered and understood again.

Search and you shall receive.

Tom thinks I'm onto something

In trying to sum up why what we're doing is important, you know, that gyration we all go through time and time again, the new entertainment of metablogging, I posted this in a comment, which tom calls out on Stir.

I think it bears repeating by me, up a level, in a post on my blog. So here:

I have promised to make some VIPS a list of articles and blogs that will somehow wrap the largeness of all of this into a single email. So far I haven't been able to do it. The importance of it, really, is that human voices--nobodies, really--are resonating farther and longer through this medium than the power structures of institutions like corporations, big media, government, religion... It's the bottom up thing that's important. I'm not saying we'll TAKE OVER any of those institutions, but we will penetrate and change them.

try explaining that to someone who wants to know what a blog is. yeh.

It all really goes back to this, which, even he who is the man with the star has said may not be exactly "there" as an idea yet. But I think, as he described it to me more than a year ago, when most people reading this weren't even blogging yet, it is more than there. It's here.

My new club

I know them now by sight. At the grocery store, at the pharmacy, in the driver's seat of their SUVs. They are the women whose jaw muscles are lax--their stares are fixed straight ahead, some kind of zombie determination propelling them through the day, no other reason than to get to the end of it.

These are strep moms. I am one now too.

This is Jenna's second round with strep throat in the last month. This means it is the second or third trip to the doctor's or urgent care in as many weeks. More antibiotics, more new toothbrushes, more nebulizer treatments, more motrin, more soup, more sprite, more popsicles, more videos, more crayons, more thermometers, more bed changes, more luke warm baths, more energetic rebounds, more trying to keep the animals out of the house, more unrest, more sleep-interrupted nights, more triaminic, more throat spray, more lip balm, more kleenex, more phone calls, more trying to work somewhere in between it all, more guilt.

I'm not alone. I see them. Sometimes I talk to them. Like last night at 9:30 at Eckerds. I saw her sitting in the chair by the pharmacy--remembered her from urgent care a couple hours earlier. I say hi. She says, Hi, I remember you. I say, I remember you too--how is your son? She says, Strep. I say, my daughter too. She says he is on round 3 with it, that he gets it so often the doctors want to remove his tonsils. I shiver for her, and wonder when our doctor will lay that one on us--no thank you.

I tell her I'm tired. She says, I know, me too. She is probably ten years older than me, but our faces look just the same. The condition is timeless, ageless. You can be 20, 30, 40, 50 and look just like us. Jaw muscles too tired to show expression. Mouth sagging in an unattractive frown. Downturned lips. Heavy eyebrows. Dark circles under our eyes.

Strep moms. There's no mistaking us.

blogging and the two-way mirror

we're nothing if not flashers and shoplifters waiting to get caught. we raise our shades daring the world to look in. we kind of hope they don't. we mostly hope they do.

A few bloggers have written that people who read them say that they're "brave" to reveal themselves this way. And they are. We are.

This week I got a new boss. The boss and I haven't worked together before, and so I thought I'd give her a crash course in who I am. I sent her the link to my credentials which links to all the places I live online, including my home here. She may be reading this. Now. If so, Hi. This is where everything's happening. Don't let it scare you.

Six months ago I wouldn't have done it. I had a boss I'd known forever, and I still didn't show him this place. I wasn't ready to raise the shade all the way. Sure, now and then I enjoyed the thrill of popping it up for a day or so, but then mostly hoped no one would be looking, except George and and my very best blog friends.

Then google bought blogger. Suddenly I'm getting emails from folks who don't live out here. They say, "Hey, that blogging thing is big." And they're reading more blogs, including mine. Probably yours too. Every now and then a friend mentions on the phone, "Oh I know that--I saw it on your blog," and I get that little rush of confusion, wondering what I wrote, about what or whom, certainly not having this particular friend in mind as part of the cast of characters who read me.

Things are picking up. They are looking in. Velocity.

The two-way mirror of blogging is us going about our business out here, and growing numbers of regular people--our friends, family, colleagues--looking in on us. The ones who don't comment. The ones you might get an inkling have come by from looking at your referrer log.

A little disconcerting.

Some bloggers have drawn their shades or moved online households because the risk of showing themselves is too great--isn't worth it, isn't practical. Their careers rely on the very power structures set up to silence them, and they can't afford--not yet anyway--the potential backlash from eyes of weight looking in on them.

Even now, I close my shade sometimes. I pull back and hunker down. And that's fine. Maybe the time will come when it's okay to let the trick-glass slip away, and all of our windows open onto one another. Maybe not.

But this day I'm okay with saying, yes, I write online, in fact, I'm rather more here than there, and so are most of the smart people I know.

So look if you like. And if you don't like it, pull your own shade down. Because no one but me can stop me from moving into the light.

sunday morning with the sessums

me being coy and cute: "When's that party we're supposed to go to? I'm ready to shake my money maker!"

george, shaking his hand above his head: "What, your medula?"

us: "bla ha haha haha!"

me: "I'm gonna blog it."

george: "No, I am."

us: "bla hahahah ha!"

Denise's Got a Brand New Bag

Denise Howell, smart crafty lady and law blogger supreme, has a new look over on Bag and Baggage. Cool-ness!

Marek and RageBoy, this is for you

Audio Blogger for the phone enthusiast in all of us.

Marek, go ahead and sign gonzo engaged up for the free trial. That place is just waiting for a two-minute phone call from the asylum.

Places by those who've lost a paycheck but still have their sense of humor

"Oh no, they can't take that away from me..."

Was rambling around today and found some really great sites and blogs brought to us by the unemployed, a bunch with whom I feel a tingling eventual bond. For your reading enjoyment, I present you with:

The Unemployee of the Month who lives here.
Where the Hell Did My Job Go?
Unemployed Theo
Laid Off in America
Invisible Matrix

the revolution just started. today. now. can you feel it?

just this minute. from posting down but not out. yah, I'm down. way down. stepping down to the live wire, the current, where the water hits the sun. That's where I found it. The flip-flop of the tide, turning and carrying me back. something. starting. so hard. swimming. sick of choking down salt water. are you sick of choking down salt water? It'll kill you. You know that. Looks good, but it rips the water right out of your tissues.

that salt water will kill you.

start purging. everything you ever had, don't use it. everything you ever did, forget it.

start new, start here.

white on black.

all there ever was.

down but not out.

just am.

huh?

So Jenna says to George, "Daddy, I had a dream last night. I was down here playing with the kitty until you came home from work, and when you came home and came upstairs, my head was off. It was right here on the floor. Then the kitty cat scratched my forehead."

Me: "The cat scratched your detached head's forehead?"

Jenna: "Yep. And the doctors couldn't fix it."

okay then.

fishrush is really rushing.

At last count, Kent had posted 19 times today. Living up to the rush in fishrush, he's basically scaring me.

looking back from that place in the distance

lemme ask you a question in southernese: All ya'll who work in big-time consulting, do you feel it?

Do you feel what I feel? The chink in the armor, the crack in the wall? it's coming. Don't get scared. It's has to happen; it had to happen. Did you know we've been part of the plan all along? Makes me smack my forehead. You too? Sheeeit!

This is where we hold hands. This is how we spot each other. This is where we keep track of what upside down looks like. Sure, I know, we'll have to do a few cartwheels along the way--whoho, where's the ground where's the sky? Which way's up? What happened? SHIT! Someone grab my hand!

Everything that got us here isn't. If you're not in it, it's hard to see it. It's hard to see the shift. But I see it. Every day. And in my lifetime, this is my lifeline to get through it.

On the other side is a really pretty place that we won't know we were responsible for building until we see it in the distance. Just like I see it now.

It took them to get us here, and they never even noticed. How ironic is that? So fitting. Some nights I laugh myself to sleep over it.

Some day I'll be able to write more. The details. By then it will be trite, cliche, too late, and I'll be kicking myself for not saying more back then. Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just permalink this post up and say:

"See? That's what I'm talkin 'bout. THAT'S what I'm TALKIN' BOUT!"

Don't worry. I've got it all under control.

from the folks who brought you bloogle...

It's Gargle, or well, maybe Toogle!



p.s., scroll up. Gary's looking for some sucker--I MEAN blograpreneur--to take over Blogstickers. Me think it's just another ploy by Gary to get Google's attention. I mean, what's a blogging tool without blog stickers?

Gary, remember the little people who stood by you.

Details at one pot.

cross blogging silliness and tiredness

I'm here, there, and everywhere. I'm tired. I offer this idea on a google portal page for mobile bloggers, which I've barely thought through, but when has that stopped me.

I offer this over at Tom Matrullo's place, in which he raises some really cool points on the authority of the byline, about a great idea encouraging all journalists to blog so that when we read their non-blog meanderings we know what hues color what we read, and about another dozen things I could easily write myself silly on but am too tired to do just that.

Carry on, in, about, behind, above, and so forth while I pass out please.

And, if anyone, anyone please, can simplify the RSS story into three or four simple steps I need to take to get the RSS feed working through Blogger on all these blogs I've spawned, that would be great. I've turned RSS on. I've selected "Full" for the descriptions. I've copied the URL offered by blogger as my RSS URL and put it in my templates, as with this blog. I've posted and published about a dozen different ways, since that seems to be what it takes this week to get a fricking post to stick. And still, bloggers who want the RSS feed for Googlers and Stir can't get them--there's nothing in the descriptions or something. I don't know.

Advice appreciated.

"ffffooooooommmm"=the sound me, having read something profound.

He says: "We need translators. Those shamans of old who speak both the language of the tribe and the language of the gods. We need translators who can live in one language and then shift and live in another. We need language travelers. Language shifters. The world is much richer than the best constructions of English language can ever reveal."

And here, I will turn it into poetry for him:

We need translators
those shamans of old
who speak
both the language of the tribe
and the language of the gods.

We need translators
who can live in one language
and then shift
and live in another.

We need language travelers
Language shifters.

The world is much richer
than the best constructions
of the English language
can ever reveal.

-Marek J.

smart mobs via m-blogging

This paper on Smart Mobs and the HipTop Nation blog is being presented in Greece at the upcoming conference on Human Computer Interaction, according to its author, John Lester of Harvard Medical School. The paper talks about the now infamous Holloween Scavenger Hunt that took place via HipTop Nation.

The paper is short and not ground breaking, except that it is because it chronicles a day in the life of a smart mob. Imagine if this mobile community of practice were gathered for something more nobel than a scavenger hunt--maybe in the hunt for a vehicle used to abduct a child or for other crime-fighting scenarios. More dreaming and conjecture when I have time. Leave thoughts as you will...

blogger is sucking up a blue streak today... posting may be sporadic.

this isn't so good

I've had posts that aren't publishing on blogger from yesterday. badabing--shit ain't workin'. Nothing on blogger.com to tell me why. Good thing I don't make a living using this blog.

Here's what it says in my error message:


Errors:
code: 553
message: Permission denied.
file: /tmp/blogmover/3199544/rss/allied.xml
Files Transfered:
file: /tmp/blogmover/3199544/archives/allied_archive.html
file: /tmp/blogmover/3199544/homes/allied.html
file: /tmp/blogmover/3199544/archives/2003_02_16_allied_archive.html
file: /tmp/blogmover/3199544/archives/2003_02_02_allied_archive.html
file: /tmp/blogmover/3199544/archives/2003_02_23_allied_archive.html

Yo Yo Yo YO!!! this is makin' me crazy.

George is back!

George just got in, and it was so neat that he could sneak into bed, where Jenna had crawled up beside me at some hour of the night, as usual, and it was just time for her to get up. So he started talking to her and playing with her little ears. She sleeps like he does. Hard. Once she finally falls asleep, when she's intent on sleeping, she will sleep through anything. Comes from having a bedroom above George's studio, with late-into-the-night recording sessions, bass drum booming, and there's Jenna, content and sound asleep.

So anyway, she finally starts to stir and I say, "I wonder when Daddy will be home." and he says "I don't know" and she finally catches his voice in her dream and bolts upright--DADDY!!!--and leaps onto his chest, into his arms.

What a great way to greet the day.

is anyone else late...

...getting their kid to school every single day?

i am.

running now--more later
......

this is some weird shite, this dream blogging

I just read what I wrote last night while, virtually, unconscious. To you, it may not seem so extraordinary, but for me, reapproaching the computer screen remembering not thing one about what I posted, well, is sort of fascinating, if not unnerving. It all starts with being able to type with your eyes closed. They should teach that in school. And to do said typing when you're very, very tired, in a position that lets you pretty much fall asleep.

Who the fuck is Lee Ann Webber, why did her name run through my unconscious? And *who's* got his math in *where*, and why is it going to make him mad, and should I care? These are some odd punctuations within last night's blogging mini-dream.

But then, if I put my analytical lenses in my back pocket, if I feel hard enough, I understand.

Wshew.

Dream a little blog with me.

sitting here drifting off to sleep, convincing myself I should throw a few words in here. Know, please, that I could fall asleep at any second. There. just there I nodded off--my eyes are closed as I type this you see--and my eyes are closed and some imaginary blue bear with the magnet on its back is here--i haven't seen it before--and jenna is shy to show it to me. images and a big face asks, "why are we starting something when we can't start anything?" there was a large faced man just asking me that. I come into consciousness just long enough to type this. And there, pizza hut drivers are running across the parking lot asking did the parked car, did they just get another pizza? And then just words:

You don't know her, Lee [Leigh?] Ann Weber.
He's got your math in there, and he's going to get very upset.

Screw tracking our dreams. I say blog *while* you dream. That's the end of this session--I'm going to sleep. before I do: The trick in dream blogging is to lose consciousness, or teeter on the edge there, let the dream run past you and then poke your head in to say, gotcha. I saw that one go by, and keep your eyes closed and type while you are asleep.

that's all.

He's Back and He's Mac

As they say, once they go mac.... Lest you thought he'd fallen off the backside of Boulder, RageBoy's back in blogland with his new toster/macintosh, which in addition to simmering human palms, is apparently full of processing power and something called BSD Unix--which I of course assumed was rough sex for the newly castrated, and, well, consider the source.

Wait til he goes wireless. We'll never get rid of him.

Jenna talks to Marek

Jenna talked to Marek today, and this is what I heard from the back seat.

"Hello? Heee hee hee hee. Heeee. Hee hee. You're funny!
Heee heee heehee hee hee hee. hee hee.
Wanna talk to my mama?"

It was great.

The Story About the Baby

Saw this on daypop. You have to know how it tugged at my heartstrings after my ordeal the other night. The writing is awesome--humor and wit A+. Can't wait to keep reading it. "Parent, Child, Vomit" -- the picture says it all.

I was telling a friend the other night, I have a new plan to get Jenna to sleep. [she's standing in front of me right now, showing me her paper, practicing her cursive writing, "mama--does this say Mark? I think it says Mark! Look at my cursive M!"] Anyway, so, my plan is to have no plan.

My plan is to surrender completely.

To let her roam the house until she falls over and passes out. Not to care if it is midnight or 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. Not to care if she paints the rug again. Not to care what kind of tape she uses to hang what kind of pictures all over the house. Not to care if she if she writes 2003 on the wall again. Not to care if she stacks six chairs on top of eachother again to reach the candy box in the top cupboard. Not to care if she takes all my checks and hides them under her bed again. Not to care if she cuts Barbie's hair or her own hair or puts on her tap shoes and dances across the linoleum floor at 4 a.m. or decides to use her waste basket as a potty again because she's too tired to walk to the bathroom. And somewhere around morning, I think she might fall asleep.

I think it could work.

Half of Blogland Goes Blind!

She's such a horndog.

Google, you should buy YACCS too.

Posted on googlers too.

wtf blogger access

two days of unreliable posting and access to blogger.
what, are you guys moving my blog to a new server one fucking post at a time?
i still love you.
you are pissing me off.

I just knocked my head against the freezer door six times on purpose

Excuse me while I hurl myself off the deck.

It's about being a mom. You see, I just spent the last two-and-a-half hours trying to get my kid to sleep. No, it really is that bad. When you're a parent (especially parenting solo--week two with George gone), you look forward to the sleeping child like you once looked forward dancing and drinking the weekend away. It's your time, when they pass out. It's the only time you get. Because you know where they are, and you know they're safe, and for once in the long fricking day they are QUIET! Angelic. As soon as the eyes seal for real, your whole spine relaxes.

Jenna's been sick with strep throat. For some children, that might mean they quiet down and rest. Not mine. She has this internal energy bank where she puts her hyper tokens, so if she's out of sorts for a day, that bank fills up with these little coins, and the minute she feels an ounce better, she cashes those suckers in--the whole lot at once, and spends them in one wild frenzy. It feels like she's pelting me with them. I can't keep up. Not with the crafts, not with the mess, not with the books, not with the meals, not with the questions, not with the smarty pants answers, not with the baths, not with the hair, not with any of it.

She's a tornado of wellness. I am useless. Where in the hell did Kansas go?

I should be used to it by now. She's five and she has never slept.

She's the baby who nursed every hour and a half, for 20 minutes on each side, and you do the math, okay, you do the math on what kind of break I had in between feedings. And you think it gets better, right? I look at other people's kids, and I think, look. They're so calm. It's clear that the parents are in charge. I bet their kids go right to sleep at night. Yah well, not if yours is like mine. She is in love with life, and that means she's going to suck mine right out of me.

Parents with calm children give me a lot of advice. It doesn't work with our kid. If she's painting, she's quiet. If she's drawing, she's quiet. That's it. The rest of the time is a manic dash through the day, me being rained on by her energy tokens that she saved up the last time she was sick.

In my day, parents drugged their kids. Horrific? My entire extended family raised their kids on "Dr. Parker's Green Medicine," which worked just fine for us kids when we were fussy and couldn't sleep, and worked on the mothers too. A teaspoon for you, a teaspoon for me. Dr. Parker practiced and made house calls until he was in his 80s. I think the entire city of Rochester was raised on that green medicine.

And was that really so wrong?

If I had some now, I'd drink the whole bottle.

Dr. Parker, God rest his soul.

Technorati is basically depressing

More later. Internet service is down--hiptop is up. The beauty of redundancy.

to no one in particular

She wasn't so much tired of being, as she was tired of being *here.* Not so tired, really, of raising an OH SHIT above the noise as of that oh shit being, like, 3 point helvetica, resonating maybe three feet. An important three feet to her, but still, three feet, not twenty three.

As more people come, and as more people have been here a longer time, she sees something she didn't expect: what they want isn't what they said.

They don't want truth and rough edges; what is important to them isn't what they tell you is important. In seeing real honesty for the first time, she suddently sees how the superficial shines that much more brilliantly.

It makes her squint. Sometimes cry.

It's not at all what she expected.

It's not why she came.

She has a few questions, but so far hasn't found any answers.

Her question today is: Who the fuck are you?

Your monologues are disingenuous, and I am disengaging. You can't hear my song anymore. Not without someone telling you that you should be listening.

You've forgotten how to be real.

Or maybe you never knew.

shopping online

(BTW, This wasn't the post I was talking about below. In fact, I don't remember what I sent via hiptop earlier. Maybe I'll never know. Google, can you hear me? Fix that antiquated m-blogging email process in Blogger. Thank you.)

i posted from my hiptop this morning and it still hasn't shown up...

...look forward to a non-sequitur sometime soon.

storm

that road
that drive
that car
that night,
that place
that lake
that storm
that sky,
that beach
that crash
that streak
that spark,
that rain
that wet
that sand
that dark,
that rush
that touch
that hard
that much,
that climb
that groan
that time
that fine,
that walk
that shell
that talk
that sky,
that beach
that night
that you
that I.

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