Blog Book - Extremecliffe Weblogsky Bookowski

Joi says that Jon and Mitch have blogged their Extreme Democracy book here. Comment facility at the ready. WIKI thoughts go here.

Now, I've had my bones to pick with the symantics around emerging this and emergent that. Even coined the widely-adopted phrase, "emergent shit from my anus." I'm not proud, but it's true. Okay I'm a little proud. I hear Harvard Business Review is going to use it. Ask Joi, he'll tell you.

So when I read the Extreme Democracy title, I got a little scared that I'd have to get all sassy again. But then I decided that I do love watching folks stretch the blog format to acomplish different things now and then--different from daily updates about our body parts, say.

Thing is, I don't so much enjoy the PDF-ism chapter linkage of the posts, and I can't seem to get the html versions of the chapters (I think that's what they're supposed to be over on the left) to come up.

Nonetheless, shoulder slaps all around for making the bookowski available to themasses (better known as us kids) here in the bloghood. Joi's even got a paper in the book. That superstar.

Once I can get the html to come up, I'm going to even read some of it, perhaps comment more intelligently. More extremely maybe. Or less so. Leaving out references to anuses. Or anusi. Not sure which. Guess that's a good thing.

I'll check back tomorrow.

Got Their Address

Code violation report in progress.

this little piggy had roast beef
this little piggy had none.

WE HAVE AIR WE HAVE AIR

WE HAVE AIR WE AIR COOL BEADS OF COLD CLAMMY SWEAT ARE EVAPORATING AS I TYPE THIS THERE IS A GOD OH HOW I LOVE LIFE I AM GLAD I DIDN'T JUMP AFTER ALL.

CEOblogs.com

In honor of the BW article on Biz Blogs, Stuart offers up an idea and a model -- up to you to decide to do it, or not.

Business blogging hits the headlines in this week's Business Week. It's a nice article and suggests a new opportunity. To my knowledge no one is yet syndicating top CEO blogs. The url www.ceoblogs.com is available! So here it is. Create a syndicated blog forum that captures Fortune 500 CEO blogs. By aggregating CEO blogs you get some unique opportunities. Afterall all you are doing is aggregating their blogs. They don't like it... they can stop blogging. Centralizing the most important ones will add new perspective to the investment community, corporate direction etc. The Fortune 500 is just one slice of this. CEOBlogs can be sliced by country, industry, turnover etc.

I would not limit it to Fortune 500. In fact, I might put them at the bottom. They certainly don't have a monopoly on creativity, innovation or voice.

Fun with Donate Buttons

an open source project

Nothing Makes Me Crazier....

Than a client fucking with my money....
...when I'm broke
......and hot.



I'm a steamroller babyI'm 'bout to roll all over you I'm a steamroller baby I'm 'bout to roll all over you I'm gonna inject your soul With sweet rock'n'roll, poor heaven I'm a cement mixer A churning urn of burning funk I'm a cement mixer A churning urn of burning funk A hefty hunk, steaming junk I'm a steamroller baby I'm 'bout to roll over you I'm a steamroller baby I'm 'bout to roll over you I'm gonna inject your soul With some sweet rock'n'roll And shoot you full of rhythm and blues I'm a napalm-bomb Guaranteed to blow your mind I'm a napalm-bomb Guaranteed to blow your mind If I can't have your love now baby There won't be nothing left behind .
Elvis Presley - Steamroller Blues Lyrics

Pig Wave

He isn't gone after all. We saw him two days ago and realized he's been alive and well the whole time. They moved his pig house is all.

Problem is, it's August. The pig fucking stinks.

But that's not the real problem. The real problem is that they still have the two black labs and Stupid Boxer as well, who continue to gang up on the pig, barking and lurching and snapping at the pig perp like a mob of L.A. Police officers 'just doin there jobs.'

I'm sick of watching the dogs bully the pig. Apparently the pig is too, because he's started to run at the dogs. I didn't know pigs could run so fast. People, pigs run FAST when they decide to run. Holy cow! I would not want to be on the receiving end of a mad pig's jowls.

Still, there's three of them--OH WAIT--4 of them because now our stupid Boxer Mix Bando has started jumping the plywood the neighbors so classily installed to cover one of the many fence holes-----and only one pig.

So I decided that after the third dog-screaming-pig-mobbing fest today to call animal control. The conversation went like this:

"Hello--I'm calling because my neighbor has a pig and three dogs, and the dogs are ganging up on the pig, circling it and jumping at it, trying to bite it."

"Mmmm hmmm."

"So, I'm thinking I need animal control to come make sure the dogs don't hurt the pig, even though I don't think there's supposed to be a pig back there in the first place. I mean, I don't like the pig being there, but I also don't want the dogs to hurt it."

"Well, there's nothing I can do about that--they can have the pig as long as they have two acres."

"They don't have two acres. They have 3/4 of an acre. It's a sub-division."

"OH, WELL, then you have to call code enforcement."

"But I'm not so much concerned about them having the pig as I am the dogs trying to attack the pig."

"Well, if they're not biting the pig, there's nothing I can do about it. Are they playing with it?"

"I don't know if they're playing with it. They circle around it, bark, lurch at it, and try to attack it. Then the pig tries to charge at them."

"Well, unless the dogs are biting the pig, you know, biting and making it bleed, then there's nothing I can do."

"Again, I don't know if they're biting the pig. I'm in my kitchen window. I see them trying to attack the pig."

"Still, unless the pig's hurt--like lying down--there's nothing I can do. Is the pig running around?"

"The pig doesn't run unless it's charging back at the dogs. It's standing. I don't see that whether he's standing has anything to do with it."

"I'm jus saying, unless the pig is actually hurt, there's nothing I can do."

"Unreal."

"The way it is, ma'am."

I got the number for Code Enforcement. I'm a woman with a mission.

And if that doesn't work, I'm calling Gomer back citing the "Animal Creating a nuisance" ordinance.

Heat Watch 2

In 1986, when George and I bought our first house in Rochester, the summer was a particularly brutal. George was on the road and I was left to tend the new abode during the worst heatwave the city had known--in my lifetime at least. Temperatures stayed in the high 90s for weeks. Tapped by our purchase, we couldn't even afford a window unit.

I remember the thermostat reading 97 degrees in my living room--at night. Consistently. Day after day, first week, second week... I also remember sitting on the recliner, a box fan at my feet, after two solid weeks, thinking about killing myself. I'm not going for drama--I really thought about it as an option for not feeling so miserable. It was only the beginning of summer, and if this was how it would be, I reasoned, count me out.

Obviously, I didn't do it.

When our central air went out a week ago, Jenna and I were already sick. We had fevers. Two days into the thermostat reading over 90 degrees inside, she entered a new phase of this plague we've had: throwing up. Oh great. Nothing like throwing up in a 90-degree house, and me too exhausted/sick to even think about what to do about it.

George was in the basement, tackling the mounds of laundry that had piled up for two weeks after our dryer died. We knew the dryer was dying. We were prepared for that. We weren't prepared for losing the AC OR for the expense, especially since I haven't had a project in more than a month. Okay two.

Undaunted, I grabbed jenna by the hand, grabbed our bag of medicine and not much else, dripped by George who was dripping in the basement, and said: "This is it. She's throwing up. I'm going to find a hotel room."

And off we went, first for phenegren, then to a ice cold room at a hotel down the road. We stayed two days. Couldn't afford to, but couldn't stand not to.

We've been back a couple of days and the AC still isn't fixed, but at least Jenna and I don't have fevers anymore. The last two days haven't been as hot, but by evening it's still above 90 inside. Didn't fall asleep last night, with cold washcloth, til 5 a.m.

Yesterday Jenna started first grade. At least they have air at school.

Yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary. We went out for Chinese as much to enjoy the coolness of a restaurant as for the food.

Then we came home.

As RageBoy might say: donations welcome, motherfuckers.

Heat Watch

It's near 90 in here now. Soon, after dark, we'll open the doors and windows like we used to do when we lived up north. It will cool down some, and I'll go outside.

There are cigarettes in the garage.

I'll sit on the green high-back chair in the driveway and I'll think about having a smoke, like I'm thinking about right now.

I don't like the heat. Especially when I'm already hot.

My lungs are burning with bronchitis. I really want to smoke. I want to remember what it tastes like. I want to feel the roughness of the smoke against my throat. I want to cough up all this crap inside me.

I'll think about it. But I won't do it. I won't do it.

No, August is the cruelest month.

We're five days into August and already I've spent them sick, fighting fever along with Jenna, the entire newly-sprung month.

Already our dryer has died and I'll spare you the details on getting a new one. Unless you live in Atlanta, it is nearly impossible to understand how difficult it is to get someone to take your honest wages in return for promptly (as in, this year sometime) delivering the item to you. It just doesn't happen. Retail is like a schoolyard, where only the bullies, brown noses and popular kids get what they pay for when they pay for it.

While George was out hunting dryers today, I noticed the house getting hotter and hotter. Checked our temps. Yep, still running around 100. I guess that's why, but gee it seems hot, I say to myself, and then to Jenna: "Are you hot?"

"I'm so hot," is the answer.

I check the thermostat. Oh no. It's close to 87. Oh no, the air is set at 79. I check the vents. Oh dear. Hot air. Not now. I try a few tricks.

1) turn off the AC. Pray. Turn around three times and click my heels. Turn it back on.

nothing.

2) call the AC guy whose number I have, try to schedule an appointment before December on the off chance that calling him will jinx the AC back to life. Turn it back on.

nothing.

3) cry softly into a kleenex, please we can't afford this right now--the dryer was a surprise, now the AC, please not now. Turn it back on.

nothing.

I made the call to a gentleman who says he actually can come look at it tomorrow. The same day our dryer (number 2--the first delivery people from H.H. Gregg never showed up) is coming. And summer has been basically workless.

Off to bathe in luke warm water so I don't feel like I'm burning to a crisp.

Did I mention school starts Monday?

Calling Dr. Freud, Calling Dr. Freud... Your Slip Is Showing.

Bush's truth telling today is making noise around the net. I think the Prez should be praised for his honesty:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we," Bush said.

Joi put up an MP3 sample here, which is crystal clear and worthy of its own TV commercial. Joi got it from Lauren.

Score one for the cocaine-damaged brain cells.

Who Survived?

I have the tune running through my head now--how does it go? "I met an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly, I guess she'll die."

And the song continues to build so that each thing has swallowed the other and the next and the next until I don't know who's left.

I think something like that has happened to our pig.

I can't be sure. But I smell a rat. More importantly, I don't smell a pig.

Further clues consist of the following:

The pighouse/doghouse has disappeared.
The boxer has disappeared.
The big headed black labs have disappeared.
The pig himself has disappeared.
I have seen no sign of the neighbors.
The fence is still in disrepair.

I wonder who ate whom?

One Month Down.

This is my No-Smoking anniversary. It's been one month since I quit--and you all were there for those harrowing weeks. Amazing, isn't it? Well, it is to me. Cold turkey baby. Took it like a man.

Except for the bouts of sobbing and throwing rolls of toilet paper at the mirror.

I went to group therapy tonight -- it wasn't until then that I realized I'd made it a month. Leaving cigarettes behind feels like many other losses for me--at first its absence assaults me every twenty seconds. Over hours, days and weeks, the assaults come less frequently, although they remain just as potent every single time.

It is strange being sick with a sinus/ear infection and not smoking. For someone who has never smoked, that must sound pretty stupid. How could any human being who has a head clogged with mucus want to inhale smoke? Where is the sense in that?

And yet, smoking, for me, was a comfort when I was sick. I may not have known how long the illness would last, how painful it would get, whether or not I'd be able to sleep at night, but I *always* knew my cigarettes were there to help me pass the time until I could run around at full throttle again.

In trying to explain it tonight in group, I realized how as a nicotine addict I adapted my every move--even my language--to eloquently justify what makes absolutely no rational sense. The funny thing is, although it's false, it's not really fake. You see the same people who are smart enough to create and pontificate rationalizations in this way actually believe them as fact. Or at least fail to recognize that it just ain't so.

My inner dialogue went this way... I would hear a message: "Smoking is the leading cause of death among women age X to Y," and would translate it in my head to: "Wshew, I'd better quit by the time I'm Y."

I would end up with bronchitis, which obviously doesn't take well to guzzling cigarettes, and I'd smoke just the same. As any smoker will tell you (if you put them on a bed of nails), cigarettes taste like shit when you're sick--especially when you have bronchitis. It's like smoking lit phlegm. Me? I'd rationalize smoking right through bronchitis this way: "Pretty soon when I smoke it won't taste like burning buggers."

It's a wiring problem, it's a trauma problem; it's all of that and more.

There is an upside to my quitting. Once I stopped being angry enough to pull teeth out of unwitting neighbors and family members, I began to realize and appreciate the nuances of the mind, the differences between my addicted thinking and my thinking now, the change in how I perceive myself and the world.

How amazing the human mind is, how flexible, how kind it can be, and how merciless.

Back to School

I know it may sound odd to those of you in slightly cooler parts of the country whose children just got out of school three days ago, but down hea' we start school Monday.

That is my news flash--we've nearly lived through summer! The current plague Jenna and I have notwithstanding, we have had an enjoyable, illness free, sun drenched summer, sprinkled with a newly acquired phobia of tornadoes (jenna) and the very lovely blisters around my now not-tan nose from this sinus/ear/brain infection I caught, quite obviously, at Chuck-E-Cheese.

In honor of next week's big event, I took my clammy, sweaty self, soon-to-be first grader in tow, to Big Lots yesterday to drop a cool $50 on school supplies.

The great thing about Big Lots is that it has big lots of stuff. The bad part is that it has big lots of many random and useless things. We were fortunate enough to find the necessities on the official School List except for a ream of white copy paper (apparently the six year olds will be running off their own dittos) and dry erase markers (which I assume the children will use to track the terror alert level on classroom whiteboards during the year).

I have also decided to get her the best electric pencil sharpener on the market (donations accepted) because I remember my own high-quality sharpener being perhaps my most important tool in all of academia, the 1968 equivalent of a Toshiba laptop.

Plastic sharpeners and the vice-grip kind never cut it for me. After about three months of school, I would decide to short-cut my work rather than struggling with wood shavings and terminally broken points, with walking to the front of the class like a nerd who'd used all her lead already.

Is it wrong for me to want as much for my own child? I don't think so. If I don't make another promise to my kid this year, I will deliver on the electric sharpener.

She can save the story for therapy--later.

Anyway, I was getting to Jenna and what has her most befuddled and amazed about first grade, aside from the fact that she's getting the SAME teacher she had for Kindergarten, who apparently passed the GCAP with scores as good as Jenna's and is allowed to progress to first grade with my child.

(Super. I was hoping for a little variety, new teaching methods, different energy. But on the up side, Jenna knows and likes the teacher, so her transition should be a piece of cake. Especially with that electric sharpener.)

Now, about Jenna's enthusiasm--it's because of her desk, you see. When I told her that she'd have her own desk, she was so surprised--so flabbergasted--that she had to sit down.

"My own desk--MY OWN DESK? You mean, my very own desk?"

"Yep," I said, her teacher having just told me the news on the phone--before CNN added it to its ticker tape panic readout at the bottom of the TV screen.

"Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! I've seen those desks! They have tops and bottoms, and a little piece that overlaps, and Mom and Mom and Mom--there's an INSIDE!"

"Isn't that awesome! I've seen those kind of desks--in fact I used to have one of those kinds of desks."

"No way.

"Way!"

"You did? And now I will?! MY OWN DESK! I'm SO EXCITED!"

I had nearly forgotten that one of the rites of passage of moving from kindergarten to first grade is leaving tables behind you.

First in Montessori, then in kindergarten, my daughter has been a table dweller. I knew she'd seen desks on TV, and she'd seen them in the older students' class room where she took art after school, but to actually GET her own desk was unfathomable to her. I guess she thought she'd sit at a table forever.

I'm not against tables, mind you. I think children can accomplish a lot working hands on, moving around, completing tasks and assignments independently at tables, which encourage variety and movement when they are used correctly--like in Montessori.

But Jenna's kindergarten wasn't like that. Being stuck at tables meant having to sit next to the boy who pulled buggers from his nose and wiped them on his chair. Being stuck at tables meant snack envy and arm punches and a wiggly writing surface from the ever jiggling knees of the ADHD and the reasonably bored kids.

This Monday my baby girl puts all that behind her. She is backpack ready and desk bound. She's kissing kindergarten goodbye and reaching for the stars--or the nearest bottle of hand sanitizer.

And I know I'll be wiping tears from my eyes as I kiss her goodbye in the car pool line on Monday.

Too fast. They grow too fast.

Where do you get those cute little RSS buttons?

An RSS question from someone who doesn't care how it works but wants to have one of those cute little buttons instead of the word "RSS Feed" on her sidebar---how?

God Speed, RB.

RB flies and rides, all for a good cause of course.

ADDED EGR BONUS: Check out the pic below the Daewoo post with RB and Doc. It's trippy.

A post in which I urge you to feel sorry for me

I have a double ear infection, which doesn't mean it's twice as bad as a mono infection, but that both ears are infected, as are my (is my) sinuses (sinus). It also means that noises coming from outside of my own head are muffled, while noises made internally, through various bodily functions, are amplified.

I am tired of my own breathing. When I cough it sounds like a plane crash in my brain. Although the pain is over--it stopped last night when electroshocks turned into complete deafness--I feel like homemade shit.

Today I got antibiotics, sorry natural health fans. This is necessary so that I don't kill the people in my house who insist on MUMBLING at me, or at least that's how it sounds inside of my head.

Unless we're talking about Jenna.

I guess because she once resided inside my body, she got grandfathered in on the internal noise ability. She is the only person/place/thing outside of my own body that is amplified 220 times. Her whispers are shrieks. Her crying = my eyes shattering. Her playing is my root canal.

That's today. This is temporary. Tomorrow will be better.

In the mean time, if you're outside of me, speak up! If you're inside of me, shut up!

Someone please do me a quick loading banner thing

This red thing at the top of my blog is much ado about nothing, isn't it? I don't like that description either. "Get burned by the fire you forgot to light." What the hell does that mean? When did I come up with that crap?

Jeneane Sessum / Allied

Somethin' like that. Purddy. Come on now.

Circa 2001

The Dave Winer who now thinks blogs are journalism used to think blogs were academic writing.

What do I think? I think blogs used to be more journalistic than they are now in the sense that we were writing about original (current, to us at least) happenings in original ways. Now, those bloggers who see themselves as journalists are primarily link factories, putting slightly new spins (if we're lucky) on already-reported mainstream news.

That's not journalism because you're not finding the story--you're merely spinning it, and that makes you closer to a PR flack than a journalist.

I love irony!

Paige Loves Her Husbife...

Paige has decided that her husband is actually the wife of the family--she has plenty of proof. Example:

When my husbife doesn't get his way, he goes into full on melodrama. Example: We're driving home from a party last night and discussing our trip to san francisco. He says we need to get up at 5 in the morning to drive there. I counter with the following thought: 'Why do we need to be in San Francisco at 7 in the morning? What will we DO that early? Maybe we can go at a later time.' His response? 'Fine--if you want to just sit around the house all day, we'll just do that.' Okay moTHER.

Go giggle.

Add Three New People to Your Blogroll Today.

Don't ask why, just do it. Go to Technorati, search on some keywords that interest you--jalapeno peppers, gardening, strep throat, whatever--and check out some of the blogs that pop up with posts discussing your cherished keywords.

Read some of them--especially those not heavily linked to. Look for folks that resonate with you--read some posts, search their site, check out their archives.

Add three compelling new voices to your blogroll today.

Why?

Something to do with velocity and widening circles.

Energy.

Fighting inertia.

blogroll alert

don't freak out if you're not on my blogroll yet. after holding out for year(s), I'm finally using blogrolling.com. I'm getting used to it. Surfing around clicking like a freak.

I used to be a staunch "Prune it yourself" fanatic when it came blogrolls. I thought blogrolling.com was like your boss cheating and using one of those automated performance appraisal packages. "If my work means something to you, can you spend a few seconds to, you know, write something original down?" I actually said this to the CEO I worked for at one company. She was too busy, so she used the software and embellished with a couple adjectives she got out of something I wrote for her.

Now I have an earache and too many people have moved addresses too many times for me to keep up. I give up. I am a blogroll idealist no more. The hand-pruned blogroll is here no more. Long live blogrolling.com

I have to go to the doc now. Leave me a link in comments to remind me where you live. 'Cept if you know I can't stand you. Then don't bother. You know who you are.

[[that's just to get you thinking while I'm away.]]

We are proud to claim him (errrr, most of the time).

Ted talks Gonzo.

Thing about it is that some of Ted's concerns are now reality--they don't feel futuristic to me. They feel like a done deal.

And by the way, the difference between blogging and journalism (and independent blogging vs. corporate blogging) is that most journalists are working for shareholders and report up to someone whose ass is on the line. In blogging, our own asses are on the line. Or at least hanging out the window.

Safeguarding the welfare of the public cannot be the first concern of a large publicly traded media company. Its job is to seek profits.

Big media companies want to eliminate all ownership limits. With the removal of these limits, immense media power will pass into the hands of a very few corporations and individuals.

Politically, big media may again be on the wrong side of history--and up against a country unwilling to lose its independents.

Are the campaign buses stopping here?

Well, they should.

I always thought of museums as places that depict what was--a way to capture and keep alive what we have already lived through. The Holocaust Museum is opening an exhibit on Dafur to depict the genocide taking place right now against Africans there. Children and adults are being burned alive. Finally it's not just nobodys talking about it. Finally Important People and Organizations are acknowledging what has been obvious for months--years?--it is genocide.

"Never forget," unless you're busy hunting for oil.

I'm thinking the Kerry/Edwards campaign bus ought to stop by. Since the current administration has at best paid lip service to the crisis, perhaps the challengers can do better.

Have I linked to the Sudan blog yet?

If not, I am now.

Go there, educate yourself.

Help.

Next they pushed Hussein into the fire. "I felt pain in my legs, but there was no blood," said Hussein, running his thin fingers across his right calf.

In quick succession, the other children were thrown in, too. The janjaweed didn't wait to see them die, and when they left, the children scrambled out of the flames, with minor burns, except Hussein, the first one in. His legs were too swollen, and he fell, unconscious. A relative who had been hiding nearby, waiting for the janjaweed to leave, scooped him up.

"Nobody can believe I survived," said Hussein, whose round face is now scarred with blisters the size of marbles.

The burnings are continuing. A few miles away in the Otash refugee camp, seven villagers, all interviewed separately, described seeing children abducted and set on fire when the janjaweed attacked Adwa two weeks ago.

Yeh--makes an ear infection seem pretty insignificant.

The Using the designation for the first time in its 11 year history, the Holocaust Museum called the situation in Darfur a "genocide emergency" --not merely a description but the strongest language the museum has.

Meanwhile we're blogging conventions.

owe owe ouch! owe ear infection

jenna and I are sick. owe. can it be morning yet so i can get to the doc. ouch. oh. my face, my ear, oh. i thought stopping smoking meant guaranteed good health for the rest of my life. you fuckers all lied to me. what gives. what kind of friends are you. you never told me it'd be the same old shit just without cigarettes. you are all fired.

What happened to blogskins?

I've been template surfing over on blogskins, where I found the last template for this site.

In the last year, I think, Blogskins has been overtaken by the younger template design crowd with a penchant for stars and light and bizarre little figures, kisses and nymphs and pinks and precious images yearning to be deep.

Bummer.

template change in progress.

had to do something. no one offered to make it look snazzy for me, so I'll use what blogger has to offer... will take some time to move over the naughty bits from the old one.

Women's E-News Story on Women and Blogging

I have no recollection of talking to the writer, but that's okay. I would have said pretty much what I said, cept for the omitted "how" in this quote: "My fascination with blogging lies in [[HOW]] my voice informs someone else's voice," notes Sessum. [[And I would have added, and how my own voice is informed by them.]]

Elaine, Shelley and I get a mention in Women's E-News in a story called Women Go Blogging.

I apparently sometime said the following, which I vaguely remember saying, though don't remember when or to whom:

"Blogs make it really easy to express yourself," says Sessum, a public relations writer. "It's an amazing tool to help you figure out who you are, what you care about and to connect with other human beings. Plus, it's a place for me to exercise my voice. I've been so busy writing for clients that I've never kept up with my personal writing. Blogging has really helped me refine my voice."

Sounds about right.

And you better fucking care that I had a cheese sandwich for lunch.

and burritos for dinner.

Canned Jalapenos mmmmmm

I haven't bought canned jalapenos in forever--til last week. I got a couple cans of these -- with the little pop open tops and the superbowl sunday looking perfect "O" slices on the label -- from my old stomping grounds the other day.

Man-alive yum yum gimme some HOT! YES! I forgot how much I loved topping food with hot jalapeno slices. Sure, sure, natural blah blah not canned blah blah organic blah blah, whateva.

I'll take a wripped-wrappered, dusty-topped can of La Costena Pickled Jalapeno Nacho Slices from my old American Spirit selling gas station any day.

Just had them wrapped in a low carb burrito with pepper jack cheese, black beans, and some vegetables from leftover barley soup. Simply microwave til juices intermingle. Killer. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I know--I'm in some big trouble because my tastebuds are back.

Flash Mobs Fo' Real

'Flash mob' makes it into the Dictionary

The English Oxford Dictionary has added Flash Mob into it's listing only a year after the phenomenon started. The 11th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary was published on Thursday 8th July and included other new words such as Vavavoom of which there is evidence that it has been in use since the nineteen fifties.

In the UK, Flash Mobs move from having fun to doing good.

While you're at it...

Read Joseph Duemer's most excellent post on Kerry's speech, Vietnam, and complexity.

I suppose it would have been foolish to stand before the nation & assert that to combat terrorism we must bring a combination of police powers & positive cultural / economic initiatives to bear as we quietly abandon the rhetoric of war.

I suppose such a statement would have been tantamount to Walter Mondale’s admission that he, like his opponent, would raise taxes, but that at least he, Mondale, wouldn’t lie about it. The truth is often not politic—a fact that defines the immaturity of our democracy.

Conflict as business model...

...and American's addiction to patriotism.

Read Jonathon's most wonderful post on U.S. Patriotism and America's obssession with war.

Global savior, heal thyself.

No Comment

I'm having problems with this site coming up. I think it's YACCS, my commenting utility. I've used YACCS since time began and have stuck with them because they took us on when there were few options and lots of "no vacancy" signs for blogs wanting to add commenting capability. They've been reliable and ever-ready for years.

Lately though, my blog has been slow to load and I wonder if it's YACCS. Sometimes when comments are down, it takes forever for my site to come up.

I'm debating changing to blogger comments, but I don't like a lot about that option. AND I don't like abandoning a three-year archive of comments from friends and foes alike.

Maybe there's something I need to upgrade with YACCS?

What's a girl to do?

What's with the border thing?

Maybe they could take some of the security guys who rifle through my tampons at the airport and put them on the Mexican border?

This is how a blogger attends a convention

John Perry Barlow has a good plan for attending the Republican Convention. I hope some of the lanyard-wearing bloggers will be suit-donned and participating, or at least transmitting some real-time pics.

And may I recommend, at precicely the right moment, a little something from President (of Funk) Clinton to hasten the pant wetting?

More from JPB:

I don't want to confront the Republicans. I want to discombobulate them. I don't want to argue with them, which would only convince them further, I want to throw them off their game. I don't want to be aggressive in my discontent. God knows there's been plenty of that on all sides. I want to be genial. But disconcerting.

So, to that end, I propose the following: I want to organize a cadre of 20 to 50 of us. I want to dress us in suits and other plain pedestrian attire and salt us among the sidewalk multitudes in Republican-rich zones. At a predetermined moment, one of us will produce a boom-box and crank it up with something danceable. Suddenly, about a third of the people on the sidewalk, miscellaneously distributed in the general throng, will start dancing like crazy and continue to do so for for about a minute. Then we will stop, melt back into the pedestrian flow, and go to another location to erupt there.*

Now this is how bloggers cover conventions.

* Idea Stavros and Sessum certified organic.

$97.53!

I have now stopped smoking for 27 days, 1 minutes, 12 seconds. That translates into 459 cigarettes NOT smoked, for a savings of $97.53! I have increased my life expectancy by 1 days, 14 hours, 15 minutes, 4 seconds.

[[courtesy of sharemeter]]

A question Mr. President?

Fun little time waster. Once you ask all your questions or enter your favorite keywords, don't forget to try bin laden, michael moore, and laura bush...

Pope Blames Feminists for Gender Confusion

According to a leaked extract, the document accuses feminists of "blurring the biological difference between man and woman".

For instance, the Pope noted, Priests frequently mistake little boys' rectums for women's vaginas.

...developing...

Stavros' folks place is still for sale?

I'm telling you, this place is blogtopia. What are we waiting for? 200 bloggers at a grand a piece. We time share in bunches.

I have dibs on summer!

Oh, and don't forget to read Stavros' convention blogging.

Jimmy, Won't You Come Back?

I've gone on about Jimmy Carter here before. There is something about living in the south, a short drive in no traffic from the Carter Center, which is a peaceful place of historic writings and images, that puts Jimmy in context. And once Jimmy's in context, his true greatness -- his heart and his brilliance, in that order -- are overwhelming.

A man of incredible integrity, Jimmy is unlike any other Presient. I think everyone can agree on that. People overuse the word integrity these days. It's all the rage in self-help circles, a cherished prize for the self-actualized who have managed to get their needs met, in the passive voice of course. Active voice is simply too aggressive.

But I digress. When Jimmy uses the word integrity, he means integrity.

Kalilily has a link to Jimmy's speech from the convention, which is worth a read if you didn't hear it on TV or if you were in the Blogger's Box at the convention. ;-)

Elaine calls out this quote:

You can't be a war president one day and claim to be a peace president the
next, depending on the latest political polls. When our national security
requires military action, John Kerry has already proven in Vietnam that he will
not hesitate to act. And as a proven defender of our national security, John
Kerry will strengthen the global alliance against terrorism while avoiding
unnecessary wars.

Ultimately, the issue is whether America will provide global leadership
that springs from the unity and integrity of the American people or whether
extremist doctrines and the manipulation of truth will define America's role in
the world.

At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul.....

Thanks for pointing this out E.

A topic I know a thing or two about...

...you know, when I'm not dissociating.

Semantically Yours...

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the new number one google search result for the word "Credentialed".

surprised? not me.

The thing that bothers me most about the credentialing of bloggers for this past week's democratic convention is how the bloggers willingly participated in a PR mega-event that had been brainstormed about, strategized about, met endlessly about, project managed about, account managed about, and congratulated over by what has to be hundreds of PR flacks across multiple organizations who really don't give a rats ass whether bloggers covered the event or not.

This was a corporate event and credentials were bestowed like tickets for a ski-doo raffle, finalists made up of the lucky few who stuck business cards with the right combination of words on them (i.e., no troublemakers, left-leaning) in the bowl on the trade show floor. Ooooo--maybe I'll win.

Yah, if life, business, and government worked that way.

It doesn't. That's why we came here--remember?

I will state my personal position again: Anything that seeks to professionalize weblogging, I am against. It's power depends upon its non-professionalization. Stop letting them bully you into stepping and fetching it, guys. And yes, guys, I'm talking to you specifically, because you continue to bite every time.

I wish I lived closer to a convention. I would not be credentialed, but I would cover it, on the street, in the 'tweens, from a boulder on the grassy knoll. Covering politics is talking to people, not following the cued plan of PR pros. I'd go wherever they weren't--anywhere they weren't.

Here is a conversation I imagine has already taken place between public affairs PR flacks involved in the event, the Kerry launch at the DNC convention.

PR Flack 1 (PRf1): Credentialing bloggers--great idea wasn't it?

PR Flack 2 (PRf2): "Sure was. I don't know how the whole thing got started, but it was the best thing we coulda done to show how the 'voice of the people' counts... That 'be not afraid' of john q. public...' Embrace him even!

PRf1: Yeah, without letting them get close enough to cause any trouble!

PRf2: Hey, those guys don't leave their laptops for a second--It was easy to keep em penned up. Can you believe they didn't riot when we saw how far away they were? No way they could hear or see anything--making like it was their war room up there--haaaa!

PRf1: Did you see them typing the whole fucking time?

PRf2: No shit--what the hell were they writing about? Carol King--how many words can you write about her -- she sang for fifteen minutes.

PRf1: I saw this one blog guy get his credentials--his eyes were so big you think I he just got the Nobel Peace Prize.

PRf2: sheeeeeesh!

PRf1: I thought they'd be all over the balloon mishap--Jesus the stage manager that had Mischer that close to Blizer is so canned.

PRf2: The bloggers were all gone by then--there were like two of them up there. I guess they got the picture that the terrorists weren't coming--"Nothing to see here boys, go ahead home..."

PRf1: hhhhaaa! Yah, "The real journalists have it covered--why don't you all go buy some ink cartridges for your printers!"

PRf2: Now the Bush team is all about how to leverage the webloggers.

PRf1: Yeah, well, give 'em Bush Cheney signs and tell them to get drunk like everyone else.

PRf2: I think if you give 'em fancy lanyards they're yours for life.

PRf1: blahahaha!

(and on and on).

Are we worthy of the jeering? Naw. Doesn't matter really. But we are responsible for not letting ourselves be manipulated in the name of blogging. At least I think so.

So you credentialed few--cover the next convention somewhere where it's not expected, scripted even. And if you get detained or kicked out, tell us about it. There are plenty of folks who can talk about healthcare and not having insurance to take their kid to the hospital and who have had relatives killed in Iraq. There are plenty of folks who rely on those tax cuts to power their corporations, who demand we close our borders and torture prisoners of war to get the answers we need.

Start a conversation with one of them.

And you don't even need a fancy lanyard to do it.

The Spiridellis Brothers--Two Guys and a Computer

Just read a good article on the Spiridellis Brothers, better known to us as JibJab, the creators of the now legendary and hysterical This Land Is Your Land lampoon. It's great to see a couple of guys who know what to do with the net get mainstream recognition from a really good piece of work. Hysterical even. Hopefully they can use the noise to drum up sales for their new book, Are You Grumpy, Santa?, which looks awfully cute.

In the meantime, the brothers are under fire from the publisher who holds the rights to Guthrie's song. At the heat of the debate is whether the use of the song qualifies as infringing satire or protected parody.

If you really want to dig into the conflict, Corante has a thorough rundown of what's gone down.

Kinda takes the fun out of two guys and a computer.

Doh!

We all need a few more balloons...
by Don Mischer
DNC Convention Director
 
No confetti, no confetti
yet.
Go balloons. Go balloons.
More Balloons. All balloons.
All balloons.
 
Come on guys,
Let's move it
Jesus.
 
We need more balloons.
I want all balloons
to go, goddamn!
No confetti. No confetti.
No confetti.
 
I want more balloons.
What's happening to the balloons?
We need more balloons.
 
We need all of them coming down!
Balloons. Balloons.
Balloons.
 
What's happening!
They're not coming down.
 
All balloons.
Where the hell
Nothing is falling. 
What the fuck
are you guys doing
up there?
 
We want more
balloons coming down.

More balloons.
More balloons.

PTSD - 1: Lullaby

rock-a-bye baby
down by the lake,
when the wind blows
your world starts to shake,
when the storm hits
your world starts to break,
and crap starts flying around smashing into you and busting your head wide open until you bleed into the streets and passersby look down wondering what the hell is wrong with you and kick you and tell you to get up and be productive you useless sack of shit,
'til it's all you can take.

PTSD - 2: Grandpa

They wept more for you
I never understood
because you were murdered
and he was supposed to die.

Just three weeks apart
my daddy, my grandpa
gone
who loved me more
no matter
dead.

I watched them weep for
you grandpa
wondering why
I didn't see them cry that
hard for my father
your death a tragedy
his a relief

your death
and his
are alive for me
still
in the corners of the
kitchen where I opened
the door to tears and moans,
on the far wall of my bedroom
where I watched shadows
at night instead of understanding
that nothing was the same,
on the school bus where looks
of pity wrapped me in kind blankets
that I grew used to wearing.

That is where I keep you.

 

PTSD - 3: Intermission

Wind washes me
dirty dirty
grandma said
you put panties on
when you sleep
or I'll tell your
mother

Rain washes me
dirty dirty
grandma said
those dolls have
no clothes and
look
you drew on
their dirty
parts now
I have to
tell your
mother

Fire washes me
dirty dirty
grandma said
look at that
drawing
I can see
that girl's chest
rip it up now
or I'll show
your mother.

Earth wash me clean
of their shame
show me where
to bury it.

PTSD - 4: Move

His hooves make prints
paint the ground in u-shaped echoes,
the hard autumn runway
where waves lap sand.

We gallop through foam,
icy lake water
splashes my bare calves
rubbed hairless on
the insides
from holding on
tight,
his belly wide and strong,

Remembering ends
the day they took him away.

But not my skin,
every inch of flesh
a memory of touch--
thighs, calves
heels, hands--
of movement
of silent conversation.

Of losing him.

PTSD - 5: Birth

I open like wings
from me flies
new life,
she.

I warm her skin
against my chest
she me,
we.

I terrify them then
blood everywhere
eyes close,
dark.

I open again for them
they save me
I know,
agony.

 

PTSD - 6: Dance

To know your face
so well
to trace the lines above
your eyes
to have found all
the secret flaws
to love you
still

To be destroyed,
ripped by words that
shred like shards,
blood drips milk
deceit and despair mingle,
currents of
spoiled innocence
rearrange
real and pretend.

How do I parse
disbelief,
real or
imagined? 
when
what was so
never was.

To love again.

7 more posts until my 2,000th here.

I shall endeavor to ring in the new millennium with a spree of on-the-spot poetry.

Please enjoy.

Or Else.

Oh No, No, NO!

They've killed him! They've killed him!

 

My B Key Makes Prime Time

Thanks to Mike for posting my story on my Hiptop/Sidekick and the faulty key of B over on the Hipshake site.

yabadabedope!

Edwards (Mrs.) for America

I've been saying for months that I really like John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth. Just read another article about her--I didn't know they'd lost a 16-year-old son or that they have a 22 year old and a 4 year old. I didn't know she was a devastatingly good lawyer, had a baby when she was 50, or looked like a real person, sans botox.

"Elizabeth Edwards' intellect was termed 'a weapon of mass destruction' by a former courtroom rival."

I love complexity. This pair's complex.

Can we elect her?

 

Glaze Flavored Drink? Ouch. Brain Freeze

Thanks Mike for the news on future blood surgar spikes around the nation from the new drinkable Krispy Kreme donuts.

My sweet tooth has been satisfied for a month, and I haven't even tasted them.

Shiiivvvveerrrr.

More on Obama from Chris at Afro-Netzien

This is a great blogger's-eye view post from the convention on Barak Obama's speech and its aftermath. Nice.

((I'm following the convention followers because I got nothing good to write about right now. A good dose of meta-blogging ought to cure me of my writer's block.))

Convention Blogger Challenge!

I was thinking that one use for blogs during the convention is an interactive treasure hunt! In other words, we, your valued readers, tell you, the convention blogeneers, what items we want you to hunt down and take camera-phone pics of then post to your blog!

I want to see:

One conventioneer with a funny hat.
Someone walking around bearfoot.
One man sleeping.
David Weinberger doing any of the above.
One half-full latte.

Extra Bonus: Get close enough to Theresa Heinz Kerry to tell me what genre of alcohol is on her breath.

On your mark, get set, GO!!

This is good...

They give you a razor, which you couldn't have brought in with you, once you get inside?

This must be so you can slit your wrists from boredom?

I like Jessamyn's posts and pics.

The meta-ness discussion was 'specially cool.

Yes, I saw him.

Did you?

Where are all of our blog reporters on the guy mainstream media and a great part of the viewing audience says made history tonight? Obama anyone?

So far meandering through the blogs covering the DNC I see lots of middle-age white guys writing about how a lot of other middle-age white guys are hard to hear.

Boys, boys, boys. We pack you up, we send you off to tend to the Important Duties of the Nation, and this is what we get?

I want a refund.

 

David Weinberger says "Shove It" to a Pulitzer-Prize-winning Journalist

Well, at least he's not running for First Lady.

Every once in a while, David utters these immortal quotes that make the sides of his readers' lips turn up, down, or all around. This one, from the USA Today today, made me smile so good:

"Objectivity is a worthwhile objective,
but it needs to be recognized that it can't be reached."
--David Weinberger

If nothing else comes from the DNC, and I suspect nothing else will, this article and David's quote on the illusion of objectivity was worth weblogger participation. He got to say, well duh BigMedia--you've never been what you claimed to be.

You Go, David.

Dr. Bill K is Way Kool.

Dr. Bill Koslosky is one of those neat geeky docs I like so much, the ones who embrace technology with gusto because they understand it can make our lives better. I owe him some notice because he keeps me up to date with emails, and as I mentioned below, I have become really sinfully bad about dealing with email since I quit smoking. (okay since before that.)

First, then, you should be keeping up with Dr. Bill and his blogging here at wireless-doc, and here.

When I wrote recently about MSF (doctors without borders), Bill wrote and gave them kudos and me a thanks for mentioning them, then told me about the kind of things some other organizations are doing to help build communities, assist the ill, injured, and others in need around the world, especially using technology.

The sites he mentioned include: Bridges,  Voxiva, One World Health (a non-profit pharmaceutical company!?!), and DNDI (which is working with MSF). These sites are all worth reviewing, and their efforts supporting. Most have donation areas if you can and choose to de-pocket some cash.

These are important links for folks who want to help others, and to help others who are helping others, extending the reach of your resources across borders and oceans and cultures. Read about the ever worsening disaster in Sudan from those who are there. This ought to make you sick. It ought to make you cry. If you're anything like me, it ought to bring outrage. It ought to make you not give much of a shit about which bloggers are covering the DNC or what happened at the Dogone Blogon conference last week.

Recently Dr. Bill sent an email on stem cell research, an email I subsequently lost (I know--me and my emails...). The good news is, David has the info over here.

Thanks Dr. Bill for continuing to inform me and remind me of global needs and global accomplishments through caring people using technology and their own two hands to make a difference. Keep sending and I'll keep posting. 

Thanks especially for writing even when I don't write back.

Demonstracione

Spam Headline Poem from My Current Inbox
With Love

 

Why would you?

Immobility uranus
mennonite dynamite
fun for you both.

How is life, Ginseng?

You've been pre-approved
the deal of the century:
legal Tylenol 3 with Codeine,
Valium, popular software.

Regain your youth,
I'm waiting for your call.

Denunciate
except for me
our little secret
Saturday.

You should tr.y this new phar.m--
forget the doctor
stay hard longer.

Hello.

Home invasion,
get cash out of your house.
Unidirectional grail,
Calvinist.

The midwife
50 curses...
Was it you evil hamal?

All I wanted
is better now, chivalry lawsuit.
All I wanted
brought salmonberry
health, happiness, and fortune.

Long time no see, babe,
'bout time you emailed me back.

 

Email is like Snail Mail: An Apology in One Part

I remember when email felt fast, amazing, wonderous, when I waited for an email from a colleague in the early 90s back at Kodak like I used to wait for the  postman to bring my American Quarterhorse Newsletter as a kid.

Oh, email was something. Oh, email was everything.

I don't feel like that about email anymore. In fact, it now takes me more time to manage (and mostly delete) incoming messages than it takes to go through my snail-mail bills, and I have A LOT of bills.

That's what I do now. I use all of my email energy to manage incoming crap, and I reserve my outgoing messages for files and communications that I need to send to clients.

In other words, I just don't email people back anymore.

And that sucks. I'm wrong for that. I know it.

I have at least two dozen messages (bolded to to make me feel guilty--tagging them as "unread" even though I've read them) that I haven't responded to. From GOOD PEOPLE. From FRIENDS. From people who even LIKE ME.

And yet, I can't bring myself to go through the envelope-sealing, stamp-licking feeling that overwhelms me when I think about writing and sending emails these days.

It was different when I had "work email" and "home email." All my good stuff came to one address. Even with SPAM, I knew there'd be treasures and I cherished that space inside my home email.

Now my homeplace is where I work, and my workplace is my home and I have Clients, Friends and Spammers knocking on my door, and I CAN'T EVEN SMOKE TO KEEP FROM GETTING CONFUSED.

Blog it and send me a link. That's all I can think to say. If you do that, I'll come across you on my ordinary and extra-ordinary routes through the net, and we'll jam out there.

Just for now. I'm sure my mind will get better. One day.

I apologize for my lack of communication. I am sorry I  hate email so much.  But I do. And I'm so tired.

Laid off from WHAT?

I had a dream a couple of nights ago that I got laid off.

In the morning when I remembered it I started giggling at the irony. Laid off from what, exactly? A layoff? Can you be doubley laid off? Yah, sorry, you're involuntarily separated from your involuntary separation.

My guess is that the dream was a result of the panic that sets in this time of year when business simply dries up. Thanks to summer vacations, July-August is always a nail biter. Same with February, which is simply payback for December-January.

You would think I'd know this, maybe plan. But I don't plan, and I don't remember until it happens.

The layoff dream then isn't so suprising, then, given that I've laid off cigarettes, that my business has let up, and that I wish everyone around me would lay off.

On the other hand, when I went to see George in Tambourines to Glory in midtown with Jenna on Sunday, I parked in the Ketchum parking garage in the area where I parked for five years.

There's always that.

;-)

Who Dat Is?

Sometimes I want to know who searched me up through google using a certain string because I know that we'd be fast friends. The person who came here by searching up Cixous and entredeux, drop me a line. We must talk.

Bloggers' Late Summer Reading List

From my comments, here are some reading recommendations from my Valued Readers. I thought others might want the info too.

Now, someone go add all of these to my Amazon wishlist, huh? ;-)

 

Two minutes to write something before I take jenna to gymnastics

I can't believe I haven't been here. I've been busy. With what, I don't know. OH I know, it's been reading fiction, my new salvation to keep me off cigs. I think it was Andrea who said she always had a book in her purse. Well, that's me. I walked laps in the pool a couple of days ago reading as I went. Put it down on the side and actually made it a couple of laps swimming (it's an olympic-size pool; gimme some credit). Picked it up again. Read it at my sister's. Read it waiting for Jenna at gym. Panic set in when I forgot it on the kitchen table, realizing the error only after I splashed into the pool on Friday.

The obsessive fiction run reminds me of house shopping. I now have several characters from several different books and several plots merging into a twisted and confusing mega story of my own. I toss authors and titles out the window preferring to spend my non-reading time trying to remember which murderer was it who used the toy cat in the ally and was it the guy detective or girl detective who grew up without a father. Then I give up trying to sort out which book was which and let the stories re-tell themselves all mingled in my imagination.

I guess there is life after smoking. Even though I've traded one "must have" for another. I've managed, so far, to make it not food, which is good, because I've been punished with that enough.

SO, I'm okay, but reading, and thinking about reading and writing and the stories we tell here and why they're not enough for me and how I used to read blogs with the same appetite as I have for a good novel now, but that you don't find people's stories on blogs the way you used to, and so I have to spend $6.95 at CVS to be sure I'm not without my fix.

okay, more later...

Think This Means They Could Fix My "B" Key?

This is great for Danger, Inc., makers of my T-Mobile Sidekick (or Hiptop in Danger Lingo). As one of the early adopters of the Sidekick, I'm hoping this means that Danger has an free and easy way of badgering T-Mobile into fixing my "B" key. It stopped working a few weeks after I bought my new Sidekick. Of course, I didn't buy any extended warranty. As it stands now, instead of looking in to what could be done to fix my "B" key, I re-jigger my writing to exclude "B" words. Instead of baby, I type infant. Instead of break, I type smashed. Stuff like that. I've gotten good at it.

The color sidekick is nice and fancy and faster than the old model. But I've found the durability isn't as good. If they upped the quality of the software and innards, perhaps they saved on the case and keyboard? It doesn't feel as hardy in your hand.

My old sidekick rode 14 miles at 40 MPH on the top of my van one time before falling off into the middle of a four-lane road when I made a right-hand turn. When I found it, face down and open, just missed by oncoming traffic, it was on and working just fine. Scratched, dented, but absolutely nothing wrong with its brain or parts.

I've had the new Sidekick a month or so, and already the B key doesn't work and I've had to call T-Mobile once when it went dead for a day to find out I needed to take out and re-insert the SIM card.

Anyway, I hope they use the money wisely, is what I'm sayin'.

And I hope they write and say, Hey Girl, we'll send you a new one that works just groovy and you send us yours.

That's be good.

Hi Dean!

Received the code. Deciphered. I read you. The quarter is benind the tallest oak in the westmost part of town. Over and out good buddy.

;-)

Sure, the story itself is funny...

...because I can think of so very many alternate headlines for it, many of them involving SPAM. But none of my funnies compare to the joy of reading a sentence like this one from the BBC:

"Despite the massive public interest, no-one was found to have lost their organs."

I mean, you just don't run into that kind of news every day.

Really, you don't.

 
I have now stopped smoking for 19 days, 7 hours, 4 minutes, 12 seconds.

okay, I'll live in a bag.

I guess. Why not? Is a zipper included?

Earthbag construction Originally uploaded by Rog.

You say symbiosis, I say homogeny...

Let's call the whole thing off.

The more weblogs embrace, partner with, and mimic traditional media, the more weblogging reads like, feels like, and smells like traditional media.

In other words, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck......

Doc thinks the teaming of Technorati and CNN around politics is cool news. I think Doc is cool. But I think neither of these things is the point.

As a nice way of streaming blogs on macro events for easy slicing and dicing BY THOSE LOOKING FOR EASY SLICES AND DICES this is a fine maneuver. 

SO why does it annoy me, greatly?

I am looking not for symbiosis here, but contrast. My biggest hope is that, in seeing these two forms of communication side by side, the juxtoposition will bring clarity and bright shiny edges. My hope is to see the blinding light of dissonance between blogging and "J"ournalism, to confuse the hell out of every one, including our very own pundits here in blogland.

My fear is that it will look more symbiotic than dissimilar, like Doc says.

politics.technorati.com? How about loss.technorati.com, how about chemo.technorati.com, how about babiesborn.technorati.com?

The diluting of blogging into little more than streaming news (especially political) is a trend that needs to die an early death. Lest we see the day when blog-speak runs beneath all the other little terror-tape up-to-the-minute reports at the bottom of the news screen -- if they can fit another ticker tape on at the bottom of the news screen!

......bloggers report Dukakas the winner by 54 percent!..... Instapundit to wed Sullivan....  Mass. blogger spies suspicious package on sidewalk....

Film at motherfucking 11.

Sharemeter says I get to live another day

I've added a day onto my life, according to Sharemeter. Thanks Paul for letting me in on it. Pretty powerful stats!

Based on my particulars: I have now stopped smoking for 18 days, 5 hours, 34 minutes, 45 seconds. That translates into 291 cigarettes NOT smoked, for a savings of $61.83! I have increased my life expectancy by 1 days, 18 minutes, 35 seconds.

The good news is, I live a day longer.
(the bad news is, I live a day longer without a cigarette.)

OKAY OKAY, I'M ONLY KIDDING!

 

Fiction Recommendations PLEASE

For the first time in six years I've read a  novel from cover to cover (in two days) without a smoke break.

I quit while I was pregnant with Jenna. I spent the majority of my pregnancy in the bathtub digesting novel after novel after novel, with a hunger I thought was driven by the knowledge that once the baby came, I'd never have time to read again. You know, since children end your life and stuff.

Now I think that my nine-month fiction fiesta may have been as much an antidote for the boredom of not smoking as a pregnancy craving. So I read this novel by Catherine Coulter called Blind Side and had a blast with it. I've never read her before, but it's one of those FBI crime fighter thrillers with a six-year-old boy at the center of the ruckus.

So, here we go gang--I'm jonsing. Do I stick with Coulter and run down the series? Or who do you have for me to read? QUICK LEAVE YOUR FICTION RECOMMENDATIONS TODAY!

[[note, I've read every Grisham novel (including bleachers--my first sans-smoking book), I read Running with Sicssors by Agustine Burrows, and I read The Narrows by what's his name? The big detective author guy--malcolm somebody? You know, the Harry Bosch series...]]

My tastes are not eclectic when it comes to fiction. Mostly I NEED AN ESCAPE in my purse just in case.

Thank you.

Everyone's seen it by now...

but I still have to link to JibJab's This Land. It's just too funny.

Waiting to Exhale

Once a week I go to group therapy. Friends ask, what do you do in group? How is it different than individual sessions? I'd never trust opening up with other people around! What do you s-a-y?
 
Group is an amazing and powerful tool for -- excuse the buzzword -- recovery. Buzzwords aside, I can say it has been an essential ingredient in helping me get more well than I've been in my previous 42 years. Without the work I've done in group, I probably wouldn't have been ready or willing to give up smoking. It's not that I talked about smoking in group. It's that, when you work as hard as I work in group, you know when you're not making progress, when there's some kind of block, when you're stuck. Usually it's an addiction. Pick your poison.
 
I didn't put this together before I went tonight--the whole smoking and group thing. I just went. Like I always do. But like I always don't, I cried through my work. All of it. Never mind cried; I sobbed.
 
I wept for the family I had and lost, the family I thought I had, the father who evaporated one day when I got off the bus from kindergarten, the battles with stepfamilies and alcohol and panic and rage and so many many other things. I wept for what was and for what was missing. I wept for him and for her and for us.
 
And finally, I wept for me.
 
It was the first time I realized, really realized, why I smoked, what I was holding down with cigarettes, why I so desperately needed to escape. Even though I've worked for a year to sort through issues I never thought I could, I've held onto so much more--more that I needed to run from every 20 minutes.
 
I've grieved plenty over the last two years, believe me when I say this. I am the one who never cried over my father's death. I am the one who carried a 4.0 GPA in the face of an emotional meltdown. I know a thing or two about holding up, and I know a thing or two about breaking down.
 
What both amazes and terrifies me is knowing that there's so much more to go. That I've really only begun. That some of what I've run the farthest from has been buried so deep under so many layers of smoke and spaghetti, of jokes and cokes, that it's going to take me a long time to get it up, and out. Out is the ultimate goal.
 
I never thought when I started this journey it would feel this way. I guess if I had known I might have decided not to take it.
 
For the first time tonight, though, I don't want to smoke.
 
I don't want a cigarette.
 
I just want to breathe and rest, to dream, to float.
 
 
 

"We do care that you had a cheese sandwich for lunch" --Mena Trott

In honor of Mena's quotable quote, I continue with my rather detailed, if not tiresome, daily meanderings through smokelessness.

When last you saw your heroine, she was so depressed she stayed in bed all day, with brief bouts of consciousness to drop off and pick up her child from gymnastics, and tend to her here and there, and then return to bed to watch A Goofy Movie with her.

Today was a bit better. I made it to the grocery store. For some, a menial task. For me, Filmore Hall. I even remembered to get dog food, which considering we were out, made both me and the dogs happy.

I had the extra energy I needed to deposit a check (from back in the days when I actually HAD work to do--Hello August I feel ya comin' you dry-as-a-bone mofo). The teller was approximately 10 steps from where I checked out at the grocery store--a real triumph!

I have therapy tonight, so I get to leave the house again in a half hour.

This is what it's like for me without my best worst friend. I'm not as down today. We watched a DVD this afternoon which was highly maudlin, and I felt better.

argh.

44 posts til my 2,000th post, and a lifetime to survive until I smoke.

Another milestone approaching. Just 44 posts until I hit 2,000 here. That's sort of cool. And then again, as with every milestone I approach these days, the fundamental question of "why?" tosses itself into the mix.
 
Today, well, just now actually, as I was back in bed, my new favorite spot, watching the Goofy Movie with Jenna, I was trying to tie this feeling of sadness/depression/??? back to something, to figure out why I've been so down even in the face of what is the triumph of quitting smoking.
 
I think it's fear. All the years of stuffing down fear and anger with smoke--maybe I'm feeling so disconnected and bored because I'm afraid of those feelings coming up? Maybe the detachment I'm feeling from life right now--the who can stand this place without a lit cigarette feeling--is a buffer because I'm too afraid to feel what living is like when I'm really there. Afraid of what those moments hold when I'm present without 5 minute breaks every 20.
 
How do I behave with no way out? How do I sit without thinking about getting up? How do I talk without the away time to process? How do I love without an automatic afterward? How do I drive a half hour without disappearing for 10 minutes of it?
 
I'm afraid of this life that you all live without escape.
 
I like my house. I have distractions in here. But the world is too bright. I don't know where you go when it gets too bright or too dark. Where's your smoking area? Even if you don't smoke, you must have one. Is it a martini? A secret something? What?
 
Tonight I'm scared that I can't do this forever, and scared that I have to. I don't like myself--my personality--the last couple of weeks. I hope the experts are wrong and that I shouldn't be feeling more normal by two weeks post-smoking simply because the nicotine is gone.
 
Because if this is my normal, well then it sucks, and badly.
 
Anyway, I have a Goofy Movie to go watch. Thank goodness, the day is nearly over.
 

I want a new design!!

Halley's got a good looking new template goin' on.
 
The font, colors, and design are so clean and easy to read.
 
I come back to this blog after visiting Halley's and look at my own house and feel like I'm looking, well, at my own house. Shit.
 
And the strange thing is, with this new blogger interface enhancement circus, I'm changing typefaces and leading and I don't even know I'm doing it, and that's just no good. I need things to be a LITTLE bit hard. Make em too easy and I'll screw them up for sure.
 
I am still not smoking. I was very depressed today. Jenna went to gymnastics camp and I stayed in bed most of the day. Why? I kept not wanting to, but it felt so good, and bad, at the same time to hang on the edge of consciousness where I no longer noticed how distressingly unappealing life is. Or seems to be, because of course I want to live or I wouldn't be doing this in the first place!!! I just don't want to feel "like this."
 
There is an ambivilance that comes with not smoking, as if the meaning has been sucked out of my participation in life. How stupid. I know it's stupid--ironic anyhow--that in getting healthier I feel less like doing anything healthy.
 
Is this hormones? Is this no cigarettes?
 
Is this what happens when you take away somebody's death wish?
 
I don't know.
 
My two huge activities today consisted of taking Jenna to camp and picking her up.
 
I could have full well gone swimming afterward. I could have gone grocery shopping. Goodness knows we need food in the house. I could have gone to see my sister.
 
I came home. I feel comfortable not smoking in my home because I've not smoked in my home for a decade. Home is where I don't notice so much.
 
But out in the world, I really fret. How stupid that sounds. Trading nicotine addiction for agoraphobia.
 
I think that this week I'm going to have to pick a day where I MAKE myself do something outside the scope of work (which is at home on my laptop), outside the scope of household chores (again, happy happy home home), and outside of the bedroom (which is where I like to nap and nap and nap). I'm going to have to push myself out into the world and find some tiny speck of joy in participating in life sans stimulants.
 
Perhaps I should take up drinking? I've been thinking about it, and that's really not good.
 
Keeping you posted.
 
-me

Bewildered.

I am tired. Dog tired. And every time I feel that tired sinking feeling I reach for something that's not there anymore, and I get very irritable. Angry even.
 
All the stuff I've read says that at two weeks (where I am now), the physical addiction/cravings for nicotine are gone. The dependence on nicotine as a stimulant is over, the literature says.
 
Bullshit I say.
 
When I want one, I want it as badly today as I did day one. The number of times per day that wanting hits has eased up, but the wanting hits just as hard, with the same gusto as always.
 
Today we went outside and cleaned my van from pedal to bumper. I used to smoke in my car on the rare occasion when I was alone in it. This was the first cleaning since my de-nicotining self-improvement project. I keep my car as near an actual pig pen as I can on an average day. And a smoker's pig pen is pretty bad. It took two hours of sweat just to get the inside passable.
 
I took 8 packs of "pegs" (what george and I call the half-cigarette oddities that result from my habit of breaking an American Spirit non-filter in half, then smoking one half at a time in my filter) from my glove compartment and hurled them into the garage. I didn't care where they landed as long as they flew far away from my lips, which REALLY wanted a reward for wading through the mess that was my mini-van.
 
I hate that van. I hated it even more today because I had to clean it without the dissociative second-hand activity of smoking.
 
We took Jenna to chuck-e-cheese this evening. My former highlight of Chuck-e-Cheese used to be stepping outside for a smoke. This time I couldn't. WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE THAT CAN DO CHUCK-E-CHEESE WITHOUT SMOKING?! Screaming rides, shrieking kids, bad pizza, and epileptic-friendly blinking lights.
 
"I don't want to be a freak like you people who can stand that place without a cigarette," I said mostly to myself as I stood at the ticket counter with Jenna waiting for her to decide whether to get a notepad and a ruler, a goodie bag, or a tube of body glitter with her 256 tickets.
 
But I managed.
 
And it made me so tired. I get so tired. I teeter between exhaustion and insane rage. The all-or-nothingness that was once reserved for my smoking activities has seeped into my non-smoking self.
 
I know there must joy in regular people's daily activities. I know somewhere there is a "fun time" waiting for me minus the detachment that comes from smoking, that a boredom free life without constant multi-tasking exists somewhere. And I'm sure the experts are correct, that what I'm experiencing now is more the havoc of the emotional addiction, not the physical.
 
But it feels pretty physical to me when I want to put my fist through a wall.
 

Fair and Balanced Tom

We're all Fair and Balanced. Well, compared to Fox News. 
 
Go read Tom and do as he says.
 
Tom: A new commonplaces, fair and balanced watchdog of the zou gou.

If only Bush could spell...

Oh shit!
We missed by one letter!

Happy Anniversary

My last cig was on july 3, so I count July 4 (independence day--pretty clever, eh?) as my no-smoking anniversary, which means it's two weeks today officially.
 
I didn't quit on independence day on purpose. The doc made me do it.
 
Still, feels pretty good except when it feels really bad.
 
Thank you all for your encouragement. Frank Paynter says I'm over the worst of it now. I remember how easy it was to "have just one" after quitting for 4 years, so I'm not sure I'll ever be over the worst of it. It's amazing the stories an addict tells themselves.
 
I once explained the thinking process in quitting to a friend who never smoked. It is true addict thinking that takes over the want-to-be quitter. Logic doesn't really work. In those moments when the craving hits, every single valid, rational, well-rehearsed reason for quitting you've given yourself---even if you just recited them two minutes prior---vanish. Gone. Into thin air. You remember nothing, nada, can't think of a single reason in the world why having a cigarette at that given moment would be a bad idea. It's like amnesia. Until you're in the middle of an inhale, you really have no conscience because you're really not conscious.
 
As soon as the wave passes, all those reasons come back into your mind--OH RIGHT! I can't smoke, OH I'm so glad I didn't light one up, oh MAN I would have blown two weeks straight, OH JEEEZE and there's Jenna, and OH CRAP THAT'S RIGHT, I'm on that medicine where I could die of I keep it up, and RIGHT I remember now!!! Duh! How did I forget all that?!?!
 
Then the next wave comes, and it's la-la-land can't think of a single reason, can't summon one good reason why having a cigarette would be a bad idea, just can't think--trying to think, but can't--of a reason why I shouldn't enjoy just one..... hmmm... seems like there was some reason I'm not supposed to, but no, nope, can't think of what that might be.
 
I wish I weren't an addict. I had a cousin, Louise, who, for as long as I knew her (decades), had one cigarette each day, just after dinner. Never more. She enjoyed that one cigarette in its oneness in a way I never could.
 
No sooner would I light it than wonder what I'll be up to next. Not Louise though. She'd sit back and relax, smoke her cigarette, make it last longer than mine ever did, and then she was finished. Just like that. On to other things without wondering when she'd have another. Without worrying that she might not have another.
 
What is that gene I'm missing? I don't have the "enough is enough" gene. I have the "if one is good, than 160 must be g-r-e-a-t!" gene.
 
Oh, wait a minute. I just remembered Louise married into the family.
 
Figures.
 

Hell yes, war crimes.

Read Stavros today. And wonder then why so many good and decent people hate this country. Or, don't wonder.

Stewart Was Here.

You know how you can tell?
 
Because every time Flickr comes out with a new feature, your favorite blogs begin to look like they've been hit by the local overpass graffiti artist.
 
That's because Stewart is very smart and geeky and businessy and creative and he doesn't slow down. He leaves ideas scattered behind him in chalk outlines that are no longer just "inside" flickr. They're spreading. Look out.
 
Now you can check out photos on flickr, and with just a click-a-da-mousey, share them with your blog readers, complete with your witty commentary.
 
Stewart's announcing a new partnership over on his blog too.
 
Ah Stewart. What next, you crazy kids?