Word of the Decade: Toink

Reminiscing blogaria 2002, when my middle schooler was a kindergartener, and the word of the day was Toink.

December 27, 2002

Word of the Day: Toink

So Jenna, by virtue of her five-year-old stamina, and with help from her father's gaming prowess, wins 1400 points at Dave and Busters two nights ago. She picks this great Coca-Cola soccer ball--like a real soccer ball--as one of her prizes. She's been having, pardon the pun, a ball with this ball. She tells me this about it:

I know what's inside of this ball, mom.

Oh you do?

Toink.

Toink? What's Toink?

You know, Toink. Feathers and fluff and small paper. That's what's inside, filling the ball up.

So that's Toink--feathers and fluff and papers?

Yep. That's Toink. It's inside this ball.


Toink--Your word of the day. Courtesy of the babyblogger.

so embargoes are still dead according to TC

I think everyone has gotten the memo by now: TechCrunch stopped honoring embargoes from PR people a long while back. And today, TC has still stopped honoring embargoes. Elvis also remains out of the building.

It's understandable Mike doesn't want to deal with embargoes because he spends time writing stories that are supposed to be news while another outlet breaks the embargo and Mike doesn't run the story because the news isn't new anymore.

As Mike's argument indicates: no one wants old news. And news is only news for a second. If you're lucky.

Mike has some advice on how to release news the new-fashioned way -- he says to release the news on your own corporate blog and then email everyone asking them to take a look. So he's basically advising you to break your own embargo (and spam your friends). heh.

Over on facebook (WTF) Robert Scoble has some suggested ways around TC's no-embargo policy for companies who still care about giving their left nut to appear on TechCrunch. Example:

Donate $1,000 to a charity if Arrington keeps his mouth shut (will cost you maybe $5,000 to keep a few big bloggers in line). Make it public. That way he’ll look like a loser if one of his writers breaks wind first.

Only thing is, Robert hasn't been copied on the memo stating that companies - yes, even tech companies - don't care as much about appearing on TC as they once did.

You see, THEY got the memo letting them know that they should care to be where their customers and users are. Those people are not hanging around TechCrunch.

The old technobility has lost its crown. Long live the mommy blogger.

(taking tongue out of cheek)

The larger issue of the end of the embargo is a pain in the ass for PR people and a pain in the ass for the reporters who have always been professional enough to stick to embargoes.

It's also a pain in the ass for the Press Release itself, which finds its role further weakened, because the entire "pre-seeding" process before a press release hits the wire has to change when the media won't agree to hold off on publishing until a specified date and time.

So what do outlets like the Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch who now shun embargoes really want? They want the exclusive. They want to be the only outlet to get the news, or they don't want to play.

So how do you make news?

FIRST, you help people do something so special that they are compelled to tell their friends. You help them do that thing better and with less energy and expenditure than your competitor. You incent and reward them for telling their friends - you make them your business partner. You work with a communications pro (I'm thinking of dropping the PR term altogether) who connects what you're doing -- and what PEOPLE are doing WITH what you're doing -- to everyone who should know about it.

And you don't stop.

Embargo that.

the more all over the place i say things...

the less i have to say.

seems so anyway. here, there, everywhere, twitter, facebook, blog1, blog2, blackberry, strawberry, argh.

so updates in order of importance:

1) jenna is in middle school and playing flute in band.
2) the pool will be closing in two weeks but we haven't had sun in days so the water is cold.
3) i'm entertaining various work and career options.
4) i'm entertaining friends and neighbors with dogs that don't stop barking.
5) george is walking with a cane [[wait move me up to #2]]
6) i took new blood pressure medicine and I can see now. [[no, wait, move me up to #2]]

my favorite tweets of the evening in NO particular order:

• @elonjames: #Twilight is to Movies what #SouljaBoy is to the dreams of our ancestors.
  
• @DaisyJDog: I can't believe there is a picture of me without my collar on the internet http://bit.ly/1nj0Zv
• @DavidPaulNewell: LA times reporting that Obama made an off the record comment calling Kayne a "jackass". http://tinyurl.com/m9dpzx
• @QueenofSpain: Walking as slowly as possible back to my car after picking up meds at the pharmacy...I don't want to get home in time to put kids to bed

stockpiling homade soup

in advance of h1n1. laugh now, but you'll be after my carrots later.

xoxox

middle school

jenna's in it. it's blowing my mind. looking for a flute. locker shelf in. 3-ring binders. she's growing. she's fluid. time is elastic. i don't get it. and that's ok.

RT @Lauren_Bacall

Yes I saw Twilight my granddaughter made me watch it, she said it was the greatest vampire film ever. After the "film" was over I wanted to..
6:28 PM Aug 22nd from web

smack her accros her head with my shoe, but I do not want a book called Grannie Dearest written on me when I die, so instead I gave her a...
6:32 PM Aug 22nd from web

DVD of Murnau's 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu and told her, now thats a vampire film! and that goes for all of you! watch Nosferatu instead!
6:36 PM Aug 22nd from web

Found poems from 1982

Synchronicity is maybe what it was. Jenna was restless weeks ago and looking for things to get into the night she found the old photos, her idea to make a scrapbook for our 23rd wedding anniversary out of pictures from the past. 

 I finally dug the plastic bin of photos out from beside my dresser, where it sat beneath other plastic bins of things I have no place for except to put on top of other plastic bins. It was two years ago that the plastic bin obsession seemed like a good idea. Now I wonder why I didn't opt for the dumpster. 

While Jenna scattered photos across the rug searching for just the right ones, I came across a notebook I hadn't seen in a decade-plus: my college poetry notebook, stuff I wrote when I was 20, when Gerald McCarthy was my professor. So I decided to type these up, for digital archiving, if not for your enjoyment. I hope maybe for both. 

A Poem for My Brother 

I sit on the basement stairway 

curl my fingers into fists 

my feet move as 

the veins on your arms rise 

your hair drops beads of sweat 

onto your knee 

the high-hat, the snare glisten 

under the single unshaded lightbulb 

hung from the wooden ceiling beam. 

I have never been able to touch you. 

one 

You can talk to me now 

about writing I

spill my ashtray on the bed 

rub gray ashes into the cotton sheets 

my grandmother gave me 

so I can smell smoke in my sleep. 

You're growing even thinner 

When I touch you, you break 

into pieces so small. 

Who stole the meaning?

home 

The living room is gold now

wall-to-wall carpet sprouts shag 

like those weeds behind the high school. 

Someone moved my copy of Lolita 

and the hell of leaving was easier 

than coming back 

Meditation on the Train Ride to Chicago 

The windows move us 

past the south side 

and I wish 

we were just leaving home. 

Glass shatters 

laughter leans against a street light 

an unseen hand shakes the clothesline 

torn t-shirts and diapers wave 

underwear sponges up 

the dirt from the city sky.

vision 

The road stays dark 

my feet disappear under me 

to lose my arms 

I stretch them forward 

they will not leave me.

I dig my fingers in

hold my eyes in my hand 

and squeeze until the pain stops. 

The Rain 

Against the tree 

arms behind my back 

I lean on my hands 

rubbing bitten finger tips 

up and down the bark.

Yesterday it was spring rain-smell 

memories of bicycles, porch lights, kickball

the quiet splash of sneakers 

down the path toward the mud hole 

grass gone 

maggots hungry with anticipation. 

Too young for the funeral, 

I stayed behind 

and wondered who would die next. 

On TV, the world turned round 

and everything that was supposed to be funny 

still was.

windshield wipers for my eyeballs

ptsd cure: patent pending eyeball wipers. work similar to windshield wipers, except on eyeballs. gentler. smaller also.

action: eyeball wipers scrape traumatic imagery from eyes before droplets are deposited in memory, obscuring critical thought and hope.

inspiration: visit to neuroscience intensive care unit at emory medical center, where floor-to-ceiling, glass-windowed patient rooms let nurses (and visitors, AKA me) visually monitor the condition of critically ill patients 'round the clock.

price: free to all little children and grown up children.

creative commons license applies.

Serving Up some Culture Kitchen at bTrendie

Not surprisingly, Liza Sabater said it better than I did. For me, it IS fun to be helping out bTrendie because although the technology is sound, and obviously without the evolution of e-commerce, online shopping wouldn't have gotten so much more intuitive. BUT the point is, with bTrendie the technology is secondary to we're doing.

This isn't a technology story, although it should interest the tech media. It's a story of a startup who had the balls enough to ask 10 women from very diverse blogging backgrounds to join forces to generate Really.Good.Ideas and to create a user experience tailored to its actual users BY its actual users.

Other private shopping sites like RueLaLa and Gilt offer a range of merchandise across a wide swatch of the buying public. Those sites have worked hard on broadening their offerings, with RueLaLa recently going mobile. In the mean time, bTrendie has focused more and more keenly on meeting the needs of pregnant and newly delivered parents, and getting many products designed and made by moms into the hands of moms.

Watch for more to come. And if you're pregnant or know someone who is, get your bohonkus over to bTrendie to grab the deals.

---

The Kid Is So My Son

There's been a lot of talk and speculation -- and possibly even some facts, though I haven't seen them -- indicating that some or all of Michael Jackson's children aren't biologically his.

I don't know who their gene daddy is, or what DNA mashup was the genesis of the Jackson kids. The consensus is that they are gorgeous and poised now that we've seen them quite literally unveiled.

What IRKS me are the people who blabber on about what kids of color (not black, not white, but the colorful ones) (what I long ago on this blog called extraethnic, which maybe should have been intraethnic, or interethnic, or just plain KIDS, hello, I don't know) SHOULD look like. (p.s. we're all mixed; deal with it.)

"Those kids are not his. No way. YOU should know what mixed kids look like--those are not mixed kids," one mom with a son of mixed heritage said to me last week.

I was like, um, I don't get it. True, they could quite possibly not be his. They could be his. They could not be his. I can't tell you.

Someone else today said to me, "Those kids aren't his. They are not mixed."

Sure, Paris with her blue eyes, it's a long shot genetically speaking, but it's not unheard of. I haven't seen ALL the Jackson relatives. I don't presume to know. Why should any of us presume to know?

I've seen every permutation of DNA, every hue, every hair type mixed with every melanin level, every highlight, freckle, and eye color combination imaginable in my 25 years as a card-carrying member of the 'mixed relationship' club.

Even if they're not Michael's biological kids, does that mean the father was Caucasian?

What would you like to do, say, "Turn her hands palm up and let's see if she's mixed"? I'm here to tell you, you still wouldn't know.

I'm not saying that these kids are biologically Michael Jackson's or that they aren't, and I'm not bothered that people have OPINIONS because goodness knows this is the Interweb and without an opinion you might as well stay home...

BUT...

...don't tell me what specific qualities of appearance a growing child, a child in media res, needs to demonstrate in order to be defined as non-white.

Identity is precious and takes decades to develop - we're lucky if we figure out our personal configurations while we're still on this planet. Identity is nothing to be toyed with, except by its owner. Or maybe it is.

So I say, ask a white-black middleman, ask me, ask someone you know, or ask no one, but definitely ask yourself this: What are your preconceptions of what mixed kids look like, what defines mixed, and where did you get the information? What if you're wrong? What if white is black and black is white?

What if Jesus had hair like wool and skin the color of copper like it says in your Bible, not blue eyes and locks of gold?

Who's identity are you really unsure about? Really?

Maybe its the man in the mirror's.

--

have you SEEN my childhood?

Michael Jackson called this song his autobiography. It is.



Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for the world that I come from
'Cause I've been looking around
In the lost and found of my heart...
No one understands me
They view it as such strange eccentricities...
'Cause I keep kidding around
Like a child, but pardon me...

People say I'm not okay
'Cause I love such elementary things...
It's been my fate to compensate,
for the Childhood
I've never known...

Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like pirates in adventurous dreams,
Of conquest and kings on the throne...

Before you judge me, try hard to love me,
Look within your heart then ask,
Have you seen my Childhood?

People say I'm strange that way
'Cause I love such elementary things,
It's been my fate to compensate,
for the Childhood I've never known...

Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like fantastical stories to share
The dreams I would dare, watch me fly...

Before you judge me, try hard to love me.
The painful youth I've had

Have you seen my Childhood....

beating a dead cat

what. i'm supposed to NOT blog it?

News Shift - This Century So Far According to Google News and the Wayback Machine

I was thinking tonight, looking over the hot topics on Google News, how even though "things" have gotten worse since the economy fell into disarray, "things" somehow don't seem as bad as "things" were when the Bush-Cheney-Fox-News team blasted catastrophe 24x7, without ceasing, without fail, during the 'war on terror era.'

Even with a real catastrophe on our hands today, with a bi-polar economy in need of lasting stabilization, the Obama political machine has found a way to keep the hot topics less dramatic, less hysterical, less frightening. And the media (Fox news notwithstanding) has obliged.

In The News

Red Wings

Stanley Cup

Sonia Sotomayor

Pittsburgh Penguins

Tony Awards

Mariano Rivera

Orlando Magic

Billy Elliot

Tony Stewart

Chivas USA

You see? Woooo. I'm shaking. Not.

Some say Google is in bed with Obama. If so I hope Obama gets all the covers. Because it's making me feel better that even though "things" are in many ways worse, it doesn't feel all that bad all the time.

Do what I did tonight and use the Wayback Machine to take a look at Google News past.

It's a little bit fun. A little bit interesting. A little bit scary.

But not as scary as it used to be.

Hamster Genitalia

Judging by my referrer log tonight (right sidebar), someone is (one might call it "disturbingly") obsessed with hamster sex.

Frank, give it a rest for tonight.

I'm just sayin'.

TWITTER: Men on Men Action!

New Harvard Research suggests a Man of Twitter (MOT) is almost twice as likely to follow another MOT than a Woman of Twitter (WOT).

And in other news, Hell is still HOT.

The NEWS to me is that Harvard finds this trend stunning:

These results are stunning given what previous research has found in the context of online social networks ⁱ. On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women - men follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they know. Generally, men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women. We wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on a typical social network, and men find the content produced by women less compelling (because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.).

Huh? Remember the pre-historic era of blogrolls? Remember the echo chamber? Remember Aggregators and top feeds? Remember Techmeme? Twitter is not a new Internet, it's just a new node with the same tendencies and hierarchies (and patriarchies) replicated in 140 characters. I really don't GET the assumption that men usually follow/read/link-to women, and that women do the same. It's just not true. Not online, not offline, not never.

An interesting fact to me is the sheer velocity of popularity on twitter, and how ACTIVITY (not content) may be what drives follows:

Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets.

That may mean that tweeting OBNOXIOUSLY OFTEN gets you somewhere on Twitter. But then, I think we already knew that.

the WB

Kelly at Kdidddy has a great recap of her recent trip to the (former) motor city, the glory, the tragedy, the vinyl, the husband, the house music, the to be continued, and the pictures.

OH and the writing. I've been reading way more 'mommybloggers/parenting bloggers' than usual recently because of a project I'm working on, and I've made an amazing discovery: lots of these people are writing their asses off. Writing WELL, I mean. Great story tellers. I can't avert my eyes kind of story tellers.

What did I expect? I mean, I WAS an early mommyblogger before mommyblogging had a name, although the name itself isn't one I would have self-selected because the term is a market segment, and I frequently avoid being segmented. I've spent so much in therapy dollars trying to integrate, after all.

So Kelly is one of these Really Good Writers Who Also Happens to Be A Mom (that's my new proposed term for mommy bloggers by the way: RGWWAHTBAM. Deal with it.). However, she mentions not being able to write so much on her blog these days, a malady with which I've become (believe me I've read your emails) all too familiar.

That's why it was great to read her Detroit post, which inspired me to post here YET AGAIN (nearing a record for the year).

As for the post itself, I cry when I think of Detroit. Really. Of all it was, is, and represents. It makes me think of the middle class genocide remark made by the 'markets' expert guy a couple of posts down. wtf. no really.

We have adam lamberts and chris whats his faces and legions of others who eat fresh meat of the love-art-industry of American music built in a city that has been desimated.

Accidental? Maybe not.

ADAM! ADAM! ADAM! really. white people. don't get me started.

ANYWHOO this post was supposed to be about the writer's block that Kelly is currently toying with deciding she has.

I know. I do know. I've been calling it menopause, but have also been waiting on hormone test results which will probably show I have years left of fertility and in fact actually have Mad Cow Disease.

But something is amiss - it's not easy to write - it's not as cathartic - it doesn't seem necessary. SO many words and pixels flood the net. Lots of times I feel like I'm doing a disservice to add more.

NONETHELESS I just added some more, and thanks, Kelly, for the inspiration.

okay, an Oreo Donut?

From Sheila Lennon, a simple elegant site that demystifies the most unhealthy foods on the planet by showing us what quadruple smothered, battered, and fried looks like: This is why you're fat.

Halley's gonna freak when I say so, but if you put this Oreo Donut in front of me, I'd be all up in that.

Back to the Future

I clicked my blogroll tonight for the first time in forever. You are still there, many of you. wood s. lot how long has it been? And you lead with a doosey. You always had doosies and you still do.

Don't miss it. Steve Lendman spills the beans on how markets really work (against us).

Why? Because the profits are enormous, in good and bad times, and when carried to extremes like now, Fitts calls it "pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy," duping the public, fleecing trillions from them, and it's more than just "a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide (by other means) - a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts."

and...

The idea that equity prices reflect true value or that markets move randomly (up or down) is rubbish. They never have and more than ever don't now.

Fisticuffs Saturday

You start the summer and you figure: YAY! THE POOL!

The thing about Atlanta is that a subdivision isn't just a subdivision. Sure you can call it a subdivision, but it calls itself a swim-tennis community. Unlike a regular subdivision, a swim-tennis community has, among other things, a pool and a tennis court.

Rocket science.

Now, since we don't live in a swim-tennis community, but rather in a loose-basketballs-and-random-bikes-strewn-across-yards community, our neighborhood doesn't have a pool. Or a tennis court. Or a clubhouse. Or a neighborhood association. I know, stop painting the rosy picture.

As a result of our pool-less-ness, every summer I search for a swim-tennis subdivision that takes outside members so that we have somewhere to swim, fry our skin, and basically wear out the child so we need less melatonin nightly.

For the last 4 years we've joined the same pool, and for the last two of those years, we've seen what apparently is a rite of summer in the south: pool fights.

A pool fight takes place when at least two grown men have consumed at least two cases of beer over the course of at least two hours while sitting or standing or stumbling in direct sunlight over the course of at least eight hours, after which one says something stupid to the other.

What happens in fight club stays in fight club.

Tonight's brawl was between two fathers who had a total of six kids at the pool who had been friends for 15 years. Niceeee.

Apparently the wives were at the crux of the conflict, and then apparently one of the husbands said something about the other husband's wife's crux, and fists began flying.

I don't know how many grown-up fights you've seen, but until my pool days, I think I had only seen a couple of bar brawls, the result of falling in love with a bassist who sometimes played in clubs where people sometimes drank even more than pool people do.

Today's fisticuffs was broken up by several other large dad-men at the pool, and the drunker of the two offenders and his wife and children were escorted out by the large dad-men. Some pool goers stayed on after the brawl; others decided it was a good time to take their leave.

I think I did a little of both.

Meanwhile, I had three girls there (mine and her 2 friends), who got to witness the brawl in all its splendor, leaving me with the task of explaining wtf.

They didn't say, "Mom/Miss Jeneane wtf?" but it was written all over their faces.

I explained that some of those involved had been drinking large quantities of alcohol, and things got out of control, but that those people were gone now and we were ok.

And thinking that was lame, I asked the President of the Board at the pool what happened, who said: "Too much booze, too much sun."

What happens in fight club stays in fight club.

What won't leave me alone tonight are the faces of the children who watched the fists connect, the ones whose dads were involved, the ones who were dragged out of the pool and stuffed into the car smack dab in the middle of what was, three minutes before, a fun day.

But that's how it goes with pool fights.

The not so funny thing is, when we were driving out of the subdivision, I saw the offending family outside at their house. The kids skateboarding, the parents were sitting relaxed on the front setps laughing, talking to another neighbor.

Everything was back to normal. Nothing to see here. Don't ask don't tell. They'll all live to swim another day.

What happens in fight club stays in fight club.

moves me now like then