Who’s Shaping Whom When the Internet and TV Worlds Collide?

This was written for B&C Beat, but did not go up due to vacation deadlines. Enjoy!


The big news in new media this week was the much-vaunted melding of the minds between CNN and YouTube, coming together this past Monday on the consecrated grounds of the Presidential debates. The unexpected headline grab which set the blogosphere alight occurred earlier than that, and has led to continued raging amongst bloggers and on TV to this day, which was when JetBlue’s handlers requested that the YearlyKos event remove JetBlue’s logo from its website. What has bloggers in a tizzy now is the question of whether or not the proprietor of a blog is responsible for the comments left on the blog by readers. This was all spurred by a campaign of Bill O’Reilly’s, announced on his TV show, to shame JetBlue into revoking its sponsorship of YearlyKos, and which was referenced on television by Mr. O’Reilly as recently as yesterday evening. YearlyKos, of course, is attached to the blog DailyKos. Has TV’s effect on the internet outshined the internet’s effect on TV, at least for this week?

Please note that I would like bonus points for using both the phrase “new media”, as well as “blogosphere”, in the first paragraph of this column.

I caught the tail end of the debate on TV, and it was definitely enough to get me to go online and download the broadcast, in its entirety, to my nifty new video iPod, which I then proceeded to watch while riding the train. I’m not sure if the purveyors of the debate can count my viewership as a previously untapped resource, as I have been known to watch these events in the bar after practice with the closed captioning on – “Shh! I can’t read what Kerry is saying!” – but it is quite likely that, due to the sheer novelty of the event, more than one tech savvy yet politically unmotivated soul was compelled to do the same. Please note also that the question I was privileged to catch on the ‘tube (that’s “boob-“, not “You-“) was, “look at the candidate to your left and tell the audience one thing you like and one thing you dislike about that particular candidate.” This did not make for scintillating television, although it was sort of funny - too long to be very funny, as per the generally accepted rules of comedy, but at least quirkily humorous.

Tuesday’s edition of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with John Stewart featured a “correspondent” who was very upset with the format of the debate, espousing a fear that, by taking the news out of news reporters’ hands and putting it into the hands of the public, via YouTube, the “correspondent” would be out of a job. Of course, this issue at the moment is not a real one, as CNN chose the questions for the debate, and Anderson Cooper hosted it. It did provide some real comedy in reference to the endeavor, and it also outlined the very real fact that the people asking the questions were, well, unprofessional. I suggest that television reporters wait to worry until the public begins to provide really polished content, by which time the reporters will most likely be reporting online, anyway. Until then, while YouTube may spice up CNN, it is still CNN’s show.

Of course, with the ongoing issue between The O’Reilly Factor and Daily Kos, here we have an instance of TV actually sending attention away from itself towards the internet – as if it didn’t receive enough attention already. The question now being posed speaks to accountability, mainly asking, if you run a blog, are you responsible for the contents of the comments posted to your blog? Does the fact that comments opposing the views contained within the posts on your blog are often purposefully left published, in a sort of www letters to the editor policy, and further are often the catalysts for debate within the comments section - does this fact preclude you, the proprietor of the blog, from the responsibility of monitoring the comments section for vulgarity, profanity, and hate speech? Is this an instance in which profanity is not, in fact, profanity, if it is employed in an effort to denounce profanity, as if it were being denounced from a pulpit? Or, would it behoove you, the blog’s proprietor, to remove the offending comment and leave a marker explaining, euphemistically of course, the gist of the comment, so that the resulting debate is not disrupted, in spirit, for posterity’s sake? Should there be an FCC-equivalent in place, monitoring popular blogs? Could there even be, or is it a Sisyphean task? In this same vein, if so-called offending words from DailyKos’ comments section are repeated on The O’Reilly Factor, so as to prove a point as to how vulgar DailyKos is, and again on the show’s website, does that make The O’Reilly Factor just as vulgar?

Comedy Central weighed in again, this time from O’Reilly pseudo-homage The Colbert Report, as the eponymous host Steven Colbert announced that he didn’t “want to talk about Iraq anymore. It's too easy . . . At least there's one place that understands this: Fox News." Colbert went on to say that by denouncing DailyKos, O’Reilly was focusing on “the homeland.”
"Do not go to DailyKos.com," Colbert ordered. DailyKos.com was then flashed on the screen so that, as he explained, “viewers know where not to go."

If new media is really the beast that will kill old media, television is really doing a good job of helping it drives nails into its own coffin.

Things I would do on dates

You went there, didn’t you.


There are certain things that make sense as first dates, or second dates, or much-later-in-the-relationship dates. And I think, as a collective mind, we often get these steps all mixed up. So, after reading stuff@night’s “The Guy Issue” while having a couple of vodka and juices, (side note – who does that? People who haven’t gone to the gym in a week and feel good because they’ve managed to make their leg shake do that, clearly. Not alcoholics.) I have decided that you would all find it absolutely hysterical if I made a list of acceptable activities to plan dates around.

Please note that these are dates I personally would enjoy going on, and their practicality hinges entirely on the guy who is going on the date with me.

Additionally, I feel that I must point out that while I individualistically can see all of the dates in the “Other Date” category as satisfactory second dates, that does not mean that every guy I might date would warm up to the ideas suggested within, and thus some of these activities should be held in reserve until subsequent dates. Also, the first dates can all be considered for ensuing dates.

Date date date date date, date date date date, date date date date date date, date! (it's a song)

And now, since every Google search performed for “date” in the next 48 hours will link here, may I present, again, for the first time:


Things I Would Do On Dates

First Date
Get a drink at a regular, after work bar
Get a drink at a sports bar
Karaoke
Go to a dive bar
Go to an amusement park/fair (expensive!)
Go to an arcade-type place (think Jillian’s)
Play pool (poorly)
Alliterate
Hit up some batting cages
Stake out spots and see a show in the park
Catch a comedy show
Go out to dinner
Go out to lunch
Go rollerblading
Go to the beach
Snowboard
Sail (not that I know how)
Spend the day in a park
Go to a wine bar

Other Dates
Go to a live sporting event
Go to a show that requires that you not speak to each other for the duration
Watch a burlesque show
Surf
Go for a run
Go to a wine-tasting
Go to a scotch-tasting
Attempt a pub crawl
Do anything during which I run the risk of appearing super competitive
Cook
Go to an expensive restaurant
Go to a bar where the cocktails cost more than four gallons of gas
Go to an “upscale” strip club
See a movie
Play frisbee
Take a picnic to a park
Take a picnic to a secluded area
Hike
Go camping
Kayaking
Canoeing

Some things, like a burlesque, may be feasible before you've had your traditional third date relations - or, you know, whenever the kids are doing it these days. Can you imagine a bigger turn on? And some, like the (upscale) strip club, are probably better left to dates you go on after you've established yourselves as a force to be reckoned with (or with which to be reckoned, depending on where you went to school.) I mean, who wants to compete with that?

Let's be honest here. I, for one, know that I can not possibly shake my ass as fast as someone who gets paid to do it for her living. Seriously. Don't even try. Word to the wise.

Your turn. Actually, I’d like some input. It’s not like I’m all that good at this. Really, this is just a list of things I like to do. The guy’s pretty much optional.

(Also, if you can show me how to turn this post into two columns, you may not even need those first couple of dates. Rowwwr.)

New post!


New post!

New post!
new post
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new post . . .



hahahaaren'tRSSfeedsfun?



Things I should be doing:
writing a half page article about the convergence of the IFRS and the GAAP;
writing a blog about The Riches.

Things I am doing:
eating;
listening to Augustana's Boston, thinking about how it's being used in really weird ways considering the content (Who is Will Traveler?) and how, when I first heard it, I thought it was so apropos considering my move, and how now it's a teeny-bopper song and I have to hide my love for it . . .



Clearly I need more coffee to take care of the manufactured angst.
Maybe it's the weather.

B&C post will be up shortly. I'm off to the kitchen to see what else I can eat.

How to Fix My Car

My car, she is quite old. Well, not really that old, she only came in to existence during the first Clinton administration. In contrast, my existence began during Carter’s. So, you know, she’s a spring chicken by some standards, although certainly not in car years. You see, car years are measured by determining what percentage of the sale price you spend on yearly maintenance, and multiplying that by 100. So, if you buy a car for $20K, and you spend $400 that year on an oil change and some minor body work due to that tree that just popped up out of no where in front of your neighbor’s yard, your car is still only 0.5 years old by it’s 1st human birthday. I bought my car for $500 in October. By my calculations, she’s as old as some of them redwoods out yonder in California.

LooLoo and I are buds, though, and I like to treat her well, assuming this is the best way to ensure that she does the same for me. And this usually works. She’s very considerate, making sure to alert me to the fact that the gas gauge was not working by cutting the engine just before we’d have crossed the train tracks rather than while we were right on top of them. She’s almost too reliable. She doesn’t leak oil like the old Plymouth did, and she doesn’t guzzle it the way she does gas (she’s loyal to her beverage of choice, my LooLoo is). I felt awfully guilty when her oil light came on while I was driving back from New Jersey. My poor LooLoo! She’d held her tongue for so long! She never made a fuss – and because of that, I had completely forgotten about this basic part of her maintenance!

Well, I pulled over into a rest stop right quick, let me tell you. And I looked in the manual, and it confirmed for me what I’d also learned about my last car, which is that LeSabres like 5W-30 motor oil. Well, what my baby wants, my baby gets! And so I marched my little butt into that rest stop and I bought her some 5W-30. I grabbed some paper towels on the way back out, slid into the driver’s seat, released the primary latch, and – nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. There was a faint clicking noise, but that was all. LooLoo would not respond.

She was clearly giving me the silent treatment. It was ok, I understood. She was feeling that she’d been taken for granted. I hadn’t been following up on her maintenance, her behavior up until then had been that good, but you just can’t do that to cars. You might as well ride them hard and put them away wet for all the damage that you’ll do. And I’m not even talking about damage to their sensitive car psyches! I empathized, I really did. We weren’t in one of those fancy rest stops with garages, unfortunately, so I decided to wait until we’d gotten home and deal with LooLoo’s problems in private, the way I really ought to have done in the first place. I mean, it’s just the considerate thing to do.

LooLoo didn’t complain at all the rest of the way home, so I knew we were on the same wavelength. Unfortunately, once we got home, I broke the trust. I didn’t try to look under LooLoo’s hood for a week and a half. A week and a half! Wow. No wonder she was pissed. I finally, finally, parked her in front of the house yesterday after work and, armed with a very long flat-head screwdriver, attempted to see what could be done about her bonnet problem. The primary latch release was engaging something, that much I could tell. I could actually get my hand under her grill to attempt to disengage the secondary release, but she wasn’t letting me bring that hood up for all the attention in the world. I poked, and I prodded, and she just went quiet. Poor LooLoo. Poor, neglected LooLoo. I was clearly going to have to resort to drastic measures.

I was going to have to take her to a mechanic.

I had our day at the mechanic’s all planned out. I would bring LooLoo in at lunch, and then give her some privacy, maybe walk around downtown while they fiddled with her cables trying to fix that nasty latch problem of hers. Once they got her back to the baseline, I’d fill her oil reservoir with the premium stuff I’d been saving for a special occasion, and maybe even treat her to a tank of Super Unleaded gas for being such a good girl. Of course, once I got to work this morning, I realized that it might really just be that primary release lever. Maybe if I took a pair of pliers and pulled the cable, the hood would pop open. Maybe her cable was just loose. LooLoo’s been through a lot in her life, I can’t fault her for that. Maybe she just needed a bit of a lift to bring her back to looking the way she had in her glory days. It was worth a shot. What’s a little cosmetic procedure between friends as close as we are?

Sadly, no one in the office had pliers.

So, it was with no little trepidation that I brought LooLoo in to the mechanic. I had, of course, made sure to dress the part of Someone Who Knows What They’re Talking About, as my dress and these pointy shoes plainly showed. I’m sure that the updraft from the fan next to the garage – the one that kept blowing my skirt straight up so that I had to gather it in bunches and hold it tight to my thighs – did nothing to take away from my air of Not Being One To Be Trifled With. I explained the situation to the kindly mechanic, making sure to keep one hand on LooLoo’s hood as I spoke so that she’d know she had my support. He asked me to open the driver’s side door and pull the latch release lever a couple of times. Nothing happened. He asked me to do it again, faster this time. Again, nothing. Had LooLoo gone numb under the hood? Oh, my poor darling! He asked me to pull the lever, and hold it. I pulled with all my might, and he started pounding on the hood of the car. Pounding and pounding, and all of a sudden, LooLoo popped her hood! Huzzah! He told me that this was perfectly normal amongst the more mature models, and that I shouldn’t be afraid to use a little force if future situations called for it. He also pointed out that, regardless of what the manual said, LooLoo's oil cap clearly indicated that she would prefer 10W-30 oil. Oh, fickle LooLoo. But she has reserved the right to change her mind, and I respect her for that. As for the release, really, she just needed her latch lubed up with a little WD-40 and her hood given a good pounding.

Turns out, LooLoo is a masochist.

Thoughts Of a Rockaway Girl from Deep Inside Red Sox Nation

I was the only non-Massachusetts native in the staff meeting this morning. Main topic? Roger Clemens.


A couple of weeks ago, my boss stuck his head into my office and asked, “Did I hear you say you’d gone to your first Red Sox game?”
“Yep!” I replied, eager to share stories about Fenway and how small and quaint it is.
“Have you become a Sox fan yet?” he queried, continuing his train of thought.
“No, I’m from Queens, I’m not switching teams. I’ll always be a Mets fan,” I answered, a little startled.
“Don’t worry,” he assured me, “you’ll evolve.”

Weird Habits I Have Been Known to Develop Out of the Blue (Apropos of Nothing, As It Were)

1. Scowling at my boss. See: How Not to Get Ahead at the Workplace by Kara Thrace (2004).
2. Aggressively rubbing all facial orifices when allergies strike. Seriously, I know there are no bugs in my nose. You’d think I’d been a cocaine freak in a former life. And for the amount of money I spend on mascara, one might assume that I would rather it didn’t end up pooling under my eyes by the time I got to work each morning. But one would be wrong, wouldn’t one.
3. That month in 2006 when I consistently forgot to zip my fly.
4. That month in 2006 when I consistently forgot to put on underwear.
5. Forgetting that my car has no pick-up when I decide to cut people off. Extra special because the Meineke™ Fairy clearly stole all of the bulbs out of all of the turn signals on all of the cars in Massachusetts.
6. Leaving my house keys in the door when I come home.
7. Leaving my car keys in the ignition when I get out of the car.
8. Removing my car keys from the ignition and dropping them on the passenger seat before I get out of the car.
9. Apparently, forgetting that I carry keys at all.
10. Getting bored before finishing a simple ten-point list.

Me? Shy? Why, I . . .

For a brief, dark moment following two conversations I’d had over this past week, I thought that I might have to rethink my entire idea of myself, as well as my childhood, because, apparently, my own personal narrative was entirely wrong. Or so I’d been informed. Seriously, was it possible that I just did not know myself? At all? Had I been asleep? Had I just been watching the wrong movie this entire time? Was this Vanilla Sky 2 – American version, Cruz’s revenge? (Would I find the answer in Scientology?)

Also, if I didn’t know myself very well, and other people knew me better than I knew myself, was there someone out there whom I knew better than they knew themselves? Were there several someones? Was there a whole army of someones out there just waiting for me to explain themselves to themselves? And how much money do you think they would pay me to do that for them?

Certain facts I hold to be true and self-evident about me (or, Liz’s Bill of Rights):
1. I am extremely shy.
1a. I was even shyer as a kid.
2. I have to force myself to be social.
2a. I don’t really like people very much.
3. I have low self-esteem.
4. Doesn’t mean I don’t know that I’m smarter than the rest of you. Because I am. See point 2a.
5. I will regret typing that.
6. I cry way too much.
7. People seem to like my ass.
8. I am a bad actress.

I remember being terrified of other people as a child the way some kids are scared of bugs or dirt or big dogs. I remember, when I was a very young child, having to warm up to my teacher each day in school, not talking to her when I first came to class because, you know, she might bite. I was that kid who stared at you mutely when you asked her a question - the one you figured would probably be blowing shit up in about twenty years. I’d talk to my teacher more and more as the day went on, only to have to start over again the next day. I remember doing this to my grandparents, who lived right downstairs, and my aunts, who lived right upstairs, and my dad, who had to go away for weekends to work and is my dad. I remember doing this to my best friend each time we went to her house. I remember sitting quietly at family parties, not talking to anyone, feeling awkward as hell and wanting to hide. Also, not knowing what awkward meant.

And yet, was it possible that I made this all up?

Maybe I was a gregarious child. Maybe I was a social butterfly, the belle of the ball. I mean, I’ve been hit in the head a few times. It’s possible that I was completely full of shit.

I do know that, right now, I don’t like talking to the neighbors, I don’t like asking strangers for help, and that if you leave me to my own devices for a couple of days, I will avoid all contact with other human beings, if at all possible. I don’t even like asking people I do know for help, come to think of it. What if they turned me down? How would I ever survive?

I am scared to walk into new classrooms. I hate calling people I don’t know very well on the phone. I practically hyperventilate when someone I don’t talk with on a regular basis calls me. Hell, I could probably use some tranquilizers, and I could easily be the before in those squeamish commercials for social anxiety meds. Forget the fact that I used to call people and ask them for money – as my job. That was just a testament to the sheer fact of my will, as well as the sheer fact of my broke-ass-ness. I can force myself to interact with people, it’s just that the small problem of me really not wanting to do so must shine through, since I know that I am not a good actress. In reality, I don’t even like emailing new people. Which is why those who are the lucky recipients of rambling, incoherent emails get so many of them from me. Because I should probably be sending them to other people. Thanks for being my surrogates! Woohoo! Go you guys!

The only place I really talked a lot, and freely, was in school, and then only directly to the teachers, and only once I had gotten a little older. Never to the other students in class, because if I looked directly at them, I might wither away and die. But I had no problem talking to teachers - see point 4 - clearly, I had the right answers. And clearly, everyone would benefit from – nay, couldn’t live without – the pearls of shiny, pearly, pearlescent wisdom positively dripping from each and every one of my comments. I couldn’t deprive the people of that, oh, no. But outside of class, I went back to being the school hermit.

And then, well - or so I thought.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine while at a birthday party. I mentioned that I used to be very shy as a kid, and was still kind of shy. She reacted with surprise. I repeated my assertion. She pointed out that I didn’t seem very shy. Then we laughed and pointed at people. At least, I think that’s how the conversation went. There was a touch of alcohol involved.

My thinking, when I again capable of thought, was that I’ve only known this friend for about eight or nine months. I’ve lived six of those months in Boston. She does not live in Boston. Ere go, she only observes me when I have driven down for a social engagement, and have been drinking my usual moderate amount. So! There you have it! Alcohol as social lubricant! I’d solved it!

I said as much to my cousin. If anyone would agree with me about how shy and ungainly I was as a child, it’d be a family member, right?

Hell no.

His response was that I was never shy, and also that I’d fought back (I used to win, too – I’m not the only one rewriting history, kiddo!)

For a brief moment, I thought my entire life was a lie.

But then, like wisdom from angels’ lips, the answer came to me:

I had based my personal denouement on two specific interactions, and there was, in fact, an entirely plausible conclusion to be drawn.

The answer to the great mystery of my life is that . . . to get me to be social, you can either feed me alcohol, or beat me. Sweet. I should have been born in a trailer. Not that there’s anything wrong with a trailer. I should look into trailer life, as apparently, I was built for it.

Oh yeah – you could also just be wrong. And then I’ll tell you. So, you know, that way’s cool, too, I guess. Whatever.



**UPDATE: My friend Stevie points out that by this metric I was also born to play rugby. I don't know how I missed that one. Also, I forgot about caffeine. Try to shut me up when I've had only half a bagel and four cups of coffee, I dare you.

All fall down (shit! they're on to me!)

A canonical author has passed, and one of the very first thoughts to flash across my little brain when I heard of his death was, “Wow, I’ve never gotten around to reading any of his books.”
This was swiftly followed by a crushing sense of guilt, made all the more weird because my first thought had been, “I didn’t even know he was still alive.”

Apparently, in my world, it is alright to ignore basic foundation blocks of Western literature if the author has been dead for awhile (at least since the 1980’s), because I’ll get around to reading him or her at some point; but it’s just downright rude to ignore living authors! I should have gotten right on that, apparently. Thanks, psyche, for making that clear.

I’m tempted to put together a list of important living authors, ordered chronologically by birth. Maybe then I can cross-reference it by known diseases/psychoses/crippling enamorations with drugs and or alcohol, get myself a little reading list and try to beat the clock. Most likely, not only would that plan never be borne out, but it also just wouldn’t work. There are too many. That’s the root of it, really: that I feel like a fraud. That every day I get through without someone catching me, asking me how on earth I ever managed to graduate with an English major, how I could have ignored so many great works, how I can manage to drag myself around upright each day, well, every day like that is a miracle. The logical jump is to assume that, some day, the cards will fall.

The chances are pretty good that I’ll knock them over while drunk, let’s be honest, and get them all sticky and covered with gatorade and step on them for a couple of weeks before I bother to pick them up.

This all makes me angry. Illogically angry, that type of anger I especially hate because I know it comes from some deep-seeded neuroses and not from any basis in reality. That type of anger that forces me to acknowledge that, seriously, I can not hide the crazy, no matter how much I’d like to think I can.
I’m angry because I read what I was told to, and so much more.
I’m angry because I trusted that by doing the work I would, in the end, cover the gamut of what’s important.
I can’t even begin to imagine where I got that idea. Whoever said that you’d have learned everything you needed to know by the time you graduated college? Apparently, it was the same person who promised that rose garden; which is to say no one. I made it up, and I’ve been fighting to catch up with that idea for as long as I can remember. Uphill both ways, barefoot, and possibly pregnant in the kitchen, who knows, but hell, as a fraud I reserve the right to mix my metaphors, thank you very much.

So then, I wonder if this is what drives most people, this desire not to fail? This feeling that you’ve managed to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes thus far, so you’d better get your ass in gear and make all of your illusions true? I wonder if it’s this fear that really goads us along, and allows us to turn potential into viable possibilities? And would that mean then when my time comes if I’ve been a success at life, it was really all because I was running away from some metaphorical bees and that scary clown from It?

Can’t I just attribute any success I have to a love of puppies and ice cream? That would be so much tastier.

Endnote: Today I was saddened to read that Kurt Vonnegut had passed away at the age of 84. I didn’t name him earlier in the essay because I didn’t want it to seem as if I was writing about Kurt Vonnegut, and then segue into disturbing facts about me, and then get lost writing about me. This whole piece has been about me, I’ve been bringing the crazy this entire time. Just so we’re clear on that. This is not the worst memorial in the world. It really is just a good ’ole tangential rambling.