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Rain!
This is the object attached to our living room lightpull. It makes a cheerful jingling sound whenever I turn the light on or off. I quite enjoy it. Yesterday, I must have pulled too hard in the dark (hoo boy) because, as the light came on, a shower of elephants rained down upon my head. I have yet to find all of the persnickety pachyderms.
(Long view, from the chair.)
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.
What's weirder?
. . . the fact that I swallowed or inhaled a bug at the start of my run, or the fact that I coughed it back up twenty-five minutes later?
Dark horse - the fact that I still don't know if I swallowed or inhaled it?
Blech. Protein.
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.)
Reunion's coming up
A teammate of mine, who also happened to be another English major, basically functioned as my partner in crime throughout the whole of the second half of my college career. We were so closely linked that if one of us was not in class when the exams were handed back, our prof. would just give them both to whomever had bothered to show up.
We, each of us, were a mess, but together we were a highly functioning mess.
She once missed an email informing us that a final had been moved to a building across campus, and our prof. interrupted the exam to ask me, personally, from across the room, if I knew where she was. She, of course, came running in five minutes later after having sprinted flat out across campus in her usual platform sandals and skirt.
She is the reason that I know Chicago has a curfew, and she is the one who takes me shopping whenever I visit her and insists on taking me to the Urban Outfitters there. I always buy something, just because she brought me.
New post!
New post!
New post!
new post
new post
new post
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.
(Long view, from the chair.)
