Category: metablogging

Who’s with me?

Because I am certifiable, I have signed on to NaBloPoMo. Don’t worry, it’s not a cult. (At least I don’t think so.¹) November is National Blog Posting Month. It involves commitment to posting every day for the whole month. That’s 30 days in a row.

The NaBloPoMo website lets members² make groups. To hang out. Like in cliques, I guess. Lots of people have started regional-based groups, like New England Bloggers³, Tennessee Bloggers, or Blogs from Europe.

Many others have created groups reflecting special interests. And perhaps some are especially interesting. Such as bikers, or brides or pregnant bloggers. Or pregant biker bride bloggers. Or knitters. Or (judging by their limited enrollment⁴ so far) even more specialized special interests, including Bichon bloggers and Kevin Spacey Bloggers.

I found myself with an urge to join a bunch of groups. Just because. And what’s more, I had the urge to start my own group: The Ministry of Silly Blogs:

Our chief functions are threefold: a) to identify silliness on the web, b) to create silliness on the web, c) to promote silliness on the web and 4) to encourage the promotion, creation and identification of silliness on the web.

And while filling out the form to start the group, I noticed a box to fill in an existing website for the group. “Damn,” I thought. “The Ministry of Silly Blogs deserves a website.”

So I made one. With some Official Ministry Bling, even.

And 3 other people have already signed on to be part of the Minsitry of Silly Blogs. 3 people who are total strangers even. (And quite possibly, 3 people who are totally strange.)

So, anyone else out there care to join me? Either at the Ministry, or just with NaBloPoMo in general?

I also have in mind a number of other groups, which I may or may not decide to officially form:

  • Pants Bloggers: For bloggers who write about pants, like to say the word pants, and/or who wear pants while blogging
  • Homo Sapiens Bloggers: For bipedal primate bloggers who consider their brains more highly developed than your average baboon
  • Genji Bloggers: for bloggers who like to write about having read the 11th century novel The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, often known as the first novel ever written.
  • Linguistics Grad Student Bloggers with 20-month-olds Named Phoebe and Who Like to Write Lists and Make Stuff Up: For bloggers who are named alejna

———————————
¹ I followed Magpie over there. But how well do I really know her?

² Why is that I get uncomfortable with that word?…members…Sounds a bit like card-carrying members. Or perhaps cult followers…

³ Well, “Bloggahs,” which I joined in spite of my non-native tendency towards rhoticity.

⁴ N=1.

de-lightful, de-lovely, de-lurking

The Great Mofo Delurk 2007 I hear, via Magpie, that tomorrow, Octber 3rd, is a grand holiday: The Great Mofo Delurk.

I have to say, I like getting comments. And I like celebrating made-up holidays. (Remind me that I should start making up holidays. I could design a whole line of greeting cards. Maybe I should declare some day to be “Make Up Your Own Holiday Day.”) Anyhow, we were talking about comments, weren’t we. Well, I like them. So do other people. So some folks have decided that people need a little bit of an extra nudge to leave some comments, at least this one day a year.

I plan to celebrate by leaving a few comments around on blogs where I tend to lurk. (Actually, first I plan to celebrate by getting up, engaging in some sorts of personal hygiene rituals, getting dressed, getting Phoebe dressed and off to daycare, doing some work, commuting, having a meeting, doing some more work, commuting again, and maybe having a festive holiday scone. Because I think every holiday needs a tradition of baked goods. And I don’t think scones are taken.) By the end of the day, I hope to work myself up to leaving at least a quick “hello” on a few blogs.

And I’d love it if you’d join me in this celebration. You could start right here, by leaving me a scone. Or a comment, since they are less likely to get crumbs on my laptop.

I know that it can be hard to come up with just the right comment to leave, so I thought I’d offer up a few possibilities for some quick-and-easy, down-and-dirty, alpha-and-numeric comments that are ready-to-wear. It’s easy to convey lots of meaning with just a few keystrokes. Just refer to the handy chart below.

     comment        translation
     yo  Great post!
     yoyo  You rock!
     yoyoyo  You rock. Like someone in a rocking chair. Knitting socks. That don’t match.
     oy  Your corniness pains me. Please stop.
     oyo  This is meaningless
     3752  I think you may have miscalculated
     555 That color isn’t the most flattering for you.
     12  I would like to sing you an aria.
     9  This post was one of the most poignantly written, beautifully crafted, impassioned things I have read in many long years. I was moved. I cried. I wept. I did an interpretive dance.
     pants  alejna, you are cracked
     squid  this was a disturbing, but strangely compelling post
     dude  all of the above

just posts (and just posted)

The August Just Posts are up and strong. In case you don’t know them, they are a collection of posts from around the blogosphere where people have written on topics of social justice and all types of activism. Not only are these posts about activism, they are activism. And what’s cool is that you can exercise your own activist muscles, too. Just by clicking on the links.

The posts are on a wide range of topics: race and racism, gender, healthcare, poverty, environmental issues, and more… Have a look. Just visit any one of these folks listed below, now representing 3 continents, for a list of links.

jen   mad   hel   susanne

august_just_posts.jpg

I usually have to work myself up to writing about topics of activism. Even though they are topics that I think about often. I like to write fun stuff. I try to entertain. So it almost feels like an intrusion when I write about a serious topic. It’s particularly hard for me to write about controversial topics. I am a person with strong opinions, but a quiet voice. I fear confrontation, I fear conflict. So the post I just put up makes me feel vulnerable. I just posted something both personal and political, and I didn’t even have my editor look at it first. At the same time that I want people to read what I wrote, I want it to be buried to save me the risk of attack. It’s silly, I know. I’m working on building up that spine. Are there exercises you can do for that?

retour de France (und von Deutschland)

We’re back home now, as of about 6:00 p.m., after a fairly long but blissfully uneventful travel day. (No delays, no lost belongings, no mishaps to speak of.) I just put Phoebe to bed in her own room, in her own crib. I will probably keep this short, as it is 2:00 in the morning according to the way my own internal clock has been set. (I just dozed off holding Phoebe, sitting in the glider up in her room.)

It is good to be home, and to be reunited with my laptop. I hope to catch up soon in my blog reading, as well as in responding to comments. (Thanks for all those comments I got during my trip, by the way. Yay, comments!) I really spent almost no time on the computer during the trip, aside from those couple posts, and time uploading photos. I have a bunch of things I want to write about that are trip-related, many of which could turn into posts at some point. Here, have a list:

  • descriptions of food I ate (especially during two final days of gluttony)
  • reflections on using my rusty French (it came back more easily than I thought, but sometimes a bit messily)
  • thoughts on returning to France 18 years after I lived there last (there have been lots of changes)
  • a bit about renting an apartment in Paris for a vacation (it was great)
  • a rundown of activities and sites seen (with photos)
  • a guide to Paris highlights from Phoebe’s perspective (Pigeons!)
  • a few thoughts on our lost stroller, and the sucky replacement one we bought

I’m really going to miss being in Paris. It was wonderful to be able to walk everywhere. To barely leave the building to find all sort of activities. And food. I would have liked more time in Germany, too. The trip went far too quickly. And soon my life will catch up with me again, and I’ll realize that I haven’t done any work in the last couple of weeks, that there were bills I forgot to pay before leaving, that I missed the registration deadline for school, that the house is a mess and that there are another dozen or so commitments and projects that are waiting for me to get back to them. But for now, I’ll just get some sleep, and remain cheerfully ignorant of all those things.

public display of procrastination

Sometimes I feel like that should be the title of my blog. Public Display of Procrastination. Actually, many blogs could fit that bill. Perhaps it could be a blog genre: the PDP.

How did it get to be past 11:00 again? This is the eternal question. At least the nightly question. I’ve been trying to make sleep a priority lately, as sleep can lead to general well-being. And lack of sufficient sleep (which is what I’ve largely been dealing with, or not dealing with, depending on your parse) can lead to the following: memory loss, crankiness, sloth, chocolate cravings, crankiness, low tolerance for the shortcomings of others (“crankiness”), low tolerance for the shortcomings of self (“crankiness”), chocolate consumption, ice cream cravings, chocolate ice cream consumption (which is odd, because I never even used to like chocolate ice cream), reduced productivity, decreased patience (“crankiness”), confusion, speech errors (“each sparers”), muddle-headedness, shorter tempers (“crankiness”), increased stress, distraction, nap envy and memory loss. Also, there is some chance of crankiness.

I was all gung-ho to get some work done tonight, after Phoebe got to bed. And while I’ve been busy since then, actual work has not happened. Here is what has happened. (And I have less than 8 minutes to write it before midnight, at which point my laptop will turn into a pumpkin. And lord knows I’ve got enough vegetables to deal with.)

  • I read a few blogs
  • I read some news
  • I pimped out a minivan with flames
  • I ate some ice cream
  • I wrote and sent a vegetable-related email
  • I wrote a list of bird songs
  • I ate some more ice cream
  • I put in some laundry
  • I wrote this

Time’s up.

the eleven-o’clock salad

lettuce.jpgIt’s just past 11:00 p.m., and I just ate a big salad. I realized that before you know it, it will be time for my next CSA pick-up, and I still had 3 heads of lettuce, plus lots of other greens, onions, and kohlrabi. You will be proud of me to know that I opted to make and eat salad rather than going right to the freezer to get out the ice cream which we bought earlier this evening. (Note that I have not yet forgotten the ice cream. Its time will come.)

The salad was good. I do like salad. Especially when it’s been tossed with the dressing in a bowl, so that the dressing is all evenly spread around. An equal distribution of wealth, as it were. (I like to eat a good helping of socialist metaphors.) And by the way: boy-oh-boy has our salad spinner been seeing a lot of action lately.

I keep feeling like I want to record more of my life, of our life. I’m not sure why, exactly. Part of it is that I like my life, and imagine that some day I’ll look back fondly on this time, and feel a bit sad if I don’t remember what my day to day life was like. My future self will think things like: “Back when I was a new mother, did I eat enough vegetables?” or “Did I get enough sleep when I was a grad student?” or “I wonder what I thought about pants when I was in my 30s?”

I keep meaning to update the Phoebe Blog more frequently. Phoebe keeps growing and changing, and well, doing things. Again, things that I feel like I’ll want to remember. My memory fades so quickly, and the days blur together. Hell, the weeks and months blur together. I just managed to post a bit to the Phoebe Blog last night, but there are gaps. It’s strange this feeling that I need to record all of it. I don’t think my parents recorded too much about me, or even my sister (the first-born). I wonder if it’s partially my packrat tendencies making me want to store things away. (The packrat in me badgers me to squirrel things away? Can I fit a rabbit into this somewhere?)

The trip plans are coming along moderately well. I have squared away an apartment in Paris. I have filled out the form from the conference organizers to get a hotel room in Saarbrucken, who seem to have reserved every last hotel room in the town so that you must go through them. (Which means you may not actually get a choice about which hotel you’re going to stay in. Which may lead to some difficulties, as we have special public transportation and crib needs due to travelling with a toddler. I sent an email. I think I’ll be known as a troublemaker to the conference organizers. Because I also questioned their request to have a letter faxed from “the head of my institution” stating that I am a student in order to get the student discount for registration, in addition to sending a scan of the student ID. They claim that such a letter should only take “2 minutes” and is standard procedure. Which is a load of hooey.) I also still have to look more into trains.

And I keep thinking it would be nice to watch a movie. It’s possibly been weeks since I watched a movie. Oh yeah, and I’m supposed to be doing work. Oh wait. Now I’m supposed to be sleeping. Crap.

And you know how I felt compelled to write more 7 lists? Well, as I anticipated, I didn’t have much time. Phoebe’s nap ended, followed by needing to get her a meal, and get her dressed, and who knows what all, resulting in a time lapse of two hours. Then we went out a shopping excursion to get a birthday present for John’s aunt. (We’re going to her 80th birthday party tomorrow. Possibly not the 80th such party that she’s had.) We didn’t get home till 8 or so, then it was time for Phoebe to get a bath and get to bed. It was 9 by the time she was in bed. (Way past her bedtime, but she seems to have her parents’ night owl proclivities.) So, no time to work on lists. But since I don’t want to throw them away, or toss them into the compost pile with the beet greens, I’ll lay them on you here.

So, here are some sevens (and sevenths) I thought about incorporating into some lists.

More than seven more seven things.

books:

  • The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (I haven’t read it, but it seems to have a Phoebe.)
  • The Seven Dials Mystery, by Agatha Christie
  • The 7 habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey (Not that I’ve read it. I have a low tolerance for self-help books)
  • Seven Spiders Spinning, by Gregory Maguire (one of his kids’ books)
  • Seven Daughters and Seven Sons, a young adult novel by Barbara Cohen, based on an Iraqi folktale.

    • music:

  • Seven and the Ragged Tiger, an album by Duran Duran
  • “lucky number 7 passed me by,” a line from Cracker’s “Lonesome Johnny Blues”
  • “Love is the seventh wave,” a song by Sting
  • A line from “Monkey Gone to Heaven” by the Pixies:

    • If man is five (if man is five…)
    and the devil is six (and the devil is six…)
    then god is heaven (then god is heaven…)
    this monkey’s gone to heaven

  • There are also seven days in a week, seven deadly sins and seven wonders of the world. You can be in seventh heaven, you can get seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror, or you can sail the seven seas. Agent 007 is Bond. (James Bond.)

    • If you’ve got more 7s for me, toss them my way. Toss them like a salad.

    If I take off my pants, do I get a different rating?

    What's My Blog Rated? From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating
    (Snagged from twoluvcats of a wealth of semi-useless informtion.)

    In case you’re wondering how I managed to score this rating, because perhaps you hadn’t noticed any steamy sex scenes (or any steamy pseudo-sex scenes) of late, the site is kind enough to give the criteria on which the judgment was made:

    This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

    ass (8x)
    sex (3x)
    dangerous (1x)

    My site, especially the current front page with my two recent kick-ass women posts is a bit heavy on the ass. They seem to have only counted the free-standing ass tokens (as in “she kicked some ass”) and not those in compounds (such as my 20+ tokens off kick-ass).

    I apparently also had sex three times on my front page. Woohoo! Getting some action! Of course, I was writing about the pheromones of Star Trek aliens, and the sex-free relationship of two other fictional characters. (I also used the word asexual a couple of times in that post. And that’s got sex right in the middle of it.)

    And then, here’s the kicker. “Dangerous” contributes to an R-rating? Hello? This makes me unbearably curious about what other words might be considered too titillating for general audiences. For example, would synonyms of dangerous be considered equally as adult?

    Roget’s New Millennium™ Thesaurus
    Main Entry: dangerous
    Part of Speech: adjective
    Definition: hazardous
    Synonyms: alarming, bad, breakneck*, chancy, critical, dangersome, deadly, delicate, dynamite, exposed, fatal, formidable, hairy*, heavy*, hot*, impending, impregnable, insecure, jeopardous, loaded, malignant, menacing, mortal, nasty, parlous, perilous, portentous, precarious, pressing, queasy, risky, serious, serpentine, shaky, speculative, terrible, thorny*, threatening, ticklish*, touch-and-go*, touchy, treacherous, ugly*, unhealthy, unsafe, unstable, urgent, viperous, vulnerable
    Antonyms: protected, safe, secure, unhazardous
    Source: Roget’s New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.3.1)
    Copyright © 2007 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
    * = informal or slang

    I’m thinking that parious sounds pretty racy, not to mention thorny and ticklish. As for speculative? Well, let’s not even go there.

    Anyhow, I would have been inclined to generally rate my site with a PG-13 rating. Which, oddly enough, is how my real life gets rated according to this quiz swiped from raincoaster:

    Your Life is Rated PG-13

    Your life isn’t totally scandalous, but you definitely don’t shy away from adult themes!

    on kick-ass women characters

    Joss Whedon kicks ass.

    I’m sure many of you already knew this.

    I’ve been a fan of Buffy and Firefly/Serenity for a bit, and therefore had some awareness that Joss Whedon could produce, direct and write some cool stuff in the kick-ass woman department. However, I developed a whole new level of appreciation for his own kick-assedness when I saw this video of him talking about answering the big question: “Why do you write such strong women characters?” (Thanks to bs and orangerful for bringing my attention to this clip.)

    I had been very excited to see that he was lined up to write a new feature-length film version of Wonder Woman. Cool, huh? However, I’m sad to say that I’ve recently learned that he is off the job. Damn.

    In other kick-ass-woman-related news, there’s an upcoming blog event that should be worth checking out: The Action Heroine Blogathon. (hat-tip to Lazy Eye Theater, and thanks to jenny for making sure I knew about it.) I’m hoping to participate, with some sort of new post in the kick-ass women series. I’m even hoping that YTSL will have a new post of her own along the same lines. (Any chance?) Anyone else out there have some movies or shows with action heroines they want to write about?

    about me, about time

    As of yesterday, I’ve now been at this blog for 6 months. And as is my trend, I’m running behind in the things I’ve been meaning to do. For example, I meant to have some sort of “about” page. Possibly more than one. So that poor unwitting souls who stumble across my ramblings can have some sort of idea what they’re in for.

    For some reason, I’m resistant to writing a blurb about myself, though I’ve done pretty boring-ass ones about the blog for places like blogher and technorati. So instead of writing another blurb, I offer to you a test. But don’t worry. It’s multiple choice.

    1. I am a ______-year-old _______.
      a) 12, squid
      b) 35, woman
      c) 1, party game guaranteed to please the crowd
      d) blue
    2. I am currently in _____.
      a) grad school for linguistics
      b) a box
      c) really big trouble
      d) all of the above
    3. I am ______ ______.
      a) usually tired
      b) happily married
      c) wearing pajamas
      d) all of the above
    4. I have a ______ ______ named _____.
      a) one-year-old daughter, Phoebe
      b) sewer alligator, Fred
      c) big toe, Philippa
      d) false
    5. I think ______ is a funny word.
      a) pants
      b) pants
      c) pants
      d) a and b, but not c

    Okay, and here’s a picture John took of me:

    alejna_and_fish.jpg