Is Desperate Housewives That Desperate?

Ok, not to be catty, but we were watching Desperate Housewives last night and suddenly there's a new character on Wisteria Lane. Apparently Carlos and Gabby need money so badly they've resorted to renting out rooms in their house. They're interviewing this potential tenant and I keep looking at her thinking "Who IS that? She looks familiar."

The whole time I kept thinking she looked like a very weathered Mallory--you remember fresh-faced Mallory, right?



Doesn't this sort of look like her, except gaunt and, um, not attractive?


It is her.

Ok, actually she doesn't look that bad in this picture--on the show her character turns out to be a drug dealer and let's just say she looks like she's her own best customer. You'll have to watch it next week to see what mean.

If nothing else she just looked so un-hollywood. I'm so used to everyone looking like they get better and better as they get older--actresses, that is--what with fat injections and botox and eye lifts and who knows what else. Honestly--look at Courtney Cox or Katie Couric or Christy Brinkley--or almost any actress/model over the age of 40. Granted, everyone looks slightly like they've been replaced by an alien that looks ALMOST the same but something's not quite right--but they all look pretty glam.

Then look at Mallory (she's always Mallory to me, not Justine Bateman) on Desperate Housewives--you'll have to watch it next week because I can't find any links to photos bad enough to illustrate my point, and trust me, I do have a point. She just looks weird--I don't know if she attempted some kind of plastic surgery and it somehow didn't work out or what, but she looks sort of like a cross between a gaunt, stoned version of her former self and Michael Jackson. Seriously.

Forget Waiting for a Book Deal--You Can Create and Sell Your Own Book

My friend Renee is my guru of stuff like The Secret and The 4-Hour Work Week--basically all that power of positive thinking stuff that most people think is a crock but I personally buy into. She reads my blog and knows about my obsession with the book deal because she sent me this link.

Unless I'm reading it wrong it appears you can write a book and, for a cost of $3.66 per book with fewer than 108 pages (or $1.50 plus $.02 per book if it's more than 108 pages) print it and sell it on Amazon or wherever you want.

Um, how cool is that?

Now that we know there is the actual option of writing a book we all need to think of something to write and do it, if for no other reason than curiosity. If a random nobody writes a book and manages to market it successfully enough I suppose it would be possible to create your own million dollar book deal.

For instance--I have been listening to the audiobook of The Secret (also kindly given to me by Renee--thanks if you're reading this!) and Jack Canfield, the guy who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul, tells the story of how he decided he wanted to earn $100,000 in a year and dreamed up the idea for that book and went for it. Here's his bio now:

Jack Canfield, has worked his way from being a teacher to holding a Guinness world record for having seven books simultaneously on The New York Times® Best Sellers list. As a coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, he's sold more than 80 million books. Canfield has traveled to over 21 countries, delivering hundreds of keynote speeches, workshops and trainings each year. Canfield has appeared on numerous television shows. Today, he shares his success strategies with companies and associations worldwide

The only problem is that, if I apply Jack Canfield's theories to myself, I can already tell you that I would never succeed at building my own million-dollar empire because the only part of it I'd want is the million dollars.

I don't actually want to be an entrepreneur or build an empire. I don't want to travel or do any public speaking. I want the structure of going to an office every day and having someone else worry about the details. So if I apply the principles of The Secret to myself I've already shot any chances of being a passive millionaire--or any kind of millionaire--because I don't actually WANT to have that life and the universe only sends you what you want.

Oh well. The universe sent me a cool new job and the link to this self publishing thing so the message is that if I ever want to publish a book I can just do it myself. The universe also probably knows I have no initiative beyond writing this blog so won't be publishing a book anytime soon, unless it's a book of short short stories. Yes, that is an actual writing genre, by the way.

Obviously, the concept of short short stories was tailor-made for me; it may as well be called FIO fiction. Read these stories and tell me you don't think they're a stroke of FIO genius.

How Do You Say Eco-Friendly in French?

I got this from my one of my favorite new blogs, Stuff White People Like.

This is truly a case of fact being funnier than fiction. Check out Le Petite Paradise Preschool's website --if you didn't know better wouldn't you think it's a joke? I personally can't see how it's NOT a joke.

Check out the eco-friendly section and you'll see what I mean. Any sales pitch that has to use the qualifier "mostly" just can't be for real, can it?

If so then I am "mostly" eco-friendly myself. I "sometimes" take my empty soda cans to the kitchen at work to put them in the recycle bin. No matter that it's maybe 1 in 10 times; I am still committed to recycling, non? And I "mostly" recycle paper and cardboard--unless I'm too lazy to walk the few extra steps to the recycle bin and must put it in the trash instead. The floors at my house "might" be made of wood from genetically enginered trees, therefore having spared hundreds of real trees. Or possibly not.

Anyway, I'm sorry but I am not thoroughly convinced that it's not a joke--I mean, school anthem on the website?

Mizz Information

Nobody ever reads my other blog, Mizz Information, so I may as well re-purpose what I've written there lately and save myself the effort of writing anything here.

How's that for both self-serving and lazy?

Don't Say They Didn't Warn You

Last week I heard something on the radio about the FDA taking another look at the safety of Lasik. I never did catch the full story, but was sufficiently curious that I checked out the Washington Post's archive and found a few articles about it.

Apparently "in fury and despair," some angry Lasik patients went before federal health advisers to recommend that the government warn more clearly about the risks of the surgery.

I don't get it--anyone who does two seconds of research about Lasik knows about the possibility of halos and dry eyes. A few months ago I wrote about my Lasik experience and the resulting dry eyes and less-than-perfect vision. I mean, I guess I could hold the surgeon accountable for my complications--one of the main reasons I wanted Lasik in the first place was because my eyes were so dry contacts were a nightmare. Also, I had large pupils. He did know about these things and still did the surgery--but then again, I knew about these things and still elected to have the surgery.

How much of this is about the doctors wanting to make a profit and risking patients' eye health as a result and how much is it about people wanting perfect vision at any cost? How many patients, if told by a doctor that they weren't good candidates for the procedure would seek another opinion and, if that doctor told them it would be fine, would go ahead and have it? I'd be willing to bet at least half would go ahead despite the warnings.

I--and I'm sure I'm not the only one--just wanted what everyone who opts to get Lasik wants: to be able to see perfectly without glasses or contacts. Was I guaranteed a perfect, complication-free result? Absolutely not. Sure, chances were that I'd be fine like the majority of people who have it and wake up with 20/20 vision and never give it another thought--but did anyone promise me that? Not at all. Granted, while they don't gloss over the warnings per se, they do do the "don't worry--complications are very rare" thing.

I'll tell you one thing, though--they sure won't touch my eyes now. I've gone back a few times hoping they could "tweak" my vision--which I think is about 20/40 but they now claim I have a predisposition to complications and am no longer a candidate. If that's not a cover your ass, I don't know what is--but somehow they didn't realize I had this "predisposition" to complications before I had the surgery. I guess you can only be predisposed AFTER you've already had the complications.

At any rate, even with my dry eyes and halos and need for light prescription contacts or glasses, if I could go back in time I'd still have had the surgery. To me while yes, it's annoying that I don't have 20/20 vision with no dry eyes at all, it was crippling to have vision so bad I couldn't see my glasses on the table in front of me or read a shampoo bottle in the shower. Before I had Lasik, if I had been on a desert island and my glasses had broken I would have been totally SOL; now I'd be fine, and to me that's worth having to use eye drops and wear contacts or glasses if I want to see 20/20.

The Bottle Whisperer

Today's Washington Post features DC's "Breast Whisperer"--a $150 an hour lactation consultant who saves new moms from resorting to the unthinkable: bottle feeding. She is booked around the clock with $150 home visits and $85 an hour office appointments--all told she sees about 80 women a week, according to the article. Don't think she's in it for the money, though--the article points out that she magnanimously reserves two free visits a week for low-income families!

No, she's not in it for the money--the article says that her message is:

Breast-feeding may not always be easy, but it's the healthiest option for babies' development and immune systems, as well as for their mothers' stress levels and improved protection against some cancers.

I think she's onto something--not with her opinion that breastfeeding is the end all, be all--but that women are willing to pay top dollar to have someone help them feed their babies. I will spare you my rant about why I'm sick to death of hearing how "breast is best" and how breastfed babies never get sick or have allergies and are all geniuses. Suffice it to say that back when I had Mimi I was just like the women in this article--brainwashed to think that not breastfeeding your baby was tantamount to feeding it Drano and any mom who wasn't willing to go to whatever length necessary to breastfeed for at least a year deserved to have her baby taken away from her.

I did everything in my attempt to keep breastfeeding through severe postpartum depression and nipples that were basically dangling by bloody threads as a result of Mimi's bad "latch": I forked out money to a lactation consultant who sent me home with a hospital grade breast pump (even though I was home full-time with my baby and had enough milk to feed 5 babies) and detailed instructions to do something to my nipples pretty much every waking hour of the day: soak them in soup bowls of warm water, blow dry them, put neosporin on them, put antifungal cream on them (just in case I had thrush, even though neither I nor Mimi had any symptoms of it), put hot compresses on them, put cold compresses on them--oh, and walk around without a shirt or bra on anytime I was home.

Thinking back to that time just makes me shudder--I was such a mess and drove myself absolutely crazy obsessively trying to ignore my bleeding, mangled nipples and do what good moms do: breastfeed my baby. When, after 6 weeks, the psychiatrist declared that I needed to either go on medication or be hospitalized, I dejectedly called the lactation consultant to get her guidance on how to wean the baby--because everyone knows you can't just quit cold-turkey. Like a salesperson trying to prevent a customer from walking away from a sale, she helpfully pointed out--and this is not a joke or an exaggeration; these were her EXACT words:

"Sometimes formula-fed babies sleep so deeply they never wake up."

But I digress...I forgot I said I'd spare you the rant. At any rate, I think I should go into business as a bottle-feeding consultant. That's a service that society is severely lacking; someone to tell you that the world won't end if you decide not to breastfeed your baby. I could offer anecdotes about all the breastfed babies who actually end up not actually having immune systems of steel--I mean, seriously--do you honestly think that every single one of the millions of kids who are deathly allergic to peanuts or milk or dust or who knows what was bottle fed? I could compile lists of geniuses throughout history who never tasted so much as a drop of breastmilk.

Seriously--for every woman out there desperate to spend any amount of money to have someone be her breastfeeding cheerleader, there is another who'd pay just as much to have someone reassure her she's not a monster or a bad mom for wanting to feed her baby formula. For $150 an hour, I could be that woman.

Tick Tock--and Augusten

I haven't been writing in here much because I'm distracted waiting to hear about something that I can't write about yet. And no, I'm not pregnant so don't go thinking it's that.

Oh, and sadly, it's not a 6-figure (or any figure) book deal either.

In an attempt to distract myself I checked Augusten's website to see when he's coming to DC and THANK GOD it's changed from May 19 to May 20. May 19 is Mimi's birthday and I don't think 12 year old girls react too well to their moms having to take a pass on birthday dinner to go to meet Augusten. Maybe I could have convinced her that she, too, wanted to go meet him; Matthew was listening to Magical Thinking with me in the car and was riveted to the story about Augusten being in a Tang commercial when he was a kid. It's a given that she'll be her snarky self anyway, so no matter what we do it will be met with attitude anyway. Remember Wednesday Adams? That stone faced look and constant world-weary attitude? Yeah, that's Mimi.

Anyway, it looks like he's coming May 20th instead so all is right in the world. Here is an article about him and his new book in the New York Times.

In the meantime, I just ordered 4 books he recommends highly in his blog:

A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel.

Split: A Memoir of Divorce by Suzanne Finnamore

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation by Elizabeth Berg

Is Twitter the Equivalent of Trash Art?

As you may have noticed on the sidebar on the right side of this page I am now "Tweeting" (or is it twittering?). I started doing it because every day I read several marketing newsletters and many blogs and social media is basically the only thing any of them talk about. For those of you who are not receiving marketing newsletters daily and don't know the first thing about marketing--or care to know it--Wikipedia defines it as:

...an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings.

In other words, Facebook, MySpace, blogging, etc, etc.

I could go on and on, but I'll spare you--if you want to learn more about it you can read my other blog, Mizz Information, or google it and you too can become an "expert" (I have written 3 articles for EzineArticles and am now an "Expert").

At any rate, lately all I seemed to be reading about was Twitter. Don't ask me why but it's apparently considered to be a trend or asset in the business world, so in an effort to always keep my resume fresh, naturally I had to get with the times and start tweeting.

Two things about Twitter: first, I have no idea what the actual value of it is. I personally see it as sort of an art form reminiscent of a gumball machine that dispensed--for a quarter--pieces of trash in little plastic balls. In other words, I see Twitter as a completely FIO way of being some kind of modern day poet.

The thing is, like Christopher Goodwin's gumballs (see link above), ultimately people's tweets seem to me to be the literary version of small pieces of trash encapsulated in little plastic bubbles. Take a look at my "tweets" in the sidebar: you basically have I think 150 characters to make some kind of witty quip or otherwise somehow relevant observation. I like it because I personally am entertained by my own witty quips, but as far as the overall point or value of Twitter, I'm stumped.

It's funny to me the way people I see as being big guns in the business or marketing worlds seem to place a high level of importance on social media stuff I think of as relevant only to teenagers. Penelope Trunk, uber business woman and 6-figure blog to book deal getter, is doing it. Barak Obama is doing it (or at least someone posing as him is doing it). I won't waste anymore time looking up who else is doing it; I think it's safe to assume most writers or marketing people or just plain anyone trying to be down with the times is doing it.

Twitter is, for me, at the same time entertaining and boring. Yes, it's kind of fun to write any random thought in 150 words or less and release it into the universe, and to read other people's random thoughts. Then again, are other people's random thoughts really that interesting? Or are mine, for that matter? It's one thing if you're 16 and trying to stay in constant contact with your "peeps" and the minutiae of your life is all you talk about anyway, but do adults really have anything interesting to tweet about?

Raise Your Hand If You Did NOT Have Postpartum Depression

While looking up something else (I can't even remember what) I came across this breaking news:

Gwyneth Paltrow Suffered From Post-Partum Depression

And this is breaking news....why? Most women can tell horror stories of their post-partum depression: my personal favorite is when my best friend from college hallucinated a chicken walking across her living room.

Most are not that entertaining, though--most women's experiences range from not being able to get out of bed to not being able to sleep at all, from worrying obsessively about their babies getting hurt to worrying obsessively about hurting their own babies, and then everything in between.

However, I have not yet heard anyone describe their expericence quite like Gwyneth did:

"I didn’t know I had it until after it was over."

My heart goes out to her.

Back In The Game

Yesterday's pain crisis--horrible burning shoulder/back pain due to excessive computer gaming--has mostly been averted thanks to ibuprofen, heat and valium.

I can't help but think of the term "mother's little helper" when I think of valium--isn't that what they used to call it back in the 50s or 60s or whenever they came out with it? Back in the days before Prozac and before it was ok for housewives to admit they were miserable and bored and lonely at home. I personally don’t think it’s all that great—it just sort of spaces me out, which is not something I need pharmaceutical help with since I am in tune with my surroundings about 25% of the time anyway. The 50s housewives can keep their valium because I don't think it's anything to write home about.

The heatwrap, on the other hand…that thing is pure genius. It’s essentially a giant, hot maxi-pad that you stick on your back, where it magically stays hot for 12 hours. I have no idea how it works but I LOVE it and would definitely take one over valium any day. I have it on today, however, and am slightly worried that people will think I actually do have a maxi-pad stuck on my back because it is clearly visible through my shirt and the adhesive "wing" is clearly visible on the back of my neck.

At any rate, the good news is that no permanent harm was caused by Luxor--which is slightly unfortunate because I'm already craving it like a 50s housewife craved valium.

Luxor

Patrick was away last weekend so I spent an embarrassing amount of time playing Big Kahuna Reef's replacement, Luxor (Google "Luxor game" too see what I'm talking about). I had big plans--go see Meet the Browns (see yesterday's post), shop, go to the gym, etc. I am also reading a really good book, Next by Michael Crichton, and was definitely going to finish it.

Saturday I had the kids but while we were home I spent pretty much every free minute not reading but playing Luxor. Sunday I was on my own from 1-6 pm--perfect time to go see a movie, right? Pedicure, shopping, whatever. Suddenly, though, I was bone tired so lay down on the sofa and watched Arlington Road (again, see yesterday's post). But that only lasted for 2 hours and, if my memory serves me correctly, I think I spent from 3-6 playing Luxor.

Yesterday I started having a burning, wrenching pain in the middle of my back, right next to my right scapula. I thought it was either from excessive sofa time or lifting weights.

This morning I asked my friend/coworker who is a massage therapist in training, to diagnose the pain--did she think it's a pulled muscle? I jokingly mentioned maybe it was a result of my Luxor binge.

Turns out that, yes, she thinks it's a pinched a nerve in my scapula. The cause? Luxor.

I might be the only almost 40-year old woman to ever sustain a video game related injury--how pathetic is that?

**** Update****

My back/shoulder/arm now hurts so bad it's crazy...I'm swearing off computer games forever. Unfortunately I still have to spend most of my waking hours sitting at a computer using a mouse anyway.

Nothin' Goin' On But the Rent

Crickets are chirping in my head--nothing new over here.

I haven't talked about movies much lately--I guess that's a testament to the quality of the movies we've seen lately. One of my favorite things to do in this life is go to the movies. Not watch movies--I usually can't sit through a movie at home (although I did just watch Arlington Road yesterday and it was AWESOME--a definite at least 9.5). But physically go to the movies. The only problem is when there is a run of bad movies, like there has been lately, it's hard to find anything worth seeing. I still badger Patrick to go every week, but it's been slim pickings lately.

Let's see how far back I can remember:

1) The Ruins--we saw this last week and Patrick rated it second worst movie he's ever seen, with Bug being the standard by which he judges all bad movies. I personally liked Bug but did have to agree with him that The Ruins pretty much sucked. At first it seemed like it was going to be a twist on Hostel--which I personally gave high marks--but then it turned out not to be a twist on anything. Having any type of twist would have made it at least marginally entertaining--in reality it pretty much wasn't. I think I have to give it maybe a 4--it was scary so that was fun but that's about it.

2) 21--this movie rocked. We saw it the week before we went to Vegas but sadly it didn't help us win any money. Kevin Spacey was really good in it, and overall it was just good--even Patrick liked it, which is high praise for a movie. Unlike my opinion, which is probably useless to most people because I'm like Mikey--I pretty much like anything. But 21, even by standards more rigorous than mine, is a good movie--I'd give it an 8.

3) The Bank Job--this movie was pretty good at the time but, now that it's been a few weeks, I can barely remember it so it couldn't have been that good. It was kind of confusing and not that realistic, but better than most other movies out lately. Patrick liked it and I probably gave it a 7.

4) Horton Hears a Who--yes, I see an assload of movies--the fact that I can think of 4 right off the top of my head proves that. I saw this movie with the kids and, even though I wanted to see it and love the original movie, I fell asleep for most of it. Unfortunately, I woke up at the end and for some reason squirted a tear when the tiny kid says "Yop" and suddenly everyone can hear that's there's life in Whoville after all. Mimi was sitting next to me and apparently saw my eyes misting up because she said "You've GOT to be kidding me--you're crying for THIS?" That's Mimi for you. I have to give this movie low marks because it was worse than the original and having Carol Burnett be the voice of the kangaroo just ruined it for me somehow. I give it, sadly, maybe a 2--which is unheard of for me.

5) Yes, I can keep going all day but I'll stop at 5. I forgot that I just saw Superhero Movie with the kids on Saturday. When you see as many movies as I do they all sort of blur together, but I do remember that it was pretty funny--I think I'd give it at least a 7.5.

Ok--I'll spare you--suffice it to say that if it's been in a theater and is rated R Patrick and I have probably seen it, and if it's rated PG there's a chance I've seen it with the kids. The main movie I want to see is Meet The Browns but so far I haven't been able to convince Patrick to go. Maybe Wednesday.

Crazy Successful or Just Crazy?

Lately I've been reading/listening to a lot of books about forgetting the rules and just making things to happen. Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, Timothy Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek, Steve Chandler's 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself and various other motivational speakers/authors. The common theme among them: throw convention out the window, rules don't matter, you are the master of your own destiny, etc. I guess it equates to what is known as the "entrepreneurial spirit."

I listen to/read this stuff and get really hyped up--"Yeah! I'm just going to make things happen for myself! F the rules--I'll write my own rules!" I can see why these people get paid a ton of money to speak or write books--because the fact that I and millions of other people are listening to/reading them is living proof that, yes, it is possible to write your own rules and design your life to your exact specifications.

(Patrick--who may as well be named Eyore for these purposes--totally disagrees with my enthusiasm, by the way. He says they’re all full of shit and anyone who tried to do what they say would immediately be fired and their lives forever ruined.)

One thing that occurred to me one day, though, while double-dosing on Timothy Ferriss in the car and Penelope Trunk on the computer--both of them have similarly extreme stories: Trunk with her start-ups, firings, bankruptcy, and now fame and, apparently, fortune and Ferriss with his quitting Princeton, losing jobs, starting companies and working 24/7, etc.

Then cut to me, sitting at my quarterly appointment with the psychopharmacologist, listening to him tick off his standard list of questions: Have you been more active than usual? Reduced need for sleep? Risk-taking behavior? Delusions of grandeur? If I were to answer yes to any or, god forbid, all of these questions, I'd be walking out of there with a prescription for Lithium to quell what would diagnostically qualify as a manic episode. I never did anything close to any of this stuff they've done yet I am supposedly bipolar II and on medication for life.

So here’s my question: don’t you essentially have to be bipolar to be a successful entrepreneur? Don’t all these people get to the top by working 24/7 (reduced need for sleep), doing what other people would never dream of doing like quitting jobs to start a business (risk-taking behavior), and of course thinking that the reason they can do this stuff and succeed is because they’re echelons above the common person (delusions of grandeur)? What would happen if they were to wind up in the shrink’s office and handed a sheaf of prescriptions—would they still be on top of the world, writing best-selling books and making millions with their speaking engagements? Or would the meds pop their manic balloons and send them back to regular desk jobs?

White People--Christian Lander's Got Your Number

Yesterday I mentioned Christian Lander's blog, Stuff White People Like, but said I hadn't really read it yet. I subsequently went and read it and have to say that it may well eclipse my former favorite website of all time, The Best Page In the Universe.

It is hilarious and so, so true. This post about how white people like free healthcare is one of my favorites.

Other stuff white people like: having gay friends, recycling, multilingual children, coffee, expensive sandwiches and microbreweries, to name just a few.

I must not be all white because the only thing on this short list (here's the full list) that I like is having gay friends--I am the anti-recycler, don't drink beer and, if I had a personal motto, it may well be "Welcome to America. Now speak English."

Blog-to Book-Deal #92

Ok, not really--I'm not sure if the actual number of blog-to-book deals to date is 92; I just stole "92" from the title of this article that appeared in the March 30, 2008 New York Times.

Christian Lander, an Internet copy writer, has a blog called Stuff White People Like. I would have given the guy a book deal for the title alone. I have to go read it but at a super quick glance (who, me--offer an opinion based upon a mere glance?) it looks hilarious. Hilarious, apparently, to the tune of $300,000, according to the NYT article.

Look at it this way--turn on your TV on any given evening and chances are you will find a reality show of some sort. Dating shows, beauty contests, a million different takes on the theme of survival, people battling it out to lose weight, people crammed in a house trying to annoy the shit out of each other, etc. You name it and there's a reality show about it. The whole premise is that people are entertaining enough just by themselves; no need for writers to sweat it out trying to write scripts or come up with ideas.

Isn't the same thing true of blogs? I'm certainly no literary agent yet I spend an inordinate amount of time reading various blogs. If I were in a position to make money by translating interesting ones into book deals I'd be set for life. Sit back and surf the infinite number of unsolicited book pitches--what could be easier? It's like being a modeling agent sitting at a pool filled with hot young girls--just sit there with a cocktail and take your pick of the ones who would make you the most money.

At any rate, is this not yet more evidence that FIO is the way the world operates now?

As is this, for that matter--my new FIO poster child, Penelope Trunk, blogging about how writing without typos is totally outdated. I say poster child because she embodies the spirit of FIO--that is, fuck rules--make your own, then laugh all the way to the bank.

Augusten Says You Must Go Buy This Book

If you read this blog you know two things about me:

1) I am obsessed with Augusten Burroughs--I love him, his writing, think he's redonk smart and funny and he just rocks. He is living proof of the "if you want something badly enough and believe it will happen theory." My favorite quote of his: "When I was 34, I decided to stop being an alcoholic and become a New York Times best-selling author."

And just like that, he did.

And,

2) I'm all about recommending--and even reviewing--books I have yet to read.

At any rate, I was reading his blog just now and he was raving about his good friend, Haven Kimmel (lucky girl!!) and praising her upcoming book, Iodine. He says she's hilarious and a brilliant writer, and naturally he's one to know. I we should all take his advice and read this book when it comes out, and in the meantime, read the other books she's written.

If you decide not to heed this advice, fear not: I will read them all and you know you'll be reading about it here. And I promise to actually read them.

The F Word

I'm laughing because I submitted an article to ezine and got the following email response:

Thank you for your submission to EzineArticles.com.

We would like to help you get this article approved but there is an issue which needs to be resolved first.

Your article is in violation of our Editorial Guidelines, Section 1.g.

We do not accept articles that contain excessive or unnecessary profanity. Please edit your article, removing all profanity, and resubmit for Editorial Review.

Yikes--I must have become so jaded about my language that I didn't even realize I had submitted an article containing "excessive profanity." I went to edit it and, after reading through it, couldn't find so much as one bad word. Thinking I was missing it, I read it again--and again. I did say "hell"--was that what they were talking about?

No, there it was--the last line where I said "...let the "f" word fly." I didn't say "fuck;" I said "the "f" word." Apparently "f" by itself is considered--by EZine's lofty editors--to be a bad word.

Fuck that shit.

Guess What?!











Ok, sike--April Fools! I don't want to give my mother (or Patrick!)heart failure.

I'm so busy laughing at my own cleverness that I'm just going to repurpose my post from my other blog today in case you actually want to read something.

Sexy Superlatives

So I'm eating lunch and reading Us magazine and, two pages after an article about Sarah Jessia Parker's reaction to being dubbed "Unsexiest Woman Alive" by Maxim magazine (totally unjustified--or at least I hope so, because more than a few people have told me I look like her) is a poll asking readers who they'd rather date, Domenico from That's Amore or this hot British bloke, Matt, the new Bachelor from Britain.

Is this a joke?

In case you have no idea what That's Amore is, I'm ashamed to say that I watched it (only once!) and honestly thought it was a parody of a show where girls vie for the attention of some hot guy. The dude the girls on That's Amore are fighting for is one Domenico Nesci, and he looks like a flabby version of that guy who sometimes plays a monkey on SNL.

Take a look for yourself:



You've got to be fucking kidding me. Where do I even start? Ok, well since we're talking about a guy who is presumably heterosexual, what's up with the Italian pride booty shorts? In case you're thinking maybe he's actually not hetero because of the shorts, think again: no gay guy would wear black socks with whatever you want to call that garment--bathing suit, shorts?

Apparently either I'm stupid or the women of America are wearing beer goggles because this guy has all kinds of fans. I guess the guy's allure is that he's supposedly a) good looking, b) exotic because he's Italian and c) presumably rich? Or did I just make up c) and that's not even a premise of the show?

Back to poor Sarah Jessica for a minute; here's what Maxim magazine said about her when they voted her "Unsexiest Woman Alive":

"How the hell did this Barbaro-faced broad manage to be the least sexy woman in a group of very unsexy women and still star on a show with 'sex' in the title? Pull your skirt down, Secretariat, we´d rather ride Chris Noth."

So let me get this straight: Sarah Jessica Parker=unsexy; Domenico Nesci=sexy?

WTF?

Do you think that if I spend enough time writing about blogger success stories the universe will just see fit to turn me into one?

Dooce® (are you impressed I know how to produce that little "R" in html?) is more fodder for my just do it even if you don't know why you're doing it and eventually it will pay off theory.

In case you are not already aware of what Dooce is, it's the blog of Heather Armstrong, notable apparently because writing it at work apparently caused her to lose her job and she managed to turn that frown upside down and transition from, in her words "making a lot of money as a web designer" to being able to support herself writing about the details of her daily life. Now her website--through advertising revenue as far as I can tell, plus I think some products--brings in enough money to support her family and enable her husband to be a stay-home dad.

Oh, and of course she got a book deal out of it, resulting in "Things I Learned About My Dad: Humorous and Heartfelt Essays, edited by the creator of www.dooce.com." That's a new level of FIO publishing/fame that I hadn't previously considered: Editor. As in, get other people to write it then get your name on the cover and most of the royalties. A+ Heather Armstrong--you go girl!

Check it Out

I haven't really been keeping up with the other blog I started a month or so ago--Mizz Information--but the other day I wrote something and figured I'd post it there instead of here. I had just figured out how to do trackbacks and tracked back to a post on Webinknow, David Meerman Scott's blog. It was the first time I used trackback--fyi, Blogger doesn't support trackbacks so I had to figure out another way to do it (hey, I can write about that in the other blog!).

Long story short is David Meerman Scott read my post and said it was an excellent post.

How psyched am I?

Put That Cash Away!

Last week I wrote about the Visa campaign suggesting that people who pay with cash or checks bring business to a screeching halt. My personal take on the spot is that the point isn't to promote use of the card in the check card sense, but in the credit card sense. Yes, it's called a Visa check card, but come on--everyone knows Visa is a credit card. Using the card as a check card is the same as using it as an ATM card--and incurring the same fees you're charged if you use your ATM card at a machine other than your bank's.

I think the commercial is absurd and advocates the "charge it!" mentality that's leading many Americans to the poorhouse. Incidentally, there was an article yesterday's Washington Post talking about this same mentality and the resulting consumer debt--$2.52 trillion!

Anyway, today in MarketingProfs Daily Fix, one of the many marketing newsletters I subscribe to, there was an article talking about that same Visa commercial. The author, Jeanne Bliss, had a very different take on it than I did--namely, that the ad is all about speed and efficiency with no mention of the fact that many people use it as a credit card, not a check card.

Happy Easter!

F*ing It Off, Huffington Post Style

Forget blogging your way into a job or a book deal--now you don't even have to be a blogger to gain respect and renown. The Huffington Post has a system that allows top commentors to become featured bloggers on the site.

Basically all you have to do is comment on someone ELSE'S blog, then you in turn will become a respected blogger, right up there with the likes of Barack Obama, Bill Maher and, well, Candy Spelling.

By the way, I love the term "opinion journalist", as used by Arianna Huffington in the above article about the commenter-to-blogger system. "Journalist" used to mean a skilled professional who went to school for a long time and worked his/her way up the intellectual publishing ladder; now you can become an "Opinion Journalist" by just writing whatever you want to about whatever you want-- no research, fact checking or advanced degree necessary.

And the beauty is that, if what I read more and more frequently (yet don't have to cite specifically where because I'm an opinion journalist) is true, 10 years from now traditional media will be extinct and f-it off journalism--I mean opinion journalism--will reign.

Letter-writing advice from an 11 year old

Last night I was at Rite Aid with Mimi, searching for my favorite Easter candy: Cadbury caramel eggs. You can only get them at Easter so you have to stockpile them so you can have enough to last until next year's Easter candy hits stores.

While I was searching in vain for the caramel eggs--NOT to be confused with the gross cream eggs--Mimi was talking about something which I admittedly wasn't listening very closely to. Then I heard her say "Shining pillar of urgency." What? What the hell is a shining pillar of urgency?

She backtracked and told me how a kid in her class (who, let's just say, is not a native English-speaker) was writing something explaining how to write an effective letter? I didn't really understand the point or what exactly the kid had been writing, but the upshot is that this kid's advice for writing an effective letter boiled down to this: if you use the word "administration" in a letter, it turns the letter into a "shining pillar of urgency."

I'm not sure what this kid was trying to say--who knows what "shining pillar of urgency" lost in the translation from Chinese to English--all I know is that I'm now obsessed with the phrase. The only thing that comes to mind when I think "shining pillar of urgency" is that it sounds sort of X-rated.

Speaking of X-rated, while I searched the cold medicine aisle for a cold pill small enough for Mimi to swallow, she had wandered to the "family planning" aisle. When I walked up to her she ticked off the names of various types of lube and vibrating condoms, and asked why they came in flavors. She then proceeded to pick up every bottle and ask me "what flavor is this?" "how about this one?" Who knows what the appropriate response to those questions is--I just went with "I don't know."

Luck O' The Irish

How did I spend my first St. Patrick's day as a bonafide Mc? In the freakin' ER with what I assume was a ruptured ovarian cyst. I say "assume" because even though I spent over 5 hours there, all they did was take bloodwork--not so much as pass an ultrasound wand over my abdomen.

The best part was that my discharge instructions--given to me by the nurse because an actual doctor couldn't be bothered to come speak to me or examine me--say that if I experience sharp, shooting pain and shakiness to immediately go to the ER. Um, isn't that what I already did and they didn't do anything for it the first time?

So no green beer at the McGary house last night--although I don't drink beer anyway so I guess it wouldn't have mattered.

And can I just say that it boggles my mind to have a husband who leaves work to come to the ER just to sit with me for 5+ hours? Contrast this with my former life--for instance when I was in labor with Mimi. Let's just say that Patrick wouldn't have been sleeping in the recliner the whole time without so much as a "hey, how you doing over there giving birth to my child?"

Why Americans Are Fat And Broke

If martians landed today and wanted a 2-minute synopsis of American culture, all they'd have to do is watch this commercial:



and familiarize themselves with the concept of Taco Bell's "Fourth Meal"--"the meal that's served between dinner and breakfast."

To sum it up: Americans are greedy and fat....and apparently stupid because we aren't particularly alarmed about either of those facts.

According to this website, the average American household carries almost $8,500 in credit card debt. We need big houses, big cars, big everything--and have discovered that we can have these things even if we don't earn enough to pay for them. As long as we can have them we don't care what it costs--witness the whole sub-prime mortgage crisis and the fact that during the twelve month period ending June 2006, there were 1.5 million consumer bankruptcy filings.

Alarming, right? One would think so, but Visa knows better--they know that people are in debt specifically because they buy into the message that credit is good and cash is bad. You pay with a credit card and everything is a breeze--no thought to the bill that will arrive at the end of the month. As for the moron who insists on paying cash--he's holding up the line and keeping the next guy from his immediate gratification--what the hell is he thinking? He better get with the program.

And why stop at material goods when it comes to excess? We don't, which is why, according to the American National Center for Health statistics, about 63% of Americans are overweight and that number continues to rise every year. We constantly hear about the "Obesity epidemic" in the US and what we need to do to combat it--then we head over to Taco Bell for fourth meal. Same concept as the money thing--why stop at 3 meals when you can have a fourth?

Once you get to Taco Bell you get to merge the best of these two worlds: you get to pay for your $3 fourth meal with a credit card--no cash necessary!

That's what I call American ingenuity.

Want to Help a Girl Out?

I am still boss-less at work--actually, that's not really true--I do have an interim boss who is very cool and some projects I'm working on. However, contrary to the "team" environments I've always worked in (definitely not without their own pitfalls) this job is basically me and my two computers and not a lot else as far as interaction. Yes, weekly staff meetings or "team building" exercises are tedious but at the very least they make it feel like you're interacting with a group and getting some validation that your contribution matters. As hokey as the "team" concept is, when you're in a team-free job you kind of miss feeling like part of something. Or at least I do; I'm sure others would envy me sitting here in utter silence all day, every day with just my 24" Mac (and other, inferior, computer which does not bear mentioning) to keep me company.

Yes, I socialize a little but as far as feeling like I actually work for a company with any structure--forget it. Maybe it's my need for validation--in every other job I've ever had I got a ton of ego-stroking and acknowledgement for the fact that I am not a moron and actually want to do a good job. Not that people tell me I suck here or anything--it's just that I barely interact with anyone so no matter how much of a kiss-ass I could try to be, there is no ass to kiss. Bottom line is I either need to get over it and enjoy my government mentality do nothing and accept this paycheck just because you show up to work every day job, or decide that I can't roll like that and get another job.

I've decided, at least for now, that I'm a fool to consider leaving I Do Next To Nothing And Get Paid For It, Inc. so I use the time not occupied by actually interacting with coworkers to act as if I'm in a job that actually engages me. Which basically means reading dozens of newsletters, articles, blogs, etc every day to the extent that I'm well on my way to earning a bootleg degree in online communications and marketing. That and trying to publish articles in whatever format possible so I can amass a resume that resembles that of someone who actually knows what they're talking about and gets paid accordingly.

Anyway....LONG intro short--can you go to this website and give me a "thumbs up"? If I get a high enough ranking I might get to become a "Rafter." Still not exactly sure what that means, but it still seems like a worthy enough endeavor.

So help me put my viral marketing knowledge to work and tell all your friends to go vote for me to prove that word-of-mouth is actually a viable marketing tool!

Read This Blog Via Email

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Engrish of the Day

A combination of Engrish and the f word I've been abusing lately.

These Are My Kind of Rules

David Meerman Scott--a "Thought Leadership and Virtual Marketing Strategist"--has a great blog, even if you're not really interested in viral marketing and social media.

Go read this post then come back and resume reading here.

Hell yes this person is me! Minus, of course, the actual Marketing or PR background. But isn't what he's saying that it doesn't matter because in the age of social media the only thing that's required to succeed are an internet connection and a desire to learn?

The Rise of Collective Intelligence

Ok, at first glance this might seem like a very academic subject for me to be addressing after my two last posts centering around the "f" word, but actually it is just another take on the FIO philosophy (see my March 4 post and do the math to learn what FIO means).

My previous entries have talked about how FIO means, essentially, just doing something out of blind faith that you will succeed and waiting for success to come find you. The theory of collective intelligence seems to be the Mac Daddy of FIO-ism. Collective intelligence is the intersection of the FIO's out there, in some way devoting time, thought and/or energy to topics they are interested/talented in and companies then using their expertise to effortlessly profit.

This report gives some perfect examples of what I mean. Read the Lego example on page 18. Lego holds an annual contest to get ideas for new pieces. The winner receives not only the satisfaction of knowing that they--a total layperson far from being a trained Lego-maker--designed this great piece, but 5% of the sales of the piece as well. And the company, the article states, effortlessly enjoyed a 10% decrease in design and labor costs and a 10% increase in revenue. I'd say that's a win-win situation, wouldn't you?

An even better example is YouTube. Two 20-somethings basically set it up and let people populate it with their videos--then sell it to Google for $1.65 billion. Then, on the flip side, is my current FIO poster child--an amateur video producer makes a iPod fan video, uploads it to YouTube, where an Apple ad exec just HAPPENS to see it. The exec personally calls the dude who made it and asks if he'd like his video to be featured during the World Series. I mean, come on--how can you read that and deny that there is definite truth to FIO?

Funny Women

The other day I wrote about an article that proclaimed that women are not, as a rule, funny. When I wrote it I was at work and, apparently, brain dead because I wrote that I didn't really know any funny women. When I was driving home from work I was like wtf, of course I know funny women! My sister, my ex-best friend who never talked to me again once I was divorced (but who was, nonetheless, funny), and of course, my friend Temperance.

I totally don't mean this in a racist way but I realize it could be construed that way--so hopefully nobody will construe it that way. That said, I'm sorry but Temperance (who is black) is funny in a way that no white girl can touch. She is so smart and down to earth and just funny. She doesn't do like white girls--talk about people behind their backs but never have the courage to say how we feel right to their faces; if she has a problem with something or sees something a certain way she just tells it like it is to your face. In that same vein, she doesn't mince words or try to say things in a way that doesn't offend people like white girls who go to great lengths to have everyone like us and think only good things of us do.

For instance, I have never had a white friend answer, when asked "What are you doing this weekend?": "Hopefully, fucking," as Temperance once did.

But I digress....my apologies if you read that day's post and thought "What? She knows me and I'm funny!"

Blogs That Launch Careers
(Warning: if you are offended by the "f" word then you might want to stop right here)

If you read this blog you know that I'm all about the concept of passive success--in other, more blunt words, fuck it off style success. "Fuck it off" is a term coined by my friend Temperance, as in "Don't fuck it off"--interpreted by me as don't be lazy. Once I'd heard the term I realized that, in fact, fucking it off was not necessarily a bad thing--I like to think of it as more of a positive term meaning "efficient" or "effortless." Not stressing over something or making excuses but just doing it.

Patrick and I often talk about the books I could write about all aspects of fucking it off--the fuck it off diet (in which I would detail the easiest, most accessible low fat or low calorie foods, such as can be found at any fast food establishment), the fuck it off workout (in which I would lay out entire exercise plans that can be done while you're sitting either in the car or in your chair at work, or just during the course of any given day--no trips to the gym or sweat necessary), decorating (as my sister Cassie and I practiced to create her beautiful new dining room)--you name it and I'm sure I could spin the fuck it off adaptation of it. Aren't I, in fact, living proof that it works?

At any rate, I read an interesting blog about blogs that launch careers. While none of the success stories can really be seen as fuck it off success stories, they actually sort of can be if you substitute "write it and they will come" for "fuck it off." In this context I think the two terms are pretty much interchangeable, as in these people were blogging simply because they liked to write and--poof--instant success. Ok, maybe not really--but then again, maybe.

Advice from the Millennials

Lately I've been reading a great blog--Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist. She is off the hook successful--wrote a book, launched three start ups, is a columnist at Boston Globe, and her syndicated column runs in more than 200 publications worldwide. Just like me, right?

At any rate, she just launched a new site www.brazencareerist.com which features 50 Generation Y bloggers. Generation Y, by the way, is defined by Wikipedia as children born between 1980–1995. I, born in 1968, am obviously not a Gen Y-er; however, I find Trunk's blogs to be very relevant to my professional and personal experience. At a quick glance, the bloggers on her new site seem a lot younger than I am--but a lot more professionally accomplished--and all seem to have a lot of drive and entrepreneurial spirit, but on their own terms.

Again the operative term being "quick glance", I read the bios and blogs of a handful of her bloggers (50 at this time) and each of them seem like super go-getters--enthusiastic, smart and idealistic. Maybe "idealistic" isn't the right word because they all seem to be pretty successful in shaping things the way they want them to be as far as careers go. It's a little funny to me, though, in an admittedly superior way, to see 20-somethings--some not yet out of college or grad school--writing like they've been around the block 1,000 times and are back to report on the way things really are. But then again, who am I to say that--many of them HAVE, in their short time in the job market, accomplished a lot more than us rule-following Gen X-ers.

Case in point: last week's OnBalance guest blog. That blog alone pretty much defines the difference between Gen Y-ers and the 40+ set: namely, the bitter "don't bother dreaming about a job you'll love because it will never pay the bills" attitude. Reading that blog last week made me shudder--reading post after post about how you're doing your kid a disservice by so much as allowing them to major in anything other than business or pre-law because in the "real world" you can only cling to solvency by going into soul-sucking, 60 hour a week+ professions like law or accounting. Teacher--forget it--you'll never be able to pay the bills. Musician, artist--you name it--if a job involves any measure of enjoyment then forget it--you'll never be able to pay the mortgage and your life will end. Seriously--go read the comments and tell me that I'm misinterpreting this attitude.

At any rate, I'll be interested to see how much of these millennials' (another term for Generation Y-ers) advice is applicable to this baby buster (again, thanks Wikipedia for expanding my vocabulary).

Why Women Aren't Funny

Aren't you starting to hope I get a new boss soon so I won't keep posting stuff in here?

I am scratching my head over this one: an article in Vanity Fair claiming that only men are funny. Um, which men are they talking about? Surely only professional comedians and/or actors and not everyday men in ordinary life. With very few exceptions--Patrick being one--I have to say that off the top of my head I am pressed to think of so much as one real-life guy who's funny. I'm just talking about in my home in the burbs-- to work in the burbs-- and back to the burbs daily life. Maybe I'm just mentally flat lining from sitting here in silence all day but I can't for the life of me think of any particularly funny guys--let alone guy--in my 250+ person office. Yes, I know some funny guys--have known some hilarious ones--but have known equally many funny girls.

Actually, as I write that I have to say that maybe the article is right--because if I sit here now and try to think of how many super-funny girls I've ever known I can't say I can think of many. I'm still talking know as in encounter in daily life, not see on TV or read or whatever.

Wow--that's depressing--I never thought about it but maybe the author has a point. Now I get to sit here for the rest of my day and do like that character in Hannah and Her Sisters--the one who would sit inside her head when she was having sex, classifying everyone she knew as some type of animal....or something like that--and go through every person I know or have ever known and decide if they were funny or not funny. As if I needed yet another distraction.

Boss-Free

I'm enjoying my first (and probably last, now that I jinxed it by talking about it) day at work without a boss. My old boss left Friday and nobody has really mentioned who my new one will be so I'm just sort of laying low in hopes of them forgetting about me entirely.Except on payday, of course.

I feel sort of like George in that episode of Seinfeld where he goes to that empty office every day, takes his coat off, sits down at the desk and stays there until 5 pm, at which time he puts his coat on and leaves. Granted, I do have work to do right now and probably for the forseable future, but what would happen if I just didn't do it? Who would people complain to?

Anyway, I have been impressing myself with new html tricks such as making a button:



We are in the process of re-designing that page, which is why I get to spend my day learning nifty stuff like that.

Anyway, I am already the queen of muti-tasking, especially on the computer. At any given time I will have a million windows open--writing something, reading articles, blogs, seeing what the Today's Special Value is (until they blocked QVC at work, sadly), etc. Add to that the fact that I have two computers side by side here at work--a PC and a Mac with a 24" screen. My computer multi-tasking skills are crazy now--soon I'll be able to type with two hands at once, one on each keyboard.

At any rate, I hadn't checked Augusten's website in a while so I went to check it out and found out HE IS COMING TO DC ON MAY 20th!!!! Good thing it's not the 19th because that's Mimi's birthday and I'd have to be sent to the mother's hall of shame for missing her birthday. I strongly advise you to go to his website and read his Details columns (8th link down in the bottom right hand corner of the page). Hilarious!

Well, better get back to the boss-less job.

Forever Young and Beautiful....Or Else

I meant to write about this a long time ago but meaning to write something and finding the time to actually write it are, of course, not always compatible with each other.

Anyway, about a month ago my mom mentioned that her friend's friend had passed away and her obituary was in the Washington Post. This was a woman my mom had periodically mentioned for years--always in the context of how gorgeous she was.

So I check out her obituary and was half amused/half freaked out how the whole thing seemed to sum up her life's accomplishment as...being gorgeous. I mean, this is DC, a town where it's more about being smart or accomplished or successful than it is about how you look. I mean, of course you have to be thin and attractive and young-looking--but just to look the part of the yuppie you are. I could maybe see an obituary like this in LA or something, but I'd never seen the Washington Post run an obituary basically gushing on how beautiful a woman was. I wasn't aware that DC was the kind of city that had "it" girls. But what do I know--I live in Olney.

As off putting as an entire obituary centered primarily on how gorgeous and glamorous a regular person/non-celebrity was, one thing was even more freaky: she apparently had never revealed her age to anyone, including her husband.

Um, what? I sincerely hope the man was just playing dumb and honoring his wife's memory by not revealing that he'd known all along, but his quote sounded pretty convincing. Why would he lie about something like that? I had to smirk that despite the fact that the author gushed on and on about how wonderful and noble this woman was, he didn't hesitate to disrespect her life's goal of keeping her age a secret. If I'd gone to such great pains to hide my age my entire adult life I would hope that I could at least go down as having been "eternally young and dynamic."

At any rate, just a week or so before that I had read a blog about "botoxing your resume" that talked about how looking young and attractive are apparently vital to a professional woman's continued success in the work world. I mean, which is it--are we supposed to be teaching our daughters that looks don't matter and that what counts is what's "on the inside," or are we supposed to be telling them that actually, looks do matter and they better keep those fingers firmly plunged down their throats and start saving for the plastic surgery they'll need to augment their resumes? I can't keep up.

Apparently, what we're supposed to do is teach them that looks don't matter, grades and personality and sports skills do--while we navigate the dangers of looking our age and do what's necessary to stay young and beautiful at any cost. After all, according to Charla Krupp, author of How Not to Look Old “Looking hip is not just about vanity anymore, it’s critical to every woman’s personal and financial survival.”

Does this mean that I can write off my Botox as a business-related expense?

Spanish for Nannies

LMAO--this is hilarious.



And--sidebar (as my friend Temperance says): my ex mother-in-law did once actually check her housekeeper's bag to see if she was stealing. I'm not even kidding. Luckily her housekeeper was just black, not Spanish, so she could humiliate her in English.

New Blog

Last night Patrick mentioned that he needed to start learning how to increase traffic to his company's website. Search engine optimization is what it's called, I told him. How do I know this? Because half of what I do at work is either read marketing newsletters or research stuff related to websites--either creating them, using them or promoting them.

Anyway, I told him I'd look through my email inbox because I know I've gotten lots of articles about SEO. This morning I started thinking about it and realized how much information I've come across during the past year as I've basically had to teach myself all things web-related. One thing I'm particularly big on is researching a topic that I think is important to our website or business, with the intention of passing on the information and having someone realize I'm not just pulling stuff out of my a$$ and that I actually come up with some good ideas that make good business sense. Naturally, though, almost all of my research/ideas fall on deaf ears because the reality of the business world--or at least mine--seems to be that unless you're in a position of authority, no matter how good your ideas are, you can pretty much forget about implementing them.

At any rate, it dawned on me that it's a shame most of the information I come across goes no further than being filed away as mental notes about how something could or should be done. Much of my time seems to be spent obtaining a bunch of information about a given topic--why not write my own articles about it? While blogging about my feelings about this or that is fun, it's not exactly profitable; commercial writing, however, is a different story.

I then set up a new blog--Mizz Information (was supposed to have been Miss Information, but that was already taken...you can read about why over there)--where I'll be writing about stuff related to marketing, web stuff, and other business-related topics.

Wanna Play? Not!

I’ve written before about the readers/commenters on The Washington Post’s On Balance blog and how nasty they are. Yesterday's post—written by the resident stay-home dad guest blogger-- was about the value of mom or dad only playgroups. While nobody flogged the author about how stupid or small-minded he was--he was actually referring to ANOTHER article about the same topic and the nasty comments were directed at that person--I marveled once again at how self-righteous and same-minded the posters there are.

Day in and day out, regardless of the topic, the regular posters pounce on whatever idea the author touches on, ripping the author for his or her opinions on the matter at hand or writing style or whatever it is they can find to take issue with. It's like (or not "like"--they actually do) they sit at their computers, fingers drumming impatiently, until the day's post goes up at approximately 7 am and immediately commence the rip-fest with the ever-triumphant "First!" post. Bonus points if they can find something to make a personal dig at Leslie about--the names of her kids, the misuse of a word, a way in which someone perceives that she's contradicted herself, her looks--anything. Ditto any other author--the topic is stupid, the person can't write, Leslie is stupid for featuring this or that particular guest blogger, etc, etc.

Anyway, the thing that most cracks me up about the regular posters is what back-patters they all are--to hear them tell it their lives are all perfect: their marriages, their parenting styles, their kids, their jobs, their beliefs...they all act like they've got the whole thing figured out and anyone who thinks or does anything differently is a moron. One of my greatest satisfactions in life is knowing from personal experience that most people have whole Oprah-esque facets of their lives that nobody would ever guess just looking at them--and I'm sure the OnBalance regulars are no exception. I'm sure that more than a few honestly think their lives are perfect when, in fact, their husbands are cheating on them or they personally have some fatal flaw or whatever. I have no basis for saying this other than that it seems to me that almost everywhere I look this is the case--everyone seems to have some dirty secret--so the chances that the OnBalance crowd are among this flawed population are pretty strong.

Yesterday's post was particularly amusing because everyone was, as usual, so adamant that there could never be any impropriety between moms and dads in a playgroup scenario. Everyone, most of them assert, knows that there's absolutely nothing wrong with stay-home dads fraternizing with stay-home moms. Every interaction would naturally be totally above-board, totally innocent, totally child-centric, totally intellectual--because everyone in the world is as intellectual and politically-correct as they are, right? Why, the mere thought that maybe moms and dads playing unsupervised might not be the best idea in the world is blasphemous and discriminatory! Every one of them seems to know for a fact that all adults have perfect boundaries and that if a dad were to invite a mom over for a little backyard swim of a playdate of COURSE it would only be about the kids and they wouldn't even notice each other in their wet swimsuits....

Either these people don't know what they're talking about or I live in a different universe entirely, because my reaction to the question "Are mom/dad playdates a good idea?" is a resounding "no!" Go watch the movie Little Children and tell me what you think. Or Google "married dating", for example: you get 1,420,000 hits. Over 500,000 for "swinging parents." And that's just two totally off-the-cuff search tries. Or, better yet, go initiate a playdate with an opposite-sex parent and see what the reactions of your spouse and his/hers are.

Bottom line is that truth is stranger than fiction and you see a lot when you live in the burbs long enough. Maybe those OnBalance posters' problem is that they have always been at the office all day and never have gotten to experience the wacky world of life in the burbs during school hours.

Virtual Genius or Exploitation?

Maybe the fates are trying to speak to me--just as I was lamenting about the fact that I haven't written any posts or anything else lately because I've been busy at my actual job, my friend emails me this article.

Apparently two recent books tout the idea of outsourcing both business and personal tasks to "virtual assistants" in India. As is often the case with my posts, I am recommending these books based only on their descriptions--I have yet to read them-- so for all I know my interpretation of their content may be totally off base. The books are The 4-Hour Work-Week:Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere , and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss and The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.

From the two seconds I had to devote to thinking/writing about this topic right now it seems that the premise of these two books is the concept that outsourcing tasks both great and small to India is the path to success here in the good ol' USA. The beauty of this, apparently, is that you can pay these "virtual assistants" $5 to $10 to do as much of your job as possible, while you continue to keep the job that pays you way more than $5 to $10 an hour.

I am about as far from intellectual and/or PC as you can get--I barely read the paper or watch the news, I love Walmart and fast food, and I'm sure that the corn conspiracy laid out in The Omnivore's Dilema (again, as I gather from hearing other peoples' accounts of ) are sheer propaganda. Yet even I can't help but wonder about the ethics of the concepts laid out in these two books.

If it's wrong to outsource manufacturing clothes and products to low-paid workers in other countries is it really ok to outsource tasks like researching an article or ordering flowers for your wife? Or is $5 to $10 an hour a respectable wage in India and it's therefore not exploitation to farm out any possible task to these "virtual assistants" there? And even if it is a decent wage, is it wrong in the way using illegal immigrants here rather than giving those jobs to hard-working Americans is wrong? Or is that not even wrong, and if Americans are too lazy or too greedy to do work that others will gladly do for far less money, that's their problem, not society's?

At any rate, if you read this blog you already know that the concept of being paid as much as possible for doing as little as possible is near and dear to me, so I will definitely check these books out. I can't imagine what I personally would outsource but the concept is intriguing.

Spell Check, Where Are You?

Why has the spell-check feature of Blogger just disappeared? Or is it just not working for me? This is a serious problem for me because, sadly, this English major relies HEAVILY on spell-check.

Best Valentine's Day Movie Ever




Have you ever seen the Family Circus Valentine's Day special? It is the BEST holiday cartoon ever, beating out every Christmas, Halloween, Easter or any other holiday special. Except possibly The Tiny Tree...but that's another post for another time.

I love the description of the Family Circus movie on toonarific.com:

The excitement of Valentine's Day reaches a fever pitch as the kids Billy, Dolly, Jeffy and PJ all try to outdo each other's Valentine's Day card to their parents. In the end, everyone learns the meaning of true love.

"Fever pitch" indeed! Granted I haven't seen this movie in, oh, say 20+ years, but to this day I remember every detail. Ok, maybe not every detail, but the overall warm-fuzzy feel. Not to ruin it for you, but the kids are busy making Valentines for the parents--I forget who's making what and/or if the three older kids are in cahoots making one together, but someone is crafting this huge heart with a wood frame, covered in red paper, etc. Then the adorable round-headed PJ (the baby) makes some little scribble and the other kids make fun of him for it. I think the "fever pitch" this review refers to is when Barfy (love that dog name!) does a the slow-mo "NOOOO Barfy!!!" run into the huge paper valentine and crashes through it, wrecking it.

Then the parents coo over PJ's scribble and the mom, in her ever valium-calm voice, moralizes that it doesn't matter what the actual Valentine looks like, it's the thought that counts.

Anyway, I guess it's too little, too late now but I'm going to spend from now until next Valentine's Day trying to find this movie on DVD.

Yay and wah

The good news is that Patrick is home. Yay!

The bad news is that the furnace is broken, so it's 50 degrees in the house.

I could make an inappropriate comment but I won't.

A few words from Matthew

I was sitting here at the computer playing--shocker--Big Kahuna Reef 2--and Matthew came into the room. I said I'd be done in one second, I just had to write something in my blog. This is what he told me to write:

My son is better than my daughter

Then, watching me write it he said he wanted to write something himself and made me leave the room. This is what he wrote, in all its 72pt "Chiller" splendor:

My mom is a great mom ; and she makes horrible decisions on where we go out to dinner. Example: tonight I almost puked on the table.
Gross.

Just got back from Chicago--it was like -23 degrees there today so I made it out in the nick of time. I love my sister Cassie but I don't know how she can deal with living there!

We had a great time reaping the benefits of Patrick's executiveness--when I checked in I realized we had a whole extra room hooked to our suite so Cassie and her family came Saturday and stayed the day/night. We got to hang out and have fun while Patrick worked non-stop from 6 am till 11 pm Friday and Saturday...and tonight, tomorrow, and Tuesday.

Let me just say this before moving on: it is true that Frette linens--I believe they are one of Oprah's favorite things--are quite possibly worth the like $100 per towel price. They had Frette linens in our suite--as well as L'Occitane bath products--and I am addicted to the sheets and the towels.

Ok, anyway, we had a great time and I'm back but poor Patrick is still working 'round the clock. Granted, his "work" for tonight involves going out to some ritzy steakhouse for dinner then to yet another hospitality suite gathering. But when you have to be on at 6 am and stay on until 11 pm every day for a week it is exhausting even if a lot of what you're doing is shmoozing.

Speaking of work--and I didn't even plan this nifty transition--I was going through some old emails and reading about this French woman who wrote a book on why people shouldn't have kids. Unfortunately it's not available in English translation yet, but once it is I will surely be reading it and you'll surely be hearing about it. In the meantime, though, we can all read her other book which is available in the US and in English: Bonjour Laziness-Why Hard Work Doesn't Pay.

Or, if your laziness extends out of the workplace and into your personal life in the form of not reading books, you can just read this interview with her to get the gist. Actually, you probably have to read that interview and the blurb on the page about the book to get the whole idea of what the book is presumably about. Namely, one of the universal truth's I've discovered thus far in life--that the people who do the least work and/or are the most incompetent get rewarded while the smartest, most motivated people get more work and less pay when they have to take up the slack the incompetent ones create.

Anyway, I'll be interested to see what she says and if it matches my observations.

I was doing really well with posting for a few days there, wasn't I? I have actually been busy doing real work at work lately and haven't had a chance to write in here--can you believe that?

Poor Patrick is en route to Chicago for his big annual meeting. He was supposed to be on a 10:40 am flight, which got cancelled, then a 1:20 pm, which finally took off at about 2:15 and was supposed to land at 3:10. I just checked Southwest and it now is scheduled to arrive at 4:10 pm. I don't know which is my worse nightmare--being stuck on the runway for hours or being stuck in the air, circling the airport because the plane can't land. How he does it without Xanax I do not know--just thinking about it is enough to make me have to take some.

I'm supposed to go to join him/visit Cassie on Friday and am praying the weather improves because, as much as I love Cassie and Patrick--and especially as much as I want to see my old friends from my old job--I don't think I could deal with the all-day ordeal of flight delays and stress.

Anyway, better get back to work--big boss is coming.

So you think you can dance....but can you do it Fridays at 11 am?

Mimi just came in and excitedly announced that there's a new hip hop class for adults at the Olney dance studio, being taught by some guy who was a finalist on "So You Think You Can Dance?"

Um, hells YEAH I think I could dance if this dude could teach me. All excited I clicked on the link with the details, scrolled down the list of his accomplishments including "Danced with Beyonce at the VMAs" and "National Pepsi Commercial with Mariah Carey" and am ready to pick up the phone and sign up when I notice the time the class will be held: Fridays at 11 am.

Are you kidding me? Which adult in Olney, MD is going to take a hip hop dance class at 11 am on a Friday? That would be me--except for I happen to be at WORK at 11 am on Fridays.

Wah! There goes my fallback career of 40 year old, white hip-hop star (that's in case the book I have yet to write doesn't end up being a best seller.)

My dad is going to be Steve Jobs' new best friend

Wow--my dad made Google's top news page today with the results of his study about iPods and pacemakers.

How psyched is Apple going to be? Too bad my dad works for FDA so even if they did want to express their gratitude for the upcoming glut of sales to pacemaker-wearers he couldn't accept.

Does FDA permit family members to accept if he can't? Sadly, something tells me no.

Oh well--anyway, my dad now offically outranks me as most famous Bassen. Or does Oprah trump Apple?

Don't even try to sell Matthew any of that fake ass

This is a video of Matthew when he was 2 and a half, being asked what his favorite animal a the zoo is. My dad was kind enough to transfer it from video--and apparently in the nick of time. The tape broke as he was working with it--no doubt from having been watched and rewound and watched again probably hundreds of times.

Time Toilet

Last Thursday I borrowed a 7 day book from the library: Critical by Robin Cook. I had every intention of finishing it, what with it being a quick read, but sadly spent basically all my free time this past week and weekend playing Big Kahuna Reef 2.

When Patrick first introduced me to the world of BKR I just stared at the screen not even understanding how to play or how it could be fun at all. Long story short--that was like a year and a half ago and I became fully obsessed with it, then somehow broke my addiction for a good six or more months. Lately I started up again and wish I hadn't; it truly is like computer crack. "I'll just play one quick game before I (fill in blank with any activity from recreational to mandatory)." One game turns into two, etc, etc until I am forced to stop because I have to leave the house to do something. If I don't have anywhere to be I can easily waste probably 2 hours or even more.

Anyway, now I'm jonesing because I just used my few free minutes before I have to take the kids to Hebrew school to write this instead of playing my "one quick game." So I have to go play it right now...and I dare you to try it, but don't hold me responsible when you too become obsessed with it.


p.s. I don't know why the spell check in Blogger isn't working lately, so pardon any spelling mistakes....I'm missing valuable BKR2 minutes right now and can't waste time cutting and pasting into Word to check spelling.

Having older sick kids is a lot less stressful than having young sick kids. Mimi called me at work this morning with her best sick voice on (she was at Eric's) telling me her stomach hurt so I said she could stay home and I'd come get her from his house at noon. I picked her up, we went to Safeway for popsicles and Gatorade (her choices) and no sooner did we get in the door to the house then the nurse from Matthew's school called saying that HE had a stomach ache. So off in the rain we went to pick him up too. Now they're both home--and magically recovered, at least for the moment. Matthew laid on the sofa for 30 minutes or so then came into the kitchen asking for Honey Nut Cheerios--"A LOT of Cheerios." Then there came Mimi wanting perogies (sp?).

Now I'm "working" from home and trying not to drink Diet Pepsi--I'm trying to detox from it and artificial sweetners in general. It's not going so well--I swear there is the liquid equivalent of nicotine in Diet Pepsi because I crave it like crazy. They need to invent the soda patch or gum or something. Or, since it's not like it affects the lungs or throat like smoke does, I guess drinking it is probably just about the same thing as wearing it or chewing it. And helpful suggestions like just drink water flavored with a little lemon or--even grosser--drink soda with real sugar are the equivalent of telling a smoker to hold a golf pencil and pretend it's a cigarette or something. In other words, useless, but thanks just the same.

Speaking of hopeless cases of addiction, Patrick and I were watching Intervention last week and it featured this woman who was addicted to so many prescription drugs I don't even remember what they were. Pain pills but also something like 20 muscle relaxers a day plus other stuff. I guess she had either arthritis or maybe Lyme disease but they weren't sure; from what Patrick and I could tell the main physical ailment she had was trying to function as an upright human being on 40 kinds of sedatives at once. Not to make fun of someone's serious plight or anything (but you know I will) it was actually funny as hell. She would do stuff like just fall asleep while she was eating, basically folding in half at the waist so her face ended up in her plate or, my favorite, try to talk and just totally botch it. She was talking about going to Taco.....Taco....Taco.....girl just could NOT remember the second word of my favorite restaurant, Taco Bell! Anyway, not to be mean but sorry, it was very entertaining.

You know a night didn't go by without us watching a movie--this time it was Superbad. Yes, we also saw it in the theater so we knew how bad it was--according to everyone but us, that is. Us and all the teenage boys of the world probably. I'm sorry but it is HILARIOUS if you're not above lots of crude sexual humor and swearing. How can you not laugh at lines like, in response to "if you scratch our backs we'll scratch yours," "Um, the thing about my back is...it's located on my cock." Sue us or call us morons, or both, but we laughed hysterically through the whole thing--twice now, and would probably laugh just as hard no matter how many times we watch it.