Friday, November 25, 2005

Headlines

The Daily Jot doesn't have to be up in the morning first thing. Today I slept in, got out of bed in time to catch some football and was a lump on the couch for most of the morning and afternoon.
C.I. called and asked if I wanted to take part in something. Democracy Now! did a special on the guy who wrote the lyrics to The Wizard of Oz music and other songs. It's a really good special and you should check it out.

But since there were no headlines today, the thought was that those who wanted to could participate in coming up with the headlines. So that's what we did. It was like one of The Third Estate Sunday Review's "News Reviews" only shorter. Mom's always wondering how that process works and today she got to see. We were on the phone for about two hours. I think Mike's going to go over the process at his site so I'll leave that for him.

Besides providing the community with some headlines, C.I. and Elaine also thought it would help in terms of getting us together to work on something before Saturday night. Mom always wonders how those things go when we're all working together so she was right there listening to me on the phone.

C.I. and Elaine also thought it would help with us all being in holiday spirit and maybe not wanting to do long entries.

So here's some news you might not know about. We're all going to be posting it because we all worked on it.

We've composed the following twelve headlines dealing with , , , , , , , the , the , and other topics.

1) From Dahr Jamail's MidEast Wire (Iraq Dispatches):
Monday in Iraq, US troops fired on a car in Ba'qubah, killing five, two adults and three children. The US military states that they feared the car "booby-trapped." The family had been returning from visiting relatives when a US convoy approached. The car was fired on from the front and the back. One Iraqi was quoted as saying, "The ones who brought in the Americans are at fault. Those who support them are at fault. All of them are at fault. Look at these. They are all children. All of them of are children. They killed them. They killed my entire family."

2) In the United States the Associated Press reports that Cindy Sheehan returned to Crawford, Texas Thursday and joined what some estimates say were 100 protestors and other estimates say as many as 200.Cindy Sheehan stated, "I feel happy to be back here with all my friends ... but I'm heartbroken that we have to be here again," said Sheehan, who hoped to arrive earlier in the week, but was delayed by a family emergency. "We will keep pressing and we won't give up until our troops are brought home."

3) Since Sheehan and others last gathered at Camp Casey I and Camp Casey II, laws have been passed to prevent further gatherings in Crawford -- "local bans on roadside camping and parking." As protestors returned this week, they were advised they could be arrested. Among those arrested Wednesday were Daniel Ellsberg and US diplomat Ann Wright. Democratic Underground has a report from Carl who was also arrested Wendesday. Carl reports that "The entire [arrest & booking] process took 3.5 hours." Carl advises that the vigils will also take place on Christmas and New Year's Eve as well as that "Donations to the Crawford Veterans For Peace can be mailed to P. O. Box 252, Crawford, Texas, 76638-9998."

4) As the participation of psychologists and psychiatrists in the "BISQUIT" program and other 'interrogation' work raises ethical and professional questions today, CounterPunch is reporting that in WWII, United States anthropologists participated with the Office of Strategic Services in attempts to determine means to destroy the Japanese. David Price reports, in what is a clear betrayal of the profession, anthropologists were instructed "to try to conceive ways that any detectable differences could be used in the development of weapons, but they were cautioned to consider this issue 'in a-moral and non-ethical terms'." Price notes "Ralph Linton and Harry Shapiro, objected to even considering the OSS' request ­ but they were the exceptions."

5) In legal news, as the prison industry has switched to a profit making business, prisoners have found themselves located far from relatives. The distance has proved profitable for long distance companies. The Center for Constitutional Rights argued in court Monday on behalf of "New York family members who pay a grossly inflated rate to receive a phone call from their loved ones in state prisons." CCR notes:

The lawsuit, Walton v. NYSDOCS and MCI, seeks an order prohibiting the State and MCI from charging exorbitant rates to the family members of prisoners to finance a 57.5% kickback to the State. MCI charges these family members a 630% markup over regular consumer rates to receive a collect call from their loved ones, the only way possible to speak with them. Judge George Ceresia of the Supreme Court of New York, Albany County, dismissed the suit last fall, citing issues of timeliness.

6) In other legal news, Cynthia L. Cooper reports for Women's enews that November 30th the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. At issue in this case, is whether or not bans on reproductive freedom enacted by state legislatures must take effect before they can be legally challenged or whether they can be challenged as soon as they are passed. The standard up to now has been that laws can be challenged as soon as they are passed. Cooper notes:

By changing the legal standard for when an abortion restriction can be challenged in court, anti-abortion laws could quickly entangle women across the country, without directly overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that held that states could not criminalize abortion in all circumstances.

7) The Guardian of London reports on a Rutgers University study that has found "[g]lobal warming is doubling the rate of sea level rise around the world, but attempts to stop it by cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions are likely to be futile." Professor Kenneth Miller tells The Guardian's Ashraf Khalil, "This is going to cause more beach erosion. Beaches are going to move back and houses will be destroyed." This comes as the Climate Conference is gearing up to take place in Montreal from November 28th to December 9th. United for Peace and Justiceis issuing a call for action:

This fall let's mobilize a nationwide, grassroots education and action campaign leading up to mass demonstrations in Montreal and throughout the U.S. on Saturday, December 3rd. Help gather signatures for the Peoples Ratification of the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty (http://www.unitedforpeace.org/www.kyotoandbeyond.org), which will be presented in Montreal. Join Climate Crisis: USA Join the World! (http://www.unitedforpeace.org/www.climatecrisis.us) as we call for:
USA Join the World by Ratifying the Kyoto Protocol
Support and Export Clean, Safe, Non-Nuclear Energy Alternatives
End Government Subsidies for Oil and Coal Corporations
Dramatically Strengthen Energy Conservation and Fuel Efficiency Standards
A Just Transition for Workers, Indigenous and Other Communities Affected by a Change to Clean Energy
Defend the World's Forests; Support Community-Run Tree Planting Campaigns

8) With Congress out of session due to the holidays, a number of organizations are attempting to inform the public of pending legislation. The Bill of Rights Defense Center warns to "[e]xpect a vote [on the renewal of the Patriot Act]after Congress returns on December 12th." Of the bill, Lisa Graves of the ACLU states:

The Patriot Act was bad in 2001, and despite bipartisan calls for reform, it's still bad in 2005. Instead of addressing the real concerns that millions of Americans have about the Patriot Act, the Republican majority in Congress buckled to White House pressure, stripping the bill of modest yet meaningful reforms. Congress must reject this bill.

Both the ACLU and the Bill of Rights of Defense Center are calling for grass roots action.

Also asking for action is NOW. Congress failed to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. You can make your voice heard via NOW's take action page. On their page, you have the option of e-mailing your representatives and/or signing a petition that NOW will present to Congress on December 5th.

9) Meanwhile, as November winds down, American military fatalities have reached 76 for the month, with the Department of Defense reporting 50 Americans wounded thus far this month. The total number of American military killed in Iraq, official count, has reached 2105. Scripps Howard News Service reports that, "U.S. commanders on the ground have already launched plans to close bases and withdraw troops in the coming year, according to two congressmen who returned from Iraq this week." The two congress members are John Kline and Mark Kennedy (Republicans, Minn.).

10) In other Congressional news, Ari Berman reports for The Nation that John McCain is in the midst of makeover. Meeting with The Arizona Republican Assembly in August, McCain slapped some new war paint on as McCain supported the teaching of so-called "intelligent design" side by side with evolution, the state's "ban on gay marriage that denies government benefits to any unmarried couple," hailed Ronald Reagan as "my hero" and was observed "strenuously defending . . . Bush's Iraq policy."

For those who have forgotten, McCain attended Mark Bingham's funeral. Bingham was one of the passengers of Flight 93 on 9/11 in immediate media reports. As the days wore on, Bingham appeared to disappear from many reports. Mark Bingham was gay. Whether that resulted in a "downgrading" by some in the media has been a source of speculation for some time.

11) Focusing on the media, at The Black Commentator, Margaret Kimberly addresses the issue of Bob Woodward, tying him and his editor to the journalistic behaviors of Judith Miller and her editors:

Miller, Sulzberger, Woodward and Bradlee are at the top of the corporate media food chain, and their behavior tells us why Americans aren't being told anything they ought to be told. Woodward uses his access to make a fortune writing about the Supreme Court or various presidential administrations. If a journalist's priority is writing best selling books based on the amount of access gained with the powerful, then truth telling goes out the window.

12) Also addressing the very similar behaviors of Miller and Woodward are Steven C. Day at Pop Politics, Ron Brynaert at Why Are We Back In Iraq?, and Arianna Huffington at The Huffington Post. Though still vocal on Judith Miller and weighing in with the "latest," CJR Daily still can't find a connection between the "journalistic" styles of Judith Miller and Bob Woodward. In their most recent 'Judy report', CJR Daily ponders the question of why did Miller go to jail when Scooter Libby and his people maintain that they released her from confidentiality claims. Covering old news and working themselves into another lather over Miller, CJR Daily wonders"Why did Ms. Miller go to jail?" and maintains the question "has never been fully answered." The question has indeed been answered.

Whether CJR Daily approves of or believes the argument of Miller, Floyd Abrams, et al, is beside the point. For the record, the answer has been given many times. The argument was that Miller needed more than a form signed possibly under duress. Abrams and others have long been on the record explaining that they sought a release other than the form. In the front page report, Sunday October 16, 2005, Don Van Natta Jr., Adam Liptak and Clifford J. Levy reported:

She said she began thinking about whether she should reach out
to Mr. Libby for "a personal, voluntary waiver."
[. . .]
While she mulled over over her options, Mr. Bennett was urging her to allow him to approach Mr. Tate, Mr. Libby's lawyer, to try to negotiate a deal that would get her out of jail. Mr. Bennet wanted to revive the question of the waivers that Mr. Libby and other administration officials signed the previous year authorizing reporters to disclose their confidential discussions.
The other reporters subpoenaed in the case said such waivers were coerced. They said administration officials signed them only because they feared retribution from the prosecutor or the White House. Reporters for at least three news organizations had then gone back to their sources and obtained additional assurances that convinced them the waivers were genunie.
But Ms. Miller said she had not gotten an assurance that she felt would allow her to testify.

Again, from the front page New York Times story on . . . October 16, 2005. Though this was not the first reporting on Miller's position, this front page story of the Times was commented in great detail including at CJR Daily here and here. The latter time by the same writer who now wonders "Why did Ms. Miller go to jail?" Repeatedly hitting the designated pinata with articles focusing on her conduct while reducing the conduct of Bob Woodward to asides (whispered asides?) doesn't appear to make for brave "watchdoggery."

Democracy Now! has a special presentation today. The headlines above were composed by The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim, Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review, Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills), Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Betty Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man, Wally of The Daily Jot and Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix. Thanks to Dallas for his help with links and tags.

Hope that had something of interest to you. Don't forget Mike's motto:

The Common Ills community is important and the Common Ills community is important to me. So I'll do my part for the Common Ills community.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Happy Thanksgiving


Mom asked me, "Why haven't you run the photo of Kayla's son?" That's Common Ills community member Kayla's son Brian. He was born last week.

Why haven't I run the picture? C.I. was going to wait and run it on Thanksgiving and I figured I'd wait and run it the day after. Rebecca ran it Sunday morning when C.I. couldn't get it to post at The Common Ills. To post pictures not online, Rebecca, C.I. and Third Estate Sunday Review use this program called Hello. That's how C.I. posts Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts.

The Third Estate Sunday Review ran an article and wanted the photo in it, not above it or below it. To have it in an entry, you need to be using a photo already online. C.I. kept getting error messages from Hello (which is why Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts didn't go up until Monday morning). So Rebecca tried and after a few error messages, finally got it up at her site. Then it was able to be put inside the article The Third Estate Sunday Review ran.

Elaine ran the photo in a post at her site on Monday and Rebecca reran it then too.

Mom wasn't concerned about C.I. She figured it would go up at The Common Ills and that the Ted Koppel thing had C.I. running behind as well as the holidays. But in terms of me and Mike and Cedric, I heard about it.

Mom said, "What is with you three guys? You're too 'manly' to post a photo of a baby?"

I laughed and pointed out that Kat and Betty hadn't posted it either.

But so Mom won't think that I think I'm too "manly" to run a photo of a baby, there it is.

Cedric posted yesterday and he did a great post but I think he was just trying to get it up and be done with it and sometimes you try to put a photo in these things and it's nothing but problems.
Like in the article for The Third Estate Sunday Review, Brian's photo runs three times in a row.
They only inserted it once. Sometimes you can play with inserting a photo over and over before you can get it to show up.

What's the point of all this?

Well a lot of times when I'd read The Common Ills and the other community sites, I'd see something and wonder about it. Like when Isaiah's comic didn't go up Sunday, if I wasn't there helping with Third Estate Sunday Review, I might have thought, "Is Isaiah sick?" or "Did Isaiah do a comic that's been censored?" or "Is something wrong with my computer?"

Or maybe I also wouldn't get why a typo wouldn't be corrected. C.I. will correct a name that's spelled wrong but otherwise doesn't care. Beth's offered her opinion in her columns that she thinks C.I. makes a typo or two intentionally to keep that "do-it-yourself flavor."

I don't care about typos as long as I can understand what someone's saying.

But doing The Daily Jot I really get that time is limited. And like Jim always says about typos at The Third Estate Sunday Review, if we make a mistake, we do a correction, if we make a typo tough crap. He feels that way because you don't see a newspaper running corrections on typos and they make them too.

But doing The Daily Jot, I'm a seasoned pro now with a month under my belt ha ha, I see that you have to think about what you're going to say, then you have to write it and then you have to make sure you like it. All of that is probably obvious. Then comes hitting the "publish post" button. And sometimes Blogger, the program we all use, takes the post right away. Sometimes it takes a few minutes. You're not done then though. You need to "republish index" and "republish blog" which are two more buttons you have to click on. If you don't do both, your latest post might not show up when people pull up your site.

I usually go fairly quick. But to "republish blog" for C.I. takes around ten minutes.

Rebecca's asked everyone to do tags. Technorati doesn't read my tags or my site but I keep tagging. It doesn't take me too much time. I usually cheat and copy the tags from a post by C.I. or Mike or Kat. But if you've got a lot of stuff in, like C.I. usually does, it takes awhile to get those tags in.

And like yesterday morning, C.I. posted the thing on Ted Koppel. That was tagged. But it didn't show up at Technorati searches. So C.I. had to keep "republishing blog" over and over and estimates it probably took an hour of time to keep doing that throughout the day.

So my point is that if you do several posts a day and go through all that crap (Jim calls tagging crap), there's not all this time some people might think there is.

And there's a bigger point that I'm getting too. I got an e-mail about my blogging yesterday. The guy was nice and I won't name him because I disagree with his e-mail. He said he was afraid I was getting lazy like some other bloggers that don't blog regular. It's a lot of work sometimes. Like if Rebecca's doing an entry with a lot of links, she has to hunt down everyone of those and that takes a great deal of time.

I do a "jot." This is my entry for today and tomorrow so it's longer and consider it my holiday entry to so it's probably going to be the longest thing I'll do at my blog.

I'm the newest of the community bloggers so I wanted to talk about what I've learned. Mike and everyone else is good about helping me out when I don't know how to do something and talking me though the technical aspect. But I know sometimes they have to think about it because it's something they've been doing so long that they've forgotten the mechanics of it because it's natural to them now.

So if someone in the community or outside is thinking about starting a site, I feel like I might have something to say there.

Here's my list of things I've learned.

1) Typos won't be avoided. That's true even if you use the spell check. If you mean "too" but type "to" the spell check won't catch it. Accept that typos will happen (and Jim would point out that they happen in newspapers all the time).

2) You want perfection. That's fine if you're going to do one entry a month. If you're going to try to blog regularly, you need to remember Kat's motto: "It is what it is." Depending upon your level of perfectionism, you may never be satisfied. If you have people reading, they're waiting for new content.

If you subscribe to a paper, Mom subscribes to three, think about it like that. You've got your coffee brewing and you're waiting for the paper. You don't want to wait and wait. You want it to be there. You can obsess on your end but on the other end, people are waiting. So if you're a big perfectionist, you may never be pleased.

Ava and C.I. aren't perfectionists in terms of spelling. They could care less. And Ava points to studies where people recognize the word if it has the letters or most of them in it. But they would love to have more time to do their TV reviews. Not for spelling but to make their points and to polish. They usually have about 20 minutes to write those reviews. They're great reviews. (And check out their latest review which is on Commander-in-Chief.) But they don't go back and reread them.

I can't believe that because the reviews are so damn funny. If I have time to play on the net, at least once a week, I'll read one of their reviews. "Make Room For Bully" and "Threshold" and "Prison Break" are probably my three favorites.

But it's true. They loathe those reviews. They can tell you the points they're making but they can't quote from the reviews. Now everybody else can and will when we're all working on The Third Estate Sunday Review. But they get those things done and just want to never look at them again.

Betty is that plus spelling. She is as much a perfectionist about how she says it but she also cares about spelling. And Betty has about thirty minutes to an hour most nights after she gets her kids to bed that she can work on her posts. She works on the same post over and over trying to make it say just what she wants. And she does one post a week. She wishes she did more and is trying to figure out some sort of a balance. Today she'll be blogging with an entry that she's going to try to spend no more than an hour on.

So you need to think about what level of perfectionism you want.

3) Why are you blogging?

C.I. turns down interview requests. And there was one that Jess was talking about, but wouldn't name, that came in Friday and Jess saw it when he was helping with the mail. (Jess and Ava both help C.I. with the e-mails.)

Not everyone would turn down interview requests.

If you're doing it to get famous or make money, chances are it won't happen.

The internet has already developed their star systems and few will probably break through. (C.I.'s broken through - Jim, Dona and my opinion and I'll talk about that on another thing.)
If you're looking for fame and riches, you're probably going to be blogging in vain.

The smartest thing to do is figure out what you want to do before you start.

If you're just trying to have a conversation with people who might be interested, you're probably going to be happier than you would be doing it for any other reason.

4) There are no rules.

A supposed still indymedia-er angered the indymedia community with a trashing indymedia article that ran in LiP magazine and then got distributed online by a non-indymedia organization.

You'll read a lot of people telling you what to do. Don't listen.

Write what you want, the way you want, and make it true to you.

That's how it will reach anyone (even if it's just one person). A lot of people forget that and you go to their sites and just yawn.

They're all trying to copy the big dogs and trying to cover the same hot topic and they've got nothing to offer that you can't find somewhere else.

Rebecca's stayed true to herself and built up quite a following. If I go to any of the community sites, I get a unique voice. They're all of the left because it's a community for the left. But they'll look at something in their own way. You can see that with Elaine and Mike's posts where they'l work out which two headlines from Democracy Now! to note each day and they'll both have a left opinion but they'll both notice something different in their comments.

Jim's had a hard time accepting that C.I.'s going to do things the way C.I. wants. Gina and Krista argue that C.I.'s style at The Common Ills is "a private convesation taking place in public." That means C.I. may be noting something to members instead of working on the "big lead" at the top of an entry. Members love that. Jim's always wanting more recognition for The Common Ills and will argue that an entry should have started four paragraphs down, without comments that are to members.

But as interview requests have come in and Ava and Jess have seen them and as people on Jim's campus have stopped him, people he doesn't really know, to talk about something up at The Common Ills, Jim's grown to realize that the community feel C.I.'s created is more important than journalism rules.

On my campus, I see it too with people who read The Common Ills. They aren't even members but they read it and feel like they've had a conversation. It's casual and it can be funny or pointed but it's not, "Oh no! I had to read the New York Times" or whatever stiff, lifeless thing you might think of.

Stephen Hadley is now in the news re: Plamegate. C.I. wrote a thing this summer that was talking about Hadley's role. There wasn't a lot of attention on that from the "news community" online. But in it, while C.I. was talking you through it, C.I. provided examples. One was using Matt Damon. That led to people seeing it that wouldn't normally. (Mike got e-mails on that and ended up with a reader specifically because the woman came across C.I.'s post as a result of the Matt Damon ref.)

If C.I. was trying to take on that "serious" attitude, many of the people in the community would never have noticed The Common Ills.

When C.I. was on the phone with me helping me set up this site, I kept asking about "the rules" and C.I. said there are none.

I think if you approach it that way, you're better off.

If you're a copy of someone else, you're just a copy. Be you and that's something different.

4) I want to talk about something but no one's talking about it.

Probably somewhere, someone is. They may or may not be talking about it online.

But if it matters to you and you think you can say something about it, do so.

Rebecca's found a huge audience by talking about stuff other people wouldn't think to or wouldn't talk about if they did think about it. C.I.'s led the charge against Dexter Filkins.
Dexter Filkins is becoming a joke. When C.I. first addressed it, C.I. was a lonely voice. For moths after, C.I. was still the only one questioning Dexter's rah-rah Falluja reporting. That's less the case today.

You can be one more person trashing Judy Miller today. To me that's a bit like bringing green bean casserole to a Thanksgiving lunch. Usually you have four to five people bringing that same dish. Everyone playing safe and bringing the same thing.

You don't stand out doing that. You don't look brave doing that.

You look like you're going for the easiest thing.

And now that I'm back at Mom's and catching up with friends, that's one thing I'm hearing over and over. A lot of laughter at the bloggers going after Judy Miller, after she's left the paper. A lot of laughter at the fact that these "brave" voices think she was a solo writer on every piece. My buddy Tomas laughs at four bloggers who are trying to be "big" by joining in the dogpile on Miller but don't know their facts.

5) Are you a blogger or are you trying to be an official voice for the Democratic Party? (If you're a Republican reading this, substitute "Republican Party.")

One of the other big laughs these days is in watching the war cheerleaders on the left try to rewrite history and act like they haven't been advocating "stay the course" nonsense. There's one in particular that's a joke on Mike's campus, on Third's campus and on my campus who lied about Cindy Sheehan when she was camped outside Bully Boy's "ranch" and tried to argue that Cindy Sheehan wasn't for bringing the troops home. The blogger looked like a fool.

The blogger looks like a bigger fool now writing things that try to imply she's always wanted the troops pulled out. She hasn't. She's been the unofficial voice of the Democratic Party. She's followed the party line of "we have to stay!" She kept doing that long after the public wanted the troops home. She only changed her party line when the party started to a little.

Now she's putting up posts acting like she was for this all along.

She wasn't. She was wrapping herself in the flag and insulting people who wanted the troops home now. She was a tool for the party and she's now a joke on campuses.

If you're going to parrot whatever your political party says, you probably don't need to do a blog. Political parties have their own sites.

If you're going to ask the questions that need to be asked and raise the issues that need to be raised, you should probably do a blog.

But if you exist to celebrate your politicians, call it a "fan club" and not a "blog" so people know what to expect.

6) Drop the "I live above it all" tone.

If you're angry, be angry.

Quit trying to prove your maturity. Mature adults are not robots. They have feelings. They may be sad, they may be happy, they may be angry, they may be inspired.

There's a dork who trashed C.I. for writing "Focus on the Fool" in January. That was a post ridiculing the idiot James Dobson. This dork, on the "left", said we had to be fair and welcoming of Dobson. The idiot didn't know what he was talking about. I doubt he'd write the defense of Dobson today.

But back when it was all about pushing the lie of "values voters" dork needed to prove he was with the program. Dork is a dork. Dork will always be a dork.

Dork may as well put on a long dress to go with his school marm "style."

Dork thinks he looks rational and mature. He just reads bo-ring!

Elaine noted she was really depressed on the anniversary of the slaughter of Falluja. She got more response from that than anything else she'd put up prior. Adults have emotions.

People respond to emotions. They don't respond to robotics.

Dork is a robatic.

If you're going to hide your own emotions, don't expect anyone to relate to you or to respond to your writing.

7) When something feels important to you, go with it. Listen to yourself.

When I kept asking for the "rules" from C.I. that first night, C.I. told me a story about how there was an assignment in an English class C.I. took. The person C.I. was living with ripped C.I. off.
"What are you going to write about?" C.I. told. Then the night before the paper is due, the person announces, "I wrote it." C.I.'s response was anger and then to note, "Fine, but it happened to me, not you. I'm writing about it and mine will be better because it happened to me." The person was trying to copy C.I. C.I. ended up with the A and the copy cat ended up with a C.

No one can talk about your life as well as you can because it means something to you. Be yourself and listen to yourself.

That's how C.I. has broken through. That's why Jess and Ava keep reading the interview requests in the e-mails.

Nobody is ever going to e-mail the Dork I talked about earlier and ask for his opinion. That's because you find it at 50 sites with bigger audiences. You be you and you will be noticed in some way. Maybe you'll break through the way C.I. has, maybe you won't. But you will be noticed by some people.

Dork never will. He's a copy of a copy of a big dog net star.

Originals stand out. Copies just make you think of the people they're copying.

So tomorrow's Thanksgiving and I hope everyone who reads this has something to be thankful for.

I'm thankful that despite Hurricane Wilma coming through, we've survived. I'm personally thankful that my family is okay. I'm thankful that we'll be getting together tomorrow for some fantastic food and sharing. I'm thankful that I do have memories of my dad. A lot of people lose a parent much younger than I did and are left with no memories. I can remember Dad and my family's been real good about talking about him and helping to keep him alive. I'm thankful that I lived through the car accident and that my mom did too. I'm thankful that the country has caught on to the Bully Boy even if the big media hasn't. I'm thankful that I have friends who are there for me. I'm thankful that I'm part of a wonderful community that's supportive and really cares.

I'll end with Mike's motto:

The Common Ills community is important and the Common Ills community is important to me. So I'll do my part for the Common Ills community.

How long did this entry take? About an hour to write. The links I have above? About an hour and 26 minutes. Now I'll swipe tags from Kat. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I'll jot on Friday.









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Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Grab bag



Had to start with Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts. "Deep discussions."

I always love The World Today Just Nuts but when Bully Boy's playing cowboy, it's always extra funny.

As Mike said:

The community is important and the community is important to me. So I'll do my part for the community.

I'll be jotting today (obviously) and tomorrow and probably on Friday but don't expect anything Thursday. I can't promise you a certain time. I like to get it out of the way in the morning but that doesn't always happen.

This morning, we were cracking wallnuts for a bread my mom's making and pecans for some pies she's making. That was me and my grandfather. We also took the turkey out of the freezer to defrost and we just bought it yesterday so that didn't make a lot of sense. Why put it in the freezer in the first place?

We didn't put the ham in there?

Is it bird flu? Something else?

I don't know. I don't cook.

But Mom does and she's a great cook. She's working half a day tomorrow and then coming in to get started.

I don't cook but I do odds and ends. I'll peel potatoes and mash them when she tells me to. Or I'll stir for her. But I have no idea how to cook anything except scrambled eggs unless you count throwing something in the microwave.

Another gasbag bites the dust.

Tonight Ted Koppel leaves Nightline. If your eyes are welling up, make a point to read C.I.'s "The end of a (bad) era" and Rebecca's ""ted koppel go away already."

And don't miss Rebecca's "makeout music" entry. I'm not sure what I'd pick if I had to pick just one. Maybe Dave Matthews Band "Crash"?

That's a pretty sexy song. Way the music rolls around like waves and all. Check out what Rebecca's readers picked.







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