It is possible that somehow you missed the biggest news on the Internet this week. If you have, I'll fill you in: Hyperbole and a Half is back.
Hyperbole and a Half is one of the funniest and most popular blogs in existence. Written and illustrated by Allie Brosh, each longform piece is accompanied by crudely-drawn but idiosyncratic images that have spread throughout the Internet in the form of memes - usually presented without attribution, but easily recognized by her fans. I first became aware of Allie Brosh's brilliant blog through the post The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas. That was posted in December of 2010. There would only be five more posts from Allie through 2011, none in 2012, and nothing more from her until this week. Her final post in 2011, Adventures in Depression, gave some hint as to what was about to come.
Allie's silence was broken by occasional messages attributed to her that appeared on message boards during her absence, though their authenticity was disputed. There was even a Facebook page set up by her, or by someone else on her behalf, and that is where I first heard the news that Allie was coming back. That post gave a foretaste of the post that would follow.
On Thursday, May 9, 2013 Allie posted an account of what she's been going through during her absence. And it is brutal.
You should read the rest of her blog, too. The 81 posts she wrote and illustrated in 2009, the 80 in 2010, the five in 2011. They are fun and funny, and that sense is barely diminished by the knowledge of where Allie is now. Will the fun and funny Allie ever come back? No one can say. But her most recent post ends with a grain - literally, a kernel - of hope, that maybe there is something out there for her other than nothingness. And that kernel gives the rest of us hope, too.
The following is a true story. It has had some fictional elements added. Discerning truth from fiction is left as an exercise for the reader.
I almost forgot to go to the supermarket that night. It was about 9:30 and as I drove past I noticed the parking lot was mostly empty, and wondered briefly about what sort of people would be shopping there on a Friday night. About half a mile later I remembered that I wanted to pick up some ice cream there while it was still on sale, and maybe see if they had that Belgian Waffle mix I couldn't find anywhere else. So I turned around and headed back to the store.
As I drove through the parking lot a bedraggled orange cat dashed through my headlight beams. It looked wet - it had been pouring just an hour before, as my fellow bloggers and I huddled in a bar watching suspect #2 in the Boston Marathon Bombings get extracted from a boat. I parked my car and headed for the entrance. Ice cream, I thought. Belgian Waffle mix.
Hey, could you get me something while you're in there? a voice said.
I stopped, looked around. There was no one else in the lot. Nothing but some cars and the wet cat now sheltering in a cart corral.
I'm hungry, came the voice again. Couldja get me a can of something?
The cat was staring at me.
I hadn't had much to drink that night. One Yuengling that tasted sour. A Guinness that tasted like it was watered down. Another Guinness that I hadn't really wanted, but someone else had bought for me, so I drank it.
I turned to continue into the store.
Something nice, the voice said, fainter now. Not that store brand crap.
I was a little unnerved as I grabbed a cart. I didn't need a full-sized cart, but I didn't feel like carrying around containers of ice cream in my hands. I got two cartons of Rocky Road, still on sale, the one and a half quart size. They didn't have the store brand butterscotch swirl my mom likes, but that might get restocked in a few days, so I could get that for her then. Ice cream in cart, I began to search for the aisle with pancake syrup. Find the syrup, and the waffle mix might be nearby.
I stopped at the pet food aisle.
That cat did look hungry. Maybe it would still be outside.
I found a can of the stuff my cats like. Just one can. If the cat was still out there, I'd give it to him. If not, my cats would eat it.
A few minutes later I headed to the checkout. Two containers of Rocky Road ice cream. One box of Belgian Waffle mix. One can of cat food. Nearly ten o'clock on a Friday night. I wondered what the high school girl behind the register thought.
As I walked to my car I looked over at the cart corral. The orange cat was still there, staring at me.
Didja get it? a voice asked.
I reached into my bag and pulled out the can of cat food. I began to open it as I walked past my car towards the cat.
Just leave it and go, the voice said. The cat backed away as I approached.
I pulled the lid off the can, set can and lid on the pavement, and took a few steps back.
The cat scrambled over to the can and took a few tentative nibbles, then began to gobble away.
Oh, damn, this is good, I heard, muffled.
The cat stopped and looked up at me.
Well, whaddya want? Go away. I'm eating.
I kept watching. The cat arched its back slightly.
Seriously. Go away. I'll hurt you if you stay.
I took another step back. The cat continued to stare at me, then began eating again, more warily.
We were done here. I headed back to my car. I wanted to go home, maybe have some ice cream.
Hey, came a voice as I got back into my car. Thanks. Thank you for the food.
I tossed my bag on the passenger seat, started the car and pulled out of the lot. As I drove away I looked at the cart corral one last time. I could see the cat still there, eating.
A few months ago the legendary (but very real) Todd Robbins created a Facebook group called Sideshow Spectrum. It's an invitation-only group, but any member can invite anyone into the group. The idea was that it would bring together the entire spectrum of the Sideshow world, from veterans and old showmen to current performers, up-and-comers, rookies, historians, fans, and even the merely Sideshow-curious. It's a fun place to be, with all the infighting, recriminations, and general chaos of a big, dysfunctional family getting together for Thanksgiving dinner. Sometimes it's an amazing resource to have access to, like when a friend accidentally swallowed a piece of glass last week (she found the glass bowl from which she was eating fruit had started to chip apart) and was wondering how worried she should be. I immediately took the issue up with a group of people who eat glass on a regular basis, and was able to get expert advice. (She was fine.)
Yesterday someone posted this to the group:
hoping someone can help....i want to learn more about the history of sideshow....can anyone suggest where to start.
Now, instead of the usual response (which would be to club him with a tent peg, take his wallet, shoes, and pants, and dump him somewhere in the next county), people actually supplied useful information. Even I was able to suggest a couple of resources, the things where I first learned about Sideshow, and some that I've come to know though my association with performers.
The top response is John Robinson's Sideshow World (http://www.sideshowworld.com/). The motto there is "Preserving the Past, Promoting the Future" - with a third item thrown in, "Enjoying the Present." Past, present, and future are all covered in the articles and interviews that appear with an alarming frequency, sometimes several times a day. John and his staff put a lot into this site, and you will get a lot out of it. You can easily get lost for many, many hours on this site, and they would all be hours well-spent.
Another response is James Taylor's Shocked and Amazed (http://www.shockedandamazed.com/) This site serves to promote the irregularly-produced Shocked and Amazed! On and Off the Midway periodical - a book-length magazine that contains long articles covering every aspect of past and present sideshow. James is a historian, curator, and archivist (and not to be confused with a certain mellow music maker of the same name), and he and his staff gather information from far and wide for each edition. The next one is coming out soon, back issues of many of the previous ones are available, and rumors abound of a second "best of" compilation. (The first is, I believe, out of stock.)
Here's a nearly hour-long documentary based on Shocked and Amazed! from 2003, featuring many amazing performers who are still active a decade later:
Another suggestion is to simply connect with the giants, the living legends, the walking repositories of history. Folks like John "Red" Lawrence Stuart, Ward Hall, and the great Todd Robbins. I have only seen and heard Ward from a distance, I have been in touch with Todd online and was his designated "...that guy over there" at last year's Sideshow Gathering (as in "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and that guy over there"), but I have had the privilege of sitting down and talking with Red for a good long while behind the scenes at the first (and so far, only) sideshow I have attended, the World of Wonders at the Northeast Fair in Pittston, PA in 2011. I showed up just before they broke for lunch, and Red was watching the set while everyone else went to eat, so we got to sit and talk about all sorts of things - including how some wireless high-speed internet companies will slow you down to DSL download speeds once you exceed a certain monthly limit. (At least, I think that's what Red said! I wasn't following all the technical details.)
One other suggestion was to get a job with a sideshow. While this might not educate you in the history of the sideshow, aside from what you can pick up there or learn from the crew, it will certainly immerse you in the here-and-now of sideshow. As one participant in the discussion said, "You know how to get a job at a carnival? Just ask." Unfortunately, sideshows these days are few and far between, and you have to know when they're at a carnival or fair, because they're often not advertised.
I had some suggestions of my own. One is the excellent book American Sideshow by Marc Hartzman. This book is not just a history of sideshow in America, but was also my introduction to many of the sideshow performers I would later meet through the Sideshow Gathering, and my introduction to the Sideshow Gathering itself. (Actually I had heard of the Gathering years before, but had heard the whole affair advertised as more a sort of side-show to a tattoo convention - which, in fact, it is.)
Another fine book I recommended is the regrettably out-of-print Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women by Ricky Jay. This is an excellent history of sideshow and other performers from decades and centuries past.
If you have not seen Tod Browning's "Freaks", you should, just for the sheer number of historically significant performers who appear in it. Plus it's an amazing film. The "One of us!" scene is required watching for anyone interested in sideshow. Here's the film in its entirety:
Then there is, of course, the Sideshow Gathering itself. In that place you can meet dozens of current performers, veterans, historians, and fellow fans. You'll have access to countless historical references and artifacts, many available for sale or for bid at auction. The death of founder and driving force Franco Kossa back in 2011 and the effects of Superstorm Sandy in 2012 (which resulted in extensive damage to the sideshow Mecca, Coney Island, and caused numerous guests and exhibitors to cancel their plans) were tremendous setbacks to the Gathering. Will there be another Gathering in 2013, or has it, too, passed into sideshow history? That remains to be seen.
Thursday, April 18 through Saturday, April 20:Scranton Public Theatre presents A Spotlight on the Jason Miller Playwrights' Project. Two Dramatic Comedies, "Lou Gehrig Did Not Die of Cancer" by Jason Miller and "Taking Liberties with Peter Rozig" by K.K. Gordon, will be performed at the Olde Brick Theatre, 128 West Market Street in Scranton. Tickets are $12.50 for adults, $10.00 for students and senior citizens. Showtime is 8:15 PM. (Performances will also be held April 25-27.)
Friday, April 19:NEPA BlogFest, Spring 2013 edition, Rooney's Irish Pub, 67 South Main Street in Pittston starting at 6:00. Meet local bloggers and maybe even some candidates for office. Admission is free.
Sunday, April 21:Prose in Pubs @ The Vintage. Prose in Pubs temporarily relocates to The Vintage (see above for address) starting at 4:00 PM. Rae Bryant will be the feature.
Ayup. 'Round these parts, we don't need psychotics in combat gear to shoot up schools - just some rednecks doing a little target shooting uprange of an elementary school.
MIDDLE SMITHFIELD TOWNSHIP — State police in Monroe County said a stray bullet hit an elementary school on Thursday. Troopers said the bullet struck a double-paned window at Resica Elementary School near Marshalls Creek. The school is in the East Stroudsburg School District. It smashed through one pane of glass, but not through the second. No one was hurt. State police questioned four men who were target shooting nearby. They could face charges in Monroe County.
Middle Smithfield Township, Monroe County - A bullet hit the window of a class full of second graders Thursday. It happened at Resica Elementary School in Middle Smithfield Township, Monroe County. ...Police say people at 823 Resica Falls Road were target shooting and someone missed a target. The bullet traveled at least a half mile. It went over a road, through the woods, and across the school parking lot. Forsyth said the teacher in the hit classroom jumped into action. He explained, "The classroom teacher immediately sheltered the children along a wall where they wouldn't be visible from the outside." ...School District Police Officer Marc Iannazzo found the people who were shooting. He said he discovered four young men in their late teens or early twenties doing target practice. He said, "They were shooting into the woods down the hill towards the school." He noted, "I saw multiple guns, about three or four rifles, a couple handguns, laying on the bed of a truck and they were shooting at targets tied to a tree." Police are investigating the young men. Eyewitness News tried to talk to the people at 823 Rescia Falls Road but a man started yelling as soon as a reporter and photographer pulled into the driveway. He demanded the crew leave. The school district is holding a parent meeting about the situation at Resica Elementary School Friday at 3:45.
State police continue to investigate the incident that caused a stray bullet to hit Resica Elementary School. The school was not targeted for any criminal purpose, said police. Patrol units located four people who were target shooting today after a bullet hit a second grade classroom window at the school on Route 402 in Middle Smithfield Township. All 20 students who were in the classroom are safe, according to superintendent Sharon Laverdure. The people, ages 18 to 21, were target shooting about a half-mile from the school, according to Lt. Robert Bartal of Troop N State Police. Their names have not been released. ...Bartal said police would confer with Monroe County District Attorney David Christine to determine if charges will be filed. “By all indications, they were just target practicing. It was not an intentional act,” Bartal said.
Yes. There's a term for that kind of unintentional act. It's called "criminal negligence."
The address given for the shooters is indicated by the red marker "A" at the top right. The elementary school is the cross-shaped building at lower left. Note the scale at bottom left, and the houses, road, and baseball field between the two. How could they have possibly known these things were there? File under "heroes of the NRA."
Shane Burcaw is a lot of things: a blogger, a student, an all-around great guy. He's the blogger behind Laughing at my Nightmare, and the founder of the organization LAMN.
He's also dying. He has a condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy (Type 2.) He has had it since childhood, and it is gradually robbing him of his muscles and his ability to move. Eventually, it will take away his ability to breathe. Eventually, it will kill him.
He knows this. He has known it for a long time. He has decided to take an upbeat approach to it. He wants to leave a mark on the world. And he wants to make Ellen DeGeneres laugh.
Since I started my blog almost two years ago, people have been telling me “YOU SHOULD GO ON ELLEN!” They scream it at me actually, hence the caps lock. My response was always “I’d love to, but she’s very difficult to get in touch with.” I kept the idea in the back of my mind until I felt it was the perfect time.
Well, my friends, now is the perfect time. And if it’s going to work, I’m going to need every single one of you to help me!
This Thursday at 11am (Eastern Time), Operation Make Ellen Laugh will begin, and if it is successful, my life and the future of LAMN could be changed forever.
We will conduct Operation Make Ellen Laugh the same way that we have successfully contacted other celebrities (Anthony Green, Alex Morgan, etc.): with a MASSIVE twitter/fb bomb that is too large for her to ignore. This time, however, we’re stepping up our game, because we refuse to let this Operation fail. Instead of getting hundreds of people to tweet her that day, we need to get thousands!
It’s very simple: starting at 11am on Thursday and continuing all day long, thousands of us will begin sending her a special tweet (I will post the tweet on Thursday morning). It will contain a link to some videos that explain who I am and why I’d like to be on her show.
I wrote a long time ago that my ultimate fear is being forgotten after I’m gone, leaving no impact on the world with my time here. Now I have a chance to truly put that fear to rest, as I believe the things we are accomplishing here at LAMN, Inc. are capable of making a significant positive impact on the world. Getting on Ellen would catapult us to new levels, and give us an unbelievable opportunity to affect the lives of millions of people.
All I’m asking is that you take some time to rally your friends to take part in this Operation. Please “Attend” this Facebook event to signify that you are committing to recruit as many tweeters/facebookers for April 11th as you can. Then share it on your wall so that your friends can read this and do the same thing
Together, we can pull this off, and I will be forever grateful.
Help make this happen. Shane has been wanting to do this for a very long time. But he is operating with a time limit. He has recently noted that things he was capable of doing six months or a year ago are no longer possible. Please spread the word, and help him achieve his goal!
UPDATE, 4/11:This is the day, and Shane has posted these instructions:
Alright folks, the time is here! We have a few quick instructions to make sure that we're all doing this the same way and have the best chance possible of getting Ellen's attention (without annoying her TOO much in the process). It's pretty simple: - PLEASE do NOT spam Ellen. We want to get her attention, not bludgeon her to death with tweets, so one tweet every few hours from each person should be MORE than enough - No swearing, use your big person words - Remember to reference Shane as @shaner528 and not just "Shane" When constructing your tweets you will need to incorporate the following hashtag and link: Hashtag: #MakeEllenLaugh Link:http://s0.gd/7e
Sample Tweets
"Hey @TheEllenShow, have you laughed today? Put @shaner528 on your show and you will! http://s0.gd/7e #MakeEllenLaugh" "@TheEllenShow if you want to have a good laugh, bring @shaner528 onto the show! http://s0.gd/7e #MakeEllenLaugh" "Hey @TheEllenShow, while you're making others laugh, @shaner528 is after YOUR laughter. Laugh with him! http://s0.gd/7e #MakeEllenLaugh"
Finally, THANK YOU! In the end, we can't accomplish anything without the help of people like you, so from the bottom of our hearts thank you for helping us work to spread Shane's message of positivity to the world. Remember that we're going to stop bothering Ellen at 11pm US Eastern Time, and HAVE FUN!
The economy sucks, and it has been sucking for many years.
You can take it back as far as you want: say that the Clinton era of explosive growth an "irrational exuberance" was actually a bubble that began to collapse even before a victor was declared in the 2000 election. That George W. Bush's policy of getting rid of the surplus he had been burdened with by his predecessor put us on the path to collapse. Or that the September 11, 2001 attacks were a brilliant bit of asymmetric warfare which, for a very small investment of money and lives,* allowed a terrorist organization to provoke a series of predictable responses that resulted in global economic losses in the trillions of dollars.
For me it personally started to suck back in early 2007 when, after a series of contractions that had taken place over the course of years, I was finally squeezed right out of my lucrative position in the DVD industry. I spent the next six months searching for a job that paid anything close to what I had been making, until my old company finally contacted me and offered to take me back - as a production worker, making a little less than 2/3 of what I had been earning before. (Through the magic of overtime and at considerable personal expense I was able to bring in a decent paycheck from time to time.) That position lasted another three years - three years during which I kept my eyes peeled for anything better - until it went away in December 2010. In 2011 I was brought back again as a temporary employee (by a recently-hired personnel manager who would lose his own job just a few weeks after I met him), a job which lasted intermittently until in April of 2012 I finally accepted a full-time position in an entirely different industry - now making 40% of what I had been earning in 2007.
A few years ago a friend who works for the federal government in a place that could be discreetly described as "just outside the beltway" told me of a conversation she had come across between two fellow employees who were blithely discussing the prospects for the nation now that the recession was over** and the economy was improving. She pointed out to them that in places like Northeastern Pennsylvania the recession had not ended, that unemployment and the local economy were bad and were getting worse. And they looked at her like she was an idiot. Well, obviously they weren't concerning themselves with the peons in the sticks. For the people that counted, the recession was over, and things were looking great. The economy had winners and losers, and it's better to be a winner than a loser. You can't worry about the losers, baby.
Articles in magazines from around Washington, D.C. bore out this attitude. Employment in the region was great. Real estate sales and rental rates were as strong as ever, and prices were as high as ever. New restaurants and bars were opening all the time to separate federal employees, lobbyists, and the associated camp followers from their money. For those whose lives and jobs were entirely within the beltway bubble, the recession was over, and a new era of prosperity was at hand.
So has the sequester brought the hard times to Washington, D.C.? Maybe a little. I haven't heard much complaining from the privileged set down there, and I expect that they are as insulated from the sequester as they were from the other negative effects of the recession. It's not like any members of Congress or their staffs have been affected, and so it's likely that the bars and restaurants that they frequent are doing as well as ever. The pain is being felt by the lower-level employees of the federal government, but the professional bureaucracy is still doing just fine, thank you.
A few weeks ago a staunch opponent to gay marriage, Senator Robert Portman of Ohio, changed his position after discovering his son was gay. This news was given a generally cynical reception, as it was widely assumed that Portman only changed his mind because now he had a personal stake in the matter.*** But Portman's conversion suggests that perhaps the way to make members of Congress take a genuine interest in an issue is to bring the issue home to them. Since having their constituents suffer the effects of the continued economic downturn is clearly not enough to make them care about getting the economy back on track, perhaps having members of their own families lose their jobs, homes, and incomes will make the plight of the rest of the nation real for them?
Of course, if that happens, they will always be able to retreat to the insular bubble of Washington, D.C. to continue to focus on the winners, and continue to ignore the losers.
*That is to say, the nineteen terrorists who died on the planes that day. **Technically, the recession ended several years ago. But as any economist who has the faintest idea what they're talking about knows, the effects are stll reverberating through the economy. ***Arizona Representative Matt Salmon has maintained his opposition to gay marriage despite having an openly gay son, suggesting a sort of integrity, or at least consistency.
This is by way of Michelle, my co-administrator at NEPA Blogs. The local weekly The Weekender is taking nominations for its annual "Best Of..." lists. In the past we've missed out on the nomination process, but this time Michelle caught it in time.
The Weekender is holding their annual "Weekender Readers' Choice" nomination and awards. We'd really love it if you'd take a moment to nominate NEPA Blogs for the honor of Best Local Blog. The link to vote is located here: http://www.theweekender.com/readerschoice/weekender-readers-choice-2013.
You must vote for at least 25 categories and only once to be counted. You have until Tuesday, April 12th to cast your ballot.
We completely missed the nomination process last year while focusing on other things (mainly Spring BlogFest). We want to win the whole kit caboodle this year, baybee!
Please share with anyone who is casting a ballot. A vote for us can help them make their quota of 25 entries!
If you live in NEPA, we'd love to have you nominate NEPA Blogs as best local blog! We do our darnedest to publicize blogs and blogging throughout Northeastern PA, and it's nice to get some recognition in return!
I haven't been blogging here as much as I would like to be, or probably should be, but I am keeping up with other people's blogs. One of the blogs I read daily is "The REAL Blogger Status," written by a Blogger insider but full of helpful information and occasionally biting criticism regarding the Blogger platform.
A post yesterday advised blog authors to be cognizant of what they are putting potential commentors through when they are forced to solve CAPTCHAs, those annoying and occasionally unsolvable distorted word puzzles that can be set as a pre-requisite for anyone looking to leave a comment. CAPTCHAs, while viewed by some as a minor inconvenience and necessary evil to screen out robotically-posted spam comments, can also dramatically reduce the number of illegitimate comments being left on a blog. If you use moderation, the post suggests, it may be unnecessary to also use a CAPTCHA.
I use moderation, and have ever since a flood of racist and harassing comments were posted during the election of 2008. These comments were coming in during the day, when I was at work and unable to do anything about them for several hours; for those hours they were as much a part of my blog as anything I had written. After reading yesterday's post, I thought maybe it was time to back away from the CAPTCHA and loosen things up a little. Last night I turned that setting off to see what would happen.
About fifteen hours later I had fourteen new comments in moderation. Every one of them was spam.
Spam comments aren't merely annoying. A lot of blogs permit you to flag your comment to receive an email whenever someone comments after it. This is apparently part of the strategy for spam comments: the spammer also requests these follow-up emails so they can harvest email addresses - and possibly blog addresses - from anyone else who comments. This is explained in today's post on The REAL Blogger Status.
So: CAPTCHA back on. My apologies for the minor inconvenience.
I woke Saturday morning to a sound thundering through the house: the sound of water flowing through the pipes at full blast. I stepped out of bed and directly into half an inch of water.
We've had basement flooding over the years, but the water has never accumulated to the point that it was Saturday morning, not since I had begun reacting to incoming flooding with active pumping. I ran into the downstairs bathroom and realized that the water was coming from there - but where? There was water dripping from the ceiling, but the leak didn't seem to be from above. I quickly discovered that the water inlet hose to the toilet was detached and blasting water full-force all over the place. It took just a few seconds to shut off the valve, but immediately the problem of what to do with the water needed to be dealt with. Fortunately I always know where the pumps are, and set them up immediately to begin pumping the standing water down the nearest drains. I threw towels on the floor to begin absorbing the water that wasn't getting pumped. Then I stepped back to assess the damage.
I have always said that you could get a pretty decent education from the books in my bathroom. Dozens of books, magazines, comic books, plus numerous catalogs, mailings, and other assorted things that probably should have been thrown away long ago.
Many of them were now soaking wet.
When the hose detached - disassembled, really; the threaded fitting that holds the hose captive and directs it into the tank broke apart - the water sprayed everywhere, including onto the ceiling, and onto the rack that held my books and magazines. As soon as the immediate issues had been dealt with I began to sort through the books. Those that were completely dry - and there were many of these - were put into a Rubbermaid tote to be dealt with later. Those that were wet and worth salvaging - all the books and comic books and some of the magazines - were piled up to be dealt with quickly. Those that could be discarded, old magazines with no historical value, were bagged for recycling.
I got some drying racks and spread as many of the magazines and comic books as could fit over them, taking them down as they dried and replacing them with others. I grabbed the soaked books - a paperback of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (one of my least favorite recent reads) and an Irish-bought hardcover compendium of the complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, among others, and...did something that probably damaged them worse than they already were. Something I would not have done if I had followed these links first:
There are other useful links out there, but they all have the same basic instructions, mostly. Essentially, what I should have done is stand the books upright on an absorbent base with absorbent papers tucked in the front and back covers and let gravity do the work. I'm hoping it's not too late to do that.
A side note: A lot of the water was absorbed by crap that I should have thrown away long ago. If I had, if it hadn't been there, then a lot more good books and magazines would have been damaged. As it is, I can just take my waterlogged seed catalogs from three years ago and Quality Paperback Book Club mailings from last year and toss them out.
I've been involved with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective for over a year now. I've written numerous poems, short stories, and fragments for the group, and I have quite a bit of writing that was done before I met them. Most of these stories and poems are scattered in files throughout my hard drive and printouts here and there.
Two immediate concerns come to mind when it comes to writing: how do I make sure I can't lose it, and how can I find it when I need it? I've had an answer to both of these questions for a while, and I've been offering it as a suggestion to other people: Put all your stories and poems in a blog created just for your writing. This way, even if you lose your home computer, laptop, or story discs, your writing is still safely stored in the cloud. (Well, not exactly safely, but we'll get to that shortly.) And you don't need to lug your writing anywhere as long as you can access your blog. Index it properly, and you'll be able to find your stories and poems quickly!
One problem comes to mind: What if you don't want to share your writing just yet? Or at all? What if these are stories you'd like to submit for publication someday, and don't want to see floating around the internet? That's easily fixed: lots of blogging platforms offer a wide array of privacy options, from a blog opened to invited readers only to a blog only accessible by the blog author. For now, that's the setting I have on my new blog.
Which presents another problem: backing up. Most blogging platforms have some mechanism built in to allow the blog author to back up the blog, and most blogs are automatically archived in one way or another. But not if the blog is set to private, with only the blog author able to see the posts, then the author must back up manually.
That's an inconvenience I'm willing to accept, for the moment. I'll gradually be posting all of my poems, stories, and fragments to this new blog, one which only I can see. In the future, I may add some readers.But for now, it will just be me!
Scranton poet and playwright K.K. Gordon has had one of his plays selected to be performed in a competition at the American Globe Theatre in New York City. "Real Friends Help You Move" will be presented on Wednesday, April 24.
I made this the other day, and I liked it. My mom didn't like the rosemary, though. The rosemary is what makes it unauthentic; you can use parsley instead, or nothing at all. I don't measure anything, so all measurements are rough guesses.
1 lb lamb tenderloins, cubed 1/4 cup of flour 2 tbs. olive oil 1 cup water (plus more water) Salt Pepper Garlic salt Onion salt Rosemary 5-6 large potatoes Carrots (equal in volume to potatoes) Onion
1. Peel and dice the potatoes (or leave the skins on for extra fiber) and carrots.
2. Coarsely chop onion.
3. Cube lamb. I used tenderloins because that's what I pulled out of the back of the freezer.
4. Put flour in plastic bag. Add salt, pepper, garlic salt, onion salt, and rosemary.
5. Add cubed lamb and shake until thoroughly covered.
6. In large stew pot with heavy bottom, heat olive oil at medium-high heat.
7. Add half of onions and saute briefly.
8. Add cubed lamb. Saute several minutes until browned on all sides, stirring constantly.
9. After lamb has thoroughly browned and flour is beginning to stick to bottom of pot, slowly add water until all lamb is covered.
10. Add potatoes, carrots, and rest of onion.
11. Add more rosemary, and other spices as desired.
12. Add water to cover all vegetables.
13. Simmer at medium for at least one hour.
14. Refrigerate leftovers. Flavors will continue to combine in leftovers, and Rosemary may become more pronounced.
1. The Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective will be holding its Poetry Night on Thursday, February 21 at The Vintage in Scranton, 326 Spruce Street, starting at 8:30 PM. Details can be found here.
2. The next NEPA BlogFest will be held Friday, April 19 at Rooney's in Pittston, starting at 6:00. Details can be found here.
3. Germany has a much higher rate of solar power production than the United States, and FOX News reveals the shocking reason why: Germany gets more sunlight than the U.S.! ...Wait, it doesn't? Well, FOX has never let facts get in the way before. See my post on NEPA Solar for more information.
I just wrote a long short story called "Canaan" for my writing group. I have the rest of the week to do rewrites before I present it. I'm very happy with it. It's pseudo-hard science fiction, so we'll see how it plays...
Meanwhile, I have some actual blog posts planned for here. With all the stuff I've been doing on various other blogs, I've been ignoring this one for too long. I'm hoping to end that soon.
UGI is Pennsylvania's largest gas utility. After Hurricane Irene knocked out electric service to tens of thousands of residents of Northeastern Pennsylvania in August 2011, the slow response and lack of preparedness by UGI's electric division meant that UGI's electricity customers found themselves without power long after customers of other utilities had rejoined the modern world.
UGI was featured in two articles in the Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice this past Friday, January 25. The first appeared on page 10, and had to do with UGI deciding to go ahead with plans to construct a pipeline, despite a denial of a "special exception" that would allow them to construct a gas compressor station that would be tied in to the pipeline.
UGI pushes ahead with pipeline plans
BY ELIZABETH SKRAPITS (STAFF WRITER)
Published: January 25, 2013
Although plans for a natural gas compressor station in West Wyoming are temporarily on hold, UGI Energy Services still plans to construct a pipeline that will provide UGI Penn Natural Gas customers with gas from Northeastern Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale. "We're moving forward with the pipeline regardless," said Kevin Kelleher, manager of producer services for UGI Energy Services Inc. in Wyomissing. The company plans to run approximately 28 miles of 24-inch diameter pipeline from an existing facility in Washington Township, Wyoming County, to connect to a UGI utility line and the Transco interstate pipeline in West Wyoming. UGI is obtaining required state permits, including from the Department of Environmental Protection. The company hopes to begin clearing the right-of-way in the spring, with the bulk of pipeline construction to take place during summer and early fall, Kelleher said.
...The route, as drawn up by Quad3 Group, starts at UGI's Washington Township facility and runs through Eaton and Northmoreland townships in Wyoming County. In Luzerne County, the route goes through Franklin Township, under Cummings, Brace, Village, Sutton and Ridge roads, then crosses West Eighth Street and Coon Road. It then goes into Kingston Township beneath Mount Olivet Road, skirts Frances Slocum State Park and goes under Carverton Road and then into West Wyoming.
Meanwhile, three pages later, we see this article from the AP about what people living in the vicinity of this pipeline can expect in the future:
Pa. fines utility $500K over blast that killed 5
By PETER JACKSON, Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Utility regulators voted on Thursday to fine Pennsylvania's largest gas utility $500,000 for a 2011 natural gas explosion that killed five people in Allentown and called the company's safety record "downright alarming." The Public Utility Commission unanimously approved modifications to a settlement with UGI Corp. that boosted the civil fine from $386,000 to the maximum allowed by law at the time of the explosion. The settlement also requires the Reading, Pa.-based company to replace all its cast iron pipelines within 14 years and to expand and enhance its testing and monitoring programs. The thunderous blast, which was traced to a crack in a cast iron gas main, killed five people, flattened a pair of rowhouses and set fire to a block of homes late one night in February 2011. Utility workers toiled for five hours to punch through ice, asphalt and concrete and seal the 12-inch main with foam to stop the flow of gas. In their joint motion to modify the settlement, PUC Chairman Robert Powelson and Vice Chairman John Coleman said UGI's record of safety compliance is "patently unacceptable." "This is the eighth time in slightly more than four years that this commission has adjudicated a matter containing allegations of gas safety violations by a UGI-owned gas distribution utility," they said. "This goes beyond cause for concern; it is downright alarming."
Do you think anyone living near this new pipeline has any cause for concern? Living here in coal country, we know firsthand how concerned utilities are about cleaning up their messes after the boom goes bust. Will the gas industry be any different from the coal industry?
Another event at the Vintage in Scranton! Read all about it here! I will be presenting "A Brief History of NEPA Blogs"! Michelle Hryvnak Davies and several other NEPA bloggers will also be presenting!
The Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers Collective will be hosting its monthly Open Mic Poetry Night at The Vintage, 326 Spruce Street in Scranton, on Thursday, January 17. Go here for more details.
Longtime readers - or new readers who casually glance at my sidebar - may be aware that this isn't my only blog. I've got several others, but one of the most significant is NEPA Blogs, a blog dedicated to blogs and blogging in Northeastern Pennsylvania. I've recounted the history of that site numerous times, so I won't do it again now - though I am planning to do it in a few weeks when I do a Pecha Kucha presentation on the history of NEPA Blogs. Which means I have to gather up twenty images, and be prepared to speak about each for twenty seconds. Ohboy.
NEPA Blogs is still running on a Blogger/Blogspot platform. This is mainly due to my inertia: I know Blogger, I don't know Wordpress, which is a platform that a lot of people are insisting we need to move it to. I'm not really ready to learn a whole new system at the moment, and I imagine transferring over every previous post, every link, and every comment would be an enormous undertaking. On top of that, it seems like every Wordpress blog I know of has gotten hacked or infected at one time or another. In fact, an alert just went out that many Wordpress blogs are vulnerable to data theft because of a security flaw in a popular plug-in. Fun.
But Blogger has some limitations. Google (the owner of Blogger) has taken a standard approach to complaints about issues: provide a forum for users to complain about issues, state that the issues are being dealt with, delete all the complaints, and redesign the complaint forum. Maybe the issue will be dealt with, maybe not.
One of those limitations wouldn't even be an issue for most bloggers, but it is for NEPA Blogs. Blogger allows you to have "live links" on your sidebar that link to both the primary page of the linked site and the latest post as presented by the site's RSS feed. A nice feature of this is that the links will arrange themselves so the most recently updated sites appear at the top. We use this as a way of displaying all the blogs linked by NEPA Blogs, with the most recently-updated blogs appearing at the top of the list. This provides an incentive of sorts for bloggers to frequently update their sites: the most recently-updated sites bubble to the top of the list, while the sites that haven't updated lately sink to the bottom.
We discovered some time ago that there's a limit on how many blogs could be on one of these lists. After that limit is exceeded, adding a new blog would cause another blog to drop to the bottom of the list with no link to a current post. We were never quite clear on what this limit was - it may be somewhere around 120 blogs.
At first we dealt with this by arbitrarily assigning new blogs to a second list. But this meant that the most recently updated blogs on the second list would appear below the oldest blogs on the first list. It wasn't fair to the new blogs, which would never have the exposure of any blogs on list 1.
So we came up with a new approach: list 1 would contain all of the blogs that had updated within a certain time frame. List 2 would contain blogs that had not updated within that limit. Some trial and error determined that two months was a good cutoff. Active blogs had generally updated within two months. Blogs that had not updated in the past two months were likely not being updated anytime soon. Some more trial and error led us to create a third list of blogs that hadn't been updated in over a year. Blogs that haven't been updated in two months sometimes come back, but blogs that haven't been updated in a year rarely come back.
This has turned out to be a pretty good system. Every month or so I need to move a few blogs from List 1 to List 2, and a few from List 2 back to List 1. Every few months I need to move a few blogs from List 2 to List 3, and very, very rarely I need to move a blog from List 3 back to List 1.
I haven't done this in a few months. Since October, maybe.
Today I had to move thirty-two blogs from List 1 to List 2.
That wasn't the end of it. I also had to move about seven blogs from List 2 - and one from List 3! - back to List 1. So the net effect is that List 1 has moved about twenty-four slots away from being completely full. We have lots of blogs still to be added, mostly from the NEPA BlogCon that co-administrator Michelle and the rest of the Fearsome Foursome ran so effectively back in September. While every blog starts off on List 1, many of these blogs haven't been updated in two months or more, so they will be moved to List 2 at the earliest opportunity.
Meanwhile, we're faced with the issue of presenting a new "Blog of the Week" on WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. We've been doing this almost every week for the past sixteen months. With over sixty blogs showcased so far, we've already picked most of the low-hanging fruit. Some of the remaining blogs will not be showcased due to content - featuring nudity or obscenity on your front page is a pretty sure way to not have your blog shown on TV. We probably won't showcase others that are almost certain to offend the PA Live! viewing audience, or blogs that haven't been updated in a long time, or simply don't have much general appeal. At some point I worry that we will be presenting fashion blogs, week after week. (At least those that don't have any nudity on the front page!)
Blogging isn't dead, as far as I can tell, though a lot of the bloggers I met online back in 2004 when I first got started have dropped out of blogging in the past few years. I truly intend to start paying more attention to Another Monkey, but I will continue to put some effort into NEPA Blogs as well.
(UPDATE, 1/1/13: According to Jen, Redbook is promising to make things right, and according to Michelle, I got some things wrong. UPDATE UPDATE: And Jen got something wrong, too! See updates at bottom.)
The first time I ever saw anything from Pinterest I had no idea what the site was about. It was a photo of cakes baked in mugs. Ohh, I see, it's a place where people creatively use mugs - pint mugs? - to...ummm...make cakes? Which I suppose made as much sense as it being a place for people to discuss the works of Harold Pinter, which I also considered a possibility.
Michelle Hryvnak Davies, co-administrator at NEPA Blogs and Queen of All Media, Social or Otherwise, tried to drag me into the world of Pinterest last year when she added a Pinterest component to the NEPA Blogs media empire. Which I still didn't understand; by this point I had determined that Pinterest was some sort of image posting site (though there were already, like, a billion of those at the time) merged with a social network, all of which for some reason appealed overwhelmingly to those of the female persuasion. It also now was coming across as some sort of creative-works outlet, which seemed like an odd fit for a blog about blogging in Northeastern Pennsylvania, but whatever. Even when Michelle and local blogger Karla Porter went on Blue Ridge Communication's ComputerWise TV to do a full hour-long program on Pinterest I still didn't understand - though it didn't help that I fell asleep early on and woke up right at the end. I was exhausted from work. (See updates below.)
So gradually I've worked out that Pinterest is an image posting and sharing site merged with a social network, designed to allow people to share and showcase their creativity and see the creativity of others. Unlike, say, Flickr or DeviantArt these aren't just photos or artistic creations; these are, for the most part, creative projects that can inspire others to their own projects, or even be recreated by other people. Like, say, cakes baked in mugs. It's not just that, so NEPA Blogs can post our blog headers and whatnot and still not be tossed off the site, but it's mostly creative works, being posted and "pinned" and "repinned." Sometimes with attribution, more often - like photos on Tumblr - without.
There are a lot of creative people out there. A lot of people who invest a lot of effort into their creativity. A lot of people who deserve credit for their creativity.
And there are some people out there who want to skim off the best ideas, repost them, and claim them as their own.
Redbook magazine has just done that to one of the biggest names in blogging.
Jen Yates is the blogger behind the wildly popular Cake Wrecks site and the author of two books based on that blog. She also has a spinoff blog, EPBOT, that provides an outlet for her non-cake-related stuff. On this site she also features some creative projects and tutorials, the sort of stuff that finds its way to her Pinterest site. As with her blog, her Pinterest posts tend to have broad general appeal and are enormously popular.
In a recent article, Redbook magazine copied some of the most popular Pinterest posts, created artwork from the posted photos in an apparent attempt to avoid copyright issues, and presented them without attribution.
Now, this is a dickish maneuver to begin with. But what makes it entirely douchey - perhaps unintentionally douchey, but douchey nonetheless - is the fact that the project of Jen's that Redbook stole and reprinted without attribution was one that was scheduled to be presented with attribution in an upcoming edition of Better Homes & Gardens Good Housekeeping.
You may get the sense that bloggers - especially successful bloggers - see themselves as New Media hotshots who look down upon the Old Media, especially the "dead trees" media of newspapers, books, and magazines. But nothing could be further from the truth. Most bloggers I know consider it to be the height of success to get your work presented in published form, on paper. Newspaper and magazine articles are considered incredibly valuable for getting the word out about your blog to new audiences, audiences that might otherwise never hear about your blog. So having the opportunity to get her work featured and credited in Better Homes & Gardens Good Housekeeping was extremely important to Jen. Now that may not happen at all, since Redbook has effectively scooped the article by publishing the details of the project first. Will Better Homes & Gardens Good Housekeeping cancel the article? Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, Redbook claims that it is planning a response to the numerous messages it has received complaining about this situation. Do they plan to make this right? Or will they hunker down and claim that once an idea is published to the Internet it becomes public domain?
Whatever happens, be warned: if you're posting the fruits of your creative efforts on a site like Pinterest, you might just be making it easier for someone else to come along, steal them, and claim them as their own.
UPDATES: 1. Jen has posted a response from Redbook that promises to make things right: EPBOT: Redbook Makes It Right Jen is satisfied with this response, so I guess we can put away the pitchforks and torches. For now. 2. Michelle pointed out that I have mashed together two episodes of ComputerWise TV from the past year: One which Michelle and Karla went on to promote the NEPA BlogCon, and one that featured Michelle by herself talking about Pinterest. 3. Jen misidentified Good Housekeeping, the magazine slated to feature her project, as Better Homes and Gardens in her original post.
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."
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