A Rock To Tie A String Around

I haven’t ignored the Super Fantastic Blog Contest 2010, really, I haven’t. In fact, it’s not too late to enter, my response and box wine influenced winner decision will arrive next week.
I had to get this one off my chest, lest it fester and drive The Husband crazy for the next month. I realize this contradicts my earlier post ‘I’m not your mommyblogger’ but I couldn’t resist.

We were recently forced to switch pediatricians, our HMO broke up with our Medical Group and since the HMO has custody of us, we had to say goodbye to our wonderful pediatrician. Instead we were sent across town to the evil stepmother of a new office.

I’m continually surprised about the medical field. I used to want to be a doctor, back when I was a kid. That goal was whittled down and smooshed into an unhealthy obsession with medical television dramas and forensic crime TV. One thing I have learned as I get older: real medicine is much less interesting and competent than television medicine. Give me television medicine any day. Those doctors know what’s going on, and they act quickly. In real life, you can sit in that waiting room for days only to be diagnosed with a shrug of their highly educated shoulders and a prescription for a pharmaceutical strength multi-vitamin.

My son, Mr. Adorablepants, is the healthiest kid I’ve ever seen. He’s fearless, strong, and eats anything I put in front of him, most of the time that is…sometimes he throws it across the room, but he throws with gusto – I have to give him that. So when our new pediatrician told me I needed to put him on pharmaceutical strength Vitamin D supplements, I paused.
I know my medical knowledge comes from WebMD, I know. However, I also know that Mr. Adorablepants lives in sunny Southern California and is outside at every possible opportunity, has fair skin and is a healthy weight and height – not obese. Thus precluding any of the risk factors for Vitamin D defiency. He also has no signs of muscle weakness or lethargy.

I can’t help but wonder who’s funding the Vitamin D campaign around there. In any case I told her no thanks.

Then, they wanted to give him a TB test. He’s two years old…. Now, as a teacher I’ve been TB tested every which way from Sunday. They TB test us teachers to the point of giving us TB with all the micro-doses of the virus that they have to inject under our skin. I know my TB tests. As a result, I know that all 800 times I’ve been tested, they’ve made a big stink about telling me not to bump or mess with my arm, because irritating the little bump of virus can give you a false positive result.

I would love to explain to Mr. Adorablepants that he shouldn’t mess with the bump on his arm, but I think his response would be this:

“Dinosaur! Grrr!”

That’s been his stock answer to most of our discussions lately.

So I asked the nurse: “Do you get a lot of false positive results on two-year olds when you give them a TB test this young?”

She nodded and said “Well, yes…”
So, we passed on that one too.

At the end of the day, we left after two hours, with a good guess at what he weighs and an approximation of how tall he is. They had me stand on the scale with Mr. Adorablepants, and then did the foolproof scientific method of asking me how much I weigh and then subtracting the difference.

Seriously people?

Then, to make up for it, they gave Mr. Adorablepants a lollipop – or in the immortal words of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – a cavity on a stick. This was especially ironic as they had just given us a referral for his first dental visit. When I pointed out that a lollipop is a major choking hazard for a two-year old, the doctor looked at me like I was made of witch-cake and said “Well, yes….”

We passed on the lollipop.

I feel mildly bad about being such a bitch on wheels, but not too bad.

It just frustrates me. You have to be your own amateur doctor to not get screwed by your professional doctor.
A few years ago I was having some allergy issues and trouble breathing. I went to my doctor who looked up my nose, listened to me breath and two minutes later prescribed me an asthma inhaler.

I had to explain to the doctor that the inhaler could kill me as I have a heart murmur and have been explicitly told to stay away from anything that increases my heart rate – such as Sudafed, coffee and especially Albuterol inhalers.

He shrugged and said “Yeah, you don’t want to use this then.”

I know WebMD is not an alternative for medical school, but it’s frightening to me what could happen if you trust your doctor too much.

Okay people. This is serious. I have painful, crippling and hopefully short-lived blog writer’s block. I have started no fewer than three blogs today only to do the virtual version of balling up the paper and tossing it into the trash.

Maybe it’s stress, maybe it’s excess houseguests, maybe it’s because I start school next week and my brain is atrophied from my two-month vacation.

I don’t know.

However, my disorder will work to your gain. I’m hosting my first ever contest. Here’s the skinny – and remember, I’m a teacher, and very serious about rules:

The objective is this: name my next blog topic, tell me what to write about and I will pick the best topic.

Here’s what you win: In addition to a hearty thank you and a shout out on the blog – I will send you one randomly chosen item from my house. It might be big, it might be small, it might have claws and need a litter box, it’s a surprise, like a virtual grab bag.

RULES:

I can’t think of any rules, it’s anarchy. Know this though, the winner will be chosen arbitrarily, and under the influence of box wine. Think accordingly.

Respond here or on Facebook or Twitter – I judge all entries equally.

Give me a challenge people!

Like most teachers, I can’t stand teacher movies, or books or inspirational quotes. As a teacher, I get flooded with all sorts of things that my well-meaning family and friends think will inspire me. I hate it all.

Yesterday I watched ‘Dangerous Minds’ with Michelle Pfeiffer. Not really out of choice, more out of laziness. Okay, if they’re trying to recruit new teachers with that movie, the producers are going the wrong direction. The lessons for new teachers that can be garnered from ‘Dangerous Minds’ are this:

1. Your first year will be horrible on a nightmarish scale
2. All administrators are evil dream-smashers who will go out of their way to stomp your ambitions and creativity
3. If you want to break through to your kids, you need to spend money. Lots and lots of money – money on candy, money on amusement park tickets, money on fancy, shmancy dinners.
4. You must spend every waking minute of your time away from school on your students, this means going to their houses, taking them out on the town.
5. You must be willing to sacrifice your personal life – dating, spouse, kids, etc…if you are to be successful

It’s true across the board for inspirational teacher stories. Since all the top hitter teacher books and movies are based on real-life people, I can only assume that I’m doing something wrong.
Ron Clark (The Essential 55 and made for TV move played by Mathew Perry) and Jaime Escalante (Stand and Deliver) both nearly killed themselves in their attempt to teach the masses. Clark nearly died of pneumonia, and limped back to school just to make sure his kids passed the test. Escalante had a massive heart attack and instead of staying put in the hospital, drug himself back to the classroom to prep his kids for AP exams.

I have no intentions of doing either. I stay home if I get sick, if I have pneumonia, I will do my best to leave a coherent lesson plan, but then I’m breaking out the hot tea and the Nyquil. I will not be worrying about my students. Does this make me a monster? Maybe….

Erin Gruwell (The Freedom Writers) worked several second and third jobs during her first year just so she could buy her kids books out of her own pocket. She also spent every waking minute at school, and as a result ended up divorced – at least according to the movie. Nope, not for me either. I will fight tooth and nail at my school to get my kids books, but I’m not going to be folding bras in a department store all night just so my kids can lose a copy of Siddhartha that I bought with my own debit card. Callous? Maybe….

Louanne Johnson (Dangerous Minds) came up with brilliant, innovative ways of teaching Bob Dylan to inner city kids to get them to connect to poetry, she visited the student’s homes, she bought them everything her teacher salary couldn’t afford. So what’s the problem? Well, the real Louanne Johnson did come up with a brilliant way to get her kids into poetry – by using rap lyrics. Why did the producers change rap to Dylan? I don’t know. ‘Dangerous Minds’ has been accused of whitewashing, I think it’s a pretty fair accusation, all things considered.

I’m partial to ‘Lean on Me’. You know, the story of Crazy Joe Clark, the principal of Eastside High. I like the scene where he suspends the basketball coach for picking up a piece of trash during the school song (in the real history, the coach was suspended for walking around during song – still pretty hard core), I’ve often wished that we had a principal with the balls to walk around campus wielding a baseball bat.

The problem with Hollywood Joe Clark vs. Actual Joe Clark is the question of accuracy. In real life, Eastside High was never under threat of state takeover, and while violence decreased, there was no major increase in test scores.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_on_Me_%28film%29

My first year teaching, I spent too much money out of my pocket on stuff for my kids, I stayed late at school every night; I went full throttle Freedom Writers ahead. Until that is, I realized my approach was all wrong. I was looking at my kids as somebodies that needed saving from their lives. They don’t need saving, they need knowledge, they need skills and tools, not another missionary disguised as a first year teacher.

I teach at a school that could have very well come out of one of these movies, it’s inner city, south central, gang-ridden, low income – my kids come to school with terrible stories, more crap on their plate than I’ve seen in my lifetime. Yet, my days at school are pretty normal. At the heart of it all, they’re kids. They don’t want to turn off their ipods, they chew gum even though they know I hate it, they make fun of me every time I have to wear my glasses to work. They’re just kids. They don’t want me sucking up to them with presents and amusement park tickets, they want someone who honestly wants to be there.

When I was in eighth grade, my track coach put me on shotput. To comprehend the true absurdity of this decision, you would had to have seen me in eighth grade – I hadn’t quite broken 5’0 yet, I was just teetering on 4’11, and I weighed somewhere around eighty-five, maybe ninety pounds. My hair was permed in an attempt to look like Jennifer Gray ala Dirty Dancing, the result was definitely more Beaker than Baby, and, I had giant metal braces on my teeth. I was hawt, and overwhelmingly unathletic.

The coach had literally tried me on every, single event and having failed to find anything I could do, decided on shotput. Looking back I can see his logic. He couldn’t kick me off the team, and most of our competitors didn’t even have a female shotput, so the event was usually ceded to me without my ever having to lift that impossibly heavy metal ball off the track field. On the few occasions that I was faced with competing, he would pull me off the event, citing some kind of fake injury. I think he was just being preemptive, predicting the ensuing injury if I had ever had to throw a ball that was about half my body weight.

I can’t put this event in a book. Why? No one would ever believe it. You don’t believe me now do you? I don’t blame you. You’re saying to yourself, why didn’t he just make you run, or better yet, cut you from the team altogether? I don’t know. I can guess though that it had something to do with the fact that my run moves mostly at the same pace as my walk, except with slightly more knee. But, that’s really just a guess, I’ll never know.

That’s the problem with the truth, it often sounds so improbable that it makes lousy fiction. I frequently read blogs written by book and magazine editors and they all echo the same sentiment. Writers who rely on their truthiness to move their fiction come off looking like amateurs. Their insistence ‘but it’s the truth!’ doesn’t make it any more readable.

‘Mommy Dearest’ is a good example of this. I have no doubt that Christina Crawford had a crap time of it, beyond crap time. Joan Crawford was a crazy person with a capital C. I have also never known anyone who could keep a straight face all the way through that movie. I find myself wondering if the wire hangers and chopping down of the rose garden in the middle of the night was a child’s exaggeration of events. If in reality the wire hanger scene went something like this:

Joan Crawford: “Hey, Christina, honey, can you try to pick up your clothes? Your closet is a mess!”

Christina Darling: “Whatever Mom, you suck.”

Joan Crawford: “Is that any way to speak to you mother? Oh man, what did I tell you about the wire hangers? Can you try to use the wooden ones on your nice dresses from now on?”

Christina Darling: “You better be nice or I’ll write a hugely exaggerated version of this scene in a scathing tell-all memoir in a few years.”

Joan Crawford: “Where did you learn the word ‘scathing’? You’re only eight years old?”

As a child, my mom used to threaten that she was going to get us these matching outfits...now that's scary.

Something like that anyway. Of course, it probably did really happen and I’ll now start getting hate mail from Christina Crawford fans…. My point is this: no one wants to hear the truth, no one will believe it. There’s nothing more frustrating then telling a totally true story and having people call you a liar. We call you a liar because we can’t believe how horrible, funny, and/or witty you were in that moment. It would make our lives look downright drab.

Sometimes the truth doesn’t stick because it makes no damn sense. Like the time back in sixth grade when I was the only kid cut from the volleyball team. Somewhere around fifty kids tried out, I was the only one they cut. They wouldn’t even let me be Watergirl #2. The school counselor called me into her office everyday for a month to talk about my feelings, so I could tell her if I was disappointed, rejected, bitter, cynical. To be honest, I was none of those things, I was relieved.

I didn’t really want to play volleyball, volleyball terrifies me to this day. I can totally see why they cut me from the team, why I was the only one who got cut from the team. I was also the only one who ran screaming from the ball every time it got within a five-foot radius of me.
Still though, it doesn’t make any damn sense why they would cut just one kid and not even allow me the self-confidence boosting sense of joiner-inner that serving water and clean towels to my forty-eight other teammates would have brought me. I know it had to have been a point of discussion among the coach and teachers, how else did I get on the school counselor’s radar? Why were my teachers so darn nice to me for the rest of the year? Why? I’ll never know.

What I do know is that scene will never make it into a book. Too bad really, guess I’ll have to go make something up.

I’m confused by the term ‘mommyblogger’. Mostly, because I’ve been called one lately, by more than a few people. By the very most raw definition, I suppose it’s fitting – I am a Momma, and proud of it. However, if you read back through my archives, I rarely blog about anything to do with my genius son, who at a mere two years old can say his alphabet (most of the time) and count to ten, sometimes eleven. Not to mention the fact that he can spot a kitty at a hundred yards and frequently freaks out passing strangers by shouting “Hello! Howru?” He’s a genius, cute too, but that’s not my point.

I think in order to be a true mommyblogger, you have actually blog about your child with some passing frequency, and I also think there must be some kind of prerequisite that you offer parenting advice and/or crafty tips. I do none of these things. I suck at crafts; my parenting advice is limited to a shrug of the shoulders and a profound ‘Huh, no idea, good luck with that.’

I suppose I could start offering up some of the advice that I get from family and friends….that’ll land me in social services land pretty quick. For the record, I never take this advice – it’s just offered to me on a regular basis by my outstandingly Scottish mother and neighbors. I’m actually amazed that any Scottish children live to adulthood.

For example, my son, Mr. Adorablepants, is doing this really cute thing where he smacks and headbutts us. Precious right? Sometimes it’s because he’s frustrated that I want to comb his hair, sometimes it’s because I am being totally unfair and making him put on shoes, sometimes I think he’s just channeling his own internal Tyler Durden. So I asked my Scottish neighbor, she’s in her sixties, has kids and grandkids, reminds me of my mom in many, many ways.

Her advice? Bite him. Yes, you heard me right, bite him. As I tried to scrape my jaw off the sidewalk, she told me this fascinating anecdote about raising her kids and how when they’d hit or kick, she’d just reach over and give them a little nip on the arm, like a dog. They’ll stop right away, she said, laughing and cooing at Adorablepants who was staring at her in horror.

In the early months when Mr. Adorablepants was colicky and attempting to set the world record for straight hours of screaming, I called my mother to see what I should do. Her advice? Rum. Yes, she advised rum. A little sip of rum will quiet the baby right down. I shouldn’t knock it, not like I haven’t heard the drunken baby solution before – the advice is the same the world over, it just seems to depend on your geographical location as to what flavor of alcohol. My husband’s Russian/Jewish family advised Vodka for the same purpose. I’m not sure where my mom got Rum; it doesn’t seem like a particularly Scottish brew….

Not the actual Adorablepants - he's more of a Guiness kind of guy

The Scottish seem to have a more free-range approach to child raising. It makes sense when I think of my childhood. I grew up in the mountains, and my sister and I would literally run in the woods from sun up till it was cold and dark outside. The other day Mr. Adorablepants made a beeline down our driveway and was headed straight for the middle of the street where a giant, filthy mud puddle was beckoning him. I yanked him back to safety before he made the asphalt. My Scottish neighbor shook her head at me in a way that said ‘oh you poor dumb girl’ and said, “You young women are so over worried, how’s he ever going to learn?” Learn what? What it’s like to get hit by a car? Or what it feels like to contract malaria from puddle water?

In terms of crafts I fail at mommyblogging as well. For Christmas this year I decided that because we are chronically cash-strapped, that Mr. Adorablepants and myself were going to make the presents for his grandparents. Mr. Adorablepants happens to be a champion finger painter; he’s like Jackson Pollack with a dash of Picasso with just a taste of Magritte – a genius. Anyhow, I decided that Adorablepants would paint the canvases and I would make frames for them and tada! Presents.

Disclaimer: Not the actual Adorablepants, all stunts were perfomed by a stand-in

Personally, I thought they turned out pretty darn all right. Downright okay. The reviews I got from the grandparents were this: “It was so creative, really, unlike anything else we’ve ever seen….” In my experience describing something as ‘creative’ is a euphemism for ‘ugly and weird’.

So there ya go folks, this is my one and only mommyblog. No product endorsements included and no usable advice either – please, for the love of all things holy, don’t use the Scottish parenting advice.

But here’s a few mommyblogs I would recommend:

http://sarcasticmom.com/
http://undomesticdiva.typepad.com/
www.redbrownblondeandbald.com

So read away, and stay away from the Rum.

I think I have the Na’vi blues. You know, the pandemic that’s running rampant across the country, affecting mostly dorks and the emotionally unstable? If you’ve escaped as a result of either a staunch (and well grounded) refusal to watch James Cameron movies, or because you’re just awesome and/or mentally healthy – the Na’vi blues has been classified as depression brought on by watching James Cameron’s Avatar and the crushing realization that real life will never, ever be as beautiful as Pandora.

Although, in Pandora you run the risk of being eaten by a giant rat thing and stomped by enormous rhinos, not to mention the imminent threat of being clawed to death by the big bird-dragons. (In my perfect paradise, all wildlife is fuzzy, vegetarian and likes to cuddle.) Never mind all that though, when you get past the ridiculously dangerous predators in Pandora, you get to plug your hair into plants and CGI’d animals and commune with nature.

I think we’re all suffering from the Pandora Blues. It’s been a creeping epidemic for some time now, and I think we have James Cameron to blame. The Abyss was the first movie to exhibit unearthly CGI effects, Cameron’s stilted writing and character development. Titanic followed in the tradition, bigger than life sets, ships, characters, flowing dresses that in real life would have caught on fire as Rose ran in slow motion through the coal burning room.

I don’t think Avatar is to blame, necessarily, but I do think it pushed us over the edge. There are a lot of CGI wonder movies out this year. The Lovely Bones is another that created a heaven (sorry – not heaven, it’s the in-between) that is so beyond our imagining beautiful that it makes our everyday lives look drab by comparison. That’s kind of the problem though, in The Lovely Bones, the novel by Alice Sebold – Susie Salmon’s in-between wasn’t glorious CGI’d rolling planets of butterflies and turquoise skies melting into impossibly high snow-capped mountains.

It was a the high school where Susie would have gone if she hadn’t died, and hundreds of dogs that ran across the field to her house at twilight to play. It was faintly skunk-scented air that reminded her of home. It was effective in its simplicity. If Sebold’s theory that we create our own afterlife is correct, that is more on par with what us normal folks will imagine, it won’t be enormous blooming roses trapped under a lake of clear blue tinted ice, it will be our homes at the time we felt most safe, most at peace. It will be warm oatmeal cookies and fireplaces that keep the house just perfectly cozy.

But that doesn’t make for very good cinema, does it? So Avatar and The Lovely Bones both have broken the bar for beautiful. Anything else will too much like real life – no wonder we’re depressed.

It’s all symptomatic of a much bigger restlessness. We’ve made our celebrities impossibly good looking, too skinny to be a ‘normal’ person, their lives too dramatic to be at all comparable to our own. We revel in finding photographs of celebrities doing ‘normal’ stuff like going to the coffee shop without makeup on – in fact you can get whole tabloids who specialize in celebrities without makeup doing human things like buying groceries. Then we sit back and act shocked that they aren’t red carpet gorgeous all the time.

It seeps into our politics. We want wondrous results, and we want them NOW. While logically we know that many of the reasons for our current economic recession started eight, even ten years ago – you see hoards of outraged voters, ready to drop kick Obama for not fixing the problem in under a year. Before Obama was even inaugurated you started hearing hints of ‘The Obama Recession’.

I think it’s less about politics, I find that the more the person actually knows about politics, the less likely they are to start pointing fingers at any one president be it Obama, Bush or Clinton.

No, I think it’s more of the Pandora Depression, we took the concept of Hope and Change and turned it into 200 story tall trees with little white jelly fish magical souls floating on our shoulders when it should have been a gentle twilight and a field of happy dogs.

Hope and Change are concepts, the reality of our country and our lives is that things take time, and the results rarely resemble what you imagined. The real power of Hope and Change is the concept that you will always be able to deal with unexpected results and gradually, over time, forward motion won’t be as difficult as it once was.

I want to throw a fork at John Edwards.

Today, John Edwards admitted that he lied to Nightline and that Reille Hunter’s baby girl is, indeed, his daughter. And not only is she his daughter but that he also went to enormous lengths to try to cover up the incident back in February 2008 when the baby was born. Allegedly he relocated Hunter from North Carolina to Santa Barbara and rewarded her silence with a three million dollar home. On top of that, he actually faked the DNA results and talked a campaign staffer named Andrew Young into taking the fall for him and claiming paternity. Oh, and did I mention that all this was happening while Edwards was cheating on his cancer stricken wife?

Dog.

I bet another three million that we would never have heard this admission if Andrew Young wasn’t about to publish a tell-all memoir of his experiences on Edwards campaign. Oh, did I mention that the powers that be are investigating Edwards’s use of campaign funds for his 2008 election bid?

He was my horse early on in the 2008 election; he was my pick in the 2004 election. I was never crazy about John Kerry, but I was excited by the prospect of Edwards in office. So when the primaries started heating up back in 2008, I had my fingers crossed for Edwards even though backing him meant that it would be another white man in office. I still backed him.

I liked his health reform policies. I liked his proposal of regional health care markets. I liked that he wanted to do away with the Defense of Marriage Act and legalize marriage for all couples – be they gay or straight. I also liked that he wanted to withdraw from Iraq within ten months. I can’t say I really believe that it would have happened, or that his health care reform would have been met with any less animosity than Barack Obama’s reform attempts. But, I wanted to believe it.

But now, now…well, now I want to throw a fork at him, hard. I will never understand the urge that overcomes men in power, be they democrats or republicans, to compromise their integrity, destroy their family, and blow up their public image at a time when the entire country is staring at them and not only judging them, but also looking for cracks in their shiny veneer. I just don’t get it.

Is the urge for sex that strong? Seriously men, you have to help me out here – is that it? Or is it, as I suspect it might be, something else – a need to feel powerful, like you’re so much the shiz-nit that you can have any woman you want. You can skip all the niceties, the dating, the wooing, the compliments and the dinners and skip right to sex. Then, when it gets complicated, you can buy a three million dollar house in Santa Barbara (I’d say mansion, but knowing Santa Barbara – Hunter is probably living in a two bedroom bungalow with no yard, three million doesn’t go all that far…..) and ship your trophy and unfortunate offspring across the country.

My mother has a theory (to her it’s more like a doctrine) that when dealing with executive branch elections, we should only elect the old money rich. Her logic is that old money rich has nothing to prove, and isn’t going to be constantly trying to show off the size of his man bits to his staffers. She says that when we vote for rags to nouveau riche aka John Edwards, we’re voting for someone who is going to be by default in shock from the amount of power that they just inherited and thereby constantly trying to prove what a great, important man he is.

And before you say it…er…write it….there are 10,000 examples of Kennedy’s and Clintons to prove her wrong. This is what makes Christmas at my house really, really fun.

Nonetheless, it’s an interesting theory. Part of the reason I liked Edwards initially was his son of a coal miner, boy made good charm. But I suppose what I really have to admit to myself is that I like that quality in theory but when I think about the sheer amount of shit that the President of the United States has to take from the good ol’ boys club also known as the Senate, I want someone who doesn’t think he has to prove anything to anybody. I want a Kennedy, an Obama. I want someone who could stare down the Harvard Law Review and not blink. I don’t want folksy charm or uplifting anecdotes about Edward’s coat of many colors. I want balls.

I just hope that the victims of John Edwards downward spiral find some peace.

I like to fantasize about moving to exotic foreign countries, like Canada. So every once in awhile, I find myself up late with insomnia, googling phrases like ‘so you want to become a Canadian’ or ‘how to move to France’. My findings will be the topic of another, more in depth blog, I promise, but it’ll have to wait. I got sidetracked by crazy. As it turns out, it’s hard to move to a foreign country, the French government doesn’t seem at all enthusiastic about my plan of not working and instead sitting in quaint little cafes and eating baguettes all day. Pfftt….who knew the French were so uptight?

So I turned my sights to more attainable countries, I figured that maybe if I go to a less popular place…the immigration process will be easier. I did a little hunting around and found this guy named Max, who wants to start his own autonomous community and house it in the middle of a third world county where presumably they won’t notice it’s there or won’t care.

I know that you’re thinking – this sounds like my college roommate, the first roommate, the one I suspected of being the uni-bomber, the one who constructed voodoo dolls out of paper clips and left them scattered on my bed when I’d go to class. That roommate, the one that mysteriously disappeared after winter break….. I think this is a male version of my college roomie, all grown up and full of ambition.

Max’s idea is called The Liberty Colony. I had a hard time actually finding his site…maybe he has it under super Liberty Colony induced security….but here’s a link to a discussion wherein Max tries to sway people to his cause:

http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/2725.aspx?PageIndex=1

The basic idea is that the Liberty Coloneers would be exempt from all the stifling, controlling government meddling and free to practice full entrepreneurial freedom. They’ll make millions! Of course….since they’ll be living in a third world county (some suggestions on the site include Somalia, Afghanistan) the likelihood that their amazing products and/or services will be funded by the locals is slim. I guess they’ll be utilizing the world wide web….of course, they can do that already, and they don’t have to live in Puntland. But there must be something I’m missing about the allure of The Liberty Colony, right?

Worried that they might be a little close-minded? Just like my college roommate was close-minded when I asked if she would consider not cleaning her frog tank in the shower stall….. Don’t worry, The Liberty Colony accepts all sorts of different political views: “a variety of groups to include conservatives, libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, minarchists and a variety of other variously named groups.”

See? True diversity. Libertarians and anarchists!

Max is serious. Just like my college roomie was serious about never washing her hair. He only wants hard-core applicants, and this is not for the faint of heart. If you go to the Liberty Colony, of course, since the location is to be kept secret – that’ll be hard…. But if you go, you are signed on for a year contract, after that you’re free to ‘do as you please’, c’mon, are you going to get an offer like that from France?

“…in the first year the initial Colonists agree to be governed by the initial PDA. After one year is expired they are released from that obligation and can do as they please…”

Max is totally reasonable. Just like my roomie was totally reasonable when she used my teapot to make ramen noodles, thus making my next cup of tea taste like powdered chicken Ceylon….

If this really is my ex-roomie, then I think I’ll have an in. I might even get waved the tax that Max is proposing to charge his new inhabitants. Did I accidentally say tax? That’s not what I meant, Max would never ‘tax’ anyone; taxes are a symptom of communist socialist fascist regime bent on destroying personal liberty. That’s not what the Liberty Colony is all about. No, Max is simply requiring operational costs – that are paid directly to him for the privilege of living in rural Afghanistan….

Interested? Max is taking the first 100 applicants as soon as he can mix the Kool-Aid…I mean take the applications. Want to help? Here’s some suggestions that Max offers:

“Also, there are other ways to help:
1. Spread the word about the site.
2. Help recruit colonists.
3. Help sponsor a specific Colonist or contribute to the general fund to pay for the Colonists. Every bit helps.
4. Volunteer to be a mod in the forums and post in the forums.”

You can also contact Max at: info@libertycolony.com

In fact, if you actually do contact Max, and get a reply – I’ll send you a prize….granted that prize will be something I find around my house, and will be of varying value….but a prize nonetheless. It’s a contest!

I’ve come to appreciate the spam that tries to infiltrate my blog. I really have. Since I started this blog last year, the quality of spam has gone up tenfold. In the old days, I used to check my comments and be hit with five to ten comments pending approval that all said:

“Try Levitra! Best For Your Face! Best Love For You and Yours.”

I’m not sure what Levitra does, but I am pretty sure that it doesn’t belong on your face.
Then the spam took a different turn – it showed up all in Russian or Arabic. My first reaction was ‘I’m a global sensation! Go Me!’ Then as I read the Russian…I picked up certain key words – namely ‘Levitra’, ‘Viagra’, and ‘Cepocal’.

Either my global audience is worried about my face, or there was no global audience, only global spam.

But, I’ve got to say, the spam that’s hitting my inbox lately is of a much higher quality. I think the spam bots have learned that I am susceptible to flattery, and they’re working me, oh yes they are.

For example:

“Aw, this was a really quality post. In theory I’d like to write like this too – taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and never seem to get something done.”

This comment comes from my new BFF Tad, whose email is www.buyumbrellastrollers.com. A suspicious person might just think that Tad is buttering me up so I approve his comment and then anyone who clicks on his name, wanting to know more about my BFF, will be directed to a site that sells umbrella strollers and possibly Levitra.

Cynics. I think Tad is sweet on me. Take for example this next comment:

“It appears that you have placed a lot of effort into your article and I require more of these on the net these days. I sincerely got a kick out of your post. I don’t really have much to say in response, I only wanted to comment to reply wonderful work.”

This love note comes to me from my next in line BFF, Billy. Billy virtually resides at www.bodybuildersusa.com. I like a man who takes care of himself. Billy was so blown away by my extra stupendous writing that he couldn’t even say much in response, he just dropped in to stroke my ego, and possibly sell me some Viagra.

I’ve figured out three rules that future spammers need to follow if they are to get past the ironclad, bulletproof moat that surrounds my comment section.

Rule #1: Kiss My Ass
Rule #2: Kiss My Ass
Rule #3: Kiss My Ass

Yep, that’s really the secret folks, just kiss my ass. Tell me that your blown away by my writing, tell me that you accidentally found my blog and now you think you have a crush on me, tell me anything – as long as I don’t find pharmaceuticals or foreign mail order bride ads in your tagger – you’re golden.

Sometimes though, I get some readers who sound a little disappointed:

“Wow. A New Year but where are the new posts? Please write something new ”

Poor Bill at www.onlinebusinessopportunities.com. I’ve been neglecting him and now he’s sad. Good thing he’s making so much money from home, or else he’d need some Levitra for his face.

Lots of people try to cheer me up. I get tons of jokes:

“Why did the chicken cross the road? To buy discount vicodin at www.cheappharms.com’

Don’t worry, I didn’t get it the first time either – it’s kinda a joke bomb, it’ll go off in about three hours and you’ll find yourself howling with laughter for seemingly no reason. Or maybe it was the side effects of the generic pain meds….

In any case, readers, keep it coming. I especially like the real comments, the ones that let me know you’re out there. But vicodin jokes are good too…..

I don’t understand Twitter. Against my better judgment, the husband convinced me to try Twitter, and I’ve been at it for a couple of weeks. He told me it was like Facebook – if you like Facebook, you’ll love Twitter. He said it was an excellent place to broadcast the random ‘news’ articles I find, or the blogs I like or just post random statements about myself without the self-conscientiousness that I occasionally feel on Facebook. No offense intended Facebook – it’s just that with Facebook, I understand that even if I’m bored or in an insomniatic fit and I feel like posting a new update every five minutes – I shouldn’t. I’ll look crazy and I’ll drive my friends crazy.

Plus, I pretty much know most of my Facebook peeps – a lot of us grew up in the same small town together, some of us worked together in theatre, some of us teach together, some of us know mutual people and appreciate the same interests i.e. writing, reading, Swedish horror movies….. It’s like a really big, slightly disjointed family. We stay on our best behavior and generally appreciate each other’s quirks.

Not Twitter. Twitter is crazy land to me.

The best analogy I can come up with is that Facebook is like Wine With Friends Night – and Twitter is Drunken Binge on Tequila Night With Co-Workers.

You’ve all been there, or maybe you’ve just had to hear about it, or clean up after your roommate….either way – you know what I’m saying.

Wine With Friends Night means that we all get together, have a few too many glasses of something expensive and start talking about whether the Japanese ‘Ringo’ can even be compared to the ‘The Ring’ and why ‘No Country For Old Men’ made a better movie than book whereas ‘The Road’ made a better book than movie, and the merits of Cormac McCarthy.
Every once in awhile, as the night progresses, someone says something off the wall, then quietly excuses themselves to the bathroom and we all forget about it, they return and we order another bottle of merlot and keep on keepin’ on.

No one pukes in their hair, no one punches the bartender, and no one threatens their mother.
Not on Twitter – I mean Drunken Tequila Night With Co-Workers.

On Drunken Tequila Night, you’re hanging out with a bunch of people that you don’t really know very well. You might know that they bring a lean cuisine frozen pasta meal for lunch everyday that makes the microwave smell like marinara, and you might know that they have a hot boyfriend/girlfriend whose picture they keep on their desk. But you don’t really know them.

On Drunken Tequila Night, everyone is vying for attention. Everyone wants to be special, wants everyone else to see how pretty they are, how popular they are, how clever and witty they are, and most of all how hot they look when they giggle.

On Drunken Tequila Night, conversation eventually dissolves into random fact-bearing nuggets like:

“Hot Chocolate!!!!”

“I like Toast!”

“My right boob is smaller than my left boob!”

and occasionally, the totally inappropriate but psychologically telling outbursts such as:

“My mom is a heartless bitch who should have had an abortion.”

Incidentally, I ‘unfollowed’ that guy….

My point is this – I don’t get Twitter. I currently have eighteen followers and am following ninety-three people. I get flooded with people’s random, tequila induced thoughts every time I log on. I’m trying to figure out why I should care, or why they should care that I watched ‘Let The Right One In’ on Netflix last night.

In differentiating between Twitter and Facebook – there also seems to be a breakdown in the level of responsibility involved.

On Facebook – if someone posted something scary like ‘I just can’t take it anymore’ – I bet their inbox would be flooded with ‘are you okay’s?’ and their phone number that shows up on your profile would be called a few dozen times. Maybe not, but I’m hoping that’s the truth. I’ve done it, not the post but the phone calls and the follow messages demanding that people let me know they’re all right.

But, in Twitter land – if someone tweets that same thing – they’re likely to be ignored, or at best ‘retweeted’ – which basically translates to ‘I read this and while I can’t be bothered to make a comment, I’ll gladly repeat you”

Help me out people. I want to like Twitter, I mean Oprah likes it and she’s never steered me wrong….or has she?