I'm on the List

While I was up much later than I should have been cruising the internet superhighway, I clicked on a link to a blog post to find that I was actually mentioned in that blog post.

It is with great pleasure that I announce my inclusion in Spleeness's Funny Twitter Updates, vol.2.

Double Take

The other morning as I was in between sleep and something like wakefulness, I heard a commercial for some new flavors of a certain soft drink. At that time, all I thought about was the different flavors, marveling at all the ways they could come up with to shove sugar down our throats...

But the next day, I was slightly more awake and not just getting up when I heard the same commercial. During this listening, it occurred to me that this commercial might be some kind of pastiche* of The Vagina Monologues. They even called termed this 30-second beverage reverie, "The [Diet Soft Drink] Monologues." And the woman in the commercial, talked about how women weren't indecisive, they were open to the physics of various soft drink flavors (this is why we stock every flavor, you know, just in case).

Considering all that The Vagina Monologues stand for, should I be offended? Or just chalk it up to everyday capitalism?



*Nerd writer alert--I really love the word pastiche and rarely find the opportunity to use it in any meaningful way...

In Place of Our Regularly Scheduled Programming...

I really do have some brilliant thoughts and most excellent ponderings to share with you--but they are not quite formulated yet, and I'm running late. So in the meantime, check out my writings about the brilliance of others:

Edward P. Jones and Panel Discuss The Known World

Celebrate Black History Month with Music That Crosses Borders

The National Zoo Talks Animal S-E-X

So sad, even I have been reduced to using those three letters to get people to read my stuff:

Woo at the Zoo: Let's Talk About Sex

I'm thinking this will be one of my more well-read posts.

Extra! Extra! Read What's Left of It...

While most of the newspaper-y world is dismayed over the demise of The Washington Post's Book World, I am still in mourning for the Post's now-defunct Sunday Source section.
In part because I used to write for it, mostly because I miss reading it.

How Great Stories (and Blog Posts) Are Born

I was on the subway and reached in my bag for a book I'm reading. The woman in front of me was reading The Express and the article she was reading caught my eye. And instantly I had an idea for a blog post that I could put up on the Cultural Events Blog I write at Examiner.com. So I put the book down, got out my calendar and searched for a pen. I quickly scrawled the idea, and put the calendar and pen away so I could get a bit into my book before the train ride ended.

But that oh so persistent muse...well, really it isn't all that persistent There are days when I feel idea-free, and other times when I get stopped in the middle of something else with a great idea.

So I had to put down the book again and to scribble another idea. The way you can forget that a beautiful butterfly landed on your shoulder minutes before is the same way you'll forget a fleeting, but good idea.

Blog Post Confessional

When I ran into someone I hadn't seen in a while at a party, she confessed to me that she though she hadn't seen me, she felt as though she had been prying into my life by reading my blog. She seemed sort of embarrassed.

I reassured her that it was okay and that if I didn't want anyone to know, I wouldn't post it on my blog. The thing about blogging is that you are your own editor. And although it may seem that some people do not know when to stop, it really is all in their control and they choose to tell all (or what we think is all) because they want to do so.

And this blog is hardly all that confessional. There is plenty of things that I'll never write about. Anywhere. And isn't that how we all live our lives? We only tell part of the story. What we reveal doesn't add up to even half the story.

Been There, Got the T-shirt

The other day I stepped out in my hard-earned t-shirt that bears the logo of everyone's favorite satirical newspaper, The Onion. (Hard-earned in the sense that I worked hard at a contracting gig that put me in an area of DC to be near enough to the happy hour where they gave away the free t-shirts to actually saunter over there after work.)

Someone told me she loved my t-shirt and I said, "Yeah, I should have grabbed more." This was just some random comment I threw out. All they had were women's size small (an odd choice to have in abundance), so I didn't get more because I didn't see myself giving them away to all of my female friends who wear that size.

"You could have sold them on eBay," the woman replied.

We had just been talking about how I was a writer and she was thanking me for publicizing her event on the D.C. Cultural Events blog I write for Examiner.com.

"It's because you're a writer," she said. "You don't think like a marketer."

I could pout and say that this was an unfair generalization, but what the hell, it's true.

I need to think like a marketer, although I'm not sure I want to get into the t-shirt resale business...

Deer and Bears and Police, Oh My!

When The Washington Post asked me to do a Road Trip in Shenandoah National Park, I thought why not, since I'd never been.

You can read the article here:

Scouting Shenandoah's Skyline

The park staff said that the bears were friendly and that seeing a bear was often the highlight of a person's trip...I saw no bears, but I did catch on sign telling me that a certain area had "aggressive bears." Truthfully, I didn't know there was any other kind.

And I was delayed by a deer family eating lunch. They say not to get too close to them because they'll get frightened. So I had to wait 15 minutes or so for the fam to finish the picnic they were having right near my car.

To be honest, the unfriendliest and most frightening creature of all was the menacing park police officer who stopped me and gave me a warning for having a defective brake light.

BlogHer DC 2008

As I wrote in my previous post, there were definitely some goodies to be had at the BlogHer DC conference, like slippers, a cute little portable mouse for my laptop, and a laser pointer. But really these conferences are about knowledge and making connections.

If I had one big takeaway from the BlogHer DC conference, it was that authenticity is key. Authenticity and good content are Even when panelists had differing opinions on methods, techniques and formats, they all in some way advised bloggers to be true to themselves.

I thought about this when I overheard someone at the closing cocktail reception say that he was going to get his site all spruced up with bells and whistles. He reasoned that if it looked good people would come, even if he didn't put so much time into the content. Sure they'll come, but will they stay? And will they ever return?

At a bare minimum, a blogger needs to identify themselves somehow--with a picture, a graphic or a tagline--and give readers some method for contacting the blog's author.

You also need to spread the link love, meaning you gotta include hyperlinks to the cool stuff you mention and link to the cool bloggers you read. I definitely have to do more of the latter, but here is some of the former. I got great tips on some online tools to put method to my madness:

rescuetime.com--Analyzes your internet usage each day. You can set alarms to help you limit time on certain applications (Facebook!!).

yoono.com--Links you into your Twitter, Facebook and IM accounts on one page.

Zotero.org--This is a good tool for aggregating research, as their tagline says: 'research, not re-search.'


digsby.com--A tool for organizing and aggregating your e-mail accounts and social networking applications.


springpadit.com--This set of online notebooks wants to help you get organized one project at a time. It's still in beta, so you have get a code, but look for it to launch.

alertbox.com--This usability guru's site isn't cute, but it doesn't have to be because he has the inside scoop.

Besides learning about these super-useful online tools, I also learned that the Chinese have a word for the first person to leave a comment on a blog/article and that people are having virtual baby/wedding showers where they present to stories to the guest of honor.

Who knew?

That Chicken You See Running Around With No Head--Yeah That's Me

I'll be at the BlogHer 2008 Conference all day today. I wish I could tell I was doing something brilliant like Twittering the conference or something. But I'll be taking notes the old-fashioned way.

Then I'll be dashing over the the Washington Post to hear children's book legends Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury because a) I want to hear them speak and b) I am on the board of he WNBA-DC Chapter and we are co-sponsoring the event.

But hey, there are many days when I just watch the tumbleweed roll by.

David Sedaris
My first experience with author David Sedaris almost got me killed.

I got one of his audio books from the libary, unaware of what I was in for. I thought it would be mildly amusing, but instead it was unbelievably hilarious. So much so that when I listened to it in the car, I was laughing so hard, I nearly ran a stop sign.

Sedaris isn't for everyone, of course, but if you aren't offended by his offbeat worldview and sometimes less than pc offerings, it is a treat to hear him read his work.

When I got an e-mail saying that someone I knew had an extra ticket to go hear David Sedaris speak, I jumped at the chance. Sedaris, who lives abroad, was here to promote his latest essay collection, When You are Engulfed in Flames.

As usual, Mr. Sedaris was laugh aloud funny. He is in the habit of paying someone at a book signing prior to a speaking engagement to introduce him. When a young woman who looked a little nervous approached the microphone, I thought she might have been university staff, but no, she was a student. Sedaris had offered her $10 to bring him out and for someone who hadn't planned to speak before a capacity crowd, she did a good job.

Book tours are all about promotion and he read a funny piece that The New Yorker had asked him to write about being on a book tour. But Sedaris doesn't just use him speaking engagements to promote himself. He also mentions, holds up and reads from the work of another author he admires. He read from The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders. This kind of promotion was good to see because not everyone is quite so generous.

This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land

It is always amazing to me how I can find an entirely different world when I travel just a few hours away from the metropolis I call home. I am a city girl, so anything that is not quite a city has a limited attraction. Still, it is good to be reminded that although everyone does not live as city-dwellers do, we all have plenty in common.

On my way to Shenandoah National Park to do research for a Washington Post story, I saw a hand-scrawled sign that read: NRA Supporter for Obama. The person who made that sign had a point to make. Later I saw one that declared Virginia to be McCain Country.

More and more I see people sporting all kinds of variations of the mohawk. But I didn't expect to see any mohawks once I got a little deep into Virgina. Sure enough, a man at a gas station had a mohawk that was accompanied by a rat tail in the back.

The Mohawk/Rat Tail man came into a convenience store as I was paying for my (cheap!) gas to announce/ask about getting some gas on store credit. He said he needed to gas for two hours because he was going to get some money and that he'd be back. This transaction (or lack therof) was surprising to me. I didn't think people still did things like that. But with the way things are going, everyone may be bartering and borrowing a lot more.

Recently, I was allowed to get items from a store on credit, so I can't say that it doesn't happen in big cities. However, it is a phenomenon I associate more with small town living.

A Brief and Wondrous Book Signing with Junot Diaz


Author events usually don't get too interactive until the end when they open things up for Q&A, but Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Diaz started out his talk last night at Politics & Prose by asking the audience for their thoughts on DC, the times we live in and living in DC in the times we live in, so that made for a much more shared experience. He was funny, even when he didn't intend to be, but also very insightful.

These aren't exact quotes, but more like my impressions of some of what was said:

On the upcoming election:
Diaz said that the fictional narratives of the political parties are so sloppy, he can't believe people are lapping it up and that even the worst genre writer couldn't write this way. And he encouraged people to keep journals of the next 50 days to have a record of what we're going through, though he added that what we're going through will help no one.

On anger:
When he started to read a second passage from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, someone asked for the page number. He said, "I refuse to reveal the page number on truculence alone." But then he did reveal it, admitting that he was a big wuss. Diaz said that ten years of failure had helped rid him of his anger and that part of growing up means you become a big wuss.

On being a writer and on expectations:
When someone asked for suggestions on how to teach parts of Oscar Wao, he said that as a writer your own work tends to elude you. This got laughs, but he meant it. Then after the questioner told how she'd teach it, he gave some other suggestions.

When someone asked why he was more "authentic" at this reading than at another at the Folger Shakespeare Library, where this person thought he had been more "polite," he said that he had gotten an 8 page letter lambasting him for cussing and being too much at that very same event. And he added that people expect writers to be the same every time, which they can't be.

On hope:
A Caucasian gentleman from Texas started talking and was eventually in tears as he relayed how his Dominican wife and children struggled at times, living in a part of the U.S. where they were not always appreciated. He said they all drew inspiration from Diaz's work, especially his 13-year old son. The tearful man asked Diaz if there was any hope for the future.

Diaz gave a wonderful impromptu speech about how people do the things they do like write books and raise children because they have hope. He said things will get better and worse. Then he talked about being of African descent and said that for hundreds of years his ancestors in the DR were bred to work, with no say in who to love and no real chance to benefit from the fruits of their labors. He said there is hope for the future, but that we are going to have to really fight for it.

And because this entry is getting long, I'll close by saying that Diaz, admitted nerd and Jersey/Dominican nationalist, answered a final question that referenced his worldview by saying that in his mind everyone on the spaceship in Star Trek is Dominican.

Death Be Not Proud

As a word person, I have to say that some words irk me or perhaps I should say I find the way people use some words is irksome.

Case in point: my brother and his wife like to use the word "kill" when they finish off anything.

"Can I kill this orange juice?"

"I killed the rest of the pizza."

This word is standard in journalism when it is decided that a story will not run.

I'm doing some contract work as fact checker and I sat in an editorial meeting where someone declared that a famous actress had been "killed." Though he knew perfectly well what this terminology means in a journalistic setting, one editor looked shocked for a second. For just a moment, he thought that the woman had died, when really the story about her had been stricken from the current issue of the publication.

Speaking of stricken stories...I just learned that a story I toiled over for The Washington Post was killed. It isn't a death and yet I mourn...

But some stories are resurrected and brought back to life. In their original form or in some alternative format. So hope springs eternal.

Remembering the Howard Theater in its Heyday

As I was taking photos of the old Howard Theater for a Road Trip article I wrote for the Washington Post (Raise Your Hands for a Gospel Tour of Washington), I was greeted by three old men sitting in a Cadillac. They regaled me with tales of the theater in its heyday. One said that Della Reese lived across the hall from him in Cleveland. They even told me that at one time the sign was on the corner of the building and not in the center where it is now. The theater is now in disrepair, but grant money is going to be used to restore the theater to its former greatness.

I was telling someone else about it later and they described it exactly as I thought of it—it was like being the barbershop. They were both comrades and rivals and they tripped over each other and helped each other in reminiscing. I was there to act as the audience they needed to take a trip back in time. For once, I stopped to listen rather than sticking to my plan of doing what I needed to do and moving on.

It was fantastic to hear them talk about growing up in DC and listen to a time when people were less cynical and it didn’t take so much to dazzle us. It was a thrill just to see the performers enter the theater. “I used to come up here just to smell how those men smelled,” one of them said to show just how intoxicating the experience was for him as a boy.

The Glamorous Life

Not too long ago, I was interviewing for some contract work and the interviewer said, rather sheepishly, that to him my writing work sounded “glamorous.” Why would I want to do something so un-glamorous as contract work?

(Since a few words can trigger a song in my head, I went to YouTube and dug up the old Sheile E. video you see above.)

There is some glamour to writing, but a lot of it is as grueling as any other kind of work. In addition to being a striving creative genius, I am HR, PR, Marketing, Accounts Payable, Account Receivable, CEO, peon, janitor and cafeteria staff. But yeah, when I am driving somewhere and its not rush hour or sleeping late, rather than getting up at the crack of dawn after working really hard the day before, I do feel rather fortunate. I certainly don’t do it for the money (ha!). As a lifelong nerd, I really do love to go behind the scenes, get to the bottom of things, see how they tick and then find a way to explain that other people.

It is funny how when someone who is supposed to be “creative” mentions money they become a sellout of some sort. Writers should embrace some kind of chic poverty, rather than trying to pay bills and retire like everyone else. I just left a networking event where I agreed with someone about wanting to make more money and someone’s reaction was, “Oh, you’re a mercenary writer!” No one ever accuses middle managers, engineers or teachers of being mercenary when they talk about their desire to earn more. Few people work for free. Why should a writer be any different?

Has it come to this?

Ok, while I'm busy writing about text messaging, my brain has been busy forgetting how to engage in old school methods of communication. I sat down to type a letter and for a brief moment panicked because I couldn't remember which address (sender/recipient) went where. Then I remembered.

But the internet is there to help. In case you've forgotten too,
here's a visual.

Where's the Beef?

I had a few choice topics in mind for a blog for today. But my digital camera ate a few pictures I'd taken (which could be a blog post in itself), so I was left pondering what to write about.

Well, I just got an e-mail that blew all of those other possible blog topics right outta the water.

I HAVE BEEN INVITED TO JUDGE A MEATLOAF CONTEST!

Yup, that's right. I knew if I kept at it, they'd be coming to me. A restaurant I wrote about maybe a year ago has requested my presence at a contest to decide who fires up the best mound of meat. The contest isn't until October, so you'll have to stay tuned for all of the exciting developments.

Unaccustomed Earth (in more ways than one)

So I'm reading Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (great book by the way, every time I pick it up I don't want to put it down) and reading some of the accompanying press that is generated when an author has a new book out...and I am wondering why the media has decided to doggedly pursue the same line of questioning with regards to her writing.

Everyone either asks or refers to other people asking her why she only writes about immigrants from India and their children...as if there is something wrong with that. She is the child of Indian immigrants. And to be fair, her characters are Indian, Indian American and Caucasian, so there is some variety.

No one asks African-American authors why they mainly write about black people. They don't even ask Amy Tan why she keeps writing about immigrants from China. And no one ever asks white authors why most of their characters are white.

But there are a different set of expectations for "minorities" and within that perilous category of minorities, there are different expectations for different minorities.