Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Headed home from Cleveland this morning (at 5:45 a.m., ugh!) to Cambridge, where multiple BlogHers are in town for Corante’s Symposium on Social Architecture. I’m looking forward to exciting blogdish and tagtalk from Mary Hodder, who doesn’t get to Boston often enough, not to mention Lisa and Halley, and Liz, whom I just don’t get to see often enough, except by way of their blogs.

While reading Liz (MamaMusings), I caught (kerchoo!) the latest funny search-meme. Search for your own name plus “needs” and blog some results.

Here’s some of what Google thinks a Betsy needs:

1. Betsy needs a family who will be understanding of her limitations
2. Betsy needs to develop an efficient method to find her information
3. Betsy needs to be trained before she can score essays
4. Betsy needs to be in a family where she can be watched pretty much 24-7
5. Betsy needs to understand that everyone believes that they act rationally according to their own worldview

At MSN Search, Betsy’s needs are more colorful :

1. Betsy needs a show name
2. Betsy needs to be switched to reserve on 200kms
3. Betsy needs a new title
4. Betsy needs a fenced yard
5. Betsy needs your help, support, and to hear from you!

Betsy’s needs at Yahoo add a touch of mystery:

1. Betsy needs to tell Amber some positive things about Kathy
2. Betsy needs to know asap
3. Betsy needs to see him when he’s green [????]
4. Betsy needs a break
5. Betsy needs extensive roof work done

Thanks to all you search gurus for helping us get in touch with our less-known needs–though I sure hope that “roof work” one is not prophetic, at least for this Betsy!

Brand new, from Scott Adams, just started October 24. Scott’s first post already has 27 comments–and I love its category, “Dilbert Stuff That Got Me In Trouble.”

His number one entry here? “Dangerous donuts”! At least he doesn’t blame that Krispy Kreme meme….

…though I clearly can’t can’t resist…

Warm, generous, funny Alpha-Male advocate, stealth-disco-ing Ms. Halley Suitt is in the hospital with chest pains. She seems to me a billion years too young for that! Please get well quickly, Halley, our bloggiverse needs you…

Inspired by David Weinberger’s lovely poem about “the modern embarassment of looking at a rainbow“:

Here’s a photo of a double rainbow by Robartes on Flickr.

And now for something unrelated: a giant trilobite in front of our fireplace.

This is all just a disjointed metapost to say that I’m back again from my not-very-wired summer.

Here we see two French Victorian visions of “l’An 2000”–with both news and personal messages delivered by, er, somewhat earlier versions of the iPod.

Even more amazing, they got the year almost right!

For even more graphic Y2K predictions, and some funky flying machines, check out the sorted-by-theme card-auction website
(scroll down “Other” to get to “Year 2000”)–thanks, Amity!

David Weinberger

“Around the fire, after a day of grubbing for grubs or dancing between the legs of a woolly mammoth, our ancestors didn’t harangue cavemates about how their new improved spear thrower would jump-start their sex life. You can’t fool anyone around the fire, because you’ve all been doing the same thing all day, your frailties and strengths on display.”

I love Britt Blaser’s new metaphor for blogging–the relaxed, communal, and various late-night chitchat of multiple voices around a campfire.

Link via Scripting— thanks, Dave!

Dave Winer laughed when I told him that yesterday, but it’s really true. In the looking-glass world of blogging and IRC, you can enjoy too-much social life without ever taking ten fingers off the keyboard.

Dave came to town and demoed his new OPML editor last night–
Lisa Williams and David Weinberger both live-blogged the event; you can replay the video made by Steve Garfield here.

But Dave and his demo will soon hit a city near you, most likely, and when they do, I urge you to get out and enjoy them.

As for me, I’m headed back to the backwoods!