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

Robot ad placement at its most disturbing: An ad for “old-fashioned hot dogs” attached to BoingBoing’s demo of vintage LSD scare-story about talking hot dogs with ketchup in their hair…

p.s. Einstein’s sister had moral issues with hot dogs–she loved them, but she was a vegetarian. Her famous brother kindly encouraged her, “You know, in your case, I believe the hot dog could be considered a vegetable.”

Similarly, my non-hot-dog-eating husband defended me at a physics picnic against some knowledgeable passerby warning about all the bad stuff they put into hot dogs (I eat one about once a year.) “What’s inside your hot dog,” said Frank, “is protons, neutrons, and electrons.”

Jon Udell is working on a cool tool for this.

Why would you want it? As Dave Winer said, when he and Andrew Grumet created a script to find people who share your RSS subscriptions, “Think of it as your personal echo chamber.” Your bookmarking doppelganger probably links to webpages you haven’t found yet–but will holler “Wow!”, “Wee doggie!”, or “W00t!” when you do.

Jon Udell plans to compare user profiles from the popular shared bookmarking site Del.icio.us. (Not surprisingly, his announcement has attracted a lot of bookmark action from folks who use Del.icio.us, including betsythedevine.)

So you have to share your bookmarks before you can find out who shares them with you. For some reason, this reminds me of one of my favorite Kevin Marks quotes from Bloggercon 1: “I realized that I can read thoughts–but only if people write them down first.”

David Sedaris (to pick one up-to-date essayist at random) tapdances across the page, pitching out spangles of detailed irony to a hip audience. And the backdrop for this display is some fine-looking tapestry of a topical and recognizable theme–Santaland at the mall! Country houses near Paris! High schoolers dreaming about the Ivy League!

But happy endings and hip ones don’t work together. The finale must always be close-up peeks through the tapestry–ooo, there’s a flaw in the weave!–so you see:

• melancholy!
• loneliness!
• rootless lives!
• futile unattainable aspirations to glory!!!!!!

Surprise! (Or at least, a surprise the first ten times you see this done.)

My goal as a writer is different. I want you, dear reader, to enjoy whatever cross-quilted oddball tapestry I’m working on so much that you smile forgivingly over its obvious flaws.

And my obvious flaws.

And even (I really hope this for each reader) your own.

Dateline, Monday May 31: Dave Winer is back in Cambridge — can we get a blog dinner going tonight? Don’t just hang out in your blogcave watching the flickering shadows? Glaucon You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners. Socrates Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? Glaucon True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? Socrates And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows? Glaucon Yes, he said. Socrates And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?…To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

My bad, after breakfast with Dave (including my first ever Podcast), I discover that he’d got the dinner hour scheduled for Chris Lydon’s show.

Just goes to show I need to get out of my cave more often…

I just signed up for my own LiveJournal blog. I love the helpful spelling corrections it offers:

bloggers — LiveJournal thinks this is a misspelling and suggests

loggers, floggers, blockers, logger’s, blokes, flogger’s, baggers, blocker’s, buggers, luggers, blowers, bilges, bloke’s, bloaters, bloomers, bloopers, blotters, braggers, sluggers

blogs — Another spelling mistake! LiveJournal suggests

blocs, bloc’s, blocks, blokes, bogs, logs, bilges, biogs, blows, blobs, blots, clogs, flogs, slogs, Belg’s, bulges, belongs, bilks, Borgs, belugas, bog’s, bogus, bolos, log’s, loges, logos, bongs, balks, bolas, boles, bolls, bolus, bulks, bolds, bolts, Bliss, belows, blahs, bliss, blouse, bolo’s, befogs, blips, bloats, blob’s, block’s, bloke’s, bloods, blooms, bloops, blot’s, bowlegs, brigs, clog’s

Why did I sign up for one? You can’t comment on someone else’s LiveJournal blog if you don’t have your own.

Besides, we truly dedicated floggers can never really have too many belugas…

Laurie Duncan http://www.tuaw.com
Judith Meskill http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/
Elizabeth Speirs http://www.mediabistro.com
Mary Hodder http://www.napsterization.org
Liza Sabater http://www.cultuerkitchen.com
Suzy Conn http://www.blogwaybaby.com
Betsy Devine http://betsydevine.weblogger.com/
Chris Hampton http://www.uffish.com/
Nichelle Stephens http://www.blogsheroes.com/
Elayne Riggs http://elayneriggs.blogspot.com/
Jen Bekman http://www.jenbekman.com
Andrew Horwitz http://www.culturebot.org/
Robert Diamond http://www.broadwayworld.com

Why does the name Forrest Mims look so familiar to geeks of a certain age?

Because wrote all those RadioShack books that got you started, starting with Getting Started in Electronics…
He’s now writing for a bi-weekly webzine called Citizen Scientist— the latest column on “The Scientific Names of Plants and Animals“…his own website reflects the breadth of his current interests…

Good to see he’s doing well, the Phillip Torrone of my own long-ago era…

How did I almost miss this? Fortunately, JR duly Noded it…:

“Today is 05/05/05 which by some strange coincidence is the same in Nations that put the Date First as well as Nations that Don’t…”

One small step toward world harmony on this Cinco de Mayo?