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

Going around the circle, introducing ourselves:

Marisa: My name is Marisa and my blog is “Nursing Student Hell.”

(Somebody else, very excited): I read your blog! I read your blog!

Marisa: You do? I’ve never met somebody who reads my blog before.

I love this conference.

…but not into jobs in the actual US of A.

Link to Lisa Williams and write to your congresscritter…

More than 10,000 years old, tattered scrolls found in a clay pot near Jericho contain what may well be the first two-minute pitch of a business plan. The scrolls were found near the remains of nine fossilized figs, said to represent the birth of agriculture: “Eleven thousand years ago, there was a critical switch in the human mind — from exploiting the earth as it is, to actively changing the environment to suit our needs,” Dr. Bar-Yosef said in a statement from Harvard. “People decided to intervene in nature and supply their own food rather than relying on what was provided by the gods.”

Nearby scrolls reveal, however, that the creative effort of early farmers quickly inspired some early entrepreneurs:

Hark, O King, to a plan whereby we shall profit many gold shekels from the “figs” whereof all Jericho now speaketh.

And some say, user-generated foodstuff is an abomination, for how can mere mortals create food like unto Jehovah’s?

Yet others torment the fig-planter, saying where is thy revenue model? Whereat the fig-planter’s teeth are set on edge.

O King, I propose to hang scrolls upon every fig tree, whereon any peddler or merchant may hawk his wares.

Many gold shekels of revenue will they pay us!

The fig-planter may be fobbed off with a small share, and we shall prosper greatly.

Yea, verily, we should acquire even more riches, could we but find some rival to undercut the price of that rascalous, greedy scribe, the one known as Google.

Still recovering from that long weekend…

• Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … Super Broccoli!
• Make your own motivational poster.
• Don’t wait around for the day when your ship comes in! Author Elizabeth Benedict quotes a friend: “Forget about the ship. It will be a series of small dinghies that’ll come your way.”
• Dervala reveals that Bill Clinton is her puppet.

Ah, Dervala, if only! He’d have acted a whole lot smarter if that were so…

• Lisa Williams has “annotated” her desk. Best inspirational signage ever!
• Niek Hockx wonders what happened to springtime as he shutterclogs off to the beach
• Congratulations to Ronni Bennett, who’s soon going “home” to the place she once longed for but lost.
• Tingilinde has some great tips on walking.
• Liz Lawley recommended Luna Bars in February–my family has been enjoying them ever since!
• Dave points to some ongoing hot OPML action.

Great quote from Liz Henry about an emotion I think of as “movie whiplash”:

I had that feeling… where you’ve been perfectly manipulated emotionally by a movie and can SEE exactly how and it’s sort of cheesy and embarrassing, but also incredibly profound and moving. So I’m being overanalytical on the movie at the same time as I’m crying a little bit and going “Nooooooo! Get on the train!!!!!” or “Kiss her, you fool!” or whatever.

And Pen-Elayne posted her own fine linkfest, including a pointer to this hilarious Metabloggery at No More Mister Nice Blog:

Let’s see: Here’s Atrios complaining about Mark Kleiman complaining about Atrios favorably linking to Digby complaining about Wonkette complaining about Peter Daou complaining about the media refusing to proclaim that Stephen Colbert was funny at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Give that man a prize for the ultimate in meta-blogging! As for me, sorry for my recent light blogging–I’m having a “crisitunity,” so thank goodness the rest of the world keeps on doing such interesting things.

Luboš Motl’s Reference Frame is an extremely popular physics blog–in fact, the number one Google result for “frank wilczek blog.” Luboš is offering a prize to his 400,000th visitor–and the same prize to visitor number 400,001, 400,002, 400,003, or 400,004–the opportunity to write a guest post there. But hustle on over there if you want to win; he’s already up to 399,679.

In other Luboš news, he is very kindly attempting to double (or do I mean halve? the nice one of those two) the Amazon rank of the now almost-officially-released Fantastic Realities.

Thanks, Luboš, and I hope those big-number visitors add interesting and amusing posts to your own collection.

For my bloggiversary, just a little late–not quite a top ten, but some good stuff from a very straaaaaange 2005.

If what you really like is the Funny Ha-Ha:

• Pre-mocking this year’s Oscars
• Randomly generate poetry based on your blog
• Volkswagen Beetles, and Robby, by a nose
• Maple syrup miracle (with shiny graphic of miracle Kokopelli)
• “I pledge allegiance to the fish”?

Here are the OpEd pieces you liked the most:

• Happiness is a Dutch bicycle
• Hallelujah for modern music, including Handel’s (with a graphic of multiply-pierced Mr. Handel)
• Word from a lover (and hater) of science museums
• Chuck McGee, now out of prison…
• AP reporter:”What happened? What happened?”

Traveler’s tales–and this year I traveled a lot!

• Soft watches and traveling Saturdays (Barcelona)
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Frank Wilczek, and Iker Casillas (Madrid)
• Galactic strawberries and DMZ birding (Lindau)
• Deciphering the technology of Mozart (Vienna)
• Home home home home home (Home!)

Finally, some personal thoughts I’m glad I wrote down here:

• Dried marjoram from her grandmother’s garden
• Geek celebration: Our billion-second-iversary
• Portrait of a 1918 blogger
• Father’s Day and loving men, just in general
• Christmas landscape with berries, birds, and blogfriends

This is a barge full of coal, one of many each day that float down the Ohio River. See the train tracks in this photo’s lower left? They carry multiple freight trains–gypsum and phone poles and sulfuric acid, going to market on rattling rails of steel. At night, in my comfortable hotel bed, I sometimes wake up a little to hear them go by. Pittsburgh is a constant reminder that our lives depend on more than bits and pixels and dollars. So, let this photo be my small contribution to the debate among Nicholas Carr, Doc Searls, and others on “Business as Morality.” Commerce as well-requited generosity works for only some people, and for them only some of the time. People need a reliable way to exchange some of their work for somebody else’s money–because coal and flour and steel and gasoline are produced by people who want to get paid for their work.

Meanwhile, in another part of the bloggy forest, Derek Powazek hates the term “user-generated content”, and so do

• Jeneane
• FactoryJoe
• Susan Mernit
• MobileJones
• …and others (a prize to Trogdor for the Most Funny Ha-Ha complaint.)

I agree “user-generated content” is ugly, but its ugliness reflects an ugly truth we might otherwise forget. There really are lots of people who see our “content” as something they hope to loot for their own benefit–and I don’t see why we “users” should try to forget that.