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

Bloglines is a free web-based aggregator created by Mark Fletcher. It
was the first newsreader I tried, and I like many of its features. But
I’m very frustrated they lost all my subscribers! Here’s how it
happened– I toyed with the email addresses to frustrate spambots.

From: bdevine@spambotsarestinky.hotmail.com Subject: Web Form: [Feeds] Date: 29 Oct 2004 15:10:56 -0000

Hi–Bloglines shows the RSS feed for my blog as defective or missing,
and has for about the past 24 hours. My RSS feed is fine, and I’d love
my friends who subscribe to it in Bloglines to be able to read my
latest post (yesterday). I don’t know if this is a problem with Manila,
with weblogger.com, or with Bloglines, but I’m hoping you can fix it
anyway. BTW, that was great you gave $ to BloggerCon 3! Thx, Betsy

Feed: http://BetsyDevine.weblogger.com/xml/rss.xml

From: “Bloglines Customer Support”
<support@spambotsarestinky.bloglines.com> To:
bdevine@spambotsarestinky.hotmail.com Subject: Re: [#10889] Web Form:
[Feeds] Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 13:45:53 -0700 Hi there



Thanks for the bug report. We’re investigating it and hope to have it resolved soon.



— Kate kate@spambotsarestinky.bloglines.com Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com



Tell a Friend about Bloglines! http://www.bloglines.com/sendsubs

From: Betsy Devine [mailto:bdevine@spambotsarestinky.hotmail.com] Sent:
Monday, November 08, 2004 6:12 AM To:
support@spambotsarestinky.bloglines.com;
kate@spambotsarestinky.bloglines.com Subject: Re: [#10889] Web Form:
[Feeds]

 Hi Kate and/or other supporters–

Whatever “fix” was applied caused my feed to lose all its 51 Bloglines subscribers including me.

Please give me back my subscribers, I worked hard to get them to like my blog.

In related news, I re-subscribed to my feed (so did 1 other person) and it isn’t updating in Bloglines.

Unhappily yours, Betsy

http://BetsyDevine.weblogger.com “Making trouble today for a better tomorrow.”

To: “‘Betsy Devine'”
<bdevine@spambotsarestinky.hotmail.com> Subject: RE: [#10889] Web
Form: [Feeds] Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 18:08:51 -0800



 Hi Betsy,



Oh no, sorry about that.  Let me see what I can find out for you.



Thanks for your patience.



Kate

From: “Betsy Devine” <bdevine@spambotsarestinky.hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: [#10889] Web Form: [Feeds] Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 10:50:44
-0500

Hi Kate–

I want the 50 people you unsubscribed from my feed to be re-subscribed,  please.

If this isn’t possible, I would like Bloglines to use some other way to
help  me get my subscribers back–maybe by adding my blog as a top
Recommendation  for people who subscribe to the same blogs I
subscribe to.

If this isn’t possible, I will have to blog about this very bad
experience with Bloglines as a way to notify my former subscribers that
they are no  longer subscribed.

I hope to hear back from you soon about this problem. Betsy

http://BetsyDevine.weblogger.com “Making trouble today for a better tomorrow.”

From :  Bloglines Customer Support <support@spambotsarestinky.bloglines.com>

Sent :  Tuesday, November 16, 2004 6:12 PM

To :  “Betsy Devine” <bdevine@spambotsarestinky.hotmail.com>



Subject :  Re: [#11477] Web Form: [Feeds]



Hi there Betsy,



Unfortunately we have no way to recovering that information.



Your site will most likely show up as
a recommendation for other people subscribed to the same sites. That’s
how  the system works.



Please accept our apologies.



Thanks, — Kate



kate@spambotsarestinky.bloglines.com Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com



Tell a Friend about Bloglines! http://www.bloglines.com/sendsubs

In an unmicrophoned and intimate space behind the Agassiz Theater,
Harvard’s Early Music Society presents L’Orfeo, Monteverdi’s 1697
“fable in music.”

I went to the dress rehearsal tonight–real tickets have sold out for
all but opening night, and no wonder–Harvard has excellent word of
mouth. Music director Thomas Kelly and stage director Zoe Vanderwolk
(yes, that Zoe, the multi-talented blogger at Greenpass) have created a
seamlessly transparent, honest staging of this classic.

From the opening fanfare (sackbuts and cornettos baroque trumpets*) to curtain calls with
the young cast taking their bows, you are under the spell of Claudio
Monteverdi. Costumes and scenery are scaled to enhance the opera’s own
magic–nothing is pretentious, nothing is tricksy–if only the ART**
could stage classics so well!

Among many talented players, some are especially good. Lovely, grave,
clear-voiced Erica Brookhyser personifies “Music,” bare-armed and
bare-footed in heavy silk classical drapery. (It gave me a start to see
her at intermission in blue jeans and clogs, chatting with one of the
lutanists. “I only come onstage during the happy acts,” she explained.)

Paul Guttry as Charon (“Caronte”) maintains fine control of expressiveness and tone way down into some very deep bass territory.

Samantha Franklin sings an irresistibly flirtatious Persephone
(“Proserpina”)–and Nick Vines (“Pluto”) convincingly falls for her
wiles, going from pouty to patriarchal with dignified grace.

All in all, it was a marvelous evening of music and theatre–congratulations to all for a job well done!

*  Memo to self: don’t blog at 2 a.m.
**Cambridge’s American Repertory Theater (ART) is famous for avant
garde productions of classics, an ultramontane version of bait and
switch where (for example) Uncle Vanya is performed by actors engulfed
in overcoats, or Pericles is enlivened by nude videos of its principal
actresses.

2 B OR NOT 2B TAHT IS DA QUESTION1!!!!1 OMG WTF

IM translator via Joi Ito

Your name as a rock star, if you become one…

(Favorite candy / Last name of favorite musician ): Reeces Pieces Clapton

 

Your “fly boy” nickname, a la J. Lo?

(First
initial / First two or three letters of your last name): B. Dev (or
maybe R. Cla, if we start with Reeces Pieces Clapton.)

 

As a famous fashion designer, you’d call yourself…

(First word you see on your left / Favorite restaurant) Thesaurus Temple Bar

 

If the CIA recruits you as an exotic foreign spy, you’ll need a cover identity…

(Favorite spice / Last foreign vacation spot): Oregano Geneva

 

If you become a billionaire socialite, tabloids will call you…

(Silliest childhood nickname / Town where you first partied): Betsy Boo Manhattan

 

As a hard-boiled detective, you’ll be called…

(Favorite baby animal / Where you went to high school): Kitten Concord Academy.

 

If you walk into a bar on a regular basis, your fellow barflies will say “Here comes…

(Last snack food you ate / Your favorite alcoholic drink): Mixed Nuts Margarita!”

All things considered, I’d better stick to blogging as Betsy Devine.

Thanks to the Redhead, who’s about to get married, for her variations on the theme of name-changes.

WordCount* is an
online toy based on word popularity. (It ranks common English words
from #1 –“the”– to #86,800–“conquistador”.) You can use it to:

* Embellish short quotes or poems by giving each word its own popularity number:

* Play silly word-race games: “love” is only #384–slightly less
popular than “economic”, which is #383.  The word “Beatles”
(#12851) is more popular
than “Beatrice” (#12867)–I bet that would annoy the hell out of Dante
(#23652).

* Play the vanity word-race game–you know you want to. I confess I did, says Betsy (#19932) Devine (#32630).

* Thanks to Jonathan J. Harris for inventing WordCount!

Memo to the Venus de Milo: you’ve got too much tummy for a modern starlet. No wonder the rest of us all feel so “well-rounded.” Fortunately–I discovered thanks to BoingBoing–certified-genius physicist Richard Muller* just published some answers online to the modern problem of excess mass. Unfortunately–I then discovered–the two physics-secrets to losing weight are: 1. Consume fewer calories (Physics of Gluttony)         and 2. Get used to feeling hungry. (The Physics Diet) The good news from Muller, if you can call it that, is that exercise might make your muscles look sexy but doesn’t do much to remove pounds of excess fat. The other good news is that Muller himself got used to feeling hungry and even enjoyed it. Venus de Milo and I might just try that…

* Rich Muller also teaches the Berkeley course Physics for Future Presidents–just about all the science you’d need to run the world.

…or at least, snow and farewell. It’s pouring down snow, and roofs are getting white.

Frank and the camera crew left for MIT after shooting footage of just about everything you can imagine.

I am wondering what Swedish tv audiences will think of all the events this crew took pictures of:

• Snow falling on our garden, as seen from our bedroom window.
• Frank reading in his favorite chair.
• Frank playing the piano.
• Frank and Betsy sitting in two chairs talking. Have you ever
  tried to talk with your spouse non-stop for 10 minutes, pretending that
  just the two of you are there?
• Marianne the dog, watching Frank and Betsy as if we were a Wimbledon tennis match.
• Frank and Betsy being interviewed by Roland about Longing for the Harmonies, which W.W. Norton now plans to re-publish.
• Betsy blogging, with Frank looking on, bemused.

The crew then, intrepidly, shot some more footage outdoors. Frank and I
were instructed to shut the front door, count to ten, then open it and
stroll out, going for a walk. We are not allowed to look at Guy or Rob
or Roland or the camera. So, we do some walking following these
instructions. Then we are asked to do some more walking, starting from
a point outside the house and going together around the corner.

I said to Guy, “Maybe Roland would like to walk with us?” Guy said, not unkindly, “You haven’t done a lot of this, have you?”

So we walked to the corner and past it and kept on going. Snow fell on
us. Frank was wearing his brand-new black shoes, bought for Sweden, and
flakes of snow were melting all over them. I was having a great time,
maybe because, as Guy noted, I haven’t done a lot of this.

Now our house is quiet. Marianne, in her 114 dog years, has rarely seen or smelled so much
excitement. She’s conked out in her fuzzy dogbed now, so fast asleep
that she’s not even snoring.

Marianne has got the right idea.

On the brighter side, as Roland continues, “To all European Kerry supporters the result
may be disheartening,  but never the less, the outcome is a
victory for democracy.”

(Det brukar sägas att vi svenskar får precis den regering vi
förtjänar. När det gäller presidentvalet i USA kan man säga att världen
får precis den president som amerikanerna förtjänar. För alla
europeiska Kerryanhängare kan det verka nog så provocerande, men årets
val är trots allt en seger för demokratin.)

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Schmutz for all to see!

November 12th, 2004 · Comments Off on Schmutz for all to see!

Left to right: Light with schmutz, microphone in heavy fur coat, Guy the cameraman.

Comments Off on Schmutz for all to see!Tags: Nobel