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

Sorry, Manila design gurus, but could I have your attention–again?

First of all, thanks to Userland for the comment-spam fix
you made in August. You cleverly made it easy to erase comments when
somebody leaves a whole bunch on a single post. So, please add checkboxes to my discussion page too, so that I
can delete wholesale comments even when they got added to lots of
different posts.

This new comment spammer knows more blogware tricks than I do. For example, even after I turned off comments, he added 10 more new ones. So now my readers can’t share legitimate comments, but spammers can slurp up Google-juice anyway… Please don’t let spammers leave comments when I’ve turned comments off.

When I use membership prefs to block one of his aliases, he creates
another–even though Manila knows that all this garbage is coming from
the same IP address! (At least that’s what I think it means when the
user profile for members named “poker”, “phentermine”, “online
gambling”, etc. all link to the same user profile:
http://BetsyDevine.weblogger.com/profiles/$159.) Please don’t let members I’ve deleted or blocked sign up again with new names and phony email addresses.

Thanks for letting me scream, and have a nice day. I plan to myself, once I erase those stupid spam comments….

Today alone, more than 20 new “members” signed up using fake names like “cheap phentermine” and “online poker”, then left comment spam on many posts.

If you are a real person rather than a bot, please just send me email” bdevine at hotmailpancake dot com, minus the popular breakfast food.

Sorry about this.

I ran across the Leftist Marching Band at a rainy-day event in Durham NH.

They are playing tiny gigs but these guys could be gathering crowds and
positive press in a much bigger way. Wouldn’t some big event be better
with a band playing “America the Beautiful”, “When the Saints Go
Marching In”, and “This Land is Your Land”? Not to mention a baton
twirling drum majorette…

New Hampshirites! Progressives! Anybody! Could you please get this info
to somebody who could use this kind of help saving our country from the hatemongers and spendthrifts now running the GOP?

This is not how I like to think of bloggers:

Remember, a blog is basically a diary that logs consumer narratives on a public, non-erasable hard-drive known as the Internet. A good percentage of blog content reflects consumer experiences with “branded” products or services.

Hey, I know lots of folks with similarly sharp focus. I know people who think:

• Weekends are basically time to spend getting drunk.
• Women are basically an opportunity to get a look at their breasts.
• Mornings are basically time to waste writing long blog posts. (heh)

People who focus too narrowly miss a lot.

Link to Pete Blackshaw via Steve Rubel, a marketing pro who seems to have more perspective on what blogging means.

I’m remembering some of my crazy kid thought processes this morning, thanks to a funny blog story by Lisa Williams about a dead rabbit.

I grew up in the era of long, slow, neighborhood-and-family
summers. My pals and I had a “clubhouse” on some scrub land,
and one day somebody arrived with a still-warm dead squirrel. We all
petted its soft fur, admiring its many tiny perfections. Tears in our
eyes, we held a solemn funeral. One of our group treasures–a handsome
cardboard cigar
box–was sacrificed for a coffin. Freeze frame on our sad and
thoughtful faces then.

Now cut to the same group, same clubhouse, a few evenings later,
digging up the same squirrel, with dialog like, “Yeah, good. It
stinks.” “Oh boy, it really, really stinks!” “This is going to be
perfect for Eddie’s father.”* We gleefully carried the now sodden and
smelly cigar box to Eddie’s house, put it on the front doorstep, rang
the bell, and raced home to the safety of our own houses.  We ran
fast because Eddie’s father was a big mean guy and we sure didn’t want
him to run after us and catch us.

We got
home to find our mother on the phone with Eddie’s father–one of
the scariest moments of my life.  Going over a cliff in a Ford
convertible when I was in college was nothing compared to hearing my
mother say, “Oh, hello, Mr. Ozkelewski.”**  In the Ford, I just figured I
was about to die. That night of the squirrel, I’m not sure what I expected.

The conversation continued–we could hear only one side of it.
“Oh my, Mr. Ozkelewski–really? How awful.” [Our mother turned to scowl
at us four kids, now standing huddled together and looking terrified.] “Of
course, you must be very upset. I’m glad you called me.” [Our mother
was glad? She didn’t look glad–she was really glaring at us.] “But it
must have been some other children who did it. My kids have all
been home tonight, ever since dinner.”

Once she got off the phone, she gave us a huge scolding and I hope I
looked suitably sorry for what we’d done. But hearing my mother lie to
save my skin–and I don’t think I’d ever heard her lie before–was one
of the happiest moments of my childhood.

* Eddie’s father had threatened to chase us out of our clubhouse if we didn’t let four-year-old Eddie into
our gang. We were a tough bunch of seven- to ten-year-olds and we had
no wish to become Eddie’s baby-sitters.)
** Or whatever his last name was. At this point, I’m not even sure the kid’s name was Eddie.

Robert Novak is promoting a brand-new leak from “well-placed sources within the Administration”:
“Quick Exit from Iraq is likely.”

Well-placed sources indeed–Novak’s informant gave him detailed
post-election plans right down to dumping Colin Powell from State.

I ran across the link via my plugged-in Washingtonian SlashDot pal (CyGuy) who points out

the total hypocrisy.. (after a full
weekend of conservative pundits criticizing Kerry’s SOFT FOUR YEAR GOAL
of getting US forces out — as being a sop to the ‘terrorists’ by giving
them a target to to holdout for).

Josh Marshall’s take
is that Novak’s trial balloon will make Bush attractive to a wide range
of voters.  For old-fashioned fiscal
conservatives, point to Novak’s leak and say Bush has an exit plan but
Kerry wants to keep our troops stuck in the quagmire.

Meanwhile, neo-con hardliners can dismiss this little leak as pure hot
air. Why would we want to pull out of Iraq, where Bush’s game plan has been such a
great success?

Picture this: a screaming preacher invades a crowded subway. When one
rider asks the screamer to quiet down, several Bible-toting
“Christians”
surround her and start yelling about the special hellfire God has
planned for gays.*

Instead of retreating, she starts singing her favorite show tunes. Finally, her attackers give up and get off the train.

You go, girlfriend. If I’d been there, I hope I’d have had the courage to start singing harmony.

* In my mind, putting your fellow riders in fear crosses the line from subway-friendly free speech to assault, 
If your attack aims to force gay people off the subway, that seems to
cross the line from simple to aggravated assault–but IANAL.

Once upon a time, the news was something big media gathered, filtered, and delivered to a respectful audience. 

Heh. The biggest big-media story today is the rise of
the journalist-blogger. First with the conventions, then with the
ongoing Rathergate, newscasters and dead-tree pundits want you to know
that news is being reported–and even made–by just plain folks.

OK, not every Juan (or
Jenny) Q Public has email, let alone broadband access to blogworld.
Still, it’s exciting that more of us can now grab
front-row seats when news is made–maybe even hop into the onstage
spotlight.

So what’s the backstory of this “new” phenomenon? What dangers and opportunities does it bring?  No three-minute
soundbite or fluffy op-ed can tell you.

But blogger/journalist Dan
Gillmor can, in his new book We the Media. It’s full of decisive moments and smalltown heroes–an exciting,
principled, savvy, and practical page-turner. If you haven’t read it
yet, you are missing out.

I met Dan at Bloggercon II
and got a free copy of his book. And I was thrilled to see I’m one of
the many people he cites as a source, though that’s probably because of
my live-blogging Hoder rather than for anything useful I said over dinner at Legal Seafood. Is this a
proper disclosure of possible conflicts? Well, I’m no journalist, just a
hard-working blogger.

What is the matter with ad.doubleclick.net? I’m sitting here staring at
blank online-news pages minute after minute while ad.doubleclick.net
tries to figure out what ads to show me.

Now, when I’m paying for broadband internet access, and the servers at
ad.doubleclick.net are set up to duplicate dial-up page-loading times
and the World-Wide-Wait, it’s doggone annoying. There is no way I’m
going to click on an ad that is wasting my time and money before I even
see it.

So if you, dear reader, do business with ad.doubleclick.net, please
tell them to rev up their servers if they want clickthrough.

The
revenue model you save may be your own.