Google Poem: Not that you were planning to, but...

* oh my god Karen, you can't just ask people why they're white.

* you can't just punt.

* No. I'm sorry. But you can't just be so adamant about something, then whoop-de-doo change your mind, oh well, never mind.

* You can't. Just let her do it.

* you can't just say “sexual harassment is just wrong”

* You can't just accept such stories uncritically.

* See, you can't just let me enjoy the moment.

* This means you can't just mail in your keys and say goodbye to the loan

* You can't just spend money if it is not there and teams are wanting a lot of money for players...

* You can't just come in one day on the train and try to influence everything

* once you've seen the second, you can't just stop.

* You can't just run yourself a bath

* you know, you can't just do this in one second.

* You can't just get rid of it by forcing me

* You can't just write random articles on a daily basis.

* You can't just drop your vowels like that and get away with it.

* You can't just bunch a lot of keywords together over and over again, though; search engines generally don't like that, and your page rank will fall.

* if you forget to take the bottle to work, you have to sniffle all day, because you can't just buy another one. And be careful handling the bottle, because if you spill it you can't get a replacement.

* You can't just forget standards--they're there for a reason. Mostly to save guys from waking up next to monsters in the morning.

* You can't just use any old thing like on a resistive screen.

* I know it's tough and you can't just ask someone to simply “Inner Game That Shit” in order to make it go away.

* You can't just go out and buy a personal jet at your local general store.

* I mean, you can't just hire a random fan who sends in an application and then say, “Wow, you've watched every UFC since 1993 and you clearly know your MMA — here's a striped shirt, we'll see you in the cage next Friday.

* And you can't just call in sick because you don't feel like working.

* You can't just turn around, go back down the ladder and quit.

* You're right that you can't just pick a place by reputation.

* You Can't Just Demand to Be Placed on Somebody's Blogroll.

* In order to slay a god, you can't just bring more warriors.

* you can't just walk in and be all hey can i marry your daughter now kthx YOU CAN'T DO THAT

* You can't just plop down like this.

* you can't "just put him down"!

* It isn't rocket scientist, but you can't just toss up any old free “easy to use” blog and consider yourself a future online business success story.

* They're always like, “Now, now, you can't just go scaling back a recipe!” But that's pretty much exactly what I did...

* You can't just shut a farm down...

* You can't just ask for knowledge.

* Understanding that you can't just create money from nothing and then spend it without any negative consequences isn't complicated.

* If you can't just enjoy watching the Greatest Golfer of alltime play this game, then go back to your beer swilling, women chasing redneck 4some and stop bothering the rest of us with your Bullcrap.

* You can't just play your best games and sit out on your weaker games, it's not allowed.

* You can't just sit inside you car and wait for someone to do the task for you.

* You can't just have the will to do it. You've got to have the stuff.

* you can't just have one person take the ball.

* You can't

Bloggers Breakfast

I regret missing the Bloggers' Breakfast...or was it brunch? Woodsy told us all about the event, and some of us wished we had been there.
Woodsy was delighted with all the bloggers, and was particularly happy about getting to know XUP, who she reported is delightful, intelligent and cool.
Here are my reasons for not doing the brunch:

1) I haven't been blogging, so feel unworthy of attending.
2) I get all shy and nervous around high-profile bloggers.
3) I never commit to morning activities on weekends.
4) There is no fourth.
5) There is no fifth.

Porn and Sex and Blog Popularity in Ottawa

Tonight I was with some friends and we discussed the pornographic nature of some television shows. For instance, it was argued that werewolf porn is really just a kink for the fluffies, who are apparently some kind of cuddly fetish group -- and possibly sometimes inclined to disguise as werewolves. This naturally brought us to further discussions about the secrets of getting an Ottawa readership for one's blog. This then brought us to talk about the ESI blog and its appreciated but rather stagnant readership. To grow, it was thought that we ESIs needed to be personal. However, our readers will know that this is something the ESI community completely avoids (so, therefore, beyond our ability). Realizing this, the next suggestion was that we needed to be sexual, especially in an Ottawa context. That was the word for the evening.

Well, the discussion came around to the the core issue: How to get readership when you are a group of people without a single voice for readers to follow, not into revealing personal details, not independently famous, and not interested in working too hard to achieve it? Really, to me, given that we can't discuss our personal lives with any real gore, it's clear that discussing or engaging in public sex is beyond us. So, anyone have some suggestions about how to increase readership other than producing pornography or becoming personal?

Addicting

Ms Army Pants: You are obsessed!
Woodsy: No I am addicted.

Below is a quote from the book that I am reading, In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, by Gabor Maté.

“There are almost as many addictions as there are people. In Brahmajala Sutta, the spiritual master Gotama identifies many pleasures as potentially addictive.

…Some ascetics and Brahmins…remain addicted to attending such shows as dancing, singing, music, displays, recitations. Hand music, cymbals and drums, fairy shows…combats with elephants, buffaloes, bulls, rams;…

Gotama, known to us as Buddha, lived and taught about twenty-five hundred years ago in what are now Nepal and northern India. Today he might also include in his sermon: sugar, caffeine, talk show, gourmet cooking, music buying, right-or left-wing politics…”

I would like to add blogging to this list. But I can’t decide if I am addicted to blogging, or if I am addicted to my blogging?

Sorry Audrey

The people appear to have spoken.

Sarah Boxer on Blogs

The latest New York Review of Books (Feb. 14, 2008) contains an article by Sarah Boxer on blogs, books on blogs, and the trouble with writing books on blogs. In her article, she asks the following questions about blogs: "Are they a new literary genre?Do they have their own conceits, forms and rules? Do they have an essence?"

She says some pretty interesting things about bloggers and blog writing:

Of course I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that bloggers have fouler mouths, tougher hides, and cooler thesauruses than most of the people I've read in print.

The very tone of most blogs--reactive, punchy, conversational, knowing, and free-associative--is predicated on linkiness and infused with it.

Blogs are porous to the world of texts and facts and opinions on line.

Bloggers are golden when they're at the bottom of the heap, kicking up. Give them a salary, a book contract, or a press credential, though, and it just isn't the same.

Bloggers at their computers are Supermen in flight. They break the rules. They go into their virtual phone booths, put on their costumes, bring down their personal villains, and save the world.

The law of the blogosphere is Hobbesian: survival of the snarkiest.

Blog writing is id writing--grandiose, dreamy, private, free-associative, infantile, sexy, petty, dirty.

The article contains some good tips for getting famous: "One of the surest ways to hoist your blog to the top of the charts is to bring down a big-time politician or journalist." Sex, doesn't hurt either, apparently, and can "give your blog a lift".

I have prepared a small quiz for all of you (based on the Boxer article) to test your blogging knowledge. Don't cheat. Don't look up anything on Wikipedia. I know, I know -- telling a blogger not to cheat is like telling your cat not to jump on the counter while you're out.

Here's the six-question quiz. No prize this time, because there is no way to prove that you didn't cheat.

1. Define "link whore".
2. What does the Japanese blogging term, ishikoro, refer to?
3. What famous blogger uses the acronym, "SAHM"?
4. Who coined the word "Weblog"?
5. What's a "troll" in blogspeak?
6. What is "astroturfing"?