A link to a new video at BIO Yes they used the magic word “Rovian” in the teaser, so I….It’s great. Well, “Rovian” is a good variant of the magic word. Don’t mean magic in a good way. Do believe in Kharma, and the Rovian will lose to the good kharma.

Personally I agree with Steve’s comment, but grassroots political blogs do impact on people.

Am still in intermittent pain from last oral surgery, and have intermittent cable service. They’re coming on Wednesday with a new box, but they think there is another problem that is causing the modem to stop working every hour or so, somtimes more. Have become an unwilling expert on cable problems in the past eight years. Think it’s probably frayed outdoor cable wire as that is what it usually is when there are low or no signal problems.

Normally I would have made a bigger deal of this and had them come tomorrow. But I’m exhausted, emotionally and physically dreined, and sometimes it does dawn on me that my dental problems are over. Sometimes. So if I’m not around blogs, I will be sometime later this week.

The more I think about the following post the more I realize how easy it is for people to be sanctiminous and say things like “I throw these things out,” when they accept paid advertising, don’t have a sidebar that looks like a billboard for causes, and don’t plug people in nearly every post.

The sad reality is that a blogs “success” has more to do with when it began, how carefully a blog links–you’re not supposed to link to too many blogs that are below you in the food chain. There are books that will teach you the tricks to becoming a Google Six and other ways to “become top ranked.”

Those are the emails that I trash, even when the person offers to teach me the tricks for free. Nothing in life or blogging comes without a price. It’s the price that we’re willing to pay that’s important to me, and I will never sacrifice my blogging freedom.

Here’s Newsweek on the subject of Kos. Just the title is scary: “Can the Daily Kos control the Dems?”

I know. I’m an alarmist not living in the real world. Only the car alarms that I blare tend to self-start long after I have I have finished blaring.

Do you want a populist blogging world where each blogger has a chance of making it? Or an elitist blogging world where only a few can rise? Because that choice is coming.

Cooper I would have loved you anyway.

Sage time traveled in the South, sort of. He talks about an incident that happened when I was very young and still makes me cry.

Here’s a link to an article in The New York Times that explains how JWT bought all the advertising on THP for a week, in an attempt to create buzz over the Internet for JWT’s clients. It’s the lamest way I have ever seen of creating buzz, and I still hold Arianna responsible as she calls herself a blogger. Never did her time in the trenches, but….her blog doesn’t let everybody comment.

Why does JWT/THP have so little respect for the “small” blogger? Why should I do anything for them without getting something in return?

Follow this link I’m not a marketing person. The link and the link it links to looks at this problem from a “viral marketing astroturfing” pov. Last week I wrote about, the sick possibility, an all volunteer Daily Kos TV network–except for Kos himself. This past week I received this.

If you think I’m making too much of this, you’re missing the broader implications of many volunteer bloggers working their tushs off for a few people to profit. Have a link in a bit to Arianna at the Cannes Ad Festival. She spits in the face of every grassroots blogger.

Blogging is new. It can go in many directions. It can be the first meritocracy in publishing. It can also have ten stars and everybody else “volunteer” blogging for ten people who get rich. I won’t be a “volunteer” for them. Nor will I be one of the ten stars.

I put too much into my work to let other people profit from it. If you want to gloat in a comment about how you received an email and trashed it–don’t. That’s the blogging equivalant of not reporting an empty package in New York. The point is to make people aware of this–it could be a new and disturbing trend—without linking to her too much.
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What’s wrong with this quote? It’s most of an email that I received from somebody at the Huffington Post.. Don’t know how many other bloggers got this or some variant of it. Hope that you don’t feel flattered but potentially taken advantage of.

Came across your blog looking for top sites on aging/generational issues–you have a really great site! While I don’t think you’re particularly among the elderly demographic, you might find this clip from Poet Laureate Billy Collins’ poem “Forgetfulness” interesting (and hopefully something you’d be willing to share with your readers). The poem is about getting older and forgetting things, and it’s pretty poignant. It’s part of a new ad campaign by JWT for the Huffington Post (trying to make ads more like content).

The Huffington Post says that it’s a blog, or at least part of it. It began on May 9, 2005 and is ranked 9 on Technorati and 20 on TTLB. I have written a lot on blogging and on how blogs become and stay “big.” Arianna’s blog is the exception to every rule.

Unlike the rest of us Arianna has limitless resources, and has used it on Huffington I like it. But it’s not a blog. When was the last time you had JWT do your ad campaign?

So clever how the ad looks like content. The video and poem are both beautiful. Damn if I’m going to play it without getting something equally significant in return. “Oh those pesky bloggers.” Straight out of Arianna’s mouth. In another context. Please read it. It’s unintentionally hysterical as it’s about recreating advertising to meet the needs of the new consumer, and how we’re “witnessing the Rise of the Creatives.”

Yeah from the sweat, pores and labor of the regular blogger

Why do I dare say this? I’m a grassroots blogger. When I first began I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but I met a lot of people. We helped each other begin. I was fortunate to meet Tom Baker the blogger formerly known as The Cranky Liberal, and our Duke Dawg Doug early in “our blogging careers.” I bring them up, in particular, because both were the catalysts for two distinct blogging communities with different goals and purposes. Many of the people overlap into both communities.

My two favorite expressions: “I delete not debate on Courting. Go to BIO.” Not that I’m planning to debate but somebody will. and “steal the dawg’s blogroll.”

With little money but much much time Tom, the Dawg and I have created amazing communities. I don’t debate because I don’t have the time. I have blogged in up to four blogs at a time. This was the closest week I came to taking off from blogging in going on 20 months. And only because I fell apart physically after a minor oral surgery. I have undergone five more major ones and blogged that afternoon. Arianna has also said “that Internet rewards obsessives.”

I’m waiting. Does she really believe that bloggers like me want to help make her richer, and will be so happy to run her ads? Why sure Arianna, I live to give myself more work so that somebody else can profit.

It’s a little different than helping a new blogger meet people, and show them the technicalities. Blogging, to me, is about bringing people together. My posts tend to be long and often are researched. They might be non-linear, self-absorbed, and a myriad of other things but Courting’s rankings reflect the work that I put into it. Have taken Courting and BIO on vacations. Yes I’m obsessive. The rewards have all been intangible, and most of the time that is great, but sometimes….

Somebody left a comment who was also approached. He’s looking at it from the advertising end. Very interesting.

My real life work, friends and family have taken a back street to blogging. Since I have received publicity and have been nominated for awards, my friends and family have me confused with somebody famous, so they’re being very understanding.

Blogging has both brought me closer to, and taken me away from my true goal–world peace. Damn I confused myself with Miss America again

BIO is a grassroots political blog that grows hourly. I’m not sure what Courting is other than a blog I made from nothing to “top ranked for a non-political, non-Christian, non-radical right personal blog.” And for a baby boomer that’s nothing short of a miracle. I don’t write baby boomer. We’ve been reminiscing since the 80’s about how great life was when we were kids and that’s grown old. I don’t do menopause or aches and pains unless of course they’re my teeth. I know that I have much to learn from people who are both older and younger than me so I remain flexible as to age.

Advertisers are so eager to embrace the younger demographics that they fail to notice how many blogs written by baby boomers are popular with younger generations. If I am, I assume….Maybe it’s me

Grassroots blogs require a lot of work. Courting is a one person show and I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking anybody to guest blog for me while I’m away. It’s not that important to the rest of the world. It’s priceless to me.

In the past few months people have sent me resumes, problems to solve, asked if I would “share” this book with my readers when I don’t have the time to read the books I want to read. I understand these requests. Might be powerless or not want to help, but that’s the price a “successful” blogger pays.

That’s just it. Most “successful” bloggers pay, if not much in dollars, too much in hours. These hours multiplied by the pay the blogger gets or had been getting for real life jobs can come out to quite a hefty number.

Most bloggers who tell me that I complain about everybody but the blogger making money off it aren’t serious bloggers. BIO and I have both prove that we having staying power. We have the blogging chops. This isn’t a hobby to us, it’s a job. It’s a job that we love and it has its many magical intrinsic rewards. But it’s a lot of work. Any blogger who says it isn’t, puts in fluff or posts once a week.

Yet BIO is doing an important job, I’m not afraid to write about personal issues and how they affect me. And every body’s favorite Dawg now has several generations of pups.

Is there anything in the Huffington Post that is of and by the people? Yet they think I might want to share an advert with my readers? Are they crazy?

I have been cutting back time on Courting and am only on rotation once a month at BIO. While I would love to blog full time on Courting and BIO , I have a personal goal and dream that blogging has taught me isn’t a delusion.

Comments designed to get a rise out of me stopped doing that sometime ago. Has Arianna ever seen comments that insult every part of her? Would she understand what I was talking about? Don’t really think so.

From where I sit, and it’s usually in front of a computer monitor, Arianna is acting like the Empress who asks the servant to clean the kitchen fully once again because Arianna dropped some crumbs.

Any blogger who knows me knows that I don’t ask for favors. That I put my money where my mouth is, literally and cause wise.
When I read Arianna’s comments about “The Rise of the Creatives,” I did laugh. Then I became angry. Because this isn’t the Renaissance, and I’m not going to spend endless hours painting detail while somebody else gets the credit.

I want what she’s have having because I deserve it. Courting and I came out of nowhere. Yet here we are

On a personal note, I have little faith in TTLB because it fluctuates so much. But I had a personal goal that I didn’t talk about. James Dobson and I were neck-in-neck. It feels so great to beat a member of the radical right. That’s a blogger’s intrinsic satisfaction. But it doesn’t pay the bills. I don’t do ads on Courting. I would rather pay her expenses myself and feel free to plug who I want to when I want to. Plugging and linking are good things that bloggers can do for each other. They help keep the playing fields level and eventually make new ones.

Have watched both my Technorati and TTLB change so often that I don’t take them seriously. Some people would say that I can afford to say that. Am nowhere near Arianna’s rankings. And I had a real interview with George Clooney that I just didn’t think was up to standards.

I very much appreciate every positive thing that has been said about me. I’m a writer. Any publicity is good publicity. I almost didn’t write this because I didn’t want to give The Huffington Post any.

Who am I but the Peasant Girl patiently waiting by Arianna’s side for more orders? Screw that.

Stumble it!

Today’s the first full day of my new life. Finally have the teeth nature intended me to have. To the rest of the world my teeth were fine. To me they were small, yellow, and in constant need of care.

I had stress induced dry mouth from the time I was a young child.. I finally figured out that it was the cause of my problems because nothing else made sense. Medications actually helped alleviate it because I wasn’t tense all the time anymore.

Never knew until yesterday that Listerine is horrible for people with dry mouth, and I’m a Listerine junkie. Love the taste, swishing it around my mouth and keeping it there. It always felt as if I were killing all the germs. Didn’t realize that I was killing the teeth.

I can’t believe that I’m talking about my teeth in my blog and that people have been so wonderful. That’s one of the great things about blogging. I can talk about the really horrible without fear of being judged. The morally wrong don’t count.

I have always used writing as a way of understanding what the problem is, and being able to think of solutions. Now I can think out loud in my blog and get great support.

The pain is beginning to abate and the swelling’s going down. Can’t believe that my face didn’t swell through prior more intrusive oral surgeries. For some reason this two year tooth saga began to wear me down around the same time I received publicity.

I was burnt. Did write about that. Didn’t write about how scared I was until the last couple of weeks, I think. Almost looked up “fatal symptomless conditions that could happen while on a dentist’s chair or in the ten days afterwards.” Remembered that I’m a former SSI Claims Rep ,and am a Licensed Social Worker who specialized in geriatrics. Know them all from my careers, and my reading.

Did read everything I could on dentistry and implants. I’m very blessed because I could afford to go to the best. My very expensive health insurance doesn’t cover even a part of it. But I knew from the day I decided to do this that this was an amazing investment in myself that will pay itself back ten times.

Know more than a few people who are having extensive implants. They began before me, and will be going for a much longer time. Some even have insurance that my dentists accept. I guess people don’t want to pay a larger co-pay. I will say that my friend’s sister Denise has excellent insurance and spends as much money on jewelry and clothes as if she were the average pop star.

Dental work isn’t the place to economize on. I’m in so much pain because one of the teeth that was worked on the other day was one of the “too much work” teeth. I first had my teeth bonded in 1983 when I was 32, and…here I am the world’s first self-professed dental bulimic.

You helped me get though this. And offered empathy rather than the scorn I thought this would be received with. Though I didn’t want to I used to judge a person by his or her teeth until I couldn’t anymore.

That’s an incredible high. Thank you all so much. This is about as dramatic as my present day life gets. My youthful dramas are much more interesting.

I am so disappointed in New York’s senators for not voting for the Kerry/Feingold bill.

I wanted Hillary to be the first woman president six years ago. Unfortunately she’s been campaigning for president since she first became Senator. I can’t believe that she lacked the chutzpah to vote for that bill. Unless she’s planning a strategy move to end the war tomorrow and somehow…

Chuck’s parents live in the same eighteen hole golf course apartment complex that my Mom lived in. Would love to have been able to see my Mom going at Chuckala’s parents. According to my Mom they were stingy in the reception they made after Chuckualla was elected. Heavy on the egg salad, light on the smoked fishes.

My parents would have sprung for the all smoked fish reception, with caviar, if one of their kids were elected Senator from New York. That’s as far up the political ladder as any parent would want their kid to go now. And my parents had daughters who changed careers a lot so it really would have been a miracle.

Chuck, your parents would have gone to great lengths if they had to, to make sure that you didn’t serve in Viet Nam. No Jewish boy I knew went to Viet Nam, no matter how poor their family was.

Our grandparents had survived the pogroms and/or the Nazi’s as did many parents of baby boomers. They weren’t going to let their children and/or grandchildren die in a meaningless war. You should be a leader in this. Unless you have a plan to…

I support the Troops that are in Iraq, with all my heart. But on Tuesday I will be downtown at a rally in support of Lieutenant Eheren Watada who might face court martial because he believes that the war and occupation in Iraq is illegal. He’s the first commissioned officer to refuse to be deployed.

May the war end tomorrow, but in the meantime may more troops take courage from Lieutenant Watada and do the same.

I took back my teeth, and that sounds strange. We can take back the country. As usual, I don’t debate, I do delete, and if you want a debate go to BIO.

On Monday I will be back with a post about an experience that I just had with another political blog. I’m dying to write about it now, but….

Stumble it!

The Ommnipotent Poobah has a very interesting, and different post up at BIO It goes along with my theme and is-well check it out. He’s funny–and comment please.

After two continuous years of dental visits, the sixth and supposedly most minor oral surgery has me looking like a prizefighter–chin area–but one with the best teeth in New York, summer edition. Has me feeling like a prizefighter who has been knocked around a few too many times. Am finally going to have my James Spader film festival. Please understand that my comments would be sub par. Won’t be commenting until the weekend I think, when I begin to feel human again.

Have a box of “Swiss Liqueur chocolate” filled with Stoli. Bought them at the drugstore because I thought I loved the box, and that the candy would be hard. As Stoli has been my vodka of choice since my 20’s thought it would be funny. The thought of biting into anything sweet is truly repulsive. Can’t figure out how they’re supposed to be eaten as the vodka streams out–sort of like a jello shot. Guess you’re supposed to share. Or I have been wrong all my life, and putting an entire square of chocolate in my mouth is acceptable. Not planning on experimenting.

William Shatner is being inducted into the TV Hall of Fame, and will be roasted on Comedy Central

I began watching The 4400 because I had to go to the Sci Fi event for it where I met some people who told me about their encounters with aliens. One backed Lucia’s assertion that more people are abducted where Webers used to be on Broadway near West 72nd Street than any other place because it was so crowded. She had heard that on the Sci Fi channel several months before the event at The Regency where all the drinks had the iridescent faux blue ice cubes that look so garish with diet coke.

She had also heard that all of Broadway is prime alien picking country, and did lock her windows, and do more to stop aliens from attacking her and/or Little Luce, since their building fronts Broadway. As I live two Avenues west, I wasn’t worried. However many people who live or work in my building have morphed into kinder, more gentle people in the past year. Do have to wonder.

I believe that there is a Fidelity where Webers used to be and always mean to ask if they have heard about any alien abductions. But what if they are? So much to worry about when aliens, not of the undocumented kind, posssibly enter into my life.

I didn’t know then that Joel Gretsch who plays Tom Baldwin on The 4400 is Shatner’s son in law. Have read interviews with him where he rambled on about how great a father in law and grandfather Shatner is. Some people just have all the luck.

While Shatner occupies a big space in my heart, James Spader does practically own it. Or could if I could find out where to send the key. Oh, right, first I would have to find it.

Stumble it!

I took out the post that I had about Home Depot. I was angry. It was poorly written and didn’t make sense.

Yesterday wasn’t an easy day for me. Today was supposed to be but Fernando the doorman woke me since Home Depot delivered the AC’s I cancelled three times. Wasn’t sure the first two times took. I had him send the Ac’s back with the delivery person but this wasn’t following HD protocol.

When I tried calling HD today there was a 25 minute minimum wait. They said to go to the website. The website said to call. I sent an email and gave all pertinent information. Am not wasting a minute more on this. I did my part over and over again. Refuse to play Groundhog Day with HD.

Sunday night Lucia, Little Luce and I remembered when The Boat Basin Cafe was yet to be discovered, and we could get tables outdoors with a minimal wait. But even inside is outside as it’s an open catacomb. Always reminds me of the Coliseum in Rome, on a much smaller scale. The menu was upgraded a year or two ago, and the tuna entree was had much more zest and was way more interesting than the second to last time I was there just before the rain week.

Little Luce did her community service for the GMHC. She was on stage during the AIDS Walk. I am so proud of her. Her class presentation begins with how she has lived all her fifteen years in the apartment that Lucia and our friend, soul mate, whatever, Patrick lived in before and during his sickness. While we had dinner, Little Luce gave her presentation and we talked about Patrick who will have died 21 years ago next October 9th

Lucia was in the GMHC’s pilot support group for caregivers. Lucia gave up much of her life. Patrick was the most difficult of our friends for me. He was the closest and the first. But I learned.

During Gay Pride Month please think of all the straight women who nursed Gay men during their sicknesses.

I think of Riverside Park as my country club and The Boat Basin Cafe is the clubhouse. I’m in Riverside Park everyday and eat at the Boat Basin at least four or five times a week in real summer, Have been a bit preoccupied and not into going out lately.

We had walked down to the river on the South side of the West 79th Street entrance. It’s disgraceful that the stairs are rotting, sand filled with deep holes. It’s a giant law suit waiting to happen. The North side entrance has been modernized for at least two or three years.

We walked up on the North side and when we reached the top tier of the park, I smelled the faint smell of new blossoming Honeysuckle. By Wednesday it will have blossomed, and by Friday, Saturday at the latest, it will take over Riverside Drive and the park and would be cloying if it didn’t last such a short time.

My neighborhood is like no other in Manhattan. It doesn’t have the modern planned feel of Battery Park City or the strange mix of industrial zillion dollar edge on West Street–runs from Tribeca though the West Side, forget exactly where it ends. Isn’t up here.

Though I lived on the East Side, 63rd and Fifth for fifteen years, I would walk across Central Park to go to Riverside Park because it was so solitary and peaceful. The park that runs parallel to the East River was always unfriendly to me, I didn’t want to walk near cars when it was water that I needed.

Riverside Drive is long and stately. I know how rare it to live across from Park land in Manhattan yet I always have. There’s no place like New York from sometime in June to sometime in August, and then again in September and October. I am so privileged and I know it. But the yearning for amenities in my primary, or even secondary, residence keeps growing.

The Drive is mellow as is West End Avenue just to the East, but Broadway is one block from that, and I love Broadway, I do, but I yearn for a smaller scale. This weekend Broadway seemed empty to me but I knew that most people from other places would have thought it crowded.

I was at the dentist(s) for four hours today so I’m more than a bit out of it. My dentists and their staffs are incredible but by the end I felt as if I were going to throw up and pass out. probably at the same time. Took a nap, and woke up with a feeling that I have only experienced several times before.
“Oh wow, something feels different”
“I feel great.”
“My life has just changed forever and ever.”

I feel so blessed that I could do this at all, and then without incurring debt. Wow. Each day for the next month, I will feel slightly different, and have to go back on Wednesday, and I’m sure often for the next month. It’s over and I stayed the course, with only a minor meltdown this past month. I think, maybe, because I have run out of excuses.

But his two year journey did teach me patience and to measure success in small increments. Thank you, the so many of you, who have taken this with me, and wow does that feel weird and vain to write.

Now you can vote for me…Kidding. I just won my own lottery, and a few other major life battles.

Please excuse me if I don’t answer comments for a few days. Am really kind of out of it, But in a good way

Stumble it!

I’m going for my last dental visit in two solid years of every two weeks–with some breaks for good behavior. I really really don’t like Ann Coulter. Wouldn’t like a liberal who was as nasty but don’t know of any.

Papers drop “liberals” for being offensive but Ann Coulter? Ain’t even funny. But unlike “Godless liberals,” her expression. she must have God on her side. Because she gets millions to be flat out nasty. And that’s gross.

If you wish to disparage Ann Coulter, feel free. If you wish to disparge me, remember I’m a humorless liberal, and I will use the expression that has been used so often on me “I have friends.”

Ann Coulter hasn’t lost any of her 100-plus newspaper clients, or the support of her syndicate, Universal Press Syndicate, despite her nasty remarks in her new book about 9/11 widows and her comment in an online interview implying that, perhaps, U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) should be “fragged.”

Why is Coulter keeping all her subscribers? “Ann’s client newspapers stick with her because she has a loyal fan base of conservative readers who look forward to reading her columns in their local newspapers,” Universal Director of Communications Kathie Kerr said in a statement, after being queried today by E&P.

Editors, she pointed out, have chosen not to run certain “Doonesbury” or “Boondocks” cartoons, which come from the liberal side of the spectrum.

The Universal columnist has also “joked” about killing other people, including Arabs, Muslims, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and suggested that blowing up The New York Times building might be a good idea, especially if the reporters and editors were still inside.

Stumble it!