I missed this one last week but it really needs a post. I know, full-time job, blogging, running my dog’s presidential campaign. I’m a busy woman. I missed it.

But it’s a great post so here.

Say that a blogger gets fired from his or her day job for blogging. (Recent high profile media examples here and here.) It is a common enough tale to become almost a cliche.

But what would your reaction be if you found out a spiteful blogger, for no other reason than to fuck you over and with whom you had some petty online disagreement, went and outed you to your corporate overlords who didn’t take too kindly to your potty mouth and intemperate opinions? You get shit-canned and your online arch-nemesis is crowing over his/her “victory”.

What would your reaction be?

Sarcastro asks what would you do?

Check out Katherine Coble’s comments in the thread as well. If you recall the Kirking incident from last year, she’s got a bit of knowledge on this.

Kate O, who has about a million things she’s always working on, discusses songwriting.

Smith talks about various elements in hit songs that make their lyrics and melodies memorable, universal, and instantly appealing. Certainly those are elements worth striving for, if pop hits are your goal — and they are ours.

But one of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is the importance of writing for me. I’ve always done this, to a degree, but at times I’ve strayed a bit into unfamiliar territory in the hopes of writing something that more people would connect with. Imagine me writing, for example, a song with NASCAR allusions. I’ve tried it. It sucked. I won’t do it again (I promise).

Not Nascar!?! She goes on to talk about writing for universal appeal.

It’s today, campers.

I am in for a treat tomorrow. I will be attending the 67th running of the Iroquois Steeplechase at Percy Warner Park in Nashville, a yearly event that is a self-professed “spectacle of horses, hats and hounds.” This day marks the premiere social soiree of the spring and summer season in the South (like that alliteration?).

The pictures are fun from Southern Fancy.

Doug gets a beatdown by his wife Cathy when he asks for child #6.

When you go to his page, you will see his vasectomy fund. It might be best to donate for his health and survival.

Heh.

Rhino Legs has a whopping good time on her anniversary.

Where would you most like to spend your first wedding anniversary?

a.) In a bungalow on the beach in Mexico.
b.) At a chateau in Provence.
c.) In a cabin in the Great Smokies.
d.) At a B&B in New Orleans.
e.) In the hospital where your husband has landed for an emergency appendectomy.

If you picked E, you are CORRECT!

Southern Beale is shining the light on a scam when she caught a kid in a lie about Tuscan Readers Services, where people try to sell magazine subscriptions door-to-door. She’s written about this before.

The kid lied to me. I mean, I always figured they were lying, but this was a lie I could verify. She told me she lived in a particular house, but in fact I actually happen to know the family that does live there, and she isn’t one of them. She made up a whole big story about how they’re selling the house and moving one street over–also a lie. I know the family has their house on the market and they’re moving to another part of town.

This is what kills me. Every time they come to the door they make up a family name, pick a house in the neighborhood, and claim to live in it. Well, our neighborhood is pretty sociable with one another. We’ve had quite a few neighborhood get-togethers and while we don’t know everyone, I certainly know the people on my street. The assumption seems to be, since this is a suburban neighborhood, no one will know one another. Maybe that’s true for some neighborhoods but it’s not true for us.

She warns that some people do pay attention and now about their neighbors.

She cries foul and points out that just because they say Vanderbilt Children’s Services is getting the money doesn’t make it necessarily true.

Memphis held their zombie walk a couple of weeks ago. TheoGeo was there.

Nashville is zombieing it up this evening.

From MetBlogs:

In Nashville, the undead will begin assembling at Riverfront Park (map) on Saturday at 5:00 pm and begin the walk at 6:00. If you would like to join the living dead, conveniently, registration is not required—just show up

I miss all the fraking fun.

A zombie dog. How awesome. Looks sorta like HBIC Ivy’s dog Tiny.

From Jagadiah:

My mom teaches elementary school, and came home from a field trip yesterday with a story about how she had to sit in the back of the bus and intervene on a conversation between kids who were telling each other about how one like the way another’s butt smelled. The conversation was being conducted in chat rooms via Nintendo DS.

How can that much have changed since my day?

Oh, it gets worse the older you get.

Or it might be better.

Let’s go with door number two.

But Chez Bez is weighing in with calm reason.

After the 2000 and 2004 losses, I heard many folks talk disgustedly about moving to Canada. Didn’t happen. There’s a lot of emotion in statements like these, but I don’t worry about a bunch of fellow Democrats getting all Canuck on me. Surely I can’t imagine, after some time has passed between the upcoming Democratic nomination and the general election, that most Democrats who currently support Hillary won’t be casting their vote for Obama. (Or Obama supporters voting for Hillary, for that matter.)

He calls himself the 3-minute pundit. But what a very good three minutes it is.

From the Tennessee Photographers Pool on Flickr from picgerl.

And he’s quite proud that he didn’t know.

It wasn’t until today that I learned “Hannah Montana” is not her real name.

Carry on.

From Silence

I found this picture this afternoon looking around Flickr at Nashville photos and I decided to give Pink Kitty a gander.

Well, she’s not blogging there anymore and is here.

I’ve been blogging for years at pink-kitty.blogspot.com. I hid behind behind a nom de plume so I could say what I wanted to say and not really worry about someone in the real world finding out who I am or what I said.

I didn’t want to be dooced

She is continuing a brand new journey at her brand new blog, Habhak.

Ceeelcee pontificates about life in the new age.

I was listening to “This American Life” last weekend, (yeah I’ve got a yellow-dog liberal streak down my back, screw you, righties!) and David Rakoff told the story about Vinny Ricardo, who was found dead in his New York apartment after mummifying for over a year. Tragically, with the television on.

It got me to thinking, I pay all my bills via electronic transfer. My doctor and my dentist know that I’m responsible enough to make my own appointments on a regular schedule. The folks where I work know that I’d just as soon disappear to my cabin in Sewanee some day forever anyway and catch up on forty years worth of reading and bird watching.

He goes on to say, if you don’t hear from him on Twitter or on his blog, check up on him in case he’s deceased.

Lovely thoughts this a.m.

Our own Newscoma has a story about a woman who lives in Arkansas and is expecting her 18th child. Michelle Dugger, 41, is due on New Year’s Day. The children range in age from 20 to 6 months. I have no understanding of what her life is like. That’s got to be like $30 a week in milk alone…

Full story. And, the family has a web site.

Edit: They also have a TV show on the Discovery Health Channel, it seems. You can even play “Name that Duggar!”

The next Nashville Geek Tweet-up is scheduled for Thursday, May 22nd, at Flying Saucer. We’ll be there from 7:00 - 10:00 pm. Everyone is welcome, especially those who are looking to meet others in the social networking spectrum. RSVP in the Facebook Event, or in the comments of the post on studio nashvegas.

Come one. Come all. 

Damn. Sue Johanson of Oxygen’s “Talk Sex” is retiring, and the last episode will air on Sunday night (and will count down the year’s top 10 sex toys).

It’s a shame. Sue Johanson’s show was one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen on the telly.

Rachel is right. She will be missed.

- 2 tickets to Bonnaroo 2008
- OurStage Tent
- Free downloads of live Bonnaroo shows
- Free DJ Lessons
- $500 Travel Budget
- AND 2 tickets to Bonnaroo 2009!!!

Go here if you are so inclined.

god bless america… 

and yes, i’ve already ordered these

Jim at the FBI Memos talks twitter.

Now, email is old school. Adults send three emails for every text. With teens, it is the other way around. Young consumers play by their own set of multi-tasking, micro-messaging rules. And most marketers are failing at getting any message through to them. In a world they completely don’t understand, marketers just assume more is better, and they increase the frequency of their old school messages. This is a generation that can do homework, chat on Facebook, keep up with Twitter and text messaging, all at the same time. According to a 2007 study by MTV and Microsoft, 14-24 year olds have an average of 53 people they consider friends. Multi-tasking is all they’ve ever known. They can filter the noise out.

Our girl, Newscoma, has an amazing ability to get the more distinguished commenters over at her place!

Just a few months ago, none other than Norman Lear showed up to comment about the story of Loraine Barr!

This morning, gold medal great Bruce Jenner himself made us squee because ‘Coma made him laugh.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I think it’s pretty darn cool.

No, I didn’t spell that wrong. It represents Michigan and Florida, the two states where the primary process was thwarted. Now that the Democrats are down to the wire and there’s not a final decision, what about those two states?

On one side of the issue, the Democratic party leadership told each state government that if they moved their primary to such and such a date, the result would be that their votes wouldn’t count and the candidates would be told to not campaign there. They were warned ahead of time, and the result was exactly what they were told it would be. From this point of view, these two states should have gone by the rules. They’re whiny crybabies who got their hands (or votes) smacked by daddy.

Read the rest of this entry »

From former Nashvillian Brittney Gilbert.

Then: “Blogging will be the death of legitimate, long-form journalism.”

Now: “Twitter will be the death of legitimate, long-form blogging.”

Then: “I would never have a blog.”

Now: “I would never have a Twitter.”

She’s right.

Twitter is interesting to me. I’ve seen more news broken on Twitter that sometimes takes up to an hour to make it to mainstream news sites.

The Uncle also weighs in.

Eddy Arnold, whose mellow baritone on songs like “Make the World Go Away” made him one of the most successful country singers in history, died Thursday morning, days short of his 90th birthday.

Arnold died at a care facility near Nashville, said Don Cusic, a professor at Belmont University and author of the biography “Eddy Arnold: I’ll Hold You in My Heart.” His wife of 66 years, Sally, had died in March, and in the same month, Arnold fell outside his home, injuring his hip.

Arnold was an ambassador of Nashville in many ways.

Read the rest here.

Ginger also weighs in.

Angela compares her definition of a recession in comparison with another person’s definition.

For years, I’ve defined recession as a financial condition causing stress-related indigestion, sensation of lightheadedness at the gas pump/Wal-Mart, and a recurrence of aberrant thoughts, such as: “Hmmm, generic Peanut Butter isn’t so bad.”

Turns out, these aren’t symptoms of a recession at all.

She says it’s good to know but it still doesn’t help her much.