I half-watched the roast of Charlie Sheen on Monday night.  I have to admit that I’ve never totally gotten the point of a roast.  Why is it amusing to bring someone on stage and say horrible things to their face?  Teasing, fine.  But the Comedy Central roasts are just cruel, starting with Seth MacFarlane’s joke about how he has Charlie Sheen’s obit ready: he just had to change the date and place on Amy Winehouse’s obit and he’s ready to go.

Which sort of begs the question: if all these comics are saying you need help, that you’re sick and grappling with addiction, isn’t it beyond cruel to bring you onstage and mock you publicly?  Say mean things to Larry the Cable Guy or Bob Saget if they volunteer for this.  But isn’t it irresponsible to allow Charlie Sheen to be the roastee, even if he agrees to it?

I don’t know… have I lost my sense of humour, or did the roast seem overtly cruel?

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We’re in the middle of IComLeavWe, so hello to all IComLeavWe’ers!

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Only a handful of people answered whether they wanted to do The Grateful Said this year.  Does that mean there is pretty much no interest?  Vote below or forever hold your peace…  I think we’d need 50 or so participants to make it worthwhile, and this would be in addition to the yearly Creme de la Creme.

Speaking of the Creme de la Creme, the prizes so far are fantastic.  Thank you so much for running with this, and a huge thank you to everyone who has offered up something.  We already have 12 prizes, so this is going to be fun.  You have until October 19th to submit a prize, and I’m going to approach a few places to see if they want to donate something to the mix as well.

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If I send an email from my mobile device, the signature reads: “sent from a device that makes me type a lot of things wrong” or something to that effect.  It’s one of those excuse-the-typo messages.

On Wednesday, the Wolvog sent me an email about the website we’re building together.  Last year, he was home alone with me one day while his sister was at school.  I asked him what he wanted to do and he said, “make my own website!” So I bought him a url and he has been tinkering with it.  He ran into a roadblock with something he wanted to do on the front page so I did some research and sent him an email  from my mobile device about what I found.  This was his email back asking when we could try out the software I found online.

I noticed that the signature on his email now read: “sent from a computer that makes me type a lot of things wrong.”  I burst out laughing and called him into the kitchen to ask about it.  And he just beamed: “I noticed it on your email and I thought, ‘well, that is a great excuse and people will now understand that computers and spelling can be confusing!'”

Well played, Wolvog, well played.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Finding the Place” (Bloodsigns)
• “Support” (By the Brooke)
• “Hi, My Name is Josh and I Have a Dead Baby Too” (Jack at Random)
• “A Possible Explanation” (Trying Not to Scream)
• “Seen This Look Before” (Chron.com)
• “A Little Relief” (Secondhand Happiness)
• “Pulled Together by Kindness” (Not a Fertile Myrtle)
• “The Gratuitous Post about My Cats” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “Life Lessons Peyton Taught Me” (Once a Mother)
• “Accepting that This is the Path We’re On” (Invisible Mother)
• “Just Be Enough: Someone” (Kir’s Corner)
• “The Speech” (From IF to When)
• “Over Before it Even Began” (In Due Time)
• “9/11: Remember & Carrying On” (Four of a Kind)
• “Nine Eleven, Ed McCaffrey, Stephen Covey and Me” (Write Mind Open Heart)
• “9/11 Remembered Through the Lens” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “How Strangers Change Your Life for the Better” (Too Many Fish to Fry)

Still Kicking Your Collective Ass: I am so proud of you!  17 posts!  Let’s keep it up: there is a whole world of blog posts out there worthy of a little extra attention.  This week, the dates are things written between September 16th and the 23rd.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Mommy Odyssey has a post about being kicked off of emotional auto-pilot by all the loss in her life.  It’s a tiny benefit she can find in what she has struggled through in terms of infertility and pregnancy loss.  I love this sentiment: “All I know is that I’m finally building myself back up, piece by piece. I am no longer trying to put a roof on a building with no foundation. I now realize that first you need to pour the cement.”  It’s a gorgeous post about learning to feel, about inviting life close.

Embracing the Rain has a post about being lapped about a threesome at work who all got pregnant together the first time and now are all pregnant together again.  She writes, “While I am genuinely happy for them, I am also finding it to be a very difficult reality check for me.   I wish that I was in their position, but the reality is I’m no closer to having even one living child now than I was 2.5 years ago.”  It’s a quiet post that ends with tears.

Notes from the Ninth Circle has a fantastic, tiny post about what she isn’t going to do on Facebook.  Seriously, it defies description — you just need to read it.

Lastly, A Half Baked Life has a post about feeling like her life is not her own; it’s one that she has borrowed from someplace else.  I get this feeling often, so I was glad to read someone else saying it too.  This is the paragraph that made me gasp: “On the train back from New York, N. was sleeping on my chest, and I found myself looking down at her, almost afraid to breathe, afraid that somehow this moment would evaporate, and life would be ‘same as it ever was’.”  Isn’t that gorgeous?

The roundup to the Roundup: I didn’t find the Charlie Sheen roast funny, but I also fear I’m losing my sense of humour.  Hi, IComLeavWe’ers.  Vote for the Grateful Said, and an update about the upcoming Creme de la Creme.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 16th and September 23rd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I read the recent article in the New York Times about how small towns are being torn apart by anonymous bulletin board websites that allow people to essentially post the town gossip (the more inflammatory the better!).  Think so-and-so is having an affair on his wife?  Post it online — without your name attached, of course — and see if anyone can corroborate your thoughts.  Think so-and-so is a dick?  Post it online — anonymously please! — and see if anyone else agrees.  And beyond that, make sure that you answer a person’s earnest question as nastily as possible so she is left wondering who the hell her neighbours are.

I feel for these small towns, especially ones where the population is settled rather than fluid, and people are so distrustful and hurt by their neighbours — not even certain which ones to be upset with since the board is anonymous — that their impulse is to move.  To uproot their life and take it elsewhere.

But I have to disagree somewhat with the author: this phenomenon isn’t unique to small towns.  While people may believe that just because you live in a large city that you can absorb slams to your reputation better, the reality is that most people take large entities and make them smaller, creating tiny niches.  In the city, we exist in a tiny bubble within a larger circle.  I don’t interact with many people outside my tiny bubble, and everyone new that I meet turns out to be strangely interconnected.

Therefore, when people anonymously post horrific things about people I know on our local anonymous posting bulletin board, the infamous DC Urban Moms, it affects them.  When people allow discussions to dissolve into a flame war, it affects people in their face-to-face world, especially if they suspect the author of the anonymous comment.  City people may be able to find a different bubble in the larger circle, but it means sometimes switching jobs, apartments, churches, and where they go grocery shopping in order to do so.

I started out thinking DC Urban Moms was a lifesaver.  I posted about being unable to breastfeed and WhyMommy along with others stepped forward with formula coupons.  People weighed in with their thoughts about local pediatricians.  I found answers to a lot of “where can you find…” type questions.  Drama happened, but I could tune out the flame wars by skipping over postings by certain people, knowing that they were the ones who tried to foment others on the list.

And then DC Urban Moms started their anonymous forums and I had to stop reading.  There were passionate fights on the listserv, but people had to stand behind their words which reined them in.  Amongst the real advice you can still find on DC Urban Moms, you now need to wade through discussions such as “wake up fat people” and “obnoxious things being said in DC schools.”  I have only been back on when a friend writes me and says, “holy shit, look at what someone wrote about me online!”

The Topix site mentioned in the New York Times and DC Urban Moms step over the line from a “fight site” to a cruelty zone, where people attempt to destroy each other’s reputations and livelihoods.  School teachers are bashed, neighbours are torn new assholes, and even children aren’t safe from people’s acid treatment.  People are told from complete strangers that they’re horrific parents, skanks, and selfish.  You really don’t want to go on there and see what is being written about infertile men and women. (To be fair, the horrible comments are scattered amongst some wonderful support as well.  But frankly, I can’t stay for the support when it comes with a big helping of “you obvious don’t deserve to be a parent and that’s why you can’t get pregnant” type commentary.)  And all of it is done anonymously.

It makes you wonder who these anonymous posters are.  Are they shopping at the very same P Street Whole Foods?  Are they at the next table at ACKC?  They could be a fellow shul-goer, they could be my gynecologist, they could be a friend of a friend, floating around the same little city bubble.

I left the newsletter and site — and I’d encourage all the townspeople of Mountain Grove to do the same — because I didn’t want to take part, even as just a reader.  I don’t think enough good can come from anonymous sites nor do I think that questions that need an anonymous presentation are always best suited for an online site.  I understand why people legitimately want to be anonymous to ask their question.  I understand that some questions are embarrassing in nature or people worry about information getting back to the wrong person.  But the reality is that the anonymous function is rarely used to protect the question asker from damage in their work or social world that could come from their question.  It is more often used to hurl insults.

As that article admits:

Jeff Steele, the founder of DCUM, says there aren’t many topics on the site that can’t turn into an argument. Compared to the kinder, more utilitarian parenting newsletter he and his wife also run, he says, the message board is like the Wild West.

If he knows that’s the case, I have to ask why allow anonymous posting?  Why not make people stand behind the statements they make and tame the Wild West?  Force people to rethink whether or not a discussion needs to begin online.

In fact, Steele admits in a blog post that users themselves have requested that people stand by their words by logging in:

So, to those of you who wonder whether DCUM is likely to change with Maria’s new role, here is your answer. Especially, to those who suggest — over and over again — that we require users to login, the chance of that is close to nil.

If people are asking “over and over again,” why not give it to them?  The answer — I would guess — is that DC Urban Moms would get many fewer page views if people played nicely.  Though I assume that if asked, Steele would trot out a socially-respectable answer such as the commonly used cry of free speech.

Claiming free speech in and of itself makes for a weak argument.  Free speech is a constitutional right, but it is always tempered with limitations, stating that people cannot commit libel or slander, incite violence, scream out obscenities.  Free speech is a responsibility — not something to be abused for amusement or to attract page views.  As human beings who require a certain level of decency in order to function as a society, we need some limits or guidelines on that free speech.

Limits which are sorely lacking on online anonymous posting forums.

I think there are plenty of good reasons for anonymous posting, and for me, it’s the reason behind why you are not attaching your name that makes it permissible or not.  I’m not sure how we argue the good of anonymous posting when it’s used solely to call someone else a bitch.

I feel for the small towns mentioned in the New York Times article, but I also feel for those of us in larger cities who also have to contend with vitriol on the Web.  It’s a short life.  I’m never sure why some people feel the need to make things uglier than they need to be.

Um, this post on digital hoarding resonated with me in the sense that it made me examine my own digital tendencies.  Reading about how many unread messages were in the author’s inbox made me queasy.  Reading about how many messages were being kept in her inbox at all made my heart start pounding with anxiety.  Reading about how many pictures and videos she had brought my pulse back to a normal level.  But then she talked about email again and my breath started coming out in short gasps while I involuntarily barked, drooled, and then fell on the floor twitching.

I may be exaggerating slightly.

But only slightly.

I run both ends of the spectrum.  My inbox needs to be semi-empty.  It almost never goes under 12 messages because I have 12 emails that I keep in my inbox at all times for quick access.  But it seems that my threshold for emails in the inbox is 30.  Once it goes over 30, it starts making me anxious.  When it goes over 40, I start dropping work I need to do in order to carve out time to address the 40 emails that need answering.  The only messages in my inbox are messages that need to be dealt with in some way.  Once I have emailed someone back, the email is filed under one of my 250+ labels (I am considering consolidating some of those labels).

On the other end of the spectrum is my digital hoarding of pictures and video.  My mantra seems to be: “you never know when you might want to see this again.”  Things I KNOW I will never want to see again still get filed.  I have an incredible amount of images as well as video that I carry with me daily via mobile devices.  I like having it with me, even on days when I do not turn on said mobile device.  I refer to my iPod as my security blanket — it makes me feel better just to have these pictures and videos with me, even if I don’t use it.

That said, I am terrible at checking voice messages.  On my home phone, I’ll listen at the end of the day, though I’ve also been known to suddenly remember that I need to check the machine only to discover that the messages on it are three days old.  I never check my cell phone voice mail.  When I say “never,” I don’t mean that I check it once a week or so.  I mean that I never check it, therefore, it is currently full and people apparently cannot leave any more messages.  I was kindly told this in an email by my husband.

See, emails I deal with immediately.  Voice mails, not so much.

I don’t have text on the phone, I don’t listen to voice mails, and I make this perfectly clear to people.  Can I truly be held responsible for other people’s frustrations that I won’t use their favoured form of communication?  I clean out my freakin’ email inbox like I’m Bree Van de Kamp with a bottle of Lysol.  So what if the rest of my digital world is a mess?

Stewart writes in the post:

The thing is, we live in a consumer culture. It’s all about accumulating things: Clothes, shoes, snapshots, friends, followers, likes. We’ve created a world of have and have-nots, and convinced ourselves that it’s always better to have.

Is that it?  Is that why it’s so difficult to hit delete on an email we think we might want to read again one day?  So difficult to cull our friend list on Facebook, so difficult to drop people from our Twitter feed once they’re added?

Plus, the digital world isn’t the same as physical objects in your house.  You can digitally hoard and no one knows it unless they look at your phone or email account.  My iPod feels like the junk drawer in the house — it’s full to bursting, but no one knows simply by looking at the kitchen.

For me, my digital life mirrors my offline life: I have a tendency to hold onto physical objects (you do not want to see our storage room) both for sentimental and “what if we ever need it” reasons.  But I also am hyper-organized, with folders and colour-coded filing systems and to-lists galore.  I like to be organized.  I like to have the only things in front of me things I need to deal with.  Junk mail is trashed immediately.  Other mail is dealt with as soon as possible so it doesn’t pile up.  Permission slips are signed and returned on the first day.

And yet there are a crapload of DVDs and photographs around this house.

Are you a digital hoarder?  And does your online life mirror your offline life?

The air is getting cooler, the leaves will soon be crunching underfoot, and it is time to start organizing the sixth Creme de la Creme.  Every year, the list gets longer and longer and I need to start working on it earlier.  I’m not complaining — I’m just stating a fact: it’s a lot of work.  Last year, we had 364 submissions.  This year, I’d like to have over 400.  So things will need to kick off soon — namely, October 20th.

Here’s what you need to know before the list opens.  This post is long, but I sprinkle a lot of good information in here so you’re going to want to read until the end.  Lots of changes afoot — some boring but some, I hope, are a bit fun.

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Because it’s a lot of work, I’m changing one aspect of it this year (beyond opening the list on October 20): the list will only be open for new submissions until January 5th.  In the past, I’ve updated it well into the spring, but the list is just too enormous to do that now.  I need to contain the bulk of the work  to these fall/winter months and then put it to bed.  So the last submissions will be taken on January 5th at 11 pm EST and then the list will close for the year.

Which means, you may want to take the next few weeks to peek through your archives and find which post you want to highlight.

As always, there will be two deadlines: the first will be December 15th.  Any submission that comes in between October 20th and December 15th will be on the Creme de la Creme when it goes up — as always — on New Years Day.  The second deadline will be the hard deadline of January 5th.  Any submission that comes in from December 16th to January 5th will go on the list after its initial posting (in other words, I’ll get it on there some time after January 1st).  Any submission that comes in after January 5th will not be included.

There is plenty of time to get on the list, but I know some people like to know when the list will open so they can submit as soon as the list opens so they’re high up on the list.  Also, I ask as a favour that you spread word about the list between now and December in order to get as many people on there as possible before the list goes up on January 1st.  Tweet it, Facebook it, Stumble it, blog about it, email about it, call your mother about it — help me get word out so no one gets to mid-January and feels left out.

(2)

When the call for submissions goes up on October 20th and the list opens, please take the time to read the full post.  I know it’s long, but I write it for a reason.  It is to make things easier for me and easier for you.  I can’t tell you how many people don’t bother to read the post and it shows when the submission comes in wrong, for instance, a post from 2009 for the 2010 list.  So I’m begging you, if you want the Creme to run smoothly, please read the post.

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The part that I really, really, really need help with is the Blogs that Closed section.  I am looking for the names of blogs that closed in 2011.  This means that they have at least one post in 2011 and then they formally stated that they are going to stop blogging OR they have not had a new post since January 2011.  If you are a former blog writer who closed his/her blog in 2011 OR a blog you read in 2011 closed, please email me the name so I can keep track.

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Speaking of being high up on the list (I was speaking about that in the first point in case your eyes are currently glazing over), I am holding the second slot on the list for the winner of a commenting contest I’m going to hold in the next few weeks.  You know how I love for people to comment everywhere, so in order to encourage people to comment more, I’m going to be offering up the second slot on the list as a prize.  Yes, those higher up on the list have given feedback that they get more hits.  More news coming soon.

I will probably hold a second slot somewhere high on the list for an IComLeavWe’er to grab in a comment raffle.

Just trying to keep it fun.

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Lastly, the Creme de la Creme was created as the anti-award list in response to all of the “best of” voting contests that spring up each winter.  It’s all well and good to honour one person, but I’d much rather everyone have a post honoured — we all do great work.

That said, I think it would be fun to have prizes this year BUT they would not be merit based.  No blog post would be deemed “better” than someone else’s (how do you truly judge something like that?)  Instead, they would be by random chance based on where you are on the list.

Because this is the 6th year, I’d like to honour the 6th, the 36th, and the 216th participant (or something to that effect — I picked the number 6 and then squared and cubed it, but it will all depend on how many prizes we have to work with).  And I’d like the prizes to come… from you.

The prizes should be handmade, based on a specific skill you possess, or something you wish to giveaway (such as a giftcard).  You have etsy shops, you have online stores, you have crafty side projects, you can pull together a fun basket of American candy that would be appealing to someone overseas.  Anyone who would like to submit one of their pieces as a prize will have their online space listed and linked to as a thank you.  So it becomes a give-and-take: you contribute the prize, but in return, you get free publicity right before the holidays so people can support you (by perhaps doing some of their holiday shopping at your online site) OR support your blog.  See, it’s like a big community group-hug.

Anything works, though it obviously needs to be mail-able or transferred electronically:

• Do you do website design?  Offer up a free blog makeover.
• Do you make jewelry?  Offer up a bracelet.
• Great at using photo software?  Offer to touch up someone’s pictures for them or teach them how to use photoshop.
• Do you knit?  Contribute a hat or scarf.
• Do you have a gift card to a business you’re not using?  Someone else might want it.
• Anyone who crafts or creates music or has a technical skill they can pass along — send it all up as a prize.

If you would like to contribute a prize, please write the following information in a comment below:

• What the prize will be
• A link to your online site (or your blog if you don’t have an online site but can make something crafty to serve as a prize or have a skill to pass along)

By doing so, you’re making a commitment to deliver the prize — t0 mail it to the recipient or connect with them over email if you’re passing along a skill.

The prizes will all be randomly assigned based on where you fall on the list.  The first person who has a “lucky spot” on the list will get to choose from all the prizes offered.  Then the second lucky spot will get to pick, so on and so on until the final lucky spot gets the final remaining prize.  If you do not wish to keep your prize, you can pass it along to the next person on the list.  All prize submissions need to come in by October 19th at 11 pm EST to be included.

Got that?  So leave a comment below if you have something to contribute.

Wheeew, and those are the five announcements.  Look for the submission list opening on October 20th.

WAIT!

Jen asks a good question in the comment section below.

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Are people interested in doing the Grateful Said again, the comment equivalent to the Creme de la Creme list?  I loved it and would pull it together again if people are interested.  Let me know in a comment below if you’d participate.  Trying to gauge interest.

I am chalking it up to exhaustion.

At my last guitar lesson, my teacher opened the book to a new page and asked me to sight read the new piece.  A pretty common occurrence with guitar class and one that doesn’t usually phase me.  I don’t think reading sheet music is one of my strengths — I tend to play by ear — but I can certainly do it.  The week before, he had similarly turned the page and asked me to sight read a new piece and I had breezed through it.

But at my last lesson, I just stared at the notes, suddenly unable to read… any of them.  It was like looking at Japanese: you know it’s a language, but you can’t actually discern what it says (unless you are my cousin and read Japanese).  I not only couldn’t tell which was a “G” and which was a “C,” but I suddenly didn’t know any of the string names or which fret created which note on the guitar.

So I started to laugh.  For the duration of this incident, I kept emitting this nervous, embarrassed laugh.  I tried to explain that I literally couldn’t process any of it.  I don’t think he understood what I meant or took me seriously (maybe because I was laughing?) because he gave me a strange look and suggested that I start with the top note (I was playing triads).  But that was the thing — I could identify that the dot on the top was what he meant by “the first note” and knew from placement that it would be found on one of the higher strings, but I couldn’t identify the string or fret, nor was it any better when he said, “play B.”

I struggled for a few minutes with it, thinking that this was a passing brain cloud — a spot of grey in the sky and it would soon float past — but when my thoughts still remained grey and murky, and when my teacher was thoroughly confused by my inexplicable inability to do a task that I have literally performed several dozen times since last winter, he moved into a completely different exercise, one using tablature instead of sheet music.

I went home and told Josh about it who responded with, “that’s strange.”  And that was the end of it.

Until I couldn’t remember what year it was.

I was looking at an expiration date, wondering if it was coming up this November or if it had already passed last November.  I literally didn’t know if it was 2011 or 2012.  I had at least narrowed it down to one of those two years.  Josh gave me the same look that my guitar teacher gave me, one a mixture of disbelief and wonder if this was the set up to a joke.  Except it wasn’t a joke.  I didn’t know the year.

So we went to bed early that night.

At this point, I am chalking up my forgetfulness to lack of sleep.  But it was strange and upsetting, an anxiety-laugh-inducing situation to not be able to recall information that I know that I know.  It was different from forgetting a person’s name or where I put the keys.  Those are moments of forgetfulness that happen to everyone.  We all forget temporary things: where we parked or information we just heard.

It is different to forget something that you know so deeply that it is part of your very being.   I have been reading sheet music since I was five years old.  It is ingrained in my brain by this point in the same way that reading words doesn’t require much of a mental strain.  While time is fleeting, the year is a constant that repeats as a part of the date daily.  It too becomes ingrained a few weeks into each year.  Forgetting the year in January is understandable.  Forgetting it in September is less so.

I was bothered by the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, when I first saw it.  It’s about a couple who pay to have the relationship erased from their brains.  The title comes from an Alexander Pope poem about vestal virgins — they shut out the world and in turn are forgotten by the world.  And they just sit there daily, without experiences tarnishing their memories and weighing them down — their sole focus is to pray.  They have nothing to remember, and therefore, nothing to forget.

Having nothing to remember doesn’t sound at all pleasant to me.  In fact, it sounds like an extremely painful way to live.  I love experiencing things.  Of course, I prefer the good experiences to the bad ones, but that is life — you can’t really pick and choose what you get.  But having is all sounds better to me than having nothing at all.

In that poem, forgetting is presented as preferable to being in emotional pain, but forgetting wouldn’t bring me comfort AT ALL.  In fact, it would probably disturb me more than the bad memory itself. (Of course, this scenario counts on the person being dimly aware that a thought is missing vs. being completely oblivious to the fact that they have forgotten something.)

There are plenty of events or people I’ve encountered in my life that continue to bring me emotional (albeit dulled) pain.  But even in the throes of that pain, I wouldn’t have requested to forget those events or people.  I wouldn’t even forget my drive or goals — even if they’re thwarted by my own ill-functioning ovaries — in order to live in peaceful bliss, unaware that I even want to build my family.  I think — though I can’t know for certain being that I’ve never been in this situation — if I had been to war and had PTSD, I would still find it preferable to suffer than to forget.

Forgetting is one of my biggest fears.

Would you do the procedure, erase bad memories, people you don’t want to remember, or your desires so you could be released from them?  Or is that emotional pain preferable to the idea of forgetting?