Archive for April, 2009

My transformation into a brute continues apace

Just moved on to Stage 3 of the New Rules workout! I’m taking my time, making sure that when I have injuries, or something doesn’t feel quite right, I take a step back and rest up instead of trying to work through it. What with the being old thing. And that’s working quite nicely.

But one thing is going to kill me in this stage — the body-weight matrix. For one of the workouts (you get an A and a B, and you alternate them), I have to do the following all at once at the end of an already-grueling session:

  • 24 squats
  • 12 lunges, each leg
  • 12 lunge jumps, each leg
  • 24 squat jumps

Rest and repeat.

That’s really fucking HARD at the end of a tough workout! And to make it more special, I did this first body-weight matrix in a dark playground by the on-ramp to the BQE Sunday night because I got to the gym too close to closing time to fit it in while there and had to finish on the way home. Which is just as well, because I was able to hold onto a piece of playground equipment with a death grip while doing the lunge jumps, which I thought were going to finish me.

But even though I was sure I couldn’t make it, I did. And then I visited a Mr. Softee truck on the way home.

Next up: getting involved in Scottish heavy events. I can throw 28 pounds. I might not be able to throw it far, or well, but I can throw it. The biggest hurdle is finding a place to practice, preferably somewhere that already has all the weights so I don’t have to hump them onto the bus.

A purchase I didn’t want to make, but nonetheless turned out well

So I just bought myself a netbook.  And I reaaaaallly didn’t want to, but it worked out.

I kinda like the thing.

I bought it because I’m now working on a project at work that’s online, so I can do weekend work from home rather than having to schlep in to Manhattan and waste a lot of my weekend in transit.  But the problem is, the project requires Internet Explorer, which Microsoft no longer supports for the Mac.  And then, I need to be able to open links to native documents, which are all in Windows format.  While I have Open Office,  I can’t even see the links because the program I have to use won’t work on anything but a Microsoft platform.

I thought I’d maybe use the computer lab at school, since I did pay an access fee and all, but the site doesn’t work there, either, possibly because it’s disabled on shared computers.  So off I went to J&R and got myself a cheap little netbook.  It’s really not bad; I don’t have any trouble seeing the screen, it’s got a trial version of Office so I can access everything but PowerPoints (which just won’t load for some reason, but I just skip those for the time being), it’s plenty fast, the keyboard is reasonably comfortable, it’s very light and fits in my purse.  The only drawback is the 3-hour battery (the version that’s $80 more has a 6-hour battery) but since I will primarily be using this at home or at a coffee shop with outlets, it doesn’t really matter.  Oh, and the fact that you can’t view the entire window in your browser, but I’ve already gotten the scroll-click-scroll thing down.

I may use this for my travel computer, since it weighs nothing and it’s cheap enough that I can easily replace it if it gets lost, stolen or dropped.  It’s also cheap enough that it’ll pay for itself in no time since it will allow me to bill a little extra time evenings and weekends.

What you can, and can’t, expect from blogging

I spent three years or so writing for two big, A-list political/feminist blogs. So I know a thing or two about blogging, and what to expect from it. And more importantly, what NOT to expect from it.

And what you can NOT expect from blogging is that readers pay you for the content you put out there for free.

Not that you can’t make some money from a blog. But it’s important to understand just what it is that makes the money. See, it’s not your content. It’s your audience. Because where you make your money on a blog is from advertising, and the rates for advertising are dependent on your audience, both its size and its perceived interests. If your blog has a large audience of the kind of people who advertisers think will spend money on their products (such as food blogs or Apartment Therapy), you can charge them to access your audience via paid advertising. If you don’t have much of an audience (or your audience is not perceived as the type to spend money*), you won’t be able to charge much. You attract the audience via content or widgets or what have you, but don’t kid yourself that it’s your writing that pays the bills.

Newspapers, magazines, radio and TV work the same way — I did a few years in journalism back in the day as well, and I can tell you that the size of the paper is not determined by how much news there is, but by how much advertising was sold for the day.** Indeed, when the paper goes to layout, the number of pages is determined by the number, size and placement of the ads, with the total ad space over a certain percentage of the available space. What is left is called the “news hole.” So when your editor wants 12 column-inches on a story, that means that that’s all the space you have available to you for your content, even if what you have is really a 16-inch story. Your content, in a way, is immaterial to the business side of the operation (and there is a division, traditionally, between editorial and business), except inasmuch as it brings in readers, increases circulation, and makes it easier for them to sell advertising at good rates. Your content, in other words, is a delivery vehicle for the ads, which is the profit-generating part of the business. This holds true even if you’re a blogger for a traditional-media outlet and get paid for your content. As Roy Edroso said in response to Dan Collins’ asking him about what kind of welfare the Village Voice gave him:

Keep this under your hat, but the Voice sells ads and uses the money to pay us. That’s capitalism, comrade, and as much as you and I dislike it, it’s the deal we’re stuck with.

Dan, you may or may not know, writes for Protein Wisdom, which was one of the right-wing blogs supported by Pajamas Media (he took offense to Roy’s characterization of the Pajamas Media arrangement as “welfare” and decided to hurl it back, without understanding that there is more than one model out there). At least until Roger Simon and the boys pulled the plug on the financial support they were giving the blogs, in favor of putting money into PJTV, which is a subscription-model podcasty sort of thing. Mostly, it seems to involve stilted videos by Dr. Helen supporting the patriarchy. And Joe the Plumber.

Mind you, unlike blogs, newspapers have separate advertising reps, whose entire job it is to sell advertising space and thus generate revenue. Blogs generally rely on ad networks to sell ad space, with varying results. Another problem is that advertisers underpay (or bypass) blogs due to faulty perceptions. But if you’re going to make money at blogging as a blog owner,*** you have to devote a certain percentage of your time and brainspace to the business side of things. Continue reading ‘What you can, and can’t, expect from blogging’

I am *so* buying a Susan Boyle CD

Turns out she’s recorded before, for a 1999 West Lothian charity CD:

Wow. So, when is her CD coming out?

In other news, it looks like she might be regretting her remarks about never having been kissed, because she shuts down Diane Sawyer (and anyone else remember when Diane Sawyer was, like, a real journalist? Because this interview is just embarrassing) pretty quick when she tries to bring it up. Really, the focus on it has been sort of creepy. I’d also be pretty creeped out by Piers Morgan’s offer to be her first kiss had she not already told an interviewer — early on, before she was asked by the umpteenth media outlet about her virginity — that she would like to kiss him. And at least it would shut down all the talk about her first kiss at some point and allow everyone to move on.

Then there’s the makeover talk, and I’m glad to see that she’s also shutting that down by insisting that she doesn’t want to change too much. I’m also glad to see that Amanda Holden agrees (though I’d be less glad if Susan had *wanted* a makeover, and Amanda was deciding for her). A great part of her appeal is her real-person-ness, and going too glam would wreck that.

Q. Why is there meat in my bed?

A:

The culprit

Surprised? This time it was one of the frozen raw bones that the dogwalker gives her. Guess it was too frozen, because she stashed it on my bed to eat later, then forgot about it.

Whereupon it thawed out, and oozed blood and meat juice through my blankets. I got to sleep with raw meat last night!

Hulk Hogan, MRA

How dare the bitch leave me!

Pro wrestling legend Hulk Hogan, embroiled in a bitter divorce with his wife, Linda, told Rolling Stone magazine he can “totally understand” O.J. Simpson, the former football great found liable for the deaths of his wife and another man.

“I could have turned everything into a crime scene like O.J., cutting everybody’s throat,” Hogan said in the interview for a feature that will run in Friday’s edition of the magazine.

“You live half a mile from the 20,000-square-foot home you can’t go to anymore, you’re driving through downtown Clearwater [Florida] and see a 19-year-old boy driving your Escalade, and you know that a 19-year-old boy is sleeping in your bed, with your wife… . “I totally understand O.J. I get it,” Hogan said.

Note the possessive pronouns: it’s HIS stuff, goddammit, and HIS possessions include HIS wife. Nothing belongs to her, of course. Not even her own body. HE will decide who she can sleep with, and if it’s not him, it’s nobody.

This is exactly the kind of thing that leads to this. Or this. Or this. Or this.  Or this.

Fortunately, Linda Hogan and her attorney realize this, because she’s putting it out there:

A spokesman for Linda Hogan said Wednesday that the statement amounts to a death threat and that her attorney is “weighing all options necessary to protect his client.”

“Sadly, his recent comments remind us that his definition of fair is much different than what the law dictates,” Linda Hogan said in a written statement.

Her spokesman, Gary Smith, linked the comments to the 55-year-old Hogan’s three-decade career, during which he held multiple championship titles and, during his heyday in the 1980s, was easily the most popular wrestler in the world.

“We have always maintained that the fear that Linda has had to live with comes from the rage and instability much too often associated with pro wrestlers,” Smith said in the statement.

Though I definitely take issue with the idea that this is something limited to pro wrestlers. Sure, there have been some high-profile cases of pro wrestlers killing their families and themselves in rages, but what really fuels these guys is a frustrated sense of entitlement. There’s a reason that women are most in danger of being killed *after* they leave their abusive husbands or boyfriends. There’s a reason that MRAs are so obsessed with keeping control of their wives even after the divorce, through use of the courts or playing games with child support. There’s a reason that MRAs are so obsessed with bitches “getting themselves pregnant” just to trap them and take their money.

And there’s a reason a guy I met through OK Cupid last week (and I think the issue there is the free nature of the site attracting the freaks, not any sort of personal tear in the space-time continuum that keeps feeding me these jokers) went off on a long, angry screed about two women with whom he’d been on dates who’d committed the mortal sin of not reaching for their wallets on the first date when the lunch check came — to the point where he bailed on the second one in the middle of the date, called her from Starbucks to tell her she was old enough to pay for her own fucking lunch, and then passed the phone to some strange man (for some bros-before-hos support, I suppose) when she started yelling at him for being an asshole.

I failed to find this amusing, and told him so. And for pointing out that at age 41, he should really learn how to negotiate the lunch check in a civilized manner if he wants to go Dutch treat instead of running out the back door and then enlisting strangers in his efforts to avoid the consequences of such behavior, I got the following from him: “No bitch tells me to buy her lunch.”

When I responded that I considered bullet dodged, thanks much and happy hunting, he emailed back, “blow me.”

“Not,” I replied, “if your dick were made of chocolate.”

Zero to “blow me” took about four emails. If he ever manages to marry anyone, he will undoubtedly wind up in divorce court singing the same sort of tune as Hulk Hogan.

Surprises

Wow. Check this woman out.