Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Archives for July 2009

Blog Spotlight: Meish.org

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I’ve decided that as frequently as I can I’d like to highlight a specific blog I love by talking about the blogger and linking to my favorite recent entries. It’s only fitting that I start with the single blog that was at the top of my link list when I launched nine years ago, and continues to be a daily read today:

Meg Pickard’s meish.org.

Meish wasn’t always Meish – it was once Not So Soft. In that capacity I consider it my parent blog, as I created my own specifically to ape what Meg was doing daily.

I’ve read Meg ever since, and she’s never stopped being compelling. She lives in London, was schooled as a sociologist, and spent time abroad conducting ethnographies. She presently works in some capacity for The Guardian.

Meg has a way – as all great bloggers do – of making the common seem very compelling. She also writes wonderful lists (frequently etymological in nature), takes clever and pretty photographs (even with an iPhone), and shares thoughts on social media.

And, as borne out by her original blog name (an Ani reference), Meg has wonderfully eclectic taste in music (and shares some of my OCD organizational qualities).

Some other recent highlights: she tracks the occurrence of “Flying Ant Day” with uncanny accuracy; she ruminates on the concept of time tourism (which I have discussed at length with Rabi); attempts to create a universal theory of measurement; dissects nationalist “visit us” campaigns; makes tables out of old maps; details past packing mishaps; and she bemoans a lack of adjectiveless sandwiches.

And that’s all just in the last year. Meish posts a few times a week, which makes it easy to follow in RSS; more voracious readers will want to subscribe to Meg’s many-times-daily tumblr.

Having met Rabi a long time ago, and Alison more recently, I’d say Meg is probably the blogger I’d most like to meet in real life.

Why I #blamedrewscancer, Intermission (a)

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I’m not quite ready to be done with my story of jumping out of a plane to Blame Drew’s Cancer.

You see, I promised this girl I used to have a big crush on that I would write something “epic,” and now I have Drew on the edge of his seat.

It seems like a good time for an intermission.

From inside of the planning of Blame Drew’s Cancer events I can lose sight of why we’re planning. It isn’t for fun, even though we’re having fun. It isn’t for Drew, even though we’re all behind him. It is to get people talking about cancer out loud, to raise money to benefit LiveStrong, and to create a network of support for cancer battlers and survivors, and their families.

Every time I start to forget that, I am reminded of the changes Drew’s efforts are making in Philadelphia. People are blaming cancer everywhere I go, which means they’re talking about cancer. Not about cancer “victims” or “losing” the battle to cancer. No. They are blaming it. Making it a villain. Recognizing its impact while marginalizing its power.

They are beating it.

Here’s a partial list of the people who I’ve witnessed blaming Drew’s cancer in the last few weeks:

  • Larry Mendte, former anchor of CBS3 news
  • The chair of my events committee at work
  • Fox29 Good Day Philadelphia
  • A guy on the elevator wearing a LiveStrong band
  • The Philadelphia CityPaper
  • Local sports fan Joe In Philly
  • The team at LiveStrong
  • My good friend Ariel, as his friend Baylor, sitting on a SEPTA bus
  • Author Tara Hunt and the entire Whuffaoke crew
  • Gina’s boyfriend Wes
  • My mother

    Yes, my mother. When I mentioned Drew to her she knew just who I meant, which was a wonderful seugeway for mentioning that I had jumped out of a plane. “You know, with Drew. To blame cancer.”

    She was totally into it. Italian mother guilt averted! To quote:

    If you do anything that involves raising money for charity you can count on support from me. Keep me posted, and give Drew a hug from your nurse/mom.

    Drew, prepare for a really fierce Italian mom hug by-proxy tomorrow at LiveStrong night at Lucky Strike Lanes while you’re knocking down pins/cancer.

    (ps: You should come too! Tomorrow, Thursday, July 30, at Lucky Strike Lanes, 13th & Chestnut. 20% of proceeds benefit LiveStrong all day if you mention LS or Blame Drew’s Cancer, plus $20 a strike and $10 a spare starting at 7pm courtesy of Level 3 Media.)

    • Is misogyny okay if it is tacit?

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    I am angry about something. I ran the same situation by Elise, and she just found it amusing.

    I’m interested to know what you think, posed in both hypothetical and actual flavors.

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    Hypothetical:

    You are attending a conference titled “Asian-Americans Emerging in Social Media.” Whether or not you are Asian is irrelevant; assume you’re interested in the content of the conference, and that 98% of attendees are at least partially of Asian descent.

    While picking up your registration packet you recognize a non-Asian blogger, and he’s wearing a t-shirt that says, “I’ve got yellow fever!”

    Later in the day, you run into a white female you don’t know wearing a tank top that says, “I’m turning Japanese.” Perhaps it’s just text, or perhaps it’s paired with a minimalist illustration of slanted eyes on an “O” face in a nod to the song’s subject. Later, at a party thrown by a Chinese culture website, her apparel bears something to the effect of, “Don’t worry boys: size doesn’t matter … to me”**

    Note your initial reaction to the shirts, considering the context of the conference. Now, consider that both wearers blogged/twittered a promise to “pack their most inappropriate t-shirts” for the conference. Has your reaction changed?

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    Actual:

    This is a recount of something Grace of What If No One’s Watching witnessed at the recent BlogHer conference.

    The attendance, while not 100% female, is very largely so. I haven’t seen more than 20 or 30 male attendees since I’ve been here.

    The first one I saw just after arriving, at a restaurant in the hotel. I noticed him due to his shirt. It showed a graphic of a woman with her breasts exposed, her nipples replaced by @ signs. It read “show me your tweets.”

    Then, not an hour later, I saw a man sporting a shirt saying something along the lines of “I love mommy bloggers–they put out.” The next day, the same man attended a party, hosted by an ostensibly feminist website, sporting a shirt reading “I am having very spiritual thoughts about your breasts” or some similar nonsense.

    Did you have a similar reaction to those slogans? Note that they’re clearly aimed at women no matter the setting, while in my hypothetical two of the shirts wouldn’t have been as striking sans Asian context.

    Again, does it change your opinion that that both bloggers blogged a promise that they had packed some offensive apparel?

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    Both the hypothetical and the actual rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, they might be wryly humorous, but why bring that wry humor to a place celebrating a medium where a specific minority has escaped marginalization and become empowered?

    Elise – an Asian woman – found them both amusing – especially “yellow fever” and “show me your tweets.”

    Are Grace and I humorless feminazis for being offended?*** Or, is Elise is a self-hating Asian woman?**** Neither. Grace and I don’t appreciate tacit misogynism. Elise gives people the benefit of the doubt.

    A final fact: both of the male bloggers commented on Grace’s post, claiming they wore the shirts to get noticed and start conversations (they apparently forgot that they’d be noticed simply by being a male). Those comments were followed by friends/readers who vouched that no offense was meant (they have “good hearts”), as well as a number who less-than-kindly called Grace overly-sensitive (a gem: “Is it possible it’s your own insecurities causing this? Seems to me that you feel like you’re less than a man.”).

    Seriously?

    Next year BlogHer is in New York City, and I’m contemplating attending. And you had better believe that if I do I am going to spend at least one day hanging out with Grace wearing the most hard-core grrl-power t-shirt I can find.

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    * If you’ve never heard the phrase before, it is a particularly unclever way to note that you are a non-Asian who is primarily attracted to Asians.

    ** In the same way that people assume all black men are heavily hung, there’s also an assumption that Asian men are uniformly not. Neither assumption is statistically supportable.

    *** I can’t speak for Grace, but I kinda am.

    **** No.

    Tuesday Morning Tech Links

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    I flag a lot of techie links, as if I’m going to go and use 39 how-tos or 87 productivity tools right there on the spot. That’s not how it works. You tuck that information away for when you need to look back on it. And a scattering of bookmarks across my five different computers is not a good tucking method.

    Hell, even cloud bookmarking doesn’t really do it – for me a bookmark is for a page (in a book or on the web) I know I will come back to at a specific time. This sort of thing is more open-ended.

    Luckily, I have the ultimate in permanent memory technology – a nearly decade-old blog.

    Elise has been doing a lot of CSS work lately, which is an area of web design where I’ve fallen behind. Thus, I love this Getting Started with CSS guide, which is packed with 20 starter tools. (via @mayhemstudios)

    Handy list of the 22 most useful free apps for your PC. At the beginning I was like – um, duh – but as it continues it will surely slip you a surprise or two. (via @robangeles)

    In a similar vein, 30 open source apps for web designers is a litany of code- and image- editors and FTP apps that I’ve never even heard of before. (via @bkmacdaddy)

    I sometimes have a blank moment where I’m futzing with my server can’t remember exactly what I’m supposed to be doing with my .htaccess file, and the next time I have that moment I’m going to re-read 16 Useful htaccess tricks.

    If you are several dozen levels of “Internets Wizard” higher than that, perhaps you’d be intrigued by the Ultimate Round-Up of Fireworks Tutorials. I have Fireworks now, but what I haven’t had is time to level up my skills in it.

    If you or someone you know is still Twitter-averse or a Twitter-virgin, they should refer to the mammoth Ultimate Guide for Everything Twitter, which covers just about any question you could conceive of. (via @Sharonhayes)

    Alternately, for the power-user, how about a guide to how to use twitter when you follow several-thousand people? Around 300 I felt hopelessly lost, and started searching for an external app to sort people into groups. This article takes a more organic approach. (via @danavan)

    Finally, not really a tech link, but it appeals to this same crowd: What to include in your design contracts.

    Why I #blamedrewscancer, pt. 3

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    (Read Part 2)

    It is just past 2:30 on Saturday afternoon.

    The bodies of Drew and his tandem partner are framed by stunning cerulean blue from the open hatch of the plane. Drew’s tiny, thickly-accented videographer has just tipped herself out of the plane.

    Drew leans his head back against the shoulder of his partner.

    “Three.”

    “Two.”

    I do not hear “one.” Their bodies arch out of the open side of the plane, dwindling quickly from view, as my tandem partner duck-waddles us closer to the hatch.

    I jump next.

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    Drew accepted my pledge to get involved with Blame-a-Thon with zero hesitation, despite the fact that he didn’t know me from Adam. Actually, he had never met Britt in person before either, and hadn’t known Mikey for all that long. Only Chris, his co-host from Best Damn Tech Show, was a long-term friend.

    His entire project team had been recruited via Twitter. A day later I found myself equipped with an official BlameDrewsCancer email address, pitching ideas and drafting documents.

    So much for taking a break from event planning. That had lasted all of five weeks.

    If the scope of Blame-a-Thon started big, then the ideas behind the scenes were gargantuan. We were reaching out to huge sponsors – businesses I’d never before dreamed of contacting as an individual. And, more and more events found their way onto the schedule – LiveStrong night at the Phillies, karaoke, bowling, sponsored evenings at National Mechanics and Buckhead Saloon, and maybe even a night at a local comedy club.

    In any other organization I’d be wary of stretching too thin, but BlameDrewsCancer was the inverse. Every time we added another seemingly-insane item to our list, more resources and support emerged from the Twitter community. The pace of blaming and donations (all benefiting our partner LiveStrong) kept increasing.

    Through our non-stop conversations I suddenly had a crew of best friends that I barely even knew. I even bought a new phone after a year of waffling just so I could stay in touch with all of their manic happenings.

    My windfall of awesome new people is actually part of Drew’s end-game for the charity – he wants to use his experience with cancer to show people battling cancer (and their friends and families) that they can build their own dynamic systems of support through tools like Twitter, and then convert that system into the real world. In fact, Drew wants to help them do it.

    Somewhere in there, we started to talk about skydiving. Chris and Mikey had done it before, and I mentioned wanting to tag along on their next trip. Britt said she was game. If Drew wanted to skydive, we could do it as a team, with our final member Amanda acting as ground control.

    This is what impresses me the most about Drew, and about Blame Drews Cancer. Drew didn’t necessarily want to skydive. I at no point got the impression that it was something on his “bucket list” of things to do just in case cancer got the best of him. In fact, the idea of it occasionally seemed to send him into a panic attack.

    Skydiving was an extreme, scary thing to do, and it seemed to me that Drew wanted to do it – fear and all – just to shove it in cancer’s face. He would pitch himself – cancer and all – out of a plane at an altitude of 15,000 feet to prove that Drew has cancer, but cancer doesn’t have Drew.

    We picked a date. On Saturday, July 18 – a day after my six month wedding anniversary – I would leap out of a plane and hope to land all in one piece.

    Monday Morning Remainders

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    Some links I’ve been meaning to share for a while that don’t quite merit their own posts, but work well traveling as a pack.

    Last week Ad Age ran a great article on Social Media taking cues from indie music. They highlight four artists taking the lead in connecting to their fans on the web, and the #1 example is my personal fav Amanda Palmer, about whom they gush, “[She is] more sophisticated than almost anyone on the internet — musician, brand or otherwise — when it comes to gathering her audience around her and keeping the conversation going.”

    In a not-dissimilar topic, NYT ran an article highlighting how bands are increasingly eschewing labels in favor of self-releasing or seeking alternate funding. Fluffy on content, but features Metric, whose self-released Fantasies is killer. Metric is my Garbage replacement while Shirl and the boys chill out. Metric’s manager just detailed the funding behind the record in an open letter; dense, but a fascinating peek into the Canandian indie industry.

    Nerd Boyfriend is a photo blog that posts modern and vintage photos of well-dressed nerds you’d probably like to date, and offers suggestions of how to match their look. Their Scott Walker post is one of my recent favorites, both for fashion and photography.

    “How to decide if you have a good job” is a fantastic post about start-ups, stress, and loving your life. It also give a bit of background inside into Alice.com, a novel start-up that regularly delivers all of your household necessities to your home at a discount over big box stores.

    On the flipside, big box corporations are co-opting the “buy local” movement, the same way they’ve all undertaken “green-washing” their businesses. Disappointing on the surface, but there is certain a local element to chains with e-tailing encouraging people to continue to hit their brick and mortar locations or customizing their sales to a regional audience. Neither are bad things.

    Um, the melting arctic has released a torrent of “biological goo” on the Alaskan coast and we are not alarmed why? Sounds like the beginning of a terrifying episode of X-Files to me. (via Cecily of Uppercase Woman).

    September is a month dedicated to raising awareness of cancer in children. I’ll be busy planning Blame-a-Thon, followed by my corporate charity campaign. If your month isn’t so insane, you could host your own Alex’s Lemonade stand. If you don’t know much about Alex’s history, check out how Alex’s little stand can teach big marketing lessons.

    That should be enough to keep you occupied on your lunch break.