Christian The Lion

Thursday, July 24, 2008

This video caused the most spontaneous fit of happy weeping that I have had in a long time. It makes me want to run out and love something up.

Labels: the videos

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Photographs Of The Few BlogHer Attendees Of Whom I Remembered To Take Pictures

When I packed for the BlogHer '08 conference in San Francisco, I decided to bring along both my Olympus Stylus 790 SW and my Panasonic Lumix FZ20. I had this idea that I would do my drunken, willy nilly shooting with the small and durable Stylus, and that I would take time to shoot much better photos sober with the Lumix. I was obviously (drunk and) filled with the bevolent spirit of wishful thinking when I packed my suitcase before heading to the conference.

I spent the entire weekend hauling my heavy-ass laptop around, and so my larger Lumix never even made it out of the suitcase. As a result, I ended up shooting what photos I remembered to take with the Stylus, a pocket-sized camera with which I am not overly familiar. Translation: I shot every single photo on the "available light" setting and was often tipsy enough to forget to hold still while I snapped.

Welcome to the fuzzy and grainy shots of the few people I remembered to snatch pictures of in between cocktails at BlogHer '08. (Links to the individuals' websites are listed below their pictures).

Her Bad Mother and son

Sweetney and No Pasa Nada

Oh, The Joys

Drowning in Kids and Fluid Pudding

Red Stapler, Poot and Cubby, and Moosh in Indy

Better Now

No Pasa nada, Fluid Pudding, Joy Unexpected, Suburban Turmoil, BlogHer's Elisa Camahort, and Deb on the Rocks

Evany and The Bloggess

Fussy

Notes to Self

Mrs. Flinger, Dutch Blitz, and Deb Roby

Whoorl

Dooce

Crummy Cupcake

BipolarLawyerCook

Jenandtonic and Lucy's Spleen

Leahpeah

Letter B

Sparksfley

Labels: BlogHer, the photographs

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My Brain Beef Hooked

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Say hello to Kyran Pittman. She doesn't know it, but this photo I took of her is being repurposed to illustrate a point: my brain, it be all broked.

I went to the BlogHer '08 conference in San Francisco.

I put my face out in public attached to the Schmutzie name for the first time.

I got on stage to do my part in the BlogHer Community Keynote on the first day of the conference in front of hundreds of people.

I met a large number of wonderful people whom I had never before met, social anxiety be damned. I kind of like people more now.

I forgot to eat regularly, and then I forgot to take my psych meds regularly, and then my brain got all creative with the who'sthatwiththewhatnow?

Still, I had one of the best times of my entire life.

And then, I went through three different airports to catch two planes to transport myself back to a city of less than 200,000 people, a fabulous spouse, three cats, and a beige cubicle that I am paid to occupy for 40 hours every week.

KERBLOOEY!

This calls for some chicken wings and a locally brewed ale to help with the processing, methinks. Oh, and also to celebrate the Palinode's birthday today, because he's all old now and needs to keep up his strength.

Labels: the here and now, the photographs

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50x365 #306: Mrs. Loewen

We often conversed over recess, and when you found out I wrote poetry, you had me make copies, which you collected in a folder in your desk. You taught me to take joy in talents I normally hid in shame, and it's become a sensation I seek again and again.

I am a participant in x365 and Blog 365.

Labels: x365

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50x365 #305: Lara

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Your gentleness with your instrument and the people you knew inspired me as a child. I knew I could do that, too, if I only practiced enough. That was before your schizophrenia. When they found your body days after death a couple of months ago, I felt relief for you.

I am a participant in x365 and Blog 365.

Labels: x365

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50x365 #304: C.

Monday, July 21, 2008

You struck my intuition with a plagiarized chord I couldn't fix. After you disappeared with money stolen from trusting friends, it came out that everything you claimed was fiction, including your name. Later, a ouija board gave us a name we never looked up. It was best you were gone.

I am a participant in x365 and Blog 365.

Labels: x365

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50x365 #303: Marina

Sunday, July 20, 2008

There was something so very relaxed, so natural, about you, and it was enviable. When others worked so hard to prove their maturing personalities, you walked and talked easy as one who had always been herself. It made you both gorgeous and irresistible, and I aspired to your graceful character.

I am a participant in x365 and Blog 365.

Labels: x365

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A Little Old Man And A Touch Of Comfort

Saturday, July 19, 2008

I am hiding out in my hotel room at the BlogHer '08 conference in San Francisco at the moment, because I had to sit down and write something in a quiet place, or I was going to have a difficult time explaining why it was that I had stripped off all my clothes, draped myself in a tablecloth in the grand ballroom, and proclaimed myself myself the Lizard King. I am truly enjoying this conference, but there are 900 people here ALL THE TIME, and I am an introvert. It's best to secure some alone time for myself than become infamous for spontaneous nudity.

The nervousness I feel here when meeting all these incredible bloggers of all levels of fame pales in comparison to the anxiety I felt when the Palinode dropped me off BY MYSELF at the airport on Thursday morning to put me AND MY LONESOME on the first leg of a three-plane journey from Cityville to Edmonton to Denver to San Francisco ALONE. Have I mentioned that I have never travelled by myself on an airplane before? Because I haven't, and the idea of navigating three completely unfamiliar airports SOLO put my brain through an electric mixer.

The first flight was from Cityville to Edmonton in a glorified cigar tube that held what looked to me like twenty-five people. I read the Globe & Mail studiously to avoid looking out at the right wing of the airplane, which was small and wobbly-looking and obviously going to tear clean off the side of the vehicle while I watched so that I could be aware of, from the very first sign of trouble, exactly how much time I had before I was to be embedded in a field of canola. Did you know that teenagers in Canada are waiting longer to have sex and are more likely to use condoms than they were ten and twenty years ago? When I was in high school, people just slutted around and contracted trichomoniasis. How times change.

We managed to land safely at the Edmonton airport, though, despite all signs to the contrary, and I was hustled along into the terminal and told to find the line-up for United Airlines. Which I did. And no one was there. I stood there at the far end of the airport for ten minutes, checking signs, craning my neck around the counter, and wondering why in the hell, in a crowded airport, no one was standing within fifty feet of me.

And then it hit. I started sweating and forgetting to breathe and thinking ohmygawdImissedmyplane/lostmyluggage/willbedeniedentryintotheUS/Ihavetopee. I jog-walked to the nearest hallway with bathroom signage and started walking. There was no one in this hallway, either, and I was beginning to believe that I had stumbled over the threshold into the bizarro version of the Edmonton airport, and I wondered if I ended up in bizarro San Francisco, would I be the only attendee at the bizarro BlogHer conference?

The more the hallway wound around, the more freaked out I became, so when I finally found an open door to a room with a little, old man behind a counter, I nearly threw myself across the green arborite with joy at there being a non-threatening person before me.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"Yes!" I said and blinked at him.

"And?"

"Oh! Right. I just got off a plane, and I don't know if I was supposed to pick up my luggage, and no one's in the line, and..."

He put his hand on my arm. "Breathe. What airline did you take here?"

"It was a small plane, and it was white, and it had four letters in its name." My fingers fluttered around over the counter.

"Show me your ticket," he said, patting my arm.

He didn't treat me like the crazy person I was appearing to be, and I was relieved to be treated with warmth. I realized that my long walk through the bizarro hallway was not another stretch into truly losing my shit but was really a march to reason. The man squeezed my hand, such an intimate gesture for two strangers, a little old man and an incoherent thirty-something, and he walked me out to a place I could sit until it was time to line up for customs.

"You'll be fine," he said. "Drink some milk."

During the rest of my journey to BlogHer '08 here in San Francisco, I had several more experiences that brought out my anxiety - I got lost in the Denver airport, I thought I missed my flight, my flight was delayed, I almost knocked over a one-legged man in his seventies - but I battled that fear with thoughts of the little, old man who sat behind a counter down a back hallway in Edmonton. He was kind and gentle to a person who was so far over the edge that they had lost even their literacy, and in that small squeeze of my trembling hand, he let me know that I would be okay.

Everything about this conference has presented me with challenges to my comfort zone, because I am shy, I am nervous around new people, and this is the first time that my actual human face has been associated with the name Schmutzie in public, yet, despite these challenges coming at me from minute to minute, I have been okay, and I am okay.

All it took to change my perspective and, in turn, the perspectives of others I have spent time with this weekend, was a touch of comfort from a perfect stranger in a place I would least expect it.

Labels: BlogHer

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50x365 #302: Wendy

I came from more conservative stock, so I was tickled when your daughter and I came home to find you red-cheeked and laughing at "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" with a nearly empty wine bottle. We sang all the songs together, laughed, and pinky-swore that it never happened.

I am a participant in x365 and Blog 365.

Labels: x365

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50x365 #301: Natasha

Friday, July 18, 2008

This keeps bears away, right? you asked, holding mosquito spray.

It's for bugs.

AND bears, right?

No, just bugs. I shook my head

But then how come more people aren't eaten by bears?

Do you see any around here?

No, but they're really sneaky, you said, scanning the low brush.

I am a participant in x365 and Blog 365.

Labels: x365

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