Blogging Touches Lives

And for once I'm not being snarky. Blogging really does touch our lives -- in a way that's unique and participatory and fulfilling. Of course it also often punches us in the eye. Witness my on-going little tit for tat with He Who Must Not Be Named. Or Those Little Boys Who Should Be Named, Called Out Often, And Taken Out Behind The Shed And Whipped Soundly By Their Mommas Since No One Obviously Ever Did That Before And Sometimes Folk Just Need Some Common Sense Beat Into 'Em. (Did I just say that? Man am I getting mean and cranky and showing too much southern in my old age or what.)

Witness the comment left here. Or read James' Academy Awards acceptance speech here after winning CL's Best Blogger in Atlanta award this week. And yeah, he earned that puppy. Congratulations James! Enough earnestness in one post from me. That's your annual allotment now used up. Let's all go get wasted. DBT tonight at the Variety. Yeah!

The Sisterhood

Lordy, I've been away for so long doing battle in the bubbasphere (Peach Pundit) that I'd forgotten all about the powers and the resources of the blogosphere sisterhood. So it's very refreshing and delightful to be noted by blog Queen Connie Reese on her list of women bloggers worth celebrating. Thank you Connie. I needed that!

Celebrate. That is truly a good word when used wisely. I wish I could use it more often. Makes me wanna party!

Blog It Long Time Baby

I'm working really hard on my blogging addiction, so I've cut way back here on the SGR with the more personal kinda posts. However, I see no need to de-continue the media and political stuff, but I like doing that more over at Peach Pundit. It just pisses 'em off so much when I do that it's got to be a good thing! So, make a daily visit to PP part of your nutritious breakfast.

Thinking Blogger Award

One of my absolute fave bloggers, Tania Rochelle, just tagged me with a Thinking Blogger Award! What Internets tomfoolery will they come up with next? How about Republicans for Hillary? I kid you not.

Thanks Tania. Coming from a real writer/poet like you, I am quite touched. Now I have to tag 5 other bloggers with my own Thinking Blogger Award. Send me your nominations. But they have to all be metro Atlanta, okay? I take care of my homies first.

"You're Running A Blog Not A Democracy"

Take 'em out back and shoot 'em... Anonymous Trolls (ATs) on blogs, that is. The blogosphere is all a'twitter (lower case twitter, not upper case Twitter) about a call for greater civility in the blogosphere: codes of ethical conduct , rules, regs, ethics badges, pledges, notices of of honor codes one chooses to abide by -- or not. That sorta thing.

Jeez, I go off the grid for four days and the conversation changes... not one iota. Might just stay off longer next time.

I agree that ATs are the worst of the worst slime who live under rocks. They annoy me to no end too, but I can't say I've had a terrible problem with ATs. Only once were they an issue anyways, when I foolishly left Anonymous Commenting up on the SGR right after Neal Boortz had blabbed (and blogged) about this very blog while on-air. Even then, I just deleted the stream of really vile comments. Didn't have any kinda ethical or moral dilemma about doing so, either. As the great Rusty T says, "You're running a blog, not a democracy."

So I can't really get all fired-up over masturbatory debates about should anonymous commenters be allowed or not, not to the degree of this NYT article today at least. Then again, I'm hardly as popular as BlogHer, so I don't attract their kinda attention, good or bad. (And if you do read this blog, you'd likely come to the conclusion that I tack to the "no such thing as bad press " end of the PR spectrum.)

For the record, I do not allow annonymous comments here. That's merely a coward's MO, and hardly worth protecting, in my book. Also, the registration process is so daunting on Blogspot, that most ATs lose interest at the thought of having to register and use a nom de plume just to cuss me out. (I laughed my butt-off though when someone was such an AT, and thus too cowardly to leave a post on my blog, that they instead left an anonymous post about me on someone else's blog! Now that's slime so low no microbe could even get under.)

Anyways... here's the NYT article again. It features gals from BlogHer.com, a site I once tried to post what I thought was a fairly reasonable (I didn't even use profanity!) comment, but of course I got slapped on the hand and lectured to about "rules" on personal attacks when I decided to speak my piece about the (dubious) professional choices of a certain BlogHer blogger. (She once worked for Edelman PR.) Women really are annoying with all their nicey-nice rules and such. And that was, naturally enough, the last time I visited BlogHer.

Then again, no one really likes being called a "stupid illiterate cunt" and things of that nature for too long. And women are often targeted for particularly vitriolic comments in the blogosphere. Still, I kinda like the creativity displayed by a certain Atlanta-based, male photographer who commented here (anonymously, of course, other than noting his profession 'cause I guess he felt it/he was special) that I wrote like a "drunken five-year old."

If I ever met-up with that dude, I'd let him buy me a drink just so I could toss it in his face. Just like a boozing kid, eh? But no, I didn't delete the "drunken five-year old" comment. It's on some post somewhere in here for all the world to judge -- both me and the commenteer.

Frankly, if some of these pro-guidelines folks had come of age before the blogosphere with, say, David T. Lindsay as one's snark guru, as I did, they'd know perfectly well how to wield and weed the vitriol -- in just the perfect places, for maximum impact. Or for at least some damn flavor. And Lordy Mercy how most blogs need not so much a lot of rules and regs, but instead just a whole lot more old-fashioned... style and flavor.


The plan is proceeding as, uh, planned... Mahhhh-ster. (My advice? Always do the accent.)

Southern Women Are Better

There's that cheesy line in that cheesy southern girlie movie, Steel Magnolias maybe, where one of the cheesy characters says something very uncheesy... that her favorite emotion is laughter through tears. And that's exactly what you get with every single page of Tania's achingly poignant, silly, ironic, goofy, wrenching, hilarious, righteous, dead-pan, dead-on blog. If I had to take just one blog with me on a desert island, including my own, I'd take Tania's The Stone's Colossal Dream. And one of her poetry collections too.

Committing News Is Better Than Covering It

Here's a podcast of my Old Media session from PodCamp. Not my best. I was kinda hungover and just a little snippy. Imagine that.

My dear New Media Jim is out at VON committing small TV. Here's his coverage of VON. Amani's there too, who, last time I checked Jim's channel, was busy interviewing Jeff Jarvis. How cool is that?!

FYI... the search term Podcamp Atlanta was at #8 on Technorati yesterday. (Screen shot capture from Amber.) Just under SXSW and not far from Paris Hilton. But remember, it's not news-worthy for Atlanta until Cox Plantation says it's news. Currently, PodCamp Atlanta is #14 on Technorati's search terms.

Technorati tag: podcamp atlanta, podcampatlanta2007, podcampAtlanta

PodCamp Post-Mort

Why write a post-mort yourself about PodCamp Atlanta when others have already done the heavy lifting for you?! Some excellent feedback, thoughts, ramblings, musings, general commentary on PodCamp Atlanta are all over the Internets. Here's a list for you:

Ellie's Dad -- I love that a techno-biggy introduces himself at a conference as the author of the "Ellie's Dad" blog! That's soooo social media. Love his remarks here too.

Bernaisesource -- No one writes with the clarity and precision as that Dan Our New Media Man.

GriftDrift -- Always sticks a knife just where one is needed.

Radical Georgia Moderate -- Looks at things in a way you wish you had. Rusty can rearrange your thought process.

Peachtree Screed -- The Godfather.

Amber -- Goddess of social media cool. Damn fine PodCamp organizer too!

Stephanie -- Delightfully readable blogger.

Josh at Hyku -- Our blog guru. Everything we know trickled up from FL with Josh.

What A Concept! -- Sherry the idealist, sets our ATL new media moral compass.

PJNet -- Head counselor at all Media Camp. Leonard keeps us grounded in first aid, safety and media reality.

Mike Schinkel -- emerging on the Atlanta tech blogger scene. Good photos.

The Shelbinator -- the one to watch.

Jeff Haynie -- serial entrepreneur; serious techy.

And then there's the MSM dude's (AP) report.


As Greenfield suggests, you tell me what kind of report/reporting you like best about PodCamp Atlanta '07!

Technorati tag: podcamp atlanta, podcampatlanta2007, podcampAtlanta

Bloggers Suddenly Not "Redolant Remora Fish"

Not only has the MSM political elite, in this case the Washington bureau chief for Time, Jay Carney, given a HT to political bloggerati, the dude's gone so far as to take his hat completely off to bloggers. This time the blogosphere gets kudos for what many consider the inevitable resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales... over his ugly little mass-firing of U.S. lawyers who were apparently not towing the (R ) party line the way Karl Rove likes to see it done.

Heck, before you know it, MSM will be munching-up on those puppies. Keep the heat on, bloggers!

Song appropriate for this, Whip It by Devo, but not available on Pandora, due to licensing issues. Speaking of Internet radio, my beloved always true Radio Paradise is circulating a petition to try to get royalty rates to stay at an affordable rate, a rate that will keep Internet radio alive. According to Mr. Bill at Radio Paradise:

"The US Copyright Office has released their new set of rates for the payment of royalties by Internet Radio -- royalty rates so high that they threaten to put RP (Radio Paradise) and every other US-based indie webcaster out of business. With your help, we will not allow this to happen!"

I signed. Hope you will too.

This post put together by Aztec Camera, We Could Send Letters. "Just close your eyes again. Until these things get better. You're never far away. We could send letters." (Wow. I'd forgotten what a gem this song is!)

Live-Blog The Birth

What's the hot trend among blogger men? Live-blogging the birth of their child. Yawn. Wake me up when it's the mom live-blogging it all.