Do you know Michelle of The Green Study? I discovered her during the holidays when we were both hanging out at C4C, Company For Christmas — the open blog for folks who were alone on the holidays. Neither of us were alone, actually. In fact, I don’t think that I “chatted” with anybody who was alone. But I made some friends, including Michelle. We followed each other, and I entered her Christmas Story contest.
And I won 2nd Prize!
Recently, I entered another one of Michelle’s contests, this time for “The Worst Job I Ever Had.” And I did it again. I won second prize. But next time, I’m going to take this bit of advice:
Check out the first prize winner, The Wisdom of Life. That job was way worse than mine.
And check out mine over at The Green Study: The Gray Zone.
One if the best things about blogs/bloggers/blogging is the camaraderie. Because the more we all write blogs, the more we all read blogs and the more we all comment on each other’s blogs, the more fun we have. And of course, the more likely we are to meet fellow bloggers face to face in the unemployment line.
No, no, no. That’s not what I mean.
What I mean is that, we bloggers like to spread the wealth. Share the fun. Tell each other about other fun places to visit and enjoy. Other folks’ blogs. The more the merrier. (Hell, who wants to work at work anyway.)
Today I am honored to be pulled along in the wake of one of the funniest of all of my bloggin’ buddies, Peg O’Leg at her blog Peg-O-Leg’s Ramblings. Yup, today I’m posted over at Peg’s in her pretty darn new Wednesday feature called
“THIS One Should Have Been Freshly Pressed”!
Most of you know Peg as a gifted humor writer who can stand her ground among other brilliant Irish writers like James Joyce, Bram Stoker and Medbh McGuckian. Unlike Joyce, Peg is NEVER boring. Unlike Stoker, Peg never terrifies us. And unlike Medbh McGuckian, we all know who Peg IS. Plus we can spell her name, which is nice.
Now Peg created her “Should Have Been FP’d” feature after realizing that all of us bloggers, from time to time, hit the PUBLISH button thinking-hoping-wishing that the brilliant piece we’ve just posted will hit the Big Time. Reach the masses. Be Freshly Pressed. And then it misses. It doesn’t. It isn’t FP’d. Our hearts are broken when only two people end up reading that brilliant post, our STATS tank, and we need to drown our whines, in wine, ice cream and chocolate. Or, in Peg’s case, in anything Reese’s.
This has happened to you. It has happened to me. But Peg, with her big heart and blog feature eased my pain. So head on over to Peg’s to sample one of my favorite humor pieces and take in a big bunch of Peg’s. Please? I bribed her into including me in the feature by promising her brilliant stats. Don’t let me down!
The Ultimate Honor
Here’s the link in case you missed the other three links: http://pegoleg.com/. Not that I’m anxious, mind you. I just don’t have enough chocolate on hand to cope if you don’t head on over to Peg’s.
One of the reasons I started blogging is that everybody who knows me sooner or later gets to hear all my stories. Repeatedly. I needed new victims. Preferably victims whose eyes I do not see rolling when I pull out my story again. Victims who I won’t hear saying “oh, not that one again.” Victims who are out of sight and will therefore leave me unaware when they run screaming from the room.
My fellow bloggers.
So today, on the magic day when all of Hollywood turns out, dressed glamorously (or incredibly hideously) for the Academy Awards, I will dust the red carpet off the story of my own personal triumph.
It was an incredibly special night for me. An honor really. Well, actually two honors. Two Oscars. Two Awards. But I only got to make one speech.
It was the summer of 1983, and some really fun people worked in my office, one of whom, Jon, was a summer intern from the DC area. Carol, Mike, Jon and I all went to Jon’s house one night. You see, 1983 was still in the Bronze Age, and Jon’s parents were on the cutting age of technology, because they had a VCR. And Risky Business had just come out on video.
In the middle of the movie, we took a beer/bathroom break. And guess what I spotted, casually stuck on the bookshelf in the TV room of Rob’s house.
Oscar
And Oscar
It turned out that Jon’s father was a filmmaker. Documentary films. So, in honor of my acting career that died in a broom closet, my pals presented me with two Oscars for Documentary Filmmaking. Sadly, not one of us had a camera. Probably just as well, because my career would not have benefited by all the publicity surrounded my wearing blue jeans during my acceptance speech.
Receiving Oscar, and his twin, Oscar, was a special honor to me, since I had neither made, nor been in any documentary films, nor even fetched donuts and coffee for the real filmmakers. Regardless, I got to hold Oscar and Oscar, and I got to make a speech accepting my Academy Awards. So I am in an unusual club of people who have never actually acted or contributed in any way, shape or form to a movie, who has been presented an Academy Award.
Yes, I’mthat good.
* * *
If you’ve read this before, I hope you screamed quietly.
But they can sure as hell piss me off. Especially when someone refers to folks, readers, women, whomever as “bitches.” As in “yo! Bitches! Listen up!”
It is meant affectionately, I’m told.
Ummm. No. I don’t think so, buckaroo. I think it’s offensive. Very.
Am I alone though? Am I the only one? Am I the only person of my gender (or any other gender) who is offended when referred to collectively as “bitches”? Female dogs? Am I the only person of either gender who thinks it is annoying or offensive? Am I truly a fuddy-duddy?
I thought I’d take a poll to see what my millions of readers think. Because I always forget to post the results of “Other,” I won’t include it in my poll — instead you’ll be able to see where your opinion is in the greater scheme of FiftyFourAndAHalf-dom.
Feel free to expand on your answer in the comments, folks. I’m sure I’ll be adding mine to yours!
It’s your most cherished hope. It’s what you wake up, day after day, wishing would happen. It’s more important to you now than World Peace.
Yup. You wanna be Fresh Pressed.
And I can help you there, my friend. Just listen up.
You see, I have the power to make it happen. To get you there. To fulfill your wildest blogging dreams.
I would have mentioned it before but, well, I only just realized my power. Until today I thought it was just coincidence. I’m so ashamed.
Take a look at my blog roll – you’ll see. I follow a lot of blogs that have been Freshly Pressed. Even though my blogroll is hopelessly out of date, you can see that I’m there in the trenches with the best of the best.
But I just didn’t see the pattern.
Last winter when I was having problems receiving emails of some of the blogs I follow, I decided to follow myself – that way I’d know for sure that I was getting alerts of all the folks I wanted to read.
That’s when it happened. Yup. I was Fresh Pressed for Hey Doc?
It’s happened since, too. Well, not to me, of course. But still I just didn’t notice the pattern. Finally it dawned on me. A couple of weeks ago when I started following Fear No Weebles. She was FP’d almost immediately after I put my email address in the “Follow Me” slot for a post called There’s something about Mr. Weebles.
But the concrete proof came just this week. For those of you who don’t know her, Miss Weebles is very fond of Le Clown of A Clown on Fire. She even wrote a post politely recommending that Word Press’s habit of not FP’ing the Clown should end. I clicked over there and realized that I’d been meaning to “Follow” him for a while, but, well, hadn’t. So I did.
FiftyFourandAHalf 