What the Deuce?

At long last (at looooong, looooong last), the Internet's least-successful giveaway has come to a merciful close. The charming and lovely PsychMamma, as the only participant, walked off with the big prize. As she's currently off vacationing in the sun and sand, I'll let her know when she gets back and her tan has worn off.

Clearly, the hurdle of having to make a donation was a higher one than I anticipated, so I apologize to those of you who would have liked to participate but just weren't in a position to do so. When I chose to do this, I didn't realize that the minimum was $10. I'm still going to make an additional donation to the film, including one to match PsychMamma's generosity, and I'll try to do better next time in the giveaway department.

Moving on: Tonight I went to the reading and signing event for Heather Armstrong's new book, "It Sucked and Then I Cried." While plenty of people apparently gave her shit about calling it a "San Francisco" signing when it was actually south of there in Mountain View (actually the publisher's doing, which didn't surprise me), I was grateful that it wasn't in SF. This way I actually had a chance to go; if it had been up in the city, I wouldn't have been able to get there for it. As it was, parking was a pain and the small bookstore was packed. I was there a half hour early and every seat was already gone, and most of the decent floor spots were taken. But I copped a little step stool that was innocently occupying a corner unattended and settled in.

I'm not going to give you a recap of the event, as it's a "you had to be there" kind of thing, and I'm not going to tell you to go buy the book. If you like Dooce, you probably will; if you don't like her, you probably won't; if you don't have a freaking clue who I'm talking about, what are you doing here?

But I will tell you why I bought it and why I went tonight: She makes me laugh and I respect what she's done. The shy and retiring Mrs. Flinger went to the event in Seattle last night, and she posted about it, too (hers has video!). She conveniently wrote for me how I felt about going to see Heather and the experience overall:

Heather was absolutely hilarious. She was real, honest, pregnant (yes! BY GOD she isn’t lying about a pregnancy to make money! I know this shocks you.) and actually made the crowd comfortable. She’s every bit a normal person as you can expect some chick from BYU gone badass to be.

Feel what you will about her, to those who resent/hate/despise/"can't stand" her, whatever. To me she's a genuinely funny woman with a talent for telling a story and I wanted to give her props for being the blogger and writer she is. I'm not a fawner. I don't fawn. I didn't go there to fawn. I didn't have a funny story to tell or a need to make her remember meeting me. I didn't tell her, "Oh, I'm a blogger, too!" I didn't have my picture taken with her. I didn't bring a present for her gestating baby. I didn't tell her "how much I lurve your blog" or anything like that. I went there to show my support by buying the book, listening to her interact with her readers, and have my book signed.

And maybe to have something to write about to end the drought caused by the misery of that giveaway. Maybe.

Death Becomes Her

When thinking about a post for today, I'd planned to write about candy. I mean, why not? But then, as I do most days, I popped over to dooce to read her latest post. What I ended up reading, and the hours after, changed that. A lot.

Now, if you go over, please read what she says about the site she features before you go clicking on it, lest you be a "Mimi," too. "This somber series of portraits [was] taken of people before and after they had died..." I did read, and decided it was something that I didn't want to be looking at during work. Instead, I started reading the comments since she'd opened them, and those were moving enough. When I started reading there were about 141 comments; at the time of writing this, there are 901. By about number 44, I was already fighting tears and I hadn't even gone to see the pictures under discussion. Clearly, the subject of death, and our reactions to it, touched a nerve.

I decided I was going to wait until I got home to go view the gallery, and went to lunch not too long thereafter. I didn't have a lot of time, so I went to a nearby falafel place that I enjoy. There is a large TV in one corner that's usually tuned to Al Jazeera in English....which I don't generally watch. But when I glanced up at one point, mouth full o' falafel, I was startled to see a man in a coffin on the screen, quite dead, being made up prior to his viewing. I still have no idea what the story was about because I couldn't hear it and it didn't really matter -- the visual from it, on top of what I'd just been reading and thinking about, was enough to boggle my mind a bit and mull over how differently news is presented elsewhere in the world.

On the drive back and for a while after that I was thinking about death and its place in our society, our lexicon and my own life. Many of the commenters at dooce mentioned our fear of death and how it plays into the reactions people have to the photos. That made me think about how, on the other hand, we use the concepts of death and dying in our language so easily and perhaps carelessly. I realized that, a bit earlier in the day, I'd written an IM to someone wherein I'd said, "She is absolutely killing me today," without a second thought, the way we all do. Hmm, I'm pretty sure I'd said essentially the same thing...about the same person...just the day before. And here I am, still alive.

Think about it. "I'm dying of hunger." "This will be the death of me." "My head is killing me." "He's rolling over in his grave." "That is a dead end." Those are just the first few that come to mind, I'm certain you can think of many more. Why is it we're so comfortable referring to death in these offhand, casual manners, but the thought of death itself freaks us out?

As I've been thinking about this for so much of the day, I eventually realized something about my own reaction to the idea of death and dying: It's not the idea of my own death that bothers me, or thinking about people in my life who have died, it's contemplating the death of friends, family and loved ones in my life now that makes my own internal wig-out meter go bonkers.

So, let's see, here I am, seven paragraphs into this post and I still haven't gone to see the photos that started all this. I'm not actually procrastinating, as I don't have any true hesitation in viewing them. I just wanted to be done here because, if they're as haunting and beautiful as people said, I think I'm going to want some tissues instead of a keyboard afterwards. Now, however, as a friend of mine says, it's time to pull on my big girl panties and deal with it.

They won't make a slinkity sound, exactly

"Some people are like Slinkies...largely useless, but they can still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs."

Today's quote is from a commenter on Dooce where, in her most recent post, Heather shares some of the unbelievable hate mail she gets, as well as her response to it.

Everything I could think to say about the people who take the time to send ugly mail like that to someone, anyone, has been said five times over in the comments so I won't waste our time rehashing it.

I'll just say that I'm glad to toil on in obscurity if that is what you have to look forward to when you become an award-winning, financially successful and influential blogger.

And that I may be getting a Slinky soon, since the law tends to frown on pushing people down stairs.

Wherein I'm far too busy to trifle with this posting nonsense

This is going to be a short one because I'm rather occupied with intense planning for something I've got brewing with California April. (Yes, I'm blessed with an abundance of Aprils in my life.) Neither of us wants to say too much yet because there are some variables at work and the "j-word" could rear its ugly head.

There doesn't seem to be much interest in commenting recently, so I'm not too worried about someone who does know what's in the air saying something prematurely. (And if you do, just don't.) I know people are coming by and reading because I can "see" you are -- yeah, I'm talking to you, Ohio -- so I'm not that discouraged. Anyway, hopefully all the pieces will come together shortly and we can both share more. I'll just say that, at the moment, I feel a little bit like Dorothy listening to the wind stir.

To keep you entertained while I'm busy, go read Dooce. She's back after being sick for a couple weeks and she has an adorable Christmas present to share. If you aren't already reading her, you should be.