I once got a ticket driving to a library event 200 miles away. The library is often the first place I turn to for a book. And I’d rather live in a world with potholes than one without libraries. So, I loved this video of Mustafa, the Old Spice Guy, speaking about libraries.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu-KBxOtJxs&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
(I saw this on GalleyCat)…
Quiet streets. Rush hour means three cars deep at a red light. My grandmother knows your grandmother. Going to the grocery and seeing 20 people you know.
This is life in a small town.
It’s often over-romanticized. But the small town life is still what I prefer. To me, Muncie, where I live now, is a big city. It’s not big enough to have bad traffic other than at all-you-can-eat buffets, but anywhere with a multi-screened movie theater and a mall is a big city in my book.
One of the small towns that I’ve called home over the years is Greenville, Ohio. It’s where we went for groceries, swim classes,…
It’s been awhile since I’ve done an “Adventures in Spam” piece. Here’s my last one. Anyhow, I received the following email below and thought I would take a break from writing for a few minutes to respond.
My Dear,
It is my pleasure to contact you for a business venture which I intend to establish in your country. Though I have not met with you before but I believe one has to risk confidence to succeed sometimes in life. There is this huge amount of Seven million Five Hundred Thousands U.S dollars ($7.500.000.00) which my late Father kept with a Fiduciary Fund Holder in Abidjan before his death.
Now, I have decided to invest this money in your…
Wall Street brought to you by America. America brought to you by Wall Street.
An $8 whiskey near Wall Street. Where is Windell when you need him? Glad I brought my credit card.
(60 minutes later) Wait, wasn’t there just a flag here? Wall Street brought to you by debt. Debt brought to you by Wall Street?
If I were paid per page view, I would wake up in the morning and write a headline like the one above.
This is what our world is coming to. Journalist Michael Ayers (@michaeldayers) shared a story with me this morning in the New York Times – In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger.
The piece is about how online journalists are on deadline around the clock and judged by the amount of page views their pieces get. Here’s a passage:
…they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.
Tracking how many people view articles, and then rewarding — or shaming — writers…
UPDATE 11/10: The site Sweet Christians site is no longer up. I like to think I had something to do with that.
60-minutes was on. Harper, our daughter, was upstairs drifting to sleep to Kenny Loggins. Annie was paying bills at the kitchen table. I was looking for Christian porn.
“Annie (my wife)! Annie!” I was giddy. “You’ve got to see this! It’s a Christian porn site!”
Annie has this immense capacity to put up with me. It’s basically her superpower. “What are you doing?” She calmly asked.
I told her that in my efforts to find a funny name for an imaginary Christian Porn magazine for Monday’s post, I stumbled upon Sweet Christians:
“The #1 Christian Porn Site: Where the girls…
I’m not one to laugh about flaming religious icons, but there’s just something about a flaming Big Butter Jesus that cracks me up.
I try to justify it by thinking how tacky and wasteful a 60-foot, $500,000 Styrofoam Jesus is, but I still feel somewhat guilty about it. Look, every religion has their excessive spending – Buddha statues, the Taj Mahal, the Vatican. So who am I to wisecrack about Big Butter? I defer to Heywood Banks on the issue.
In the lyrics of his song Big Butter Jesus, Banks sings, “‘No graven images’ that’s one of the commandments…”
That makes me feel a little better. I don’t think it was invented back then, but I’m pretty sure that by “graven” Jesus meant Styrofoam. Still, I feel that it’s always…
Okay, before you read this you need to start the video below.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq01UYiMyHg[/youtube]
I bet Heywood Banks, the comedian singing the uber-catchy melody that should be playing right now, has a full inbox this morning because Big Butter Jesus was struck by lightning last night. This is all that remains…
One of my Facebook friends described it as a praying mantis.
I’ve driven by BBJ, located just off I-75 between Dayton and Cincinnati, many times. I will miss him, not as one who misses a religious monument, but as one who misses the world’s largest piece of fruit located in your home town. It was a roadside attraction. There’s not much left to say that Banks hasn’t sung already, so I’ll just wrap…
Andrew and I have been in touch with one another throughout our Nothing Personal project and one thing keeps coming up…this ain’t easy work. It’s uncomfortable and emotionally fatiguing to talk to folks whose lives have been shattered by the crisis.
I’m tired of living this crisis and talking about it. But we have a lot more important work to do. The events of 2008-2010 have changed my life and the lives of countless others.
Here’s a windblown me trying to make sense of it all.
And here’s me talking to cows…
…
Tomorrow I leave Uganda for Ireland. It’s been a busy few days and I’m reminding of something that Jake at Nuru told me:
“These folks are way stronger than me. The things they’ve been through and overcome, I don’t think I could do it.”
I don’t know how they do it.
Meet Susan:
She is a single mother of 6 and is HIV+. She received food from the clinic, but not since the financial crisis.Now her children eat one meal a day.
Meet Jacob:
Jacob was my main man in Uganda. He’s a college-grad who had a good job with an NGO supported by USAID. The contract was supposed to last for five years. Jacob got married and soon his wife Sarah was…
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