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I hate instant messengers these days. The reason I hate them is because people don’t have any courtesy when they use them. They think that because it’s just a form of online social networking that they don’t have to use the common courtesy that they use with people with whom they are speaking face to face. Here’s some of the stuff that’s been nagging me lately about IMs:

Scenario 1: You see a friend online on your IM. You send them a HI. They respond and you start talking. Then your friend just stops answering you. After 10 or 15 minutes go by, you wonder if they are on the phone or working or something. However, an hour or more goes by and you notice that the person still shows as online, yet you never once got an explanation from them for why they stopped talking to you.

Scenario 2: You see someone online. They do not have a busy message up. You send them a message and they snap back at you, telling you that they are busy.

Scenario 3: Someone sees you online. They send you a message. You talk for a few minutes and then they just stop, like in #1 above.

Scenario 4: Someone IMs you as soon as you come on, to ask you about someone else. No, how are you? No, are you busy? No anything. Just blurting out what they want, getting the answer and then, without a thank you, they stop talking to you.

There are a lot more scenarios. Those are just the top ones that several people have been perpetrating in my world lately. I know that IM software is buggy. Sometimes it shows people online when they are gone. I give people the benefit of the doubt… until those scenarios become regular occurrences.

So here’s the thing. Why is it that people feel it’s okay to be rude, because you’re talking to someone online and not on the phone or in person? In this age of technology, those scenarios up there are just as rude as hanging up on someone. Why do so many people not get that?

At any rate, here’s what I’d like to see the perpetrators of those scenarios do so that they stop pissing off me and others:

• If you don’t want to talk to all the people on your IM list, make yourself invisible to the ones you DON’T want to speak to. Then, if they are courteous, they will not IM you.
• If you do start talking to someone but become distracted by other IMs or Tweets, tell the person you gotta go, you are talking to someone else and you just can’t concentrate on all the convos. I don’t get pissed when people say this to me. I prefer to know that they’re busy with someone else rather than they can’t be bothered to tell me they don’t wanna talk to me anymore.
• Start your IM convo by asking how the person is. If they are busy… this lets them know that you will not take offense if they don’t have time for you, and shows them that you aren’t just some rude SOB who lives in an egocentric world.
• Use your busy or away message if you busy and/or away. Don’t just snap at people because YOU didn’t put up an alert or warning.
• When you IM someone, and start a convo, don’t just stop talking because someone or something else is more interesting or more urgent. If you started the convo and you can’t continue it, then you need to end the convo. Tell the other person you have to go.
• Don’t forget the common courtesy that was instilled in you as a child. The people online are just as real as the people you see every day face to face. They have feelings and they deserve to be treated with the same level of courtesy as any other person.

All of us have been the victim and the perpetrator in these instances I’ve depicted. I’ve started becoming more aware of how I treat others online because of the way I’ve been treated by a handful of people whom I thought - knew - were my friends. We all need to realize too that just because someone is your friend doesn’t mean they understand what is going on with you and isn’t hurt when you treat them rudely in IM.

I’m not sure how to solve these issues. I’m probably going to have to bite the bullet and send an email to all the perps because they don’t read my blog. I wanna be nice about it, but at the same time, it’s hard because I’m disappointed in their behavior. I don’t want people to be mad at me, but I also don’t want to feel bad when I speak to them in IM and they just don’t show me any courtesy. Obviously, it’s something that has to be tailored to each friend in an individual way, but I don’t like having to do it. I wish I could just understand how people can get like this. It reminds me of how people drop all their friends when they have a new love interest. It’s rude, and hurtful.

Ok, I’m stepping down from the soapbox. Do you have an IM or Twitter pet peeve? Something that common courtesy would resolve? Feel free to rant about it in comments.

Have happy social media Sunday!

I’m not! Really! Anyway, I’m not here today. I guest posted over here because

1. Someone is asleep, and is not rising from the depths of her room and,
2. I don’t want anyone to ever call me a Mommy Blogger.

Oh, wait! I didn’t squee in that post, so I guess I’m not a mommy blogger after all. Or I’m not fluffy. Something like that anyway. Click the link and go read. Maybe it will make you chuckle…

Everyone thinks men in saggy jeans is a bad thing. I’m not so sure I agree with that…

Sorry for stealing Jester’s Friday schtick. I was all out of things to say this morning after finding out that the microwave died. Just what I need, another expense. Well, at least it’s Friday. That’s gotta be worth something, somewhere.

May your Friday include hot bodies, not hot weather.

Before you read this, you might want to read Jester, Britt, and my post from yesterday including the comments. What’s written below pertains to all of these posts.

After yesterday’s soul baring post about my writing and self esteem, I have something that seems, on the surface, to go along with it nicely. I took this damned color test thingy because Jester did. I wondered if the color thing explained why Jester had been annoyed recently. Maybe it explains why I’ve been so moody lately. That would certainly be the answer for someone who believes in karma and fate and all that stuff. I don’t really happen to believe in supernatural explanations for the inexplicable, however.

At any rate, here’s the results of my Color Test.

Winter took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test!“Strives for a life rich in activity and experience…” Click here to read the rest of the results.

I don’t think we can box any of us up as tidily as all of these quizzes do. No two of us are alike and the answers are too pat. Still, they are kinda fun and this one tied in nicely to yesterday’s post.

At Britt’s yesterday, she had people post the link(s) to posts they wrote that they liked best. Reading them was an adventure. I haven’t finished yet, but it was an amazingly creative thing to post. I liked the way it was interactive and how Britt herself went to read all the posts. It was one of those things that makes you smile about the community that is this blogging world.

I posted the link to my 10th Thursday Thirteen. It was 13 excerpts from The Bar that included a kiss. The reason it is my favorite post is because in the comments people told me how the kisses made them feel, and how they wanted to go kiss their S.O. Reaching people with my writing is important to me, whether it’s here or at The Bar. So on the day my self esteem was feeling bruised about my writing, Britt’s post made me think of that TT and how the readers felt after reading my writing.

I feel much better now. Vindicated in a sense. I loved all the comments I got on yesterday’s post, but Vixen was right in the end. I had to find the satisfaction within me. My satisfaction wasn’t in my writing, but was in the feelings my writing evoked in others. So thank you to Jester, Britt, the commenters on my blog yesterday, and everyone who commented on my Thursday Thirteen the Tenth. My self esteem is totally sending you all hugs right now!

Have a colorful Thursday!

*sigh* My self esteem has taken a hit in the solar plexus. Lucky for me, I’m used to gasping for air. However, it’s left my mindset that of the poor kid staring in the window of FAO Schwarz at Christmas. Or Ebeneezer Scrooge looking in the window at the happiness of Bob Cratchit’s family despite their lack of money. So I’m a little disconnected, a little lost today. You’ll have to forgive me my moodiness.

One night ShinyBitch told me she needed a poem for her character Sascha. Sascha was going to write a poem to her mate. Shiny was looking for poetry on the internet. A few minutes later, I gave her this:

Winter breeze cold and chill
The screams of broken hearts so shrill
You stand before me so tall and real
But hold me always, let me feel.

The path to love is long and hard
The potholes linger, like your guard
Upon me always watching, ever there
Catch my stumbles with your care

You hold me up when I’m alone
When I can’t bear the river’s moan
The shrieks of pain from winter’s night
You always shield me from its fright

To me you are the only one
Who breathes and sighs and always comes
To my side in darkness free
And lives to love no one but me.

Another time, my friend Jen, who uses the name Opalgirl on message boards and IM, was bemoaning the fact that people were writing poems for each other on the Zanctuary board, but no one had written her a poem. A few minutes later I gave her this:

She glows with a regal light
Twists and turns give forth
Fire beneath the surface
Brilliance not as like the diamond
But instead a warmth felt
From the heart out to the skin
Her moonglow in muted hues
Outshines her sisters
With understated elegance
A genius caught within
The unknown, the mysterious
She is aglow with magic
Her fire banked always
But flashing brighter than the sun
To make those self same sisters
Pale in comparison
And kneel as supplicants
To the Opal.

I’m not into writing poetry these days, although on occasion I can just slap something together like those two poems. I’m sure that neither of them would survive a critique, but both made people I care about happy, and that was all that mattered to me. With the hit to my self esteem, I’ve been sort of bashing myself internally, wondering if all the things I write only matter to a few people. I’ve been questioning my creativity, my skills. I’m no literary genius, but I somehow thought I had it in me to be something more than a technically proficient cliche.

You expect to be critiqued and judged when you put the things you write out there in this electronic media world for others to read. Somehow I’ve come away from a few recent writing experiences with the sense that I’m not expressing myself very well. When I write a piece that is meant to give the reader a sense of the character’s quietly growing despair, a spiraling swirling darkness that is sucking them in, and the reader doesn’t feel that… I can tell myself that it’s just one person. When others chime in with a “meh” attitude about it, I begin to wonder what I could have done to make that sense of quiet despair more palpable. And the answer, of course, is nothing.

I yam what I yam. My creativeness has been honed over a lot of years, and if it’s just not there… then it’s not. I’m not going to drink some magic bean juice and wake up in the morning with a brilliantly creative bean stalk of ideas sprouting from my brain as if I was a JR Ward, Nora Roberts, or Charlaine Harris. (Harris’ books have spawned a new HBO series called True Blood.) I guess I have to admit that I’m just not that creative in an original sense.

I don’t have any trouble being run of the mill and cliche on most days. I was just a little more sensitive today what with the way things have been shaking out at home and work. Tomorrow I’ll probably wonder why I ever felt as if my self esteem had taken a hit to the gut. I’ll probably look at my writing and be happy with it again. Today, I’m just gonna sigh again.

Hope your Wednesday is sigh free!

So yesterday I was grilled. Today, I have fired up the FryDaddy since I’m a little tired of BBQ.

My sizzling victim is Kevin of Always Home & Uncool. Kevin’s blog says that he is a work at home, Gen X dad who is rockin’ the ‘burbs. The cast of characters on his blog include My Love (his wife the executive), Thing 1 (his Hannah Montana wanna be daughter) and Thing 2 (his sweet and sour son), and Murphy’s Happy Recap (his faithful canine companion). Okay, I stole the words from his profile , but really, Kevin tells his story much better than I could.

I dug into his archives a little to prepare for the questions. I didn’t have to dig far to recognize that Kevin is not your average suburban dad. He’s just really not average at all. The man is sharp as a tack and more amusing than a lot of the humor bloggers out there.

As some people *cough* Nicholas *cough* know, I’m not a fan of fluffy blogs and blog posts. Some of the stay at home dad blogs I’ve seen are just as fluffy as the mommy bloggers who squee over Oprah and Rachael Ray. I cringed when I drew Kevin in the lotto that is Neil’s Great Interview Experiment. My cringing was for naught as you will see.

Without further BS on my part, here’s the interview, with my comments below each of Kevin’s responses.

1. Why did you decide to name your kids (on your blog) after characters from Dr. Seuss?

I’ve read “The Cat and the Hat” a few zillions times to my kids over the years and it just stuck in my head. They are at the age when playing and having fun are all that matter, and that’s a good place to be in life.

BTW, I’ve called them many other things in real life. But in the end, Fric and Frac was too easy; Harold and Maude, too weird.

Hmmn. I used to call Motley the PITA. Too easy and too weird in one fell swoop. Too bad it was also very true at times. HEH.

2. Do you think it’s hard to be a “Daddy Blogger” in a “Mommy Blogger” world?

I don’t like compartmentalizing us into Dads or Moms. We’re all parents. We have a common enemy. Unite, Servants to the Sippy Kid Crowd!

But honestly, it’s like being an ice cube in a sea of hot tea. I mean, how can I compete with the raw sexuality and rawer language offered up by the Oprah-fueled masses?

I’d never realized that the sippy cup crowd cursed and had raw sexuality. If that’s the case why didn’t they rip Karl’s clothes off of him this year at BlogHer? Maybe the raw sexuality is same sex in nature… after all, sex with another woman is a dangerous thing in a stay at home mom world, isn’t it? (Don’t shoot me for the cliche!)

3. C’mon… you can tell us… is My Love really the main bread winner in your family, or are you secretly the inventor of the Samurai Shark (or some other item that Billy Mays hawks on the tube)?

My father co-wrote the lyrics to “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around the Ole Oak Tree.” I live comfortably off the royalties. Tip of the hat to both Bush administrations!

Ahhh. Gotta love a man who can bash two Bushes with one shot!

4. Why do the new friends to your blog only have nachos and mozzarella sticks to choose from? Shouldn’t there be a nutritious choice like zucchini sticks?

If you insist, I can nuke some spinach nuggets in a pinch. You like Cheez Whiz on yours?

Meh. I’ll pass on spinach nuggets and Cheez Whiz. I’m more of a hot wing kinda girl.

5. This is a twofer: What made you start blogging and how did you decide to become a humor blogger? (Don’t say it’s cause you think Diesel is funny either. That’s a cop out answer, even if it’s true that he is funny. Heh heh.)

My credit card was canceled because of delinquent charges for too many, um, online services, so I needed to find something else to get my creative juices flowing between freelance gigs. I did corporate communications for a very conservative Fortune 500 company for almost 10 years, so I needed a lot of practice to relearn how to write something besides “ours is a culture of continuous improvement and, by managing talent effectively and exceeding the expectations we set for our customers, we can increase EBITA by adding value for our stakeholders through cause marketing that redirects discretionary spending as we bounce along the bottom of this down cycle.”

I became a humor blogger because I have no real insight or wisdom to provide anyone on anything in particular. Kinda like Dr. Phil.

I work in Accounting. I know EBITA and EBITDA. (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) I like a man who can work that into a sentence.

6. What’s your favorite beer and why?

What is this - “Sophie’s Choice”? It all depends on the situation, the place, my mood, the company, etc. For sheer beer pleasure, Young’s Double Chocolate Stout is incredible. It’s a beer. It’s a dessert. It’s a floor wax. For everyday quaffing, I like to pick up the Saranac Trail Mix 12-pack so I can choose one to suit the situation. Yuengling makes a great beach beer. Most of the Red Hook beers — ESB, Pale Ale, IPA — are excellent. Sam Adams’ products are uniformly fine, except for the bizarre cranberry beer they push at the holidays. They briefly made a Hazelnut Brown Ale in the late ’90s that I thought was really special. God … I’m welling with nostalgia …

I’m sitting here stacking up Kevin’s choices against Rott’s Beer Fridge... Two thumbs up on the Young’s Stout. Red Hook ESB isn’t bad. Rott agrees with the Sam pronouncement… and wonders why Kevin hasn’t tried Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, which only comes out in the winter?

7. If Thing 1, Thing 2 and My Love all went on a trip somewhere for 5 days, leaving you alone to take a solo mini-vacay, where would you go and what would you do?

Depends on the time of the year. Spring, I’d go to Florida and do the spring training baseball circuit. Summer, I’d take a tour of Major League Baseball stadiums. Autumn — me and the dog would go hiking the New England hills. Wintertime … I’d fly to London and visit all the pubs serving Real Ale that I could.

Not being a fan of baseball or hiking, I applaud the booze hound in Kevin and concur that a trip to London to drink ale would be awesome!

8. What mainstream movie do find incredibly arousing?

“The Princess Diaries 2.” Anne Hathaway’s eyebrows send tingles to all the good parts.

I like her boobs better.

9. What’s your favorite music/songs to play during sex or a romantic evening?

“(I Wanna Be Your) Alpha Male” by Steve Burns to send the proper signals (it’s all in the “boom-shucka-lucka). “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)” by The Offspring for the bump ‘n’ grind. “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult for the cuddling afterward. Also, you can never go wrong with the entire “Liquored Up & Lacquered Down” CD by Southern Culture on the Skids.

Anyone who likes BOC and the Offspring is A-OK by me!

10. I like to retell my dreams on my blog if they are either especially vivid or about other bloggers. Tell me your most interesting blog-related fantasy, daydream or real dream/nightmare.

People read my blog then promptly subscribe to me and unsubscribe to dooce because, while I am not a Wii-distributing pioneer, I am far more interesting and relevant to their lives.

Why do I feel like Kevin has read Avitable’s blog?

And there you have it. Kevin of Always Home and Uncool. Because this is Tuesday, and in honor of Kevin, I’m closing with a tune I’m sure you all will enjoy. In my case, it brings back memories of KNAC.com and one of the chat roomies named Kyuss who used to monitor bang to this song. Also, I think this was recorded when Ron Welty was with the band. My readers may recall me saying that I met him at my company’s Christmas party last year. Here it is… the Offspring!

Pretty Fly For a White Guy

Now, go check out Kevin’s blog and have a happy ale drinking, Offspring monitor banging Tuesday!

I’ve been grilled like a bratwurst at a tailgate party! Neil over at Citizen of the Month has this project he set in motion some six months or so ago. It’s still going strong. It’s the Great Interview Experiment. The reason I know it is still going strong is that I was interviewed by Vodkamom. If you’re interested in what she asked me and what I had to say, click on her name and check out the interview post on her blog. She didn’t ask me run of the mill questions so it’s not quite as boring as you might think it would be. I sent off my questions to the person I am interviewing and I’m awaiting his replies. Once I have them, I will post my interview here.

Now, it’s time for my Monday Marcus photo. Today, I am speechless. I just want to look at the man and drool. These are the photos that made him a superstar in the modeling world.

If you like hot guys who are cool, you gotta swing by Uncle Monkey Boy’s brand new blog. Click on his name and leave a welcome comment for him. I’m very excited for him. I’m sure he will find this just as much fun as the rest of us do.

I had a great brunch at El Torito with Karl and Motley on Sunday. I knew Karl would be going back to Florida on Wednesday so I wanted a chance to go hang with him one more time before he left. He’s not even gone yet and I already miss him being nearby!

So he and I and Motley were sitting at our table Twittering and fussing with our new phones… while this guy sat a few booths away with an overstuffed organizer, papers sliding out of it… We were so techie and cool. I don’t understand how business people can walk around with those little overstuffed folders of leather in this day and age. Hello! Smart phones, people! Buy one. Learn to use it. Lose the bits of paper!

Paper is only good for fanning yourself when you’ve been looking at Marcus Schenkenberg photos. HEH. Have a great Monday!