Volume One: The Condensed Version

The last couple weeks, it seems like all I've done is go to production meetings about the new book (there is no way to write that without sounding like a poser; I tried about seven) -- during which, I've had to describe, in great detail, everything I disliked about the last book -- so I can avoid making the same mistakes this time out. It's not that I hated it, exactly.  Mostly, I was just really, really young. That problem has since been solved.

What I am enjoying is Michael Jansen Miller's twitter-ized version of Reality Truck, Volume 1. He posts it in a very DailySedaris style, which is no mean feat, given that he's certainly not got Sedaris to work with for raw material.

It's funny whenever I see him tag things RTv1 -- because when I first got to twitter (a couple years ago), and I saw all the ReTweets (or "RTs") I always did wonder why everybody was suddenly talking to me all the time.

At any rate, here's a sampling of Reality Truck, Volume 1 the way Michael Jansen Miller sees it, 140 characters at a time (along with a few of his related observations):

• "I asked for a whole new look, I'm just not sure I wanted that new look to say, 'will this be cash or charge?'- Reality Truck V.1"

• "Life was good, or more important (where I went to school anyway) it looked good.... -RTv.1"

• "Or as my friend Scott said in pondering my birthday present, 'Does Prada make a crown of thorns for the Catholic who has everything?'- RTv.1 "

•  "...Then I got *bangs*, and it's essentially all been downhill from there." -Reality Truck V.1"

• "After hours of sparkling debate, we reached the following conclusion: Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter, because nobody listens. -RTv.1"

• "I get to my office, open up all my email and mail, and 'work.' Sometimes I 'write' and sometimes I 'edit.' Sometimes I 'cry.' -RTv.1 "

•  "I have given up hope that I will ever live in a home that would be considered "habitable" by people who have what my parents refer to as 'standards'.-RTv.1"

• "So we came to the mutual conclusion that he needed a more traditional wife. And I really hope he's found that in Mark.- Reality Truck V.1"

These two were about the same girl:  "For someone with limited musical knowledge (except whatever she gleaned as a groupie), she managed to play both of them like a fiddle.-RTv.1" and "We were 'otherwise engaged' (athletically so- I might add), at the time of her call or I might've paid more attention.- Reality Truck v1.

• "Here are three words you never want to hear in the same sentence: upper, lower, and GI.- Reality Truck V.1"

• "Things got off to a bad start when the admissions staff broke the ice by asking if I had a 'Living Will.' -Reality Truck V.1"

• "I had to give up caffeine, chocolate, and cheap red wine. In short, I had to abandon everything that gives my life meaning.-RealityTruck V.1"

• "I don't think I have what it takes to be obscenely weathy...namely, money.- Reality Truck V.1." And then he writes, "The Second Coming: Fall 2010. Pray." [And that is when I wondered why he isn't on my payroll as publicist.]

• "I'd never in my life been so happy to see a person in white shoes. - Reality Truck V.1." He adds, "Shoe on the other foot? Fall 2010: RT: The Sequel

•   "I have to say there aren't too many friends who'll come over with a spade on their lunch hour and help you bury a dead body.-RealityTruckV.1" (I should maybe clarify, that passage was about my late cat, Steve, and not the Stalker also named Steve, who came along a couple years later, and is, as far as I know, still alive.)

• "I may be poor, but here are two words I pray you'll never hear in the same breath as my name: Miss. Clairol.- Reality Truck V.1"

• "The downside is, nothing in my life *goes* with this hair. No *one* goes with this hair.- Reality Truck V.1"

• "@MissKristina It is fun to SQUEEEZz Ms. R into anything approximating 140 characters. Glad you're liking it!"

• "Save the date! Reality Truck, the Sequel (in 3D?) rolls into town October 1." [Again, WHY isn't he on the payroll?]

•  "Ellen is busy alienating all her friends, screwing around on her nice boss/boyfriend, wrecking her career and coughing up blood.-RTv.1" [It took me a minute to remember this was a thirtysomething reference. It may be dated, but it's still my favorite memory of the 80s, and the DVDs will be the first movie night in the new place.]

And on a totally unrelated note, he posts:

•  "Lesbian Teen Prom Battle. When I was in high school, the lesbians had NO interest in going to the Prom. And I should know. I took one," along with, "I'm starting to think we could maybe just decide Mayor using #foursquare."

When I suggested we ought to ditch the real Volume 1 and just publish his version as a little chap-book every coffee table in town would need, he responded,  "Need Ralph Lauren paint samples swatches as end paper-- homage to the future as we honor the past."

Done.

I tell him, "but YOUR version of the book is SO much better than mine." He says, "Yeah. That's what they said to KingJames. I hear that didn't turn out so well.

Hard to Tell

With all the Twitter Porn Phish floating around for the last few days, it's hard to tell, which messages are hacked, and which ones were really sent to me by people I know. (Sort of like the Mardi Gras spam deluge that seemed so earnestly concerned with my Lenten choices of deprivation.)

For example, I got all three of these twitter direct messages from one real-life friend:

"Get bigger and have sex longer."

"You look funny here" (plausible)
and

"don't give up sex for Lent! Please! For your Queendom's Sake."

Frankly, they all seem helpful.

I'm a Qwitter... or Why I Left Twitter

This is what my friend, writer Holly Goddard Jones wrote about her decision to leave facebook this weekend.

"My dad once told me that the only thing worse than a drunk is a recovered drunk. That’s why I’ve hesitated to write about my decision to leave Facebook (and how serious that sounds! as if I’ve declared that I’m leaving my political party or religion!), and that’s why I decided to not even announce my exit last week before finally finding the magic button...."
 

At first I was horrified -- because I am a big fan of her writing, and facebook was a great way to see it on a regular basis. Then I read her blog pretty carefully... and then I was inspired.

Inspired to delete my Twitter Account -- just the private, social account --I still have one for work, and that's the job, and I guess that won't change). Reading it, I can still get a local snow report if I need one; hear from my favorite bands; get my national news feeds, and keep up with my real-life friends' whereabouts. I don't expect I'll have a lot to say there, other than reporting news, and work, and chatting with the Readers about that from time to time.

Like Holly, I hasten to point out that I could always change my mind, but right now: it's one less thing to do, and one more way to Unplug. Don't worry, I haven't suddenly become Amish. The BlackBerry isn't going anywhere. I'm not going to stretch a couple cans out on a string between two trees. I should also clarify that I haven't generally found Twitter to be the time-suck I hear about (usually from people who aren't on it) -- as long as you have a working phone, it's an extremely time-efficient way to get caught up.

And best of all: it's kept me off the phone (which I do find to be a prehistoric time-suck) -- if I post that my parents are in town or I'm Yondering or ORounding, nobody wastes time calling me for dinner or movies and other stuff I would do, if I wasn't already occupied.

As for what to do with Facebook, that's next. There's a very public "fan page" there for work. There's even a "facebook fan page" for this blog (the Link NEVER works, so that's up to Intern)-- much as I hate the (Taylor) Swift-ian implications of that.

But the friend profile page that's Me also shares my work name and, as a consequence, is filled with 900 people I don't know and have never met (down from 1500 after a lot of aggressive whittling over the past six months, when I realized this whole thing was getting ahead of me).

I.R.L (in real life, for those who spend their time there and not on facebook), I have maybe seven friends. Not 900. So a change has gotta come.

I am reminded of Bill Maher's New Year's resolution a few years back "to know one less person every day." He has a point. At least when it comes to Strangers.

Leave a Message. Or a Txt. Or an email. Or a Tweet. Or an FB. Or a Skype.

I didn't mean to be out of touch during the seven hours I was at Brunch today. (Doesn't every good brunch last seven hours? Of course it does, if it's hosted correctly.)

I thought I was posting TwitPics and yFrogs and FB Mobiles throughout -- like these -- which never showed up (casualty of the Margarita'd BlackBerry, presumably). These are hopelessly old, because I had to wait and post them from the bigscreen, like an ANIMAL.

It is possible I am becoming over-accustomed to immediacy (in that I have asked mah Geek, Jason, to install a port in my neck so that I can just think everything right onto the screen -- and printing press, cause yes, that's also how I roll; I've been trying to get the pressmen to let me dictate directly into it for years). He said No. So far. He didn't say he couldn't do it, only that he wouldn't do it.

Out of deference to my hosts, I did not check my BlackBerry at all during brunch (other than to theoretically post a few photos that never arrived onscreen -- but that's broadcasting, not dialogue). I try not to engage in online conversation during any real-life physical social interaction. It always feels like that's better-dealing the person or people I'm with: "Yes, you guys are fine.... but let's see if I can do better, shall we?" I will check in occasionally -- to see if someone's gotten lost, or needs a ride, etc. but that's about it (and if the group is really large -- as it was Friday, for example -- we have been known to Text and Twitter each other from a southern table, to a northern table). The room I am in? That is the absolute best room in the world to be in. I will not better-deal you (I will just leave if it stops being the best room in the world).

I wasn't the host today, so there was no need for me to check in and provide directions or anything, and I stayed pretty wireless-free. And then I came home.... to 7 facebook messages; 5 texts; 7 BlackBerry emails (that's the private email that no one has);  four Direct Messages on Twitter (but three had just shown up from last night, so they don't count); and even one Skype (which I really only use for mah BFF and mah Sailor, pictured here, on a boat ... cause that's sailor-esque).

The two of them kinda got me hooked on Skype, cause for some reason it just feels like leaving a note in a knothole in the woods or something -- it feels old school to me.

I get invited on "detox" vacations sometimes -- the kind where there's no wi-fi, no blackberry, no twitter, no facebook, etc. I think they have a word for destinations like that. It's called Prison.

###
You might also like:

The Facebook Movie
Naked on Facebook: The New Privacy Settings 
The new Facebook's Here! The new Facebook's Here!
Facebook vs. Twitter
This Blog on Facebook 
30 Rock The You Face Glossary 

Top Chef Spicy Twitter Style

I don't usually watch TV live (like an animal), I TiVo it and watch it later without the commercials (like a civilized human being). So I was late to the Twitter firestorm that erupted during last night's Top Chef.

I tuned in around 3 am and observed this exchange where @PerlLawLex (she has protected tweets so she can either let you in or not; it's up to her), observed: "Tom's got it all BUT heard he might be dating Padma which kinda makes him less attractive."

I promptly chimed in (not that anybody was listening at 3 am), "Whaaaat? Tom just had a new baby with his wife in August?? Dating Padma?! She's pregnant! How can she date TOO?!"

As soon as I typed it, I realized how many logical fallacies there were in that statement. For example, Tom's new baby and Padma's new pregnancy could simply be an indication that Tom -- in addition to being a good chef -- might be extraordinarily fertile. He could be impregnating people from across the kitchen, or over the GE Monogram® appliances. Perhaps he simply assisted Padma in her longtime fertility struggle against  The Heartbreak of Endometriosis via a handy GladWare receptacle? (That show is more brand-ed than Martha Stewart and nothing would surprise me.)

The TV Guide challenge was admittedly lame (as superbly chronicled at Videogum) but I was too distracted by the Twitter-generated subtext to even waste my usual time wishing either CancerGirlRobin or SaveechBeechJenn would go home. I barely even had time to notice (for the first time) that my Sweet Young Thang Bryan is only THIRTY-THREE and thus a practically felonious object of my (admittedly chaste) Chef Crush.

As naive as I am (How could Tom be Padma's baby-daddy when he just had a baby with his wife?!) even I got a little suspicious after last night's repartee. 

Padma: "It's like a little prick on the tip of my tongue..."
[Natalie Portman and assorted nobody-vegetarian-friends laugh uproariously and trade spicy rejoinders.]
Tom: "It went from a little prick to 'big in the mouth.'" [Blushes furiously. Anonymous-Vegetarians continue to laugh.]

Geez. Get a room you two.

The prospect of Tom and Padma conceiving made me want to rush right out and buy the product this commercial shilled 20 minutes in. (There is no way I could make this up.) Now THIS is what I call effective Product Placement.

Take THAT GladWare.

Dick and Julie

"I think the dozen people who click onto your website while they take their coffee breaks will manage to carry on if they don't get to read about your sauteing thorny vegetables in butter for one more day."
--Julie and Julia

One of the things I got for my birthday was the book, Julie and Julia, which I just started. And I'm far enough in to have read the part where she confesses to not knowing who Richard Hell is.

I know who Richard Hell is. I've even talked to him on the phone, during which I took cheesy delight in addressing him as Mr. Hell. (I knew his real name of course -- he's FROM here -- And it isn't Richard. And it isn't Hell.) I thought it was pretty funny, and I'm pretty sure he thought I was a dork, but the surprising thing to me was, either way, he was a good sport about it.

And either way, the book has made me think that there are probably A. people who know who Richard Hell is, B. people who don't, and then subsets of people who would admit to that, and then people who would not.

I figure I'm admitting to reading Julie and Julia, which is far more embarrassing than any of the above. But I wanted it, cause I love food and I love writing about food, and it's entertaining, even if it isn't well written. By and large, it reinforces the fact that there are often BIG differences between bloggers and writers -- some people are both (Dana Jennings is one of my favorites off the top of my head), but a lot of times they're the exceptions who prove the rule. This girl Julie, who wrote the book, doesn't pretend to be a writer -- she's actually an Actress -- employed as a Secretary.

(At my first job, I was a writer, employed as a "marketing assistant," which is the euphemism my Engineer Boss was kind enough to call me, because he felt bad about calling anyone with a master's degree his secretary. It was the 80s. I think he felt extra bad because his daughters both had liberal arts degrees like mine and I'm sure he was hoping someone would take pity on them someday and give THEM a job. All I know is, he worked harder than any other boss I've ever had. He was the BEST boss I have ever had. He is the Boss by whom I went on to measure every other Boss. And I was very, very glad to make his coffee. My time in carpetland with him was time well spent. At my next job, I had a real, old-school secretary, who knew actual shorthand and actually preferred to be called a Secretary and not an Assistant. I put in four years at that stop in carpetland and it was much, much harder. But I also made a lot more money.)

----
I was just thinking, on my last birthday, I didn't even know HOW to blog (I did sorta know how to MICRO-blog, which is what I was still calling Twitter at the time, and that's because I was doing it wrong).

I still think Writers and Bloggers have very different jobs, and I'm still sorting out the two. And by "writer" I don't mean "novelist" -- which is the kinda thing any Writer will be asked about sooner or later if they go into writing as a profession. (No, I don't write Fiction. At least not on purpose. I don't think it's any more or less legitimate, or interesting, or serious than non-fiction -- just different.)

I'm also not a Journalist -- they have schools for that, and I didn't go to one -- I'm just a writer who sometimes writes about the news.

I love to cook -- but it doesn't make me a chef. They have schools for that too. Again, I didn't go to one. Chef Baby Brother did. That's why we call him Chef Baby Brother.

The blogging thing? Eh. I'm still figuring it out as I go.

In the Pank

So how is the pink laptop experiment (of being allowed to have a computer at home again: admittedly, a small one). Well, first, I seem to have maybe torn a rotator cuff. But I got a few repetitive motion injuries with the first blackberry, so it's probably just the 24-hour Torn Rotator Cuff that's going around.

First, I caught up on some of the YouTube I've been missing --- and promptly sent out the video to Looking Glass's fine rendition of "Brandy" to 1342 of my closest friends. And then I sent them the Red Hot Chili Peppers' version of it.

And then I found some porn.

And then I noticed that I can now see all the Facebook ads that weren't coming to the BlackBerry. They're obviously very targeted based on whatever's in your profile, and it makes me think Facebook has some odd ideas about the purchasing power of single women in their 40s. The one ad that is there every single time I log on is: "Meet Black Men" which promises "you can meet thousands of black singles in your area today at blackpeoplemeet."

The second most frequent ad is for "Warm Delights," which is kind of uncanny. I rarely buy processed food, but I have a pantry full of these (in case of emergency). I'm not even really that into chocolate -- but this is one of those rare guilty pleasures that actually looks and tastes EXACTLY like it does in the commercials, and really DOES take about a minute to make. (They now make "minis" to which I say... "amateurs.")

The next ad I get every time I log on is "Obama says get a degree" and that now would be a good time to finish my education. Uh, don't think either my bachelor's or master's alma maters has lost accredititation lately unless Facebook knows something I don't (which wouldn't surprise me).

I ran these Facebook suppositions by a few friends who also happened to be online, and they were being targeted as well. As a thirty-something mama, Facebook apparently thinks friend Bluebelle would like to go on a diet. And scrapbook.

Tasha is 20-something and they want her to improve her credit score and Meet Christian Singles. And go to Japan. Because she gets ads for Air Nippon. (Apparently, Facebook has become self-aware and knows I don't fly. And that I didn't even know what Air Nippon was.)

Facebook likes travel though, and wants pal Jupiter to go on a gay cruise.

Sandy is the same age I am -- married with dogs, but no kids -- she reports, her ads are for "homeless pets. Oh, and Red Sox & Patriots baby clothes. Apparently not clever enough for pet clothes with team logos."

When Dan asked what we WOULD like to see ads for on Facebook (assuming we had to see them), we reached astonishingly quick consensus on "bacon, booze, and Ambien." Three things we all love. Bluebelle added in Alan Rickman movies. I added in Sam Shepard. Not Sam Shepard movies necessarily, just Sam Shepard. "Add to cart. Proceed to checkout."

I'm just mad I wasn't the one who patented bacon vodka. Please. I was writing about Hop Sing bringing me bacon-tinis in the 90s.

I would also like to see an ad that markets the fact that these pink laptops get so hot I suspect they cause sterility. (Plus!)

I then asked everyone what degree of anonymity they preferred -- should this possibly, at some point, end up in print (spirit of full disclosure); I'd hate to inadvertently out someone's gay cruise (!) -- and surprisingly, everyone was fine.

They're all very comfortable with the world knowing what they think about booze and Ambien and Bacon. It wasn't like that when I first started writing for a living over 20 years ago. In ink. With only a legal pad and an abacus. Like an animal. Now everyone blogs and twitters and facebooks.

(I haven't even gotten around to writing about finding my book -- and by my book, I mean the one I wrote, as opposed to one I simply pre-owned -- on the shelf at Half Price Books on Thursday. It was never, ever sold in bookstores; they ASKED for it, which I understand is nice, and flattering, and possibly good business -- but I really only wanted it to go to people I KNEW. So the "half-price" didn't bother me, it was finding it in a STORE that creeped me out.)

So I'm still a dinosaur adjusting to the different world we live in now.

At the end of this discussion, Jupiter added, "feel free to use my name, but if I get to order someone, I wanna order Matt Damon and I don't care if I have to fly to Japan."

I'm still ordering Sam Shepard. And I'd maybe go as far as, oh, Versailles.

But for now, I just have to go join a credit union and find love, if
Facebook has its way.

Using Protection

As you may have noticed, the Twitter feeds for this blog are now "protected." At some point, the blog may be too. As long as you're a signed-in "follower," you should be able to read them just fine.

Anyone already on Twitter, but not yet on this Twitter, just has to sign in and click on Follow, and then I'll get a little note that says "accept" or "decline." (Sometimes it takes me a day or two to get to the clickies.)

The new Facebook's here; the new Facebook's here!

I saw the new Facebook for the first time yesterday, and as someone who resists change with every fiber of my being....I gotta say, I kinda like it.

It's heavy on the status updates (which I like), and with one click ("ignore all"), it gets rid of all those Mob/Green/Starbucks/Seahorse/FlowerPatch/Flair requests (which I never liked or understood).

Access to my groups and fan pages is cumbersome, but I'll probably figure it out. (And there are too MANY groups and fan pages on there as it is. I don't want to be the 1,432,245 person to join anything. Stop asking me. Please. And if the cause you ask me to join directly violates the separation of church and state, consider yourself "de-friended.")

Now that Oprah's there, and Mark Zuckerberg apparently built his page himself with his own bare hands, I can't help but like it a LITTLE less.

But I'm really enjoying watching @MarthaStewart get the hang of Twitter. Somebody must've finally told her she had to stop yammering on about those damn @Flor tiles (no matter HOW much they paid her).

FB vs Twitter

I haven't seen the new Facebook layout yet. It doesn't show up on the BlackBerry so I'll probably wait and see it Monday on the big screen.

If it's as bad as they say, it may cement my incipient suspicion that I'm more of a Twitter gal than a Facebook gal.

Don't get me wrong - I'm as addicted as the next person - but I noticed a long time ago, I don't use FB the way most of my friends do.

As my buddy Ian and I discussed over the Christmas Eve dinner table - we don't play Scrabulous; we don't send each other electronic cups of coffee; we don't tend your virtual garden; and if you send us a seahorse to put back in the ocean, it'll just die. Ian and I don't have any pieces of Flair. Whenever I get a L'il Green Patch request, my response is that I gave at the Office. And I really did. (Even if I did get flamed on Facebook the other night for blowing the tops off mountains because I subsidized KU by turning on the air conditioning. I remain certain that I do more than average to keep the tops of mountains intact.) My new old friends @AliThinks and @AllanThinks suggested by Facebook standards, it meant I'd "arrived." I felt a little better, but in truth, it always hurts my feelings a little when someone hates me. For days, I found myself defensively explaining to everyone I could get stopped just how eco-friendly I am.

But blood feuds and enemy-making aside, I really just use Facebook to look in on my friends -- see what they're doing, and let them know what I'm up to.

That is, in essence, Twitter. Without all the flair. Without the Scrabulous. Without the Big Blue Waves that I don't know how to catch, much less pass on.I wish there was a little bit more of the FB style profiling info on Twitter -- but name, politics, religion, and marital status all become fairly quickly apparent anyway.

It isn't, as Brian Williams suggested to Jon Stewart, about always having an interesting answer to the question "what are you doing right now?" As with real-life civilized discourse, it's perfectly permissible to sit quietly and shut up.

While I was very late to the facebook party (and was dragged there kicking and screaming by my pals Elle and Kimmy- and I love them for it), I was actually a fairly early adopter of Twitter. By Local standards. (I was on there way after my friends @AustinChronicle, for example, but way before the local Daily Paper).

I kept reading about it in the Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) and thought "this is just crazy enough to work."

Granted, I was slow to catch on.I thought it was more like a Radio you broadcast on, when it's actually more like a CB where you have conversations (to go back to my 70s roots where I was perfectly happy with my 8 track tapes thank you).

Luckily, my official TwitterTutor, @AliThinks -- who knew me on Facebook -- took me aside and showed me the ropes.

She taught me how to follow BACK, and now I can filter my news exactly the A.D.H.D. way I like it. Most of the time @WSJ feeds right on top of @nprPolitics interrupted by bursts of sanity from @Bittman and @MMFA.

She also taught me how to make new friends -- like @MissKristina who's sending me a Ryan Adams bootleg that I wouldn't even know existed if it were not for Twitter.

Not that giving me stuff is the only way to make friends -- but I highly recommend it.

(@ChefDaveO would STILL be one of my favorite people even if he hadn't shared his stash of Baby Bok Choy.)

And that's really what I love about Twitter -- it's a way to gather all my favorite people in the world together in one place and hear what's on their minds.

I'm sure there's a danger -- as with all things online, it could be isolating rather than uniting: everybody sits in their respective houses while maintaining the illusion of communication and connectivity -- but I find it's opening my world up.

I was a FAN of my friend @BiancaLynne for a long time before I even met her, for example -- but Facebook was where we eventually got together and made a plan to have coffee.

The same was true of my BFF -- who now schools me in all things NewMedia and patiently tolerates my baby steps. I was a fan for years (decades in fact) before we ever had a real-life lunch. Facebook is what facilitated that.

My preferences for Twitter over FB will likely end up being moot -- everyday I get a new Tweet that half the people I know are getting kicked off FB.

But for now, you can find me on twitter http://twitter.com/RealityTrucks
###

###
You might also like:

Naked on Facebook: The New Privacy Settings
This Blog on Facebook 
30 Rock The You Face Glossary 
Leave a Msg. Or a txt. Or a tweet. Or an FB. Or a Skype.

Early Adopters

It would be safe to say, I'm not an early adopter.

I admit this, because there are witnesses... witnesses who will be more than happy to confirm that I am the person who said, "this email thing will never catch on," and whined loudly from my 1980's Edit Desk when the writers stopped bringing me disks I could read.

So 2008 was a big year for me.

In February, I ditched my seven-year-old Nokia for a BlackBerry, under protest, and only because I'd finally worn the number eight off that phone.

By summer, my friends Elle and Kimmy dragged me kicking and screaming onto Facebook and MySpace.

A little after that, my banker sent me so many WSJ articles about Twitter that I felt compelled to sign on for fear he might stop cashing my checks.

And by Thanksgiving, my friend Tex had talked me into manning not one, but two blogs. (When I say "talked me into it," I mean: we sat down with some beignets and he mashed a lot of buttons on his laptop, and suddenly, I was a blogger. A blogger lightly dusted from head to toe in powdered sugar.)

When I told him I didn't adapt easily to new technology, he said I reminded him of what his Little League baseball coaches had said once of him -- that it's like watching me run the bases with a piano strapped to my back.

Sounds about right.

Sometime in 2009, I will have an entirely new website at work. By way of direction, I only told the guys renovating it that it must be idiot-proof -- that they should be picturing Lenny in Of Mice and Men when they're thinking of the person who'll be updating it at 3 a.m.

Sometime in January, I'll have a new laptop.

These are not baby-steps, for me.

My friend Ian doesn't even have a cell phone, and over Christmas Eve dinner, he had the same facebook complaints I did -- i.e., we don't know HOW to put your seahorse back in the ocean, or clean your garden, or catch the Duke Sucks wave. Pleeeease stop asking us.

But 2009 will be different.

I have told Wes at TAO and Dave at Elevation that I'd like for them to team up and build me an iCar this year, and then install a thought portal into my head so that I can just communicate directly, without the bother of a keyboard (otherwise, Dr. Nick is going to have to treat me for carpal tunnel).

I'll show YOU an early adopter.

CrossFire

"Guns don't kill people. BULLETS kill people."
--Chris Rock

"I made my wishes clear.
Uh-huh.
And if the Crazy Fairy were here, she could grant them."
--House

Oh for heaven's sake. Another day, another nutjob.

Again?

Seriously?

I've only written a half dozen columns this YEAR, and already the crazies are back. No sooner had the paper hit the stands this morning than some whack-a-do calls in and says (and this is a paraphrase), "I wanna leave a message for the person who writes Reality Truck..." wrapping up with, "tell her I'll show HER a GUN," and then something indecipherable, followed by his hope that we had Caller ID.

Why, as a matter of fact, we do.

Now, is that a threat? Maybe "showing me his gun" is a "euphemism."

He didn't say he planned to shoot me with it -- just show it to me.

Maybe he was kidding? This week's column WAS about how happy I was NOT to have accidentally shot my neighbor. His call was obviously a reference to that, but in what way? Is she a friend of his? For heaven's sake, I didn't even come CLOSE to shooting her!

Possibly, it was a joke... a prank...but anybody who knows my history knows stalkers with guns aren't funny.

Rob's question (since we had to disclose the call to him -- 'cause if there's anything your coworkers resent, it's Crossfire), was "what'd you say THIS time that'd get you shot?"

Nothing I can THINK of.

But after my unfortunate incarceration (of four hours) several years ago, where I got arrested on the say-so of a lunatic who'd stalked me for over a year, I always err on the side of over-informing every single person I know when the Unstables show up.

We didn't have blogs back then, or I would've been able to twitter the loon's vehicle and description to at least 43 people, every time I saw him.

I don't KNOW what the twitter-subscribers would DO with the info. In fact, when I click on them, usually it says their account has been "suspended for suspicious activity," but surely one or two would call the proper authorities if I was micro-blogging from, say, somebody's trunk.
This time around, I'm taking more precautions.

So, the guy's number is 494... OK, I'm not printing it here, but I DID give it to a LOT of people. And I bet they all even wrote it down. And if they wrote it on some selected restroom walls, well that's their biz. And sure, it's probably a throw-away phone anyway. I'm not NAIVE; I watched the Sopranos.

But I've ALSO seen CSI. I know they can find out stuff.

Last time, the whackjob stalked me, and somehow I was the one who ended up in cuffs. (And it was NOT a consensual, adult, all-in-good-clean-fun kinda thing either.)

Well, this time, I am NOT going BACK into that hole. Where they only have basic cable. And they make you sit in the front row.

And watch TNT Prime Time in the Daytime.