I shouldn't really be surprised by this revelation, but none the less it was a bit weird and very awkward that the one thing I 'learned' from meeting Jorja Fox was more about myself than anything to do with her, the website I run, or the fans I interact with. I'll never be humble, but perhaps I can learn to be gracious and accepting of things in way that validates other people.

A couple weeks ago I was in Cleveland with my grandmother (from whence I made Tweets about her and joked I was going to get her an account called 'Where's My Chardonnay?' to share her witticism with the world), and she thanked me for fixing up her computer and getting her back on line. I told her it was nothing and she complained that the one thing she didn't like about how my father had raised me was that I didn't know how to take a compliment. So I said thank you and she said "No, thank YOU." and I said "Uh ... you're welcome?"

The next week I met Jorja Fox and she and I had a bit of a 'Thank you' war, where we each said it to each other and after she shot me a look of 'Be gracious, damn it!" I replied, "You're welcome."

I've talked about this with my partner since, and she's right. I suck at accepting thanks from people. Anyone. Anywhere. Any time. At home or at work, I just grin and shrug, or reply "No, thank you." or "It was nothing." In essence, I blow off the thanks. Simply, I lack the ability to accept a compliment.

This has a converse, by the way, which is very useful. I lack the deep seated desire to hear 'Thank you' from various people. I do my work, I do good things, and I accept praise, but I don't look for it, and my ego's healthy enough that I actually don't feel like I need it. This set me apart, in high school, from a lot of people I knew, who sought validation in the weirdest places. I never had illusions that the right dress, the right hair and the right man would make me loved and respected. I always knew that the brunt of the work would always be of and in my selfness, and that I just had to be me.

So great, I was raised to be perfectly suited to handle the magazine life the media throws at women. That's good. I'm completely perfect for corporate America, where I can count 'thank yous' on one hand, but if I had a penny for every time someone tried to blame something on me, or dump their responsibility on me, I could retire by 35. And I'm just not designed right for the rest of the time. I'm not comfortable telling people 'You're welcome.' It doesn't feel natural or right or the correct term most of the time.

I mean, when I hear "Thank you for fixing my computer", yes, I reply "You're welcome." Well, probably "No problemo," but the sentiment is there. But when I get "Thank you for donating to this worthy cause," I think "Dude, what kind of a schmuck would I be if I could and chose not to!? Of course I did!" And then there's "Thank you for coming over," to which I want to say "Thank you for inviting me."

It's hard for me to accept thanks without defusing it into something less than it was, and it wasn't until two weeks ago that I realized it might be insulting. I don't take it as such -- when I thank people, I rarely expect a reply, except when I'm being a table-manners-monster with Hubbit's son. Suddenly I'm wondering if that's disingenuous of me, and I'm second guessing every time someone says "Thanks."

So to the world, I'm going to try and be better about saying 'You're welcome.' But more than that, I'm going to try and be better about being sincere about saying that simple phrase! If I get a little awkward about this for a while, well, now you know.

Next week, though, I start biking to work again.

So yeah, there's that. More later.

Wait a second...

Right now, someone out there is looking at this going "Why, on God's green earth, did Jorja Fox invite YOU anywhere?"

I've recently realized that many of my family members and friends have no idea what the hell is going on, and why Jorja Fox, a Hollywood actress on a hit TV show (albeit with a rather eclectic career), would know me from Ahab. I don't actually talk about this to everyone. It's not that I'm embarrassed about what I do, it's just that it's something I don't talk about because it involves a lot of explanation and 'I just do.' I'm like that about a lot of things.

I don't like having to explain or justify what I do with my free time and invariably, people ask "Really? Why?" My friends who participate in role-playing games and the SCA and so on are, generally, more 'Oh, sure.' and accepting about other such "fringe" activities. The normal people of the world look at me like I'm that creepy guy on the bus reading a girly magazine. Thanks to years of dirty looks, I do the classic avoidance technique, perfected over my time as a webmaster. I don't talk to everyone about playing role-playing Games (I doubt my family's interested, except Dan, who likes to make RPG jokes, and Boone, who actually plays them). I don't talk to everyone about the SCA (only my brother and online people care). I don't talk about my 'fringe' activities. Everyone does this. We edit our hobbies when we talk to people who don't understand. Many coworkers know I play Doom and table-top games. I think one of my myriad of superiors knows about the SCA and wants to try it one day.

To those who didn't know, here's the deal. I run a fan site for Jorja Fox, and I have since I was in college. It's called Jorja Fox: Online and is at http://jorjafox.net.

Sometimes, when you put it that way, it sounds weird and strange. Or maybe I'm just making too much of it and you who didn't know will go 'Oh, okay.' Anyway, it's out there now. I run the site, Jorja's manager(s), personal assistant and publicists have known and been in contact with me, off and on, since 1999, and that's just how it goes. Part of my free time is given over to this every year, but I do my best to make sure it doesn't affect my personal life. If a choice comes between a camping trip and breaking news (like me being at Simple Day last year when Jorja was re-hired to CSI), I pick camping. Every. Single. Time. Actually, there's a joke about how every time I'm out of town, something 'big' happens, but that's neither here nor there.

The facts are these

1. I run a fansite for Jorja Fox
2. Jorja Fox knows I run this site
3. Jorja's PA has contacted me before
4. They all know I live in Chicago
5. I was invited to the HSUS Spotlight:Chicago by Jorja

And now you know.

What Has Gone Before

In November of 2009, it was announced that Jorja would be the celebrity host of the Fifth Annual Spotlight Humane: Chicago event, to raise money to end dog fighting, at the end of February 2010. I thought, at the time 'Gee, I wish I could go, but at $150 per person (oh, wait, $250 to meet Jorja! Hah!) I'd really rather donate money to the cause.' Of course I thought it'd be cool to meet Jorja, but I'm a realist. I'd just bought a car (quite literally, I think I drove it home and read the news), and now I'm saving to buy my first house (hopefully by the end of this year!) so I sighed, said to my Mrs. "Boy that whomps!" and moved on with my life, promoting the event and urging people to donate in Jorja's name.

We got to $500 by the Monday before the event, by the way, so in theory I could have used that to pay my way, but I would have felt unethical and crappy.

December/January, some of my friends asked if I was going. I replied I couldn't really justify it. Besides, what would I wear to a cocktail event? I've gained some weight so my best clothes make me look ... terrible. I know, it's been a problem since I screwed up my knee. Also there's no free gym in my apartment, which is an excuse and I know I'm cheap, but really the best way for me to lose weight is a stair-master or an elliptical. I'm eating better again, though. Trying. Trying.

Anyway, the long and short was that I was pretty much not going. Money, clothes and I didn't want to be that freaky stalker chick. Seriously. I've run a website for an actress since December 1996 (yes, 15 years, since I was 19 years old). I'm really on that border of freaky-stalker and I know it. The only way I have to alleviate it is by trying my damnedest to be respectful and treat Jorja like a person, same as I would anyone else. I don't let people speculate on her personal life on JFO, and I've been known to delete comments whenever people venture into those topics. Frankly, my feeling is that the site is meant to celebrate her achievements as actress and advocate. Her personal life is just that. It's hers and it's personal. If she goes on Letterman to talk about it, then it's public, but until then, it's not something I delve into.

People ask me where I get all my information. Most of the time I get my information from reading the exact same news articles that you read, or watching the same videos. Sometimes I'll get them a day early. TV Guide and EW have both contacted me 'early' with breaking news, like when Jorja was leaving CSI, I had a copy of the article hours beforehand, which let me write the blog post early and schedule it, with a link to where the full article would be posted. Clever internet things. I keep in their good graces by never scooping them, and always crediting them. It works for everyone. I'm a good person, at heart, and I try to make it show.

The one thing is, I'd never met Jorja Fox. And of course I wanted to. Goodness, who wouldn't like to meet someone they've admired for a decade or more? I always imagined, one day, I'd run into her when I was in California visiting my mother. Turn round a corner and boom! There's Jorja. My life actually does work that way, so it's not an impossible dream.

That isn't what happened.

Here's what happened

January 28th I got an email from Jorja's personal assistant. It's an email address I've vetted before, so I knew it was for real. I'd happened to check my mail on the train coming home, thank you iPhone, and thought "I wonder what's up. Hope it's not something I need to take down right away!" Instead I got this:

In appreciation of your efforts over the years, Jorja would like to invite you and a friend to be her guests at an event for the Humane Society in Chicago on 2/27/10. Please let me know if you're available.

As I walked from the train to the car, I looked like someone had slapped me. I was shocked, horrified, excited, flattered and then a full sentence popped into my head: "Oh my god! What am I going to WEAR!?" The Mrs. was in the car and as I opened the door, I noticed her face was concerned. Clearly she'd noticed my freaked out expression. I told her, "Nothing's wrong, it's a good thing. Not work." She nodded and as we drove home, I read her the email and mentioned, "It's the cocktail party the Humane Society's throwing on Saturday the 27th of February."

She asked "Am I a bad person that my first thought was about what I should wear?" We laughed at that. It made the whole thing more real and easier to cope with. Then we realized it was on Saturday at 7pm, and Shabbat was over at 6:30ish. Thankfully I knew we'd be able to make it by 7:30ish (if we weren't women we might even make 7pm!), so I emailed and asked if that was okay (complete with a side comment about how my first thought really was about clothes). It was, the Personal Assistant and I exchanged cell numbers, and I sat in a daze for much of that Thursday night.

I woke up multiple times in the night, just completely gob-smacked that a star, a real famous person, not only thought of me, but took the time out of her day to ask if I'd like to meet her at an event, and then went to say she appreciated my work? Anyone who ever tells me Jorja's not a class act, I may shoot in the kneecap then and there.

I don't do JFO (I call the site 'Jorja Fox: Online' so 'JFO' is my nickname for it) because I thought I'd get to meet her. I do it because she is an amazing actress, a tireless advocate, and by all reports, a damn nice person. Most people would collect a personal shrine and store it in a shoebox. Me? I was learning HTML when she started on ER so I thought I'd do a webpage. Then other people sent me more information so I added it, making a collective of shoeboxes. Then more and more and more information rolled in and suddenly, by the time I met Mrs. Ipstenu, I was a fansite runner (if I can stretch the shoebox metaphor to it's absolute limit, I own a chain of Foot Lockers now). She knew all that coming in to a relationship with me, which is possibly why she's still with me. I was always honest that I did this 'thing.' Thankfully she understands that kind of interest (it's not an obsession, I know the difference) and as we both like CSI well enough, it's not a hardship. She tolerates me leaping around, recording from the DVR to my computer to take screenshots on a Thursday night, and she reviews any non-Jorja posts I end up making (policy and all that) and keeps my feet firmly on the ground.

So there I was, end of January, knowing this was a possibility (and knowing full well that Jorja's time to spend with me would be highly limited), but knowing without a doubt that Jorja Fox had invited me to an event ... and I couldn't tell anyone. I mean, what if it didn't happen!? What if it all fell through or was an elaborate hoax!? So I Tweeted and FaceBooked that there was a cool personal thing I might get to do, and as soon as I knew for sure, I'd share. I explained 'I was invited to a party with some neat people, hopefully I'll get to go.'

And then I sat on it for a month. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Secrets and Lies

I hate secrets. The little lady once commented that I'm terrible at keeping them, which I feel isn't true. I'm excellent at keeping secrets, I just hate the necessity of having to do so. I've kept many secrets for years and never told anyone except for her, which is her point. I tell her everything. And while I know that a secret's only good if no one knows, you have to have an outlet. If I couldn't have told her what was going on with the invite, I might have burst a blood vessel. I also told my aunt and a cousin, and my best friends, because I needed a reality check. My aunt and cousin had great advice.

ASusan said "Absolutely you should go and have a good time. Try not to gawk."

CuzDan said "Yeah, gawking's not too cool. And don't lead with lines like, "I preferred your early funny work," or, "Putting someone through college with that movie, huh?" Or "So just why are your political advisers under investigation exactly?" Also eat to balance out the booze."

To which ASusan replied "Yep - definitely eat to balance out the booze, and oh yeah - don't say "I just love your work" in fact just shake her hand and say nothing, it's the safest plan."

While I didn't intend to say nothing, I mean come on, Jorja knew I was coming, I made a decision not to ask her about her career. Mrs. Ipstenu pointed out that this wasn't an interview, and I was sure she probably had nothing to ask me, so I decided I was going to say something like "Thank you so much for inviting me, Ms. Fox. I really appreciate this."

After all, when I thought about it, the only 'trivia' I'd ever really wanted to know was 'What the hell is her real name!?' (the answer is on the JFO FAQ). And since I know that answer, I had nothing else I wanted to ask her.

Well, that's not true. I could have asked her tons of things. Like 'Was it as cool as it looked, being on Velocity Trap?' and 'Do you ever get tired of the flat-iron on your hair?' But at the end of the day, all the trivia I 'want' to know about her, I already have crammed up into the Trivial Pursuit: Jorja Fox Edition in my head (if they ever make that edition, I will clean the house). There's nothing I felt would be appropriate to ask her in that setting. If she ever wanted to 'use me' as a way to leak new news, I'd be happy to provide, but that's her choice and I just can't justify pressuring her. She's a person, just like me.

The real problem I had is that I was totally unbalanced about the whole thing and it freaked me out a little. Okay, okay, it freaked me out a lot and took me about a week to settle down about. It was a gift. Here was a thank you for doing something that was never asked of me, never expected, and certainly never demanded, that I do anyway because I can, I want to, and so I do. Which is why I was so unbalanced. I never expected to be thanked, or acknowledged. I knew she knew and was okay with it, and for me, that was (and is) enough.

The 'star' nature of it didn't bother me at all. In my world, the idea of meeting a star isn't strange at all. My mother is friends with some famous people I boggle over, my grandmother knows Bob Mackie for crying out loud (whom I've had the pleasure to meet), and my aunt and uncle ... well, if I were to list the famous people they've met, I'd need a new database. ASusan and UJohn are the most direct and blasé about what they think about famous people, but they're New Yorkers and it's expected. Suffice to say that meeting famous people? Happens. It's not the fact that I got to meet Jorja Fox, or even that she happens to be famous, that weirded me out, it's how it came about.

She thought of me. It's stupid-flattering, and I'm making far more of it that it probably was, but it's the first time that's ever happened.

It is not, by the way, a dream come true. That would be someone saying 'I want to publish you!' and whisking me off to the life of a famous, rich, reclusive author. And possibly running a Big Gay Comedy Nationwide Tour with Eddie Izzard, Miss Coco Peru, Elvira Kurt, Vidur Kapur and Judy Gold. We're here, we're queer and we're on your TV! Sorry, that's off topic.

Finally, it's happened to me

I like CeCe Peniston. Sue me.

After I spent 30 days freaking the hell out, in various stages of "Oh. My. GOD!", it was finally over. I'd spent hours and days being fine, and then I'd stay up half the night, looking at the ceiling wondering. Finally, after a few more emails and communiques, we dressed up nicely and went off to the Water Tower to meet Jorja Fox.

Getting There

Since parking was only $24 at the event, and taxis are nebulous and vague where I live, we opted to drive down. Google maps claims it's an 11 minute drive. I think they've never driven down Devon Street. God knows I try not to.

It is a little silly that I was as nervous as I was. For a month. I mean, I spent a lot of time praying I wouldn't vomit. Which is embarrassing. I should be past this, and Mrs. Ipstenu spent quite a bit of time reminding me that while this 'felt' like a big deal, it was really a fair quid pro quo for running JFO for all these years. And yet, my nerves controlled me for a long time about all this.

I didn't make the VIP party (from 6 to 7) because I couldn't make it to the event at all until 7:30. Doesn't that suck?

I've been to the hotel before, but I've never been to an event there in my life. So yes, I was nervous as I went up and said "Hi, my name is Mika Epstein. I believe there are some tickets here for me?" There were and they happily waved us in, telling us to enjoy the event. I noticed that there was something written by my name, but not what it was. We walked around the silent auction, met the rescued dogs, and then went into the main gala room.

Meeting Jorja

Now, I was well aware that Jorja was 'working' the event, and would not have a lot of time for me. She had, however, requested that I should "aggressively" let her know I was there. I didn't have to. As soon as I walked into the main gala, someone pointed at me, and suddenly there she was. She grinned and said "Mika?" I smiled back and we shook hands, expressing to each other how nice it was to finally meet. She wore a really cute dress over dressy jeans and sandals. When asked (Mrs. asked, I didn't) she said they were vintage. As we all approved of recycling this was met with nods and ah-sos!

Jorja actually made time to chat with me. We talked about Japan, about surfing and hiking. I told her about my knee, and we commiserated that getting old was terrible! There was a brief mention about Ali, her boxer, and then Jorja was kidnapped by someone else. But not before I got that picture and tweeted about it. Then she came back to us to chat a little more. She says she really likes Chicago, and the fellow near us joked that he questioned her sanity.

The Party

The party was ... well. A party. Jorja gave a speech, introduced a boy and his dog, introduced the CEO of the Humane Society, awards were handed out, and then music and dancing began. We didn't hover, but after about a half an hour, we swung back over to get an autograph (what can I say?) and got to meet the surprise of the night, Billy Petersen. My friend Melissa, whom I told about this, had asked for an autograph for her mom, which I will mail tomorrow. Billy had no clue who I was, and was perplexed I didn't want my photo taken with him, or an autograph for me. Then Jorja swooped in and explained I was the fansite runner. She and I marveled that it had been 15 years. Billy looked thoughtful, which was either him being very polite or very amused. It was hard to say. I caught a picture of them together, of course.

Post Script

By the time I got home, the twitter-verse was afire. After all, hadn't I said I wasn't going!? I had, and I wasn't and yet there I was and now you know. I'm still a little giddy, but I waited till we were in the car to actually yelp like the fan I am. It was a girly yelp, I admit.

So. There's that, then.

This strikes me as something my brother, Boone, and I would have done. I'm fairly sure at one point I did a silly comic like this about twins with magic powers from the sea and sun with Boone's uncle, Ryan, when Ryan and I were 13 or so.

Start reading here.

Seriously, it's sick and wrong and insane and possibly the silliest thing I've read in months.

Chapter Nine gets you the Vampire Wizard Ninja Moon Warriors (one of whom is a werewolf).

Again.

This post is a rant about why I hate how NBC airs the Olympics, making it so that the West Coast, which is where the Olympics are taking place, watch the whole thing on 3 hour tape-delay. Which isn't fair and I know, based on what Dick Ebersol said in 2008, this won't change until someone else buys the Olympics.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

In 2006 I had this suggestion:

Treat the Olympics as highlite reels. Show us the best and the worst. Show us the crashes and the surprises. Show us the kids who overcome a crash and win. Show us the great skier who flops, with a Super Ski image to show where he fucked up. Bode Miller straddled a gate? Show me that part! People say that Americans can't concentrate at length? Okay, then, pander us. Show us clips instead of whole programs.

In re-reading that post, everything I felt 4 years ago is still true. It's even worse now, with Hulu and YouTube.

Of course, NBC seriously screwed up their website two years ago, and while this time the site is better, I never go to it. Ever. I go to http://vancouver2010.com who, at this very moment, is telling me that at least 2 figure skaters whom NBC has not aired in their 'live' coverage have already finished.

What's NBC showing?

Womens Snowboard Cross. Which was won, at 3pm Pacific Time, by a Canadian. Not the American who whiffed it big time four years ago. Also, it's currently 5:30pm Pacific. So that's not 'live' by any stretch of the word.

I know that most people aren't home to watch telly at 3pm. But for NBC to insist that today, in 2010, we all pile into a house to watch the 'live' Olympics at 8pm is naive. It's the era of Twitter and Facebook, where someone's got a grainy video of the live event posted online, within minutes of the skier whiffing it big time and plowing into a tree. And if I go to NBC's Olympic site, which is so shitty, I'm not even linking to it, I can't even watch figure skating online.

I need to point out here that it's about 9pm Central and we've seen four, maybe five, of the 20 mens figure skaters actually skate. If I go online to watch the ones I missed, I can't find them. So much for their touted 'live' claims.

Two years ago, Here's the definitive answer given by Dick Ebersol, NBC's czar of the Olympics, said this:

It's live on the East Coast and in the Central time zone, which is roughly 81 to 82 percent of all the households in the United States. Historically, we have always shown the Olympics on tape on the West Coast. We have repeatedly done significant testing or polling, if you want to call it that, on the West Coast. And they have told us - the viewers have repeatedly told us that the vast majority of them, well in excess of 80 percent, want to see the Olympics when they're available to see the Olympics. They don't want to see the key events of the day happening at 4 or 5 o'clock their time. They want to get home and watch them, and that's why there's a delay on the West Coast. And you know what? Strangely enough, in every Olympics that I have done, going back to 1992, every Olympics, the audience on the West Coast over-indexes against all the other regions in the United States. They love sports so much, and they know when they want to watch it, and that's in primetime.

Quite simply, I think he's full of it. I think he's wrong, and I think he's massaging his data to try and salvage the NBC olympics, which are loosing money. And why do they lose money? Could it be that no one's watching? Could it be because we can't find what we want to watch?

My suggestion remains. Timeshifting is fine, but stop treating it like it's live. Show us live as live, and then from 8pm to 11:30pm, show us the best of the best. Show me why Lindsay Jacobellis didn't win (she hit a gate). Show me Plushenko's awesome skate! Show me the home country winning their second on-home-soil gold (Go Canada!). Show me the great skating and skiing and snowboarding and everything else. Stop showing me about polar bears and Shaun White's history and show me sports.

This concludes my yearly rant on how much NBC sucks. See you in 2012!

This was a bit I recorded for my cousin Dan about 25 years ago. I couldn't have been more than 7 or 8, and at that age, I had no idea what the hell 'regressing' meant, or why the idea of Shirley MacLaine regressing into the past was meant to be funny. But I know now, and it is, indeed, funny. And you know, it really is.

I do, I just do. Winter more than summer, which may explain why I live in Chicago ... Anyway, this is staying on top until the Olys are over.

Favorite sport:
Long Track Speed Skating and THE LUGE

Favorite athletes:
Bonnie Blair and Johann Olav Koss

Favorite nickname:
Hermann "The Herminator" Maier

I hate NBC though, and their time-shifting idiocy. It's 2010, NBC. 'Most' people do not watch the games at 8pm PT anymore. We watch it all day long, on every one of your 8 channels and on-line. Catch up or move your asses out of the way. Now, GO CANADA!

But right now, and every time I need to update it, I hate it.

I don't mind using command line to wget the latest version and unzip it, overlaying the new files atop the old ones. What I mind is having to manually visit the pages for all my extensions, and determine if I need to upgrade or not. It makes me wish for WordPress with the happy 'Hey, that plugin needs updating!'

See, there's no admin 'side' to MediaWiki, like there is for WordPress, or ZenGallery, or anything else I run on my sites. MediaWiki is for the hardcore people who don't mind getting their hands dirty. And as a user, I think this is the real problem with the whole thing. Until they make a user friendly admin side of the whole thing, MediaWiki will remain used by the nerdy, the geeky and the techie, rather than the whole world. Part of why WordPress became so popular is they made it not easy, but easier to run your own blog. It's still got problems, sure, but they made it so you could easily learn how to manage your own site.

And then there's MediaWiki.

MediaWiki sucks to admin. Like today I found out I could turn on File Caching. That's great new, I think! I use it for my gallery and my blogs (runs faster among other things). Except that, unlike WordPress (where Donncha's freakin' amazing WP Super Cache can clear out files on a scheduled basis) or ZenPhoto (where it runs once a day, or whenever I press 'clear!'), MediaWiki has no cache expiry. That blew my mind, but seeing as MediaWikis are 'mostly' static content, it makes a little sense.

So I turned it on and ran $php maintenance/rebuildFileCache.php which force caches everything. All at once. This is awesome to get your site 'started' and all told, it took up about a moderate, but not huge, bit of space.

Also, I was told 'When you edit a page, the cache is refreshed' except I did, and it didn't. Then I was told 'Add this to your page URL and it will prompt you to recache.' (this being ?action=purge) except that didn't either. If I was logged in, it did nothing. If I was logged out, it did, but then I went back and it was still the old page. Finally I sorted out that the cache pages had to be owned by 'nobody:nobody' (this isn't too weird, BTW). The problem NOW is that if they were owned by that, then the script rebuildFileCache.php didn't work!

So, great, it now works, it now flushs when I edit and save a page. If I run the rebuild command, I'll have to manually go in and chown the files to nobody, which annoys me, but I have godlike access to the server and I can always fix it. But what if I want to delete everything in the cache? Basically I have to dump the entire folder. Which is annoying, but at least it's working now.

Why would I have to flush the whole cache? Because I make a formatting change, let's say. Also, I have advertising on my sites. How does this get affected?

In the end, I'm going to keep the cache running for a month, see how it goes. But it still annoys me how much of this is lacking because of no admin 'dashboard.'

Then again, that's MediaWiki. Function over form. All powerful, all annoying.

As a ten year resident of Chicago, I finally broke down and got a car. I have deeding parking in my apartment, so generally I don't have a lot of worries. Still, I know that to park on a Chicago City Street I need a special sticker.

When I got the car (Nov 13) I was told the dealer would get my license plate within 60 days, but I needed to pay for the City Sticker on my own. Within 30 days. I waited 28 days and, when it was clear I wouldn't get the plate within the 30 days, I went downtown to City Hall (I work nearby) and got a sticker for my dealer plates. At the time I asked 'I know the sticker has my dealer plate on it. Do I need to trade that in when I get real plates?'

The lady said yes, but promised me I wouldn't have to pay again. Great!

On January 7th, I went back down, having gotten my plates, and said I needed 'real' stickers. I had not brought my sticker in, since I didn't really want a ticket, and my neighbor (who parks beside me) just got one. They said I needed the sticker and promised that any tickets within 30 days of the new plates being issued would be dismissed. Of course I asked for a print copy of the law that said they can't ticket me, to keep with my insurance issue.

Instead I got one that stated, and I quote "Motorists CAN NOT receive a ticket for having ... an inaccurate license plate number ... printed on their sticker."

So while you have to have your license plate on the sticker, there's no law that says the plate has to match yours. It's a 'security' feature only. Which is amusing to me. How does it secure anything if no one checks it?

Here are two articles I read that made me wonder how these idiots get jobs in the 'real' world.

Naked Came The WebComic

Art, "Art", and Almost "Art" - What qualifies as "art" in webcomics?, by Jules Rivera, only counts as 'news' and not a blog by the virtue of having 'NEWS' in the URL (if it had blog, I'd forgive it entirely).

I'm going to say this. If someone walked up to me and said 'You're not a writer, you just blog', I might pop them one. I do too write! You are here, reading my writing, and either enjoying it or rolling your eyes at my idiocy and moving on. By the way, you're welcome to do that. But this right here is my art.

I take particular offense to her deciding the XKCD, possibly the wittiest and most fun webcomic I've run across ever, is a terrible comic because it's a stick-figure comic. She says of these "This is a person who is not making an effort. The more lazy the artwork, the more terrible the comic is to look at."

Clearly she also feels math is hard.

As for a webcomic she says is 'better', we've got the one I don't actually read regularly, Order of the Stick. The text size is too small. Seriously. I can't read it. But I do think it's one of the better D&D parody strips out there. And since I'm not actually a rough and tumble D&D girl (I had a bard who was actually really crap with lyrics, I miss him), it's not my thing. Still that doesn't diminish from the fact that the work is really good.

Look, just because you don't 'get' the art, doesn't make it invalid. I can't stand Hemingway (a couple of my relatives will shortly be sending hit-men to my house to kill me, so this will possibly be my last blog post ever) but I appreciate his work! I get why he's famous and a master, but it's not something I'd read for pleasure. For that, I've got Moby Dick, a book many people hate. That's how art works. It makes you stop and think.

And if the webcomics that make me stop and think are a stickman world (XKCD - don't forget your hat!) and a photocomic of a dude writing on a chalkboard (Surviving the World, thanks Dante), then don't diminish their work. There's room on the net, and in the store, for all of us. Diversity is good! Express yourself the way that come's naturally!

Well ... except this next guy.

I'm With Coco

NBC’s Gaspin Talks About Emotion of Late-Night Changes, by Brian Stelter, is a failed article, not for anything Brian did, but for what his subject said, when asked what he'd learned about the whole Tonight Show shenanigans.

For those who don't know, on May 29th, 2009, Jay Leno stopped doing The Tonight Show on NBC (which runs at 11:05pm ET) and started doing the Jay Leno Show at 10pm (same station). Conan O'Brian got the nod for Tonight, and in January of 2010, rumors began than he was going to be punted and replaced with ... Jay Leno. Okay, the ratings weren't great for either show, and I don't know anyone, personally, who actually watched the Leno Show, but a lot of people, myself included, felt that it just wasn't fair to Conan. I recall commenting that NBC were idiots for not just letting Leno GO and leaving Conan for a year. Late night TV isn't the same as regular TV.

But. NBC didn't. They fired Conan (there's no other word for it, people), and then Jeff Gaspin, NBC Universal TV Entertainment's chairman, said that he had underestimated the emotional drama that the whole shipwreck caused.

Quote: "I probably, you know, I probably underestimated the emotion of everything that went on. I went to Conan, to Jay, to Jimmy with a very logical, rational plan. I explained it to the press. I wasn’t trying to hide anything. And I think the underestimated the emotional impact it had on Conan, in particular."

Frankly, he comes off sounding like this: Gee, we had no idea firing Conan would hurt his feelings! As I tweeted to my friend Sabrina, Well it's not like NBC execs have any experience with being fired. How would THEY know.

I'll let how stupid they are stand without comment.