Author: Ruby Sinreich

America Blog is hittin’ the big time, bay-bee. They were mentioned repteaedly in the Daily Show (best show on TV) coverage of blogs’ coverage of Gannon Gate (see below).

But change IS gonna come! I am finally about to change this blog over from the blogger platform (which is great for simple publishing) to WordPress (which is simply the bomb). I use WordPress on Orange Politics already. I love it because it’s open source and easy and powerful and flexible. And today they have released WordPress 1.5 which has tons of huge improvements!

Along with the platform change will come a long-overdue redesign. There could also be some bumps in the road, so please be patient if you try to load the site and get errors or things look funny. And pray hard with me that I am somehow able to import all the old comments.

B. W. Ventril tagged me in this Internet quiz chain. I think he’s amused by the idea of making me write about something other than politics and blogs. That’s valid.

Here’s the bloggiest thing about it (and he may not realize this): BWV is totally my friend, but I don’t know who he is IRL. I think there’s a 70% chance that he’s someone I know. Perhaps he’ll comment here and enlighten me as a reward for playing the quiz. ;}

So I’m supposed to answer these questions and pass them on to three other people. Here’s goes…

1. Total amount of music files on your computer?
   This is actually complicated because my stuff is spread around. I have about 226 MB on my work computer (shh!) and 1.91 GB on my boyfriend’s computer (I kept going ’till his hard drive said ‘uncle’). But I also have 1 GB of music on an SD card that I play in my Treo (which is also a computer, IMO).
2. The last CD you bought was…
   “Connected” by the Foreign Exchange. Smoove hip hop. Recommend.
3. What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?
   Before and during reading this I have been listening to the Secret Agent stream from Soma FM. It’s good for working to, which is what I’m supposed to be doing.
4. Write down five songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.
   • “Barracuda” by Heart rocks my ass off. It gets me going which is especially helpful for cleaning the house or other shit I don’t want to do.
   • “I Can’t Make You Love Me” by Bonnie Raitt breaks my heart and makes me cry every time I listen to it. Funny how I used to listen to it more when I was already heartbroken. Ah, the downward spiral…
   • The whole album “Songs in the Key of Life” by Stevie Wonder represents my friends and that is a very good thing. When I listen to it I can picture them dancing and being happy. (Also his “Don’t You Worry About a Thang” on Innvervisions makes me think of my mom partying in the 70’s. A happy thought.)
   • “Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)” by the Talking Heads is the most lovely, comforting thing. I already loved it before Christa pointed out the lyric “sing into my mouth.” That just made it better. This is my favorite song by my favorite band.
   • There has to be something by Parliament… probably “Flashlight” because I remember my dad telling me it was his favorite P-Funk song as I was headed out to go see them play about 5 years ago. And it is good stuff.

   Wow. That was much easier than I thought it would be!

5. What 3 people are you going to pass this baton to and why?
   • My Cousin Gail because she is the most awesome and loyal reader of this blog! She doesn’t have her own website, so I’ll post her responses here.
   • Jusinsomnia because replacing an LCD screen is way too geeky ;).
   • My wonderful man because it’s not activism, but it is audio.

This week there were two sites that I kept seeing mentioned on blogs all over the place that I finally took some time to check out. And they are both awesome in their ways. The first is Google Maps. Here’s my house. It just works right. Looks good and is super easy to use.

The other neat thing is the Name Voyager which visually illustrates the popularity of baby names over the last century. As I would have guessed, “Ruby” peaked at the beginning of the century, bottomed out in the 70’s and 80’s, and is now making a resurgence.

CORRECTION: THIS is the Baby Name Voyager. The link above is to the Social Security Administration’s baby name records which are also intersting, but not nearly as entertaining.

I’m sorry I don’t have much time to write about this, but hopefully you have been following Gannon Gate, in which the White House issued a press pass daily for two years to a man using a pseudonym who couldn’t get credentialed at the capitol. A small amount of distributed Internet research revealed that in addition to the right-wing Talon News, he was also a associated with some gay/military escort services (ie: prostitution).

Now you know lefties like me don’t really care that much what people do in their private lives, who they sleep with, etc. However, Mr. Bush got elected on a platform of keeping those perverts under lock and key. So why are they cuddling up so close to this so-called “Jeff Gannon” (his pseudonym for both reporting and escorting)?

My brilliant friend John Aravosis, has been tracking this story – and creating it – on AmericaBlog.org. Now he brings you BREAKING new information about a man called Jeff. Even more stunning than the incredible fact that this guy paid a web company to build his pornographic website, is this: about 120 seconds after I left a comment commending John for his research, I got a PHONE CALL from someone falsely claiming to represent John at AmericaBlog.org asking me to please refrain from commenting as I was “inappropriate” and then hanging up. So I called John immediately to let him know and confirm my suspicion that this was coming from “the opposition” (whoever the hell that is). The call clearly did not come from John. These right-wing losers looked me up (I always post with my full name) and called me at work to intimidate me!!! They are SO AFRAID. I can’t help but quote their dear leader and say “bring it on.”

Please go right now to AmericaBlog if you want to learn more and then take action to demand a special prosecutor to investigate this obvious example of corruption at the White House.

Dave Winer called me a “blogging dynamo!” That’s a huge compliment coming from one of the founding fathers (are there any mothers?) of blogging. I’m honored.

Two books recommended by participants here on what journalism as blogging might look like: “A Fire Upon the Deep” and “Bloom.”

The above is a great suggestion from David Hoggard of Hogg’s Blog.

I can’t get the photos to post automatically, so check my

flickr stream to see what’s up at the C. H. Blogger Con.

Now, you might think that I am all excited about the upcoming “Chapel Hill BloggerCon” because it will be a great way to both create and explore the local blogging community, or because it will be an opportunity to show off all my hard work on Orange Politics, or because I will get to hob nob with blogging celebrities like Dan Gillmor and
Dave Winer. And all of those things are true, at least to some extent. But I just now got seriously fucking excited about this event. Why?

Because I was just reading the web site for this event and among the list of participants is Bernard Glassman!!! (I know, reader, you are like “so what.” Stick with me.) There are many other Bernard Glassmans (Glassmen?) in the world, notably Roshi Bernie Glassman, Zen master, engaged Buddhist, and author of Bearing Witness (which I highly recommend).

But this is my Bernard Glassman. In the 90’s Bernard was my consulting client/boss and mentor. We met in 1993 because we were both working (in various capacities) on a publication called “On the Horizon,” which was edited by a nutty professor named Jim Morrison (which always made me giggle). Bernard paid me to do cool things with
FileMaker, but since he didn’t have full-time work for me, he also got me a job waiting tables at my favorite restaurant. Both were great opportunities for me.

Bernard loved to take long lunches and discuss far-out new applications of technology. Like a typical visionary, he had lots of creative ideas and I often felt that I was the practical, skeptical one in comparison. This was one of the first times in my life when I felt really appreciated, as Bernard was always telling me how great I was at FileMaker and that I was very smart and talented. I really don’t recall being told this before then. Bernard gave me incredible confidence in myself, for which I am eternally grateful.

Why is this reading like an obituary? Anyway, I have not been in touch with him for many years so

I would have been thrilled just to find his website and to find out what he’s been up to (I wonder frequently). But the fact that I will get to see him in person this weekend is really exciting. Thank you, Chapel Hill BloggerCon!