Posts from — May 2004

I bought a laptop this weekend; an iBook. It’s my first ever laptop. I still have my G4 with the gigantic monitor that’s basically a screen attched to an anvil, and that’ll still be the mothership, but I got the iBook so I can take it places. I guess I can leave the house with it and everything. So far it’s gone from the kitchen table to the coffee table several times. I keep opening it and closing it. I told you, I’m new to this.

I do not think I will ever be able to get used to the trackpad. How do you people do it? It’s sort of like driving a stick shift except instead of the stick there’s a… finger. Seriously: a finger. It doesn’t matter that it’s MY finger; it actually makes me squeamish. It seems sort of unsanitary. I almost want to put the eraser end of a pencil to my computer’s little tickly area instead. I would rather use a mouse and keep a safe distance from things.

(Don’t even get me started on trackballs. Using one of those things is like climbing stairs in roller skates. It’s reckless and unnatural. Also the ball is in a socket. I don’t know if I can convey how gross this is to me. The ball is in a socket and anyone could just pluck it out, and roll it around all disembodied, or even stick it in their mouth. No.)

When I write I’m a pretty compulsive cutter and paster and dragger-rearranger, and as far as I can tell I can’t do those functions on a trackpad unless I use several fingers all at once. As someone who couldn’t even snap her fingers until age 12, this is asking a lot from me. The most I’ve ever been able to accomplish with several fingers on one hand is playing that little opening ditty to Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough on my brother’s Roland keyboard. And even then I think I got it wrong. Anyway, I understand the rest of you can handle your laptop trackpads and your New Wave just fine, but I’m just telling you here.

Wow, so in the past couple of days Metafilter has picked up on the Fox News recap; Anil Dash and the Chicago Tribune’s Eric Zorn have mentioned it, too.

Just to clarify: I don’t think the Fox Chicago story was awful. I didn’t watch the segment with horror; mostly I was happy that my quotes made sense and that I didn’t look too puffy and mealymouthed speaking them. Before the interview I’d tried to come up with an articulate answer for the question “What is a blog?” because I suspected it would be one of the first things they’d ask. I was right, except the question was “What is a blogger?” which is slightly more roundabout, unless you happen to think that bloggers are a curious species, and I suppose we are. (But hey, so are American Idol fans, and there was way better coverage of their cultural phenomenon on the newscast that night.)

No, the story wasn’t terrible: it was just…typical. It’s true I have a pet peeve about human-interest news coverage of weblogs, and while I felt the segment could have been far worse, it still had a lot of textbook examples of the things that annoy me, and I couldn’t resist pointing them out. Here, thanks to a Metafilter contributor, is another TV news story with perhaps an even goofier introduction. My God.

Congratulations Pamie!

I put together a little recap of the news segment that aired last week. For those of who missed seeing it, I tried to simulate the experience of viewing this piece in all its half-assed but generally good-natured glory.

During the interview they’d asked a lot of questions about my book, but they never made it in. Since the book’s not going to be out for another year, though, I’m not surprised. I’m also not too surprised they didn’t give my site address, since this week the word fetus appeared on the front page about a dozen times, along with the more typical potty-mouth stuff.

Anyway, enjoy. My favorite is the part about the “experts” at the end.

Well, that was weird.

This weekend I’m going recap the whole damn segment for posterity and laughs. Stay tuned.

So I’m going to be on the news tonight: the FOX local news here in Chicago (WFLD?) at 9pm. I believe the story is something like “Bloggers: they blog! But what is a blog, anyway? Could blogging happen to you?” I agreed to do it yesterday. What? I’m easy.

So FOX news came to my apartment to interview me and observe me doing bloggery things, like sitting down at my computer. I mean the act of sitting down was carefully recorded. I was instructed to walk across my room and sit down at my computer, and here is where it got complicated.

“Can we see you logging on?” the camera guy said.

“Um, well, I have cable, so it’s always on,” I told him. My browser window was open on the desktop.

The reporter looked worried. “Can’t you… you know,” she said. I began to sense they wanted to see something that said AND NOW HERE IS THE INTERNET or THUS WE GO FORTH INTO CYBERSPACE or whatever.

“I could close a browser window and then open it again,” I said. They didn’t say anything. “I could… put my computer in sleep mode, and then when I sit down the screen comes on… or–”

“Oh yeah. Do that,” the reporter said.

So I walked across the room and sat down and hit a key on my machine. I stared at the dark screen. I hadn’t realized how long it takes for my Mac to wake up, and I forgot that the screen fades up slowly, which made the whole thing appear way more dramatic than it ought to be. Maybe you’ll get to see for yourself.