I am a #RealAmericanBlogger

I am human. Sometimes I win, and sometimes I fail. I am a wife, mother, employee, friend, daughter, smartass, and writer.

I am a Heinz 57 of ancestral backgrounds. I have wide hips and thick legs and high cheekbones and round cheeks (either pair). I am not blond, blue-eyed, skinny, young, or looking to be.

I am a mother. I have the c-section pooch and the stretch marks to prove it. Oh, yes, and the natives. Mustn’t forget the children.

I’ve heard/read the word multiple times, but never cared enough to know what ‘chevron’ truly was, until this week.

I’ve never owned a maxi skirt. I don’t own a fedora. I get my beachy waves by wearing my hair knotted up in multiple ponytail holders, and then refusing to actually brush it.  

I do own a home in the suburbs. Nothing in it really matches. It’s never—and I mean NEVER – truly clean. I don’t own throw pillows. I do have a desk, but the children have stolen it from me for Minecraft, so the vast majority of my writing is done from my phone, with Siri’s help.

I like Pinterest, but mostly for funny shit, and many, many Doctor Who references. I love social media. I have found my tribe there. And I think the blogging community is wonderful—it’s witty and diverse and teaches me things I would otherwise not encounter.

I am a nerd, both academically and otherwise. I revel in the fact that I am raising nerds. We don’t take Easter pictures together dressed in our Spring best and with our manicured lawn in the background. We take pictures of one another playing Scrabble and participating in cosplay.

And I am a blogger. It’s not the only type of writing I do (not in the least). I have wrestled with the greater musings regarding our overall existence, and I’ve wrestled with what blogging means to me and to the blogging community. I do not fault anyone who wonders about it themselves, and seeks to find their place at the table.

I am, however, NOT represented by the new movie trailer for American Blogger, and that saddens me, deeply. It saddens me that so many of my tribe, my community (men, people of color, middle-aged of all types and sexes, nerd bloggers, humor bloggers, and all the rest) are not to be seen anywhere in that trailer. Because CHANGE is actually garnered when we show multiple perspectives and possibilities, not reinforce standing stereotypes.

I am a Real American Blogger. I know you are, too. I hope this helps you to understand why so many of us feel ignored. 

I wrote this post in response to the following trailer: 

Self-Promotion is not my Strong Suit

I may not be good at it, but I’m going to give it a shot, nonetheless. I am going to pimp myself out for a moment. And I’m going to ask for your help. 

This picture of Wil Wheaton helps... Photo Source

Someone, please hold me.

J has been after me to take myself more seriously this year; as a writer, as an employee, as a person interested in learning everything I come across—in general, as a human being. I may not be big on resolutions, and I wouldn’t categorize J as being big on them, either, but what he keeps cramming down my earholes telling me is that this is my time now. This is the time for me to grow. This year, I need to make a leap.

So, I did something I would never consider doing before. I submitted some of my own work to the BlogHer13 Voices of the Year competition. And yes, this means I’m strongly considering attending this conference for the first time in my life. Please let me know if you would be willing to hide in the corners with me—I’d like to know I’ll meet some like-minded individuals, in person.

If you are so inclined, I would ask you to take a look at my submitted posts, and vote for them if you like them. If you are even further inclined, please feel free to share one or more post with your people, and ask them to vote as well. Even constructive criticism would be helpful; I’m currently in that place where one sits in the corner of their mind in the fetal position, wishing someone would tell them that this will all be okay, because they’ve put themselves out there in a very public way.

Here are the posts I submitted:

Head On

Prevention

On Strike

Common Ground

An Hour in the Life Of…

Now, I solemnly vow to not bug you relentlessly, begging for votes.  Also, I promise that upcoming posts will involve an update on my grandfather, a snapshot of Ant philosophizing while on pain medication for a sprained shoulder (no, sadly, I did not record it), and things that are, in general, much more worthy of reading.

Of course, if you have any BlogHer advice, this would be a great time to share it. Seriously. Chatting people up at conferences for work has never bothered me, but the idea of talking about my boring-old-self…

The Results Are (Finally) In!

Who will get this mug???

Several (ahem,) weeks ago, I started a contest for the best spam comments. I was going to post the contest winner forever ago, but as long as I can blame the snow we’ve recently received, I will. It’s not often that it snows so bad that it sends the universities into full closure; and I get to milk this excuse along for quite some time.

The spam has been especially strong amongst the blogger-types as of late; it seems as if all the spam-bots of Twitter have decided to take a completely different approach, and move platforms.

Today alone, I rejected some interesting spam comments of my own:

“This paragraph is in fact a fastidious one it assists new the web people,

who are wishing in favor of blogging. Visit my page for cheap Oakleys.”

I think that’s the first time anyone has called me fastidious. And:

“When thesе trоubles ѕtart

to ѕet in, men will сome aсross themselves going tο the wаshroom a number of occаsions a night, getting couple of

reѕtful nightѕ of sleep, anԁ typically

locate themselνes гeаlly fгustrated oг embaгrassed.”

I think the last one was supposed to be some type of poem, although I can’t be sure… That being said, no comment yet has beat the hermit crab saga of a few weeks ago.

Several of you submitted comments of your own for the contest, and they were awesome! After a week, I asked my two judges (yes, we had a panel) Josh and Lance (check out his blog AND his new book) to help me weigh in on the best comment submitted.

So, without further ado, our honorable mention goes to: The Six-Fingered Monkey! His spam comment attempted to lure him with potential ways to block further spam comments.

And, our winner is…. Alex from Late Enough! Her spam submission involved a rather impressive level of insult before being directed to a website for cheap Nikes. Congratulations, Alex! Go ahead and hit me up via email (on my Contact page) and I’ll grab the information I need to send you your “Best Spam Comments’ coffee/tea mug.

Of course, if you would like your own mug, you can check out my Zazzle store over here à. I even have a pin us moms can wear for when we temporarily go on strike. I figured it’s much easier to wear a pin than it is to carry a picket sign…

I want to send a big thank you to everyone who played along! I know we talk of this time and again, but the fact remains… I have made amazing friends through the blogging community that I would have otherwise not made. Even when the spam and stupidity starts to weigh me down, I can remember just how much fun and inspiration the interwebs delivers to us each and every day.

A Contest: The Spam, It Keeps On Coming

I know, I know, the blogging has not been much over the past few weeks. Being a basketball mom, and also winning that grant (Remember the grant? Remember the large quantities of chocolate and wine I consumed during the seven weeks I worked on writing the grant proposal? Yeah, we won that puppy! Hooray! Oh, wait… that means I have some more work to do…) has kicked my butt.

Despite the fact that I haven’t written anything in weeks, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed at all on this blog. Something that you don’t see. Something that occurs on the back end of things. Something that requires nearly constant attention. That something? It’s the spam comments. Oy, the spam comments. I think this is how we know we’ve made it in the blogging world.

It seems as if as soon as the spam comments started to disappear in the Twitterverse (I don’t know exactly how they fixed those spam bots, but let me know, Twitter, how I can express my gratitude), they started popping up on my old blog posts. By the dozens. Each and every day. Most of them are boring. Most of them don’t even register on one’s consciousness. And then… then… there are the spam commenters who up their game. Dramatically.

In the course of one day a few weeks ago, I received one who graciously complimented me on my blog, and then in the very next sentence told me that I was a horrible writer because my post titles. The next sentence directed me to their site to buy Chinese tobacco. Wait. What? Say that middle part again?

The next one I deleted was a post-length story about how the spam commenter’s daughter had recently found a seashell on the shore, held it up to her ear, and then proceeded to be pinched by the resident hermit crab in the shell. The detail given in the story (which they just had to send to me, so that SOMEONE would know the story) was astounding. Then I was directed to buy their Chinese Viagra tobacco. Because, one should feel multicultural when smoking something that may require them to seek medical attention in about four hours.

Reading these comments prompted me to immediately go to the Facebook page and ask if anyone was interested in judging a spam commenting contest, and also, what the appropriate prize for one who wins such a contest. Of course, SPAM is a natural fit, but frankly, I’m unwilling to even purchase a can of SPAM in the store, much less ship it to someone as a prize. So, I’ve had to come up with something better. As lance pointed out, spam backwards is maps, so I could give maps as a prize. Nope, I didn’t like that one, either. Or I could give the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs as a prize (they have Maps as a song title, as do the Fray and another band—The Front Bottoms—whom I’ve never heard of), but sending a CD as a gift seems to be assuming a lot about your musical tastes.

So, I’ve decided that I want to make some coffee mugs, Zazzle-style. And what better way to reward the winner of the best spam comment than with a mug that says just that: 

 Then I had to make a t-shirt, just for fun:

  

This Zazzle thing could become dangerous... But, I digress… So, let’s talk about this contest, why don’t we?

The rules: Starting today, you can enter the contest with the best/funniest/weirdest spam comment you’ve ever received on your blog by commenting on this post! Share the link to this post with all of your bloggy friends, so they can compete as well! I have a panel of judges (I know! It’s like it’s official or something! A panel!) who are going to be judging your entries for the next week (through next Tuesday night). Then, next week, I’ll announce the winner, and any honorable mentions. I’m betting we’ll have some honorable mentions…