October 2008

Creepy Costumes

by MomGrind

chucky-costumePhoto credit: Jesse
Creepy costumes for Halloween: it took me some time to figure out how she did this Chucky costume – at first I thought it was photoshopped – but then I realized she’s closing her eyes and the fake eyes were painted on her closed lids.

horse-costumePhoto credit: Ben Alman
The head looks a little too real, especially at first glance.

face-maskPhoto credit: Jared Zimmerman
There’s something creepy about those eyes and about the combination of a real face and a mask that looks almost real.

jeeves-costumePhoto credit: piperkinsvater
This is perhaps cheating, because it’s actually a mannequin, but it’s so CREEPY, I had to include it here.

creepy-costume1Photo credit: Brent and Marilynn
A creepy costume!

creepy-costume2Photo credit: Jacob Barss-Bailey
Not the creepiest but a little strange and definitely very original.

dog-costumePhoto credit: mattbatt
This one actually makes me a little sad for the dog.

teethPhoto credit: Ben Brown
Despite being photoshopped, this one is awesome – and creepy.

My little girls? Princesses, of course.

Happy Halloween. :)

comments closedWhen Merlin Mann closed comments on his blog, he said:
“The quality and care of visitor contributions everywhere has hit what I truly hope is rock bottom. Stupid, venal, ignorant, self-linking comments from people who couldn’t be troubled to actually read the article… Nonsense tagging, meta-commenting, ass-kissing, trolling… Please. It’s nuts and it’s pointless and it’s really cynical on the part of almost every publisher that allows that crap to go on.”

Mann captured pretty well what goes on in the comments section of most top blogs.

Just a few examples from the blogs I’m following (needless to say, all these comments link back to the commenter’s own blog):

Zen Habits

“Very inspiring, I’ve been wondering about a few of the points for a while. Have a good day mate.”

“Thanks.” (Yes, this was the entire comment).

“Your articles are officially the best of their kind. Its good to see that there is actually a structure to something that reads so easily and provides so much content in such a short amount of words. Definitely something I can apply. Thanks.”

Problogger

“Hi Dareen [his name is Darren v.d.], Absolutely correct. This is very-very useful article. Thanks.”

“Excellent article Darren. All very true points.” [The article was not written by Darren. It was written by guest Tim Brownson v.d.]

“Such an incredibly helpful post. It was perfect timing for me. So much of it was exactly what I needed to hear and reflect on. Thanks!”

Blech.

Life coach Tim Brownson, who’s always refreshingly honest, recently said in a comment he left on Writer Dad’s blog: “I agree that some of the ‘A’ listers don’t have communities as such – it’s just a rush for people to get the link back to their own website up first. Anybody here indulge in that game from time to time? ;)

Err yes. Especially in the early days.

 

I was curious to know what the “A-listers” thought about the comments on their blogs, so I emailed Leo and Darren to ask why they choose to leave comments open despite this ridiculousness.

Leo thinks that for the most part, the discussion on Zen Habits is a good one. He says:

I’ve been lucky at Zen Habits — I can’t speak for other blogs — in that I have a large and very wonderful group of commenters. Sure, I get the occasional spammer or “check out my site” comment, but for the most part I have a lot of thoughtful, smart, interesting people who are encouraging, supportive, and genuinely interested in the subject.

I believe allowing others to speak is invaluable at Zen Habits. Sure, everyone wants to read what I have to say, but often the most interesting advice, commentary, tips and information is found in the comment. I learn at least as much from my commenters as readers do from me. And that freedom of expression at Zen Habits — from the people who love my writing to the thoughtful dissenters — has opened up a whole range of thought that I never imagined possible.

 

Darren sounds a bit more disillusioned with the commenting scene on Problogger:

I am torn on the issue of comments on a blog.

At their best I love them and for me they encapsulate what blogging is all about  – community, dialogue, shared learning and immediate communication.

At their worst they degenerate into pointless fights, point scoring, self promotion and downright spam.

Unfortunately over the six years that I’ve been blogging I’m seeing more and more of comments at the worst end of the spectrum. I’ve strongly considered switching them off or at least being more aggressive with what comments
are allowed to go live or even who is and isn’t allowed to comment.

To this point however, I’m unwilling to let my comments sections be closed – although I can see that there will come a time where I’ll need to take a different approach.

 

So now I’m asking you. What’s your take on A-list comments? Do you ever comment on top blogs? Do you sometimes engage in the “rush to comment first” game that Tim mentioned? How do you feel about the empty comments on these blogs? Do you think these bloggers should close comments – do you agree with Mann that “it’s really cynical on the part of almost every publisher that allows that crap to go on”?

weird-hairPhoto credit: dogseat

1950s: Beehive Hair

Beehive hair first showed up in the late 50s and continued to be popular during the 60s. It was quite elaborate and required A LOT of hairspray.

beehive-hairstyle.JPG
Photo credit: Banlon1964

Early 1960s: Big, Stiff, Very “Done” Hair

Can you imagine running your fingers through THAT?

sixties-hairPhoto credit: Dr. Monkey

1970s: The Farrah Fawcett Flip, or Feathered Hair

This style was weird-looking even when it framed Farrah’s beautiful face. It was even more difficult to pull off for ordinary women.

farrah-fawcett-flipPhoto credit: watsonsinelgin

There was a male version too:
feathered-hairPhoto credit: DCvision2006

1970s – 1980s: Tight Perm, A.K.A Poodle Perm

This is more than a tight perm – it’s a tight perm cut in mullet style. Funny hairstyle indeed.

tight-permPhoto credit: La Belle Province

1980s: Big Hair

The eighties were all about power dressing, big shoulders, lots of jewelry and of course BIG hair. You will likely need a combination of hair mousse, hair gel and hairspray to recreate this lovely look.

eighties-hairPhoto credit: ninjapoodles

1970s-1990s: Mullet

A Mullet is a hairstyle that is short in the front, top, and sides, but long in the back. This hairstyle was popular from the early 1970s to the early 1990s.

mullet-hair.JPG
Photo credit: FatMandy

1980s: Mohawk

The Mohawk is a hairstyle which consists of shaving both sides of the head, leaving a strip of noticeably longer hair in the middle. Mohawks became common in youth punk subcultures in the early 1980s, then gradually spread to mainstream fashion. The hair in the middle is often elaborately shaped:

mohawk-hair.JPG
Photo credit: Ethan Woods

Or colored:

mohawk1.JPG
Photo credit: Malingering

Timeless: The Combover

This is my favorite funny hairstyle. A combover is worn by bald or balding men in which the hair on one side of the head is grown long and then combed over the bald area to minimize the display of baldness.

Donald Trump has made this hairstyle famous:

donald-trump.jpg
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

But lots of non-billionaire men sport this hairstyle too:

combover-hair.JPG
Photo credit: lets.book

Commenter’s Burnout

by MomGrind

screaming“After 26 hours of deep reflection, I have decided what will change.  Expect to see my blog die as a result, as I visit ONLY the 6 blogs that I enjoy – and not one more.  I’ve never been happier about a decision in my life!”

Rita, who graciously allowed me to quote her email here, continues: “I am long out of High School.  But since I started blogging, I feel like I have gone through a ‘time warp.’  ‘I commented on YOUR blog, so now it’s time for you to comment on MY blog.’  If I wanted to play ‘tag,’ I’d find some people who really know how to enjoy the game.  Anybody who wishes to read my words is welcome to.  Anybody who does not is not forced to.  But I am an adult, and have lost sight of that fact. I’ve never cared about the numbers, I’ve never taken an ad, and the only thing that blogging has shown me is that this is NOT a ‘community.’  It is a competition.”

Commenting is important

Everywhere we turn, we are told that commenting on other blogs is one of the best ways to grow our own blog. Chris Brogan, for example, said recently in a post titled 25 Ways To Build Your Community, “Read at least 100 blogs regularly. Not every post, but a variety.” He also said “Comment the HELL out of other people’s blogs.”

Barbara Swafford is another big proponent of commenting. She said, in a post titled Commenting Vs. Social Media, “commenting helped to make my blog and its community grow, but more than that, blogging became more enjoyable for me when I got involved in commenting on other blogs. It was in that interaction with other bloggers that I found my ‘joy of blogging’.”

But the above email tells a different story. A story of a blogger who feels that the “commenting game” is childish. That it makes her read and comment on blogs that she doesn’t even enjoy reading. 

Another friend recently wrote, in an email that they allowed me to publish here, “I stopped commenting on a lot of blogs and only dropped by friends’ blogs when I felt like it.  Instead I used social media to promote their posts. But I felt guilty after reading posts that said how bad social media traffic is and how good it is to comment on other people’s blogs. Silly really – I was happy doing my own thing.  And now I’m burned out.”

A striking example of the pressure to comment is the following comment that was recently left here by Linda Abbit of Tender Loving Eldercare. Linda, who gave me permission to include her comment in this post, writes: “I can barely keep up reading my favorite blogs, even without adding comments. Even if you don’t see me in the comment section, know I am reading! I’m trying to comment at least once a week, so you know I’m still here. I hate to let my blogger friends down, but life just gets in the way sometimes.”

Reading these words made me wonder: Is there such a thing as too much commenting? If you find yourself spending hours (even “just” a couple of hours) each day reading other blogs and commenting on them, aren’t you wasting your time? And more importantly, aren’t you risking getting burnt out?

Some bloggers believe that intense commenting is indeed a waste of time

When Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz closed comments on her blog (she has since reopened them for select posts), she said, “Getting involved in the drama of who commented where and who owes what comments and OHMYGOD! DidIrespond? ShouldIrespond? WhatifIhatethatperson? doesn’t make you money. It wastes your time.”

Hunter Nuttall recently said, in his post on becoming a problogger, “one trap I’m going to be sure to avoid is spending too much time blogging, meaning both reading and writing. I used to often have huge chunks of free time at work that I could spend reading blogs, sometimes the full eight hours. But now, I have to always be asking myself, “Is this the most important thing I could be doing?”

My own attempt at a solution

I like comments. I think I said it before: the discussion that follows many of my posts is often far better than the original post. I love interacting with my readers. I really truly enjoy the discussion. In addition, I have met amazing people through blogging – not going to name names, but there are around ten of you that I consider as friends, and at least ten more whose writing inspires me and challenges me. Why would I give that up?

However. As my blog grows, and as I get more readers and more comments, I do feel PRESSURE. One way of dealing with that pressure is to stop responding to comments individually, but I don’t want to go that route.  I was highly amused when Monika Mundell, who blogs about freelance writing, said in a recent post “Most celebrity bloggers don’t give a rats arse about their readers anyway judging by their lack of comment interaction.”

Whether this is true or not, I do know that it’s very important to me to respond to comments individually, especially when the discussion becomes highly thoughtful and involved. When time permits, I also try to visit the blogs of my commenters. I can’t possibly have all of you in my feed reader – I limit my reader to 100 blogs – but when you comment here, I do try to visit you on your own blog once in a while.

My solution to this dilemma: close comments to SOME of my posts, but not to all of them. I plan to continue closing comments to many of my “lighter” posts while keeping comments to deeper discussions open.

Another aspect of my lowering-the-comment-pressure-plan is to visit the blogs in my Google Reader a little less often – maybe twice a week instead of every weekday (I stopped reading blogs on the weekend a long time ago). Better yet: maybe I’ll only comment when I actually have something meaningful to say. What a revolutionary idea. :)

Would this new arrangement result in fewer comments here on MomGrind? I’m sure it would. Would I take fewer comments on my site and save myself from burnout? Absolutely.

Do you think there’s such a thing as commenter’s burnout? Do you like my solution, or will it annoy you to click through to a post only to find out that you can’t leave a comment?

Photo credit: BrittneyBush

chocolate covered strawberries

Chocolate covered strawberries appeal to both kids and grownups. They’re perfect for entertaining, because they are beautiful and festive and you can make them a few hours in advance. But they’re so easy to make that I make them for my family at least once a week.

If you make chocolate covered strawberries with dark chocolate, it’s as healthy as a dessert can get, and it’s also relatively low-calorie. When I serve chocolate covered strawberries I feel a little more virtuous than when serving non-fruit-containing desserts.

They’re so easy to make:

2 lbs large and firm strawberries. I try to use organic strawberries.
3 bars (113g each) high quality semisweet, bittersweet, and white chocolate
2 TBS canola oil

Wash the strawberries and pat dry with a paper towel.Slowly melt the chocolate over VERY low heat. When melted, remove from heat, add the oil and mix well. Dip each strawberry in the melted chocolate, holding onto the stem. Twist around a little to get rid of any excess chocolate. Place on wax paper. Chill a few hours in fridge before serving. These are best eaten on the same day, but are pretty good the next day too.

“Unisex” was a hot seventies fashion trend. But these pants are taking it a little too far, don’t you think? I mean, as much as I love the cut of these seventies pants – I think it’s fabulous – I can’t imagine myself, let alone a guy, wearing them.

seventies-fashionToronto Life, October 1969. Image Credit: jbcurio

I’m curious to know if real guys in the real world actually wore these pants.

homeless.JPG
Photo credit: Franco Folini

What if we could create a social system where no one is outrageously rich and no one is miserably poor?

No matter how smart or capable you were, you would not be able to accumulate more assets than a certain pre-determined amount.

No matter how bad you had it, you would always have a roof over your head, food on your table and access to basic health care.

There would still be richer and poorer people, but not the extremes that we have today.

Would you take such a deal?

I’m not asking you if such a system is POSSIBLE. This is not a discussion on why communism failed in Eastern Europe or on whether socialism is better than capitalism. I’m asking you to assume that such a system IS possible and whether you would want to live in such a world or not.

I raised this question at a recent dinner party we hosted. It’s an interesting question to ask my real-life friends, because we live in Silicon Valley, where people basically come to make a few million bucks by starting and selling, or funding, or working in high-tech companies.

My real-life friends presented two point of views:

1. Yes, of course I would want to live in such a world. It represents a just social system that preserves human dignity and prevents poverty as well as greediness.

2. No. A system like that would kill entrepreneurship. People would not have the drive to create and invent, because more often than not, that drive is NOT a drive to help the world but a personal drive to succeed.

What do you think?