Metabloggers Missing in Wake of Rita

MIAMI (Reuters) – Noted Ottawa metabloggers, the Elgin Street Irregulars, were reported missing after the vessel they had chartered failed to return to port this morning. The Vendetta set sail for the high seas late yesterday afternoon as the group celebrated International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Listed among the missing are: Coyote, 6th Apostle, 4th Dwarf, Agatha, Conch Shell, and the Independent Observer.

The vessel was last reported about 250 km south of Grand Bahama Island. Tropical Storm Rita has battered the region with maximum sustained winds of over 100 kph. Sources with the U.S. Coast Guard have stated that some debris was retrieved from the area but that it is too soon to determine whether it can be linked to the missing ship. A Coast Guard member, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed that a prosthetic leg, typewriter, rosary beads, telescope, and what appeared to be some type of canine fur were pulled out of the warm Atlantic waters near the island of Bimini.

“I’m just devastated,” said Alvin, Coyote’s twin, on hearing of their disappearance. “Though, I do wonder why I wasn’t invited to the celebrations.” The former Chair of the metablog could not be reached for comment.

Maybe today she'll run into Arrrrr!

Avast me hearties, 'tis a glorious nineteenth of September!

Yesterday, the wee she-demon had a mysterious force guidin' her steps to take her out of the path of that scurvy dog B.

But the powers o' good are doin' little fer her obsession with M. That bilge rat has made an indelible impression on her mind and there's no laser will remove it. Reminds me of a problem I've had. Fer what seemed like good reasons at the time, I had a fella tattoo the name "Abigail" on me forearm. Two days later, didn't the heartless wench run off with an infantry man!

I can tell ye, having a lassie's name tattooed on yer forearm makes it hard to win the affections of another maid. So I went to another fella. This one, much more skilled with th' ink an th' needle. He turned the name of that disloyal Abigail into a fine portrait of me true love, the good ship Vendetta.

The moral o' this story? If ye're covering up one tattoo with another, ye need a skilled artist t' do the new tattoo.

Too many lives to blog

Fantastic news: because I did so well on that coaching test, I now get regular emails encouraging me to become a coach. Here is an excerpt from today's

Has this ever happened to you? We convince ourselves we HAVE 'decided' to do something when, in reality, we're only trying it on for size. We call ourselves something to see if it feels right and to see how other people react. We start looking around at what might actually be involved in becoming this new professional. We haven't really decided. We're just fixin' to get ready.

You can learn from my mistakes. Decide YOU ARE a coach.

Meanwhile, 5M is having frustrating dreams about hockey players. Here's my coaching tip if you're getting into these situations. You have to train yourself to identify when you are dreaming. Then when things start to go wrong, like the hockey player says he needs to get some "stuff", you can magically make the "stuff" appear so the hockey player stays. You can also use this technique to turn a fall off a cliff into flying around your city.

5M also tells us that Pool Guy really isn't her "type". When I say that someone isn't my type, it generally means I find them to be either a) loud and obnoxious or b) overweight. I suspect though that when a woman says a man isn't her type it's more nuanced than that.

Why were we de-linked?

Has the honeymoon ended? Have a few naïve bloggers, with some odd notion that an online public blog is essentially a convenient storage space, akin to a night-table for one's private diary, convinced our cherished 5M to remove herself from close association to us? Or, is it simply, through changing her blog appearance the links were forgotten? Is it a mind-game? Is it temporary, a warning, of the disassociation she may impose?
How does this affect us? Do we feel the rejection of it, or had we always expected it? Can we, together, power over our inborn desires to be liked? Most of us remain anonymous, but one of us basically outed himself with a trail of clues. For him, I expect, this has become a somewhat different experience, because he risks having to personally take on any negative sentiments felt for the rest of us.

A change in one's font is as good as a rest

Looks like Musie is making some real changes. Out with the old fonts, in with the new. I like the new colour motif. Less frou-frou, which is more appropriate for a gal of her style. Also looks like she's turned her blog into a team one. Where's Coyote on that list? I thought he would have had a chance at membership. And Aggie, your Bobbie is there.

We don't know either

The Pool Guy, the Dude's Ex and the M Countdown

I'm at home tonight, recovering from my plastic surgery. I expect to be looking fabulous in a couple of weeks when the bandages come off...

I was not surprised to read that the 5M will be meeting the Pool Guy for dinner. Question: Is there an obligation to go out for dinner with any control freak who asks us just because there are no other "explorations" on the horizon? I'm hoping that the Pool Guy has more to offer than the paternalistic comments about her clothing choices. But maybe he's a nice guy. Maybe we need to give him a chance. He is a lawyer, after all!

Now, on to the Dude. The 5M felt guilty -about her phone etiquette?- when she talked to the Dude's ex-girlfriend. So, she decided that she'd "show her good will" by attending the Dude's ex-girlfriend's yoga class. Question: Can someone help me out with this one, please? Conch Shell, perhaps you with all your Zen spiritual yoga training could enlighten us on this? (You see, Aggie does NOT always get it).

M: M is leaving Centretown. At first, I thought it might help the 5M if we put up a "M's leaving Centretown countdown" on our blog once all that Pirate crap comes down. But I don't think it will help. M's moving to Kanata. That is depressing in itself. It's easy to say that the loss of M is for the better. I must say, I'm not feeling all smug and judgmental about this one. And fellow ESIs, I'm not just saying this because I'm trying to endear myself to the 5M's rabid little posse...This is a sad story.

Coaching

What is a "balance coach", I asked. A little googling turned up a website with a list of balance coaches and their photos, men and women. Some are cute but they probably have some ethical thing about not dating their clients.

This Life Purpose/Spiritual Coach, is Laurie Rockwell

A modern day Socrates. Know thyself is what it's all about and Laurie helps you take charge of your life based on the "true you."

"Once I put my heart, mind and my intention into it, Laurie was able to help me discover my purpose in life." - Mary Kelley

Now 5M, might be looking for a coach, but I'm thinking some of us might want to be a coach.

That's where Coach Training Alliance comes in. These folks are all set to take us from being smug judgmental wankers to becoming professional coaches who:

enjoy the financial rewards and personal fulfillment of owning their own businesses while making the world a better place.

They've even got a quiz that will tell you if you've got what it takes [I do, 49 out of 50 points. Hint: it looks like coaches are strongly agreeable, wink, wink]

More M reflections

I forgot to remember to forget -- Kessler/Feathers

Getting to closure is tough when it comes to some relationships. The irony, of course, is that sometimes it’s not necessarily the great relationships that get all this afterthought. As Muse has pointed out in her latest missive, the relationship with M did not even have the passion she so desired. So why all the post-M obsession? From my experience, sometimes the focus on the one individual (for example, M in this case), is not the true obsession. M may be no more than a vessel to focus upon. Is the real issue more likely: "why does it never seem to work for me with anyone?" As was once pointed out to me, I am the only common denominator of all my failed relationships. That may be a trite but sobering thought. And it doesn't dismiss what responsibilities others have in making it work, but it is something we need to consider.

It's a new day

I find it interesting how we all want to share our experience of learning of the 9/11 destruction and how quickly we realized "everything's changed".

The man who made the "Arab brothers" remark shows that it wasn't the same change for everyone. I imagine that fellow already lived in a scary world.

Two highly interesting commentator developments:

Bridgehead Phoenix - I'm curious as to what flames Computer Guy is rising from. He's introduced himself with a nicely layered paragraph.

Kyle Foley - a poetry spammer! who knew that such people existed? sort of the digital version of the lcp and those folded 8.5"x11" sheets.

Back to Musie's Issues
5M has mentioned a couple of times lately that she's looking for someone with a high emotional quotient (EQ). I suspect a discussion on this topic would have people on various sides. (The Wikipedia entry on EQ has one of their "The neutrality of this article is disputed" warnings.) I thought I'd take an EQ test, but I'm halfway through and it just doesn't have options I can go with:

A work colleague does something that angers you. A month later the two of you spend some time together Response:

• Make a statement by walking away

  Let it go. The time has passed to talk about it

  Get your anger off your chest. You’ll feel better

  In a calm and forceful way, explain what made you so angry

Where's "run him through with your cutlass the instant he first catches your ire"? I guess I've got an Emotional Quotient that's off the chart.

Come back, dear commentators

So we have scared off 5M's commentators, and she likes you guys. And that makes her sad. So, come back, look through, and comment with wonder and awe, or encouragement, or your own little piece of emotional scenery, but no flaming, because she'll only delete you (as will we).

If you do, will we question your motives? We'll try to offer some restraint anyway. We already do.

Creeps and Voyeurs

Pool Guy lives on the sixth floor. Nice of Musie to tell us. Although it would have been nicer if she'd told us before we installed all that surveillance equipment on the floor below.

I'm kidding of course. We're not that creepy. But I'd like to explore a bit how how creepy we really are. And also to explore a bit about the unwritten blogging codes we've broken here at the metablog.

A good place to start is with someone we haven't heard from for a while. When 6A came back from the Vatican, he decided to see what Evolver had been up to.

Evolver did not react well to our existence:

...on to what creeped me out. What really spooked me was to discover one of my read blogs is basically... well, I'd consider it that anyway - stalked

...I've always imagined that what I write is read by no more than three or four people in a circle of folks who all read each other's blogs. And I've further imagined that what I comment isn't in fact read by anyone (including frequently the blogger themselves.)...

He was particularly affected by our reaction to his comments, in particular that we found him to be "creepy".

...'creepy' is the worst reaction of all...

I suppose I've always feared that ...

And I've always been terrified by that specific variety of bullying that plays to this vulnerability...

I imagine I'm not the only one on the metablog who feels uncomfortable being cast in the position of a "bully" and therefore probably not the only one who was glad to see him feeling better enough to get some shots off at us a couple of days later :

I'm a little past my wounded "inner child" (so to speak) today. Getting called creepy by people involved in an enterprise as spine-chillingly disturbing as that metablog is really not something to take that seriously. I mean these folks photoshop fake magazine covers regarding the blog they until recently secretly lurked in. One post refered (perhaps facetiously) to an 'ethics committee' that their metablog has. Its pretty chilling to think that this is their reined-in behaviour...

I was the first to comment here on Evolver. It was in a comment following one of Coyote's more focussed postings, but not related to it:

...this Evilver guy. He's more obsessed with 5M than we are. Posting vaguely inappropriate comments within minutes of her posting. Focussed on her sexuality when isn't he supposed to be some kind of born again Christian?

[I nicknamed him for the same reason we nicknamed everyone when we were operating in stealth-mode. We didn't want the metablog turning up on vanity Google searches. (Who knew it would take months for Google to notice we exist?) The "evil" part? It was just too easy. ]

Going back through the 5M archives, I don't think my comment on the sexuality focus was fair. My take now on Evolver's comments is they were vague but encouraging remarks. His blog has a big focus on his Christianity. That's something that creeps me out. I have a kneejerk oppositional defiance reaction to evangelism. That E'ver is an active member of Father Joe's congregation doesn't help.

The thing is that any of us who follow Musie's blog are under suspicion for being voyeurs. Yes, we read her to connect with the human condition and all that, but we also want the sex and the gossip, to see just what intimate details she'll reveal. If it's about someone we know, all the better.

And she talks enough about wanting more and better sex and more and better love that any man who reads her blog and makes contact is automatically suspected of being a creepy predator. (Except Bob who comes off like a puppy who wants to play. He's got a deft touch, that lad.)

Evolver left a comment asking about Westfest when 5M said she'd be going to it. He may well have been only interested in learning about this community event and somehow not realized he'd get a faster response typing westfest ottawa into Google. To us, it was a clumsy attempt to make contact with Musie.

When we blog readers are finding each other creepy, a good part of our perception comes from our projection of our own thoughts and feelings onto each other. "If I only wanted to learn about Westfest, I'd just Google it, I'd not try to invite a dialogue with Musie and see if she'd suggest we meet up there."

As long as we follow an intimate details blog of a woman who lives in our city, goes places we go, and knows people we know, we are going to be perceived as creepy voyeurs.

On top of that, with our metablog, we are breaking unwritten Blog-o-sphere rules. Here are the ones I'm aware of:

1. Don't ruin it for the rest of us readers by making the blogger self-conscious and aware of their lack of privacy so that they stop being so frank. (Oddly, we seem to have accomplished the opposite.)
2. Don't spy on the blogger. (In our defence, there's not a lot we can do when she chooses the best downtown cafe as her perpetual hangout. At least she's safe drinking at the F&F. )
3. Don't criticize the bloggers or the commenters. (We've been treating 5M as though we're literary critics or members of a book club and she's a writer or a character in a novel; not like we're fellow members of a big support group.)

I don't think any of us feel guilty about breaking these rules. When you create a public site on the web, it's open to any of us to read it and react to it as we choose. That doesn't give us permission to break any laws or presume there is a relationship between us that doesn't exist, but if bloggers don't want to feel like celebrities under a spotlight, they shouldn't step onto the stage.

Wayward fruit

Does anyone know how to respond to the 5M's latest? I'm suspecting there is a little bit of "What-does-this-woman-want?" going on. The fellow with the nice car offers to help her with her grocery bags, and she refuses. Then, she's offended when he doesn't help her pick up her peaches. Clearly, she likes male attention, but the "olive skin"/"scraggly hair" comment just doesn't quite work for her. Neither does the sitting next to her ogling other women thing. The men in the 5M's orbit are not quite getting it right.

This brings us back to recent stats and conversations on the former Chair's blog in which it was noted that "Knowing what you want" seems to rate high on the Lavalife "values" list. Dwarfie interprets it as follows: "I don't know what I want" can be code for "I don't know exactly what I want, but it's not a committed relationship with you." So, perhaps, those lavalifers who have been rejected in the past, opt for this "value", thinking that they just need someone who KNOWS WHAT SHE/HE WANTS--in other words, someone who won't reject them.

In the lavalife schema, the 5M would be considered one of those people who doesn't know what she wants. How about in the ESI schema?

Haircuts and heartbreaks

I commend the 5M for chopping off her hair in protest. F--- you, M! And F--- you, too, and your red hair, Y!!! The great thing about hair is that it grows back. It's not like lopping off an ear.

A haircut is a great way to mark a personal change. I remember shearing my tresses when I was a heartbroken young lass. Someone commented, "You've changed your hair." My response was, "No I've changed."

But these days I don't need a heartbreak to go for the transformational haircut. I give my hair stylist free reign over my locks. Recently, I've come out looking like Rod Stewart, but that's ok.

Music to hurt by

Agatha yesterday mentioned wallowing in Lucinda Williams and Haagen Daaz, and the Chair, elsewhere, has spoken of Billie Holiday and scotch. For me, it's about the music.

We all have them. Those discs, artfully camoflaged in our music collections, that we keep because we know we'll need music to hurt by at some point. When we feel like we're off our heads, it's a given that we don't select the tunes we'd choose when we're fully compos mentis. It's not the cool stuff, the good stuff, the great stuff by which we want our friends to judge our otherwise-excellent musical taste. Entirely the opposite, sometimes.

It could be the cheesiest, most egregious, most awful bubblegum slush, but it doesn't matter if it helps you make it through the night. Sometimes you find yourselves singing heartfelt choruses to the most banal lyrics imaginable, feeling as if they're near-poetry. Sometimes the music has no words at all. It may be about matching one's mood, or perhaps lifting it slightly, or just saying, "Fuck it" and greasing yourself straight down the tubes and doing a splashy cannonball into the slough of despond. Sometimes it's about finding a safe place to float temporarily between the emotional storms, not unaware that you're sad, but able to shelter yourself for a bit. And of course, some of it is actually good, and good for the soul.

I don't doubt that we all have top five and top ten lists of hurtin' music. I have twelve. Hey, it's arbitrary. We coyotes tend to avoid the country and western standards -- too many bad connotations to do with guys who want to shoot us from the backs of half tons. I realise this list dates me some, but everybody's music is tied to certain times in their lives, and considering I'm a millenia-old trickster, and could've chosen a proto-Sundance drum chant just as easily, I figure I ain't doing badly:

* Astral Weeks -- Van Morrison
* Late for The Sky -- Jackson Browne
* A Night to Remember -- Cyndi Lauper
* I'm Alive -- Jackson Browne
* River's Gonna Run -- Patrick O'Hearne
* Ashes Are Burning -- Renaissance
* Flight to Jordan -- Duke Jordan
* White Ladder -- David Gray
* Outskirts -- Blue Rodeo
* Touch -- Sarah McLachlan
* Partitas for Violin Solo -- J.S. Bach, played by Viktoria Mullova
* Way to Blue -- Nick Drake

Two Jackson Brownes, I know. I just like him 'cuz he howls a lot...

Poems and Obsessions

Yesterday's Poem: I know that by saying this I'm going to catch flack from those harridans on the Ethics Committee, but I liked yesterday's poem about the poets in Musie's life. I bumped into the Chair and he told me that he liked it too.

Today's Musings: You've got to admit that it's good to see her out with R. And it's good to see that we have helped her get over M.

Wait, perhaps I should run that last sentence of mine through the "De-sarcasticizer". Yup. Turns out that what I actually meant was:

It's too bad that Musie isn't over M and finds herself thinking about who he might be sleeping with. But on the bright side, it's given me an excuse for a bit of clever photoshopping.

Why men lie

Perhaps Google can provide some light on this age-old question.

Number of hits for google search on term "what men want": 39,200

Number of hits on term "what women want": 639,000

Number of hits on term "why women lie": 2,490

Number of hits on term "why men lie": 8,110

Ratio of "what women want" to "why men lie": 79 to 1

Ratio of "what men want" to "why women lie": 16 to 1

Looking at the stats hints that the greater the wants, the higher the likelihood to lie. Looking at the ratios suggests something interesting about the propensity to lie. Are women 5 times more likely to lie than men for the same level of wants?

Corrected Poll Results

As you see in the confession below a certain furry metablogger has confessed to shamelessly voting over and over again for the same option on the most recent poll.

While this means we cannot truly be certain of the exact numbers for any of the options in the most recent poll, we can be certain that there were no votes for any of:

• Another starving artist,
• A younger guy,
• A dude, or
• Another PhD student.

An option that would apparently be supported by the majority of respondents would be for 5M to hook up with a successful lesbian who welds metal sculpture while wearing blue coveralls.

So far we've turned up no matches on LL or Yahoo dating, but we will keep looking. I understand that Jennifer Beals, the hot welder in 1983's Flashdance is now on the L-Word, perhaps she'd be available.

How can 5M meet her successful semi-blue collar gal? One possibility would be a continuing education course with the Ottawa School Board (pdf file of courses). None of the downtown schools offer suitable classes, but Brookfield High isn't too hard to get to. One class that 5M could sign up for is

Home Maintenance for Women (Ms. Fix It) (I & II)Confront household problems such as: basic carpentry jobs,caulking, plastering, painting, grouting, weather-stripping, leaky faucets, problems with toilets, electrical repairs, etc.

Brookfield HS, Tony Bravo ............................. (4661)

Oct 15 & 29, Sat 09:00-03:00 PM ..................... $90.00

(Added bonus: In a pinch, 5M could fix up things around the apartment and so not have to rely on inefficient building staff.)

But there is one thing we have to accept. 5M just might not be into girls. As much as one of our members likes to say that "we're all on a continuum", every continuum has points at the end. As one New York City woman was recently overheard to say:

I'd rather be a bitch than butch. I'd rather have a thousand men than one woman.

Mea culpa * with an asterisk

Okay, okay. It was Coyote. In the Conservatory. With a Monkey Wrench. I did it. I skewed the poll. I am a shameless dog. It was indefensible. Give me the chair. (The Chair might not like this idea... ed.)

However, I can't help suspecting that others may have been working, albeit less diligently than I, to load the results also. Perhaps others with sick, voyeuristic fantasies. I'm just sayin'.

And without sinking into whining self-justification too far, I wish to add that this tawdry confession has an asterisk.

I'll resort to the toxicity model. I think we may agree that the Muse's relationship with M had elements of the toxic sort. For that reason, I felt the need to introduce a little further social engineering into our already-suspect results. If a relationship is toxic, it stands to reason that when it ends, one needs time to detox. We speak of strong emotions here. I am baffled that others would advocate trading in one relationship for another right away. It smacks of trying to kick, well, smack, by switching immediately to crack or crystal meth. We'll save the whole methadone debate for another time. What I am saying, people, is that even if you hop from one drug to another in an effort to avoid the withdrawal symptoms -- in my books, necessary withdrawal symptoms -- the cumulative emotional/psychic payback when you finally hit the wall and have to stop is going to be overwhelming.

Like so many other things, you can do this when you're a dumb yet resilient teenager. But as you get older, there are things you just don't want to get into anymore. They hurt too much, for too little gain.

What the Muse is doing right now -- assuming the Dude thing stays strictly platonic, as advertised -- is getting her head back on straight after a life-altering experience. Takes time, people. Takes time. And sometimes the things that one most ardently seeks -- say, a satisfactory relationship -- come most naturally when one finally stops looking so darn hard for 'em. It is essential to lose that underlying anxiety that drives one to overvalue lousy relationships as if they were actually worth something, and so lose other, better potentials. Try to force the process, and you're back on that badbadbad mainline. I speak not just of relationships, but of whole lives.

Of course, there's always the question of whether I actually know what I'm talking about. We coyotes are notoriously unreliable narrators.

Some nobody woman may work

Latest poll results:

What would 007 do?