Presenting The Spam Awards!

I don't get a whole lot of spam on Mom101. The occasional 8700 word punctuation-free diatribe of nonsense from an IP in Nigeria may stumble through the cracks, or some amateur asshat SEO type trying to get the CELL PHONE SHOP keyword on thirty different posts. Otherwise, pretty quiet.

But on Cool Mom Picks, since we started accepting comments - hoo boy, am I privy to a whole new world. Over 1900 snagged in the last two weeks. 20% of them from one guy.

Evidently spammers no longer write AHOY FOR YOU PRETTY STARFISH EAT CRAZY MUNGBEAN SUNSET BREAKFAST TIME which is fairly easy to spot (unless you're moderating comments off your iPhone from an opium den somewhere). Now the likes of Rosalva Brinkman and Ragnarok Zeny post comments that seem nearly authentic. The kinds of things you just might overlook:

Well, the post is actually the freshest on this laudable topic. I concur with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your future updates. 

It's almost as if they're counting on bloggers to 1) not notice or 2) be so desperate for warm fuzzies in their comments, that they'd be happy to leave it up; despite the fact that it is on a post about upscale eco-friendly baby cribs, links to a discount Viagra site in the Philipines, and is signed by a fellow named Gaylord Aliberti.

Um, here's a hint, Gaylord: If we're in the market for baby cribs, we probably don't need Viagra.

That's when I realized, spammers work hard!

They are easily the most underappreciated writers on the internet, sure to leave a literary legacy that far surpasses any of our own.  The provide an endless source of both enjoyment and annnoyance, a seeming contradiction generally reserved for our own children. And that's saying something.

So while I'm completely uninterested in the whole idea of blog awards, especially those determined by popular vote ("Wait, so that's the funniest blog ever? Or the blog that hired the most monkeys to sit at a keyboard clicking the radio button next to 'funniest blog' once a day, every day for three months?") I think it would be just dandy to solicit entries for the Blog Spam Awards. Brought to you by FREE IPAD and EARN MONEY ONLINE NOW.

I'm imagining nominees like:

Best Use of an Adjective as a Noun, or Noun as and Adjective, or Something Else That's Not Entirely Clear

Gucci is well-known for its high-end products,which are luxury and sexy.

I follow your master skill which gives many enjoyment

Various for writing about this. There’s very a bit enormously tech data on the internet. 

Hrmm that was weird, my heart comment acquired eaten. 


Most Enjoyable Mispeling 

Nothing like the nice hefty but of a girl

This is very good article, I am very interested in its topic and to rid them was a pleasure. 

Thank you for composting about this

Poor kid cant even spell proper right. Tsk tsk tsk... 

I will be back for the next installment although sum of these comments are killing me.


Most Unintentionally Wise

 I opine that to get the credit loans from creditors you must present a good reason.

The raw attraction moves execute amazingly effectively to attract the other sex.  

I wish more people would take the time to get some sort of self defense product like a Taser. They are easy to use and could protect you. 

Don´t ever give up and make your personal thing!

Gotta getcher lovin before tey start crumblin, thats what I've heard anyway.  

Most Transparently Flattering

I like the way you write. Your style is very smooth and I enjoy reading your posts. I'm headed to the dentist but will be back later 

Yo, like the article, keep the feeling going.

you look like a million dollars.you lood outstanding.

I just passed this onto a colleague who was performing a small investigation on that. And he really bought me lunch mainly because I discovered it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!

hello, superb awesome assembled article.

You write very detailed. Pay tribute to you.

I should say, this is not a horribly written piece. i honestly do not know why this obtained a 0.


Best User Name that is Clearly Not a Real Person

Wilford Achile

Sprzedaz Biznesu 

Jesus D. King 

Louie Vuitton

Skin Fungus

Carpet Cleaning Long Island

Fuckmeat


Prizes: The winner in each category gets a free link to the non-porn website of their choice (no-follow link only, sorry) on a site with a 2 google page rank, a case of Spam(R), and a punch in the face.

Any other categories we should consider? What's the best spam comment you've seen?

Progress?

Lately, I feel like I'm missing the days that we all used to hustle into crowded elevators and stare up at the ceiling. Or down at our feet. Or maybe--just maybe--smile at the others around us and say something completely unimportant like, boy it's hot out there, or this elevator is always so darn slow!

I'm missing the days that I would pass a colleague on the street at lunchtime and say hi, and I wouldn't have to get her attention to do it.

I'm missing the days that I would wait for my coffee by reading the menu or thinking about the day ahead or just daydreaming out the window.

I'm missing the days that we couldn't check email from the playground or the dinner table or the dentist office chair, and so we didn't even miss it.

I'm also missing the light brown M&Ms lately. No good reason. But there were never more than 2 in the whole bag and it somehow made them more special.

A typical start to Father's Day

This morning, the four of us cuddled up together in a big chair and I asked the girls what made them glad that Daddy was their daddy.

Halfway through the list I thought, I'm going to put this all into a card for Nate. What a cool idea! So I grabbed a pen. At which point Nate started rolling his eyes and mumbling something about how this was just for my blog blah blah blah whine whine way to ruin a moment.

Well now it is. So there.

"The reasons we're glad Daddy is our daddy according to Thalia and Sage, June 20, 2010"

-He cuddles with us

-He cooks food so I can eat it. 

-He lets us cook cookies and eggs with me. 

-He's funny.

-He's funny sometimes. 

-I can ride my bike with him.

-He tickles me too much.

-[sage whining]

-He makes me laugh. 

-He is the best Daddy in the whole world. 

At this point I had to disagree. I said that he is the second best Daddy in the whole world.

"After who?" Nate asked. I searched for a good answer.

"After the guy who's their real daddy?" Nate suggested, always beating me to the punchline.

I agreed quickly.

And that's how Father's Day rolls around here.

Playing writer

When I see Sage seated in her little rocking chair, a small black board--an IKEA media shelf in another life--on her lap and she tells me she's "on the computer," my heart sinks a little.

I'm on the computer too much. 


She can't get my attention and so she's emulating me.


She sees me working from home sometimes in our small apartment and reads it as "mommy's not playing with us." Even if Nate is home. Even if their sitter is with them.

So I close my own black laptop and play her game. "What are you doing with your computer sweetie? Playing a game?"

"NO!"

(She shouts NO! More than she ever simply says it. You know...threes.)

"I'm writing a book, Mommy."

"You're writing a book? What kind of book?"

"A book about me and Thal. And we're playing and we jump and there's Peter Pan and at the end Bart Sim-Sim comes out."

"That sounds like a great book, Sage!"

"I'm writing a book like you."

I thought, three year-olds pretend to be firefighters and tea party hosts and stuffed animal caretakers and fairies and princesses and doctors and Woody the cowboy. If she's playing Be a Writer Like Mommy, that's not such a bad thing at all.

And yes I'm writing a book. With Kristen. The book we've wanted to write for three years, but didn't know what it was, and now we do. Posting here may be lighter for a bit; proposal is almost done and is making me more happy than happy.

My kids see that in me too.

Special to her

Each weekend, since I've been working full-time, I've been doing my best to track down something fun for the girls: A day trip to grandma's, a drive up to the suburbs, a kids' concert, an outdoor art festival. I pore through the virtual pages of Mommy Poppins and Time Out Kids each Saturday morning, wondering just how we can take advantage of the post-snow/pre-unbearable humidity weather, and all the awesome stuff for families that NYC has to offer.

(Also, it's the way we city parents justify the cost of living here. But we have museums! But we can get Indian food delivered at midnight!)

This weekend was no different. I was browsing and bookmarking when suddenly Thalia started pecking at my keyboard keys, as she does when she wants my attention on her and not my laptop.

"Can't we go to the playground?" she asked.

The playground? I was surprised. She goes there nearly every day with her sitter.

"Don't you want to do something special? We can do something special today! Look, there's a big festival on Staten Island, and we can take the ferry there and..."

"We never get to play together," she mumbled to her feet. "We're always doing something but we don't play together."

And here I was thinking that I was doing one better, always trying to track down a drop-in art class or a street fair. Not that she doesn't love those things. Not that she doesn't love those things a lot. But I forget that sometimes, to a nearly five year-old, going to the regular old neighborhood playground--just her and her sister and her mommy who leaves early and comes home late every weeknight--is something special.

So that's what we did.

I didn't take a single picture. We were too busy playing.

It's not a contest

The other day I attended Federated Media's Conversational Marketing Summit, which sounds like five words I never ever would have put together in a sentence together a few years back, let alone preceding them with the words "I attended." My transformation to full-on nerd wearing fake Spock ears and an I heart JarJar Binks tee is nearly complete!

One of the attendees, a nice gentleman with a major online media company was trying to understand who I was, and what I did at Cool Mom Picks, and what I did at Mom-101, and probably, how important I was doing it. Typical network-y stuff.

"So who's your competition?" he asked.

I hesitated. "My uh...my competition?"

"Yes. Who are your biggest competitors?"

And I realized in any other industry that would be a perfectly reasonable question.

In my capacity as an ad agency type, I could throw out a few other ad agencies we've pitched against recently. Prada can cite Chanel, Time can say Newsweek, and Target can tell you about the other guys, the ones who don't give their employees health insurance.

But a blogger?

"We don't have competitors," I said unequivocally. "We have a community.

There's enough bandwidth to go around."

This sort of blew his mind.

Last night I was engaged in a Twitter discussion about the illegality of Facebook contests and requiring a "like" of a fan page as an entry. (Yes, even as an "extra entry." Susan Getgood clarifies it very well here. ) Several bloggers responded that that was frustrating to think of other bloggers doing it if they couldn't, putting them at a "disadvantage."

A disadvantage?

This morning I read a post at Blogher by Amanda of "I Am Mommy," called What no one tells you about blogging. It has a whole lot of great stuff in it, but introduces the line, This is a full-on competition to see who can get most comments, most followers, most page hits, most features, have the most and biggest and best giveaways. 

A competition?

I understand feeling frustrated--even envious--when someone else gets recognition or a book deal or a link from Heather Armstrong. I understand feeling competitive. But that's not the same as blogging being a competition. Is it?

It is entirely possible that I am living in another world than everyone else. It wouldn't be the first time. Maybe I alone live in a world where I go to lunches like this (also this) and make friends and laugh and trade business ideas and eat too many carbs and walk away feeling anything but competitive.

With new friends from Little Lunalu, Divalysscious Moms,  Mamaista,  Tada Shop,  Planet Awesome Kid, ikidNY, Pistols and Popcorn and The Momtographers, who made these pretty pictures. Hold the competition. I'm on the right in the third photo,

But then, I've always believed if you follow your heart, remember why you blog in the first place, and work towards that, you'll find clarity of purpose and far more joy.

Do you feel it's a contest? Why do you blog?

[photo credit]

Pink and blue

This morning I stood, paralyzed, staring at the shelves of training diapers in front of me. On the left, the pink kind; the one we always get for Sage, with the princesses on it. On the right, the blue kind; the one for boys, the one with Woody and Buzz Lightyear on it.

The one Sage asked for last time we were here.

I hesitated when she pointed to the blue packs and said, "oooh!" We were in a rush. I didn't feel like having the discussion. I didn't have time to read the label. And I seem to remember somewhere in the back of my head, some commercial that described different leak protection for boys and girls. God forbid Sage has the wrong leak protection.

"Those are for boys," I had mumbled to Sage, while grabbing the pink pack in one arm and her in the other, and scurrying off to the register. I felt crazy guilty about it. What kind of feminist am I anyway? The kind that doesn't want the wrong leak protection? Because that's what I tried to convince myself. More likely, I'm the kind that continues to grapple with her pink is for girls, blue is for boys issues.

(Although if you think about it there is something kind of ironic about a boys' diaper that helps promote a guy called Woody. In the same way I try not to think too much about my girls' underwear that says Hello Kitty on it. Double entendres and children's undergarments are two things that should never ever ever go together.

Let's just forget I mentioned it.)

This morning, I walked into the CVS determined to buy the blue Pull-Ups. I conjured up the wildly joyous expression on Sage's face when she first recognized the Toy Story characters on the packaging, and I made up my mind. But something still kept me unable to decide. I must have looked like a complete idiot, standing in aisle 1 for way too long, staring at the pink ones...then the blue ones...then the pink ones...over and over again. I have no doubt the CVS employees were watching me on the security cam, mocking me from some back room somewhere: Well, does she have a boy or a girl? Duh! How hard can it be? Stupid lady.

But it did feel very hard.

It felt very hard to get those blue diapers, the one "for boys," and pay for them and open them up and put them in her dresser drawer right next to the pink polkadot underwear and the heart pajamas. I wonder if it will be hard when I send her to camp in the morning with a spare pare of "boy" Pull-Ups in her backpack. I wonder if it will be hard when a neighbor or the mom of a playdate companion gets a look at the design poking out of her waistband and makes an off-handed remark.

What won't be hard is when Sage comes home later today and squeals, Wooodeeeeee! and dances around the house hugging her diapers. And that's just what she'll do.

Then I realize, I have it easy. It's my friend whose son want to wear the princess Pull-Ups that doesn't.

[photo]

Confession

When I hear my kids giggling, chasing each other and squealing like little girls do, it is the single greatest sound in the entire world.

When I hear your kids doing it, it's kind of annoying.

Who you starin' at?

Some of my food issues are now legendary round these parts: The no fruit in my cake thing. The tuna fish makes me gag thing (as yet another poor PR person pitching me tuna fish learned yesterday). The no milk in my cereal thing. Though I suppose if I were stranded on a desert island with only boxes of pineapple cake and bowls of milky Lucky Charms, I would somehow manage to make do.

But the biggest challenge I've always had is easily food that looks at back at you while you eat it. No whole fish, no crabs with their little beady black eyes daring me to eat them, no giant pig heads roasting on a spit.

I sheepishly admit I'm one of those pathetic Amurkin types who likes to pretend my food was never alive. I prefer chicken breasts off the bone, and cured meats that bear no resemblance to anything with a face. I stopped eating wings in college when I realized that those veins? They were actual veins. Like, with blood in it. You know, veins? No clue why it took me 19 years to put the two together. I thought it was just a euphemism.

Soon after, I had a job which entailed slicing meat and draining blood. That's how I became a vegetarian.

But really, a pseudo vegetarian. A bacon vegetarian. A bacon vegetarian who also ate Walter's hot dogs. Because those things? Don't look like meat. I used to joke to other vegetarians--real vegetarians--that oh, hot dogs...that's not meat. That's like nitrates and snouts and beaks and stuff.

Yeah, they really loved that.

(But come on! Walter's hot dogs! The best!)

Cut to all these years later. I'm heavily back on the meat wagon and I've dabbled in more swimming food than I ever used to, but I still have a long way to go. Nate is teaching me to look at food differently; something we can honor and respect, and thank for giving us its life for our dining privilege. It's kind of sad when you think about it--we want food that doesn't seem like food. We want chicken shaped like stars, and bread that doesn't require teeth to chew, and fruit ices the color of no fruit on this planet, unless there's some exotic antifreeze citrus (C. Prestona) that I'm not yet aware of.

I recently asked a colleague at work who had toured a chicken farm whether it completely grossed him out. He said no, actually it made him want to go club something and drag it back to his cave and eat it with his bare hands. I have to respect that.

I want my kids to model their eating habits more after Nate's (or Anthony Bordain's) than mine. I want them to know that it's okay for food to touch on the plate. And French fries aren't a vegetable. And that  those veins, yes, are veins and that's really okay. So I'm trying hard to eat better in front of them so that they can eat better in front of me. To get out of my comfort zone so they can get out of theirs.

For now, I still can't eat the stuff that looks back at me while it's on my plate. But a nice lobster roll smothered in mayo on squishy bread from Brooklyn Fish Camp, with a cold pilsner and a good friend, can sure hit the spot in the summer.

 [beef photo]

The logic of the 3 year old

Substitute all Ls and Rs for W's for the full effect.

I want someone to sleep with me.
Thalia can sleep with you, Sage.
I want someone tall to sleep with me.
Thalia is taller than you.
I want someone who is the same tall as you to sleep with me.

No, you can't have a cookie. Remember, you didn't finish your breakfast so no snacks. 
But the cookie is not my snack. It can be my lunch.

We're playing orphan.
What's an orphan?
Someone with no mommy and no daddy and no house.

I really need a Band Aid.
What do you need a Band Aid for?
For this cut I have.
That's not a cut, Sage. There's no cut there.
Yes, it's red and it's bleeding. You said if it's red and it's bleeding it's a cut.
Well, I'm looking and I don't see red or bleeding. 
It's bleeding on the inside.

I want to sit in the front seat of the car.
You have to sit in the back, Sage. 
But I want to drive.
You need to sit in your seat. Anyway, your feet can't touch the pedals.
I will use my hands.

Can I have French fries for dinner?
No honey, you had them with lunch. 
But that wasn't on this day.
Yes. Yes it was. It was today at lunchtime, remember?
But it wasn't in a cup. Can I have French fries in a cup?
No, you can't have them at all. You already had some today.
But...but I can't feel them anymore.

Want me to kiss your boo-boo and make it better?
No because it doesn't hurt now so don't kiss it or it will make it hurt.

Finish your sandwich please.
I am not hungry.
That's fine, but no ice cream.
I am only hungry for ice cream.