the slack daily

Whereupon I use the phrase 'a suit made of chicken skin'

I have a metric asston of writing to plow through this week, so the following will have to keep you for a day or so:

• I have been nominated for the Hot Blogger Calendar, which was founded by the decidedly non-creepy Jane & Sarah (as opposed by someone who spanks it to your Flickrstream in a suit made of chicken skin.  The peeps with the most nominations make it to the finals, so you know what to do.

• Yes, we did have a chat this weekend. A highlight reel may be forthcoming. The archives are here.

• Yesterday was our discoversary.  I spent half of it writing.  But to answer his question, two years ago, I did spend it reading this.

• Dear Daisy: Just Say No.

(I swear, I don't give her alcohol.)

• Did you know that the flatmistress has gone global?

Lighten Up, Francis.

There's a saying that tone is lost in email.  I'd extend that to the blogging/commenting world, too, as the quirky quip inside our head slung like a sassy gunfighter sometimes sounds like the drunken ramblings of car-bomber on the page.  Our intentions end up clear as mud.

I've said before that I take everything at a compliment.  And for the most part, that's true.  When I receive particularly terrible hate mail, I try to remind myself that at least they're reading.  Someone who considers me a disgusting fat pig and your husband will leave you not only has taken the time to study and reflect upon my everysingleentry in my blog and everysinglepicture on my Flickr, but thinks that my husband is a hot piece of ass, but they've also made the effort to click on my email link and write fourteen lines of badly-constructed prose.  Sometimes more than once.  Even my regular readers don't do that.

Crazy Lady.

One of the reasons I wanted to get a job outside the house (outside of the whole "it pays" thing) was so I could start being around humans again.  There's something about the solitary confinement of writerdom that begins as quirky, making-small-talk-with-the-houseplants-about-your-web-stats sorta thing and ends in a zenith of Kurtzian proportions.  Thankfully I have yet to craft a hat out of The Bloggess but time will certainly tell.

My descent has translated into the way I assemble meals throughout the day, out of bits and bites that don't necessarily match but fulfill my necessary nutritional blocks.  A pear, a banana, a protein bar; a block of tofue with some hot sauce, a piece of string cheese.  My outfits have followed suit;  right now I'm sporting pink workout pants, a purple tank top, a red bandana, and old pair of glasses.  I don't think of a look so much as "is my ass covered?"  But even then I haven't always been successful.  (Note to self: toss out jeans when the ass is missing.)

I was once told that I should have my own reality show, but this week the cameras would catch me assisting Will with the zit on the bridge of his nose, plunging the bathroom sink, getting high off the bathroom cleaner fumes and sniffing Daisy's ears to figure out if she's got an infection.  (I'm not so much the Dog Whisperer as the Ear Snifferer.)  My reality show would be something akin to Dirty Jobs meets Real World: Hobos.

I have been spotted in the Real World, mind you.  And not only in flatmistressian proportions (you are still flatmistressing, yes?) but at SocialMediaCamp, where I realize that I may not work in Social Media, but I start to feel I know everyone who knows everyone, like the Kevin Bacon of the Internet.  Tickets were being given out for SummerMashMeet, but I opted out as I had to work early on Saturday (and meet JT.) 

Time out for a question: can anyone explain to this Internet D-Lister why they have the 'Red Carpet' at Social Media Parties?  Many thanks.

Back to real life, where I'm going to take my pink-clad ass, do some WiiFit, write a bit, and maybe make a sculpture out of dog hair and fingernail clippings.  Ciao.

Technical Difficulties.

I woke up this morning at 5:03am to the sound of the coffeepot gurgling; I don't always remember to set the timer the mornings that I have to be at the gym at 5:30am, but the days that I do I am incredibly pleased with my amount of forethought.

However, that forethought didn't include coffee.  Whoops.

Later in the morning,  I received an email from Amazon to let me know that  Madden '09 marks twenty years of Madden NFL Football.

Nine years ago, Older SlackBrother J. purchased Madden NFL as well as a Playstation for Christmas for young slackbrother j.  However, we decided to take it for a test run before we flew it from Los Angeles to Chicago - y'know, jusy to make sure it worked -  so we carefully opened the box, set up the system, and awaited Madden glory.

Twenty minutes later we were still figuring out how to get to  the Team Selection Screen before we finally gave up, repacked the contents, and sent the console and game along to its intended recipient.

Madden NFL: making me feel old...again and again.

In happier news:

We have more flatmistress sightings.  I am on tour!

The rest of the set here, taken by the ever-fabulous Piglet!

...while reader and artist Rick takes it in a Shepard Fairey direction:

The clearest my skin will ever look.  The  rest of the set here.

This Just In!

The Bret Michaels Period.
Originally uploaded by exeverything.

Early sightings of the flatmistress in the Southland....

The rest of the set can be seen here.  Ex-everything definitely is in the running for some swag.

Other favorites:

Two legends.

Sleeps with the fishes.

Get your own flatmistress here!

the flatmistress.

Sometimes the intersection of Internet and Real Life can be a bit jarring, kinda like that Simpsons Treehouse of Horror VI where Homer falls into the 3D world.  Entities that you've only known from behind a flat screen suddenly take on shapes and voices and fully-fledged personalities and moods and while occasionally the expectation can fall short, in my experience it's the virtual feather in the blogging cap when you finally get to meet the author behind the words.

Sizzle and Nanette have both done one of these, so if you're going to BlogHer, I encourage you to check them out.

How to Recognize me at BlogHer:

1. I am not going.  Therefore, all of those places where you don't see me?  That's where I am.

Okay, so that list was predictably short. 

While I tease about the BlogHer, there are a ton of poeple going who I'd love to meet, chat, and consume copious amounts of our favorite alcoholic libations with (I rewrote that sentence three times, we're going to have to live with the preposition.  Mea culpa.)   I can't be there...or can I?

And so I came up with the flatmistress:
 
Clicking on the above picture should take you to the full-size one, which you can then print.  Bring me to parties, to panels, tuck me under your pillow at night.  You can burn me in effigy or display me proudly on your laptop.  Best of all, I fit into carry-on luggage and I come with my own booze.  You can whisper sweet nothings to me, you can confess your true feelings about other bloggers, you can drop the "L" from "flatmistress" and burn me in effigy. 

So bring me to BlogHer, take a photo with the flatmistress, and post 'em on Flickr tagged "flatmistress." The best photos might just win some cool swag.

Even if you're not going to BlogHer, you're still eligible to play along. 

Pass it along and have fun!