Sweet Cupcake
I work as a freelancer. What I freelance at you'll learn if you read far enough. Saying you work freelance is an elegant way of stating that you are largely unemployed. Sometimes you're as busy as -- or busier -- than any working stiff out there.
But mostly the "free" in freelance means I have lots of free time. That's a good thing for now but, sadly, I might someday have to work for a living again. Until then, I look for ways to exercise my brain and body in constructive ways. The former because, hey, I need all the help I can get. The latter because, as I like to say, I'm still single and I gotta advertise!
In hopes that someone is using the Internet more constructively than I am, I peruse through other blogs and see what's going on out there. I look for people who have something to say. I don't need anything particularly profound. A blogger with some wit and wisdom he or she hasn't simply cut and pasted or otherwise swiped from someone else will catch my attention.
This is rare.
Most of my spacewalks through the blogosphere leave me wishing I had the spent the time doing something more worthwhile like watching re-runs of lottery drawings on TV. (I lost again? Dang!) A few amuse me for a moment and others might if I could speak Spanish or German or any of the other countless language people use to blog. What? Al Gore invented the Internet only for Americans?
Today I found one worth mentioning. It's called Musings of a Cupcake. Its author appears to be a young single woman in California. It doesn't proclaim to carry the world's weight on its shoulders but it's bright, honest and fresh. And I took the time to leave the following detailed comment that I don't think is violating her confidence since anyone who reads her blog can read the same thing.
jack said...
Your blog is a good read. Well done!
Bored one day, I fired up my own blog and then started clicking the "Next Blog" button in the upper right corner looking for something interesting.
And, these days, something besides "The New Orleans disaster is Bush's fault -- that uncaring, incompetent weasel." Or words to that effect. I'm not saying the point might not be valid. I'm just saying that it has been well established and duly noted, thank you. Tell me something new.
And you did. Not just about "Czarina Katrina."
It was fun to read. OK, maybe not fun. I don't want to sound like I'm deriving enjoyment from another person's pain but the stories about your cyber-breakup kept me reading all the way to the bottom of the page. And when I finished that, I went to your profile, saw your other blog and read that too.
Now I'm as entertainment challenged as the next guy but not so much so that I have to read every word of every blog I click on. Take it for what it's worth from an anonymous source on the Internet but this is good stuff.
That brings up a point: If you're tempted to bash the President's handling of the Katrina crisis in your blog, please don't. It's all been said already and more eloquently than you ever will. And while in America nothing is ever anyone's fault so there must be someone else to blame, the finger pointing going on here smacks too obviously of trying to capitalize on it for political points.
My main surprise about the slow government response is that people are surprised. No massive bureaucracy is going to be prepared for a disaster of that magnitude. If John Kerry could not muster a better campaign against such a vulnerable incumbent, what makes you think he could have beaten Bush's response time to this by any meaningful amount?
For all the anger at the government -- at all levels -- how much did people do to prepare themselves? How many Floridians, even after last year's four hurricanes, have made plans for how to live in the aftermath of a huge storm? Polls earlier this year suggested that few of them had.
I have sheltered myself from a lot of the news from New Orleans but today I read all the articles about it in the local fish wrap. Unlike government authorities I had the luxury of not dealing with the reality until I had braced myself first. And I indulged.
Some people are offering space in their homes to those sent fleeing from the Gulf Coast. A friend of mine in Shreveport did it. She recently married and moved in, as you would hope she'd do, with her husband. Her house was empty and ready to go on the market when instead she "adopted" a family evacuated from New Orleans. She says other people have donated bedding and other basic supplies.
In the rush to help, I hope the people matching the homeless with the homeowners are doing background checks. You can see it now: Someone robbed or raped by someone to whom she had opened her home.
You'll be proud that I avoided calling them "refugees." Seems people are offended by the term. Is this really the time for semantics? I mean, if I'm ever wiped out like that, call me a refugee as long as you're calling help for me!
Where was I? Oh, yes. In search of more cupcakes.
But mostly the "free" in freelance means I have lots of free time. That's a good thing for now but, sadly, I might someday have to work for a living again. Until then, I look for ways to exercise my brain and body in constructive ways. The former because, hey, I need all the help I can get. The latter because, as I like to say, I'm still single and I gotta advertise!
In hopes that someone is using the Internet more constructively than I am, I peruse through other blogs and see what's going on out there. I look for people who have something to say. I don't need anything particularly profound. A blogger with some wit and wisdom he or she hasn't simply cut and pasted or otherwise swiped from someone else will catch my attention.
This is rare.
Most of my spacewalks through the blogosphere leave me wishing I had the spent the time doing something more worthwhile like watching re-runs of lottery drawings on TV. (I lost again? Dang!) A few amuse me for a moment and others might if I could speak Spanish or German or any of the other countless language people use to blog. What? Al Gore invented the Internet only for Americans?
Today I found one worth mentioning. It's called Musings of a Cupcake. Its author appears to be a young single woman in California. It doesn't proclaim to carry the world's weight on its shoulders but it's bright, honest and fresh. And I took the time to leave the following detailed comment that I don't think is violating her confidence since anyone who reads her blog can read the same thing.
jack said...
Your blog is a good read. Well done!
Bored one day, I fired up my own blog and then started clicking the "Next Blog" button in the upper right corner looking for something interesting.
And, these days, something besides "The New Orleans disaster is Bush's fault -- that uncaring, incompetent weasel." Or words to that effect. I'm not saying the point might not be valid. I'm just saying that it has been well established and duly noted, thank you. Tell me something new.
And you did. Not just about "Czarina Katrina."
It was fun to read. OK, maybe not fun. I don't want to sound like I'm deriving enjoyment from another person's pain but the stories about your cyber-breakup kept me reading all the way to the bottom of the page. And when I finished that, I went to your profile, saw your other blog and read that too.
Now I'm as entertainment challenged as the next guy but not so much so that I have to read every word of every blog I click on. Take it for what it's worth from an anonymous source on the Internet but this is good stuff.
That brings up a point: If you're tempted to bash the President's handling of the Katrina crisis in your blog, please don't. It's all been said already and more eloquently than you ever will. And while in America nothing is ever anyone's fault so there must be someone else to blame, the finger pointing going on here smacks too obviously of trying to capitalize on it for political points.
My main surprise about the slow government response is that people are surprised. No massive bureaucracy is going to be prepared for a disaster of that magnitude. If John Kerry could not muster a better campaign against such a vulnerable incumbent, what makes you think he could have beaten Bush's response time to this by any meaningful amount?
For all the anger at the government -- at all levels -- how much did people do to prepare themselves? How many Floridians, even after last year's four hurricanes, have made plans for how to live in the aftermath of a huge storm? Polls earlier this year suggested that few of them had.
I have sheltered myself from a lot of the news from New Orleans but today I read all the articles about it in the local fish wrap. Unlike government authorities I had the luxury of not dealing with the reality until I had braced myself first. And I indulged.
Some people are offering space in their homes to those sent fleeing from the Gulf Coast. A friend of mine in Shreveport did it. She recently married and moved in, as you would hope she'd do, with her husband. Her house was empty and ready to go on the market when instead she "adopted" a family evacuated from New Orleans. She says other people have donated bedding and other basic supplies.
In the rush to help, I hope the people matching the homeless with the homeowners are doing background checks. You can see it now: Someone robbed or raped by someone to whom she had opened her home.
You'll be proud that I avoided calling them "refugees." Seems people are offended by the term. Is this really the time for semantics? I mean, if I'm ever wiped out like that, call me a refugee as long as you're calling help for me!
Where was I? Oh, yes. In search of more cupcakes.
posted by jack at 1:38 PM
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