Skip to main content

I'm unbelievably famous

Last weekend I had a jarring experience--I met someone who had read this blog. She's an ex-Peace Corps volunteer married to an Afrikaans guy. They live in Northwest near a couple other volunteers.

She's the first (and probably only, let's be honest) person I've met to stumble on this place before actually meeting me. I have to say, I felt a bit uneasy. I did a quick mental review of everything I've ever posted. Most of it--total garbage. Would I make this my first introduction to a person? "Hey, nice to meet you. Read 9000 pages of rambling nonsense. I'll be over here." The whole point of a blog is that no one ever reads it, right? Right?

In any case, she didn't seem too visibly offended by my obvious lack of tact or panache. Bullet dodged. Or maybe it is a good introduction--maybe I really am a pretentious buffoon constantly holding forth on topics obviously beyond my pay grade.

Comments

  1. If by, dodged a bullet, you mean, you met someone from the south, who, from her upbringing, by nature, is extremely polite and tactful, then, yes, i agree. I stole her corn and rama she brought to share with our group but no one cared to fat because they were drinking their carbs. Does that mean i am completely unconcerned with my impression on said guest? Perhaps. Although, surprisingly, she seemed quite taken with me. Flattering, yes, but strangely interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm confused...so you're saying that if she had been from a less polite culture (say, New York), then she would have kicked me in the junk, trussed me up like a chicken, doused me in honey, and left me to be eaten by fire ants--as I so richly deserve?

    ReplyDelete
  3. -Good to know the Rama found a home…especially with someone I strangely enough did become a bit taken with.

    -Just so you know even if I wasn't from the south I do believe your blog would give me no reason to kick you in the junk upon a first meeting. I cannot say how I will behave upon our next meeting though. Especially after the drunken insight into your personal life I was privy to on our drive to your B&B:)

    Hope you both are doing well. If you would like some more food that you don't have to steal come for a visit during your long holiday this month. -Kelee 072-385-1444

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actually b

Varanus albigularis albigularis

That is the Latin name for the white-throated monitor lizard , a large reptile native to southern Africa that can grow up to two meters long (see pictures of one at the Oakland Zoo here ). In Setswana, it's called a "gopane." I saw one of these in my village yesterday on the way back from my run. Some kids from school found it in the riverbed and tortured it to death, stabbing out its eyes, cutting off its tail, and gutting it which finally killed it. It seemed to be a female as there were a bunch of round white things I can only imagine were eggs amongst the guts. I only arrived after it was already dead, but they described what had happened with much hilarity and re-enactment. When I asked why they killed it, they said it was because it would eat their chickens and eggs, which is probably true, and because it sucks blood from people, which is completely ridiculous. It might bite a person, but not unless threatened. It seems roughly the same as killing wolves that

Internet Writing and the Content Vacuum

It's been a few times now I've had full weekday control of the Monthly 's headline blog, Political Animal, and I feel like I have a decent idea now what it's like being at the top level of blogging. (Not to say that I am  at the top level, of course, just that I've walked in those shoes for a few days and gotten some blisters.) Anyway, the first thing I've noticed is that it is really, really hard to do well. I've had days before when I just didn't have anything to do and ended up at home writing 4-5 posts in one day on this site, but pro blogging is an entirely different beast. The expectation is that during the day you will write 10-12 posts. This includes an intro music video, a lunch links post, and evening links and/or video. So that means 7-9 short, punchy essays on something , with maybe 1-2 of those being longer and more worked out thoughts. This ferocious demand for content is both good and bad. The iron weight of responsibiliy—the knowledge