Somewhere on the planet, someone clicked through for that tutorial, and I would love to peer into their life. Read an essay they’ve written. Peruse the subjects of their emails. See their toothpaste lid.
Rachelle made me a brand new, beautiful layout and I just applied the code and am sitting here drinking in its splendor. Not many people are down to partake in a 7,000-part email thread about the merits of different sans serif fonts and why one feels “too math-y” for me, but this woman is. BLESS AND KEEP HER TALENTED SOUL.
I loved comic books, especially the funny ones, like Little Lulu, and man oh man, if Uncle Scrooge was in the latest episode of Donald Duck, I was in heaven. My father financed my subscriptions, and I ended up, after one year, owing him five dollars. Though he never dogged me for it, I’m sure he kept this debt on the books to teach me the value of money. As the balance grew, I was nauseated whenever I thought of it. One birthday, he forgave my debt, and I soared with relief. In my adult life, I have never bought anything on credit.
Steve Martin, Born Standing Up
I read this book last month, and when I reached this quote I felt a lot better about my attitude re: credit. Steve’s doing okay, so maybe I will too.
When I get called a mom, it’s usually because I value my sleep cycle or know how to get stains out of things, but last night was the first instance I’ve ever felt conscious of it outside of my friends giving me (loving, tender) shit.
We were at a comedy show, and I quietly dipped out to use the restroom. A quick look at the decal on the door let me know the toilets were co-ed, which is fine, but it wasn’t til I’d pushed the door forward a little bit and eliminated some of the glare that I realized it was see-through. Plate glass. I’d be effectively pissing in front of the entire venue, since the entryway was (generously) two feet from the bar.
This development wasn’t gonna stop me, but as I walked into my stall, I said aloud to the woman who’d walked in with me, “Well that’s a liberal system.”
I made eye contact in anticipation of an, “I know!” or, “I wasn’t gonna say anything, but what the fuck?” when a phenomenal thing happened: she laughed through her nose — a sharp exhale — but not with me. She laughed at me. Like, “Look at this square, unwilling to piss in front of a darkened room of strangers.” She was younger, and as I closed my stall door and emptied my bladder, I took the time to reflect and check myself. Was I being ridiculous?
Most roadside rest stops, no matter how puked-upon and ecoli-supportive they may be, offer the minimal dignity of an opaque barrier. Most airport stalls, though the automatic toilets are too eager to flush themselves and constantly-used, provide the comfort of anonymity between you and whoever’s walking through the terminal. Was it absurd to expect at least that much of a comedy venue?
This chick was the out-of-line one, surely, for being fine just pissing in front of a hundred seated people while a show was happening.
Right or wrong, though, I felt matronly. The damage was done. I washed my hands and re-joined the audience, very aware of the fact that my toilet flush had been audible to everyone in the room. Maybe even the people on stage.
After the show ended, I told my friends what had happened and they laughed. No, they could not understand why that chick had been so on board with the glass. Yes, that door sounded weird.
I couldn’t get it out of my system, though. As we wrapped up at the bar and headed out, Mari took this photo of me so I could never forget the night I learned where my line is.
If I’m momly, that’s fine. Glad to be here.
I dogsat for @sbhelms over the fall and because I’m a demon I never returned the spare key. I bring all of this up because the Busch Gardens photo keychain she used to anchor the keys contained a roller coaster photo of us on the day I got my first period, and sometimes I accidentally pull the keychain out of my purse when I’m searching for other things and have a nice lol to myself. Mere hours before I had to pull my mother into a theme park restroom and ask to borrow an enormous overnight pad from her purse.
Because you effectively can’t reblog text posts as quotes in Firefox, a lot of the tone of the original post was lost on people, but the number in this quote is overstated in a colloquial way. Kind of like saying, “Ugh, we’d go to that party, but he lives twelve dillion miles away.”
In 2007, I was drinking coffee in Marco’s livingroom/dining room/office. He told me he and David had launched a website that had done remarkably well. He urged me to register before somebody else registered daniel.tumblr.com. Maybe I could write things there instead of on LiveJournal. There were about 27,000 users at that point, one of whom was AZSpot. Since then, Tumblr has grown to about 300 billion users, each more unique than the last. So it’s done okay. Marco has left Tumblr, started Instapaper, and recently left Instapaper. The last time we were drinking coffee together, he had a living room and a dining room and an office. So he’s done okay. And I’ve done okay with Tumblr as well. The point being, on the Internet, a lot has changed since 2007. And in 2007 if somebody had announced that LiveJournal was maybe being acquired, I would feel about like everybody feels now. (Where would I store my feelings!?!)…
The broader point being, things change quickly on the internet. There’s always a younger, cooler site looming just over the horizon. I’m not sure that acquisition by Yahoo particularly diminishes Tumblr’s longterm prognosis. It means an influx of cash, stability, and technical capability. Heck, probably a functional search feature. And it means that Tumblr doesn’t need to desperately look for ways to monetize.
The Internet will kill everything you love. But by the time it dies, you won’t even care.
