sisu

What Americans want

Here's the image we came up with for our Christmas -- no, not "Holiday" -- cards. It's a closely cropped shot of Tiny at the kitchen window with one of last year's Christmas (that word again!) cards on the sill to the left.  She was staring at a glass bauble from our street-treasures collection on the counter off camera.  Last year's Christmas card featured a salt ship at Eastern Salt across the street framed by our light-bedecked fence. The year before, we launched our blog with the politically prescient -- see John Gibson's The War on Christmas -- "The tidings that dare not speak their name" featuring a portrait of our Home Sweet Home in Chelsea-by-the-Sea transformed by the magic of Christmas lights along the fencetops, in the windows and on the tree.

While George W. was wowing the troops and leaving the nattering nabobs of negativity in the dust this morning with a rousing why-we-fight speech whose bottom line was "Americans want two things in Iraq. They wanna see our troops win, and they wanna see them come home," we were keeping the homefires burning, going through hundreds of digital images of the last year to find the perfect one to express our seasonal -- CHRISTMAS! -- greetings to family and friends.  We've got a keeper.

This Photoshop-enhanced image on the back of the Christmas card is the artist's attempt to express Tiny's thought process as she goes for the jugular of the glass bauble.

Now into production.

Update for InstaPundit visitors:  Production details here. Our weapon of choice: The Pentax Optio 450.

"I tend to look at them, and my eyes cross!"

Tiny and Baby feel about their food bowls the way Teresa of Technicalities feels about blogs: They should have "lots of content that is updated frequently . . . all day."

"I am astounded that they have forsaken one of the biggest draws in blogdom -- lots of content that is updated frequently . . . all day . . . ON THE FRONT PAGE!" writes blog buddy Teresa of Technicalities, expanding upon our previous post re the uses and misuses of vibrating PJs and the trouble with Pajamas Media:

Unfortunately, in an effort to be a portal rather than a blog -- they are neither.

So what needs to be done? Well, I can only tell them what would get me back on a regular basis -- say several times a day.

Besides the need for frequently updated content, there's the problem of those long lists of unannotated blog links favored by Pajamas Media in their lead posts:

I tend to look at them, and my eyes cross! There are so many . . . thus making me think I won't go read any -- it's too much. I'm not sure how to make it better, but at the very least, they could give a line from each post to draw readers into clicking through.

They remind us of those content-free lists of blog links called "open trackback posts" -- blogged here -- used by some bloggers to elbow to the front of the line. Their artificial distortion of blog rankings caused New Zealand Bear to tweak the logorithm of TTLB Ecosystem in order to filter them out the other day. We're not sure whether he's through with his work, but we can't say we're entirely happy with the results so far.  As usual, his mysterious machinations have taken us -- and the immediate blogosphere -- on a rollercoaster ride, our rank in the clicking order dropping precipitously from somewhere in the high 600's to a glamorous #262 for a couple of high-flying days last week and then back up to #494 today. We're trying to be philosophical about it, drawing moral courage -- not to mention a great refresher course in the various ranking tools of the blogosphere -- from our friend, the eminently philosophical Barry Campbell of enrevanche:

A lot of people are up in arms about this (see the comments to N.Z. Bear's post) even though it's far from clear that the refining and the shakeouts are complete, but we're not worried.

First of all, and I truly mean this -- I don't blog primarily to bring in an audience, though that's a happy side-effect. I blog because it's cheaper and more effective (for me) than psychotherapy . . .

Technorati [another ranking tool] tells me that we're getting noticed by the right people.

Since I started blogging, I have followed a very simple formula. I write about what interests me, and I put it out there.

As we blogged the other day, "Don't waste a single post on something that isn't, in La Shawn's words, 'for the joy of it.'" Still, there's nothing like that rush of dopamine every time you see your name up in lights.

Update:  Speaking of the thrill of seeing your name up in lights, be sure to check out this week's Cotillion Ball.  It's more of a tea dance, exclusive and very elegant, hosted by Darleen of Darleen's Place and cross-posted -- where else? -- at The Cotillion.

Technorati tag:  pajamas media

This thing has got baggy pantlegs

"Researchers have developed a cybernetic system to allow physical interaction over the internet. The system allows touching and feeling of animals or other humans in real time, but it's first being tried out on -- chickens," reports Wired News.

"Imagine, a set of official Pajamas Media Wireless Pajamas that would vibrate when the Pajamas Media G70 ("Group Of 70") blogroll has an update," writes professional contrarian Laurence Simon of TBIFOC, referring to a report that "Singapore scientists looking for ways to transmit the sense of touch over the internet have devised a vibration jacket for chickens and are thinking about electronic children's pyjamas for cyberspace hugs." Annoyed by everything that was wrong with PJM's recent launch, Laurence -- Ur catblogger and a PJM blogroller himself -- got mad, and then he got going [87775 -- comment added by Tiny walking across the keyboard -- ed].  His post begat a mini-masterpiece from Mind of Mog, the most beautiful blog in the world:

Puppyblender [Instapundit], hard at work at the computer, “Ah ooo ah oh yeah ahhhhhhhh.”

Hearing the sound, the Instawife [that would be Dr. Helen, herself a blogger of note] asks, “What are you doing dear?”

“Just blogging dear,” he replies.

It's the "herding of cats" thing, blogged here the other day:

Maybe this is the secret heart of where our own Pajamas Media is headed. The herding of cats was a central metaphor of today's blog jam at PM. You can't herd them.  But you can pique their interest and get the job done.  Historically it was the mice feasting on stores of agricultural grain that brought the cats to the table. If the human drama is the grain, the MSM could be the mice, feeding off the fruits of human labor. Let's bring on the bloggers/cats to keep the mouse population under control.

Then there's Laurence's self-generated Pajamas Media Discussion Board, set up independently the other day in the absence of any such feedback function at the official PJM site, that has drawn constructive criticism from InstaPundit himself. Ann Althouse agrees [we think]:

I was just scanning the Pajamas Media discussion boards and ran across this comment:

I *very* much agree that the site needs to be bloggier. The ad revenue is supposed to mostly come from the associated blogs, not the portal, with the portal's role being to boost traffic to the blogs, give people an easy starting point, and provide some original reporting, etc., that will encourage people to go there and encourage bloggers to do more original reporting.

That means that the portal needs to be interesting, and to change a lot. Right now it's neither.

I thought: Wow, that's about the smartest, clearest thing I've read here yet. Who said that? Then I see, it was Glenn Reynolds. Okay. Well, see? That was a blind reading test.

We're not sure, but Laurence Simon may have also been the one who started a Pajamas Media Wikipedia page. This thing has got baggy pantlegs.

"Like lemon icing on my chocolate cake"

Irascible tomcat Mr. Gato's companion animal, Barry Campbell of enrevanche, suggests algorithm tweaking may explain our blog's recent precipitous rise in the TTLB Ecosystem, even as his own blog status has risen from Marauding Marsupial to Large Mammal in the last few days. (Photograph of new large mammal by Oliver Gramatte)

"I think that N.Z. Bear must be tweaking the algorithms again to defeat the latest round of system-gaming and linkwhoring," writes blogpal Barry Campbell of enrevanche in comments to the previous post re our blog's sudden restoration to TTLB Ecosystemic heights not known in these parts since August 25:

Enrevanche just achieved "Large Mammal" status this past week, though about two thousand positions down the list from your regal perch. :-)

Flattery will get you everywhere. It turns out Barry's onto something we had missed in the post-Thanksgiving tryptophanic haze. Some of the newer kids on the blogospheric block have, apparently, been gaming the Ecosystem through something called "open trackback posts." Instead of linking and trackbacking others' posts that pique your interest and relate to what you're writing about, you simply invite bloggers at large to trackback to an open post without content of your own. It's a quick-and-dirty way of rising in the Ecosystem without doing the hard work, and it makes for really boring posts. New Zealand Bear explains:

It seems to me that the main motivation of such posts is simply to provide a quick and easy way for bloggers to generate links to each other, without any real regard for the substance of each other’s posts.The links, rather than symbolizing and codifying the relationship between two posts, or two blogs, have become an end in themselves.

There's all kinds of buzz about it in the blogosphere, but La Shawn Barber has the best explanation so far, although we're still unclear on some of the finer technical points. For example, we have no real idea what an "inline trackback" is. 'Will have to wait and see how it all shakes down, but meanwhile, we totally agree with La Shawn's bottom line:

Before you bloggers have a cow, hear me out. I, of all people, understand the desire to be widely-linked and widely-read. In fact, it’s human, and no one is immune from at least occasional link fishing. We’re bloggers, aren’t we?

For the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a certain amount of link manipulation among new or smaller bloggers.

You bloggers may not believe in the “build it, and they will come” idea, but it is true. The best kind of bloggers are the “pure bloggers,” those who blog for the joy of it. I am such a blogger. I appreciate my readers and most commenters, but if my traffic slacks off or readers begin to comment less, I’d still be here almost every day self-publishing my opinions and loving it. I love the mere act of blogging, and if people surf here to read my thoughts, it’s like lemon icing on my chocolate cake.

Exactly. Don't waste a single post on something that isn't, in La Shawn's words, "for the joy of it."

Update:  For the sheer joy of it, hurry on over to IMAO for this week's Carnival, "Know Thy Enemy: Cats."

I'm sittin' on top of the world

"If you weren't a blogger, you could become a soup manufacturer"

"It's the best stew I've ever had," says Tuck this evening, echoing Tiny's assessment (above) as she samples the turkey broth (chilled butter bits are the white flotations on top of the gelatinous broth) before we heated it up in a saucepan, added Susie's leftover glazed and creamed onions, buttered peas and bits of the turkey meat that had fallen off the bones when we cooked the carcass at low heat for a few hours Thanksgiving afternoon. We popped a Pillsbury French Bread loaf into the oven for dunking purposes. Wicked great followup to the various reiterations of Thanksgiving 2005. Can you say sandwiches?

"If you weren't a blogger, you could become a soup manufacturer," says Tuck as we get into our soup cups on this second day of feeding off the fat of the Thanksgiving larder that keeps on giving. Fortified with a meal that stuck to the ribs, we jumped back into the blogosphere, where we found our own Thanksgiving post featured in Pajamas Media's "Best of the Blogs." Last time one of our posts was featured, it elicited derision from the lively PyjamasMedia (formerly known as Open Sores Media) contingent, as blogged here and here. As we always say, we don't care what you say about us, as long as you say something about us. We couldn't help but be totally charmed by the antis' timely transformation of PajamasMedia's new logo:

The official one on the left is wonderful, but the disrespectful one on the right left us with TJLOL.

Then there was this ScrappleFace-like post from Brachman of the uppity Pyjamas Media this morning:

President Orders Troops To Wal-Mart

“Black Friday,” the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, began in South Florida early today with a 73-year-old woman being knocked down as a crowd at an electronics store rushed a metal security gate to get inside. Scenes like this were repeated all over the United States. In response, FEMA initiated its disaster assistance plan and President Bush sent troops to all Wal-Mart stores across the country.

As the Claude Raines therapist said to healing patient Bette Davis in "Now Voyager" when she wanted to override his clinical protocol and take over management of one of his cases, "Go ahead. Maybe I like it." 'Know what?  We think we like this Pyjamas Media phenomenon. Maybe this is the secret heart of where our own Pajamas Media is headed. The herding of cats was a central metaphor of today's blog jam at PM. You can't herd them.  But you can pique their interest and get the job done.  Historically it was the mice feasting on stores of agricultural grain that brought the cats to the table. If the human drama is the grain, the MSM could be the mice, feeding off the fruits of human labor. Let's bring on the bloggers/cats to keep the mouse population under control.

The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing

While we attempted to thaw the allegedly "fresh" -- "not frozen" -- turkeys for the roasting pan on Wednesday, Baby took it upon himself to inspect the table setting.

The Thanksgiving table was a triumph, but the turkeys were turkeys.  Billed as "fresh," they were in fact partially frozen and took a lot longer to get ready for cooking than we had been led to believe by the good folks of the Butcher Shop at Hannaford's in York Village. That afforded a "new-bride moment" of Thanksgiving panic for this seasoned cook. We had planned to have a back-up sandwich turkey already roasted and in the fridge by the time the second bird went into the oven Thursday morning, but because of thawing issues, we ended up having to cook the sandwich turkey Thursday afternoon after the festive meal, when we were already deeply into our cups and in a tryptophan haze. And yet it was not a problem.

Having been informed by our local Stop and Shop that chicken Peeps were unavailable this time of year, we updated our classic Sweet Potato aux Peeps with the seasonally appropriate gingerbread Peeps.

Susan demonstrates her method of preparing cracker crumbs for baked haddock.  Forget about plastic bags and rolling pins.  You just crumble the crackers with your fingers.  No muss, no fuss, no doggy odor.

"We two form a multitude," sister Susan wrote on her high school photograph for us way back when. The weird sisters imail daily and consult early and often about all matters great and small regarding life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As we gathered "round about the cauldron" in Goomp's kitchen yesterday to add the final "eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog" to the groaning board that would become the memorableThanksgiving Feast 2005, the old wives' tales of all the cooks of all the generations flowed through our conversation.

Continuing his inspection, the Babe pirouettes en pointe, balancing with his fluffy tail, as he stops to smell the roses of the gorgeous centerpiece prepared for us by the folks at Washington Park Florist.

Satisfied with his findings, the Babe exits stage right.

Grabbing gobs of herbed butter, we hand basted the turkey under the skin (inset). No more basting the turkey with a brush or dropper every half hour during 3-4 hours of cooking (our turkeys were 14+ pounds each).

It's better than basting every half hour. Turn your turkey into a self-baster by loosening the skin over breast and thighs with your hand and then putting in a generous amount of sage-infused butter at room temperature under the skin.

Our dear departed mother added the heavy-duty foil hammock into the family lore of turkey management.  The two long pieces folded over themselves twice allow you to lift the bird effortlessly from the roasting rack (left) onto the platter for resting prior to carving.

Apple and Sausage Stuffing nestles between rows of orange slices with accents of rosemary.

Our own favorite stuffing combines chopped garlic and onions and crumbled sweet sausage sauteed in butter, chopped apples, Pepperidge Farm and/or Arnold's bread crumbs of various sorts, chicken broth and cider. Family legend has it that godson/nephew Matthew's beloved, Regan, came to Thanksgiving at our table during their courtship days a vegetarian and left a meat eater after tasting our dressing.

After the turkey is lifted onto the platter to rest, we pour the pan juices into a Pyrex measuring cup and put it into the freezer for 15 minutes or so to separate out the fat.  Spoon off most of the fat, return juices to the pan and cook over medium heat, whisking in flour to make a roux. Then whisk in chicken broth to make a smooth, velvety sauce. We chopped liver and cooked it in wine for 10 minutes, crushed it and added that for extra flavor and texture.

Gravy is a uniter, not a divider. It was the Wall Street Journal in its fun "An MBA Thanksgiving" article last week, that said what we all know:

A so-so gravy versus a blow-away gravy can make all the difference in your product perception.

"We give thanks for this family circle."

Tiny checks out the turkey stockpot.

The bones and pickings thereoff went into a stockpot with water and boiled down for a few hours to make a fab stock. Lots of good turkey bits for stew fell off the bones when we poured off the liquid through a sieve. There was a wishbone in there too.  Tiny gave her paw of approval to the proceedings as she helped herself.

Goomp's new boy kitty, Purrky does a turkey of his own, grooming on the couch between Goomp's legs as the tryptophan works its wonders, inducing us all into high napping mode.

The day after Thanksgiving -- this morning -- dawn brought the steely blues of late fall to Eastern Point across the river as we packed up the leftovers and headed back to the city.

Update:  Modulator's Friday Ark now boarding. All things bright and beautiful, many cute and furry.

"The will to power surges"

Baby and Tiny, ears in full reconnaissance mode, battle for bits of cutting-board chicken.

"Smart you are. Getting hits from both sides of the fratricide. 'Came over here from your comment at Dennis's. When I have more time on my hands, I'll take a look around," writes Harry in the comments to our previous post on the Pajamas Media flamewars. One of the unforeseen consequences of warfare: Strange bedfellows. Another classic consequence of warfare:  War poetry.  Jeffrey Hull, the poet laureate of our blog, honors us with another masterpiece:

Disputation

In fang and claw, or pen and key
The will to power surges;
With biting prose or sophistry
We bare our baser urges.

'Twas always thus, and will remain
We'd learn well to accept it;
"The blow was hard!" the weak complain–
The wiser just sidestepped it.

As blood runs hot, and hate runs cold
The tale of fuss and feuding
Remains the oldest story told;
No profit lies in brooding.

Most combats I will leave to those
Who choose it as their hobby–
Since wisdom wilts as anger grows
I'll wait out in the lobby.

© 2005 Jeffrey Hull (by permission)

Thank you, Jeffrey, for helping us put it all in perspective.

Just for fun, we designed our own logo for the new, improved PJ Media using Linotype's Bio Plasm LT.

Thanks, too, to Goomp, who left this pithy bit of wisdom in the comments to our "Pajamas sound cheerful" post:

With the cold months upon us, PJ Media will feel much warmer than OSM.

Not to mention the coming monsoon season.

This just in [via The Daily Brief]: Baldilocks = OSM’s Pajamas Media’s Blogger Relations person. We feel better already.

"Perhaps the differences and anger were just too great even from the start"

As the pureed portion of Sweet Potato aux Peeps cooled on the counter, the cats staged a stealth raid (see crater in puree, inset, not to mention fluffy tail, lower right). Did you know that chicken Peeps are generally unavailable this time of year?  We had to settle for "Cookie-Flavored Cutouts."

"How is this the best of blogs," wrote an outraged illavator in comments to Dennis The Peasant's latest anti-Pajamas-Media "she done him wrong" post. "This" referred to our own "Pajamas sound cheerful" post, which was featured as one of the "Best of the Blogs" links at PJM this afternoon. While the crypto-triviality of our post may have gotten illavator's panties in a twist, the hits were music to our Site-Meter-stats ears. Our own blogpal neo-neocon puts it all in perspective:

As far as all the anger towards OSM/Pajamas from Ann Althouse and Dennis the Peasant and others goes, they have their own concerns. Included in the mix are their own stories of having been dissed by the powers that be at PJ. Who's right and who's wrong is one of those things I won't comment on unless I've heard the full tale from both sides -- and I wish I had, actually, because my therapist self somehow thinks maybe I could have mediated, at least at the beginning.

That's probably the height of hubris on my part; perhaps the differences and anger were just too great even from the start (and if anyone hasn't a clue what I'm talking about and is interested, just go to each person's blog -- listed on my blogroll -- and start scrolling down. You'll find a bunch of posts on the subject soon enough).

It's sad when people who were formerly friends (or at least, formerly civil!) end up dishing out so much vitriol at each other. I know, or at some previous point have had correspondence with, everyone involved (some very slightly and tangentially, and some rather better), so I'll draw the veil of silence now on the subject, put my apple over my face, and go slinking off.

Why should the blogosphere be more civil than any other neighborhood? It's a dog-eat-dog, Darwinian world out there. Sandbox dynamics rule.

"Pajamas sound cheerful."

"Classic pajama in silky satin charmeuse with a subtle luster. An everyday luxury, for sleeping or blogging, from Victoria's Secret," we captioned this photograph in our post "To sleep, perchance to dream" last year re what John Fund called "a watershed media moment," when CBS executive v.p. Jonathan Klein unwittingly put a twinkle in the eyes of Pajamas Media progenitors Charles Johnson and Roger L. Simon by dismissing bloggers as "a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas."

"In the end, when we realized we could get our beloved name back, we were overjoyed. So a warm, hearty thanks to all of you who expressed your displeasure with our phony identity," write Charles Johnson and Roger L. Simon, who woke up from their Open Source Media "branding"-company nightmare and realized it was just a bad dream. You are most welcome, gentlemen:

We are re-assuming our identity as Pajamas media. (Just give us a few days to sort the technical issues out.)

As both Roger and PJM Editorial Advisory Board Chair Glenn Reynolds happily acknowledge, they should have listened to their young daughters:

Roger: She loved Pajamas and made a sad face at OSM.
The Professor: As the Insta-Daughter said, "Pajamas sounds cheerful. Open Source Media sounds . . . educational."

As we always say, girls just wanna have fun.

Update:  We love this observation from vnjagvet of YARB in Roger's comments:

Only geeks know what "open source" is. Everyone knows what pajamas are.

As Instapundit would say, indeed.

Technorati tags:  open source media, osm, pajamas media