The Legend of Spap Oop

Sometimes I forget that people who read me aren't directly in my head, or know the people I know, and don't quite get why I might do something like name a blog "Spap-Oop."

My friend Ed, a long-time tech industry insider, who, like me, remembers and Age Before the Information Age, when newsgroups were all the rage, and there were not nifty icons to click, or wisywigs to deal with, and computer screens were monochromatic, and the Internet was *only* dial-up....tells the Legend of Spap Oop much better than myself...but he's somewhere in Ireland with his family, so I've got to be the one to recount it.

If you lived in Central New Jersey sometime in the late 20th Century, and knew where the Sunshine Biscut Company factory was (in Sayerville), you inevitably knew someone who worked in the snack-food industry....who made Cheezits and Hydrox cookies....

and another strange snack called Doo-Dads. The word doodad is a synonym for odds and ends.

Doo-Dads was a combination of odds and ends from the runs of Cheezits and Mr. Salty pretzels, of broken bits of other snacks foods manufactured by Sunshine Biscut.

And sometimes when they shipped the big, cardboard cartons full of boxes of Doo-Dads, the boxes got turned upside down...and, subsequently the wording was not just upside down but also backwards.

Ed, myself, and some others were in some super-discount-market one very late night, and there was an upside-down, backwards box of Doo-Dads...

"oh, look, " Ed said "spap-oop."

and he was right. Take Doo-Dads, turn it upside down and backwards, and you got Spap-Oop.

I laughed so hard I tunred blue couldn't breathe. It would be only one of many times Ed would make me laugh so hard I turned blue and couldn't breathe.

So when I thought of doing a little blog that would be a collection of oddball things I came across in the crazy, upside-down and sometimes backward world of the Blogosphere, I thought, of course, of Spap-Oop.

And there you go. It's just that simple.

:-)

Blog Events: BlogHer and Blog Business Summitt

If you haven't been to the site already, check out BlogHer, which is the first conference for women bloggers.

We're sick and tired of the good old boy A-lister network hogging up the airwaves and thinking they just know it all.

There's more to blogging than punditry--and, contrary to popular beliefe, we are not all "citizen journalists" nor do we want to be. Yours truly might have some journalistic aspirations, but I know two of my friends over on LiveJournal don't have those aspirations, and would feel horrifically violated if they knew that anybody could search their blog entries on something like Google.

After all, not all bloggers are aspiring limelight hoggers.

There's also the Blog Business Summitt for all you aspiring business bloggers.

Wish I could go to this one, but I think I've blown my boyfriend's budget for conferences. This one costs more than my flight out to Santa Clara for Blogher.

Now, if I could get a grant from some nice local businessman with big pockets I'd be oh so very, very grateful :-)

oh REALLY now!

Well, last friday, Jolie in NYC's identity was outed....

oh, as if none of us who blog regularly believe for one minute that she wouldn't eventually get busted...

and that getting busted was probably part of some plan to get herself recognized nationally...like she was on Fox and others recently because of the outing.

Come on people! Is being disingenuous really news?!?

I think those of us who inhabit the blogosphere know a load when we hear it. If y'all are like me, you've read enough recently about business bloggers, you know of Dooce and of Ellen Simonetti (see BusinessWeek's 5/2/05 issue) and of "The Washingtonienne" and of Nick Denton's Gawker Media and Wonkette....

so, please! give me a break! I don't believe for one single solid minute that little Nadine Haobsh didn't know or have any inkling that eventually all of her tongue wagging would catch up with her and her "dream job" would be a bit less dreamy.

Look, I might live in Bugfart, but don't piss on my shoe and tell me it's raining fer crissakes.

And now she's got a publicist. oh, poor little deary!

after this, I think businesses should take the tact of letting employees shoot their mouths off....let 'em blog till their blue in the face...just so that there's so damened many of them that the badmouth blog is no longer a reason to get canned--or get a book/media deal.

oh, and Rupert Murdock probably wants MySpace because that's the blog platform that the kid featured in the New York Times article on the gay teenager who was being sent to some fundie We-will-brainwash-you-into-heterosexuality (see the 7/17/05 issue) re-education camp was blogging on MySpace.

I'm not one to engage in Conspiracy Theories, but there was something awfully funny about the timing of that article and the timing of Murdock's purchase of a kiddie-blog software/hosting site.

And we all know how Murdock is such a Family Values kinda guy.

Old Guy in Search of Hipster Identity

Rupert Murdoch recently purchased Myspace,the open-source blogware of the young and pretentious.

Could Murdock be looking to suck the blood of youth culture? Does he honestly think Myspace is a good investment? or is he looking to change it around in some way?

Yeah, he probably couldn't get his hands on LiveJournal so he settled for, well, much less.

Can your posts about someone be harassment?

Massachusetts attorney Robert J. Ambrogi posts on his blog how an MD's entries about a former patient constitute stalking.

A COLIN FARRELL SEX TAPE!?!?! and where can I get a copy??

Defamer has the tidbits (but no naughty bits). However,I can't agree with the assertion that the knowledge of said tape could give one indigestion...

Because when it comes to celebrety sex tapes, think about this...who's prettier: Tommy Lee (of the infamous T.L. and Pam Anderson tape)or Colin Farrell? Whom would women prefer to see on a home-made sex tape: Paris Hilton or Colin Farrell? My bet's on Colin Farrell in both instances!

Heck, I wouldn't even care if he was piss-drunk! The man's a hottie...no doubt about it.

The alleged sex tape is such big news, it also madeThe Hindustan Times.

Now, that is NEWS!

Thursday Meetings at Berkman....if you live in Mass (or R.I. for that matter) there's really no reason not to go.

Dave Winer will be there tonight. I will have to stop myself from raising my hand and asking a very inappropriate question about his views on bloggers as journalists. Best keep the trap shut till you know everybody in the room.

So, according to the NYTimes, CBS News has decided to blog!

If you can't beat 'em (as they couldn't in the Dan Rather debacle), join 'em!

I checked the CBS News website, but the blog, titled Public Eye doesn't seem to be up and running yet.

The Times article lists more details about the blog than the CBS News site.

Stay tuned for further details.....

New Communications Blogzine is a bi-monthly magazine-style blog that features stories on marketing and on blogging. Geared mostly to businesses, the articles and information are informative and interesting. I'll be checking it out further later in the day.

But I wonder about the buzz about blogs....some time ago, I went in and did some research on blogs about bloggging. I found that many have been abandoned since the blogboom that was generated with the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in '04. New Communications is in its 9th issue, and I wonder how long it will last before it, too, is abandoned.

I wonder about the abandonment rate of blogs. If this will effect blogging as a whole, or is simply an indication that the blogger either got bored or got a real job.