Shame on You, Google

by Sasha Stone August 12, 2010 Google Sucks
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How disgusted I was to find out the news that Google has gone to the dark side.  Maybe it was already there.  Maybe the power became too delicious to refuse.  Maybe they have convinced themselves that this will be good for “the internet.”  They have disappointed me, a loyal user, beyond belief.  I am grateful for their email, google voice, adsense, youtube, ad manager and all.  But I am ill to discover that they are ready to take the power they so easily took from us, the unsuspecting public. Just remember, ass, grass or ass – nobody rides for free.  And now google, after luring in billions of users, is turning around and fucking us by making an upcoming proposal with Verizon to start controlling how content is dispersed to users.

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Making Sense of the Mommy Bloggers

by Sasha Stone August 10, 2010 Blog 'em and Weep
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I don’t get the whole mommy blogging thing very well.  One thing I noticed is that almost everyone wants to be a prototype, or a brand.  They have to sell an identity – like a sitcom star, or a reality TV star.  The brand they’re selling is often helpful and entertaining.  They give back more than they take, which is why they’re making money.  But every once in a while you can see behind the curtain.  That’s what I love about this photo. You don’t often see what it really must like a lot of time at the Drummond ranch in Oklahoma as Ree Drummond displays a fantasy life for her readers.  It is all fantasy, with a smidge of reality thrown in here and there.  I really don’t begrudge the fantasy – I just sometimes feel like a sucker for being pulled in, I will admit.  I prefer hardcore [...]

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Missed it by That Much

by Sasha Stone August 10, 2010 AHOLES AND ELBOWS
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Last year, before my daughter moved to our old/new apartment (we switched from a tiny one bedroom to a two bedroom), we had a fantasy about living on the top floor of a duplex apartment down the road from where now live.  It was out of our price range but so much the kind of place we’d wanted to live in. For one thing, we didn’t have to “be embarrassed” about where lived.  This was squarely in a good neighborhood, an upper with lots of light and windows, a hard wood floor, a fireplace and a huge kitchen.  Two tiny bedrooms. My daughter saw the ivy crawling up the brick wall outside and fell in love.  It had its own yard and a patio area.  It was the kind of place in which you could build a container garden, for instance.  It was the closest thing to a “home” that [...]

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Panic in the Night

by Sasha Stone August 8, 2010 Blog 'em and Weep
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Oh, life.  I know now that lack the necessary ability to shield myself from the things that are the most painful that we all must experience in this life.  I lack the necessary spirituality is perhaps a better way of putting it. Because of this, I have a rather pragmatic, but nonetheless torturous view of the big subjects, like death and love and happiness. My daughter woke up in the morning after a particularly traumatic nightmare and I heard her voice down the hall as it stammered to get out those few words right upon waking, those panicky words that will pull your consciousness back to the real world where we wake up in the morning.  The morning is always the best part of any day, in my opinion, because it is a new beginning.

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Friday Night Dinner

by Sasha Stone August 5, 2010 FOODIEDOM
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Before I dive into the Field of Greens cookbook (read: it will never happen), I thought I’d take a stab at posting some pics of a dinner I cooked for my dad last week.  My dad likes to eat almost anything.  It’s always great to cook for people who will eat anything because that means one is never pressured to be the best at anything.  And, try as I might, I am a B average cook at best.  Maybe even a C average.  This isn’t to say that I’m a bad cook (well, erm) but just that there are so many better cooks out there, and when it comes to food blogging — I have pretty much sucked at it. One thing that is hard to screw up is authentic ragu.  I learned how to make it on my first trip to Italy (yeah, the one where I got knocked [...]

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One Really Important Thing I Learned Today

by Sasha Stone August 5, 2010 How to Blog
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In all of the years I’ve been online, I’m still surprised to find that every single day I find a new voice, a new vision, a new person who is handing out useful info, advice, or just plain beauty.  Today’s cool person is Derek Sivers.  I found him via Lifehacker (a great site) and immediately, I’ve already learned several important concepts.  Some of them confirm what I suspected but weren’t yet a certainty (I HAVE MY CERTAINTY!). Sivers gave up his investment in CDBaby and put it towards charity, musical education specifically.  That is “his story,” but his blog is full of great advice that he gives away for free. It’s a streamlined, non-cluttered site with the important stuff to know up front. What drew me there was his post on how not to thwart your own development by assuming you are smarter than everyone else and that you already [...]

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The Bachelorette Makes for Good TV

by Sasha Stone August 3, 2010 TVDOM
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I get a lot of hits on my Bachelorette posts for some reason.  People search info about the show and end up here.  I always feel badly because it’s not new info; it’s about Deanna and Jesse and their failed, pointless love affair.  But I thought I would write up one last post on the Bachelorette, Ali Fedotowsky and her chosen man, Roberto.  The thing about Ali was that she is a smart girl.  You don’t grow up with a family like that and not end up smart.  I know it’s more fun to hate on them – and I wish I could.  But the truth is, I always liked Ali, both when she was on The Bachelor (with that horrific Jake) and then later on The Bachelorette.  I “liked” her, meaning, as a viewer I liked “her character.”  I felt that she was more honest than they usually are, [...]

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Four Things I Learned Today

by Sasha Stone August 3, 2010 THINGS LEARNED
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I am starting a new series here for you three readers to enjoy.  I seem to gather a lot of information during the day.  I figured, why not share it?  Maybe this makes me Sandra Bullock in All About Steve, which I just saw the other day and found it to be a lot better than the poor reviews, and Razzie nods, would have you believe.  It isn’t a bad-intentioned film at all.  Some bits are clumsy, but Thomas Haden Church is brilliant in it, and hell, why not gaze at whatshisname for a whole movie’s duration?  Sandra Bullock isn’t bad either.  Anyway, I could kind of, sort of relate to her character in so much as I have a lot of factoids and quotes and obscurities roaming around in my head and they do threaten to come out.  I then can either explain them to the blank stares I [...]

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Tempted

by Sasha Stone August 2, 2010 FOODIEDOM
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I picked up my old copy of Fields of Greens off my bookshelf.  This was a very popular cookbook back in the early ’90s. No, I’m not kidding.  I remember the early ’90s and I remember how popular this cookbook was.   Copyright, 1993.  It’s a vegetarian cookbook that kind of got swept away during the Atkins and Food Network revolution of the mid and late ’90s, where everything was about meat.  Why?  I don’t know.  At least now the trend is going back to vegetarianism or at least to organic, non-factory farmed meat.  At least I hope that’s the trend.  I am not a vegetarian.  I became one a while back while dating one, but decided it was a strange way to go about life.  I don’t think humans are particularly meant to be either meat eaters or vegetarians — we can adapt to any type of diet.  We [...]

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Hawk at My Window

by Sasha Stone August 1, 2010 Nature
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I have hummingbirds getting very competitive and territorial about this feeder I keep there. I am, as we speak, making the balcony area into an urban herb garden so please do not be taken aback by the poor, dead jasmine plant. It will look much better in the coming weeks. I will admit I’m not the best with interior design. I’m just not one of those people. Thus, the “old” TV, the spotty carpet, the ragged balcony area. Anyway, I humiliate myself on multiple levels to bring you this lovely natural event. Suddenly a big old hawk appeared on the hummingbird perch area. I don’t know if he (she?) was there because of the little birds or there because he/she had seen my little wild kitten staring through the window at the birds. Either way, I moved to get my camera. I didn’t manage to get to my Nikon, because [...]

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