Tweet my ass, Wall Street Journal

Don’t discuss articles that haven’t been published, meet­ings you’ve attended or plan to attend with staff or sources, or interviews that you’ve conducted.

And that’s just a snippet from the Wall Street Journal’s social media policy for staff members.

Base all comments posted in your role as a Dow Jones employee in the facts, drawing from and citing your reporting when appropriate. Sharing your personal opinions, as well as expressing partisan political views, whether on Dow Jones sites or on the larger Web, could open us to criticism that we have biases and could make a reporter ineligible to cover topics in the future for Dow Jones.

@HELLO MY NAME IS RO BO REPORTER…BEEP….

All postings on Dow Jones sites that may be controver­sial or that deal with sensitive subjects need to be cleared with your editor before posting.

FEE LING PARALYZED. CANNOT. MOVE. MY HA…..

If anybody can adhere to these rules and still Tweet something remotely interesting, I would love to read it.

[sound of crickets]

Didn’t think so.

Bring a lawyer into the writing room and you might as well just put a stake through the words’ souls.

Yet another reason not to go back to corporate America, ever.

Blogging has to be so linear

I’m writing fiction today. This blog is so confining. Can’t be here. Back later.

Flambeau Reunion update

There is a Flambeau Reunion on March 19-21 in Tallahassee and that’s all I know because I haven’t gotten my official invite yet with the details. So I just marked off the whole weekend. If anyone else has more deets feel free to pipe up. If you’re a Florida Flambeau alumni or staunch supporter and want to come, shoot me your email and when I get my invite with the details I’ll forward it to you.

What is a staunch supporter, anyway? I just realized I have no idea what “staunch” means and have never used the word other than to build a horrid cliche that I use without even knowing what it means! That’s so Staunch! ?

I ♥ Wikipedia!

Watch out, Cynthia Gibb! A killer bear is coming!

How did I ever live without Wikipedia? Any question you have, on anything, answered in a flash!

Every experience, every moment of life, can be enhanced by Wikipedia. It’s the best invention ever.

Example: I turn on the TV this a.m. and land on the start of a Lifetime Movie. A Family Lost. I get the movie description which tells me the lead actress is Cynthia Gibb, and before I know it I’m deep into the ‘Pedia reading up on Cynthia Gibb’s entire life. Now I know that Cynthia Gibb is 46 and went into acting because her sister was a student at Yale and there wasn’t enough money to send them both to college. Early in her career she landed a role as an autograph-seeker in a Woody Allen film. She also got to play the love interest of a very young and gorgeous Rob Lowe in a 1986 film called Youngblood, which I am now watching on YouTube while typing this blog and keeping an eye on the Lifetime film, now that i’m thoroughly invested in the life of Cynthia Gibb.

This might seem silly to most people. Who cares if I have an enhanced experience while watching the umpteenth Lifetime woman-in-peril flick?

But it is these trite and mundane moments of which most of life is made. And now that I know the brave and fascinating life of Cynthia Gibb, I am enthralled with her performance.

And now I’m Wiki’ing her co-stars, the locations where the film was shot, the lives of the scriptwriters….Ooo! Looks like there might be a killer bear coming in a half an hour!  Ha! And you thought this was all a giant waste of time!

Tim Geithner needs to go

OMG, I want to give Tim Geithner a swift kick. What an arrogant jerk. Gonna have to stop watching his testimony before Congress because he’s not making my migraine any better.

(BTW, apologies to everybody I haven’t returned emails or phone calls to this week. I owe a bundle, but have had this migraine for 3 days and just can’t function until it goes away.)

SATs aren’t so EZ

When my oldest registered to take the SAT, I signed up to get one SAT question emailed to me every day. Figured we could practice together.

Ha. Ha ha.

There’s a reason I passed high school, and then college. And the reason is so I’d never have to answer questions like the SAT question below, ever again. Just reading it made my brain go all AH-OOOO-GA! and then shut down…

Read the following SAT test question, then click on a button to select your answer.

If a number is chosen at random from the set, what is the probability that it is a member of the solution set of both and ?

A.  

B.  

C.  

D.  

E.  

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie

Thanks, Supreme Court. You just set our democracy back about a century.

Newspapers are gone. Now the campaign financing protections are gone.

I’ll say it again. Anybody ready for socialism? No WAY it could be worse.

Our democracy is crumbling. I don’t think I’m being overdramatic.

Geez. It’s not like I wasn’t warned.

About 7 years ago I attended a book launch party for my friend the astrologer, Michael Lutin. After we’d been treated to wine and spinach canapes (it was a KOSHER YMCA — only in New York City!) he gave a talk, and it turned dreadful pretty quickly. He started saying how life was going to be up-ended, for all of us, and he seemed almost panicky about it. This was, like, 2003, so of course I just thought he was being the crazy astrologer. But what I wasn’t recognizing was that he’s never been the crazy astrologer. Michael was always pragmatic and cynical, and his advice was always astonishing and on-target.

Now I realize what he saw. It is very scary out there. Everybody button up.

Dogs win. Sorry, kids.

I love my dogs for very selfish reasons. They love me.

My dogs celebrate my existence constantly, from wagging a tail at a good joke to knocking me down when I walk in the door.

I love my dogs back by petting them constantly, paying attention to their every bark, and giving them food and treats all the time. They are, in the words of my jealous human children, spoiled rotten.

My children. I love them but do not enjoy their company nearly so much. Our relationship is not reciprocal. It is them taking and me giving. After a while, this depletes you.

The dogs, on the other hand, are always filling me up with cuteness. Today Skittlez did this cute little thing with her paws on her nose! To die for! So cute!

Dogs rule. Kids drool. Love em both. But dogs the moth.

Crazy bitches

Joining the Bipolar Support Group could well have been the worst thing I ever did for my mental health.

First they kicked me out. Now that bipolar bitch of a group leader and her league of crazy female minions have taken to coming on my blog, to say mean things to me.

This is all because I said the bipolar group was acting bipolar. They want me to apologize for that.

Can you say cold, dead blog out of my cold, dead hands?

They kicked me off the board. Wonder if they talked about it.

Last night they had a meeting. Wonder if they talked about me.

Oh great. I used to just have a problem being bipolar. Now I’m paranoid, too. What’s next — I imagine the ladies in the group are yelling at me inside my head through my fillings?

Oh sweet ironies, you are not lost on me. At least I still have my sense of humor.

Unlike some people.

Do writers exploit people?

Big philosophical question of the day: Is it possible to honestly write about other people without exploiting them?

Yes, is one obvious answer. I’m thinking about Ann Rule, who writes true crime stories. She’s sensitive to all involved in her heinous little stories. She takes pains to not offend the sensibilities of her subjects or her readers. Hell, police departments ASK Rule to write about them.

And yet, in stooping to not offend, does she whisk away ugly things that might make the story more honest? Yes. She admits this, obliquely, in interviews by acknowledging that she won’t print facts or pictures if they make the victim look unattractive.

This is honorable, preserving the privacy of the dead, who certainly didn’t choose to be written about.

But it also hides facts. Let’s face it. It whitewashes the truth, however sensitively and for howevermany good reasons. It’s a pretty lie.

Ann Rule could slay this dragon by being a tad more vigilant about truth than sensitivity. But then she would lose the cooperation which allows her access to case files and the minds of detectives and families.

But I bet, no matter how sensitive she is, some people still get pissed at Rule for something she writes. I know by experience that it’s very hard to write anything about people that they will approve 100 percent.

This is not just my problem or Ann Rule’s problem, but the problem of every writer who tries to write about real, live human beings. They tend to not be dead, so they pipe up if they disagree with your assessment of them. And who wins that argument?

Writing about oneself is also full of pitfalls, because the people in one’s life also often object to portrayals of them. Even mentioning some of them is grounds for a sharp-toned voice mail.

Sometimes they get in here and try to duke it out, like men, or women, or barn animals or something. I enjoy the scuffle, and also weary of it.

I keep thinking fiction will save me because I can just make up all the people populating my story.

But who am I kidding? Like any of them will agree with me, either?

No, I can see where the path of fiction leads. To a head full of fisticuffs.

Writing sucks. Whoever told me to pursue this as a pursuit? I’d like to sue you.