Jennie Roth

Hey little blog, how ya doin? Feeling neglected? Yeah, yeah, tell me about it.

I got my domain renewal notice the other day and went through the same emotions as I did last year about renewing it. I almost didn’t. Then I was wishy washy and got mad at myself for being wishy washy and then just let the automatic renew take place. There’s really no point in blabbering about it but this blog has been around since February 2007 for whatever reason and sometimes I have fun looking back and seeing if I’ve grown up or not.

Relationships.

Muddy, murky, lovely, glorious, painful and rewarding relationships.

 A famous Canadian relationship recently ended and I certainly don’t want to be part of the barrage of commenters or well wishers, but in Raymi’s recent post “And So” she let out some very raw, real emotion that we don’t typically see in her everyday writing. I have no right to comment on her life, but I can’t imagine the pressure of thousands of readers asking what happened and what went wrong with a couple who had been together nearly five years and were recently engaged.

we acted beautifully together for everyone else but us. while alone it was stretches of silences for hours in our own little online worlds until it became dark then we’d get ready and go out to whateverthefuck was going on that nite. most things i didn’t want to do, i often chose his wants over my own. there’s nothing worse than acting for people you don’t even want to hang out with when you don’t feel like hanging out. making other people’s priorities supercede that of your own until you get to a point when you don’t care about anything anymore.

Grandma says “You gotta do you.” This, this is true. And I’ve found that when you do you, you’ve gotta do him too. You can feel whatever you are feeling but if you can’t tell him exactly what that is, even if he looks at you and interrobangs start appearing all over his face, you aren’t really doing you.

In the comments of the post, Raymi’s mom said, “Relationships require work, communication, affection, respect, fairness, give and take and without this, you have a superficial shell of just existing and detachment.” Then she said my most favorite thing ever: “It’s always best to be warm then live in a cold war.”

This shit isn’t one sided. I’ll never again be afraid to say whatever it is that’s crawling around inside my head, because I know he’ll listen until he understands.

And then I’ll get to listen too.

If we happen to die tragically while our kids are young, one day, they’ll have the ability to recreate our entire ego, persona and being by simply checking out our Internet archives.

Every tweet, every blog post, every facebook wall post, it will all be out there, somewhere.

One time a few months ago, I found my old Angelfire website from when I first got a computer. I think I put up a picture of my dog. My sentences were choppy, immature, and ignorant to the world at large. I’m sure I’m still ignorant to the world at large but at least I know I’ve grown somewhat.

It kind of freaked me out, the way you’d take a step back when you found that picture from your disposable camera when you were 10 on a school field trip making weird faces with your best friend at the time.

When I was a kid I was fascinated by looking at my mom’s old pictures from high school and the era of the 1960’s and 1970’s. I think I might have also stumbled upon a journal or two she kept where she wrote her musings to her love interest at the time.

I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like when our kids enter their teen years and start getting curious about what Twitter was like when it first started, what Facebook was like when it was only for certain universities and groups, and what the hell kind of jargon we were using.

They’ll look back and see some reflection of their parents in the words we wrote, the ideas we had, and the timestamps of virtual socialization.

This is all very strange to think about, as PodCamp Pittsburgh 4 has just ended and I just finished the book I’m Not Really Here by Tim Allen. At PodCamp, we came face to face with the realization that our online personas portray versions of ourselves that we became in tune with while interacting with those we follow and who follow us, in real life.

The grit and drama of daily life melted away and we were able to indulge in ridiculousness and get drunk and revel about this Web 2.0 world we live in. it’s like living in the cloud, the one that never goes down or loses your data, filled with fingerhearts and handhugs and 649’s.

It’s our ego, it’s our spirit, it’s our integration with reality -and lack thereof.

It’s really great to be dating someone who can make me laugh my head off at any given moment. For instance, by proclaiming to be the captain of a spaceship in the middle of Ikea.

<3

Social media is the personally regulated integration of each and every one of my friends into my daily life. It is my main news source and window to the world. The connectivity allows me to leverage the talents of others at any given moment for the greater good.

Author Chuck Klosterman noted, during a stop on his book tour in Pittsburgh last year, that the Internet is making the world wider yet shallower at the same time. I feel that the widening of the world is actually creating deeper valleys of knowledge and outreach; it just depends on how each individual chooses to use it.

In the very early stages of Twitter, Tony Pierce captured an informal conversation with the founders of Twitter on a walk during SXSW several years ago. I couldn’t confirm who the speaker was, but when asked what Twitter would become in a few years, he sated: “It will become the pulse of society.” A truer statement couldn’t have been uttered.

Learn. Interact. Apply.

The former Lawrenceville location of Sweet Basil La Filipiniana at 5321 Butler Street is now Pusadee’s Garden, and it hasn’t lost any of the charm and perfection provided by Sweet Basil. If anything, it’s been enhanced tenfold.

The Filipino tastes have been removed from the menu and the Thai cusine shines through in it’s traditional glory.

I enjoyed the shrimp pumpkin curry and a Thai iced tea on the new deck in the outdoor garden. The outdoor seating area has been enlarged and enhanced and can easily accommodate several parties for dinner comfortably. Surrounded by the lush greenery, I didn’t feel like the table next to me could hear every word I said. The indoor seating area has also been updated with modern furniture and a crisper feel.

It doesn’t appear that Pusadee’s Garden has a website yet, but you can get a feel for it from the old Sweet Basil site. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette covered Pusadee’s Garden this past June:

The former Sweet Basil/La Filipiniana restaurant, Lawrenceville, has been renovated and reopened as an affordable yet gourmet Thai restaurant. Tony Tongdee has opened Pusadee’s Garden, named after his mother, with help from his sisters Watcharee and Busaba of Typhoon in Shadyside. Outdoor dining available; BYOB; open daily for lunch and dinner; 412-781-8724.

This morning, two American journalists came home from being imprisoned in North Korea for five months to their loving family and friends.

Last night, a man took his own life and the lives of several young women as a result of his life experience of being desperately alone.

“Maybe all this will shed insight on why some people just cannot make things happen in their life, which can potentially benefit others.”

Speechless.

Last night while I was having a lovely dream about roach traps in my boyfriend’s kitchen, I began to smell a strong odor. Off in dreamland, I decided that roach traps evoke a scent to attract the roaches and that this was merely part of the dream.

I began gagging and woke myself up.

It was 2:04 a.m. and my dog, Custer, was sleeping soundly, at the foot of covering most of my bed. The smell intensified and I was sure it was my dog that had gone out and provoked the skunk, came back inside, came in my room, closed the door and jumped on my bed and pretended he was asleep for hours. I was dazed and confused as I contemplated to myself, “Do roach traps really smell like skunk spray?”

I decided a skunk had been provoked by some force in my driveway, right below my window. I then cursed at myself for leaving my sunroof cracked. I was certain my car would have a stench in the morning when I went to work.

Somehow, through all this stress and stench, I fell back asleep.

When I woke up at 7:19 a.m. to my all too cheery alarm clock, Custer didn’t stink, I didn’t stink, and my car didn’t stink. I was pleased but also concerned that a skunk had just taken over my vicinity.

I was going to write a short dissertation about skunks and skunkiness, but after spending too much time reading the Wiki, I’ll just show you a picture of a baby skunk.

Sweet dreams.

Yesterday, as I was pulling out of a gas station, I took a turn a little too wide. I didn’t hit anything, and nobody was beside me so it didn’t really matter. The driver of the car coming in the opposite direction, who was not effected by my wide turn whatsoever, took it upon himself to gesture at me very dramatically to let me know that I was a horrible driver and I should probably go kill myself. That’s what I took from his gesture, at least. Since he was already past me in the opposite direction, and I was on my merry way, I thought about what would have happened if I decided to pull back into the gas station and confront him. The guy was in his late twenties, beefy, and drove an early 2000’s Chevy Cavalier. He probably would have been stunned if I decided to pull up behind him, block him in, and proceed to scream some nonsense at him. This is not something I would ever do, however, I don’t like going after a competition I know nothing about.

Rob has told me several horror stories about cyclists and their encounters with vehicles. Most of the stories I would rather not know about since he rides his bike on the streets pretty frequently and every time he does, I fear for his life. Some drivers don’t respect the cyclists, some drivers get mad and run over their bikes, and some drivers shout out strange things to cyclists as they ride by their cars. There is a strong community over at Bike Pittsburgh dedicated to ranting, raving and getting revenge when a cyclist is scorned by a motorist.

Using the power of the Internet, it’s easy to identify that driver, his employer, his wife’s employer and his criminal record. I don’t think too many victims choose to maliciously retaliate towards their perpetrators, but is sure is empowering to have these little bits of information in hand.

Another way IRL road rage relates to teh Internetz is when people post rude, disrespectful or obscene comments on personal blogs. The commenter feels safe behind their shield of anonymity just as the driver feels safe behind their $36,000.00 SUV. Even if the commenter can be tracked, it’s not likely that they’ll face any legal action. I’m not sure what the general consensus is beyond deleting these types of comments. Maybe some content producers go to their perpetrator’s blog and post out-wittingly more disrespectful comments on their posts; I wonder what the statistics are.

There are so many factors that go into a road rage situation beyond the actual incident. If the driver has just been dumped by their girlfriend of 4 years, their dog just died and they ate a bad egg salad sandwich for lunch and you come along and cut them off in traffic, you’re bound to get a rain of hate, and it really has nothing to do with you.

I think the same idea goes for mean comments. There are shades of jealousy that are evoked by the mystique you can pull off on-line, you only post the photos you look great in, you only blog about the good time you had last weekend. You don’t show the world that photo someone took showing your back fat and you don’t post about the mold spores in your bathroom. If you do, more power to you, but most people don’t. Anyway, the image of yourself and your life that you portray on-line is at your own discretion, and if some long lost friend stumbles upon your profile or your blog, they’ll only get an outline of how wonderful you are doing and how successful you are. You might as well post that photo someone caught of you picking your nose, you wouldn’t want someone to get jealous of your life and start being mean.