I think I’m about a week late on this one, but if you haven’t heard of chatroulette yet, you’re in for a treat.

The premise:
You visit chatroulette.com, where you authorize your webcam and then are connected to strangers all over the world. There is a ‘next’ button at the top, letting you skip to the next random stranger whenever the desire hits you.

Of course I love it. Of course it’s a timesink. Of course it can be a terrible idea. I played with it for about an hour on Friday night. The site said about 10,000 people were on it. I also saw a person in some kind of wolf costume (who disconnected before I could say anything). I think I might have seen people having sex. I certainly saw more penises than I can really every recall. (This is certainly not a ‘from work’ activity.)

Read the NYT article; I can vouch for pretty much all of it in the limited time I was hitting ‘next’. I found the chat portion less interesting — I wanted an automatic next every 10 or 15 seconds, just staring into an endless parade of windows.

I’d love to play with it with people — a group of 3 or 4 (or even 2) would be more fun than doing it by yourself. We will see if I can convince any friends to this.

And if you haven’t clicked the NYT article, check out the buzzfeed top 24 screenshots and then tell me you don’t want to read the article.

A highly recommended experience. For 15 minutes.

Update:
Dammit, it looks like Kottke and I spent Friday night the same way. This is what I get for posting before checking my feeds. Nevertheless, more evidence for why you should be familiar with this thing.

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So, dear Rush Limbaugh is being taken to task for the use of the word ‘retard’ on his radio show. This–in and of itself–is completely unsurprising and not very interesting. I mean, this IS the guy with all the taste and class to imitate Michael J. Fox having a seizure, after all.

No, the delicious part is this:

“Our political correct society is acting like some giant insult has taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, ‘retards,” Limbaugh said of the report on Wednesday’s show. “These liberal activists are kooks, they are looney tunes.”

Liberal activists, you say?

You mean, like that tea-baggin’, moose-shooter Sarah Palin? Just a scant few days before Rush ate his foot, Palin was chastising her own colleagues for use of the same word, which in turn was only a day or so after wanting White House Chief of Staff Rom Emmanuel (D) fired for using the same word … about liberals.

Does everyone in D.C. have their heads so far up their own whazoos that no one can see they’re drowning in irony? Honestly, I think these people might be r… ah, challenged.

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‘…to make you sleep with me’

We can skip the insane lyrics of this song; is there anything better than a song about stalking? (Yes, probably.)

Instead, I’ll let you know that I woke up with this song in my head for no reason. I have been singing it for the last hour on a loop in my head. I want to shoot myself in the face.

So I’m sharing my joy with you.

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I had a bunch of drinks on Tuesday night. 2 mixed drinks, 3 beers. Over 4 hours. This is not insane; it’s not some wild bender. More than I’ve had in a long time, but not some college binge. I had a dinner of sushi, an apple and some crap rice cakes. I watched Lost with friends.

I was never drunk. But when I woke up Wednesday morning, I had a hangover from the gods. It was because I didn’t drink any water. Doh. As I’ve gotten older, my body has changed and things like hydration matter. I’m just sometimes slow to realize that I’ve aged and changed.

And so began my morning. This was followed by a sausage and egg sandwich at Starbucks. Then I made my own egg sandwich at work.

At this point, I’m expecting the egg and sausage to work the miracle hangover cure business. No such luck. And I’m craving a hotdog. I walk to the grocery store, a few blocks away. And buy hotdogs and buns.

And I eat — ready? — 5 hotdogs by 1030 am.

5.

To be fair, I skipped lunch. And yes, that cured the headache. But what kind of monster am I?

Seriously, I’m fairly mortified at the entire episode. Note to self: drink buckets of water. All the time.

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I had a whole list of items to run through, but Ray’s post took it all out of me. That’s not bad, but you’ll have to imagine all the witty, insightful things I might have written about Lost, work, life and getting old. And drinking.

Instead, I’m thinking about losing family. And grandparents. I lost my mother’s parents before I could sit up. (And it’s awfully presumptuous to say ‘I lost.’ You can’t lose what you never had; she lost her parents. I simply never had the opportunity to know them.) I was down to 3 by 5th grade. My dad’s mom hung on, a trooper if there ever was one — over ten years of dialysis — before I lost her in college.

It was a blur. But I remember Linda and I had just started dating and I was driving back and forth to Richmond constantly in my grandmother’s old Mercury Cougar. Chain smoking crappy cigarettes that Linda had given me, visiting the hospital over and over for a week or 10 days, believing I might be saying good-bye every time I left.

Good times.

In some ways, I feel lucky. That’s the thinking part of my brain; I’ve gone through the grief for losing grandparents. Done. It’s like getting chicken pox or mono.

The emotional part of me is different; I could have continued to learn from all of these people. What would my grandparents have taught me at age 20? 25? 30? I won’t know. I only know my mom’s parents through the hundreds of photographs I’ve scanned over the last 3 years. They tell me nothing about mannerisms or catch-phrases or movement or anecdotes.

And I’m sitting in Starbucks at 8:15 in the morning, on a morning where I’m too hungover, wishing for a 7-11 Big Bite for breakfast and I’m getting sad. And, in a lot of ways, it’s stupid and pointless.

It’s all OK because it’s life. It’s not worth wishing for a different timeline or things to be different. (And how did I manage to tie this back into Lost? I’m a genius.) It is what it is. And it’s not about wishing for different; it’s about dealing with the present.

Ray, my heart goes out to you. Because that might be the definition of a crappy day. Because loss of someone you care for is devastating. But you had time on your side and I hope you can hold on those memories tightly. It’s all any of us get. I hope you are holding up.

But what happened with the toilet?

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Some days you simply don’t see coming. They’ve got your name and there’s nothing you can do about it. Today has made me feel like a paper shell.

I’m sure there’s a more artful way of saying everything I have to say, but I’m spent and simply want to get this down, tuck it away until I’m ready to look at it again, so I’ll just start at the beginning.

I drag myself from my cozy bed and shower early, as I’m on the schedule as a parent helper at my daughter’s preschool today. Halfway through, she walks in and flops down on the rug in front of the sink and as I turn off the water, she asks what the wet stuff in her underwear is.

Okay.

So she’s pooped in her pants a little and we get her on the potty where she finished her business, business which is so massive that it barely flushes and once it does, lodges in the inner workings of the toilet.

Okay.

So, water will fill up the bowl but not really flush. Merely drain out. But I can’t really worry about that now because a) the plunger has run off somewhere mysteriously and b) I still have to get everyone dressed, fed and out the door.

Eventually, I have everyone dressed and eating, lunches packed and snacks tucked in the car with backpacks. I run upstairs to grab something for the boy when I think “Hmm. That toilet has been running an awfully long time.”

I walk in to find water flowing out of the toilet, spilling across the floor and spread to the far corners, going into the closet and into the bedroom.

Fuck.

I wade in and turn off the valve. The chain on the flapper in the tank had hung and now water is flowing down into the floor and walls. I throw a dozen towels on everything for damage control but have to get out to the bus stop. Downstairs, water is streaming through the ceiling in the kitchen and spilling across the floor. My son is eating breakfast and completely oblivious to all this.

Sigh.

Okay, get everyone dressed for the Arctic tundra that is the Midwest in winter. A glance at the clock reveals that, in all likelihood, we’ve already missed the bus. I put up the garage door and start pitching kids in car seats. Fortunately, my neighbor up the street has stalled the bus driver and convinced them to wait. “But look! He’s right there!” I throw it into park and get the boy out and on the bus with a hug.

Phew!

On the way to preschool, I remark to myself “Not even 9am and I’ve already gotten in an entire day’s worth of crap.” It can’t get any worse, surely.

But I am a fool.

We park and go in. I kneel down to help my dear little daughter out of her coat when my phone rings. It’s my mom.

My Grandmom died.

I’m not ready for it and just start mutely sobbing, tears blur my eyesight, my chest shudders with little paroxysms. My sweet little daughter pats me on the back as I try to gain some bearing.

I manage to get her to her room and then head outside to the car. And I grieve. I can’t seem to manage a upright, restrained cry; this is a loud, sobbing, bent-double wail. And I think I’m better for it.

The rest of the morning is playing with preschoolers and trying to hold it together and the intermittent phone calls. I’m blessed that a friend of mine invites my little girl over for a playdate for the afternoon. I take a few minutes to flip laundry, vacuum cat puke, poke at the wet ceiling.

Then I put on drawerfuls of bike gear: long underwear, wool socks, winter pants, base layers, jersey, hat(s), shoes and shoe covers, helmet. With fresh air in the tires, I put on my rose-tinted glasses and head out the door.

For the past decade, cycling has given me a kind of therapy I can’t really explain. Perhaps physical pursuits, be they exercise, sex or sports, allow us to tap into that animal brain we all possess. To simple “be” rather than to constantly think about being. Run. Hit. Kick. Kiss. Move.

I’m on the bike and I’m moving. Moving through the bitter wind, moving past houses and fields and frozen waterfalls. Moving past beaver dams and bridges. Trying to move past a hole that opened up inside me this morning. The wind whips at me, literally whistling across the handlebar tape. I’m past the river and headed around the lake, hearing the wind and the sound of a very big bird very nearby. I look up. Above me perched on a branch is, stunningly, an American bald eagle.

And I stop moving.

At breakfast, before the phone call or the toilet or the dash for the bus, I was in the kitchen making breakfast. Rebekah asked me, “Daddy, are you gonna die?”

“Well…” I began. How much do you explain to a three-year-old? “Yes. Someday. Everybody dies sometime. It’s a part of living.”

“But not me,” she tells me, very matter-of-fact. “Girls and mommies and princesses don’t die.”

How does one argue with that?

As I stare at the bird and out across the partially frozen lake, I think about the pieces of my ancestors, all these people coming together across time that just happened to make me and for me to make my children. How we carry those pieces and how they live on in us, even if generations removed and long forgotten. How we me very well owe our existence to our great-great-grandparents doing the deed at this time rather than that, to a quart jar of homemade or a hot summer’s night that–long before air conditioning was dreamt of–simply would not abide a stitch of clothing. In that light, it seems like a miraculous fluke to even be here at all.

I fight the knifing wind to return home. I put the bike away and take off the rose-colored glasses. And I am.

Postscript:

It is hard enough to lose somebody once. But there is an even crueler cut, I’m saddened to say. About a decade ago, my Granddad had a minor stroke. So small that it was barely noticed, but it did take away his short term memory. When my Grandmom was recently in the hospital for a broken hip, he would realize she was gone and then start looking for her around the house, wondering where she was, only to be told that she was at the hospital.

While he was able to be at her bedside when she passed, he won’t remember it. He’ll have to be told–repeatedly–that the love of his life has died.

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I compose a zillion posts in my head every day. Movie reviews, opinions, stories, jokes…and they never show up here. My draft folder for mog is overflowing — tons of posts, half-written, all forgotten.

I looked at the stats for the site this morning, expecting to decent drop in traffic over the last month (you know, when Ray mostly held down the fort). But there wasn’t. Traffic looked consistent. At the daily level. And the weekly level.

Well, that’s moderately depressing. 10 years of content, the search engines control the flow into here at the moment.

And then I clicked to the monthly graph. Gulp. Two years, a slow slide.

It makes sense. Most of you guys have vacated to FB. And we have all growns up in the last decade. But it leaves me with a question I never really thought I’d be asking outloud: What is this site?

It’s not that I’m dumping mog or anything. But do I have other, more focused sites I’m considering authoring. This site has been a public diary, for better or worse for the last 10 years. It’s not disappearing. I just don’t know where to from here.

Where are we going?

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