Well, first I learned that I can’t remember if ‘About’ would be capitalized in a title for a blog.  I’d go grab my copy of Strunk & White but…you know.

More importantly I learned:

Mary Carroll is my new hero.

Apparently I’m buying an Android.

I am a Twitter moron.

And…

I don’t go to enough Black Metal shows.

Let me explain.

So I started to read all of the blogs for this week’s round-up and things got off to a great start with Mark Carroll’s Always a Bridesmaid.  I was basically stopped cold in my tracks when I got just one meager sentence into the post and read:

“I decided I would Nora Ephron them with my morning coffee.”

Never in my life have I seen Nora Ephron turned into a verb.  Genius.  So genius I didn’t get it at first.  Was Mary Carroll going to reveal the identity of Deep Throat or was she trying to land a gig at Huffington Post?  Nobody cares about Mark Felt anymore (Nixon who?) but the writing was great.  Tender when it needed to be, acerbic for the rest.  I have to say though, couldn’t you  just Modge-Podge some of your old acting posters all over your husband’s sculptures?

The rest of the post brings up a good point about online and blended courses, and what we lose as educators when the classroom turns to pixels.  In our rush to meld the internet and its endless features into a measured instrument for education we often let our enthusiasm overrun an appreciation for face time.  Not to get all Martin Buber, but those breakthrough moments are hard to see on a Facebook update.

Speaking of Facebook updates, I mean Twitter, I finally caved and signed up.  I was reading Sarah Morgano’s post at Commons Connections and started to feel a little left behind.  I’m following four people and they’re all co-workers. Epic.  I’ll be sure to blog about my life with Twitter as I get the hang of it.  Fortunately there are a lot of great resources around the Commons for getting up to speed.  So what is this number sign # thing supposed to do?

Foolishly I thought I was inciting violence last week when I ragged on Apple products to Michael Oman-Reagan, resident Mac guru at the Grad Center.  Turns out he’s just as unhappy as I am.  He made a post this week about Steve Jobs’ touchy feelings on porn.   Apparently King Steve doesn’t want smut on his products.  No surprise there, that’s long been the standard at Apple, but it does raise some interesting questions about who gets to shape morality in this age of open source.  Is market ubiquity the same thing as censorship?  Are Apple products so good looking and seductive that we’re not even tempted by anything else?  That being said…we all remember what happened to Betamax.

Anthony Picciano from Tony’s Thoughts is away at a blended learning conference so no links this week.  Hopefully on his way back we’ll get a post about what was going on there.  Maybe they addressed some of the issues brought up at Always a Bridesmaid.

Helldriver was back this week blogging about the Immortal show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple.  First off, any black metal show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple sounds rad.  That place must be charged with like 150 years worth of super secret Masonic ritual stuff.  We’re lucky the Earth didn’t split open and unleash a thousand winged Dan Browns all over Brooklyn.  More importantly, this:

“They absolutely exploded when the lights went down, and the shadow of the drummer appeared behind the kit, and then the other two members of the trio sprang from the wings in a miasma of noise and smoke. They banged their heads and made devil-horns. They knew all the words, and “sang” them, too, as surely as if the lead singer had said, “Now, boys and girls, aspirate along with me …”

Seriously, whatever you were doing that night wasn’t half as fun.

Finally – Carl James Grindley is just about done with Poetry Month.  I’m not exactly sure why this makes me happy, but it works on the same level as when I watch the marathon run right through my neighborhood each year.  For no real reason other than the thrill of it I just stand there waving my stupid inflatable TMobile balloon as the athletes slug through.  You’re almost there!