Gadget

Just a point of interest to my loyal readers--all four of you: Please note that I have added a subscription button to make it easier for you to keep up with The Green Room. My vice president of IT, Director J., helped me figure out how to add this functionality, and this blog thanks her.

I hope you will promptly sign up, and that you will ask all your friends to sign up--that is, if they are not overly sensitive about bodily functions and the occasional profanity. 

Before you know it, we will rule the world.

Accidental Felon

I'm thinking about changing the name of my blog to The Accidental Felon. I keep breaking the law, sort of accidentally, and just barely missing being sent to the Big House.

You might remember that I blogged about my experiences on jury duty a couple of years ago. Well, apparently, that was a Gigantic Potentially Felonious Mistake (GPFM). Even though I did not give away any details about the case, and did not consult any outside sources, once the case was over, the defense used my blog as one of their reasons for appeal. They wanted to interview the jurors to see if my blogging had in any way tainted them. The judge said no. They appealed, and the appeals court said no.

I got a call from a reporter at the Chicago Tribune wanting to talk to me about the case and my blog. I said, sure, dude, just call me back over my lunch hour. Meanwhile, being completely ignorant about what had been happening on the case, I started googling it.

Holy friggin' crap. I discovered my name and the name of my blog and quotes from my blog in the appeals court documents. They used words like "juror misconduct" and "tainted" and "contempt." I immediately called a friend of mine who is a lawyer, and said, Perry Mason, I think I might be in trouble. I explained the sitch to him, and he said, "Do not talk to any reporters. Do not talk about the case. Do not mention my name. Just shut up." He also told me that, had the judge found out about the blogging during the case, he could have cited me for contempt and tossed me in the clink for six months without a trial. "You put your fellow jurors at risk," he said ominously.

Crap.

The story appeared in the Trib that weekend. "E. Peevie, freelance writer and mother of three, ..." it read--only it was my real name, thank you very much.

A couple of weeks later, I got a direct message on Twitter from Channel Five asking me to call or email Phil Rogers. I ignored it. The next day, they DMed me again, saying that Phil wanted to talk to me about the Metra case. I ignored it. Perry Mason would have been proud.

But then I got a phone call on my office phone from...wait for it...Phil Rogers. "E. Peevie," he said in a friendly voice, "This is Phil Rogers from Channel Five News. I've been trying to reach you."

"Um, yeah, Phil, I know who you are. I can't talk to you."

 

"Well," he said, "I'm doing a story on the Metra case, and I'm going to be mentioning your name and talking about your blog, and I wanted to give you a chance to respond."

"Thank you," I said. "You've given me a chance to respond, and I have declined it. I can't talk to you."

 

"But E. Peevie," he said, "We both went to Oklahoma State! Isn't that worth something? I just want to ask you a few questions." He had done his homework.

"Yeah," I said, "I knew that. But I still can't talk to you."

 

He asked me a couple more questions which I declined to answer, and finally I steeled myself to do the right thing. "I don't like to be rude, Phil," I said, "But I am going to have to hang up on you now." And I did. Perry Mason reminded me later that I should have just said "No comment" and hung up.

That night, on the five o'clock news, there was my giant face on the small blue screen. They had taken my photo from my Twitter account--which BTW is not a lovely photo AT ALL--and attached it to the story. And they showed still shots of my blog, and highlighted key portions where I had written about the trial. My friend Phil Rogers used phrases like "in defiance of a judge's admonitions not to discuss the case."

It went to the Supreme Court of Illinois, who thankfully decided that my blogging did not influence the outcome of the case.

Now that the Supremes have finished exonerating me, I am finally able to say that there was no intentional defiance or contempt. I thought I was being very careful to obey the judge's instructions--I was not discussing the case, just writing in general terms. Phil Rogers inaccurately said that I discussed specific testimony--but I only discussed the effect of the testimony on the witness, and did not quote specific testimony on the blog.

I am a story-teller, and I told a story. Yes, it's true that we occasionally lapsed into very brief discussions of the case while we were in the jury room--but every time, one of us would remind the group that we were not supposed to be doing it, and we stopped. I am confident that this happens in every single trial--and most importantly, my blog described it, but did not cause it.

And guess what? Sometime after the verdict against Metra was reached, the instructions that judges give to jurors were revised to include specific references to social media. That tells me that they are admitting that their instructions were previously inadequate. (My friend Officer Friendly likes to call this The Peevie Rule. I am not amused.)

I guess the state won't be calling me to jury duty again any time soon. Rats.

Searches Ending at The Green Room, Part II

Last year I posted a detailed analysis of Google searches that brought unique visitors to The Green Room. This year, some of the searches are the same, but there are quite a few interesting new ones that make me shake my head at the strangeness of the World.

First of all, why are so many people asking about butterfly poop? Seriously. I get at least five, often more, inquiring visitors every week asking the age-old question, "Do butterflies poop?" There is an astonishing dearth of information about this topic on the otherwise knowledgeable Internet; and so the Internet sends them to me for answers. The answer is Yes, butterflies poop. Read all about it here.

Many stumble into The Green Room seeking book reviews, and sometimes they're looking for a specific kind of review. Some have searched for a bad review of Joker One--which they certainly did not find here. Some arrived looking for a dissertation on the themes or chapter summaries of Danny Gospel.

More than anything, new visitors want to know about a certain company that goes door to door trying to get unwitting customers to sign up for a long-term contract for the delivery of natural gas, promising budget-conscious consumers protection from future natural gas price increases. When I last updated this expose, I reported that my price-per-therm had averaged well-below the price that the company had tried to get me to lock in. Since then, my price-per therm has ranged from $112.84 in September '08 to $39.40 in April '09, with an 11-month average per-therm price of $73.09, still well-below the $1.13 lock-in price.

An alarming number of people want to know about sociopaths: "sociopathic husband laziness," "sociopath control cross," and "sociopath brain science," for example. The search engines direct them here because of my review of The Sociopath Next Door, a scary book that made me start seeing sociopaths every time I turned the corner. When I visit my family.

This blog does not pretend to be a food blog like some of the really great sources of food euphoria out there (Elise's Simply Recipes is one of my favorites, as is Chris' Ordering Disorder). And yet! Virtual visitors have uncovered some delicious recipes in The Green Room kitchens: authentic sopes rusticos; texture-and-flavor-rich corn, wild rice and sausage soup; and fresh summer salsa, for example.

Apparently I performed a service for Chicago families learning to navigate the Chicago Public School selective enrollment high school system when I narrated C. Peevie's journey to high school.

Night at the Museum 2: Battle for the Smithsonian got people to the Green Room with amusing searches for "Bobblehead Einstein that's the way I like it," "Einstein bobblehead conversation," and "watch Albert Einstein bobbleheads singing." I can't blame them--that was my favorite scene in the movie (reviewed here) as well.

Apparently many folks are interested in taking care of an unsavory little league situation--perhaps like the one I described here. They searched for "how to get rid of a bad baseball coach," "how to get rid of a little league coach," and "bad little league coaches."

I'll close with random selections from the site meter reports that offer secret insights into the weary travelers that stop by the Green Room for a brief visit:

• Marriage is hard work
• I believed that prayer would work without fail joker one
• plucky people
• what coral should I get for goldfish
• how to get along at dinner table book
• good boy movie dinner table
• what is reading enrichment
• senator burris vain nightclub
• a boy touch a girl breast
• your own word will turn around and bit
• agent freckles
• onesimus and philemon forgiveness drama skit
  

Thank you, visitors to The Green Room, for making this blog the 889,960th ranked blog on Technorati. I'm so proud.

Yes, M. Peevie, There is Butterfly Poop

Since so many recent Green Room visitors have arrived via a quest for information about butterfly poop (because of this tangentially-related post), I figured it's only fair to offer a primer on the digestion and excretory systems of insects.

As it turns out, yes, butterflies DO poop. The bowel movement of insects, including butterflies, is known as frass. I assume that's a made-up word that combines "fragrance " and "ass" into an optimistic euphemism for excrement.

I tried to find an image of butterfly poop, but all I came up with was this image from a two-year-old post in a fun blog. It seems that it shows up as a reddish-brown stain, which is precisely the last thing I need in my house, so I will not be inviting any butterflies to flit around my living room. It's bad enough that there are seven unmatched dirty socks, miscellaneous overdue school forms waiting to be filled out, and a shoe-store's worth of cleats and sneakers lying around.

In my research I also came across a related story about an unfortunate tattoo.

That's all I got on the topic.

Searches Ending at the Green Room

Recent searches that have brought visitors to the Green Room include the following:

• What to do with all those tomatoes
• awkward teenage years
• distance to empty meter
• squirrel home invasion
• sticky fly swatter
• intelligence definition Einstein
• innocence of childhood
• the golden compass christian theory

plus three in the category of sociopathology:

• The sociopath next door he says I'm not happy
• sociopath ice people
• blogs sociopathology

and four in the category of natural gas:

• us gas price per therm
• gas price per therm futures
• fixed gas price small print
• us energy savings corp scam fraud

I need to do a better job at Search Engine Optimization (SEO), if natural gas prices and sociopathology are the two search topics bringing new visitors to The Green Room. Because, as you know, we here at The Green Room are about so much more than mental illness and economic indicators. I mean, yes, those are important and all, but mental illness is a given around here, and natural gas prices are what they are.

I've got posts pending on our little trip to Our State Capital, Springfield, the home of the truly amazing Abraham Lincoln Presidential gift shop. I mean Library and Museum--the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Although we may have spent a tiny bit more time in the gift shop than in the actual museum.

The best part of the whole trip was lying awake for hours in bed with my snoring daughter, next to the bed with my snoring son, trying to spell the variety of snoring and snorting sounds erupting with astonishing volume from both of them. Oh, wait. That was the WORST part of the whole trip, not the best.

Anyway, stay tuned, Angelina Jolie (SEO!) and the rest of you, for search-engine optimized posts!

Hints for Bloggers

Not to be a snob or anything, but when I'm browsing in the blog aisle, there are certain words that immediately suggest "lame" or "cliche" to me. I will skim right on past blogs that use the following words or phrases in their self-descriptions:

Just. As in, "just me and what I'm thinking about," or "just the thoughts and ramblings of a SAHM in the Midwest."

Ramblings. As in, "Just the ramblings of a twenty-something crafter."

Musings. As in, "My musings about everyday life, etc., etc."

Random. As in, "...a Detroit resident who blogs about random thoughts and ideas."

Hilarious. As in, "musings on the day-to-day life of a home-schooling mom of six perfectly adorable children. Sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious." I'll be the judge of hilarious, thank you. Show, don't tell.

My personal blog. Does this really give me, the prospective reader, any useful information at all about your blog? I already know it's a blog, and chances are, you have it listed in the "personal" section of whatever your syndicate is.

Anything and everything under the sun. As in, "just hilarious and random musings about anything and everything under the sun." Come on, people! You're killing me here! I'm choking on the cliches.

My feeling is, if you can't even give me a unique and catchy 10 or 15 word description that doesn't use the same words everyone else is using, then you haven't set yourself apart from the crowd. And really, you bloggers out there want to take my advice, because look at how successful this blog has become! Six loyal, devoted readers--and probably at least 20 random, accidental hits per month.

You're welcome.

Now I need to go check my description to make sure I didn't use any of these blog-busters.