Monthly Archives: October 2005

Earlier this week City Pages kicked off a mean-spirited-yet-mildly-amusing contest to see who can best condense a Katherine Kersten column into a single 17 syllable haiku. The idea is driven in part by the redesigned Strib’s new shorter 500-word limit for columnists – if the same point can be made in 500 words, why not in 3 lines of poetry? – but it’s also driven by the odd fascination CP seems to have with all things Kersten. (Here’s hoping that search results page doesn’t commit suicide when it sees itself in the mirror, btw.) She’s a bad writer, she’s ugly, she’s stupid, their laundry list of complains goes on and on like a rolling ruler. One would almost wonder why they pay her so much attention – why not just ignore her? I can’t think of a name for that type of behavior, so I’m just going to make up a term for it right now: bitchnore.
bitchnore (bich nor)
v.

1. To bitch about something when you should really just ignore it.

Anyway, all the talk about haikus reminded me of the time I wrote a haiku for CP’s restaurant critic Dara Moskowitz as part of a note I sent her looking for tips on where to eat on our NYC vacation a few years back. She thought it was so mint that she used it in her column a few weeks later. I pretty sure that makes me some sort of unofficial psuedo-indie-media haiku god, but for some reason I haven’t been invited to judge the entries in the latest contest. Their loss, I guess. (PS: not interested.)
And then *that* reminded me of how I wrote to her again a month or two ago about that butcher shop piece she wrote. I had an idea for a follow-up column that she was… uhh… less than receptive to. She basically told me I was an idiot. All those years of feeling like I had this cool bond with a fake local celebrity and then she e-dumps me. On one hand I was bummed out, but on the other, hey, I got dumped by a fake celebrity, and not just anyone can say that.
I had these big intentions of writing the suggested column myself and posting it here, but then I got side tracked by work and life and it never happened. Then my i’ll-show-her fire started to go out and I thought about just posting about how outraged I was about the whole thing, but not really doing anything constructive other than complaining (ahh, the internet, eases the pain). Then I decided I should probably just ignore it and move on. No bitchnoring for me, thankyouverymuch.
The Katherine Kersten haiku contest [citypages]
Katherine Kersten [strib]

Last Friday afternoon we packed up the car and headed up north to Lake Maria State Park for a little camping, a little hiking, and a little hanging out in the woods. The park is one of the last remaining original sections of the Big Woods forest that used to cover huge portions of Minnesota back in the day. There were lots of purty leaves to look at and lots of paths to walk on and we also saw some ducks. It’s a nice place.
It was a fun time.
Lake Maria State Park [dnr]
History of the Land [tpt] – downer enviro-documentary that talks about the big woods

So now that the Strib’s website and print edition have been relaunched in new-and-improved editions, capital-E Everyone wants to have their say. And, predictably, most of what people have to say boils down to bitching about how much they don’t like it. (Nostradoodle predicted as much, though he was too lazy to document it here because sweet, succulent StribBashing is such a low hanging fruit that it’s almost *too* easy to pick and he likes a challenge.) Oh and PS, the Strib’s website went tits up as soon as they flipped the switch this morning, which was basically dumping gasoline on the fire. Stand back.
That’s why I’ve decided to be the first person to take the discussion meta and complain about the people complaining about the new design. Weee! I’ll kick it off with an all-caps shout-out to the haters: YOU ARE ALL SO OBVIOUS AND BORING. IT’S A NEWSPAPER AND A WEBSITE. GET OVER YOURSELVES.
Howsabout some highlights? Here’s a classy post from the editor of the City Pages over on their ‘blotter’ blog:

At this writing, shortly before 9 a.m., the Star Tribune’s redesigned website–AKA, death by a thousand focus groups–has been unreachable for the better part of the past hour. You don’t suppose it caught a glimpse of itself in a mirror and committed suicide, do you?
Or it could be that the new Strib is drawing so much traffic from curiosity seekers that the server is swamped. That, um, may not be a problem going forward.

Leaving aside the fact that the City Pages website was a horrible disaster of a site for years and years, AND the fact that the current design is the same formulaic “news site” as the new Strib.com – only not as good – how predictable of a response was this from the indie media crowd? About as predictable as a soccer-mom rip in a Beth Hawkins article, that’s how. (To be fair, I think those are actually mandated by the style guide, but you get my point.) The comments are just as good, so read them, too.
Want more? Read the comments in the Strib’s own redesign blog. My favorite: “Hate it. The old site was so much easier to navigate.” Thanks!
Even more? I spent 30 seconds scrolling through MNSpeak’s Blogregator searching for “Strib” and found this (“Tough to read, tough to navigate, tough to stomach”) and this (“I was a little surprised to wake up this morning and find out that I now have a subscription to Highlights Magazine”) and a bunch of others that I won’t bother linking to because they all say the same thing. Literally, in some cases. Lazy is my favorite flavor of predictability, by the way.
(And yes, I’m aware that some people are being reasonable but those people take away the fun I’m having being meta, so I’ll ignore them.)
Ok, that’s enough. Here’s to hoping someone complains about me complaining about people complaining. If that isn’t the internet in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.
Full Disclosure: I kinda like the redesign, especially the online version. If they fix search and stop moving URLs around, it’ll even be better.