The Peep Diaries

Okay so everyone is healthy in the family. W. got the mildest version of the cold on the weekend but pretty much just had a sore throat. She is over it now. She's too healthy for her own good with all that jogging and vitamin taking. Me, I follow all my exercise with several pints of beer and seem to be constantly falling prey to colds, flus and chest infections, particularly since the kid was born.

Anyway, no point in whining, the important thing is that we're all back to normal. E. had it the worst, her voice is still husky, she sounds like a miniature version of one of Marg Simpson's sisters. But at least she isn't shrieking everyone time I come near her: "Noooo! Go away! I waaaaaant Mommy!"

Speaking of mommy, here's my report on the whole W. commenting on the blog thing: apparently her sister (who is connected to me through Facebook) read the blog, particularly the post about raising the kid right. She then mentioned it to W. who decided it was about time to check this whole blog thing out. Which means that there's more than one family member lurking around. No evidence yet that my parents or brother are reading it. And, thank god, my mother-in-law hasn't gotten a hold of it yet. (Automatically posted comments...she would have a field day.)

So W. posts something snarky in response to my discussion of her parenting. But somehow the post doesn't go to the blog, it only comes to me. Why is that? I was planning to put it up the blog on her behalf, but I was sick and crazy busy and now, today, when I go to do that, I can't find the email anywhere. I've searched everywhere for it, but it is gone. Conspiracy theory time. Did W. have second thoughts and delete the email?

I guess I have mixed feelings about family reading the blog. It's part of the whole peep culture experiment to see who finds the blog when and what they think of it. At the same time, I'm already self conscious and self censoring enough. I'll put it another way: I'm not writing anything I wouldn't otherwise say to various family members, spouses, etc. It's more how I write about things. A lot of people who do blogs say that it opens up new terrains of conversation. Others say that they don't talk about their blog with their families or partners or even close friends, and believe that none of those people are reading it. I suppose I could ask W. if she could repost and how she felt having this discussion about child rearing put into the public realm. Yes, I will ask her. I can't ask her this evening, though, because her mother is coming over for dinner. I'd say more on that subject, but I better not. You never know who's reading.

Okay I was the only guy not in a tie at the Walrus lunch fundraiser I participated in yesterday. I probably should have guessed, given that it was held at the tony old school University Club in downtown Toronto. Anyway, that wasn’t the only surprise the event held: it was sold out and packed with famous Canadians including Pamela Wallin, Valerie Pringle, and others. Plus it was being moderated by Carol Off from As It Happens and taped so that a short bit of the talk could be aired on her show. (Was it? Did anyone hear it?)

I felt a touch nervous as I waited for this shindig to get going. But it all went well. I started off reading a list of books that Amazon.com recently suggested I might want to buy including The Sexual Revolution 2.0: Getting Connected, Upgrading Your Sex Life, and Finding True Love — or at Least a Dinner Date — in the Internet Age; Working Sex: Sex Workers Write About a Changing Industry; Start Your Own Adult Web Site Business; America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction. That set the tone and away we went. Science fiction writer Robert Sawyer was my foil (he launches a new book tomorrow) and the ensuing 40 minutes or so were a sprawling battle about the future of surveillance, privacy and transparency. Afterwards, Carol told us that we should take our show on the road, which I’m pretty sure was a compliment.

So that’s what I did yesterday. It’s been a frustrating week in terms of getting writing done. E. has been sick battling a flu cold so she’s been miserable. She’s only now recovering. I spent Monday with her, then spent all of Tuesday shooting a trailer for the peep movie, then half of wed. at a Broken Pencil meeting. Then yesterday the Walrus debate. Today I’m catching up on blogging, emails and general organization. Next week, I’m writing. Nothing but writing. And blogging. Of course blogging.

So my cold/flu finally receded on Friday. Despite the cold, last week ended up being alright, mainly because it was pretty quiet and I could just focus on writing. I had a few important realizations about the book, but I think I’ll tell you about them a bit later in the week.

Today the kid is home sick, she got whatever I had. She’s got a bit of a fever and is very congested. Poor thing is just lying on the couch watching cartoons and demanding a steady stream of gummy bears. I am happy to oblige, what else can I do? The timing isn’t very good for me, since I was hoping to put in a full day of writing today. The rest of this week is pretty packed. Tomorrow we’re doing some shooting for the peep documentary (full report after it’s done, I promise). Then on Wednesday I’ve got a Broken Pencil meeting that should take up quite a bit of the day. Then Thursday I’m speaking at a Walrus magazine fundraiser lunch organized around my article about how we’re learning to love surveillance. On the bill with me is the sci fi writer Robert Sawyer. We usually have pretty divergent points of view so it should make for an entertaining conversation.

As you can see, things are busy so losing a day of my work week really sucks. But I’ll be stoic and hopefully earn points with W. Speaking of W., she tried but failed to post to the blog, responding to my post complaining about how she can’t say no to E. so I always have to be the bad guy (pretty ironic considering I’ve already fed her about 30 gummi bears, but she’s sick okay…) Anyway, for some weird reason I got her comment on the blog in my email but it didn’t appear on the actual blog. I will post it again and let everyone know when it’s up there, complete with detailed analysis. This is, after all, a bit of a breakthrough moment…the first indication that W. is actually reading this thing.

In the meantime, wish me luck dealing with the needs of a fluish two year old while earning points with W. If anyone has advice finding the right balance between stoic acceptance and the need to be rewarded for my amazing sacrifice on behalf of the family, I’m all ears.

I could link to over 500 media outlets that carried a Reuters wire story about German artists living in an Israeli art museum for 3 weeks with lice in their hair. Here’s an Australian link just for fun. The story itself isn’t that interesting – the Germans will eat, sleep, and generally go about their business in the museum while spectators watch them and presumably contemplate the theme of “hosting”, the premise that brought this piece of art to the museum in the first place.

But I bring it to your attention here, in case you managed to miss it in your local paper, for two reasons: 1) because it’s obviously an example of peep culture in the art world (my favourite quotidian detail: they have to wear shower caps the whole time to keep the lice from spreading to the school groups and security guards). 2) because it’s amazing how the formulaic mass media will pick up a peep story and run it all over the world. It’s like the Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair “scandal”, only with lice. Or something. Point being that peep fascinates in all its endless variety, even the story of a group of goofy German artists sitting in the art museum of an obscure Israeli town with lice in their hair.

Sick with a cold today. I tried and failed to get much work done. I’m working on the 2nd chapter of the book, but spent most of the day just kinda staring at the screen then off into space then back at the screen. I still feel like I accomplished something in some weird way. Maybe what I accomplished is a 2 hour nap. Anyway, I wrote about 2 pages total, which takes the page number total up to 60 or so. Enough for the book to take a kind of shape. More on that soon. For now, suffice it to say that my head feels like it’s the size of a watermelon. The highlight of my day was my next door neighbour telling me he accidentally bought a giant sized white daikon radish thinking it was, for some reason, swiss chard.

A quick update right now. I’m working on the Peep Culture book, writing the chapter about Reality Television. Man do I have a lot of material! I can easily fill 50 pages just talking about people who have been on the shows, people who make the shows and people who watch the shows.

But here’s the thing: I also have tons of material on the history of television as it emerges into reality tv, basically arguing that from the beginning peep culture was embedded in mediated entertainment. But how much of that stuff should I put in there? Do people want to read about the history of television from Father Knows Best to I Love Lucy to CSI? What do you think?

ps – say something…it will be kinda embarrassing if no one bothers to answer this question…ha!

I love it when so-called respectable newspapers run stories that are little more than celebrity gossip repeated under the guise of critique. It’s like, oh my god, I can’t believe those horrid tabloids…we’re so above this…it’s terrible..blah blah blah.

The piece that set me off was in last Thursday’s Globe and Mail, check it out here. In it Siri Agrell lists a bunch of celeb peep gossip about Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus and others then asks, all pretend worked up, “But since when has it become acceptable to obsess over the sex lives of teenagers?” Wow, like, how about ever since mainstream newspapers starting replacing serious articles on the arts with wire stories about the troubles and tribulations of celebrities?

An article in the newly released edition of the Ryerson Review of Journalism notes that in 2002 there were no celebrity stories in the Globe and Mail Weekend Review section. In 2007 the number averaged 2.75, ah, hell, let’s call it 3. Throw in stories like the kind the Globe published on Thursday (which could run in Life or Style or even Focus) and I’m sure we can get that number higher.

I shouldn’t pick on the Globe. I read a very similar story not that long ago that ran in the Toronto Star, pulled off the wire services and originally written for the LA Times. The headline was “Tabloids and bloggers target celebrities’ children.” No! Not the children! Once again, it managed to list all kinds of peep gossip under the guise of being indignant.

So if you’re worried that your celeb content is a little lite but you don’t want to seem light weight, go for the indignant angle, splash a big a pic of a hot celeb immersed in scandal and you’ve got the best of both worlds!

By the way, I can do this too! Here’s a pic of a celebrity and her kid that I came upon while entering celebrity kids in google trying to remember where I first read that article about bloggers targeting celebrity children. Actually I have no idea who this woman is but then I’m not the overseer of the Celebrity Baby blog, am I? Anyway, the blogger provides a caption that tells us this is a pic of “actress Jennie Garth, 35, and her middle daughter Lola Ray, 5” and she’s portrayed here “leaving a Target store in Los Angeles, CA on Monday, March 3rd. Dad is actor Peter Facinelli.” You got all that? Are you filled with revulsion for our society while also kinda curious about who this person is and why we’re looking at her? Hey, let me know what you find out.

So some minor discord on the home front. E. is 2-and-a-half going on three, which means she's a major whiner, screamer, demander. She's cute as hell but worse than the devil when she decides she wants to walk outside in the rain with no shoes on, or smear cream cheese and honey on the walls, or, like she did last night, somehow manage to extend herself out of her crib enough to grab a pair of thick outdoor over-pants off the top of her dresser and pull them on over her pajamas. She promptly fell into an overheated slumber, exhausted from what had been an hour plus yelling "mommy" over and over again and demanding everything from more water to markers, snacks and worms.

Now my position is pretty much to ignore these outbursts, but W. can't seem to let anything go. She's always rushing in to see what our precious angel needs. To me this just encourages the behavior and keeps her up longer. And believe me, based on how crabby she was when she popped up out of her crib bright and early at 6:30 a.m. she doesn't need to be kept up any longer.

So anyway, this morning it's my turn to get up with her. But she doesn't want me. She wants mommy. And she's yelling mommy, mommy, mommy and no no no. I reason with her, get some of her stuffed animals to reason with her but to no avail (though she does quiet down somewhat to observe the spectacle of her stuffed bear discussing the situation with her favourite plastic animal, Ape). Finally I get tired of the whole thing and say, look, I'm going to brush my teeth. You think about if you want to stay in your crib or come downstairs and play with me and when I get back you can tell me your decision. I leave to brush. This prompts wails of indignation and further cries of mommy. Then it gets quiet. Too quiet. I spit, rinse, and return. Who's arrived to rescue the day? None other than, you guessed it, mommy. Arggh! I'm pissed off. This just confirms for E. that whining and demanding and screaming her head off will get her what she wants. And it make me look like an asshole while we're at it.

So what's up with that? W. just can't stand to let E. alone. Later we talked about it and she admitted I was right (hey there's a first time for everything). But I have a feeling this isn't over...Any thoughts?

Interesting post in the Utne Reader Science and Technology blog. It starts talking about apes spying on each other having sex and moves on through Facebook’s Beacon debacle, “the attention economy”, the new book by Daniel Solove about reputation, and finally discussion about how all this is leading to less and less in terms of expectation when it comes to privacy.