A Sort Of Fame, I Guess!

Hi Everyone,
Exciting times on the Inter-web here in lovely BBD Manor, that just had to be blogged about.

A few weeks ago, during our endless season of sleepless hell Randi realized that beyond anything else she was really peeved at Jehovah's Witnesses who would buzz during the middle of the day, waking Stella. This annoyed the BBM for a few reasons.

One, is that we are NEVER going to join the Jehovah's Witnesses. Any religion that is against Halloween is not high on our conversion list.

Two, we have no ability to ID who is buzzing. Our intercom is broken, so if we're expecting a package, which we often are (new parents are always ordering stuff) we often buzzed in the JWs, expecting UPS.

It didn't happen every day, but it happened often enough that we realized we were pretty sick of it.

Second, because Stella is the lightest sleeper I've ever met the buzzer itself, if even rung once would set her off. Then she might not sleep all day, which meant she probably isn't going to sleep all night.

So we also realized it might be better if delivery people didn't buzz 10,000 times, as they are wont to do.

Randi, being a pro-active type, took matters into her own hands, and wrote a sign. That sign is at the top of this post.

I didn't know she was going to do it, but when I saw it I thought it was funny stuff, and was happy to leave it up. Anything that PO's religious proselytizers is okay by me. I'm a Jew, after all, and we don't believe in door to door sales.

Not surprisingly about four days after it was posted someone had ripped it off. At the time I was annoyed by this, but Randi seemed non-plussed, saying she could always write another one.

And that was that.

Or so we thought.

Yesterday at work I received an e-mail from a former co-worker that had "Mini Web Celebrity" in the headline. Intrigued I read further. Apparently there is a site called PassiveAggressivenotes.com, the e-mail said, and is this post about you? I clicked on the link, and this is what I saw.

There was a whole thread dedicated to Randi's sign!

The whole thing was rife with oddness. For starters the original poster, who runs the site (which apparently is a big success) lives on our block. But we had never met her! In typical New York fashion we have never met most of our neighbors that live a few doors down, and now we were finally being introduced, but only through the Internet. Weird, post-modern irony something going on there.

The second part of it was that we were now sucked into the Internet vortex of comment and rebuttal that we have all read so much about, and heard is so destructive. It was definitely kind of a voyeuristic thrill to see all these people interested enough in our short-lived sign to make all these conjectures about our lives, even if most of the conjectures were wrong and/or negative. And, being frank, I know most of these people probably don't care all that much, they're just bored at work, and looking for something to do. Although I know nothing about that.

Another irony: I am a professional journalist. I have spent most of my career trying to get people to pay attention to things I've slaved over. My last article, for example, was about how Australia is running out of water. I spent the better part of a month on it, and it was tight and painstakingly detailed. You know how many comments it received? None! You know how many comments my other stories have received? Just about none. But Randi dashes off a bitchy-funny note in twenty seconds, and the passions of the Internet are inflamed!

I also thought it was pretty damn fun, to finally be on the other side of the window. It cracked me up.

Naturally I called Randi and told her that she should log onto the site. First she entered it wrong, and went to some other bogus site. I didn't tell her why I wanted her to log on, by the way. Then she got the address right. And this is what I heard:

"Huh!" This was accompanied by the quick intake of breath, on the other end of the phone.

Randi immediately took action. One no-no, our names had not been redacted by the original poster. I don't know the legality of all this (it was a public note, after all) but that would have been courteous of the blogger to do, especially since we ARE neighbors and such. Randi dashed off a pretty peeved e-mail thataway, and soon enough that was corrected. Although I love that many people misread the original note, and wrote about one mister "Sarchuk." So even in my brain-dead mini-web fame my name is misspelled.

Then I had the distinct (mis) pleasure of reading the whole thread, because, you know, I had to. Oh. My. Goodness. Lots of vitriol about us entitled, baby-coddling yuppies, surely written by either embittered single folks, or hipsters in skinny jeans, or at least trying to wear skinny jeans. One sample:

"Well obviously they let the Stork buzz at least once. Guess they felt they got screwed over when they ended up with a satan baby and don’t want to let the bastard in with another lemon."

Pretty mean, I have to say.

But mostly it was people trying to be funny. Because on the web the standards aren't all that high, and a lot of people think of themselves as clever writers. Most of them probably couldn't hack the real thing. So they need an outlet. Fair enough!

After awhile we logged on, and posted back, which always reminds me of my favorite, if horribly politically incorrect statement about trying to win fights online: Winning arguments on the Internet is like the Special Olympics. Even if you win you are still retarded.

And, seeing an opportunity, I of course told the throng over there about my blog. I mean, passiveaggressivenotes.com has a book coming out. I deserve, at least, a pamphlet.

My lasting takeaway? My neighbor really has a kick ass blog. I could learn something.