I'm back!

I took a year off, but I am back to my blog. Soon to come:
1. A year of home ownership
2. We're engaged and planning a small, backyard wedding. "You have no backyard," you may say. "Indeed!" Details to come.
3. Baking updates

This and much more in the days or weeks to come.

Birthday cupcakes

For M's birthday a couple of weeks ago, we decided that we wanted to celebrate a deux, and I promised to make cupcakes, instead of buying a birthday cake. I looked around the internet for different recipes, and finally settled on white chocolate cupcakes with raspberry filling from Good Things Catered, one of my favorite cooking blogs. However, I did not want to use shortening in the filling (shortening still kind of creeps me out), and Sharone was kind enough to forward me a low-fat, non-shortening recipe, so I used that instead. Then, I searched around for easy and waist-line friendly frosting recipes and found a chocolate cream cheese frosting (forget where). I was so excited to get a-baking, until I realized that I had pretty much none of the necessary tools. For one, I did not own a mixer. So off I went to Sur la Table, and back I came with my tail between my legs. Obviously, they were under the impression that money is falling out of my ears, because the cheapest hand mixer they had was around $70. So off I went to Target, and came home with a handy-dandy hand mixer which I already fantasize about trading in for a stand mixer. Sadly, this will probably only come to my counter when money is falling out of my ears...

I also did not have: cupcake paper cups, cornstarch, chocolate (white or milk), sprinkles, cream cheese, filling bags/tips ... basically anything involved in making my cupcakes! The only ingredients I had were flour and sugar... enough to make a sugary paste, but not enough for super duper birthday cupcakes!

After much fun was had exploring the baking isle at Safeway, I was revved and ready to bake!

Everything but the kitchen sink

Fresh out of the oven. Smelled delicious!

Now comes the filling! A bit messy but sooo yummy!

Ooey, gooey

Finished product

Recipe, as adapted by moi:

White Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Filling

Cake Ingredients:
8 oz. Ghirardelli white chocolate chips
1 3/4 c. all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 c. oil
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 c. canned unsweetened coconut milk
3 large egg whites

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 325 degrees and prepare muffin tins with paper liners.
-Place white chocolate in metal bowl set over pan of barely simmering water.
-Stir until melted and smooth (this was really fun!).
-In medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, and salt.
-In bowl of stand mixer, beat sugar, butter, and vanilla until blended and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
-Slowly add in oil while running and mix until combined.
-Add hot white chocolate to sugar mixture; stir to combine.
-Add flour mixture in 3 additions alternately with coconut milk in 2 additions, beating batter just to combine between additions. (I think I could have gotten better quality coconut milk, or maybe I'm just not used to its texture, but it was kind of clumpy).
-Using clean dry beaters, beat egg whites in medium bowl until soft peaks form. (umm white peaks didn't really form... this is where I need more practice)
-Gently fold egg white mixture into batter.
-Divide batter among muffin cups (about 1/4 cup each).
-Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25 minutes.
-Cool completely. (try really really hard not to eat the cupcakes)
-Using melon baller, ball out small portion of the top of each cupcake and discard. (or, as I did, EAT).
-Fill disposable bag with raspberry filling and pipe into scooped out portion of each cupcake until just reaching height of top of the cupcake. (this was a big mess!! definitely need practice with the filling bag!)
-Ice as desired. (I made a chocolate cream cheese icing that turned out a bit runny but I did not use as much sugar as the recipe had called for. I think that would have made it stiffer). I also sprinkled colored sugar on each cupcake for a more festive, birthday-ish feel :)

Raspberry filling:

1 1/2 cups raspberries
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar
a small handful of Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips

In a small sauce pan, combined all of the ingredients and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Let cool. Take little scoops out of each cupcake with the fruit scooper thing, and using the frosting bag, inject a bit of the filling into each cupcake. Mine turned out a bit messy but no biggie. The filling turned out tangy and very raspberry-ish, which was perfect!

Things to come

1. Photo proof* of my culinary adventures, including my soon-to-become famous white chocolate, raspberry-filled, and chocolate cream cheese-frosted cupcakes.

2. Impressions of 4th of July camping trip.

3. Additions to my foot woes/whoahs series, including adventures in barefoot running and my high hopes for five-toed running shoes.

4. Discussions on upcoming events, including Kenny Chesney concert, Wharf-to-Wharf run, and possibly Harry Potter film.

5. Most likely a review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

* Cupcake shown in banner was not made by yours truly.

#99: Grammar

Stuff white people like, #99: grammar.

Mud Run this Saturday!!

Where have the last six months gone? It feels like just yesterday I was lounging on a chaise on a cruise ship, sipping champagne, waiting for the ship to sail out onto the Pacific. This is exactly what I was doing when M's sister called to tell him that indeed, the three of us had been signed up for the Camp Pendleton Mud Run on June 6. Now, it is June 4, and I feel compelled to both run with arms wide open towards this crazy race, as well as run screaming in any direction other than San Diego. Overall though, I am truly psyched and happy to be doing this, and I can't wait for Sunday morning to roll around when I can wake up and have this be behind me!

One thing that truly inspired me on this last stretch is a comment that I received today from a fellow blogger. Sue Ann Jaffarian is also doing the Mud Run this Saturday, and she must have somehow come across one of my entries about the Mud Run, and left me a great comment telling me a bit about her own journey toward Camp Pendleton. I highly recommend giving her blog, Babble 'n Blog, a read.

To catch up briefly on this month's training:

We took it slowly, and sure enough, by last Sunday, I was able to do a six-mile run, complete with hills. We started out a few weeks ago doing two miles, then pushed it up to two and a half, then three... then suddenly I found myself running and running and Gosh-durn, still running, during our six mile trek a few days ago. Needless to say, I'm a bit over running by now, but at the same time I am excited that I have gotten a really good base down, so I can concentrate on running being "fun" rather than "excruciating." This is imperative, as we're doing the Wharf to Wharf at the end of July, and I must be in good enough shape to actually enjoy all the bands and entertainers and supporters along that route.

In preparation for the Mud Run, I even bought myself some really cute - and totally expensive - triathlon shorts, which I bought partially with the intention that they will encourage me to train for the Disneyland Duathlon next year.

Lastly, I must touch upon my lame foot. My lame foot is seriously a pain in my behind (odd phrase, ain't it??) and after much procrastination, I actually went to a real foot doctor. He informed me that I over-pronate in my right foot, a fancy word meaning I don't have enough arch support, which leads to the tibial nerve being overly stressed (perhaps it needs a margarita? I know I do!). Any-this-is-probably-boring, the podiatrist gave me these super nerdy-looking food pad things to add on TOP of my already geeky insoles. I cannot wear them for the Mud Run, as they are made of felt, which shockingly is no friend to mud, but I shall definitely start wearing them as soon as the Mud Run is over. Hopefully, this should improve my foot-falling-asleep issue, and make me a happier and better runner.

Next time you hear from me, I will hopefully have good news to report. If there are no posts by early next week, send out a search party to sift through the mud :)

In other news, great speech by President Obama in Cairo! NYT has the full text, though I'm not sure how well the link will work.

"The Holy Koran tells us, 'O mankind! We have created you male and female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.' The Talmud tells us: 'The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.' The Holy Bible tells us, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.' The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you." (End of Obama's speech).

P.S. Happy Belated to Anderson Cooper, who turned 42 yesterday :)

Excuse the abundance of book reviews...

Okay, so I have decided to include my Goodreads reviews on my blog, but I realize that I am bombarding my blog with them, so I will disperse them gradually. For now, I have included a little variety, from the classics to the pop reading to the best book ever (The Giver)!

Update Edition

After much popular demand (one very loving boyfriend), I have decided to come out of my writing hibernation and continue with this blog. I think after two years of intensive reading and writing, I was, what you may call, "over it." Mainly, "over" over-analyzing things to the degree that I felt compelled to write about them, but I have come to terms with and embraced the fact that I shall forever be an over-analyzer, and thus must reconcile with my bitty blog.
Today, I want to catch up on some of the things that have happened in the past couple of months that I have very much wanted to write about, but difficulties arose because I do not want to think about them. To write about something that you do not think about is pretty difficult. (I am realizing as I type that I am channeling the style from "The Princess Bride." Which would be ok if I didn't find the book's style really annoying... perhaps a stylistic rethinking is in order).
First of all, I had to say goodbye to my student status (though, my ID still comes with me in case a theater, any theater, offers a student discount -- and not a dang one around here does!!!). This was difficult for me. I love being in school, I love being stressed for time working on a paper, I love the comraderie that comes with school, and now the "real world" is loudly knocking. Actually, it is a combination of it and myself knocking alternatively. It seems that at times I am more than willing to join the real world, but it does not seem to want me. At other times, the real world is so much in my face that I want to call a time out. Well, school is over and I have a feeling that it is over for a while. I know that eventually I will get the itch. It is inevitable and I foresee it clearly. But the itch to prove myself outside the classroom is much stronger, though vague in where it really lies. With school behind me, I walked foot in front of foot into the real world, and the real world had one big time-sensitive plan for me -- to pack.

I swear, I feel like after I finished school, I did nothing but pack and unpack, pack and unpack for a month and a half straight. Graduation weekend I drove up (in my parents' car, as mine decided it did not yet wish to leave Orange County, and instead decided to break down on me) and came to look for an apartment. Within a week, we had picked out place and signed a lease, and whoa Nelly, was that a big moment! I had signed a lease before, I had in fact signed several leases before. And I had signed a lease with roommates before, but this, this was the first time I was signing a lease -- with a BOY! A BOY that would be there day in and day out, day after night after day after night. So, as any responsible lease signer would do, I left. Well, no, not really, I merely came back to Orange County to begin the loooong packing process of 2008. I packed my clothes. I packed my books. I packed some more books. I packed my toiletries, my linen, my posters, my shoes, and a few more boxes of Penguins (I have many. They are very pretty and shiny on my shelf, sitting side by side, little penguins all in a row). Then, my parents said, "pack this" so I packed some plates and some pots. Then, my parents said, "pack this too," so I packed some towels and some vases. Then, my parents said, "this too, pack it" so I packed some blankets and some patio chairs. Then (well you get the picture). Then, my friend Kristin said, I have a futon for sale, and I thought, we have no couch, nothing to sit on, I must have that futon. So Allie and I drove and packed that futon in the car. More stuff to be packed away. My dad and I got a truck. We filled that truck. We filled that truck with some dexterity that it not a damn thing could move around in there. And on Saturday morning, we set out early on for the drive, me in my now-fixed car (also filled with stuff), and my dad in the Budget truck. We drove and drove and drove, and finally, arrived in Palo Alto. We arrived at my new place. My new place where a BOY also lives. (The novelty has not yet worn off).
For the first few days, all I did was wake up, unpack, store, clean. Wake up, unpack, store, clean. Soon, the apartment was not quite as covered in boxes, not quite as crazy. So, I did what any other person in my position would do -- I left! Well, I had to! I had to go back to Orange County to begin a new cycle of packing.

My parents decided that with retirement would come a slight relocation. Oh, not that far. Only a hop skip and a 12-hour plane ride, a stopover, and another 3 hour plane ride away! They were moving back to Romania, and taking the whole house with them. SOooo everything had to be packed. Organized, packed, tallied, kept score of. All the plates had to be bubble wrapped. All the photo albums had to be sorted. All the trinkets, the toys, the treasures, had to be put into boxes. For a week, I packed. Then, their big ol' container came, and everything had to be put inside. So for three days, we lugged. Then, it was gone. Then, the house looked --- well, it looked full, to be perfectly honest! The couches had stayed. Nearly their entire bedroom had stayed. My piano had stayed (coming back to this later). I was supposed to return to Palo Alto, but I too, stayed. I could not leave yet, could not say goodbye to the place I had called home for the past 15 years. So, another week went by. I slept on the couch (not pleasant), I ate my mama's food (quite pleasant), and I got to see my parents for another few days. But, then, it was time for me to return to my own new home, laden with more things to unpack once I arrived.
Then, the visits started. When Marcello's family came, they brought with them much to be later unpacked. Then, a couple of weeks later, my parents came, bringing their truck (now, my truck) full of things to be likewise unpacked and stored. But two things I could not unpack, and store, were my parents. They only stayed for a few days, then we were off to the airport and I had to watch from outside the security line as they walked away and disappeared into the crowd, without shoes, without me.

This was the packing and unpacking saga of the summer of 2008.

Some more exciting things have happened since school ended. I went to the crazyness that is the Camp Pendleton Mud Run (as an observer, not a participant). I witnessed thousands of people running and sloshing and crawling through mud, and actually agreed that it looked like a grand ol' time. Then, last weekend, I went (also as an observer) to the Wharf to Wharf in Santa Cruz, where even more crazy people ran their butts off for over 6 miles. With all this running frenzy surrounding me, I decided that I too shall run. When I read Sharone's blog about the Disneyland triathlon, I got super inspired to get my big booty off the couch (though in all honesty it is not there that often) and give this running thing a shot. At first, I could barely run for 30 seconds without almost keeling over. This was harder than it looked! But Marcello gave me a good running plan, and after following it for three weeks, today I ran for ten minutes non-stop, and including the warmup walk before I started running, I did a 16 minute mile. Stop laughing! It is damn impressive, for me. Besides the joys of running, M and I have just joined a gym. It is lovely and shiny - and expensive! But I think it will keep me going there, and I am very excited to go all the time. Plus, too many people keep insisting on having weddings this summer, and I must look at least presentable, especially for one particular one. I am actually considering going tanning. (It came with the gym package! I SWEAR!) If you saw how pasty I am, and considered how good I have to look for this wedding, you'd understand. Stop judging!

Besides the running and the potential tanning, my life has pretty much been as domestic as it comes. I am still looking for a job, and it did come as a slight shock when hundreds of employers did not call, come knocking, or sent messenger pigeons, begging me to work for them. Alas, as CNN informed me today while I was on my very shiny treadmill at my very shiny gym, this is NOT the time to be looking for a job. So, while I wait, I have honed my skills at domesticity. I have to say, there is something VERY appealing about being able to go to the mall at 2 in the afternoon after having done the laundry, the grocery shopping, and watched back to back Golden Girls.

I have also had time to catch up on some "fun" reading, though someone may want to update me on what "fun" reading is, as two of those books have included Wharton's "House of Mirth" and Radcliffe's "The Italian," which are not exactly light summer reading. I also read (finally!) "The Godfather" (rave!!!) and am now finishing "The Princess Bride" (eh, half snore, half smile). Next on my list, "Good in Bed."

Ok, my first return to the blogosphere has turned into a marathon, so I shall call it a day.

The Big (Blog) Move

Although I began In Vero Veritas with the full intention of keeping it as my main blog, I found it difficult to cut ties with blogging on MySpace. However, I think the time has come that I either blog just on here, or at least enter entries both here and MySpace; now, to kind of move things along, I think I may transfer over some of my entries.

For the love of Blog!

The average Gen XY-er is likely to spend more time on cnn.com rather than actually watching CNN. After all, who has the time nowadays? Many of us juggle work, school, family, relationships, hangovers -- and those of us living in Los Angeles, well we spend half our life in traffic! Even as Tivo makes it possible to watch what we want, when we want on TV, the Internet somehow just makes information access quicker and easier. Everything we need is at our fingertips (literally, since now we can even pull up the Internet on cell phones). Email, the weather, traffic reports, world-wide news, last night's Desperate Housewives episode, or the latest celebrity scandal - these are all accessible immediately.

In fact, as I'm typing this in the middle of the day, someone just sent me an instant message on meebo with a link to cnn.com's story on Al Gore's son getting arrested on the 4th of July for speeding and possession! If I want to be kept up to date on the latest "celebrity" DUI drama, but don't want to read about the downers of "real" news (is that war still going on? are we really killing the penguins at the North Pole with our Hummers?), I can just click the link, read the story, and leave the CNN site. Even CNN can't be all serious, all the time - sometimes it needs to give the people what they want... dirt!

Which leads me to the real subject of this post --- the political blog. After reading the dirt on Al Gore III, the news-conscient can browse through CNN's website and come across Anderson Cooper's 360 blog. Not withstanding that Anderson may well be the most adorable news anchor ever, he is also an excellent example of how legitimate news sources have widely embraced the blog, which just ten years ago was nonexistent. Cooper's blog, to whom others beside him contribute, and where readers can post comments directed at either the blog's content or other readers' remarks, covers a relatively flexible spectrum of news topics. Recent posts from the past week cover the car bomb attempts in London, the blog's search for an official theme song (Air Supply, anyone?), and of course the 2008 elections.

Cooper's blog shows the two most important aspects of a political (and in fact, any) blog -- it allows for opinion ("it may already be too late for candidates who are trailing in fundraising or the polls. That may sound rude and wrong, but it's right on the money," writes Tom Foreman, the CNN correspondent who posted this particular entry) and it encourages reader interaction ("Here's my question: Which top-tier candidate do you think runs the greatest risk of falling back into the minors?"). Blog readers aren't looking for objective reportage when browsing through the blogoshpere. For the most part, blogs "preach to the choir" -- blogsforbush offers exactly what its title promises, a Bush administration-friendly, anti-Democrat slant. Meanwhile, liberals who go to dailykos.com will most likely find their own opinions validated. However, regardless of blogs' tendency to run along partisan lines, they do offer one thing that traditional journalism does not: the element of (anonymous) interaction.

First and foremost, blogs give people who aren't Anderson Cooper or Bill O'Reilly with a television show outlet to voice their opinions the chance to speak their mind to an endless audience. Any Joe Shmoe with Internet access can suddenly mouth off on the war, on the election, on Paris Hilton going to jail - on anything! and have no real limits to what he (or she, or they) can say. The regular citizen thus can interact with the whole world. More importantly, the whole world can interact right back. Most blogs enable comments and some allow private messages to be sent via email, so that readers can voice their reaction to whatever they read on a blog. Blog comments are, essentially, the traditional "letter to the editor" updated and, for the most part, unedited.

How the Political Blog Made Waves

Although the political blog has been around for nearly a decade, with some of the first being Bob Somerby's Daily Howler begun in 1998 and Mickey Kaus' Kausfiles started in 1999, it was not until 2002 that the phenomenon began to spread like cyber wildfire.

When U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott suggested that the United States would have benefited if Strom Thurmond had been elected President in the 1948 elections, many cried "racially-insensitive foul!" Thurmond's platform had greatly focused on racial segregation, a truly un-politically correct thing to still advocate half a century later. Blogs like Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo posted transcripts of interviews and relevant articles that created a sort of underground anti-Lott frenzy that eventually played a part in Lott's stepping down as Majority Leader -- nd all this without any initial mainstream media attention given to the story! The Lott incident validated the influence blogs have in perpetuating information and garnering public interest, even outrage. Although for the most part blogs cover information already covered by the media, the Lott/Thurmond story is not the only incident which bloggers covered before mainstream news coverage. A few New Orleans residents with blogs whose Internet signal held up were the first to post images online of the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Just this year, students at Virginia Tech used their blogs to record minute-by-minute developments and communicating their own survival to far-away families and friends. (Granted, these don't originally fit into the "political blog" category, but since many of the reactions to these blogs were related to political issues like emergency response and gun control, I am including them under this heading).

There are many, many political blogs out there to date. In the ever-developing meta-layered blogosphere, some political blogs like rightwingnews.com rank the popularity of political blogs. According to rightwingnews (at number 18 on this list), andrewsullivan.com (The Daily Dish) is the most popular political blog, ranking in as the Internet's 7,203rd most popular site! A look at Sullivan's recent posts (titled "Things We Love About America") reveals another key factor of blog popularity - the video post!

The technical possibilities of the modern blog are pretty exhaustive and impressive considering the quick evolution of this recent invention. From linking to other sites (as this entry is doing) and posting images related to post (ditto), the blogger can also include video footage (which I keep trying to do but gets erased so it may or may not appear when you are reading this). With the eruption of YouTube in recent years, bloggers use vehicles like YouTube to post relevant footage. For example, here is (or should be, depending on how this works out) Hilary Clinton responding to President George W. Bush's decision to pardon "Scooter" Libby. This, of course, despite the President's promise to assure full punishment to whoever the "leak" in the Valerie Wilson case turned out to be.

Libby served as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and was his assistant for national security affairs as well as President George W. Bush's assistant from 2001 to 2005. The first sitting White House official to be indicted in 130 years, Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison after being found guilty of four out of five federal offenses related to the Valerie Wilson case, whose secret identity as a covert CIA operative in Africa was revealed in 2003.

Of course, Republicans/Conservatives aren't the only ones who manage to get themselves involved in political and media scandals which are then fodder for the blogarazzi. Democrats/Liberals came under fire, partially from bloggers, for the "Rathergate" scandal in 2004. When on September 8, 2004 CBS veteran Dan Rather introduced on 60 Minutes supposedly authentic documents (referred to as the "Killian documents) that challenged President Bush's military service record, it turned out that in fact the documents had never been properly background checked, and may have been forgeries. Conservative bloggers the nation over criticized this scandal as proof of Democrats' attempt to sabotage the elections (clearly this attempt, if true, failed) and further solidified Rather's reputation as being liberally biased. The massive blog attention given to this incident further established the power of the political blog as able to apply political sources. Some believe that Dan Rather's departure two years later after forty-four years at CBS was related to the "Rathergate" incident. Rather's statement upon leaving CBS were not exactly friendly:

My departure before the term of my contract represents CBS's final acknowledgement, after a protracted struggle, that they had not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work there. As for their offers of a future with only an office but no assignments, it just isn't in me to sit around doing nothing.

Whatever the real story is behind the Killian documents, the blog world played a huge part in the attention given to the incident, and is just another major example of blog-power.

Many popular political bloggers move on from the blogosphere and into the "real" world - generally television. Among them are Duncan Black of eschaton, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Dailykos, Alex Steffen of Worldchanging, and Ana Marie Cox of wonkette, who will be further discussed below. Perhaps this can be taken, cautiously, to indicate that most people, given the opportunity to get personal recognition, basically to put a face to the person behind the blog, will jump at the chance. Of course, it could just mean that by becoming more main-stream, they will get more attention for their blog and thus more readers - more influence.

The Blog in (as?) Fiction

Having discussed the weight political blogs can carry, and the influence individual bloggers can have on their readership, let's look at the phenomenon of blogs moving from the cyber world into the print world, and then at how blogging is actually (potentially) changing the idea of the "novel."

Among the Washington D.C. blog genre, wonkette.com covers the usual D.C.-related dirt, news stories, occasional entertainment industry gossip, and every now and then - itself. (Check out wonkette discussing its very own previous editor Ana Marie Cox, whose novel Dog Days is the slightly silly story of a campaign aide's mishaps, including fabricating a wildly successful, sexy tell-all-without-telling-a-thing blog about D.C. sexcapades). Responses to the book, published in 2006, were lukewarm, as many felt the sarcastic wit in Cox's blog during her time writing for it, particularly during the John Kerry/John Edwards campaign in the 2004 Presidential race, was absent from the chick-lit novel, and that the theme had already been exhausted in wonkette's expose on "Washingtonienne" Jessica Cutler and her blog about D.C.'s sexual trysts.

Cox's novel opens up the question of where the blog fits into the wider world of writing. After all, bloggers are first and foremost writers - should we think of them as restricted to the blogging arena? Whether the blog is hosted by myspace or CNN, it remains a piece of writing that potentially could reach thousands, if not millions, of readers.

Cox's Dog Days was not a commercial success, even though one could argue that wonkette had provided Cox with a ready audience. In fact, a 2004 article on the Washington Post website gave wonkette the honorable mention award for "Best Campaign Dirt" political blog for the duration of the presidential elections. However, whether hugely successful or not, Dog Days proved that a novel can still have, at the core of its plot, the blog. The book's heroine, Melanie's entire personal/career crisis occurs as a direct result of Julie's invention of the promiscuous blogger, Capitolette (the aforementioned, thinly veiled version of Washingtonienne). So what that the book is partially about the impact that the political blog can have? Cox's book still came to its readers as a traditional novel - complete with dust jacket and hard cover, and was published by the Penguin group subdivision, Riverhead Books, which has published books by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Nick Hornby, and Anne Lamott. The book has a close relationship to its author's first publishing venture, the blog. It is divided into chapters that slightly resemble blog entries what with their dated entry openers and excerpts from emails and text messages that hint at the blog's ability to enable links, messages, and comments. Despite this, we can feel free to judge this book by its cover. It is, indeed, a book.

Recently, however, blogs have started a different relationship to the traditional novel. Rather than being part of the plot, or even serve to update the epistolary novel from using letters to using blog entries as its chapters, blogs have started to become novels! To those of us who have a soft spot for the novel - what can be more exhilarating than turning page after page in the middle of the night, wide-eyed in anticipation? - this new trend is disarming. Could this relatively new trend eventually take over the paper novel? Will novels be written in blog entry installments to be read online, much as previously novel chapters were published chapter by chapter in magazines? Here is one blog novelist's testimony about the possibly success this new genre can achieve. Maybe a new acronym will even be invented (if it hasn't already). How about "the novlog"? Personally, I think that no matter how pervasive the Internet becomes, it is unlikely that the novel in print form will lose favor any time soon. The blog is just not suited for the novel.

The blog is meant to introduce one's ideas/opinions/knowledge to an audience who can respond. Though novelists have at times allowed public opinion to sway the outcome of their story, it does not seem likely that serious literature will ever be entirely open to anybody putting in their two cents every time a chapter goes up. Rather, the blog is much more suited for precisely the kind of venture that wonkette.com and dailykos.com aim for - musings on the current political system, current events, and personalities.

Wonkette

Ana Marie Cox founded wonkette in 2003 and left it in 2006 to focus her attentions on promoting Dog Days. Cox's website describes her as having "poor people skills," making her unpopular in the mainstream media environment, and having a "sarcasm [that] drove people away." Lucky for her, as wonkette, Cox could indulge her sarcastic nature and not worry about offending anyone. Probably worked in her favor if she did! In fact, her blog was known for sarcasm, sharp with, and a certain lewdness that encouraged talk about D.C.'s dirty deeds. David Lat followed Cox as editor of wonkette.

After the publication of "Dog Days," Cox began blogging at her personal website. The site includes biographical information about Cox as well as information about her novel but also includes her off-the-cuff blog entries, written in much the same style as she used at Wonkette.com. She occasionally contributed to Wonkette.com until she joined the staff of Time magazine to contribute a D.C. feature in the magazine and write for Time's blog.

Why We Need the Political Blog

When I first saw Martin's class title, "Political Fiction," I was a little anxious about the reading list, because for some reason, "political" can sometimes be mistaken for "boring!!" Which is really unfair, since some of my favorite novels are definitely "political" -- 1984, Unbearable Lightness of Being, and others. So why this stigma against the American political novel? Maybe because America's political history has not been, overall, as "exciting" as other countries who produce stimulating political literature. After all, there have been no recent revolutions, no coups, no imperial colonization of the United States. What about the Civil War? one might ask. Truly, American literature had not really come into its own in the 1800s, but Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage showed that an interesting Civil War novel could in fact be written. Is Red Badge a "political novel"? That is a debatable question, but the fact remains that overall, American politics have been not so exciting as to produce what one might expect to be exciting fiction. However, the books we read in Martin's class proved that interesting novels can in fact be written about politics - even the political process, like Advise and Consent.

Politics, however, remains, for the most part, pretty boring. News reporting, transcripts... Even the Starr Report was boring!! The political blog, in this rather boring environ, adds a little spice to the topic. Gossip, mud slinging, name calling, favorites--these are all game on the blog! Even speculation is perfectly acceptable on a blog! And if anal sex and politics can come together (no pun intended) on a political blog like wonkette, then more power to the blog! After all, we roll our eyes when we hear about Edwards' latest haircut on the news, but when it's on a blog we have no problem reading eagerly about the latest sexcapades, mishaps, and blunders that politicians make, sometimes on a daily basis.

A Recent Wonkette Edwards Post (Laughs included)

Americans Want Fictional Democratic President

A shocking new poll shows that America wants a Democrat president — just not Hillary, Obama or Edwards. The reasons are about what you’d expect from the American Voter: Hillary’s a woman of determination, Barry Hussein is black, and John Edwards is a gay lawyer.

“I just think he’s a slick character,” some old retired guy said about Edwards. The old retired guy in question said he wants a Democrat president more than anything — unless Haircut 400 is the nominee, in which case he’ll gladly vote for any Republican.

Hang in there, everybody! Just seventeen more months to go!

Wonkette Toots Its Own Horn

Since it launched in January 2004, Wonkette has become compulsory reading for Washington, D.C. insiders, political junkies, and a new generation which responds more to humor than the traditional journalistic obsession with process. Wonkette is to political weblogs as Jon Stewart's Daily Show has been to the political shows on television. USA Today describes the title as a "sensation" in Washington, DC. Slate's media critic says it's "sadistic"--but then confesses he's addicted.

Readership. Wonkette continues to grow rapidly. As of November, 2005, it attracted in excess of 2.7 million pageviews per month.

Returning to the political blog

Conservatives and liberals alike in the United States have plenty of options for spending hours on end perusing political blogs, whatever their lasting influence may be. Perhaps the best way to sum up political blogs is to say that they are political fiction meant to inform yet entertain, be an arena where political frustrations can be released and validated, and an alternative to serious political journalism that does not have to be restricted by silly things like formal interviewing/fact checking/no potty mouth standards. It's not that what gets published on a political blog is not true - but what does get published has been constructed like any other fiction - with a specific slant and carefully chosen characters and plot lines to explore.

Just Because It's Too Funny: