Mrs. Dangerfield’s Call
“Hello, is this Chris Casey?”, the voice on the phone asked me. “Yes it is”, I answered, as I usually do to that question. “This is Joan Dangerfield calling,”… long pause awaits some recognition from me that’s not coming, “as in, Rodney Dangerfield’s wife.”
It was 1996, and sure, I knew who Rodney Dangerfield was, but why would his wife be calling me?
“Did you write a book called The Hill on the Net?”, Joan asked. In fact I had, and it had only just been published. “I have a flier here about your book that someone gave to me. Why is it bad news that Rodney is #95?”
Aha, now I’m starting to get it. In 1996 there were many new Internet magazines trying to become THE must-read of the hoardes who were rushing online. One of them, Websight magazine, had in their April issue published an article titled The 100 Most Influential People on the World Wide Web. And I’m still flattered that I came in at #96 for my efforts to promote use of the Internet on Capitol Hill.
My publisher, seeing an opportunity to capitolize on the honor, created a flyer plugging my book. It noted my position at #96 and added, “Good News… Bill Gates is #100! Bad News… Rodney Dangerfield is #95!”
Again Joan asked, “Why is it bad news that Rodney is #95?”.
“It’s a joke Mrs. Dangerfield. If I’m #96 to Rodney’s 95, it means I get even less respect than he does.”
“Oh… ha ha ha. That’s funny. Thank you then, goodbye”.
By the next year, Rodney had climbed Websight’s list with a bullet, and was on the cover of their Websight 100 issue. I had begun the slide to my present obscurity (if there was a ranking now, I expect I’d be in the upper ten millions), and Joan hasn’t called me since.
Rodney Dangerfield dead at 82
CNN, 10/5/2004
Rodney Dangerfield, Beating Troubles To the Punch Line
Washington Post, 10/7/04
Yard Signs & Free Speech
Like one is six other Americans, I live in a community that is governed by a property owner’s association. My association’s rules explicitly prohibit the display of political yard signs on private property within the community, and that’s just wrong. So with the help and support of some like minded neighbors, we have taken the debate online in an effort to inform our community about this unjust rule, and hopefully help bring about its demise. Check us out online at http://freemontclair.us
Deleting George W. Bush
How to start your day with a positive attitude
1.) Create a “new folder” on your computer.
2.) Name it “George W. Bush”
3.) Send it to the trash
4.) Empty the trash
5.) Your computer will ask you: “Do you really want to get rid of George
W. Bush?”
6.) Answer — calmly — “yes” and press the mouse button firmly.
Enjoy your day!!
My Mac doesn’t go second-guessing me like this when I move a folder to the trash, but for the Windows majority out there, I can see why this would be a nice start to any of the remaining 55 days until election day
Thanks to Mathew Gross for the original posting where I saw this…
http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/000610.html
Will You Vote for $100k?
I’ve long believed that the low voter turnouts in the United States are our great National shame. For Americans, who hold themselves out the the world as THE example of Democracy, to show such disregard for the simple act of voting is just embarresing. We have forgotten the importance and value of our vote. We have forgotten about the price paid by others to protect that right.
But this is America, and perhaps another approach is needed. If voting was a lottery, would you vote then? Would you register to vote for the chance to win $100,000? Go for it then, maybe you (or I for referring you) might win. Then rememer to actually vote, then we all win. And while you’re at it, does it make sense then to also sleep only with Voters?Goodbye Cody
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He was born in Central Illinois, we got him from a friend of my mother-in-law. Our new dog Cody caught a flight home with us to Virginia in 1988.
As a puppy, he once accidentally ripped my nose open, sending me to the emergency room and putting himself under quarantine by animal control officers. We were playing on the floor, Cody fighting me over an old rag (ok, an old pair of underwear), and he accidentally caught my nose with a sharp puppy tooth. We yanked different directions, he yelped, and my nose started spewing blood. So we missed the end of Michael Dukakis’ acceptance speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, and headed to the hospital. Maybe it was a bad omen for that Election, but our fun didn’t always end in the hospital.Cody did tricks too. He could shake hands/paws, roll over, stand on his hind legs, or patiently resist the temptation of snatching a dog bone placed right in front of him until given the secret go-ahead code word, “OK”. He understood English, and was fluent in begging for food.
He was our first child, and in many of our oldest photos of him Cody is happily perched on someone’s lap. But soon we had a human baby, and then another, and another. And Cody was a protective big brother to each of them, and a happy floor cleaner beneath their high-chairs.
Outdoors, he had an interesting habit of only snarling at dogs that were many times his size. Perhaps he knew he could outrun them, or maybe if we’d have ever let him try, he really could have kicked their butts. We never had him fixed, though we know we should have, maybe his bravado was in his balls. He knocked up an understanding neighbor’s ugly pug twice, so there are some Cody progeny out there somewhere.
As kids got older, he got a bit slower, but he was still always the first to meet me at the door when returning from work. He hated fleas, but they loved him. And what he lost in sight and hearing ability, he gained in his ability to create new smells.
He saw other pets come and go; lizards, hamsters, a hermit crab. And this year he enjoyed the company of the four kittens one of our cats had. Our two adult cats basically ignored him, but the kittens loved Cody, and he followed them around with a curiosity he hadn’t had in anything for years.
For months we’ve seen signs of his age, especially in his hesitation and difficulty in climbing steps, but he always soldiered on. Until last week, when we found him no longer able to stand up. A vet visit offered small hope for improvement, and when there was none we were left to face the fact that Cody’s time had come. He was an important member of our family for 16 years..
Goodbye Cody, we miss you already.
The Bush Retirement Countdown Calendar
80 More Days! To help remind myself that the end is fast approaching, and to urge myself to take some action every day between now and Election Day, I created a ‘George Bush Retirement Countdown Calendar’ which I’m making available here to anyone else who might want one to hang on your refridgerator door. (PDF Format)
 August |
 September |
 October |
 November |
Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens
Dissenting Opinion, Bush v. Gore, December 12, 2000
An now only 80 days remain until American’s can either step up and re-claim their vote and role in our Democracy, or we can say what happened in 2000 was OK and let the Court’s appointment stand for another four years.
So ask yourself, what have you done today to take your country back? And what will you do tomorrow?The Democratic News Service
Now that the dust has settled on the Democratic Convention in Boston, I can take a minute to describe a bit about just what I did there. Casey.com was hired to manage Internet services in the Democratic News Service, a media center within the Convention that helped members of Congress and candidates to reach television, radio and Internet outlets.
The task of our Internet team was not the development or maintenance of the Convention’s Web site, it was well taken care of by a great group of developers. The DNS Internet team worked to connect Dems with opportunities to reach out to voters online.
Among the many online outlets at the convention, the bloggers were the focus of much attention. This was the first political convention to which bloggers were given press credentials. It was a great experience and I’m very happy to have had the opportunity to attend another Democratic Convention (this was my third), and proud of the work of our team of volunteers. Check out some of the coverage from the Convention Bloggers. And my favorite moment? Contributing to Matthew Gross’ blog from two rows behind him while waiting for John Kerry’s acceptance speech way up in the Fleet Center’s nosebleeds. What a wonderful wireless world 🙂
The Beginning of the End
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Last night, while watching John Kerry accept the Democratic nomination to be our next President, I enjoyed a satisfying feeling that I was waking up from a long national nightmare. The nightmare began in November 2000, when my last memory before falling asleep (passing out?) on that Election Night was my wife telling me what the TV was telling the world, “George Bush is President”. Of course, like the rest of the world, I woke up to learn that he wasn’t quite President yet, and I watched with horrified fascination as the following weeks led to the travesty of our Supreme Court choosing to skip the vote counting thing and appoint their own choice as President. Ever since that moment, I have still woke up some mornings, or shaken my head to recapture my wandering mind, and I ask myself, “That didn’t really happen, did it??!!”
But it did happen. And then bad went to worst. As if it wasn’t bad enough that we had a court-appointed President, rather than an elected one, he has proven to be an absolute disaster. In my humble opinion, George Bush can easily claim his place as the absolute worst President in our countries history. And now, with John Kerry’s speech at the Democratic Convention last night, I felt like I was witnessing the beginning of the end. Our long national nightmare won’t completely end until Kerry is inaugurated President in January 2005, but our wake up call is now, and we’ve got a lot of work to do through November. Through November, I’ll be working with a single-minded purpose, to help America wake up and leave the nightmare that has been the Bush years. But first, a few extra days here with my family to enjoy this great city of Boston, and then the beaches of Cape Cod. Thank you Boston! This was exactly the right place to start a revolution.Greetings from Boston!
I’m sitting in the last row of Section 320 in the Fleet Center in Boston, the section of this area that has been designated as ‘Blogger Alley’ for the event we are all here to attend, The Democratic National Convention. So much as happened since getting here last Friday, it’s difficult to find the time to recount it all! (As I’m typing right now, my old boss, Senator Edward Kennedy, has just begun his speech, really).
I am here at my third Democratic Convention working in the Democratic News Service. Our mission, to help the candidates and elected officials that are here to reach their local news… television, radio, and Internet. My team’s focus is on the Internet. The Convention’s web team is doing a great job with the officlal Convention web site, that’s not what we’re doing from the DNS. We are working to help do some matchmaking between the politicians who use the DNS, and the online media and bloggers who are here to cover this event. And so far it’s going very well.
But I should back up a bit. The adventure began last Friday, when I arrived on got checked into my very nice dorm room at Northeastern University. Not quite the Four Seasons, but then again I am one of 30,000 or so visitors who have descended on Boston for the Convention, and having any place to rest your head is something to be thankful for, even a college dorm room with roomates (not somewhere I imagined to find myself again at 39). My good friend Neal Stillman accepted my invite to join the Internet team in the DNS, and we began the week eager to take in another event here in Boston… yes, the evil New York Yankees were coming to play the Red Sox at Fenway. We took in the Friday night game at a popular sports bar near Fenway, the Cask and Flagon. And though the Red Sox lost, I still took a bet from my Yankee friend Bobby that the Sox would win the series. Two days and many beers later, I won that bet. Go Sox!
The ball games were a welcome distraction, but we were plenty busy getting oriented with the Fleet Center, setting up our workspace, training our teams, and enjoying the buzz and parties of the big start on day one. Conventions are hectic by definition, and this one is no different, except for the fact that this is a ‘National Security Event’, and so the Fleet Center has been turned into a fortress, and the troops/police/security are everywhere in Boston. At least they’re not wearing Red Coats.
Stay tuned, more to come…