My gift to you

I would like to share some of my favorite snarky message boards with you, just because.

Trolls With Wooden Spoons MDC-oriented

Snarkocracy

Free Jinger Fundie-oriented

Merry Xmas, bitches! I hope you are able to drink too much and stuff your faces with glutenous treats.

You might have a twitter problem if...

... you tweet about your child's drowning death within half an hour of it happening.

She's since taken the tweet down, but I saw it myself yesterday -- just didn't have the time then to write a post about it, more's the pity.

If you'd like the details -- the tweets before they were deleted and a link to the news report regarding the drowning -- please do go read Madison McGraw's blog posts (and ignore the slightly misogynistic subtext if you can). Madison's been posting details on her twitter account as well and is getting some flak for it, including the attempted removal of her twitter account as spam. I hope all these moms up in arms are taking the time to watch their kids even while they're grabbing the torches and pitchforks.

In the end, sure, a child is dead, but mom got a hashtag, #Hugs4Shellie, and a twibbon out of it. And isn't that what social media's all about?

New GFG parody site

You know someone's really touched the blogosphere in a very special way when you have to create a separate bookmark category just for her spinoff parody and commentary sites. Sure, Heather is Queen of the Internet, but has she inspired as many sites as Shauna? We think not.

Here's the newest list (thanks to "Shana" for emailing me yesterday to tell me about her new blog).

Keeping It Real

Gluten Free Girl Sucks

Soaring Through Blue

Gluttony Gal

PSA regarding safety belts

Hey, Dana, it is not OK to ask your four-year-old kid to unbuckle himself while you're driving so he can give the baby a pacifier. Good for him for protesting, sounds like he'd been listening when you told him about safety. Too bad you just negated all that by bribing him with a chocolate bar. You put him at serious risk of injury or death just because you didn't want to listen to the baby fuss. You are an idiot. Safety comes over the mild annoyance of listening to a crying baby.

/chickenliverish batshit WHAT-ABOUT-THE-CHILDREN rant. Sorry, but man, reading that pissed me off.

The drugs made me do it

Thank you so much, all, for the eleventy hundred emails and comments about the latest brouhaha at Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper. I was away from the internet for several days and so didn't get to see the whole thing unwind in real time, but my I've been having a blast going back and reconstructing it all. Here's a little summation (my apologies for any errors):
1) Crystal put up a post titled "A New Experiment" wherein she "dare(s) you to say something that you would never share." To kick things off she shares her own deepest, darkest story. It involves her dog, an attempt to kill him with Ambien, then abandonment of the dog in the woods, then her own Ambien overdose, and finally ends with Crystal's being admitted to the mental ward.
2) ChickenLiver pounces on the chance to bring her braying pack of commenters some fresh meat. She points them toward the entry and then basically dares someone to call the police on Crystal by adding commentary like you should be charged with animal cruelty... Any Mississippi state troopers out there…….. Or Nashville TN troopers since this is where she resides.
3) PoP commenters do as expected and fall over themselves trying to bring Crystal down. They complain to BlogHer and individual advertisers, resulting in Crystal's ads being pulled (bye-bye, blog income). They investigate getting criminal charges brought against Crystal. Man, they're having a lot of fun.
4) Crystal's husband gives his side of the story.
5) Crystal puts up a new post (can't link, cause it ain't even in the Google cache, but a kind person emailed me the entire thing) doin' some explainin'. Pulls the post back down almost immediately.
6) Crystal's husband tries to put some spin on the situation by making it all about Evil Ambien and asks readers for Ambien stories. He's going to fight the man! No word on whether you have a case if you, say, take more Ambien than prescribed as well as mixing it with alcohol (which is what Crystal did, according to her own story).
7) Crystal puts up another post defending herself, points people to her husband's post that says it was all an Ambien-induced hallucination, and calls ChickenLiver out by name.
8) Crystal takes down the blog.
9) Crystal shows up at Poop on Peeps to defend herself as well as hint around that she may be considering legal action against CL.
10) Mr. McKnob continues to put up Ambien stories in a vain attempt to take the focus off Crystal.

Now, for my interpretation of events. Man, I don't know. Crystal was deep in the throes of PPD, plus taking some powerful drugs, plus drinking (yeah, bad decision right there). It's quite possible things did not happen as she remembers. I also think she showed extremely poor judgment again in writing about it all publicly on her website. It's good to be open I guess, but discretion has its place. I hope Crystal will remember that when she starts blogging again.

Lies and hypocrisy. What else?

Interesting things are happening in the world of non-foodie food-lovers!

First we have this twitter string (thank you, Tweleted- how we do miss you) before Shauna's blogs were ever profiled or her work was ever "stolen" on Saveur magazine's website:

cakespy: CakeSpy featured on Saveur.com !

1familyfood:
@cakespy does Saveur ask for permission before using blogger's material?
@sweetsavorylife?

WhiteOnRice: What do you all think about Saveur's
online aggregating food site that takes content exerts , pics from blogs?

glutenfreegirl: @userealbutter I
try to remember it. (it's actually a really practical help.) Saveur? Total
amateur hour. Using their name to steal our work Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:53:51


SweetTartelette: @SavorySweetLife no not even. It's just taking
because they're called Saveur and we are supposed to feel so special by it.

Savorysweetlife: @tea_austen @WhiteOnRice In terms of SEO.. I think many
bloggers posts show up before sites like foodnetwork and saveur.

sundaydinner: @SavorySweetLife I like shout outs from Slashfood, etc.
But Saveur is aggregating content and building a recipe collection/search...

1familyfood: @WhiteOnRice @tea_austen @SavorySweetLife @SweetTartelette
@userealbutter have u noticed Saveur's main page is full of bloggers' material?

Savorysweetlife: @userealbutter I had my first mention in Saveur.com in
an article about streusel. And it was very exciting.. thats all.

Of course, that tweet was rather unseemly, so Shauna deleted it. But not before we caught and archived it.

And now we have this (which, incidentally, was tweeted to some random guy and not to @saveurmag) today:

glutenfreegirl: Wow. We're surprised and honored that Pork Knife
and Spoon was named one of @Saveur's favorite websites:http://bit.ly/15yBwnThank you!

Apparently we were not the only ones to notice the nastiness directed towards our beloved Saveur. A few other people noticed, too, and took issue in the comments section: http://bit.ly/15yBwn

by lagniappe on 2009-11-19
@Marymead: The "Shauna" referred to in demiglace's comment is Shauna James Ahearn, who blogs at Gluten-Free Girl and the Pork, Knife, and Spoon blog cited in the article you're commenting on. @Demiglace was pointing out that Shauna Ahearn slammed Saveur on twitter not long ago.

by demiglace on 2009-11-19
To clarify, Shauna wrote this last month on twitter (and now seems to have deleted it): "glutenfreegirl: @userealbutter I try to remember it. (it's actually a really practical help.) Saveur? Total amateur hour. Using their name to steal our work Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:53:51" It was in response to people's blogs and photos being profiled- as hers is here- on Saveur.com.

by marymead on 2009-11-18
Who is Shauna? Dude, total amateur hour, 'demi-glace'. Please explain how your work is being stolen? Can you tweet me a recipe for demiglace?

by demiglace on 2009-11-18
I'm sorry, but what? Shauna called Saveur "total amateur hour" on twitter just last month: glutenfreegirl @userealbutter I try to remember it. (it's actually a really practical help.) Saveur? Total amateur hour. Using their name to steal our work Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:53:51 Nice to know that Saveur can rise above. Though I still don't agree that theirs is a blog to be profiled by such a well-respected magazine

And so, of course, we now have this (also in the comments: http://bit.ly/15yBwn):

glutenfreegirl on 2009-11-19
Thank you to Jessica and Joshua for this lovely piece. We were
surprised and honored to find this here. We love writing Pork Knife and Spoon,
and we love knowing that other people are appreciating it. As for the other
comments, I would ask everyone reading to ignore them. I certainly did not slam
Saveur on Twitter, nor would I. I have subscribed to Saveur for years and adore
the magazine. That's part of why this piece meant so much to me and Danny.
Unfortunately, we have people trying to imitate us on Twitter, as do many
bloggers. That must be where the comment (which no one can find) must have come from originally. Thank you, Saveur.

Oh, grasshopper, you have much to learn.

The first lesson is not to bite the hand that maybe, someday, with some luck, might feed you.

[editors' note: Obviously, since Tweleted is now gone, we can't go back and dig up printed proof of Shauna's tweet. Sob. So, while many of us here at the Takedown saw and archived it for ourselves, we should have put down the bourbon and grabbed better evidence while it was dangling itself in front of our noses. A reminder for us: always take screenshots!]

Lagniappes of Internet crazy

Anyone else checking daily to see if the TSA-stole-mah-baby woman is ever going to post again? She put up her shocking story a week ago, came back a day later to put up a kinda-sorta rebuttal to the TSA's response and turn off the comments, and disappeared into the ether. Since the comment section is down I'm gonna give her my two cents here.

Look, lady, you got caught in a huge lie. You may have backpedaled a bit by saying you were "being dramatic", but it didn't matter because it was still a traumatic experience! For you and your son! (Who is, by the way, seen sitting peacefully in his stroller playing with a toy during the time you alleged he was ripped from your arms and whisked to an unknown location as he cried "No, no, no, no!") And lets not forget that lots of people have sent emails to you about receiving even WORSE treatment at the hands of the TSA, especially people who are from other countries or otherwise disposessed. Don't forget about them, you cry, I do this for them! You idiot.

People are onto you. Let's forget the pesky cameras for a moment and examine instead your Twitter account. Sending tweets like this: eh, i can put it on my blog, but get paid if someone picks up my story... MWUAHAHAHA.... pay me for my insanity!!!! before you wrote the blog post bring your motives into question. And it wasn't just one tweet; you wrote several times about looking for a publisher or media outlet for your story. I guess no one bit, because you ended up writing about it on your blog and then tweeting the hell out of it and begging others to retweet. I can't believe you didn't think the TSA would respond. I can't believe you didn't consider the possibility that maybe there would be cameras there. Again: you idiot.

And look, while I have your attention, can I bring up your parentism? (Is that even a word? Probably not, but it'll have to do.) Here are a few choice quotes from your TSA entry.

She must be a mother. She understood.

So only mothers have the capacity for being decent human beings now? Thanks for clearing that up for me. I know for me the "Truly feels empathy for others" switch wasn't flipped on until after I'd given birth. Up 'til then I was a selfish bitch. Now I'm Mother-fucking-Teresa. Oh, wait. Mother Teresa didn't have children of her own. Bad example. And then there's this:

I do recall asking him to calm me down because I could not breathe. As a father, he couldn’t.

Really, dude? Most fathers could probably tell their partners to calm down in such a circumstance. Most mothers as well. But maybe you married someone as drama-whorey as you and this is actually true. Please don't ever invite me over for dinner, OK? You idiot.

ChickenLiver got one of her favorite sycophants, La Coquette, to do a guest post about how being a dominatrix is just like being a parent. Even though she isn't, you know, an actual parent, she knows all about it because she spanks men for a living, and therefore she knows that mommybloggers are teh evil. Adding snark to this would be like putting lipstick on a pig, so I'm just going to let y'all think on that for a moment or two.

Candy noticed me!!!!!. I can die happy now. Seriously.