All I Really Need to Know I Learned from The Baby-sitters Club

Oh. My. Gawd. Pardon my randomness, but there is a microcosm of my childhood floating around on the Internet. Apparently there are people in this world that revere The Baby-sitters Club by Ann M. Martin as the holy grail of girlydom, just as myself.

As I am known to do, I was able to click-click-click my way into discovering a whole little online world devoted to the BSC that I never knew existed. I've discovered a blog solely devoted to character Claudia Kishi's off-the-wall attire (I also learned a new word, Whatthefuckery, but I digress) as described in this series of pre-teen fun. There's also BSC Wikipedia, Claudia's Room, BSC Stamped and Stoneybrookite, a blog dedicated to the "best friends you'll never have."
Wow. If I ever felt I am a reader of niche sites on the Internet, I do now. But I love that communities have grown to support the BSC books, as they basically half raised me. And look how good I turned out! I don't know about you, but every BSC book I ever purchased was the best $3.50 in the world. When a Super Special came out, it was like my birthday. Sigh. I miss the days when "boyfriends and babysitting don't mix!" spoke to me.

But in all seriousness, I think we love the Baby-sitters Club because the girls were real characters. Mallory rode horses and had, like, 18 brothers and sisters, Dawn was a "vegetarian" from "California" and wore white linen pants, Mary Anne had that boyfriend, and Claudia was artsy and painted Native American prints on her rain slicker. How weird were they?!

And yet it was okay to like them, and they were liked in the books. What a good lesson! And by another token, each book was narrated by a different babysitter. A true lesson in seeing the world for all its valid opinions. I think the entire BSC series should be mandatory reading at the elementary level. Not a believer? Let me just end with this. A book in which a girl can wear this outfit, and still have friends at the end of the day, is an open-minded, worldly book indeed:

(Claudia was wearing): "a big yellow shirt with red x-shaped buttons,
enormously baggy white pants, and big red Doc Martens double-laced with black
and yellow shoelaces. Her long straight black hair was pulled upon top of her
head with more black and yellow shoelaces braided together. Her earrings said
'stop' and 'go' - 'stop' in her left ear and 'go' in her right."

Google turned off the "light"

Can I just say I love Google? Being the festive person I am, I love when they recognize holidays Google-style. However, it's great when they can leverage their visibility to draw attention to something greater.

Today, Google put the "lights out" on their home page in order to encourage people around the world to celebrate Earth Hour. According to Google, on Saturday, March 29, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. in their local time zone. Created by the World Wildlife Fund, cities around the world will be participating in Earth Hour to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation. The U.S. cities leading the charge are Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco.

The first major landmark to go dark was the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge in Australia last night. Sydney followed Fiji and New Zealand who kicked off the blackout, and an estimated 20 other major cities and 300 smaller towns will follow suit. Sydney inspired this worldwide movement as they launched this annual "lights out" hour last year, says the Sydney Morning Herald.

So what's the affect of all this darkness on the environment? The impact this year will make is unknown, but the launch in Sydney last year involved 2.2 million people and more than 2,000 businesses who shut off lights and appliances, resulting in a 10.2 percent reduction in carbon emissions during that hour.

So, I'll think I'll participate. I have one million candles lying around the house, anyway. And I like the idea of being part of something bigger.

No idea what to do for one hour in the dark? That's pathetic.

Hell hath no fury like a gossip blogger spammed

You might want to think twice before you leave that comment about free ringtones on perezhilton.com. Gossip bloggers aren't taking spam lightly.

In the latest development in the public relations world, "grassroots marketing" means posing as an uneducated tween and blasting horribly misspelled comments on various gossip blogs. I do not envy those in internship positions at the moment who are having to come up with new and fun ways to spell "freaking" (freakn) and "genius" (genies) or analyzing the extent to which they should forget all grammar rules learned in college to moonlight as overly excitable evangelist fans.

It seems E!'s new Ashton Kutcher show, "Pop Fiction," has been spamming gossip blogs via the Cashmere Agency. Cashmere cites promotional tactics with quantifiable results. Well, they sure got E! some results at Celebitchy. The gossip blog analyzed IP addresses to find out multiple comments parading as those made by fans were posted by Cashmere Agency on behalf of several E! programs...and even Snoop Dogg.

One of the offending comments left on Celebitchy made by "gena":

“Hahaha!! It was all a prank on the paparazzi!! Its that new show on E! Pop Fiction. Its freakn awsome. The celebrities play pranks on the pap. What a genies idea. Paris Hiltons one was great all the paparazzi bit right into it. Shes not religious come on people. I love this show. Heres the link you wanted. Tell me what you think.”

Celebitchy wrote in an email to Cashmere Agency that more than 20 spam comments a day were attributed to their IP address. I don't blame them for their "celebitchiness" toward the agency - by the same token, can you imagine having to sift through 20 junk emails per day from the very same email address? Maybe some of the gossip blog fury has to do with the fact that Ashton's show aims to beat paparazzi and celebrity blogs at their own game - even though the show's jig is officially up.

As of 3/22, no one had returned a call to the blog or responded via e-mail. Yikes! There's a nice USAToday piece on "Pop Fiction," but two unflattering Jossip pieces are just as visible in a Google News search. Don't discount the bloggers.