>Who’da thunk it?  Mary Beth Temple, during last night’s Getting Loopy podcast (go here to download from archives) of the Crochet Liberation Front 2009 Flamie Awards ceremony, mentioned that I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into blogging.  While accepting the award for Best Crochet Blog, I did not disagree.

Funny how you tend to take stuff for granted until someone shines a spotlight on it.  For nearly two years I have been wandering over here periodically to play and post about whatever was bothering/tantalizing/obsessing me on that particular day.  I was never a diary or journal keeper. The mere idea of writing a permanent record of my feelings and opinions was scary new.

The most horrifying aspect of blogging lies in its very nature.  I come from a background of traditional radio broadcasting where your work, including every little stupid flub, although glaringly public, was a passing parade.  The moment a syllable passed my lips it was sent out on the airwaves, then done and gone in an instant (unless someone like the station’s program director was recording my airshift, YIKES!).  In the disc jockey parlance of the day, flaming meant talking on and on and on, seemingly without internal editing.  But for all my flaming, I never had to hear and be tortured by my work ever again, and neither did anyone else.

Blogging and podcasting are forever.  Anything set free on the internet lives on.  Anything you write or say can only be intensified; vibrations that transcend time and space and could conceivably come back to bite you in the butt years later.  This truly frightens me.

But from the inaugural post on 17 May 2008, and over the course of dozens of deeply personal essays, silly tirades, crochet design backstories, self-promotional blurbs and several attempts at pattern support, I learned to relax and just do it. Hey, this blogging stuff is fun!

Now, imagine my mortification at lucking into this Flamie award, equivalent to having a 1.21 gigawatt beam focused here.

I will get over it.  Yes, I will. 🙂 Thank you, CLF and Fearless Leader (Laurie Wheeler) and to all for your vote of confidence.

>Nobody has to remind me.  I know that I talk fast.  My pace must sound mad and maddening to listeners not indigenous to the Philadelphia-New Jersey-New York-metro-monstro-city.  I can’t help it. I’m just drawn that way.

I wish talking fast could hurry up certain conversations. Then I could get back to crocheting sooner.  And I wish I could crochet as fast as I talk.

Talking fast (the first kind) is not the same as fast-talking (the second kind: to persuade with facile argument, usually with the intention to deceive or to overwhelm rational objections).

Talking fast is not always a sign of mental agility or acuity.  People don’t necessarily talk fast because they are thinking fast or thinking well.

Talking fast is not due to having lots to say.  I can go full-throttle and say nothing at all.

Talking fast is not about making the most of the time allotted.  It’s not like I believe there’s a set number of monthly program minutes for talking, and lord help you if you go overtime.  Most of us have unlimited minutes.

The exception is broadcasting and broadcast advertising in particular, where talk is not cheap and time literally equals money.  For a couple of years my job was to write, produce, voice-over and schedule hundreds of 30 and 60 second wonders for various radio station commercial accounts. I am not proud of the fact that I specialized in fast-talking (the second kind), loud, obnoxious spots for certain advertisers.  Some clients, under the impression that those kinds of messages got the most attention, could not be dissuaded. Automobile dealerships and bankrupt furniture outlets were the worst offenders.  How many fracking times can you squeeze “Sale… hurry… last chance… offer ends soon… don’t miss this opportunity to save!” into 30 seconds? Those instances where I couldn’t talk fast enough, I had to go back and splice out every breath and pause.  Or sometimes I’d multi-track the voice-over and overlap my own words in order to get it down to time.  If I didn’t talk fast before, I sure learned the skill by the time I retired from broadcasting.

The reason I’m blogging about this, now that I’m getting around to mentioning that I will be the next guest on Mary Beth Temple‘s blogtalkradio show Getting Loopy, Monday, 5th April, 9pm EDT, is to warn anyone who tunes in that both she and I talk fast.  You may wish to engage the services of an interpreter.  Or skip the live show altogether and download the archived episode from iTunes later and maybe replay the unintelligible bits over and over until it makes sense.  I wonder.  In the same way you can electronically enlarge digital images, is it possible to e-x-p-a-n-d digital audio, somehow slow down my conversation with MBT to fill, say two hours instead of the 45 minutes we’ll have that night?

We are planning to discuss my new book, Crochet Lace Innovations, out this month.  MBT hinted at giving a copy away as that night’s contest prize.  Will she be able to let go of one?  And will we range so far off topic that I’ll have to download the archive myself to figure out what the hell I said?