Here’s today’s Dear Abby:

DEAR ABBY: My daughter and 12-year-old grandson “Patrick” visit me on Sundays. Patrick watches TV in my office.

I was recently looking at the history on my Web browser after he had been there, and I noticed that Patrick had been visiting free porn sites and chat rooms on my computer.

I am disappointed that he has been looking at pornography and that he has put my computer at risk for viruses, etc. Should I talk to his parents? To him? Or should I ignore it and disable my computer when he visits? — GRANDMA ON ALERT

DEAR GRANDMA: You should do all three — so that Patrick’s parents can make certain that when he uses a computer at home he can be supervised. And if the parents haven’t yet had “the talk” with their son, suggest they place it at the top of their agenda.

OK advice from Dear Abby (who is now the daughter of the original Abby). I would go further to say that you have to lock down computers when you have young guests. This is a pain in the neck, of course, but it’s the best option. I forget to do it many times myself, and my 10 year old likes to play with friends on kids’ game sites.

Kids know that many parents are savvy enough to check the browser history. So when they have access to the internet on a supposedly unmonitored computer, the first thing they usually do is look up porn. Kids look at porn on the internet. They are curious and it’s available. This is totally normal.

There are 3 major questions you have to ask yourself about kids looking at porn on the Internet:

1. Do I think my kid will be irreparably damaged by viewing one, a few, or many photos/videos of pornography?

2. Do I trust my kid to follow the house rules?

3. Do I want to spend time and energy on banning pornography and other damaging websites?

Let’s discuss.

1. Damage to personality, health, social skills: Many hobbies, pursuits, distractions like sports, video games, cooking, as well as porn-viewing, are run through the “Is it good for kids” gauntlet. I think we can all agree that viewing pornography is very inappropriate for children. But is the damage done by seeing some pornography so great that we must go through major inconveniences to ensure the exposure doesn’t happen? Psychology research can be a bit varied in this area. The general rule is that it depends on your kid. If your kid is resilient, well-adjusted and feels safe to talk with you about anything, then a few porn shots aren’t enough to justify canceling your broadband connection. This really only applies to older kids, say older than 9 or 10. Younger children can be frightened more easily, and show in research that their behaviors are more easily influenced by the videos they watch. Make an effort to shield younger children from any older children’s browsing. Younger kids wonder what the word “porn” means, but in general, there’s not much danger of them looking it up themselves. If your child is under 9 years of age and is finding and viewing pornography on their own, I’d take your concerns to a school counselor or child psychologist.

If your older child (9 years and up) is withdrawing from family and friends and spends most of their time alone in their room with their laptop, then it’s time to dig into things a bit. Your child is probably normal, as only the rare cases of porn and internet addiction will be seen in kids below the age of 18. While this behavior is thought to be normal nowadays, it isn’t healthy. But most kids won’t run into this danger. Most parents fear it, but statistically it’s still quite rare.

You have to judge your fear of pornography exposure against the efforts it will take to totally ban the internet from your house/phones/children’s lives. In my opinion, it’s better to talk to kids about pornography and how it distorts people’s (especially young men’s) views of sex and what a healthy relationship is. Repeated exposure translates into belief adoption. This is why advertising works. The more you are exposed to images, the more you expect reality to match those images. So, we don’t want kids looking at porn on the internet. You can’t stop the internet, so you have to stop the kid. Open and honest reinforcement of your personal values with your children is basically your only hope.  And anti-virus software. Definitely install some of that.

(P.S. Please don’t offer up filtering systems, parental controls, etc. All of that software is a joke. It’s poorly designed and all sorts of porn isn’t caught by the filters. I’m not wasting my money or my time on any service available right now. They just don’t stand a chance against human kid ingenuity.)

2. Trust: now that we’ve established that the only way to get a kid to not be influenced by the pornography they will surely see a lot of by the time they are 18 is to keep communication open and have frank talks –often– about how porn can be bad for people. The next thing is trust. I’ll be honest here. I trust my kid to respect my house rules, including internet use. BUT, I only trust her to her own limits. She’s 10 years old, not 30. At ten years old, it’s hard to enforce rules upon oneself and one’s friends. I’ve taken to locking down all machines when her friends come over. This includes the TV. (I neglected the cable at a sleepover. I awoke to find them watching TV at 2 a.m. Thankfully, the group of girls that were sleeping over were more interested in Disney channel movies than porn, but the porn-viewing capacity was there. I won’t forget the TV next time.)

I also realize that there will be times where my kids break the rules. We’ve established a “No Browser History Erase” rule on phones and internet connections. An erased browser history is an admission of guilt. This guilt comes with punishments. This rule is very well-known in our house. If I see a blank browser or any other efforts to stealth-browse the internet, heads roll.

I check the browser history on all devices on a random, regular basis. I call the kids over to ask about any URL or text message number I don’t recognize, and I demand explanations. It’s best to do this every few days or so, so you can remember when your kid had friends over or you had guests, etc. (By the way, don’t assume the bad-browsing wasn’t your spouse. It could have been. It also could have been the babysitter. Just note the dates and times of the browsing, and perhaps erasing of said browsing history.)

3. Time and Energy: How much effort and technical knowledge is parenting in this digital age going to take? Not much, actually. Checking text messages on phones isn’t hard, checking browser history isn’t hard. If you don’t know how to do it, search the internet on “Check text message history on a Samsung phone” or something similar. You will find step-by-step instructions. If you are a technophobe, I want you to know one thing: It isn’t easy to break computers. No, really. Click around, don’t be scared that your mistakes will FUBAR your device. Almost anything you can do can be fixed. It’s not likely that your clicking around is going to erase the hard drive. Overcome your fear. Search on Google.com for step-by-step instructions. The plain fact is that parents, grandparents and any child caregiver needs to know how to check browser history and the computer’s picture and video files. Pornography isn’t just a bad thing for kids, it can get you into a whole heap of legal trouble. Kids won’t know if they are looking at child porn or snuff videos, and downloading it can get you into a whole heap of hell with the Feds.

You can get technical enough to keep an eye on Internet use. That, actually, is the easy part. The hard part is having conversations about subjects you don’t want to talk about. Don’t wait for your kid to bring it up. I usually break the ice like this: “Oh my god, you would NOT believe what popped up on my screen today! It was a picture of _____! (e.g. a naked lady licking a man’s boot, an erect penis, a video of people having sex). I was so grossed out!” Then you can get into how those types of things are all just a fantasy, that real life isn’t all big fake boobs and leather straps.

However you want to say it is up to you. But you have to say it. Definitely talk about this with any child you have over 9 years old. (The younger ones can simply be told, “You know, Honey, there are scary, adult things on the Internet that you aren’t allowed to see.” Kids under 9 still see the world in black-and-white terms, so invoking “The Rules” usually works with this crowd.) Yes, yes, things were much nicer when Junior was 16 before he found Dad’s hidden stack of Playboys and Mom was secretly relieved Junior wasn’t gay, but that Hollywood version of kids’ sexuality never existed. We have to step up our game now. If we do it together and present a united front, the next generation will accept our terms of service.

Let me know how it goes. Let’s discuss in the comments.

Pull into PurpleCar Park!

Dr. Dan Ariely pulls in to PurpleCar Park to discuss his new book, The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. Stop what you’re doing, pull the car over and listen in to Dr. Ariely talk about his fun and interesting research and the key things he’s found out about motivating (or de-motivating!) people, decision-making and even online dating.

Full transcript available, in pdf form below.

Dan Ariely PurpleCar Transcript

Some jerk on Twitter DM’ed me this message, out of the blue, soon after I followed him back:

RUDE!!!!

If you can’t see the direct message image, it says: “Please click [redacted] and wait for the second page (first goes after 40sec) then clcik ‘discover your influence’ and register” (yes, I noticed the typo in “click” and yes, I covered up the website.)

Anyone who has been using Twitter even for just a  little while knows that this sort of unsolicited request is verboten. It is a real breach in etiquette, and is a tactic used only by charlatans. This sort of thing damages rather than helps your reputation. This user never contacted me before. This rude DM was my introduction to him.

So, this was my response:

my DM back to this a-hole

(I know it has his picture there, but this DM is my response back to coffeemate49.) If you can’t see the DM I sent back, it says “1. Don’t DM me advertisements. 2. 40 seconds is a ridiculous loadtime. 3. You’re assuming I give a shit about my “influence.”

I then unfollowed this jerk, so he couldn’t send me any more unwanted solicitations via DM.

He then @replies me, sending this tweet, referring to an earlier general tweet of mine where I said “Here’s one thing to know about me: I’m going to tell you the truth. Don’t ask me if you don’t want it:”

coffeemate49 is a spammer

If you can’t see this jerk’s response, it says “@PurpleCar I very rarely DM followers, it was a request for a little social help not an advert – you’re rude rather than ‘truthful’. Bye”  A little social help? You want me to authorize my Twitter account to your API bullshit app and I don’t know you OR your app? Uh, no. That’s a no-brainer, you idiot.

Listen up, developers. This is a case example that demonstrates nicely how NOT to get people to test your app. Don’t DM ppl, and for god’s sake, make the site usable. I’m not sitting around a strange website for 40 seconds so you can scam my email and Twitter accounts.

I was merciful, and that, on Twitter is always a mistake, and I didn’t immediately block the guy. I then responded with this:

If you can’t see the text, I said “you commanded me to register for a site and u used dm to do it. That is rude.” Just because a person sticks in a “Please” doesn’t mean it wasn’t a rude direction. I don’t know this dufus. This guy didn’t take the time to ask me if I would consider helping him with a site. He never made the time to have a conversation with me on Twitter, no attempt at simple decorum. Forget it! That is a sure sign of a spammer, and clicking on any websites from people like this is a sure ticket on the trouble train.

So, despite this douchebag’s promise to say “BYE” at the end of his last tweet, he @ replied this:

Coffeemate49 is an asshole.

If you can’t see the image, his tweet says “ @PurpleCar I requested – your reading of my message as a command says far more about you than about me.”

Yeah. You know what it says about me, you stupid, immoral, uneducated jerk? It says, “I block you now.”

Today, popular (now second-generation) advice columnist Dear Abby answered a letter from an adult concerned that a teenager she knows has Devil/Angel Facebook accounts:

DEAR ABBY: I have just learned that a friend’s 16-year-old daughter has two different Facebook profiles. One is a “nice” profile to which she has invited me, her family and friends from her days at a Christian academy. The other, which is pretty raw, she uses with her new “wild” friends from public high school.

The first profile portrays her as the perfect student and daughter. The other includes explicit details about her sexual exploits and drinking parties. Should I keep my nose out of it or let her parents know about the dual identities? — VIGILANT IN EVERETT, WASH.

DEAR VIGILANT: Ask yourself whether you would want to be warned about your minor child’s drinking and sexual exploits or be kept in the dark, and you’ll have your answer.

Ms. Vigilant seems nosy to me. My first thought was, “Why is this woman stalking this child on Facebook?” My second thought was, “Why is she so darn angry with this girl?” Ms. Vigilant’s attitude toward the teen is not loving and understanding in the least.

This teen, we’ll call her D.A. for Devil/Angel, seems pretty savvy on the surface of it, using two separate accounts for different, shall we say, “interests.” I personally have two facebook accounts, one for my public persona (social media, writing, and acquaintances) and the other for family and friends I know in real life. The difference between D.A. and me, though, is I make no attempt to hide either account. Another slight difference: my posts on both accounts are not … “raw.”

Ms. Vigilant is a church-lady busybody and she should mind her own business. D.A. is a fool to think the “anonymity” of another Facebook account will save her from the bad consequences such public displays of poor behavior will bring. Miss D.A., if Ms. Vigilant can find your account, Harvard can too, Honey. Universities don’t like to admit students with “suspicious moral character.” Sororities, Fraternities, companies, potential mates, also will find your “hidden” account to be damaging to your reputation.

As a former server admin, I would never attempt to keep an anonymous account online without the help of professional security personnel. It’s kind of like a case when a lawyer gets convicted of a crime and she hires another attorney to represent her: Some areas of expertise are best left to the pros. I’m very technically adept, but real online security takes a lot of effort and skill. Anonymous status is an illusion online. Anyone with just a bit of techie chops can find just about anybody else, even with randomly assigned IP addresses via large hosts like Comcast or Verizon.

So, two lessons here. 1. Don’t stalk teens online or off. If you come across information that tells you her or his life is in danger, by all means, approach someone about it. Otherwise, their Facebook accounts aren’t your business. 2. Don’t post “fun” stuff like drunken revelry online. There are ways to share pictures and communications offline. If you MUST go online, don’t use Facebook. Try a private Flickr account instead. As new platforms emerge, there will be more and more easy-to-use private options. Facebook isn’t this private option and never will be. Wise up.

All that being said, it’s not a bad thing to keep multiple accounts for different crowds. In fact, this makes sense to do. You can streamline your content according to the interest of that particular cohort, which is what I do with my 2 Facebook accounts. Not such a bad idea. But keep it relatively clean, folks! Until privacy is truly offered in the online realm, everything you do, say, post, “like,” or share is not secure. Some sites offer a semblance of privacy, but that privacy is by no means guaranteed, especially if the site’s services are free, like Facebook.

Nebbie-nosed goody-two-shoes: shut-up. Teens, wise-up.

I just said this on Twitter: “Accessible education is better than democratized data.”

Social media people are enchanted with the tech and their use of it. Grandiose claims abound about the “democratization” of information due to the internet’s proliferation. Social media people claim that the (seemingly) unfettered access to information on the web will bring down academia, traditional business models and the whole of Eastern and Western culture. Students will eschew the Ivory Tower for self-schooling, businesses that don’t catch on to “the conversation” will die embarrassing deaths, and we’ll all be connected to each other across country borders.

The fact is, every new technology was touted at its inception as the “answer” to elitism, to class boundaries, to poverty. In Nick Carr’s latest book The Shallows, he spends the first hundred pages or so on historical philosophy, trying desperately to place this notion in the time line. Societal structure may be molded a bit differently, but education is still esteemed, tried and true business models still work, and we mostly connect only with people of very like minds online (see Going to Extremes by Cass Sunstein). A whole bunch of data online isn’t going to get me the heart surgeon I need, or the long-term investment plan I want, or the diverse circle of friends I should have to keep me reasonable. It’s better to make education, given by other educated individuals, accessible to more people than to just pile up a bunch of facts and make them available to anyone with internet access.

Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irrationality, chronicles how we overvalue our own creations. We are so totally biased for our own ideas that we not only fail to see the merits in others, but we assume that everyone shares our value in our ideas. Step back, take stock. Know where we, the internet generation, sit in history. Don’t get carried away with our own invention of the Internet and accessible data. Real democracy comes with real education.

-Christine Cavalier

What? I could be new to Twitter.

So, Twitter is World Cup Headquarters. Or, so Twitter staff hopes. In order to prepare, they’ve been “working through tweaks” in the service, according to the official Twitter blog. This has resulted in many users losing not just a few tweets to deletion, but thousands of tweets. Poof. Gone. I was at more than 14,000 tweets. I’m down to around 900.

I joked about this today on Twitter, presenting the idea that I’m new to Twitter. I mean, only 900+ tweets, that’s a total n00b number. Someone called PurpleCar may have called you a jackass, or called you out on some extremist crap, or made some snarky remark in the past, but now there’s no proof that this was me. So for all you know, I’m sweet. Nice, even. Nicest person on Twitter!

More jokes between me and my Twitter people went back and forth. You have to laugh at this stuff. Twitter deleted my past, but actually it was their past to delete. We all want to keep our data out there forever, as if every tweet is our genetic data, our little children we set loose on the world. Narcissism runs deep.

Tweets aren’t holy. They aren’t meant to be recorded for posterity, for our eventual controversial best-selling biography, for our great-grandchildren doing genealogy research. Tweets are small snippets of current thoughts, not earth-shattering wisdom for the ages. Your daily data isn’t divine. Get over it and have a sense of humor about data loss.

Today, I chose to joke that I could now easily reinvent myself, seeing that I’m free of past mis-tweets. In my last tweet on the subject, I put a link up to George Michael’s song Freedom. I’ve included the lyrics below. Listened to/Read in the context of “Hey, I can reinvent PurpleCar” and “Yous guys cain’t prove nothin,’” the song turns out to be pretty relevant.  Happy New Tweeting, everyone!

Twitter’s blog post “What’s Happening with Twitter”

FREEDOM (YouTube Vid)

FREEDOM Lyrics

Freedom ’90
George Michael

I won’t let you down
I will not give you up
Gotta have some faith in the sound
It’s the one good thing that I’ve got
I won’t let you down
So please don’t give me up
Because I would really, really love to stick around

Heaven knows I was just a young boy
Didn’t know what I wanted to be
I was every little hungry schoolgirl’s pride and joy
And I guess it was enough for me
To win the race? A prettier face!
Brand new clothes and a big fat place
On your rock and roll TV
But today the way I play the game is not the same
No way
Think I’m gonna get me some happy

I think there’s something you should know
I think it’s time I told you so
There’s something deep inside of me
There’s someone else I’ve got to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Take back your singing in the rain
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

All we have to do now
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don’t belong to you
And you don’t belong to me
Freedom
You’ve gotta give for what you take
Freedom
You’ve gotta give for what you take

Heaven knows we sure had some fun boy
What a kick just a buddy and me
We had every big shot good-time band on the run boy
We were living in a fantasy
We won the race
Got out of the place
I went back home got a brand new face
For the boys on MTV
But today the way I play the game has got to change
Oh yeah
Now I’m gonna get myself happy

I think there’s something you should know
I think it’s time I stopped the show
There’s something deep inside of me
There’s someone I forgot to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Don’t think that I’ll be back again
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

All we have to do now
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don’t belong to you
And you don’t belong to me
Freedom
You’ve gotta give for what you take
Freedom
You’ve gotta give for what you take

Well it looks like the road to heaven
But it feels like the road to hell
When I knew which side my bread was buttered
I took the knife as well
Posing for another picture
Everybody’s got to sell
But when you shake your ass
They notice fast
And some mistakes were built to last

That’s what you get

I say that’s what you get

That’s what you get for changing your mind

And after all this time
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes
Do not make the man

I’ll hold on to my freedom
May not be what you want from me
Just the way it’s got to be
Lose the face now
I’ve got to live

Last year a major clothing retailer used a reading of Walt Whitman’s poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers! in a TV ad. This sparked some renewed interest in the poem, published in the book Leaves of Grass in 1891.

The original poem is an ode to the early settlers of America and the American West. If you read the poem now, with the perspective that Whitman is writing about the early adopters of the internet, almost every single stanza still holds true. Whitman was one of those timeless writers that deftly uses a specific example to capture the general feeling of a universal truth, in this case, trail-blazing.

I re-wrote Pioneers! O Pioneers to show this point, and to pay homage to my online friends who have taught me much along the way. Rewriting the poem is my way of introducing you to Whitman’s original poem and its truly timeless essence.

My rewritten homage to Whitman and my ode to my early adopter peers is below. Whitman’s original poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers! is printed below that. You’ll have to click to see more (or come to the site if you are seeing this via an RSS reader) to see the poems.

My Fellow Pioneers!

homage by christine cavalier

COME my avatar children, follow well online, mobiles in hand. Have you your flaming fingers? Have you your sharp-edged tongues? Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot drop off here, We must post my friends, we must bear the brunt of lost privacy, we the youthful early adopters, all the rest on us depend. Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you youths, Western youths, so quick to test, full of data, full of public pride and networks, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping for the camera, Pioneers! O pioneers!
Have the elders shushed you? Do they tire of teaching dignity, wearied over the divide? We take up task of building bridges, and carry their worry alone. Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the past we leave alive, We dawn a newer, mightier world, varied world, New and ubiquitous the stream we generate, stream of life and our footprints. Pioneers! O pioneers!
We attachments steadily embed, Down the glass fibers, through packets, upload heave, Felling networks, mobbing, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers!
We media barriers damaging, We the data sharing, vexing we and exposing deep our minds eye, We the landscape net surveying, we the unused space filling, Pioneers! O pioneers!
All earth’s men are we, From the cellular waves and T3 lines, from the great doomed dungeons and the high moon seas, From the schools and from the streets, from the lonely trails we come, Pioneers! O pioneers!
From plain sight, from kitchen corner, an unending sea are we, from our phones, with the satellite link in between, All the keys of comrades clicking, all the polar opposites, Pioneers! O pioneers!
O coffeeful surfing race! O beloved race in all! O my fingers ache with tender updates for you all! O I miss you when I’m offline, Invisible rapture in electronic ties, Pioneers! O pioneers!
Raise the mighty copyright, waving high the delicate balance, over all the starry favorites, (open your readers all,) Raise the fang’d and warlike C&D letter, stern, impassive, weapon’d corporate dagger, Pioneers, O pioneers!
See my children, friended children, It’s those established media we must never stop disrupting, the Boomers and the Silents and WWIIs frowning but progress urging, Pioneers, O pioneers!
On and on with compact back-ups, with inaccessible sites waiting, with data of the dead quickly suspended in cyberlimbo, through dial-up, through power outages, uploading and never stopping, Pioneers, O pioneers!
O to crash while beta testing! Are there some of us to grow weary and fail? Is there one hour we share around the world? Then upon the lines we belong, soon and sure the miles are crossed. Pioneers, O pioneers!
All the signals of the world, they ping for us, with the social tech beat, holding a network, steady connection with laptop fronts, all for us, Pioneers, O pioneers!
Life’s honesty and varied opinions, All the online forms and channels, all the networkers at the screen, All the air travelers and broadcast surfers, all the masters of enslaved desktops, Pioneers, O pioneers!
All the secret internet lovers, All the students in the class, all the preached to and their preachers, all the egos, all the apathetic, all the voiceless, all the 5K walkers, Pioneers, O pioneers!
I too with my distracted spirit and body, We, a virtual trio, hunt and pecking, wandering from site  to site, Through these stories amid backlit darkness, with ghosts left in our retinas, Pioneers, O pioneers!
Lo, the animated glowing screen! Lo, the handheld games, all the platforms and science, All the missed sunlit days, all the nights never slept, Pioneers, O pioneers!
These are our thing, they are with us, All for primal validation, while our followers in silence wait for us, We to-day’s news feed wanting, we the route for neutrality paving, Pioneers, O pioneers!
O you daughters of the dead, O you community searchers! O you mommy bloggers and you military wives! You are divided, yet you must move in unity with us, Pioneers, O pioneers!
Independent labels, bootstrapping musicians, (Show Biz OldTimers, back away or host sketch comedy,) I hear your tunes, your a capella singing, soon your video will have 1,000 views, Pioneers, O pioneers!
Shop for delectations sweet, shop the gadgets and covers, disturb the peaceful and scramble the studious, the riches of distractions appalling, mindless shock for our enjoyment, Pioneers, O pioneers!
Do the narcissists self-indulgence show? Do the traditional media sleep? Have they laid off their writers? Rough pill to swallow with strange bedfellows, Pioneers, O pioneers!
What time is it? How did it become so late? Did I nod off? The passing hours I yielded to tracking you has made me oblivious, Pioneers, O pioneers!
Set your calendar alarms, even on the desktop in the basement, turn up the volume, AWAKE! Log in to your networks, Pioneers, O pioneers!

__________

Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman

COME my tan-faced children, 
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready, 
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
COME my iconned children, follow well online, mobiles in hand. Have you your flaming fingers? Have you your sharp-edged tongues? Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here, 
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, 
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot drop off here, We must post my friends, we must bear the brunt of lost privacy, we the youthful early adopters, all the rest on us depend. Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you youths, Western youths, 
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, 
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you youths, Western youths, so quick to test, full of data, full of public pride and networks, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping for the camera, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted? 
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the 
seas? 
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Have the elders shushed you? Do they tire of teaching dignity, wearied over the divide? We take up task of building bridges, and carry their worry alone. Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the past we leave behind, 
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world, 
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the past we leave alive, We dawn a newer, mightier world, varied world, New and ubiquitous the stream we generate, stream of life and our footprints. Pioneers! O pioneers!
We detachments steady throwing, 
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, 
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
We attachments steadily embed, Down the glass fibers, through packets, upload heave, Felling networks, mobbing, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers!

We primeval forests felling, 
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines 
within, 
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
We media barriers damaging, We the data sharing, vexing we and exposing deep our minds eye, We the landscape net surveying, we the unused space filling, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Colorado men are we, 
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high 
plateaus, 
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All earth’s men are we, From the cellular waves and T3 lines, from the great doomed dungeons and the high moon seas, From the schools and from the streets, from the lonely trails we come, Pioneers! O pioneers!

From Nebraska, from Arkansas, 
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental 
blood intervein’d, 
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the 
Northern, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
From plain sight, from kitchen corner, an unending sea are we, from our phones, with the satellite link in between, All the keys of comrades clicking, all the polar opposites, Pioneers! O pioneers!
O resistless restless race! 
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all! 
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O coffeeful surfing race! O beloved race in all! O my fingers ache with tender Tweets for you all! O I miss you when I’m offline, Invisible rapture in electronic ties, Pioneers! O pioneers!
Raise the mighty mother mistress, 
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, 
(bend your heads all,) 
Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon’d 
mistress, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
See my children, resolute children, 
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter, 
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
On and on the compact ranks, 
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly 
fill’d, 
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O to die advancing on! 
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come? 
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d. 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the pulses of the world, 
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat, 
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Life’s involv’d and varied pageants, 
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, 
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the hapless silent lovers, 
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked, 
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
I too with my soul and body, 
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, 
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions 
pressing, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Lo, the darting bowling orb! 
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets, 
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
These are of us, they are with us, 
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait 
behind, 
We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you daughters of the West! 
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives! 
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Minstrels latent on the prairies! 
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your 
work,) 
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Not for delectations sweet, 
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious, 
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Do the feasters gluttonous feast? 
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors? 
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Has the night descended? 
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding 
on our way? 
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Till with sound of trumpet, 
Far, far off the daybreak call-hark! how loud and clear I hear it 
wind, 
Swift! to the head of the army!-swift! spring to your places, 
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Here’s a great list @PublicityGuru posted on Twitter today. Lists a ton of cliché phrases that should be avoided when writing press releases and other official documents.

You can find the list here: http://suspense.net/whitefish/cliche.htm#

Some of the great ones: Whole Hog, The Real McCoy, Hell-Bent For Leather — lots of funny stuff there. Check it out.

Click over to the website of my friend Chris Cavs (I know, I’m a Chris Cavs, he’s a Chris Cavs) to see my guest post today.

http://www.parttimevagabond.com/2010/05/friday-snapshot-ocean-city/

Chris Cavs posts about his travels and the part time traveling life at “Part Time Vagabond, the intersection of travel, outdoor life, and good craft beer.”

Check out his great site. It’ll give you the adventure bug!

-Christine Cavalier, PurpleCar

Those of you that don’t “get” Twitter aren’t having fun with us avid Tweeters. I could spend days on Twitter with my clever and snappy (and sometimes hilariously grumpy) crew.  My “Tweeps” provide me with distraction and comfort, humor and support. During yesterday’s 24 mile ride that included BikeDC, my Twitter people were right there with me, awaiting my pictures and updates on how close I was to the finish line. Today, I’m under a bit of pressure to get some writing done on deadline. I was just writing through one of those desperate, eye-strain moments a few minutes ago. My eyes started watering, my head is heavy with allergies and I feel like I could go to sleep right now. Obviously I need to get up and get a glass of milk (or coffee!), and I’ll do that. But I needed more than a break after I wrote a sentence so full of typos that it looked like I wasn’t writing in English; I needed a little encouragement. When “Introduction” came out on the screen as “Introducation,” I just stopped and realized it was time for that break and playful jab.

I popped over to Twitter and posted this tweet:

Define "Introducation" pls.

Within minutes, my witty friends online answered the call:

Great Tweeters Don't All Think Alike

How great are they? Just the pick-me-up I needed!

You can follow these witty people on Twitter here: @Sheepthemoon, @MariAdkins, @victorcajiao, @motownmutt, @Curiosity63, @martin_english

And please add your own definitions in the comments.

-Christine Cavalier