Quote: This is a quote you have overheard. Not something you saw on a
billboard. And not something you heard on the radio or on television.

Where: This is a place in Minnesota

Overheard by: Max

New Eyelashes, originally uploaded by smooth_d.

So, here are the new eyelashes. Please ignore the fact that I need an eyebrow wax. I know. I’ve been meaning to blog about them for a week now but I’ve just been so busy. Between transferring Overheard to WordPress, which was only mildly successful and still in progress, finding the perfect base template and redesigning it, trying hard to squeeze in MetroMix stuff into every free moment, random side projects, dealing with my Condo Association B.S., sleeping, eating and pooping, I’ve barely had time to do anything else. Oh, except go out drinking and catch a couple good movies.

Coco and Jen are happy to be drinking, originally uploaded by smooth_d.
The highlights of past, present and future:

-I think I got a drink named after me down at The Strip Club. Originally suggested Angie Bee, because it’s based off the Honey Bee, I may go back and suggest Smooth Dee. That was Jeremy’s idea. It’s a delicious, delicious drink.

-The Association stuff seems to be turning around and I may not actually have to commit myself into the loony bin. I don’t want to get into too much detail because it’s boring, confusing and always gets me worked up to talk about the crappy parts. I also don’t want to jinx it all by talking about it.

-The eyelashes, of course. They’re fabulous. Thanks, jeNC17!

-Martini Tour at LoTo tomorrow with Lesley who has moved to St Paul recently to class up the joint.

-The Wicker Man at Bunny and Coco’s last night. It was amazing and hilarious and crazy and stupid. I loved it. Almost as much as I loved the pretzel and marshmallow wicker man center piece, which I didn’t eat because marshmallow? Mm-Mm. No.

-It hit 41 degrees earlier this week.

Some lowlights of past, present and future:

-It hit -4 this morning. Hey, winter, we get it but we’re over you now. At least lend some consistency to your madness. Teasing us with 41 before slapping us with -4 is what drives people to do crazy, crazy things. Like, defiantly wear a skirt sans tights this morning. WTF was I thinking?

-The Association stuff. What’s the good if there isn’t a bad? I don’t like being underestimated because I’m female, being conned (or attempted, anyway) or not being listened to. If I tell you not to call me during my work day, I don’t really see why that’s so hard to follow. Not before 5pm on weekdays does not mean at 9:30 every morning. 8:15 on Sundays is also listed under Unacceptable.

-Speaking of… Association meeting tomorrow afternoon. It’s going to be a rough one, followed by dinner at TSC and aforementioned martini tour.

-Had drinks with the big brother the other night. Learned interesting news. I know this is probably along the lines of “tattling” (oh boo hoo) but perhaps my father should brace himself for that phone call. It involves a Uhaul. Who knows though, perhaps my lecture, berating and disappointment changed his mind. Doubtful though, because I tend to not know what the hell I’m talking about.

-We’re preparing to have the rows of cubicles moved closer to each other to make room for more rows. Our comfortable 10 feet or so will be reduced to about 4. Holy moly. Four feet? I can smell your socks from that distance, and listen to your phone conversations, and now there will be no buffer between me and the baby with the smelly diaper you’ll probably bring in.

-My dishwasher is not draining. This is probably the worst of all, because I’m handwashing my dishes and now I’ll have to waste an entire afternoon waiting on a repairman to show up in the 8 hour time frame I know they’ll give me only to tell me they can’t fix it that day, or something. And then charge me my left leg for it.

So, there’s that.

On the plus side, it’s totally Friday today and I’ll have a three day weekend next week. Woo.

Several months back I was interviewed by a freelance writer for some thoughts on OIM; how it’s doing, plans for the future, etc. During the conversation I casually mentioned an interaction I had with the folks over at Overheard in New York that consisted of me emailing them, somewhat out of naivety but totally harmless, for advice on a few topics, including advertising. I was politely advised they did not mind my starting an Overheard site, but that they would not assist in developing a competing business. While I thought it was a tad on the ridiculous side at the time (my thought process at the time: their city population is more than our entire state, so competing I thought was a stretch), I completely side with their response and I hold no hard feelings at all. I mean, hello, if it weren’t for them, I never would have come up with this.

Fast forward a couple months to a follow up email stating she was not able to sell the story then, but now she’s working for City Pages and would like to put something in their Blotter, especially with the 1st Year Annivesary party approaching. I answered a few additional questions and hoped to see it show up in a few days. She also wanted to know more about that above story and even though I was trying to stress that there was no story, that it was not a big deal, she went ahead and contacted the people at Overheard in New York.

They basically told her the same thing and pointed out their newer addition, Overheard Everywhere where they not only accept submissions from, well, everywhere, but they also accumlate some of what they consider the best of the other Overheards across the world, give them their own headlines and link back to our sites. This is something I have been aware of for some time, and OIM has appeared on there quite a few times. I very much appreciate this part of their site. Who wouldn’t?

So, now I’m embarrassed. Actually, this calls for something stronger. I am fucking embarrassed. Something that occured over a year ago that probably wasn’t even a blip on their radar anymore, and it’s brought back to their attention in a way that definitely suggests I’m sitting over here bitter to the point that it’s being picked up by a journalist. Perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill here. One could argue they probably don’t give a rat’s ass about me or that exchange back then, but maybe they do. I quickly respond to her to clarify that if she intends to go with that angle for the story that it must include the fact that I agree with them on their response, hold no bad feelings, and that I am grateful for the spotlights they put on my little website. She agrees and acknowledges that it’s “not quite as tight of an angle” as she thought it was.

Fast forward a couple more weeks, and not a single word has been uttered, that I can tell, anywhere in their Blotter or elsewhere, and the party was a week ago. So I’m wondering why a scandal has to be what gets covered about OIM. Is it because of CP or because of the reporter? Either way, it made me feel pretty lousy, and nothing even ran!

Thank you.

PS, If I’m wrong and just missed it, someone please point it out and I will replace above post with an apology. I am not completely unapologetic. But until then, you’ve lost a reader and a supporter.

Who is ready for this Friday’s birthday bash? If you didn’t get the evite, which I’m sure you did because the only two people other than my folks that read this talk to me on a daily basis anyway, here are the details:

Mac’s Industrial Sports Bar @ 6:00pm Friday, July 13th to celebrate Overheard in Minneapolis’ 1 year Anniversary. It’s also slightly less known that yours truly takes a step into the next age bracket, or more specifically, 29. So, I hope to see you there! Pass it along. (Something I tried to do via MySpace but my anger with them grows more every day. Apparently you can only add one friend at a time to an event invitation. I ask you, how ridiculous is that when you have 293 friends, and their “add friend by location” doesn’t recognize anyone in Minneapolis, MN. Um, ok. Ridiculous!)

(via.)

I had Overheard’s June entries rated and this is what it spit at me:


This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* ass (6x)
* sex (3x)
* poop (2x)
* hurt (1x)

When I had it rate just the first page, the recent posts received a “PG” rating based on the presence of the following words:

* gay (2x)
* dead (1x)

I am not sure why they didn’t appear when it looked at the whole month. At any rate, you heard it here first! Overheard in Minneapolis should have a Parental Warning! Back off kiddies!

Overheard in Minneapolis - now on CafePress!

I see you looking at me like that. “CafePress, really?” Yes. It’s free, and I can design my own stuff.

Just testing the waters, really. If it goes well with the two shirts and stickers, I’ll look into adding additional products. But who knows, I might just sell one, and that was to me!

Today, I received the silliest and weakest form of “hate” mail. Actually, calling it hate mail is too dramatic. It’s more like “I kind of don’t like you” mail.

From Bethany Wiseman of …I don’t know, somewhere where there isn’t enough to do:

I’m not sure if you were going for irony, but if you were, it was lost on me. What am I talking about? This: “Your Futures, In His Hands.” Perhaps you meant “Your Future is in His Hands,” or “Your Future, His Hands,” or even a “Your Futures, His Hands” would be acceptable. I reported you to the grammar police on facebook. We’ve mocked you plenty. I’m positive somebody over there at overheard has an FB account so check it out: http://minnesota.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31105683&id=199100056&ref=nf . If for some reason the link doesn’t work, search for the group “I judge you when you use poor grammar.” Once there, browse photos until you find the overheard picture. Have a good day! =)

Clearly, I should be afraid. The grammar police on Facebook aren’t to be toyed with. Okay, that was sarcasm. Actually, Facebook sucks. If you take the internets.com seriously, you’d be on MySpace. Otherwise, I am just not listening.

When I first read this, I thought she was being funny. “We’ve mocked you plenty.” That’s comedy right there! Then I realized she was serious. She really wanted to let me know that she mocks me. On the internet. For grammar. The ending of the email indicates to me that she really, honest-to-goodness felt she told me good. (see, I can do shitty grammar on this site, too!)

In reality, nobody who posts on the internet lets grammar take a back seat, so after my full belly laugh dried up, I started to feel bad. Especially since I’m being mocked on the internet. I might cry.

Later that day…
In a second response from her, she told me she mostly just wanted me to fix it so I wouldn’t look foolish any longer.

All sarcasm aside now. I’m well aware of the grammatical imperfection of that headline. It’s a headline, not a sentence. A bunch of people sat around all day mocking this one headline on Facebook. Trust me, Bethany, I am not the one who feels foolish about this. I do hope you accept my correction though. I’d be sad to disappoint you again.

But this made my day!

I officially reply.

Stay tuned!

This month’s Minnesota Monthly puts a tiny, if not really dim but still visible, spotlight on Overheard!

Aaron has been kind enough to take a picture of the page and put it on his flickr account. Thanks for the heads up, Aaron!

Thank you, “tazochai” for resetting my moral compass. What would the world do without people like you? Just imagine… people out there using someone else’s idea to make money! That, like, never happens. I bet this person never eats at restaurants or shops in stores. I mean, they have the audacity to make money off an unorginal idea. Patronizing those places would make them a hypocrite. As you can tell from the tone of the email, this person is perfect in every way.

Am I supposted to feel bad for being an unoriginal, unimaginative copycat? I suppose I would if I weren’t actually making money from it. That does not suggest humble things about me, but I should point out that I don’t care.
All this from the person who has one of the most unoriginal email signatures on the planet. But I’m not here to throw stones.

from tazochai
to overheardinmpls@gmail.com
date Feb 1, 2007 8:44 AM
subject copycat

Hello,
A friend sent me a link to your site:
http://www.overheardinminneapolis.com/about.html

Near as I can tell, you are not associated with the people
that had this idea over at http://overheardinnewyork.com/

Which makes you a bunch of copycat asshats. You even have
the audacity to try to make money off of this through the
ads you have on your site.

If I’m incorrect, and you really do have permission to take
the overheard idea and run with it, then you will have my
apologies, and I suggest you make the relationship with new
york much more obvious on your site. However, I bet I’m
right, and you really have no imagination whatsoever, or
morals, if you’re trying to make money off someone else’s
idea.

p.s. I already wrote to overheardinnewyork about your site

— If PacMan had affected us as kids we’d be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to electronic music

You are correct in that we are not associated with OINY.

In fact, neither are any of the other 2 dozen or so cities and states that have their own Overheard site. But I would imagine you have already researched them and sent them the exact same email.

I had already contacted OINY several months back, but thank you for your concern and action. I am a better person, now.

Best,
Overheard in Minneapolis.