This is the one with the anatomy of a good board game night.

In the past couple of months I’ve been invited to a couple of board game nights at different people’s homes and I’ve come to realize that there are specific ingredients and rules one must follow to have a successful board game night.  I’ve outlined those rules for you here:

1. Diverse Set Of Games – You need word games.  Strategy games.  Card games.  Fast games.  Slow games.  You can’t have too many games.  You don’t have to play all the games, but having a very diverse selection to choose from will be helpful once you get all the different personalities in a room.
2. Diverse Set Of Players - You’ll have a lot more fun if you have people in the room that have never met.  It’s enjoyable to get to know someone as they’re arguing his case in Apples to Apples.  And it’s fun to trash talk a stranger’s responses in Scattegories.
3. No Children/Annoying Pets – Your kids are cute, and your dogs are cuter.  But do we really need to stop the timer because you have to change a diaper or take your dogs out?  Seriously?  How do you live like this?!
4. Snacks – Of course you must have snacks…but the snacks you choose are important.  Think of your friends handling your board games.  How dirty do you want their hands?  Then think of your friends playing board games with forks in their hands.  There is a middle point.  Find it.
5. Boozy Games - Toward the end of the evening all of your prudish friends will have left, and the only ones left will be the drunks.  Make sure you have a game or two that allows all the wasted people to enjoy their drunkenness.  For the record RISK or MONOPOLY are not good games to start past 10pm. 

What am I missing?

This is another one not inteded for me.

As you may know, I get emails all the time that are intended for a different Mike Lawson.  My email address is simply MikeLawson at gmail…so I sometimes get emails intended for Mike Lawsons that have more complicated email addresses (MikeLawson7@gmail.com for example) and the sender has just left off the extras.

This week I got two emails that weren’t supposed to be sent to me.  The first was from The Home Improver Club.  According to the email I signed up for some club through Home Depot, and I’ll now receive “Home Improver Club communications” (spam) at this address.  Wonderful.

The second email was much funnier.  And I swear to god I’m not making this up…so I’m going to show you the screen captures to prove it.

My response:

Do you think this Sherri woman had some meaningless hookup and was trying to define a hookup for some playa named Mike Lawson?  What was the purpose of the original email?!

This is the one that I had nothing to do with.

I was driving in Tempe this week and came across this vandalized political sign:

I get a really big kick out of people vandalizing political signs.  I have never actually vandalized a sign myself.  But something about people being so passionate that they ADD to a sign, instead of just destroy or remove it, is powerful.  I’m not advocating anyone to go out and destroy a political sign.  Those things cost money.  I get that.

But let me tell you a fun tale from a few years ago when I was in Orange County writing for a political blog.

It all started when this guy named Tan Nguyen won the Republican primary for the 47th Congressional District.  His campaign focused solely on the issue of illegal immigration…which was odd since the 47th is pretty heavy Democratic and pretty heavy Latino.  But whatever…

One of Nguyen’s strategies was to cover the district with his bright green signs.  It was impossible to drive through the district without seeing one of these things.  And I started noticing that people were vandalizing them.  And since I worked for a political blog called The Liberal OC, and he was a Republican candidate, I stopped and documented the vandalized signs when I saw them.

People started enjoying the pictures I kept finding.

And eventually people started emailing me locations of tagged up signs.

As the posts got more and more popular, the Tan Nguyen supporters started attacking me.  For example, this is one comment I received:

This is the one that is personal.

This post was inspired by a conversation I had recently with my friend Bethany who has a blog called Me With D.  She’s wonderful, and if you are interested in reading a diabetes blog, check her out.

The gist of our conversation was this: where does a blogger draw the line between blog readers and personal friends?  How does one…or I guess is it necessary to keep your two online identities separate?

I’m super connected.  My blog is linked to my Facebook which is linked to my twitter which is linked to my blog…etc, etc.  Some of my Facebook friends I met on twitter, or they are blog readers.

My personal point of view is this: if someone is reading my blog or following me on Twitter, they’re probably doing it because they (a) know me (b) also blog and twitter or (c) enjoy my insipid tales of writing to people in prison or singing songs at inappropriate times.  Whatever the case, I’m pretty confident that there aren’t any scary Internet stalkers out there that are going to hunt me down and carve their initials in my car or anything.

I guess this opinion is parallel to the one I wrote here called This is the one about scary Internet witches that want to kidnap your children and cook them. Ten years ago people feared that the Internet would find a way to intrude on their lives in the same way Ray Bradbury wrote about in Fahrenheit 451…that we would all eventually stop being the viewers and become the viewed.  Which if you think about it, has happened.  All of us broadcast to the world what we’re doing at any given moment.  But the prophetable (did I just make that word up??) words of Bradbury and Huxley never predicted the usefulness of being constantly watched…or at least constantly available to be watched.

It’s easy for us to say that over-sharing our information will lead to bad things.  Protect our privacy to protect ourselves…right?  The only problem with the privacy-is-so-important stuff is that we’re not giving value to mass sharing.  Just a couple of weeks ago, for example, I tweeted that I was going to see a show and had two extra tickets.  And Keesha and her husband, who I had not before met and know solely through blogging, responded and showed up…and the four of us had a lovely evening.

And I could even make the case that the most personal of stories I share here are the ones that get the most comments and affect people the most deeply.  I’ve received more comments and emails about the Diabetes Police video and my coming out story which are both SUPER personal, than any others.  Gay and straight.  Diabetic and non-diabetic.

So to cut to it…yes, I get personal here.  That’s why I do this.  If I had to somehow edit out details, it would almost not be worth doing.  Additionally, it’s too difficult for me to keep up two separate online identities.  Truthfully, it’s hard to squeeze in enough time to update one Facebook,twitter and blog.
So since I’m in the mood for over-sharing, here you go:

This is the one that is self-fulfilling.

I blogged here that every time I drive through one of the photo enforcement zones that I make a funny face.  Well, on June 10th at 11:28pm I was on the 10 freeway headed home and this happened:

You may be wondering why I have a photo of 11:28pm on June 10th.  Well, the truth is I was going about 78 miles per hour…even though the posted limit is 65 miles per hour.  Damn it.

This is the one with a photo of a fifth grader.

I’ve blogged before about how I get random emails from people because my email address is just my name at gmail.com.

I got this strange urinal sign emailed to me.  And I blogged about the time that I replied to a mis-sent email about a fishing trip here.

Since then I’ve also been included in a bizarre email thread about posting bail for someone in South Dakota.

And the latest is an email that said, “Here are two picture of one of my 5th grade students.”  And attached were two pictures (including the one inserted into this post).

I replied to the woman and said “Umm…cool.  But who are you?  And why are you sending me pictures of children.”

The teacher replied and told me that “I’m a resource children at Arcola.  We were told to send pictures to you for the 5th grade slide show.”

I was half-tempted to take the two photos she sent me and put them into a Power Point, and email it back.  But I’ve been too busy for practical jokes.

This is the one about scary Internet witches that want to kidnap your children and cook them.

I’ve worked around children in some capacity for the past eleven years, and I’ve heard plenty of strong opinions about kids and social media.  The general consensus is that websites like Myspace and Facebook are a sexual predator’s playground and children have nothing to gain from such virtual cesspools.  From my experience, however, the benefits of socializing on the Interweb by young people are so many that it’s hurtful for us to continue making it difficult for youth to socialize on the net.

Let’s simplify this for a second: teens – who have traditionally been difficult to motivate to read or write – are spending their free time reading and writing.  Teens – who aren’t widely known for using their analytical skills or for socializing outside of their comfort zones – are using their analytical skills to diversify their circle of friends.  What’s wrong with any of that?

Don’t get me wrong.  I know that there are creeps trolling the web trying to talk to your children.  In fact, if you search the Internet long enough you’ll be able to find some antiquated article from a paper like the Tallahassee Times about some teen that made a bad choice to meet some pervert at a Waffle House on a Friday night.  I get that.  I know they are out there.  But I also know that if you send your pre-teen out to the mall on a Friday night there are equally pervy guys out there and that threat is just as real.  And don’t you remember the wave of stories in the late 80s where men were driving up to groups of unsuspecting young women and exposing themselves?

If I were a parent (and every day that I look at my little-bitty bank account, I’m glad that I’m not), I would avoid completely banning social networking.  I’d tell my children about the perverts that are out at the mall, on the internet, and maybe even working at the local grocery story…but I wouldn’t try to scare them into thinking every person at the mall, on the interent, or working at the grocery story was a child-molesting scumbag.  I would warn my kids about over-sharing personal information to any stranger (on the internet or otherwise)…but I would still encourage them to blog, update status messages, and share their feelings to their social networks online.

So I guess my overall point is this: the ban-all-things-cool-about-the-internet-because-we-are-afraid-of-scary-internet-monsters approach won’t work.  Kids are smart, and when mom, dad or the school principal start telling cautionary tales about Internet witches that want to kidnap children and cook them in a children-shaped oven, they tune you out and miss the real message: don’t assume that everyone is good.  End of story.

This is the one with my 12 of 12.

On the 12th day of each month bloggers all over the world take 12 photos throughout the day and post them on their blogs. It’s Chad Darnell’s idea, and you can see his website and a list of links here.

To see my photos from past months, click here.

Here are my photos from June 12, 2010.

After working out I went to my favorite place in Tempe…the Public Library.  And this visit earned me the mayorship on Foursquare.

I ended up getting a book on CD (a book I’ve read about five times…don’t ask) and the newest James Patterson paperback.

Nobody has ever been able to give me a definitive answer to this very important question: is it legal to drive while listening to an iPod?

I stopped at work to get some crap done that I knew I wouldn’t have time to do next week.  Summer Camp is both fun and exhausting.  Eleven hour workdays are draining.

This is my in-box.  Half of it just needs to be filed away.  The other half is crap I haven’t had time to look at yet.

Stopped and had coffee with Drew at Lola Coffee in Phoenix.

I love this building.  Hanny’s is an old department store that they’ve turned into a restaurant/bar.  Totally over-priced but the building is freaking cool.

Too many people are tweeting about and Facebook about soccer.  Totally bugs.  Maybe I’m just jealous that I don’t get it.

Thanks to a review on Yelp, Drew and I found a quaint Vietnamese place that was delicious and cheap as hell.

This is Chloe.  She is too hyper to sit still for pictures.  This is the best one out of about 100.

I hate the term “night-cap” to describe an alcoholic beverage sipped right before bed or at the end of an evening.  Therefore I will not use that term to describe this Coke Zero and Vodka beverage that was consumed before calling it a night.

The ever-so persistent D.  Gotta check my blood before bed.

This is the one about a few books.

I’m pretty sure I’ve read more books than this…I’ve just kind of gotten behind on writing about them here.  But whatever.  I’m only updating this list to keep count.

#22 – The Truth About Stacey – Babysitters Club Book No. 3

#23 – Lullabies for Little Criminals – By Heather O’Neil

#24 – Cross Country – By James Patterson

#25 – Slouching Toward Bethlehem – Joan Didion (okay…I’ve read this book about a million times, but I recently re-read it front to back on a Sunday evening)

So I’m only a quarter of the way to 100.  And the year is about half over.  So there is really no way I’d ever be able to read 100 books in a year.

This is the one that gives me joy.

When you work for ten plus hours with the same group of 100 kids, you start to create different ways to entertain yourself.

One of my primary sources of daily entertainment includes getting kids to sing for me.  I do this two ways.  The first is a tit-for-tat sort of thing.  I say “do you want to do activity X?  Then someone in here needs to sing me a song that I like or tell me a joke that makes me literally laugh out loud (LLOL).”  Kids get up and I audition their talents.  It’s funny because the kids have started to figure out that I really like songs from commercials, and they’ve been testing out any commercial song they can think of.  Right now just about every kid in the Club sings “London Gold…it’s the best” subconsciously.  That stupid jingle is stuck in EVERYONE’s head.
I’ve also been teaching kids songs that they’d probably normally never know…like Manic Monday by the Bangles.  I just randomly yell “It’s just another Manic Monday” and the kids respond with the Woo-woo-woo part.  Here’s an audio sample of our greatness:

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Crap, it’s going to be a long summer.