Doreen Michele

The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse. Writing on the internet -- or doing anything at all meaningful on the internet -- is challenging because there are roughly eight billion people on planet earth right now and you can't please all of the people all of the time . The Overton Window -- or window of discourse -- will vary from one group and one person to the next. Exactly what is acceptable will depend on the details of the life of any given individual and the history of any given group. When posting online, you need to account for various Overton Windows at the same time in the same piece. In the movie Patton , the main character slaps a soldier and this leads to him being demoted. Other sources suggest the decision to replace him had already been made and the slap was not the cause, but the slap -- in actual reality, he slapped two different soldiers -- g

I'm basically a total fucking loser. I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class, along with my Korean best friend who was number two and some guy who was number one. I had a raftload of impressive academic credentials for a high school student from the "backwater" state of Georgia, including State Alternate for the Governor's Honors program, a residential summer enrichment program for gifted students. That means in tenth grade, only two other people in the state of Georgia outperformed me (likely both were older than me) for applying to the program in a specific subject area and had one of them failed to be able to participate, I would have taken their place. I achieved that placement after somewhat flippantly choosing some subject or other (maybe journalism) as my area of interest because unlike most of the other gifted kids in my school, I didn't have some stand-out area of strength. I was someone doing well overall and it was essen

In the movie The Pickup Artist , Molly Ringwald's character utters my all-time favorite movie line: I'm too truthful to be good. I have apparently always been socially insightful. I was probably the bratty child yelling "The emperor has no clothes" and getting away with being rude, crude and socially unacceptable because I was cute as a button. When you are four, people laugh uncomfortably and don't explain to you why they are laughing. Being four, you stupidly think you are a talented comedian and then you spend your twenties and thirties baffled as to why everyone routinely gives you the death glare and wants your head on a pike instead of appreciating your witty insight and sense of humor. Me being me, I didn't stop being honest. I just tried to find ways to express myself that were less likely to have people wanting my head on a pike. This is a large part of why I blog. I still find social stuff very interesting, I see a need in the world for hig

I recentely read an online article with local news. Nowhere in the article does it actually name the state and the name of the publication is generic enough it doesn't give clues as to the location. I poked around the site and found a county name somewhere, maybe in the same article, maybe in a different article. I googled the city name and the spelling is unusual such that it might be a unique city name though there are definitely other cities with names that sound the same. If this article were printed in a physical newspaper bought locally, using just the city name would be fine. You would know from context exactly which city was intended. But when an article is posted online, people can potentially trip across it from anywhere in the world. You are no longer talking to just locals and even if the city name is unique, not everyone will automatically know that. Don't assume your audience will go digging for more info like I did to try to figure out exactly where

I am at long last officially launching The Cute and the Dead . I think it is my fourth comic and its roots go back more than a decade to when I had a corporate job. While I had that job, I brainstormed ideas but didn't really pursue doing the comic at that time in part because I was working full time and couldn't devote the time to it. There have been two prior incarnations of this comic under different names. Then one day a few years ago I blurted out the phrase "the cute and the dead" and really liked it, so I started a new comic under that name and moved the best of bits of a previous comic to it. I have had a lot of positive feedback from people knowledgeable about web comics. I have been told the artwork is adequate -- actually was told some very flattering things about my ability to show perspective and movement, etc -- and was told that each panel has enough action. My understanding is that you need to update a comic at least three days a week to get tr

Many years ago, I read an anecdote about an American man working in Asia. He was frustrated with his communication difficulties with the locals which ran deeper than simply a language barrier. One day, he felt like he was finally making progress and a colleague of his commented that they were "Thinking along parallel lines." He enthusiastically agreed and hoped this meant their communication difficulties would soon be a thing of the past. He hoped to soon see a genuine meeting of the minds, but much to his frustration, this did not come to pass. It was soon apparent that nothing had really changed. When he asked his colleague "What about what you said about us thinking along parallel lines?" the reply he got was "Parallel lines never meet." The same words can mean very different things to different people. Context helps inform us what is intended but to some degree how your words get interpreted depends on what is in the mind of the person reading th