The Dewey Awards, a parking ticket, and an evil monkey who lives in my closet.

Last night, at about 4 in the morning, I decided to slack off and set my alarm for 10:30am. "Six and a half hours of sleep is going to hit the spot!" I said to the evil monkey who lives in my closet. The evil monkey said nothing to back, and so I drifted off into dreamworld. 11 and a half hours later, I woke up. For about 30 seconds, I staired at my clock reading 2:30 PM. "Damn it, now I have to get up and set my clock to read 10:30am." The evil monkey began to laugh hysterically from my closet. It was at tis moment, that I realized my clock wasn't a time machine.

Gradually, I came to understand that those numbers "2:30" meant something. It meant that I missed Wonkette, and Al Franken's talk... which is just as well. I'm not particularly interested in public personalities and celebrities; if the speaker feels a need to escape through the back of the building, than I could care less about what they have to say.  I'm interested in the conversations, and the world changing minds at this conference.

Then suddenly it hit me, "I have an hour and 30 mins to get to the Dewey Awards ceremony", the monkey cackled in odd sort of forced way that was becoming of a bad actor. "Hope you win!", said the monkey.

I got to the awards ceremony with 15 mins to spare. To be honest, I was embarrased to be there. They introduced the nominees, and phrases such as, "Has raised tons of money to help underpriveledged youth get access to technology", or "Has worked for over 15 years, selflessly, to get at risk youth interested in the artistic possibilities of digital film making."  Then, they introduced me as someone who helps "host" the progressive blog alliance. The ego in me wanted, to yell, "I was just being humble! I didn't want to put "founded, organized, maintains and keeps order" on the Progressive blog alliance's homepage! It would have looked egotistical!" But, I then I caught the delicious irony.

I was proud, though, that they quoted the mission statement that I wrote:

The PBA is an emergent, self-organized network of independent activists, journalists, and writers. It demands its members to show complete intolerance for oppression, bigotry, ignorance, violence, corruption, and exploitation.

Anyhow, as they were about to announce the award, I suddenly realized something: "I didn't prepare anything to say!" In suspense, I repeated to myself, "please don't say me.." And thank god, they didn't. They gave the award to someone who truly deserves it: a school teacher named Roger Steele, who has been teaching 10 an 11 years old how to use digital technology and clay to make movies. F@#king increadible, if you ask me. I wish Roger Steele, and this sort of technology had been around when I was that age.

After the awards, I began talking to Roger. He is one of those incredibily animinated types that has that fresh curiosity and love of life that eliminates everyone around him. We talked for about 30 mins, and exchanged information. I offered to get him off of frontpage, and should be setting him up several new civicspace driven site to organize his multiple projects. The wonderful woman who was hosting the awards then came up to me and said, "I want to cry, that was exactly what Dewey would have done." I then felt someone smiling at me, but when I looked up, all I could see was the ceiling. That Dewey is such a raskle!

P.S. Only Squares have time to worry about parking tickets. Gotta, run, I'll proof read and add links to this entry later. I have truly sexy party to attend: The EFF/Creative Commons party; something tells me I will find a lot of my kind of people there.