Last week, on the day of the Mashable Austin party, I posted an alarming message on Twitter (which in turn ended up on Facebook):

Blood on my shirt. I'll explain later.

I never got around to telling the story, but my friend from LCP, Danu, has been persistent in her inquiries. She cares.

Here's the story. Last Wednesday, at Social Media Camp, I was having a grand old time chitty chatting with people I usually only see online.

I was wearing a nice white shirt with black stripes and carrying around my laptop bag the whole day.

At one point, I was hanging out by the bar talking to someone and they said, "Is that blood on your shirt?"

Usually, in the movies, someone says that and it means the person they're talking to has just been shot. They look down and there's a giant spreading pool of blood soaking through their shirt. Had I just been assassinated? Whom had I pissed off? The list could be long.



You can't see it so well in that photo, but I had several spots of blood on my upper left side and up near the shoulder.

I looked down and went, "What the fuck!?" Then I quickly excused myself to go to the bathroom.

I looked down and saw that the quick of my thumb was crusted with dried blood. How long had I been walking around a bloody mess? How many people had I chatted with, smiling, as they were thinking, "Oh, well, he obviously murdered his wife this morning."

In the bathroom, I washed my thumb and tried my best to blot the blood on the shirt, succeeding only in spreading it around. I took off my giant nametag and tried to cover up the most egregious spots, but I still had a few bit of blood peeking out from the top.

And then I figured out what had happened. I injured my thumb somehow without noticing and as I was carrying around my bag, I had my thumb wedged backward between my shirt and the leather strap. My thumb must have been leaving little bloody trails up and down the shirt while I was walking around.

Nobody seemed to notice the blood after that (or if they did, they were too polite to call it out). But I had a whole party to attend that night and no change of clothes. I suppose I could gone and bought a new shirt, but I was pressed for time.

That night, I soaked the shirt in some soap and now the spots are completely gone. I can't even find where on the shirt they used to be. So, sadly, there will be no poignant Brokeback Mountain ending reenactment.

There's the bloody shirt story. Disappointing, right?

Business in the front first, ladies: I wrote a story in Sunday's paper about using Twitter (sort of like, "Hey, I'm on Twitter. Now what?") that got some nice attention and which inspired this very lively online chat that I moderated in the morning. The chat ran fast and furious and it was all my poor eyes and fingers could do to keep up. I think this Twitter thing might have legs.

I also wrote a review in Sunday's newspaper of the spectacularly bad new search engine Cuil.com. The story didn't make it online, but I got your back with the Digital Savant version of the review. Texty!

We took Lilly to Landa Park on Saturday and apparently she is going to be a swimmer. The water was freezing, but she wanted to go in anyway. While we shivered, she sank in the water and paddled, all happy. What is up with that? Is she part mermaid? Is that a recessive-gene thing? Oh, God, we're going to have to send her to Mer-college.



We saw Dark Knight on Saturday night after much delay and it was so good it just took my goddamned breath away. I've seen every Christopher Nolan movie since Memento (yes, including Insomnia) and I have loved watching the brothers Nolan grow and learn and expand and this feels like the culmination of their dark, complex arts. Everyone is comparing the movie to Batman Begins, for obvious reasons, but the real parallels I saw were with The Prestige, with all the turnarounds and misdirection.

Enough has been written about Ledger's Joker and I won't belabor the point here, but there was certainly more to the performance than licking of chops and cackles. He found the center of the character, which is impossible because The Joker's center is chaos and nihilism. It's an amazing thing to see. I could have watched another two hours of The Joker and, even though I don't think another Joker-centric film would have been in the cards even if Ledger had lived, I think he would have made for a Hell of a cameo. It's an impossible loss.

As if that weren't enough of a weekend, my brother came over last night and we had a very fun time amusing each other with this project we've been working on. I so enjoy what we're doing and hope it can continue.

Lastly, we put Lilly to bed very early and then I stayed up very late, unable to sleep. Amid the sea a'churnin' in my head, I thought about her most. She turns a year old next week. It feels at once like an immeasurably long stretch of time and also an instant. She grows and grows.

I got teary thinking about how we moved her out of our room. She's so much happier, it seems, and sleeps much better, but I still miss seeing her poke her head above the crib, gripping the slats, as I wake. I miss when she couldn't blaze across the room in a crawl. I'm sure there's plenty more I'll miss.

I'll miss Year One. It has been amazing.