Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll was one of the lucky ones.

Earlier this year, the freelance journo was kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq for 82 days. Her translator was killed during the abduction, and throughout it all, we hoped that she would not meet the same violent fate many abductees had met.

Thankfully, Jill lived to tell her tale.

And starting next week, she will share her story in an 11-part series set to appear in the Monitor entitled, “Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story.” You can read what Dave Cook, the Monitor’s Washington D.C. bureau chief had to say about the series here.

Call me a sucker. Call me a sap. Call me a Kool-Aid-drinking idealist. But I once believed in the Web’s potential.

Tonight, I saw something that made me doubt. And that something was Brawny Academy, an online reality serial about … well, about paper towels. It tells the story of several men who are gradually educated in the finer points of paper-towel use.

There’s an entry link for low-bandwidth users. There’s an entry link for high-bandwidth users (”For full-screen video and extra features”). There’s an RSS feed. On a site about paper towels.

Maybe the most disturbing thing about it, though, is how much the interface reminds me of Myst.

We talk to ourselves constantly, and most of the time what we’re doing is dictating the story of our lives: “I was that. I am this. I will be what I imagine for myself.” It’s a nice place to inhabit, as it gives us a comforting sense of continuity and hope and narrative flow. It’s as if the same faculty that lets us frame the past has given us the power to understand the present and the means to shape the future.

But as we get older the odds change, and the likelihood of surprise grows larger. The unexpected interrupts our story: unforeseen deaths, unwanted diagnoses, inexplicable failures — setbacks, however major or minor.

The most unsettling of these, perhaps, is when our story begins to be inhabited by someone else, by a stranger wearing the costume of someone we once knew or thought we knew.

Abigail Lewis’s wrenching story in the Sunday NYT tells of an accident, on an otherwise innocent night, when her husband, out walking the dog, was struck by a car and suffered irreversible brain damage.

Here she is taking him back to a residential care facility:

How do I live with myself? What kind of woman am I that I can leave my husband in this place? What about my wedding vows? Who am I that keeping hold of my own life is more important than taking care of my husband? But I can’t take care of him. The truth is that no single person, no two people could take care of a man in Rich’s condition.

Some of the residents are in the big dining room watching a movie starring Goldie Hawn, but I take Rich to his room, where I tell myself he will be comfortable. His single bed is neatly made, some of his clothes are folded on top — underwear, two sweatshirts. I gesture toward the chair. “Why don’t you sit down for a minute,” I suggest. “I will be back soon. I’m going to run a couple of errands.” I try not to register his bewildered expression. “I will be back soon.” I notice the plants need watering but I’ll do it next time.

You can read the painful rest here.

Does it really suck to be a mom in New York City?

Well, it certainly has it’s ups and downs to say the least.

After New York Magazine writer Emily Nussbaum chronicled the absurd (and often twisted) lives of mostly bitter uptown moms on UrbanBaby.com in Mothers Anonymous , there was Amy Sohn’s piece in the August 7th issue of the mag. Unlike many of the women in Emily’s piece who wax nasty about their lives, children and husbands, Amy offers her readers a glimpse into her own personal struggles as a mom trying to balance her desire to be a devoted parent, while still being a cool Brooklyn chick in A Glass of Wine and a Pacifier, Please.

And across the pond…

Mom Helen Kirwan-Taylor spills the beans on mothering (and it ain’t always pretty) in a Daily Mail piece entitled, Sorry, But My Children Bore Me to Death.

Um, so you get the gist of that story.

Anyway, with all of this maternal angst and frustration brewing, it’s only fitting that Gawker jump on the anti-June-Cleaver bandwagon with a very personal and very anonymous on-line diary called, Diary of a Park Slope Mommy:

To learn what’s going on in the minds of these people, we’ve found a willing diarist from the trenches of motherhood. Perhaps more importantly, she’s from the trenches of the most smug, self-righteous childrearing section of New York: Park Slope.

Say hello to Anon:

So here I am, the bitch in the brownstone, leaving my Maclaren at the bottom of the three flight walk-up. You know me: I’m the mom who lets her kids run untended through the Tea Lounge, while I sneer at your parenting; I’m the one at the Power Play birthday party who disapproves of the superhero-themed goody bags and the fruit-punch juice boxes; I’m the woman standing behind you in line at the Co-op, appalled at your choice of non-organic breakfast cereal. Face it: I’ve been judging you. These are your stories.

I wonder if this “mother of two” is really Gawker editor Jessica Coen?

That would be beautiful irony.

So at a recent SMITH blogger get-together, we were talking about Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. With that in mind, I thought this was a good video for today. It’s a fictitious movie trailer riffing off Anderson’s idea - sort of The Matrix meets The Empire Strikes Back. (Hence, The Bloggers Strike Back. Which is fine with me, as long as they’re not still in their pajamas. Have you ever seen a blogger in their pajamas? It’s not pleasant. Speaking of which, did I ever tell you about the time I shot an elephant in my pajamas?)

What does it take to finally drag my ass to An Inconvenient Truth? It’s been on the top of my list for months, but somehow there’s never a good time to be completely bummed out. What it takes is a heat wave in NYC and the desire to escape to a place with better air-con then exists in my apartment. With that hypocritical notion in play, my wife and I headed out to the 7:30pm showing of the sizzling Al Gore movie, and, as reported most everywhere (though David Denby’s New Yorker review is one of the best—scroll to the bottom of the link), we were blown away.
It’s incredible. It’s intense. It kind of a thriller. It’s ultimately optimistic. Go see it. But you knew this already.

No shock when I picked up today’s Wall Street Journal (registration required so no link) to read a piece about the origin of the Al Gore’s Penguin Army, the video spoofing Gore’s movie that’s a YouTube sensation. It’s creator? Someone listed only as a “Toutsmith.” Who is this so-called Smith? The Journal did some digging and traces the email to a computer registered to the DCI Group, a Washington, DC-based PR firm that flaks for none other than — take a good guess — Exxon.

Remember that scene in Return of the Jedi when Luke Skywalker asks Obi-Wan Kenobi why he said his father, Anakin Skywalker, was murdered by Darth Vader in Episode IV, when in fact Anakin and Vader were actually one and the same?

And what did Ben K. say? “What I told you was true, from a certain point-of-view.”

Ah, I love Jedi wisdom.

See, personal media is really an amazing thing. As chaos continues to erupt in the Middle East, I’ve been compelled to learn more about what ordinary human beings who are living through this nightmare, on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border, have to say about this tragic situation.

Check it.

Sarah Bronson, a.k.a. Chayyei Sarah, is “an Orthodox Jewish thirty-something living, playing, writing, and dating in Jerusalem.” In recent weeks, Sarah, who prides herself on being very fair and reasonable when it comes to issues affecting Israel (i.e., Gaza and the West Bank) has started writing about this very conflict. Her words are honest and beautiful.

An excerpt from Sarah’s blog: (more…)

My nomination, from my inbox, is Robert Smith, who wrote me this email:

Dear good friend,

I am sorry for the inconvenience this might bring to you. I am soliciting for your assistance in repatriating a huge sum of fund which we discover during our mission in Iraq. However the details/source of the fund will be disclose to you as soon as I receive your response. I am anticipating your favorable and urgent response.

Thanks.
Rob Smith.

I just naturally trust anyone with that last name, so I’ve already sent him my Social Security and bank routing information - don’t worry; when I get rich, I’ll share with you all.

Anthony and Larry both blogged about Josh Wolf, a San Francisco videoblogger who captured an anti-globalization protest and the resulting tumult involving protesters and police. When last we heard about Wolf, he was facing incarceration for refusing to turn over his video of the incident. An update today, via Huffington Post’s Eat the Press (where, full disclosure, I do some blogging):

Freelance journalist and blogger Josh Wolf was jailed yesterday for refusing to release a videotape he took at a protest and after refusing to testify before a grand jury.

Wolf, 24, was taken into custody yesterday and “could be imprisoned until next summer, when the grand jury term expires, said his lawyer, Jose Luis Fuentes.”

If you’d like to help Josh by donating to his legal fund, visit his blog.

Sit down. Let’s talk.

Look, I’m certainly not going to be the one to condemn you for growing 2,000 marijuana plants - live and let live, as far as I’m concerned. Heck, more power to you. I can’t even keep my bamboo from dying.

But Jesus, people, if you’re going to grow 2,000 marijuana plants, don’t take pictures and then post them on your favorite social networking site:

According to Sheriff Bruce Anderson, the department’s gang and drug task force gathered enough information off the Web site to execute a warrant at a Zimmerman residence. On the Web site, a juvenile girl indicated there was marijuana growing at her house. When agents from the task force and Drug Enforcement Agency responded to the residence, they found approximately 2,000 marijuana plants growing on the property. The plants were removed and then destroyed. The investigation surrounding the marijuana continues.

Following the incident, Anderson urged parents to be diligent in monitoring the online activities of their children. “The juvenile in question made no attempt to be secretive about the marijuana. In fact, she had a picture of herself holding marijuana posted to her personal page online,” he said.

Folks, the whole point of the thing is that it’s public - don’t think anything you post on there is going to be private, especially when you’re apparently growing enough weed to keep the entire state high for weeks.