I got to meet our beloved Ed I Tor, Emily Holleman, last night at the Salon meeting in New York City.  Let me tell you, she is a sweetheart, and if anyone wants to badmouth her, they have to deal with my wrath!  In fact, she is so nice that I almost feel bad about all the things I’ve said about her. I said almost.  (Yes, she did serve me a drink that tasted kind of funny, why do you ask?)

(Deisgnanator has photos of the gathering here.)

I also met Kerry Lauerman, new chief David Talbot, Emma Mustich, Priscilla Eshleman (VP, Business Development), Justin Elliot (reporter covering Occupy Wall Street) and David Daley, the culture editor (who seemed strangely interested in our dirtiest jokes about Emily).  Here’s the sad thing: they were all nice people.  That pisses me off because now I’ll feel guilty when I complain about Salon.  Meeting people sucks. Better to stay anonymous and continue throwing rocks at each other. 

I don’t know much about the ongoing technical issues.  Greg Correll, who knows about these things, was talking to Kerry about them for a long time.  There was something about moving to a new platform and proprietary blah-blah.  At that point of the conversation, I felt like Homer Simpson during an intellectual conversation when his brain starts hearing “Turkey in the Straw.”

Anyway, Emily is super-nice, and I apologize for monopolizing her time last night.  She looks just like her avatar, and I didn’t realize how young she is.  In fact, she's the same age as my elder daughter, which pisses me off too, because now if I want to yell at her, I'll feel like I'm yelling at my own kids. 

She is frustrated by the access issues too, is good-natured about the abuse she sometimes takes in comments and doesn’t even mind Tink’s Sunday morning 3:00 am PMs about spam. Although we all complain about the Editor’s Picks, I can’t imagine weeding through all the blog posts that appear here every day.  On a good day, I can read about 20 posts and then my eyes start screaming, “Stop! Stop!”  Combine that with all the spam she has to zap, and I assume Salon gave her this position as punishment for screwing up royally in her previous job.  (Emily did say she wanted to have Tink’s baby, but that’s what happens when you down five glasses of wine in one hour.)      

I also told Emily that, even with all of OS's myriad problems, I still love the OS community. I've made so many friends here that it's changed my life.  Like several other OSers, I have been doing some posting recently at a British writers’ site called Viewshound, partly because they award small amounts of prize money every day. It is nice to add an occasional Hamilton or Jackson to your wallet.  However, I have found it less satisfying than OS, which still has far more excellent writers, far more diversity in its subject matter, and far livelier comment threads.  Of course, the British site rarely crashes!

Finally, in the best news of all, I am now an investor in Salon. I brought some wrapped pennies to the meeting, so I now own 25 shares of Salon Media Group. If I can save a few more pennies, I'll be the primary stockholder.  Woo-hoo!