My meet up with The Blogger Who Likes to Use Funny Pseudonyms and Never Shows Faces

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Originally uploaded by rob helpychalk.

My family and I had the honor of being extras for a little while at Jo(e)'s house a couple weeks ago. I know, I should have blogged it sooner, but Jo(e) did such a nice job of it, and I have had little chance to do anything besides work related posts recently, and I'm even behind on reading her blog so I didn't even know she had posted naked pictures of herself, and oh well I'm blogging it now.

This picture is a Writing as Jo(e) two-fer, since you get to see both Jo(e) and With-a-Why without seeing their faces. With-a-Why was one of the last of Clan Jo(e) we met, and when he walked in the room he almost immediately curled up, kittenish, on her lap. All the clan members were introduced to us both by their real name and their blog name, and the juxtaposition revealed an extra little joke in With-a-Why’s pseudonym that those of us who had only been reading the blog would get. After spending some time on her lap, he went to the piano, and there was debate over whether he should play The Doors or “Real Music” (= Classical). The Doors won out at first, but it turned out to be a little too interruptive for polite conversation.

While we were there we met all the Jo(e) family members--Boy in Black, Shaggy Hair, With-a-Why, Wonderful Smart Beautiful Daughter, Spouse--and two of the regular extras, Blonde Niece and Skater Boy. It was neat to meet Spouse: He gets less time on the blog, and there is a serious pseudonym imbalance between him and Wonderful Smart Beautiful Daughter. In the end, I couldn’t figure out why he isn’t blogged as Wonderful Smart Beautiful Spouse. Like the rest of the family, he spontaneously produces music in conversation. With us, he picked up one of those wooden-frog-percussion-things and began quietly tapping a complicated rhythm. As an inveterate tapper myself, I can recognize quality idle music production.

Jo(e) is just like her blog, sweet and playful and funny. As soon as we came, she got down on the floor with Joey and Caroline and played, bringing out a wooden train set and blowing up balloons. We talked a little of the politics of pseudonymous blogging, and she served some lovely pasta salad. It was easy to become extras at her house as soon as you walked in the door.