“Build Your Hypnosis Business and Publish Your First Book in 2008″

I rest my case.

I started my psych research with the findingDulcinea Science of the Brain Guide, a recent addition, but I also found a lot of goodies in the Dreams Guide, which I’ve always designated “randomest guide ever,” even though it is fascinating. Working together, my brain and a couple of web guides come up with some pretty cool ideas. I flatter myself. But anyway, today I’m doing the exercise section, which will hopefully act as a jumper cable to people’s dwindling New Year’s resolutions about exercise. I’ll also be writing a “Loving and Hating Exercise” piece, a standalone, in a few days, as Netcetera transitions into a featurey complement to the Beyond the Headlines section.

Across the Web, poor Eric Roberts, brother of Julia, is referred to thus:

“Eric Roberts, brother of Julia, disturbing in Star 80.”

That’s how I want to be remembered. “Elizabeth Colville, granddaughter of Alex, affecting as the voice-over for Dove body lotion.”

People are always the best remedy to health confusion, next to actual medicine or surgery. And as RB mentioned in another blog post on our site, we are real people behind our insights and link choices. In-sight. In-sight. Computers can’t see, you will recall, which is why you have to type in those strange jargon utterances when you sign in or sign up to a site (“Are you human? Sorry, we have to ask” – Digg). And when I first suspected I had Celiac disease––an autoimmune disease requiring a terminal avoidance of wheat––it was a person, another coworker, actually, who planted the seed in my brain. Yes, I certainly thought I was being a hypochondriac. But after hours and hours of fascinating research on the Web, which began with our Health Guide and ended on Tuesday with my gastroenterologist sticking a tube with a camera on the end of it down my esophagus, I learned that no, my gut (the poor thing) had been right; no more pre-race pasta dinners for me.

One of the first light bulb moments I had was on Columbia University’s Celiac Center site, where I learned that those with other autoimmune diseases (in my case, silent thyroiditis (sounds like a submarine movie)), are prone to a second autoimmune disease. Not only that, but Celiac disease can also be silent––symptom-less––for years; the thyroid condition, or whatever it is, is usually diagnosed first. That’s exactly what happened to me. The good news? A well-managed Celiac patient can also gain much improvement in the thyroid department. I’d prefer not to have my thyroid radioactively zapped, which is the other treatment for an ornery gland. So we’ll see how this rice- and veggie- and strange-grain-filled diet works out for every body part involved.

The irony (in the sense that it’s triumphantly funny) is that I haven’t been “sick” since November (knock on whatever this desk is made of). The work “sick,” to me, is an onomatopoeia of the common cold. Hearing it now in my echoic memory, it is being uttered by someone with a stuffy nose and puffy red eyes. It has nothing whatever to do with Celiac, thyroids, or more serious conditions. I have conditions, but I am not sick. In October, before I did get a fairly bad cold, I invested one time in those silly Dannon Activia yogurts that claim, in their TV ads, to boost the immune system. Dannon is now being sued for allegedly duping consumers, and I can attest that those drinks are absolutely useless. But the live cultures in yogurt do work. It’s just unnecessary to buy some fancy, fruity, tiny, expensive thing with a lot of additives in it to get the benefits. I’ve eaten a cheap, bland, fat-free yogurt every day for breakfast since Jan 2 (I was told to by the detox author). I also drink about 6 cups of Yogi tea a day. I’m just saying. Anyone in our office should try to reap the benefits of that Yogi genius. I believe in the power of the Kombucha mushroom to keep that Dulcinea Virus at bay. The other reading of my otherwise-healthiness: my immune system just feels really bad for me. And for that, I thank it.

The other joy of researching health conditions online is, you realize that, OK, I’m probably self-involved and just want to know how I’m supposed to eat for the next 60 years so I can get pregnant, have healthy children, and not die of bowel cancer when I’m 35 (sorry). But I also am just generally fascinated by the body, and have been since middle school. I used to be really good at science, and then science started getting hard, and I started writing poems and doing my best impression of Edith Piaf. But when my small intestine got its fifteen minutes of fame the other day thanks to Dr. Jonathan Cohen’s nationally acclaimed camera work, I asked him if I could see the images. He was either going to roll his eyes and say, “Looky here, we’ve got a pseudo doctor who’s really up on her condition,” or he was going to think that in his head, and let me look at them. He did the latter, and I began to think about the possibility of med school.

For more on the Dannon story and what live cultures can do for you downstairs, check out this article on the Well Blog.

But as time wore on, I noticed that I was rarely looking at those RSS feeds. Is it because the concept of having RSS Feeds in your e-mail is disconcerting? Absolutely. Getting 100 e-mails a day is hassle enough already; I don’t need 100 more things that look like e-mails but really contain mere links to other pieces of information­—in your browser—to cultural goings-on. No thanks. But do I use any other RSS feeds, besides as a means of bookmarking my favorite bloggers (ahem, writers)? Nope.

Meanwhile, I was still vainly checking my mail on my iPhone in the morning while the N train crossed over the Manhattan Bridge. The point? After all, the AT&T network is now so slow that if you’re not on wireless, it can take up to 10 minutes for 10 e-mail messages to load completely. No thanks. And anyway, what advantage was it to get those e-mails before I got to work? Whatever it was, it was short-lived.

I’m currently using a Microsoft Word trial to compose a blog entry to Netcetera. I need no Internet connection; it hovers silently in the background so Word can post my document to the Web automatically. I’m on vacation and would prefer to stay away from the medium I work on, in, and around 45-50 hours a week, partly so that I can recharge my admiration for its mixed bag of opportunity, education, and distraction. I’ve just retired from the business of music criticism, at least temporarily, and will be working on short fiction for the next eight days. I nearly gave up creative writing after three years of full-time writing jobs, and I wonder if technology, a spaghetti-splatter of information that alternately sticks to and falls from my face, is to blame. I’m using my dad’s Bose headphones to block out sounds and listen to old, old music. I’m reading “Eat, Pray, Love,” because I was sure I would hate it. But sometimes a big ball of cheese is the best medicine. The book is the #3 bestseller on Amazon and has been for weeks, months. On the subway you will see at least one young woman a day reading it, and guess what, it’s not an Oprah Book Club selection–yet. So why am I reading it? I, who never do what the masses do, except if they were to roll their eyes at another mass? I’m stepping outside of myself for awhile. I’m trying to be open-minded. The book is about abandoning everything one thinks one wants—a successful writing career, a house on Long Island, an apartment in New York, and a family (hey, it’s not exactly my dream, but it was Elizabeth Gilbert’s)—and traveling to three countries that coincidentally start with ‘I’—Italy, India, and Indonesia, in search of spirituality, love, good food, and oneself. It’s like a vacation within a vacation. I like it so far (thanks, Kate, for the recommendation).

What we do at Dulcinea Media is exalt the Web. We primp, prune, inspect, dissect, powder, pluck, groom and tie a bow around the Web. What is required for that job is an almost spiritual methodology: enter the Web with a calm, open-minded attitude. Respect it, but narrow your eyes at it, especially if you smell a whiff of somebody (or simply, an IP address) up on a soapbox. But most of all, approach the Web the way you would a classic novel by, say, George Eliot, who could pack as much information about the world and English society into an 800-page novel as the Internet can in a couple of pages of search engine results. In other words, it can be as classic, as classy, and as educational as a book, a PBS special, or a symphony. But it can also be as addictive as caffeine, as dizzying as a trip to Costco, and as mind-numbing as an episode of an MTV reality show. Taking a vacation from the 21st century, thus far defined by the Internet, not only relieves stress—something even a 24-year-old can face, by the way. It also reminds us of the fruits of the labor of generations past, and how we must put their accomplishments on the Web, keep them there, and do everything in our power to emulate them.

One thing they do: they read the entire New Yorker from cover to cover. In this era of choice, can you even imagine doing such a thing? Well, try it. And then try doing the same thing on its Web site. Does anyone savor the Web? As if it were a 1891 first edition of a Henry James novel? As if it might vanish or disintegrate tomorrow? What happens when your Internet connection fails? Get back to me when that happens.

So as I sit here at my parents’ droid of a PC, I think, well, I’m not blogging! I’m writing a letter to my coworkers and other scattered fans of the Netcetera Blog. Semantics is a form of therapy. I highly recommend it.

So imagine my surprise when I was, this winter, lured into a high-definition world of underdogs and a Wesleyan grad (Bill Belichick) with a penchant for fleecy Patriots sweatshirts with cut-off sleeves. Here I am, drinking ginger ale, two large cats lounging by the fire, immersed in another family’s tradition, for which I feel vicarious affinity and a level of discomfort and boredom that–would you believe it–faded as the weeks wore on. Still, I could not commit. I did not watch the Giants beat Green Bay in yet another upset away game (I think I was running at the time). But the anticipation of the Super Bowl was palpable, especially over at FindingDulcinea. I climbed on board. My reservation was only that I felt like a phony.

Love one sport, love them all. That’s what I learned the other week, rejoining that family to witness one of the greatest Super Bowl moments in history (lucky me). Because I have been an enraptured fan of pro tennis since I was 7, though I rarely play the sport myself. Watching Rafael Nadal face Roger Federer in 2007′s Wimbledon final was almost as exciting as watching the long-suffering, soft-spoken mama’s boy Eli Manning rise to the challenge and beat an undefeated team in the final 35 seconds of a game. In this sport, every second counts, and I deeply respect that about it.

Ironically, it was a terribly played Homecoming game at Wesleyan in 2002 that hinted at my future interest in the sport. Being that close to the action, caring about your team, no matter how bad they are, and having autumn as the backdrop to a bustling Sunday morning, it’s then that you finally start to accept, OK, I hold an American passport and have for two decades. It’s time I started acting like it.

Today I’m researching yellow journalism for a feature on the press that’s publishing next week. I was supposed to be done with the yellow journalism portion, but I find myself back in its midst today, finding even more goodies. After reading a book review in the Times on The Yellow Kids, a book now sadly out of print, I learned of a pioneer roving reporting by the name of James Creelman, who lived at the turn of the 20th century and met some of the most important people who ever lived, including Leo Tolstoy. In Creelman’s memoir, On the Great Highway, he devotes a whole chapter to “the Count.” Miracle of miracles, the entirety of On the Great Highway is available as an ebook! Here’s an excerpt from the incredibly titled “The Avatar of Count Tolstoy” chapter:

“It was all so strange, — and it was stranger still to an American writer, fresh from hard-headed London, Paris, and New York, — to sit with the great master in this house, whose doors were never closed to the hungry or weary, whose table was always spread, whose owner called every wandering pilgrim a brother.

“That night, as I lay in the Count’s little iron cot, among his books, I heard the clock strike twelve, and it would not have surprised me ifthe clock had struck thirteen, so unusual were the ways of that wonderful place.”

I just can’t get enough of Well, or Paper Cuts, or any number of other blogs on and off the Times site. For addiction feeding, I recommend RSS. Unless you’re of the four-hour work week mindset. Firefox makes the process of figuring out what the heck RSS is graceful and painless. When you’re on a blog’s page, simply click that little blue (or orange) square on the right-hand side of your browser’s address bar. Firefox will ask you where you want to put the RSS feed. Forget readers–just add it to your bookmark bar. Better yet, create a folder in your bookmark bar called “RSS,” subdivide into the topics of your favorite blogs, and feed away! Did I mention I’m obsessed with organizing? Here’s what the right-hand area of my browser looks like:

Oh, and by the way, we may all be familiar with food. We know what’s healthy and what isn’t. But rarely do we actually know the numbers behind what we’re eating. Fortunately, the government cares! The USDA has a free resource to let you track your calories and physical exercise. Use it! It’s enlightening and very helpful.