PAULA NEAL MOONEY

These are some of the hot questions folks are typing into search engines according to Yahoo's Buzz log titled President Barack Obama? ever since Barack Obama 's Sunday morning "Meet the Press" appearance where Barack hawked his new book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream , not the Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance that Obama previously discussed on Oprah. Obama said he was open to thinking about a run for the White House in 2008. And that started a barage of questions. Amazingly, some folks had never even heard of the junior senator from Illinois, nor his career-changing keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention that set the political world ablaze for Barack. People want to know about Obama's wife and the like. I already know he was born August 4, 1961 (making him 46 as of this update), is biracial (with a Kenyan dad and white mom from Kansas who can trace her ancestry all the way back to Jefferson Davis...

The Fried Coke recipe balls have been revealed here . (Is that the official recipe?) I wrote about searching for the Fried Coke recipe balls (that's another version) nearly a year ago, and now today Fried Coke is all the rage again for some reason. As if we haven't battered and deep-fried enough stuff under the sun, now comes deep Fried coke . But how on earth do you deep fry a liquid? Turns out you don't, according an original article published in 2006 that only alluded to the deep fried Coke recipe without giving too many particulars, calling them "gooey Coke-battered nuggets topped with cola syrup." Now the deep fried phenomenon has spread and Yahoo is abuzz with searches for "deep fried coke recipe" or just plain ol' "deep fried coke." Read more about Fried Coke balls here... Tags: fried coke recipe what is Abel Gonzales

Working With You is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work I guess this is the best part of being an isolated blogger -- at least for a couple of hours out of each day. I don't have to buy books like this new one by Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster, titled Working With You is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work to help me deal with some annoying coworker that gets on my nerves that I can't escape, like the high-pitched voiced, rotund woman on Office Space that answered her phone extremely happily every few seconds. But I do remember what it was like back in gray cube land, dealing with a few folks who got on my nerves. During days when I wasn't the one getting on other folks' nerves, I pretty much treated every one equally. 'cept the red-faced guy with the Napolean complex who wanted to rule us all. Or the witchy woman who was rough around the edges. Or the...Never mind! Just read an excerpt here... It looks fantastic. ...

by Paula Neal Mooney I just watched this amazing "A Girl Like Me" video clip of the award-winning documentary by Kiri Davis , a 17-year-old New York high school student. (Thanks, dreah , for the heads up.) Kiri Davis conducted a modern-day "doll study" wherein she asked black children to choose between the black and white dolls. Most of them selected the white dolls. But skin bleaching tales caught my ear the most. One black woman spoke of friends who actually pour bleach in their baths in sad attempts to lighten their skin. I understand the mentality. Even though some blacks consider me light-skinned, my biracial friends and whites are quicker to call me dark-skinned. All depends on your perspective. Anyhoo, I still use the skin lightening cream sold in grocery stores. I tell myself it's just to even out my skin tone. But I feel a little weird at times as it moves down the conveyor belt toward the register. I snickered at my mom when she used beauty products ...

Are We All Lonesome Fame Junkies? by Paula Neal Mooney Why is J-Lo more popular than Jesus? That's one of the questions asked by Jake Halpern , author of Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America's Favorite Addiction . I caught 20/20's interview with Jake Halpern Friday night, and the thing that keeps sticking in my mind about Fame Junkies is that Jake believes we're all lonelier than ever in our real lives -- working in front of computers all day and not connecting with each other -- then we come home and surf the web more. Because of this loneliness, the Fame Junkies' author posits that we seek fame because we believe it will buy us a measure of happiness and human connection that we lack in our every day lives. This theory could be especially true for folks like me, who spend our workdays in the company of very few people. Like the lifeguard at my health club's pool, who unveiled his life to me as I became his sounding board, hanging around in the h...

Make a Real Living off Your Blog in 2007 by Paula Neal Mooney Blogging is "hot ta death," as the kids would say. So this New Year's Day 2007 has me ruminating over ways to increase my blogging-from-home (or wherever) business goals to reach my ultimate goal: making a real living and drawing a six-figure-plus salary from blogging in 2007. Funny how some people laugh at that goal or write "good luck!" as if making a living off your blog is some kind of impossible dream. But I know that God is no respecter of persons, and if Darren Rowse and Michael Arrington can do it, so can I thru Christ. So here goes with my blogging goals and visions for 2007, which all will intrinsically help to increase my revenue by driving blog traffic and the like. Hope they help you quit the job you hate -- that you're so stressed over you get sick in the parking lot upon arrival -- and make all your money doing the blogging thing you love: Subscribe to more blogs, leave more com...